Frances Densmore

Frances Densmore (21 May 1867 – 5 June 1957) was an American anthropologist and ethnographer. She is known for her studies of Native American music and culture, and in modern terms, she may be described as an ethnomusicologist.

Frances Densmore was born as Frances Theresa Densmore on May 21, 1867, in Red Wing, Minnesota. She grew up hearing the drums of her Dakota neighbors, but she did not express much interest in Native American music until decades later. 

Densmore grew up in a successful family. Her father studied civil engineering at Beloit College, Wisconsin, and established a successful iron works. Her mother was a homemaker and immersed in church and community affairs. One grandfather who settled Red Wing in 1857 became a judge. 

She had a sister, Margaret.

Growing up, Densmore listened to a lot of Western European music, as she recalled later, "All the old Densmores were musical and did a lot of singing...there was an orchestra within the family. They were great singers of the old-country songs."

From 1884 to 1887, Densmore studied piano, organ, and harmony at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Oberlin, Ohio. After a brief stay in Minnesota, Densmore went to Boston and studied piano with Carl Baermann and Leopold Godowsky and counterpoint with John Knowles Paine of Harvard from 1888 to 1889. While in Boston, she became acquainted with Alice Cunningham Fletcher's book A Study of Omaha Indian Music (1893), which rekindled her early interest in the sounds of Indian drumming. 

After finishing her education in Boston, Densmore returned to Red Wing in 1890 and gave piano lessons there and in the Twin Cities. She also served as a church organist, directed boys' and adults' choirs, and lectured on such musical topics as Wagnerian opera, to local music clubs for women.

She traveled to Native communities in the West in the late nineteenth century as an ethnologist and reformer. Her research sparked widespread interest in Native American music in anthropological and artistic circles. Classically trained musicians saw the potential to use these songs as a basis for a national American music. 

John Comfort Fillmore, (1843-1898) musician/theorist and a professor at the Milwaukee School of Music, used Alice Cunningham Fletcher's work to compose Indian Fantasia No. 1 in 1890 and developed theories on how to explore and use Native songs in Western musical settings. Other composers followed suit in the 1890s and the first decade of the 1900s. Intrigued by these developments, Densmore arranged a meeting with Fillmore in Milwaukee on her way to Chicago's world fair, and they discussed his views of Native song and his ideas about the notation of Indian music and the harmonization for the songs Fletcher had collected.

Beginning in 1900, Densmore began her fieldwork on her own, recording Dakota songs in Red Wing; visiting Ojibwe communities with her sister, Margaret; and publishing articles in local media on Indian topics. At the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Densmore became a scientific scholar of non-Western music. In the summer of that year, in the Festival Lecture Hall in the Indian School Building, she delivered "The Music of the American Indian," "The Indians' Natural Sense of Harmony," "Primitive Rhythms," and "Indian Life Expressed in Music." Her lectures were well received by the teachers' institution at the fair, and Densmore received a letter of appreciation from S. M. McCowan, the organizer of the Indian School Building.

After her lectures, Densmore consulted with the scientist in charge of anthropological exhibits at the fair, William J. McGee, who suggested she visit the Filipino village. She followed the advice and met with Albert Jenks, the anthropologist in charge of the exhibits representing the newly acquired colony of the Philippines. Following her research at the fair, Densmore sought to use these experiences to gain greater legitimacy as a professional anthropologist. She requested that Jenks write letters on her behalf to professional organizations and continued to rely on his advice in the years to come while Jenks taught at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

In 1907, Densmore began recording music officially for the Smithsonian Institution's Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE). She was initially denied the funding in 1903, however, she applied again in 1907 using her publication on Filipino music in the American Anthropologist as proof of her qualifications and to provide insights into her framework for the study. She explained to Frederick Webb Hodge at the BAE that her ultimate goal was "to throw light upon the development of music as a means of expression; it is my highest ambition to work upon that question."

Densmore expanded her research agenda after the fair, spending the later years engaged in fieldwork in Minnesota.

In her fifty-plus years of studying and preserving American Indian music, she collected thousands of recordings. Many of the recordings she made on behalf of the BAE now are held in the Library of Congress. While her original recordings often were on wax cylinders, many of them have been reproduced using other media and are included in other archives. The recordings may be accessed by researchers as well as tribal delegations.

Some of the tribes she worked with include the Chippewa, the Mandan, Hidatsa, the Sioux, the northern Pawnee of Oklahoma, the Papago of Arizona, Indians of Washington and British Columbia, Winnebago and Menominee of Wisconsin, Pueblo Indians of the southwest, the Seminoles of Florida, and even the Kuna Indians of Panama. Densmore frequently was published in the journal American Anthropologist, contributing consistently throughout her career.

In 1926, Densmore authored The Indians and Their Music. Her other book credits include:

• Chippewa Customs, introduced by Nina M. Archabal (1929)
• Chippewa music (date unknown)
• How Indians Use Wild Plants for Food, Medicine & Crafts (1926–1927)

Between 1910 and 1957, she published fourteen book-length bulletins for the Smithsonian, each describing the musical practices and repertories of a different Native-American group. These were reprinted as a series by DaCapo Press in 1972.

She also was a part of "A Ventriloquy of Anthros" in the American Indian Quarterly along with James Owen Dorsey and Eugene Buechel.

Smithsonian-Densmore Cylinder Collection (1910-1930) Includes: Songs of the Chippewa Songs of the Sioux Songs of the Yuma, Cocopa, and Yaqui Songs of the Pawnee and Northern Ute Songs of the Papago Songs of the Nootka and Quileute Songs of the Menominee, Mandan, and Hidatsa