James Arkatov was born in 1920 in Odessa, Russia and raised in San Francisco, where his father, Alexander Arkatov, owned a photography salon. In 1938, he was invited by Fritz Feiner to join the Pittsburgh Symphony. Later, he joined the San Francisco Symphony with Pierre Monteux, and went on to be principal cellist of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra under Fabien Sevitzky. Arkatov returned to California in 1946 as a studio musician and was later appointed principal cellist of the NBC Symphony Orchestra. In 1956, he married Salome Ramras Arkatov.
In 1968, he founded the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (LACO) and was its first principal cellist. According to LACO: "The Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra was founded in 1968 as an artistic outlet for the recording industry’s most gifted musicians. The Orchestra’s artistic founder, cellist James Arkatov, envisioned an ensemble that would allow these conservatory-trained players to balance studio work and teaching with pure artistic collaboration at the highest level."
Arkatov began photographing musicians when he was with the Pittsburgh Symphony. In 1990, he published his first book of photography, Masters of Music: Great Artists at Work. In 1998, he published his second book, Artists: The Creative Personality.
In May 2015, the Arkatovs donated James' photographs of world music performers to the Ethnomusicology Archive. Many of these photos highlight UCLA Ethnomusicology's famous World Music Ensembles. https://schoolofmusic.ucla.edu/ensembles/ James Arkatov died May 11, 2019 at age 98.
Donald R. Borcherdt, known as "Donn" to his friends and colleagues, received his B.A. from UCLA in music in 1956. He earned his M.A. in music with a specialization in ethnomusicology in 1962, and by 1966 had advanced to doctoral candidacy in music with a specialization in ethnomusicology. Borcherdt conducted field research in Mexico in 1960, 1961, and 1963-1964 and in Chile in 1966-67. Borcherdt also hosted the weekly radio program, "Many Worlds of Music," in 1960-1962, on KPFK in Los Angeles. In 1961, Borcherdt, started a student-run mariachi class, Conjunto Mariachi or Conjunto Uclatlán [the land of UCLA], in the then Institute (now Department) of Ethnomusicology at UCLA, making UCLA the first academic institution in the United States to offer mariachi classes. In 1967-1968, Borcherdt made a final fieldwork trip to Mexico to continue his studies on mariachi music in Jalisco and Michoacán. He died unexpectedly in Mexico in 1969. The Ethnomusicology Archive holds his complete collection, including fieldwork recordings, field notes, these photos, and nearly 2,000 index cards filled with the outline of his dissertation. As Professor Lauryn Salazar concluded in her own dissertation, "had he lived to finish his dissertation, it would have been a seminal work within the field." Salazar, Lauryn Camille. 2011. "From Fiesta to Festival: Mariachi Music in California and the Southwestern United States." PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles.
Established in 1961, the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive is a world-renowned research archive dedicated to the study of musical traditions from around the globe. The Archive’s collection of more than 150,000 audio, video, print, and photographic items documents musical expressions throughout the world. As part of UCLA’s Department of Ethnomusicology, the Archive preserves and makes accessible over 60 years’ worth of materials that record the department’s famed musical performances. This Ethnomusicology Archive Photographic Collection represents a selection of images from the Archive's large photo collection. Included are images from the 1960s and 70s of the World Music Ensembles and guest artists: Mantle Hood, founder of the Institute of Ethnomusicology, with the Balinese and Javanese gamelans; Dong Youp “Danny” Lee, who led the Music of Korea from 1967-1997; Robert Ayitee and Robert Bonsu, who founded the Music of Ghana in 1961; guest artist Gayathri Rajapur Kassebaum playing gottuvadyum; Donn Borcherdt, founder of the Music of Mexico in 1961; Tsun-Yuen Lui, who founded the Music of China in 1959; and many more. Also included are fieldwork photos from: Fred Lieberman (Japan, 1963); Tsun-yuen Lui (Hong Kong, 1967); David Morton (Thailand, 1959-60); Bonnie Wade (India, 1968). Please browse this collection and learn more about UCLA Ethnomusicology's legendary history.
Digitization of the field recordings was made possible by a generous grant from the Grammy Foundation. The D.K. Wilgus Folksong Collection consists of approximately 8,000 commercially recorded albums of traditional music, song, and narrative as well as 1,000 field-recorded tapes.
