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Home > Crosscurrents > Public Records: One woman’s quest to document California’s folk music
Podcast: Crosscurrents
Episode:

Public Records: One woman’s quest to document California’s folk music
Category: Society & Culture
Duration: 00:19:05
Publish Date: 2026-04-06 12:35:00
Description:

Are there certain songs that have been passed down in your family — that you sing together at gatherings, or that parents sing as lullabies? If you moved across the country or across the world, what songs would you bring with you to remind you of home?

Back in the 1930s, an adventurous woman named Sidney Robertson went on a quest to document those kinds of songs across Northern California. With support from the federal government, Sidney and her small staff were able to collect and catalog hundreds of songs, capturing the music people brought with them when they moved here from all over the U.S. and the world.

These recordings became a soundtrack that celebrates the cultures that make up the Bay Area, and they show how music has the power to connect us across generations and communities. 

In this story, reporter Sheryl Kaskowitz meets a family in Oakland who discovered the power of these recordings for themselves. It’s the fourth episode of The Public Works, her series about how the New Deal transformed the Bay Area and what lessons we can learn from it today.
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