Boas, Franz

(b Minden, 9 July 1858; d New York, 21 Dec 1942). American anthropologist and ethnomusicologist of German birth. He was trained at Heidelberg, Berlin and Kiel as a physicist and geographer (1877–81), and, having gone to Baffinland, North America, to do a survey of Cumberland Sound, he went on to compare Inuit perceptions of space with his own technical mapping. It was during his stay among the Inuits in 1883–4, that he formulated the anthropological perspectives and field methodology that was to shape the character of early 20th-century American anthropology. On his return to Berlin, he became interested in the methods used by Carl Stumpf, Hornbostel and Herzog in the study of music in other cultures. In 1886 Boas returned to North America to work among the Bella Coola Indians of the Pacific Northwest coast; in 1888 he took a post teaching anthropology at Clark University and settled in the USA, having decided to make Amerindians the centre of his anthropological work.

Boas was well acquainted with other pioneers in the study of Amerindian music, including Alice Cunningham Fletcher, J. Walter Fewkes and Frances Densmore, with whom he was associated through the Bureau of American Ethnology. For some publications Boas and Fletcher shared the services of John Comfort Fillmore as transcriber for their recordings of Amerindian melodies and in 1893, while chief anthropological assistant at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, he and Benjamin Ives Gilman simultaneously recorded a performance in the Kwakiutl exhibit.

Boas was professor of anthropology at Columbia University (1899–1936), and in his teaching he emphasized that music was vital to the integrated ethnological study of indigenous cultures. While curator of ethnology at the American Museum of Natural History (1901–5), Boas organized the Jesup North Pacific Expedition (1902–6), the first comprehensive anthropological survey of the north circumpolar region, during which he and his associates made sound and film recordings. He urged his students to collect music along with other ethnological data. He recorded much material among the Kwakiutl and neighbouring tribes in British Columbia and among the Yoruba in Africa. His publications of the period 1887–1900 include many transcriptions: ‘The Central Eskimo’ (1888) and ‘The Social Organization and the Secret Societies of the Kwakiutl Indians’ (1897) served as models for later ethnological treatises that included music. After 1900 Boas developed a keen interest in linguistics and the closely linked oral arts and their accompanying forms (tale and myth, poetry, music and dance), emphasizing the interrelationship of different aspects of culture within the whole cultural frame. His publications (over 600 items) often included song texts with translations.

WRITINGS

‘Poetry and Music of some North American Tribes’, Science, ix (1887), 383–5

‘The Central Eskimo’, Bureau of American Ethnology: Annual Report 1884–1885, vi (1888), 399–669; pubd separately (Lincoln, NE, 1964)

‘Second General Report of the Indians of British Columbia’, Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, lx (1891), 562–715

‘Eskimo Tales and Songs’, Journal of American Folklore, vii (1894), 45–50

‘The Social Organization and the Secret Societies of the Kwakiutl Indians’, Report of the United States National Museum 1895 (1897), 311–753

‘The Mythology of the Bella Coola Indians’, Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, ii (1900), 25–127

Primitive Art (Oslo and Cambridge, MA, 1927/R)

ed.: General Anthropology (New York, 1938/R) [incl. ‘Literature, Music and Dance’, 589–608; ‘Music and Folk-Lore’, 609–26]

ed.: The Function of Dance in Human Society (New York, 1944, 2/1972) [incl. ‘Dance and Music in the Life of the Northwest Coast Indians of North America (Kwakiutl)’, 5–9]

ed. R.P. Rohner: The Ethnography of Franz Boas (Chicago, 1969) [diaries and letters, 1886–1931]

ed. G.W. Stocking: The Shaping of American Anthropology, 1883–1911: a Franz Boas Reader (New York, 1974/R)

ed. C.C. Knötsch: Franz Boas bei den kanadischen Inuit im Jahre 1883–1884 (Bonn, 1992; Eng. trans., 1998) [diaries and letters]

ed. A. Jonaitis: A Wealth of Thought: Franz Boas on Native American Art (Seattle and Vancouver, 1995)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

B. Laufer, ed.: Boas Anniversary Volume: Anthropological Papers Written in Honor of Franz Boas (New York, 1906) [incl. list of pubns, 515–40]

‘Franz Boas, 1858–1942’, American Anthropologist, new ser., xlv/3, pt 2 [suppl.61] (1943) [memorial issue; incl. A.L. Kroeber: ‘Franz Boas: the Man’, 5–26; R. Benedict: ‘Franz Boas as an ethnologist’, 27–34; G.A. Reichard: ‘Franz Boas and Folklore’, 52–7, and complete list of writings, 67–109]

R.H. Lowie: ‘Biographical Memoir of Franz Boas, 1858–1942’, Biographical Memoirs [National Academy of Sciences], xxiv (Washington, 1947), 303–22

M.J. Herskovits: Franz Boas: the Science of Man in the Making (New York, 1953/R)

B. Nettl: North American Indian Musical Styles (Philadelphia, 1954)

L.A. White: The Ethnography and Ethnology of Franz Boas (Austin, 1963)

R. Darnell: The Development of American Anthropology, 1879–1920: from the Bureau of American Ethnology to Franz Boas (Philadelphia, 1969)

Guide to the Microfilm Collection of the Professional Papers of Franz Boas (Wilmington, DE, 1972)

M. Hyatt: Franz Boas, Social Activist: the Dynamics of Ethnicity (New York, 1990)

J.E. Liss: The Cosmopolitan Imagination: Franz Boas and the Development of American Anthropology (diss., U. of California, Berkeley, 1990)

V. Rodekamp, ed.: Franz Boas, 1858–1942: eine amerikanischer Anthropologe aus Minden (Bielefeld, 1994)

M. Dürr: Franz Boas: Ethnologe, Anthropologe, Sprachwissenschaftler, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, 17 Dec 1992 – 6 March 1993 (Berlin, 1992) [exhibition catalogue]

SUE CAROLE De VALE/R