Paper short abstract:

Starting as a teenager, over 40 years, I documented in evolving media the richly diverse, vanishing world of the American Doo-Wop music microculture, which impacted global popular culture. This glimpse of the evolution of a genre exemplifies a great resource for partnering with anthropologists.

Paper long abstract:

Starting as a teenager, over 40 years, I documented in evolving media the richly diverse, but vanishing world of the American Doo-Wop music microculture, which impacted global popular culture from then on. This glimpse of the evolution of a genre exemplifies a great mutual resource for partnering with anthropologists. As with documenting endangered species, these glimpses involve capturing lightning in a bottle, and words or pictures alone simply cannot convey the soul of this midcentury phenomenon. Partnering with anthropologists studying the mirroring of society in its music is especially essential when that music is created by kids, for kids- -as was the case in Doo-Wop, and, now, its natural successor, rap. The genesis of who we are and who we may become is there, in the words, music and faces- -the heart & soul of the film.

You had to be there.