University of Pennsylvania Finding Aids

Born in Trinidad in 1913, Jacob Elder was a primary school tescher and community development officer before attending Penn to study for his doctorate in folklore. Elder specialized in the traditional music of Trinidad and Tobago. In addition to his scholarly studies, Elder worked to develop the Steel Band and song competitions in his native land to encourage the restless youth to find purpose and fulfillment. Manuscript holdings include approximately two linear feet of cultural material, research, working manuscript and disertation, song, lyric and interview transcriptions, folktales, stories and scripts. The West Indies Recordings contain approximately 160 hours of recorded sound collected in Trinidad, Tobago, Grenada, and St. Vincent between 1959-1965, during Elder’s dissertation fieldwork.