Toy Story: Western musicology researcher explores sounds of childhood in the 1950s
Playthings of the past help PhD candidate Ala Krivov provide cultural context to Cold War era
At first glance, Ala Krivov’s doctoral research may look like child’s play. And recently, when her work took her to The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York, it was.
There, seated in the museum’s archives, Krivov played with selected musical toys to discover how their sounds shaped the culture of childhood in the 1950s.
Her quest comes as part of the Don Wright Faculty of Music student’s PhD dissertation, exploring the role of nursery rhymes during the Cold War, a period of rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union following the Second World War.
This chapter of her research studies how children engaged with existing toys and those developed in response to the ideological and political tensions between the two superpowers.
“I’m researching the different types of musical toys that were popular in the 1950s in the U.S., mostly focusing on the white suburban middle class, who were the primary consumers,” Krivov said. “I’m studying the kinds of sounds they were making and how children were supposed to play with the toys to extract those sounds.”
Read full article (via Western News, July 16, 2024)
Photo submitted via Western News
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