Sarah Jane Nelson

Sarah Jane Nelson is an author and musician who documents traditional folk music communities in North America, including those of émigré musicians from Eastern Europe. She is interested in the intersection of mythmaking and representation of the émigré experience both in personal narratives and the early 20th Century Russian-American press, particularly in relation to nostalgia. Her first book Ballad Hunting with Max Hunter: Stories of an Ozark Folksong Collector came out with the University of Illinois Press’s Music in America Series in 2023. In the fall of 2025, she gave a talk titled “Etched in Silver: What an Imperial Age Artifact Reveals About the Afterlife of Russia Abroad,” and her feature story “The Sasha Polinoff After-Story: Old-time Balalaika Music Meets Old-time Americana Music” recently came out with Voices journal of New York Folklore. Nelson has presented on First Wave diaspora musical artists both for ASEEES and for the Balalaika and Domra Association of America. She continues her writing and research on Sasha Polinoff and his greater musical community and has recently discovered parallel career paths in the lives of Russian musical artists who emigrated to London in the 1920s.