SONYA C. CRAMER ’88
SONYA C. CRAMER, a singer, graphic designer, and art director, died Oct. 9, 2015. She was 50. An acclaimed singer who uniquely carried on her family’s musical heritage, as well as a graphic designer, she brought the two together in her longtime collaboration with Smithsonian Folkways Records. Her dynamic artistic life encompassed music, singing, design, collage, bookmaking, poetry, and arts and crafts. She was the daughter of John Cohen, of the folk revival music group, The New Lost City Ramblers, and Penelope Seeger, a potter whose elder siblings were folk musicians Mike, Peggy, and Pete Seeger. She was the granddaughter of seminal musicologist Charles Seeger and the avant-garde composer Ruth Crawford Seeger. She received her Wesleyan degree with honors in Art and Architecture. At Wesleyan, she explored the connections between feminist theory and art through book arts, printmaking, and collage. She began to study and perform in a range of world music styles, along with her family tradition of folk Americana. She sang South Indian music, and in 1990 she traveled to Madras, India to continue her vocal studies of Carnatic music. She met her future husband, Reid Cramer, at Wesleyan, and together they moved to New York City where she worked in film and television with Children’s Television Workshop and the Ginger Group. She also designed exhibitions for the Municipal Art Society of New York, and first began to work professionally as a graphic designer. She continued her visual and book arts education with courses at Cooper Union, the New School, and the School for Visual Arts. While in New York, she became the vocalist for a “chamber folk” music group called Last Forever. In 1997, Last Forever released a self-titled album for Nonesuch Records, followed by Trainfare Home (2000). Later albums appeared on StorySound Records, including Acres of Diamonds (2015). She sang on two records of material from the songbooks of her grandmother, Ruth Crawford Seeger: American Folksongs for Christmas (1989), and Animal Folksongs for Children (1992), both on Rounder Records. She sang with her mother, Penny, brother Rufus, uncle Mike Seeger, aunt Peggy Seeger, and her cousins, Neill MacColl, Calum MacColl, Kitty MacColl, and Kim Seeger. She designed the CD, her first of many projects packaging music, and loved singing and sharing a musical project with her mother and her extended family. As a singer and musician, she performed and recorded a range of original, folk, and world music. While in New York, she studied and performed Eastern European and Bulgarian singing as well. On the Grammy-winning Pete Seeger at 89 (2008), she sang the translated Japanese poem that Pete Seeger set to music, “When I Was Most Beautiful.” The two performed this song together in March 2007 at the Library of Congress. Besides singing with Last Forever and her family, she sang with others. In 1993, she and her husband moved to Austin, Texas, where she was a full-time graphic designer until the birth of their daughter, Dio, in January 1998. During this period, she worked with the firm GoMedia until it was bought by Excite, the search engine. Later, she worked with a series of public interest and nonprofit organizations. She collaborated with Charles Santos and Eugene Sepulveda on the Austin Festival of Dance, art-directing what was then the largest dance-related AIDS-care benefit in the country. When her husband took a job at the White House in 1998, the family moved to Takoma Park, Maryland. Their son, Gabel, was born in July 2000. She added the name Cramer to her own for professional and personal reasons and, as Sonya Cohen Cramer, became an influential designer and art director. For Smithsonian Folkways Records—a label founded by her godfather, Moe Asch—she designed over sixty CD and record packages of folk and world music, a number of which were nominated for Grammy Awards. Through Folkways, she worked with the Aga Khan Foundation, designing the Music of Central Asia series of recordings and companion book. Her design work on a series of Folkways Records was especially gratifying. As art director for The Sounding Joy: Christmas Songs In and Out of the Ruth Crawford Seeger Songbook (2013), she helped more people connect to her grandmother’s legacy. Throughout her life, she delighted in making things. Along with various arts and crafts, she designed and constructed limited edition art books that often took the form of wedding invitations and family announcements. One of her last projects was a collection of handmade scarves made by felting recycled cashmere sweaters found in thrift stores and sewn together in a style inspired by the quilts of Gee’s Bend. Sold at the 2014 Takoma Craft Show, she called the project, “What I Felt.” She loved living in Takoma Park and was an active member of the community. When her children attended the Acorn Hill Waldorf Kindergarten and Nursery—not far from the house where her mother was born—she designed the school’s community cookbook, Welcome to Our Table, and included her favorite family recipes. She was a founding member of the Takoma Mother-Daughter Book Group, a successful decade-long endeavor, and a contributor to the costume crew for the Montgomery Blair High School Players. She is survived by her partner and husband of 27 years, Reid Cramer; their two children; her father, John Cohen; her brother; and a cousin, Katherine Seeger ’77.