Three years ago, Vanderbilt University ethnomusicologist Greg Barz realized that American popular culture was sweeping Africa and could very well threaten centuries-old musical traditions.
He traveled to Uganda and Kenya to begin archiving music and performances before they disappeared forever. Barz’s pilot program set the foundation for The Digital Collection of East African Recordings and helped launch the creation of the Global Music Archive at Vanderbilt University.
The Digital Collection of East African Recordings, the first database in a series of databases in the Global Music Archive, is the largest streaming audio archive of East African music. It consists of more than 2,000 musical performances, most of which were recorded in the field by East African musician Centurio Balikoowa. In addition to its size, the archive is unique in that the artists provide written consent, allowing Vanderbilt the freedom to license and share the music with the world via the Internet.
“We are committed to the recording and dissemination of this music to make it globally accessible not only to ethnomusicologists but to anyone with an interest in the music and culture of East Africa,” said Holling Smith-Borne, director of the Anne Potter Wilson Music Library at Vanderbilt and co-curator of the Global Music Archive with Barz. “Research and documentation on the music of East Africa has been patchy, especially compared to other regions in Africa. This database adds significant content to the documentation of the musical traditions in East Africa.”
The Global Music Archive used Vanderbilt’s Television News Archive, which allows researchers access to 30,000 videotaped hours of television news programming dating back to 1968 as a model.
“Libraries are increasingly focusing on digital preservation and dissemination,” said Smith-Borne. “The Global Music Archive is a fascinating project that preserves dying musical history, culture and heritage using state-of-the-art digital resources.”
The archive website and the Digital Collection of East African Recordings can be accessed at: www.globalmusicarchive.org. Real Player is required to stream the sound files contained in the Digital Collection of East African Recordings. Sound files vary in length from 45 seconds to one hour and cannot be downloaded.
The Global Music Archive is a multi-media archive and resource center for traditional and popular song, music and dance of Africa and North and South America, with particular emphasis on the African Diaspora. It is a public facility that promotes education in African and American traditional and popular music through its own activities and its support for the activities of others. The archive is housed within the Anne Potter Wilson Music Library in Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music. It includes public rooms for the study of materials, and audio and video listening and viewing facilities. The Global Music Archive is jointly sponsored by the Anne Potter Wilson Music and the Jean and Alexander Heard libraries at Vanderbilt University.
The Global Music Archives hopes to add several additional databases in the next three years to its collection including a dulcimer archive, an archive of the research and recordings about the Argentinean dance the Tango by the late Vanderbilt professor Simon Collier and an archive of music from indigenous people of Mexico based on the work currently in process by Vanderbilt ethnomusicologist Helena Simonett.
Media Contact: Missy Pankake, (615) 322-NEWS
missy.pankake@vanderbilt.edu