Archival Sounds

Archival Sound Recordings in Action - Reviving the Lost Music of Bunyoro-Kitara

In 1967, the central government of Uganda abolished the historic Bantu kingdoms that had for centuries formed the regional administrations of the country.  Out went the kingdoms, out went the kings, and out with them went generations of musical and cultural lore.

In 1993, the government restored the kingdoms, and the reinstated King of Bunyoro-Kitara is now tackling the daunting task of recreating the institutions, articles and music of the regional heritage.

Samuel Kahunde, a PhD student in ethnomusicology at the University of Sheffield, began studying the royal music of Uganda through the Klaus Wachsmann collection on Archival Sound Recordings. In a fieldwork trip last June, Samuel visited the royal court to discuss the recovery of this music with the King of Bunyoro-Kitara. 

For Your Urgent Attention

Very Urgent is the first of several planned reissues by Fledg’ling Records  of South African pianist Chris McGregor's 1960s and 70s albums.  Described by The Guardian as "joining the raucous all-night dialogues of the townships shebeens to the American free-jazz of Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman and Albert Ayler", Very Urgent was recorded in London in 1968 with McGregor's longtime band The Blue Notes (here unusually credited as The Chris McGregor Band).

Archival Sound Recordings features a great many performances by Chris McGregor and The Blue Notes (often accompanied by singer Patience Gcwabe) and with McGregor as part of the Gwigwi Mrwebi Band.  It also features interviews with McGregor himself and discussions of his work by critic and essayist Lewis Nkosi.

Humphrey Lyttelton, in memoriam

In his later years, Humphrey Lyttelton was probably best known as the impossibly dry compère of BBC Radio 4's comedy panel game I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue, and for his jazz programme on BBC Radio 2.  But many will also have known him as a talented solo trumpeter and touring jazzband leader over many decades.  In this 1984 interview with Lawrence Stapely, Humph discusses his musical influences, the history of jazz in both Britain and America, the uneasy relationship between intellectualism and spontaneity in jazz, and the need for a national jazz archive.

Please note that this recording has a 30 second audio reference tone at the start.

Engaging with the User Community: a Case Study at City University

Digitising recordings and making them available online is only the first step in making a useful resource for education.  Understanding how these recording can be used in the classroom is key to making sure people get the most from the archive.  With this in mind, we went to City University to meet a class of ethnomusicology undergraduates who had been using the resource to learn about Ugandan music.

The class was led by lecturer Carolyn Landau, specialist in ethnomusicology at City University.  Carolyn has been teaching a course about the music of the Ganda people of Uganda, using recordings from the Klaus Wachsmann and African Writers’ Club collections to illustrate her lessons.

For the workshop, Carolyn asked her students to browse the site and search for specific musical instruments.  The feedback overall was very positive.  The students liked that the Wachsmann collection was available in its entirety.  They found the option to search by instrument particularly useful, as was the ability to download recordings for later transcription. 

They also mentioned that it would be a handy revision tool for their aural exam, as they could remind themselves of the sounds of various instruments.  One of the students planned to use the collection for a further in-depth research project

We told the students about some of the web 2.0 functions planned for the site, allowing users to network and share information on specific recordings.  They were particularly keen on the idea of adding searchable tags to recordings, for example, being able to label them as wedding music or funeral music.  They also wanted to be able to view and add comments to recordings, including links to relevant books and scholarly articles.

We will continue to work with City University and with other institutions to create case studies, to generate and share ideas about using audio in teaching, learning and research.  The feedback we received on the service will also be taken into account, helping us to develop the project and the website.  We would like to thank Carolyn Landau and her students at City University for their participation.

We are always looking for more case studies.  If you are a lecturer, teacher or student who uses – or would like to use – sound recordings in your work, and would like to submit a case study, please let us know.  Reply through the blog, or by email to asr@bl.uk

Rehanna Kheshgi, Digitisation Assistant, Archival Sound Recordings Project

A Wellcome Addition

Recently, the Archival Sound Recordings site launched two new collections: Records and Record Players and Scientists’ Lives.

The bulk of our initial offering in Scientists’ Lives is taken up with an oral history of the Medical Research Council’s Common Cold Unit in Harvard Hospital in Salisbury, south-west England.  A unique establishment in British medicine from its formation in 1957 to its closure in 1990, the Common Cold Unit combined laboratory research in virology with epidemiological work and experimental clinical studies on volunteers.

As an addition to this collection of interviews, we present a transcript of a Witness Seminar about the Common Cold Unit held at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine (now the Wellcome Library) in 1997.  It features testimony from many of the people interviewed in Scientists’ Lives, and crucially provides a chronological guide to the history of the Unit.  The transcript begins on page 212 of this web document.

Niall Anderson, Metadata Editor

IT Sounds Right

A key aim of the ASR2 Project is to negotiate over the intellectual property rights for approximately 20,000 recordings.  This is a complex undertaking requiring detailed research, legal support and negotiation.  We need to do this so that researchers and educators in institutions of Further and Higher Education can use the ASR2 recordings in a variety of academic contexts.  Audio is a particularly complex area in intellectual property because fair-dealing provisions for recordings are almost nonexistent within the UK Copyright Act.

Last week, the UK Intellectual Property Office (UK-IPO) launched its report Taking Forward the Gowers Review on Intellectual Property - Proposed Changes to Copyright Exceptions.  The report makes a number of proposals relating to the use of sound recordings.  UK-IPO is seeking feedback from interested parties.  If you use sound in teaching, learning or research - or perhaps feel prohibited from doing so - this presents a great opportunity to let your views be known.

Peter Findlay. ASR Project Manager

Engaging People with digital content

The Archival Sound Recordings (ASR) team is always looking for ways to expand the ASR site – not just in terms of content but in usability.  And usability these days means a great deal more than having a clear design and easily navigated menus.  What sites like ours really want to create is a community of practice around its content: a growing and dynamic body that will interact with the material, repurpose it, and share the results as widely as possible.

This is why two members of the team attended a seminar held by the Quality Improvement Agency (QIA) earlier this month.  QIA describes itself as a champion of “excellence and innovation in the provision of learning and skills”.  The seminar itself was the start of a four-month programme to see how the content of resources such as ours can be expanded upon and interacted with in Further Education colleges; in particular, how content can be recombined into multimedia learning “journeys”.

The Secret History of the African Writers' Club

On our content information pages, we describe the African Writers’ Club recordings as “invaluable to students of African Studies, and in particular to students of the rich vein of creative writing in Africa in the middle of the 20th century.”  While this is true, it does not begin to explain the story of how these recordings came to be made, and why.

While the first broadcasts were made in 1962, the story actually begins in 1950, with the establishment in Paris of a body called The Congress of Cultural Freedom.  The Congress was the brainchild of the US National Security Council, which had recently shifted its European priorities from de-Nazification to anti-Communism.  One of the first fruits of this change of focus was the establishment of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and it was the CIA who would bankroll the Congress...

A Visit From A Playwright

The Archival Sound Recordings team was recently graced by a visit from Ismail Choonara, one of whose plays, ‘Cages’, is featured in the African Writers’ Club section of the site. Ismail didn’t know that a recording of the play even existed until his son pointed him to the site earlier this year.

Ismail was born in South Africa but left in the 1950s to study science at London University. After graduation, he lectured in science education and wrote poetry, plays and stories – many of which were published in the UK, America, South Africa and particularly India.

Asked about the Archival Sound Recordings project, Ismail said: “Immediately after something has happened people are not always interested in it. But after the passage of time, cultural work provides a useful historical recording of a particular period. I hope that new, young writers will use my piece when they are carrying out research.”

Now retired from lecturing, Ismail has recently staged a successful play in five Indian cities about the final incarceration in Agra Fort of the 17th-century Mughul emperor Shah Jahan – the man who built the Taj Mahal.  A second play, ‘Prashan Chinn?’, about the riots in Gujurat in 2002, recently opened in Kolkata. A third play is in pre-production in India.

Before leaving the Sound Archive, Ismail donated a recording of his play Incident at Okari-oba.

The Archival Sound Recordings2 User Panel

We are currently looking for academics and researchers to join the Archival Sound Recordings 2 User Panel. Panel members will have the opportunity to help influence the direction and development of the project, and will be invited to attend a number of meetings and workshop sessions during 2007 and 2008. If you are interested in contributing but can't spare the time for the panel, we are also setting up an online group so that contributions can be made from afar.  You will need to be active in higher or further education in the United Kingdom.

Please email asr@bl.uk and we will contact you to discuss your involvement with or use of audio in teaching, learning and research and how you may be able to contribute to the project.

Peter Findlay, ASR2 Project Manager