Archival Sounds

Recording of the Week: Alan Moore at the ICA

Graphic novelist Alan Moore recorded in conversation with Charles Shaar Murray at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in 1987.  Moore discusses his work on the weekly comic 2000 AD, his Watchmen sequence, and the different qualities of comics, novels and films.

http://sounds.bl.uk/View.aspx?item=024M-C0095X0300XX-0100V0.xml

'Recording of the Week' highlights gems from the Archival Sound Recordings website, chosen by British Library experts or recommended by listeners. This week's item was selected from the Institute of Contemporary Arts talks collection by Stephen Cleary, Curator of Drama & Literature recordings at the British Library Sound Archive. The ICA talks collection has 1,000 hours of recordings of events held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, in the Mall, London, recorded over the period 1981-1994.

Recording of the Week: Ever wondered why Somerset is affectionately called Zummerzet?

Listen to the way this speaker pronounces several <s> sounds in this recording.

http://sounds.bl.uk/View.aspx?item=021M-C0908X0065XX-1000V0.xml

'Recording of the Week' highlights gems from the Archival Sound Recordings website, chosen by British Library experts or recommended by listeners. This week's item, selected by Jonnie Robinson, a specialist in sociolinguistics & education at the British Library, is a recording of Jesse Bookyer (d.o.b. 1883). It was made by Stanley Ellis and John Wright in 1956 in Stoke St Gregory, Somerset, for the University of Leeds’ Survey of English Dialects.

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.

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

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.