Archiving international jazz in Uster, Switzerland.

Another successful archive visit; this time to SwissJazzOrama located in Uster, a short train journey from central Zurich, Switzerland.

Visit to Klaus Kuhnke Archiv

Another whirlwind trip to Europe has begun. First stop, the Klaus Kuhnke Archiv fur Populare Musik in Bremen, Germany.

Crowdfunding the DIY Institution: a pathway to financial sustainability?

What role might crowdfunding have in the financial sustainability of DIY archives and museums?

On 'Unauthorising popular music heritage', a forthcoming IJHS article by Les Roberts and Sara Cohen

There is a really exciting special ‘music heritage’ issue of the International Journal of Heritage Studies coming out soon(ish). A number of articles from the special issue are already available online. Of particular interest to this project is an article by Les Roberts  and Sara Cohen called ‘Unauthorising popular music heritage: outline of a critical framework’ .

Arc Musica - preserving the music heritage of Cameroon

Preserving and/or digitizing decaying audio tapes is a task being undertaken in many DIY archives globally. Arc Musica is a project being undertaken in Cameroon, where "audio doctor" Joachim Oelsner has been working with local people to preserve that country's musical legacy before it completely deteriorates under harsh environmental conditions. An article about Oelsner's work can be found here.

Out of Africa: archival projects in Tanzania, South Africa, Kenya and Ghana

Jez Collins, the activist archivist responsible for the Birmingham Music Archive, has alerted me to some really exciting archival projects currently underway in various parts of Africa. I share some of these here:

Forthcoming fieldwork trip to Bremen, Germany

I'm in the process of organising my next stint of overseas fieldwork. This will be another trip to Europe, beginning mid-April. So far I've lined up a visit to the Klaus-Kuhnke-Archiv für Populäre Musik in Bremen, Germany.

'Entrepreneur Museums' and the preservation of Icelandic music heritage

Over the last few days I’ve been re-reading interview transcripts from the fieldwork I did in Iceland in 2010 and 2011 as I try and finalise a chapter on the working conditions of Icelandic musicians following the financial crash of 2008. The interviews I conducted in Reykjavik covered a lot of territory and I spoke to people from across the music sector. While the chapter I’m writing is completely unrelated to this current project on DIY archives, revisiting the interviews I did with people interested in Icelandic music heritage reminded me of an interesting conversation I had with one of my interviewees about the current status of popular music preservation in that country.

Andy Linehan on the DIY roots of the British Library Sound Archive

The fieldwork continued today with a visit to the British Library to interview Andy Linehan, the curator of the popular music collection in the library's sound archive. I met with Andy in order to learn more about the history of the archive and its DIY beginnings. The British Library Sound Archive is an excellent example of how a grassroots-style institution, in this case the British Institute of Recorded Sound founded by Patrick Saul, can become legitimised to the extent that it amalgamates with a national institution with the gravitas of the British Library.

Visit to the National Jazz Archive in Loughton, UK

It has been a jazzy start to the DIY Archives project. Following my visits earlier this week to the Nederlands Jazz Archief in Amsterdam, today I travelled to Loughton in Essex, UK, to meet with the wonderful folk at the National Jazz Archive.