This is a delightful place. Housed in what was once an electricity
building, the ground floor has a small exhibition space (currently showing is
an exhibition on 'Jazz Ladies') and a sizeable concert hall where the jazz club
meets. The next floor is taken up by a second hand music store where all the
multiple copies of material are sold (mainly vinyl but also books, CDs and
DVDs), with sales helping to fund the archive. There are also workstations for
volunteers in this space.
The top floor is shared with the local music school and in addition to practice rooms includes a meeting space which is where my interview with three of the volunteers took place; over coffee around a large oval table.
The top floor is shared with the local music school and in addition to practice rooms includes a meeting space which is where my interview with three of the volunteers took place; over coffee around a large oval table.
It is always a pleasure interviewing DIY archivists and the couple of
hours spent with Fernand Schlumpf, Peter Niederer and Tony Bellwald was no
exception. Fernand, the vice president of SwissJazzorama, talked me through the
founding story of the archive which was originally located elsewhere in
Switzerland but thanks to support from the city of Uster was later moved to the
current building.
The archive itself is in the basement of the building next door. I was
given a tour of the archive and saw the progress being made on the current
project which sees volunteers labelling all items in the archive that are of
Swiss origin (it is an international collection) - the red stickers on spines
make Swiss material easy to spot.
A volunteer was hard at work in the basement cataloguing print
materials. He is one of 30 volunteers at what is a purely volunteer run
organization - there are no paid positions here. Like is the case at the
Victorian Jazz Archive, the majority of volunteers are over 60 years old and
retired. Fernand, Peter and Tony talked of the difficulties in recruiting
younger volunteers and the need to reach out to schools and universities.
The volunteers of SwissJazzOrama are interested in connecting with
other DIY archives, particularly about the possibilities of establishing a
vinyl exchange. And because this is an international collection they are also
interested in receiving material from outside Switzerland. As part of my
research I hope to help foster relationships between DIY archives and will be
putting Fernand and colleagues in touch with other archivists participating in
this research. In the meantime, if you have material to donate to
SwissJazzOrama please contact the volunteers here.
