Data collection concludes

The fieldwork stage of this research has now come to an end. This blog post gives a brief 'statistical' overview of the fieldwork.

Preserving the music history of the Ocean State - the Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame

I'm writing this during a layover at Washington Dulles airport, having arrived this morning from Rhode Island en route back to Australia following a successful two weeks of fieldwork. I was in Rhode Island to visit the Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame. Located in Pawtucket, the Hall captures "the Ocean State's rich musical history".

Preserving traditional country music in the heart of Texas

There is no time for jet lag on this fieldwork trip to the United States of America. I flew into Dallas Fort Worth on Wednesday and then onto San Angelo Airfield before finally arriving late evening into Brady, Texas (by a stretch limo, no less) - Brady being the home of the Heart of Texas Country Music Museum, a museum dedicated to "preserving and promoting traditional country music".

Return visit to the SA Jazz Archive: the Graham Eames Tribute Concert and the SAJA Book Club

This week I made a return visit to the South Australian Jazz Archive. This was a jam-packed two days beginning with an interview with the Archive’s current president and archivist, Don Hopgood, who was a catalyst in the SAJA’s founding. 

The ‘archipelago’ that is the Lippmann & Rau Music Archive, Eisenach (Germany)

I had no idea what to expect on my visit to Eisenach, a town of 40,000 people in the former East Germany. Eisenach is home to the Lippmann & Rau Music Archive, formerly the Internationales Jazzarchiv. When I arrived I had not yet had confirmation of my visit to the archive and this gave me some time to find out about the town. What I discovered in my visits to Eisenach's museums and to Wartburg Castle was that Eisenach is a really interesting place with strong theological connections (Martin Luther) and historical links to a number of important classical musicians (Wagner, Telemann and Bach).

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.

'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.