Collaborations – the popular music heritage database

I’m currently working with activist archivist Jez Collins (Birmingham City University and founder of the Birmingham Music Archive) on the creation of a database that logs popular music archives and museums from around the world.

Capturing a moment in time: a visit to the South Australian Jazz Archive

Earlier this week I made a visit to the South Australian Jazz Archive in Adelaide, South Australia. This archive is a little younger than the Victorian Jazz Archive (the largest of Australia's DIY jazz archives), having been founded in 2003/4. Run entirely by volunteers, the archive seeks to preserve, collect, catalogue and display material that pertains to ‘the origin and development of the various styles of jazz, swing, and “hot” dance music in South Australia to the present day’, including material relating to ‘relevant performances and recordings by South Australian musicians in South Australia and elsewhere in the world’. The archive’s catchphrase is “Saving and celebrating our jazz heritage”.

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.

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.