This article was downloaded by: [200.8.114.209]On: 11 March 2015, At: 17:48Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Ethnomusicology ForumPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/remf20

We're all Archivists Now: Towards amore Equitable EthnomusicologyCarolyn Landau & Janet Topp FargionPublished online: 29 Jun 2012.

To cite this article: Carolyn Landau & Janet Topp Fargion (2012) We're all Archivists Now:Towards a more Equitable Ethnomusicology, Ethnomusicology Forum, 21:2, 125-140, DOI:10.1080/17411912.2012.690188

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17411912.2012.690188

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as tothe accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinionsand views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Contentshould not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sourcesof information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoeveror howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to orarising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

We’re all Archivists Now: Towardsa more Equitable EthnomusicologyCarolyn Landau & Janet Topp Fargion

As ethnomusicologists we have always made and used recordings as part of our research

yet we have seldom questioned this central methodology beyond stating that we make

and use recordings ‘for our own research purposes’. This special issue explores the

potential for the use of archival recordings as a central part of research to provide a more

equitable and enduring outcome for the benefit of cultural heritage communities as well

as for ethnomusicological scholarship. As such, we argue for a fairer ethnomusicology, in

which access to knowledge*often encapsulated in recordings*is facilitated for all, with

ethnomusicologists taking responsibility for their own part in this important process.

Keywords: Audiovisual Archives; Sound Recording; Cultural Heritage Communities;

Applied Ethnomusicology; Sound Recording Technology; Post-colonial Agency

Introduction: Applied Ethnomusicology and Audiovisual Archives

In Anthony Seeger’s article ‘New Technology Requires New Collaborations: Changing

Ourselves to Better Shape the Future’ he muses:

During the past few years I have sometimes glanced away from my perusal ofjournal articles or dissertations thrashing through ideas that have been around fordecades and briefly envied fields like genetics, [. . .] technology and new researchhave opened up a host of new and interesting theoretical challenges and put someold issues completely to rest. That research has also had some satisfying practicalresults, among them the release of prisoners from death rows in jails around

Carolyn Landau is Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Department of Music at King’s College London. She

completed her PhD in Ethnomusicology at City University, London in 2010. Between 2002 and 2006 she was

employed in the British Library’s World and Traditional Music Section. Her research interests include, North

Africa; Islam; community music, multiculturalism and politics in Britain; applied ethnomusicology and sound

archiving. Janet Topp Fargion is an ethnomusicologist with primary research interests in South Africa and the

Swahili coast. She is Lead Curator of World and Traditional Music at the British Library, a position she took up in

1994, where she has responsibility for the collection, preservation and dissemination of published and

unpublished recordings of traditional music from all around the world. Correspondence to: Carolyn Landau,

Department of Music, King’s College London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS, UK. Email: carolyn.landau@kcl.ac.uk.

Janet Topp Fargion, British Library, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB, UK. Email: janet.toppfargion@bl.uk

ISSN 1741-1912 (print)/ISSN 1741-1920 (online)/12/020125-16

# 2012 Taylor & Francis

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17411912.2012.690188

Ethnomusicology Forum

Vol. 21, No. 2, August 2012, pp. 125�140

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

200.

8.11

4.20

9] a

t 17:

48 1

1 M

arch

201

5

the United States of America as DNA evidence proves their innocence. Why, I havewondered, isn’t my field so fortunately theoretically refocused and practicallyapplicable? As I prepared this paper I realized that one of the areas I work in hasbeen refocused by some emerging technological possibilities and renderedpractically applicable in ways never before possible. This area was long consideredone of the most stodgy and nineteenth century of our activities: the storage anddissemination of the byproducts of our research collecting. (2004: 94)

The role that the ‘by-products of our research collecting’*recordings*can play in

this refocusing of our discipline is explored in this special issue of Ethnomusicology

Forum. It presents and analyses contemporary case studies in the assisted discovery, or

rediscovery, of archival sound recordings to people whose cultural heritage is

represented on the recordings*the so-called ‘cultural heritage communities’ (Barwick

2004: 253)*both in the countries of origin and their diasporas. The papers explore

the ideologies, methodologies and outcomes of a number of recent ground-breaking

projects, each making a unique and significant contribution to existing scholarship in

ethnomusicology and, more particularly, in applied ethnomusicology. This special

issue examines the myriad ways in which access to sound recordings is affecting the

lives and musical traditions of diverse communities around the world, and the ways in

which ethnomusicologists are using recordings to pursue their own research aims

amongst cultural heritage communities. In so doing, this issue highlights the wider

implications such approaches have, on the one hand, for the roles and policies of

sound archives in the twenty-first century, and, on the other, for the development of

ethnomusicological theory and practice. The contributions provide examples of how

the field of ‘proactive archiving’ (drawing on Edmonson’s ‘proactive access’;

Edmonson 2004: 20) is evolving in exciting new ways: ethnomusicology scholars*both up-and-coming and already-established*are developing innovative methodol-

ogies, based on collaboration with cultural heritage communities and with archives, to

explore existing and emerging themes within ethnomusicology. Important among

these themes is the extent to which a more equitable ethnomusicology methodology

can lead to empowering and enduring benefit to both our discipline and to the people

whose ‘musicking’1 forms the subject of our research.

The role of audiovisual archives has, at various times since the beginnings of

ethnomusicology and its ancestor comparative musicology, been much discussed,

recorded sound playing a central and unique role within these disciplines (Berlin and

Simon 2002; Lance 1983; Post and Threasher n.d.). Sound archives were initially

established by and for the discipline of comparative musicology, alongside other

scientific disciplines. Following the invention of sound recording at the end of the

nineteenth century and the collection of early sound recordings during (predomi-

nantly) European-led colonial scientific expeditions abroad, sound archives were

established as places to deposit, study and compare the recordings. With the

evolution of comparative musicology into ethnomusicology from around the 1950s,

1Referencing Christopher Small’s (1998) Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening.

126 C. Landau and J. Topp Fargion

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

200.

8.11

4.20

9] a

t 17:

48 1

1 M

arch

201

5

and with the methodological shift from ‘armchair’ methods to experiential fieldwork,

sound archives and their holdings fell out of fashion amongst ethnomusicologists

for a time. Nevertheless, making recordings has remained a central practice in

ethnomusicology, although increasingly ethnomusicologists have made their ethno-

graphic field recordings for their ‘own purposes’; collections tending to remain in

private hands rather than being deposited in archives.2

In more recent years, no doubt spurred on by the challenges issued by Seeger and

others (Lancefield 1998; Seeger 1986, 1996, 2002, 2006; Topp Fargion 2009), and

inspired by dramatic technological and ideological advances within audiovisual

archiving, increasing numbers of archivists and ethnomusicologists have become

involved in projects that seek to recover past documents for contemporary use

amongst cultural heritage communities.3 In many ways these activities result from

earlier methods of ‘feedback’4 and more recent ideologies of reciprocity,5 and take

them along their logical path, forming an innovative part of what we might perceive as

an applied ethnomusicology ‘movement’. Some researchers have come to understand

the varied ways in which archival sound recordings can be used by such communities,

often playing valuable and significant roles within the cultural and social life of

individuals and groups and simultaneously vastly assisting our understanding of

history, culture and performance.

In October 1998 the Society for Ethnomusicology inaugurated its Applied

Ethnomusicology Section with the aim of ‘joining scholarship with practical pursuits

by providing a forum for discussion and exchange of theory, issues, methods and

projects among practitioners’.6 In 2006 the International Council for Traditional

Music established its Applied Ethnomusicology section with the definition:

Applied Ethnomusicology is the approach guided by principles of socialresponsibility, which extends the usual academic goal of broadening and deepeningknowledge and understanding toward solving concrete problems and towardworking both inside and beyond typical academic contexts.7

2For an exploration of the types of recordings ethnomusicologists make and how they are used, see

Topp Fargion (2009).3For an international survey of archival repatriation projects, see Landau (2010: 49�66); and for some specific

case studies, see (Barwick 2004), Barwick et al. (2005), Berlin and Simon (2002), Chaudhuri and Seeger (2004),

Corn (2008, 2010), Cornelis et al. (2005), Gumbula, Corn and Mant (2009), Koch (1995, 2004), Ruskin (2006),

Toner (2003) and Ziegler (2006).4Ruth Stone’s (1982) Let the Inside Be Sweet: The Interpretation of Music Event among the Kpelle of Liberia was

one of the first studies to make use of the feedback interview.5‘Experiencing People: Relationships, Responsibility and Reciprocity’, an article by Ruth Hellier-Tinoco (2003)

as part of a special issue on Fieldwork Impact of the British Journal of Ethnomusicology (subsequently

Ethnomusicology Forum), theorises fieldwork methods based around taking responsibility for the impact of

fieldwork.6See http://webdb.iu.edu/sem/scripts/groups/sections/applied/applied_ethnomusicology_section.cfm (accessed

16 January 2012).7See http://www.ictmusic.org/group/applied-ethnomusicology (accessed 16 January 2012).

Ethnomusicology Forum 127

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

200.

8.11

4.20

9] a

t 17:

48 1

1 M

arch

201

5

The papers in this issue are case studies of applied ethnomusicology projects that

have explored theories and methods for providing lasting engagement between

cultural heritage communities and ethnomusicological scholarship. Using collections

of recordings, they describe scholarly practical pursuits aimed at meeting ‘the

principles of social responsibility’ of contributing to learning inside and outside the

academy. As such they constitute an important contribution to the ever-increasing

literature on applied ethnomusicology.8

During the latter part of the twentieth century, the role, responsibilities and

potential of sound archives developed in new directions, with more of a focus on the

exploitation and dissemination of archival holdings. Such developments have arguably

been influenced by political events such as de-colonisation and the rise of human

rights and cultural reclamation discourses, but have been enabled, particularly in the

past 10 years or so, by the digital revolution. The increased interest in archival sound

recordings from cultural heritage communities, the ethical and moral responsibility of

sound archives to facilitate access to their materials, and the increasing technological

capabilities of archives has led to dramatic changes in archiving philosophy and access

policies. One fundamental change for sound archives has been in the user profile of

held materials. Who accesses the materials and how they do so are now central issues

for archivists around the world. Archives are no longer for the ‘-ologists’ but for all

learners, including the people whose cultures are represented in them wherever they

are in the world.

Needless to say, digital technologies and the Internet have played a role*not only

do people know they can access recordings, they now clearly expect to access them.

Taking legal and ethical dimensions in our global information environment into

consideration, these new opportunities for the application of our discipline have

implications for all ethnomusicologists. Our methodologies for making, documenting

and archiving our recordings, including the importance of getting permissions from

people we record, have become paramount for a more equitable ethnomusicology.

Much of the deliberation and debate on the issues above has been conducted*until now*for and within the audiovisual archiving world, with the exception of a

handful of articles published by ethnomusicologists.9 Thus, although recordings,

archives and ethnomusicology have been inextricably linked throughout their

histories, we would venture that the existing literature on audiovisual archiving

has not reached many ethnomusicologists. The reverse is not necessarily true since,

perhaps contrary to popular belief, most audiovisual archivists working with

ethnomusicology research collections are ethnomusicologists themselves. One of

the aims of this special issue, then, is to present these issues to a predominantly non-

archivist audience of ethnomusicologists. The papers, having been written by such an

audience (apart from one), make important points regarding some of the future

8See, for example, Fenn (2003), Harrison, Pettan and Mackinlay (2010), Harrison (2012), Pettan (2008) and

Titon (1992a).9See, for example, Lancefield (1998), Seeger (1986, 1996, 2002, 2006), Topp Fargion (2009) and Vallier (2010).

128 C. Landau and J. Topp Fargion

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

200.

8.11

4.20

9] a

t 17:

48 1

1 M

arch

201

5

directions of ethnomusicologists’ activities and also those of audiovisual archives,

reinforcing the role recordings play within our discipline.

Recent Developments in Ethnomusicology and Audiovisual Archiving

The papers in this issue connect the world of audiovisual archiving with the discipline

of ethnomusicology, to show how ideologies are similar and how the concept of

proactive archiving, when adopted by researching ethnomusicologists (as opposed to

archivist ethnomusicologists),10 produces meaningful insights and lasting results.

They provide case studies of how archives and archival recordings have formed the

central part of a number of recent ethnomusicological studies. A general point that

emerges is the role the ethnomusicologist can play as ‘culture broker’ in archives’

efforts to repatriate recordings and to engage with communities recorded. In all of the

papers, we see an individual (sometimes on their own, sometimes via an organisation

in the case of Birgitta Johnson, for example) working collaboratively with the archive

as well as within the community to establish relevant means of making the recordings

accessible.

Johnson’s paper is an example of the efforts members of many communities are

already making to create local archives of genres they are committed to, and of a kind

of collaboration they can engage in with institutional archives and specialists.

Community partnership can be very fruitful both in the short term (for the

community members in the coming few years) and in the long term (when most data

not housed in professional repositories are lost) for the community and a broader

public as well as scholars. Only a few archives do their own collecting; most of them

collaborate with collectors, researchers and institutions to obtain collections.

Johnson’s article, with an emphasis on ethnographic description, is a clear example

of an inter-institutional collaboration, resulting in new recordings made accessible for

the community now and into the future.

Emma Brinkhurst and Carolyn Landau set out to explore the ways in which

recordings (in these cases held in the British Library) evoke memories and stimulate

discussion and performance in an effort to reclaim culture, and to forge and sustain

identities in the challenging diasporic experiences of the London-based Somali and

Moroccan communities respectively. Samuel Kahunde physically takes recordings

(also from the British Library) to remote parts of Uganda, to musicians and

communities who would never have the opportunity to access them online or to visit

the institutions housing collections.11

10For the purposes of this argument we distinguish between ethnomusicologists and archivists. In reality, as

we have said, most archivists have ethnomusicology training and practice within that discipline. Few

ethnomusicologists, however, have experience of working in an audiovisual archiving environment and within

that discipline.11For another important piece on repatriation in Uganda, which was published just as this special issue was in

production, see Nannyonga-Tamusuza & Weintraub (2012), the research for which Kahunde refers to in this

issue (p. 207).

Ethnomusicology Forum 129

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

200.

8.11

4.20

9] a

t 17:

48 1

1 M

arch

201

5

Noel Lobley has similar aims. Using a methodology he calls ‘sound elicitation’ to

encourage use of recordings and discussion of tradition within the community, he acts

as cultural broker between the International Library of African Music*based in

Grahamstown, South Africa*and the local Xhosa community living in townships on

the outskirts of that city. In this, as in Emma Brinkhurst’s and Carolyn Landau’s

papers, the community perception of the institution is challenging. While apartheid

may have impacted the community�archive relationship in South Africa, in London

some immigrant communities are just as wary of institutions. Many large, government

institutions such as national libraries and museums continue to struggle to fight off

their colonialist past, with restitution claims keeping these issues high profile. In fact,

fear of colonialist associations is sometimes cited by ethnomusicologists as the reason

they do not deposit their field recordings in collection organisations such as libraries

and archives (Topp Fargion 2009: 81). Ethnomusicology itself arguably struggles with

the same issues, as now prudent communities seek to claim some of the benefits

scholars sometimes amass (careers, acclaim, sometimes financial gain), leading, in

part, to the applied ethnomusicology ‘movement’ of recent years.

Many of the papers in this special issue include a large amount of descriptive detail.

In Birgitta Johnson’s paper, for example, she describes at length who the protagonists

of the project were and how each step of the collaboration was carried out. Johnson

cites Geertz’s ‘thick description’ as her theoretical approach in delivering such detail.

This is a relevant reference as her aim in supplying so much description is to provide

both context and behaviour to demonstrate the finer aspects of the role of culture

broker. As such, the role of culture broker is seen to be similar to that of

ethnomusicologist, who must develop trust and mutual respect within the

communities they work in. As ethnomusicologists, we suggest that we seldom

scrutinise the methods employed to establish respect and it is hoped that Johnson’s

paper begins to address this deficiency. Furthermore, in parallel with Landau,

Brinkhurst, and Lobley, Johnson explores in detail the efforts required to break down

the barriers between community groups and archival institutions.

According to Dietrich Schuller, former director of the Vienna Phonogrammarchiv,

an estimated 80% of the recordings of the world’s cultural heritage are still held in

private hands (Schuller 2008: 5). Considering the vulnerability of various recording

formats, Schuller estimates that we have 10�15 years to safeguard these items or they

will be lost forever. Even when they are deposited, they can be hard to locate,

expensive to copy and document, and thus difficult to repatriate. These challenges are

clearly outlined in Don Niles’ paper, in which he describes the haphazard nature of

the archival collections*collectors had a raft of reasons and objectives for making

recordings and the results are markedly different in content, technical quality

and arrangement*and the difficulty of acquiring them. In this case of repatriation,

the recordings, once located, have been returned to the country (of Papua

New Guinea)*to the representative organisation, the Institute of Papua New Guinea

Studies*and from there to the relevant communities whose culture is recorded. Here

the ethnomusicologist archivist stands a far better chance of locating materials than

130 C. Landau and J. Topp Fargion

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

200.

8.11

4.20

9] a

t 17:

48 1

1 M

arch

201

5

do community members, and an enormous amount is achieved politically and

ethically in bringing the content home.

Niles’ case contrasts starkly with the Scandinavian case described by Thomas

Hilder in which Sami community members have been able to find recordings easily in

well-organised and established archives. By using these easily-located recordings,

contemporary Sami musicians set about reviving tradition through performance and

teaching. The original efforts of the performers and the researchers to record and

archive have clearly borne fruit. This allows us to imagine an ethnomusicology that

sees to the future uses of our recordings and creates added meaning to our research.

In all the articles in this issue, authors experience and report intense engagement

on the part of communities with the recordings made accessible. The benefits to

musical and cultural knowledge and understanding*for our discipline of ethno-

musicology as well as for the ‘people making music’12*become clear as we read. If

one of the aims of (applied) ethnomusicology is to sustain musical practice,13 then

creating ways to encourage performance and transmission must be a central

activity.14 The papers in this issue tease out a variety of methods and outcomes of

these ethnomusicological endeavours, challenging and inspiring the way ethnomu-

sicology might be done for years to come.

A Brief Contextual History: Recorded Sound, Archives and Comparative

Musicology

The ability to capture and reproduce sound was first made possible as early as 1752

with the invention of the melograph by Leonhard Euler, a Swiss mathematician and

physicist. The melograph was a device ‘consisting of two revolving cylinders with a

band of paper passing over them. Note positions and duration were marked onto the

paper by pencils connected to the piano action’ (Ord-Hume n.d.). Later, in 1857,

French typographer and physicist Leon Scott constructed a ‘phonautograph’, which

was able to represent sound waves on a glass cylinder, enabling him to analyse speech

and music (Borwick n.d.). The next major development came in November 1877,

when the American inventor Thomas Edison first devised the tinfoil cylinder

phonograph. He completed and tested the prototype and then patented the machine

in December 1877 in the United States (Ford 1962: 222). It was also during this

12Referring to Jeff Todd Titon’s widely accepted broad definition of ethnomusicology. See Titon 1992b: xxi).13For more on the concept of sustainability, see Titon (2009) and http://sustainablemusic.blogspot.co.uk

(accessed 4 April 2012), as well as a forthcoming special issue of Musicology Australia, scheduled for publication

in 2013, on ‘Music, Culture and Sustainability’ edited by Daniel Bendrups and Katelyn Barney on behalf of the

International Council for Traditional Music Regional Committee*which comes out of a ‘Sustainability and

Ethnomusicology’ symposium held at Griffith University, Brisbane in March 2011.14The concept of sustaining musical practice via ethnomusicological research is, in our view, different from the

concept of ‘safeguarding’; that is, ‘protecting and promoting endangered musical heritage’ (Grant 2012: 31) via

such mechanisms as UNESCO’s various programmes and conventions referred to in Grant (2012: 32).

Sustaining musical practice is more in line with Topp Fargion’s concept of the ‘facilitation of the continuation of

tradition’, while protecting and promoting endangered musical heritage is more like a conventional

understanding of ‘preservation’ (Topp Fargion 2009: 76).

Ethnomusicology Forum 131

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

200.

8.11

4.20

9] a

t 17:

48 1

1 M

arch

201

5

month that Edison famously engraved the song ‘Mary had a Little Lamb’ onto tin foil

using his cylinder phonograph, which consequently became known as the Speaking

Voice or the Speaking Machine.

Despite these major advances in sound recordings, it was another nine years before

the phonograph was used as anything more than a child’s toy. In 1888, having

redesigned and improved upon it, Edison re-launched the phonograph into the

market (Weber n.d.). Perhaps the most important improvement he made during this

period was to replace the tinfoil with wax.15 This was the same material that

Alexander Graham Bell, Chichester A. Bell (Alexander’s cousin) and Charles Sumner

Tainter were using for the graphophone, which they had created and developed

during the early 1880s in Washington, D.C. (Ford 1962: 223). Also working in

Washington during this period was Emile Berliner, of German origin. In 1887 he

developed what became known as the gramophone, a machine that recorded sound

onto flat discs. The gramophone machines available to the consumer were only for

playback and were not able to record. Edison’s phonograph, on the other hand,

recorded and played back on the same, portable machine, with a simple flick of a

switch. Thus when the first field recordings were made, of the Passamaquoddy

Native Americans, by Jesse Walter Fewkes in 1890, Edison’s machine was used

(Myers n.d.).

Meanwhile comparative musicology was officially recognised as a scientific

discipline following the publication in 1885 of Guido Adler’s article ‘Umfang,

Methode und Ziel der Musikwissenschaft’ [‘The Scope, Method, and Aim of

Musicology’] (Mugglestone and Adler 1981). Adler’s publication established the

examination and comparison of different types of music for ethnographic purposes

as one of the four strands of systematische musikwissenschaft [systematic musicology].

The development of this discipline was closely linked to, and largely reliant upon, the

birth of recorded sound. As more and more recordings were made, so it became

necessary to find somewhere to preserve and store them. This led to the establish-

ment of the very first sound archive in 1899 in Vienna, Austria, by physiologist

Sigmund Exner, followed in 1900 by the establishment of the Berlin Phonogramm-

Archiv in Germany by the psychologist Carl Stumpf. The first half of the twentieth

century saw the establishment of various other notable sound archives within Europe

and the USA, including the Discoteca di Stato in Rome in 1928, the Musee de

l’Homme in Paris in 1930, the M. I. Glinka State Central Museum of Musical Culture

in Moscow in 1937, the Phonotheque National in Paris in 1938, the Recorded Sound

Section of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. in 1940, and the Archives of

Traditional Music in Indiana in 1948. The latter part of the twentieth century saw a

boom in not only the establishment of national, but also local and regional sound

archives throughout the world, including, in 1955, the establishment of the British

15The needle could incise the wax rather than scratch the surface of the tinfoil, making for a more robust sound

signal.

132 C. Landau and J. Topp Fargion

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

200.

8.11

4.20

9] a

t 17:

48 1

1 M

arch

201

5

Institute of Recorded Sound, today the recording collection at the British Library

(Post and Threasher n.d.).

The type of recordings that sound archives collect varies depending on their

institutional affiliation (government, non-government, commercial or cultural

organisations), who they perceive their principal users to be, their size, funding,

and so on. According to the comprehensive 2004 UNESCO publication Audiovisual

Archiving: Philosophy and Principles, there are five different types of sound archive:

broadcasting and studio, programming, audiovisual, national, and university and

academic archives (Edmonson 2004: 2). Many early archives, such as those in Vienna

and Berlin, were established within universities or scholarly institutions with the aim

of serving the needs of academic researchers. The first recordings were made

principally by ethnographers, explorers and colonialists and were then transcribed,

analysed and compared by comparative musicologists from within the archive.

Are Archives worth their Time and Effort? Repatriation, Changing Roles, and

Ethnomusicological Responsibilities

The majority of sound archives in existence today subscribe to the definition of an

audiovisual archive, as proposed by the 2004 UNESCO publication:

An audiovisual archive is an organization or department of an organization whichhas a statutory or other mandate for providing access to a collection of audiovisualdocuments and the audiovisual heritage by collecting, managing, preserving andpromoting. (Edmonson 2004: 24)

In other words, most sound archives state that their principal aims or responsibilities

are to collect, manage (i.e., organise, document), preserve and promote (i.e., provide

access to or disseminate) their holdings. Some archivists have suggested that a kind of

hierarchy within these various goals exists whereby the dissemination of its holdings

is considered to be the most fundamental role of an archive:

Access and use seem to me to represent the raison d’etre of an archive. The variousother tasks with which sound archivists are concerned*such as acquisition,organisation and preservation*are not ends in themselves, but processes directedmainly towards the dissemination and exploitation of recorded sound collections.Archives exist to be used and, I believe, should be used in order to justify theirexistence. (Lance 1978: 29)

During the second half of the twentieth century the role of sound archives changed

considerably, due partly to the shift in approach from comparative musicology to

ethnomusicology. This shift was influenced by the Social Sciences (such as social and

cultural anthropology), which were gaining particular momentum in North America

following the Second World War (Nettl and Bohlman 1991). These disciplines

considered empirical research conducted in the field using participant observation as

the preferred methodology; and as ‘armchair’ or comparative musicology went out of

Ethnomusicology Forum 133

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

200.

8.11

4.20

9] a

t 17:

48 1

1 M

arch

201

5

fashion, so the sound archive was no longer seen as a research centre, but rather as a

place for pre-fieldwork and post-fieldwork consultation*at most. Ethnomusicologists

made their own recordings in the field and often considered recordings made by others

to be of less importance or interest. More recently, some ethnomusicologists and

archivists have begun to challenge this negative view of archival sound recordings,

including Ronda Sewald, who suggests that:

Instead of condemning sound recordings out of hand, we must begin to learn toassess them and to study them as historical documents and as entities playing a keyand often central role in many forms of musical behaviour. To be sure, soundrecordings have their flaws and weaknesses, but they also have many strengths andare capable of providing us with information about past events and current forms ofhuman behaviour that is difficult to obtain through other means. (Sewald 2005: 8)

While archivists and ethnomusicologists like Sewald have been arguing for the

importance of archival sound recordings within ethnomusicological research, others

have also been highlighting the potentially important role of archival sound recordings

for other communities, namely those whose musical traditions are represented on the

recordings. Anthony Seeger has been one of the most active and vocal advocates in this

area for many years (see, for example, Chaudhuri and Seeger 2004; Seeger 1986, 1999,

2002). For although most sound archives were originally established by and for the

academic community, with the gradual process of de-colonisation, starting in the

latter part of the twentieth century, it was recognised that, just as land was being

repatriated to indigenous communities, so sound archives, it could be argued, had a

responsibility to make their holdings available to the communities where they had

been made.

One of the earliest efforts at repatriation was the Federal Cylinder Project of the

American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress (Gray 1996). This initiative was

begun in 1979 to coordinate the preservation and duplication of wax cylinder

recordings made between 1890 and 1942 by ethnographers, travellers and other

interested researchers, mostly of American Indian music and spoken word. The

Project (with funds from the Ford Foundation) sought to return copies of the

recordings to the communities where they were made, producing a series of catalogues

that include field notes and other information on the recordings. Originally stimulated

by a number of requests for copies of the cylinders coming from American Indian

tribal organisations and individuals, a few pilot projects were initially conducted

in which selected recordings were returned to local organisations and/or relevant

recordings were played to assembled community members in local museums. In one

case, Dr Nancy Lurie played tapes of Winnebago music for Native Americans living at

Black River Falls, Wisconsin. At the same time she recorded comments the community

members made as they listened, as well as performances of versions of many songs

after they had just heard the older versions on the recordings (Walcott 1982: 20).

Emma Brinkhurst’s paper in this issue, in particular, uses a similar methodology

resulting in new recordings being added to collections to further contextualise and

134 C. Landau and J. Topp Fargion

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

200.

8.11

4.20

9] a

t 17:

48 1

1 M

arch

201

5

interpret historical recordings while at the same time documenting current thought

and practice within the community.

In this way, repatriation or the assisted (re)discovery of materials can be understood

as a way of ‘promoting’, ‘providing access to’ or ‘disseminating’ collections, and thus

achieving one of UNESCO’s fundamental archiving goals. The aim of such projects is

usually to return the content of the recordings to people who feel that the sound

contained on them is part of their heritage or, in the words of Robert Lancefield,

‘practices [or sounds] that community members feel to be somehow intrinsic to their

group past and present selves’ (Lancefield 1998: 48). Since these people may no longer

live in the area or even the country where the recordings were originally made, it is

equally important that sound archives make efforts to repatriate (usually copies of)

recordings to such ‘translocated communities’ (ibid.: 53), whether the translocation

has occurred forcibly or with the consent of those involved. Lancefield argues that it is

important for sound archives to repatriate their holdings to people*wherever they

are*and not just to places, although most documented projects, until now, have

focused on places of origin, much to the detriment of displaced peoples, since ‘these

recorded traces of a communal past can be invaluable to people struggling to craft

their own self-reinvention in new locations’ (ibid.: 48).

Both Carolyn Landau’s and Emma Brinkhurst’s papers explore issues and methods

for repatriation and engagement with diasporic communities in London. In the case

of Emma Brinkhurst, the Somali community she engages is based in the streets

surrounding the British Library. What these papers reveal is that ‘distance is

relative*social distance between the local community and a government institution

can be even more challenging than airline travel to geographically distant places

today’.16

Other ways in which repatriated recordings have been used by communities, as

documented by scholars, are numerous and varied, including to re-evaluate and

transform culture (e.g., Seeger 1999), to revitalise cultural identity (e.g., Gray 1996),

to reclaim land (e.g., Koch 1995, 2004) and

[. . .] as surrogates for live performances by informants, as souvenirs or items ofnostalgia, as tools for reclaiming cultural heritage and traditions, as teaching tools,as items of power and propaganda during factional struggles, as items for barterand trade, and/or as a source of entertainment. (Sewald 2005: 8)

The articles in this issue not only illustrate and illuminate some pioneering and

unique methodologies in repatriating, redistributing or facilitating the (re)discovery

of previously hidden cultural heritage materials, but they also bring to light some new

ways in which cultural heritage communities are responding to and using such

documents in various locations and settings around the world.

As a result of such repatriation and the increased interest in archival sound

recordings by communities outside academia, the user-profile of sound archives has,

16Correspondence with Anthony Seeger*notes to editors, October 2011.

Ethnomusicology Forum 135

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

200.

8.11

4.20

9] a

t 17:

48 1

1 M

arch

201

5

obviously, become larger and broader. As Seeger has pointed out: ‘The answer to the

question ‘‘who is our primary audience?’’ is changing, and archives need to recognise

this and change some of their assumptions and operations’ (2002: 41). Some of the

necessary operational changes are in relation to access and dissemination, in order to

give meaningful access to all interested communities:

Scholars today represent only a tiny fraction of the potential users of the recordings.Many of these potential users, however, will never be able to come to Berlin,Vienna, Bloomington, or Washington D.C. Archival dissemination, therefore, hasto reach farther than just to our sister institutions and our peers. We have toredesign our dissemination and rethink our mission. We probably need to developnew methods for sharing our holdings, undertaken either by archives singly or byinstitutions in collaborative networks, in order to meet the needs of communitieseverywhere. (Seeger 2002: 43)

It is clear that radical adjustment has been required by some sound archives in order

that their access policies may meet the needs of all potential users of their materials

and, in so doing, fulfil their potential, taking seriously their responsibilities as sound

archives. Some have even gone so far as stating that these are moral responsibilities

that archives ignore at their peril:

First, repatriation need not impose an agenda of local reversion to a purportedlypure, ‘authentic’ practice defined and policed by outsiders, but can simply providepeople with traces of their sonic past (if indeed they want them), to do with whatthey will. Second, a decision not to repatriate carries as heavy an ethical load as adecision to do so. To do nothing is, after all, to do something*and with fieldrecordings, it can be to fail to see that while they are indeed analytical specimens,some also are tangible precipitates of once-evanescent sounds still close to people’shearts. (Lancefield 1998: 59�60)

However, these benefits depend on repatriation and outreach activities, often

engineered by ethnomusicologists as culture brokers between the archives and the

relevant heritage community. The ethnomusicologist authors in this issue act as such

culture brokers.

From Reactive to Proactive Archiving: Archiving as a ‘Social Process’

Engaging in repatriation and outreach work, sound archives (and ethnomusicologists)

might be understood as being ‘part of important social processes, and not simply

appendages of academic programs, research institutions, or national repositories’

(Seeger 1999: 2). Furthermore, not only can existing collections be better utilised, and

usefully and meaningfully disseminated, but the way that archiving is done can also be

transformed better to meet the needs of the cultural lives of those communities who

find existing collections of particular value. In other words, archives must not only be

‘active producers and arbiters of knowledge’ (Ruskin 2006: 5), but they should also

engage members of relevant communities in the archiving process, which in turn will

136 C. Landau and J. Topp Fargion

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

200.

8.11

4.20

9] a

t 17:

48 1

1 M

arch

201

5

continue to create knowledge. ‘Collaborative archiving’, as Ruskin describes it,

‘involves careful methods of collection, development and dissemination, treating

the process as seriously as the product’ and also requires ‘a re-imagining of archival

production as a mutually beneficial partnership and a means to breaking down the

walls between the academy and the community’ (ibid.: 5�6). It seems to us that

although Seeger and Ruskin are talking about archives, today’s ethnomusicology also

sets out to participate, to partner and to engender trust for mutual benefit*to the

scholar and to the community partners (previously thought of as ‘our informants’).

Such approaches to the archiving enterprise can be understood as ‘proactive

archiving’, which is when access to collections is initiated by the archive itself, as

opposed to ‘reactive archiving’*whereby the users of an archive initiate access

(Edmonson 2004: 20). According to Edmonson, ‘The only limit to proactive access is

imagination’ (ibid.)*and can take the form of broadcast, the production of

collection-based products such as CDs, the digitisation and delivery of material

online, exhibitions, lectures, presentations, and so on. Throughout the world today,

many sound archives are positively engaged in proactive as well as collaborative

archiving in a variety of creative ways, some of which are presented and analysed in

this special issue. Likewise, many ethnomusicologists are engaged in collaborative

research involving proactive methodologies, as this issue so vividly illustrates.

The object, then, of this special issue is to highlight that although audiovisual

archiving may well have been ‘long considered one of the most stodgy and nineteenth

century of our activities’, in today’s digital age, driven by post-colonial agency on the

part of the peoples recorded, it is impossible to ignore the role recordings can and

arguably should be playing within the discipline of (applied) ethnomusicology. When

one pays attention to the role that collaborative and proactive research can have in

bringing these archival by-products to the centre, ethnomusicology has the potential

to be applicable for the long term good of all peoples.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Anthony Seeger for taking the time to read and comment on

every article in this special issue, including this introduction. As an experienced and

esteemed ethnomusicologist and archivist whose own writings have inspired much of

the work presented in this volume, we were honoured and our collective efforts were

enriched by his input on this project.

References

Barwick, Linda. 2004. ‘Turning it all upside down . . . Imagining a Distributed Digital Audiovisual

Archive’. Literary & Linguistic Computing 19 (3): 253�64.

Barwick, L., A. Marett, M. Walsh, N. Reid and L. Ford. 2005. ‘Communities of Interest: Issues in

Establishing a Digital Resource on Murrinh-Patha Song at Wadeye (Port Keats), NT’. Literary

and Linguistic Computing 20 (4): 383�97.

Ethnomusicology Forum 137

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

200.

8.11

4.20

9] a

t 17:

48 1

1 M

arch

201

5

Berlin, Gabriele and Artur Simon. 2002. Music Archiving in the World: Papers Presented at the

Conference on the Occasion of the 100th Anniversary of the Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv. Berlin:

VWB, Verlag fur Wissenschaft und Bildung.

Borwick, John. n.d. ‘Recorded Sound: Gramophone Record and Compact Disc Technology’. Grove

Music Online. Oxford Music Online. www.oxfordmusiconline.com (accessed February 2012).

Chaudhuri, Shubha and Anthony Seeger, eds. 2004. Archives for the Future*Global Perspectives on

Audiovisual Archives in the 21st Century. Archives and Research Centre for Ethnomusicology,

American Institute of Indian Studies. Calcutta: Seagull Books.

Corn, Aaron. 2008. ‘The National Recording Project for Indigenous Performance in Australia:

Safeguarding Cultural Survival in Remote Australia’. Copyright Reporter 26: 112�15.

***. 2010. ‘Land, Song, Constitution: Exploring Expressions of Ancestral Agency, Intercultural

Diplomacy and Family Legacy in the Music of Yothu Yindi with Mandawuy YunupiEu’.

Popular Music 29 (1): 81�102.

Cornelis, O., R. de Caluwe, G. de Tre, M. Leman, A. Hallez, D. Moelants, T. Matthe and

J. Gansemans. 2005. ‘Digitisation of the Ethnomusicological Sound Archive of the Royal

Museum for Central Africa, Belgium’. IASA Journal 26: 35�43.

Edmonson, Ray. 2004. Audiovisual Archiving: Philosophy and Principles. Commemorating the 25th

Anniversary of the UNESCO Recommendation for the Safeguarding and Preservation of Moving

Images. Paris: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

Fenn, John. 2003. ‘A Conversation with Jeff Todd Titon’. Special Issue on Applied Ethnomusicology.

Folklore Forum 34 (1&2): 119�31.

Ford, Peter. 1962. ‘History of Sound Recording’. Recorded Sound: The Journal of the British Institute

of Recorded Sound 1 (7): 221�9.

Grant, Catherine. 2012. ‘Rethinking Safeguarding: Objections and Responses to Protecting and

Promoting Endangered Musical Heritage’. Ethnomusicology Forum 21 (1): 31�51.

Gray, Judith. 1996. ‘Returning Music to the Makers: The Library of Congress, American

Indians, and the Federal Cylinder Project’. Cultural Survival Quarterly 20 (4). http://

www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/204-winter-1996-traditional-

music-community-life (accessed 28 May 2012).

Gumbula, N., A. Corn and J. Mant. 2009. ‘Matjabala Mali’Buku-ruEanmaram: Implications for

Archives and Access in Arnhem Land’. Archival Science 9 (1): 7�14.

Harrison, Klisala. 2012. ‘Epistemologies of Applied Ethnomusicology’. Ethnomusicology

58:forthcoming.

Harrison, Klisala, Svanibor Pettan and Elizabeth Mackinlay, eds. 2010. Applied Ethnomusicology:

Historical and Contemporary Approaches. Newcastle-Upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars

Publishing.

Hellier-Tinoco, Ruth. 2003. ‘Experiencing People: Relationships, Responsibility and Reciprocity’.

Special Issue on Fieldwork Impact, edited by Tim Cooley. British Journal of Ethnomusicology

12 (1): 19�34

Koch, Grace. 1995. ‘This Land is My Land: The Archive Tells Me So; Sound Archives and Response

to the Needs of Indigenous Australians’. IASA Journal 6: 13�22.

***. 2004. ‘Voices of the Past Speaking to the Future: Audiovisual Documents and Proof of

Native Title in Australia’. IASA Journal 22: 20�31.

Lance, David. 1978. ‘Dissemination of Audio Resource Materials: Two Papers delivered at the

Annual Meeting of IASA in Lisbon: Access and Use in a Museum’. Phonographic Bulletin 22:

29�35.

***. 1983. Sound Archives: A Guide to their Establishment and Development. International

Association of Sound Archives.

Lancefield, Robert C. 1998. ‘‘‘Musical Traces’’ Retraceable Paths: The Repatriation of Recorded

Sound’. Journal of Folklore Research 35 (1): 47�68.

138 C. Landau and J. Topp Fargion

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

200.

8.11

4.20

9] a

t 17:

48 1

1 M

arch

201

5

Landau, Carolyn. 2010. ‘Moroccans, Music and Identity in Britain: Exploring the Relationship

Between Ethnomusicology Sound Archives and Cultural Heritage Communities in the

Diaspora’. Ph.D. diss., City University, London.

Mugglestone, Erica and Guido Adler. 1981. ‘Guido Adler’s ‘‘The Scope, Method, and Aim of

Musicology’’ (1885): An English Translation with an Historico-analytical Commentary’.

Yearbook for Traditional Music 13: 1�21.

Myers, Helen. n.d. ‘Ethnomusicology: History to 1945: Scientific Advances’. Grove Music Online.

Oxford Music Online. www.oxfordmusiconline.com (accessed 1 February 2012).

Nannyonga-Tamusuza, Sylvia and Andrew N. Weintraub. 2012. ‘The Audible Future: Reimagining

the Role of Sound Repatriation in Uganda’. Ethnomusicology 56 (2): 206�33.

Nettl, Bruno and Philip V. Bohlman. 1991. Comparative Musicology and Anthropology of Music:

Essays on the History of Ethnomusicology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Ord-Hume, Arthur W. J. G. n.d. ‘Recorded Sound: History of Recording: Early Recording and

Notation Devices’. Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. www.oxfordmusiconline.com

(accessed 1 February 2012).

Pettan, Svanibor. 2008. ‘Applied Ethnomusicology and Empowerment Strategies: Views from Across

the Atlantic’. Special Issue on Applied Ethnomusicology. Musicological Annual 44 (1): 85�99.

Post, Jennifer and David A. Threasher. n.d. ‘Sound Archives’. Grove Music Online. Oxford Music

Online. www.oxfordmusiconline.com (accessed 1 February 2012).

Ruskin, Jesse. 2006 ‘Collecting and Connecting: Archiving Filipino American Music in Los Angeles’.

Pacific Review of Ethnomusicology 11: 1�15. http://ethnomusic.ucla.edu/pre/Vol11/Vol11pdf/

Ruskin.pdf (accessed 28 May 2012).

Schuller, Dietrich. 2008. ‘Audiovisual Research Collections and their Preservation’. April. http://

www.tape-online.net/docs/audiovisual_research_collections.pdf (accessed 30 March 2012).

Seeger, Anthony. 1986. ‘The Role of Sound Archives in Ethnomusicology Today’. Ethnomusicology

30 (2): 261�76.

***. 1996. ‘Ethnomusicologists, Archives, Professional Organizations, and the Shifting Ethics of

Intellectual Property’. Yearbook for Traditional Music 28: 87�105.

***. 1999. ‘Happy Birthday ATM: Ethnographic Futures of the Archives of the 21st Century’.

Resound: A Quarterly of the Archives of Traditional Music 18 (1): 1�3.

***. 2002. ‘Archives as Part of Community Traditions’. In Music Archiving in the World: Papers

Presented at the Conference on the Occasion of the 100th Anniversary of the Berlin

Phonogramm-Archiv, edited by Gabriele Berlin and Artur Simon, 41�7. Berlin: VWB, Verlag

fur Wissenschaft und Bildung.

***. 2004. ‘New Technology Requires New Collaborations: Changing Ourselves to better shape

the Future’. Musicology Australia 27 (1): 94�110.

***. 2006. ‘Lost Lineages and Neglected Peers: Ethnomusicologists outside Academia’.

Ethnomusicology 50 (2): 214�35.

Sewald, Ronda. 2005. ‘Sound Recordings and Ethnomusicology: Theoretical Barriers to the use

of Archival Collections’. Resound: A Quarterly of the Archives of Traditional Music 24 (3�4):

1�10.

Small, Christopher. 1998. Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening. Hanover NH:

Wesleyan University Press.

Stone, Ruth. 1982. Let the Inside Be Sweet: The Interpretation of Music Event among the Kpelle of

Liberia. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Titon, Jeff Todd. 1992a. ‘Music, the Public Interest, and the Practice of Ethnomusicology’. Special

Issue on Music, the Public Interest, and the Practice of Ethnomusicology. Ethnomusicology

36 (3): 315�22.

***. 1992b. Worlds of Music. Second Edition. New York: Schirmer Books.

***. 2009. ‘Economy, Ecology, and Music: An Introduction’. World of Music 51 (1): 5�15.

Ethnomusicology Forum 139

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

200.

8.11

4.20

9] a

t 17:

48 1

1 M

arch

201

5

Toner, Peter C. 2003. ‘History, Memory and Music: The Repatriation of Digital Audio to Yolngu

Communities or Memory as Metadata’. In Researchers, Communities, Institutions, Sound

Recordings, edited by Linda Barwick, Allan Marett, Jane Simpson and Amanda Harris.

Sydney: University of Sydney. http://conferences.arts.usyd.edu.au/viewpaper.php?id�34&

print�1&cf�2 (accessed 1 February 2012).

Topp Fargion, Janet. 2009. ‘‘‘For my own Research Purposes’’?: Examining Ethnomusicology Field

Methods for a Sustainable Music’. World of Music 51 (1): 75�93.

Vallier, John. 2010. ‘Sound Archiving close to Home: Why Community Partnerships matter’. Notes

67 (1): 39�49.

Walcott, Ronald. 1982. ‘American Folklife Center Project’. IASA Bulletin 33: 13�22.

Weber, Jerome F. n.d. ‘Recorded Sound: History of Recording: Acoustic Recording’. Grove Music

Online. Oxford Music Online. www.oxfordmusiconline.com (accessed 1 February 2012).

Ziegler, S. 2006. Die Wachszlinder des Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv. Berlin: Staatliche Museen Zu

Berlin Preußischer Kulturbesitz.

140 C. Landau and J. Topp Fargion

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

200.

8.11

4.20

9] a

t 17:

48 1

1 M

arch

201

5