Smithsonian: Smithsonian Launches Kickstarter for Culture-Defining “Anthology of Hip-Hop and Rap”. “The Smithsonian has launched a 30-day Kickstarter campaign today for the Smithsonian Anthology of Hip-Hop and Rap, a powerful cultural statement told through an unequaled combination of music, text and stunning visuals. The compilation, to be produced and released by Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, includes nine CDs, more than 120 tracks and a 300-page book with extensive liner notes, essays by artists and scholars, and never-before-published photographs from the National Museum of African American History and Culture’s collection.”
Music
Electronic Beats: This Fascinating Site Visualizes Random Techno Mixes In Real Time
Electronic Beats: This Fascinating Site Visualizes Random Techno Mixes In Real Time. “The internet is bursting with an overwhelming amount of amazing techno mixes, podcasts and radio channels. But for all their musical promise, online platforms are still lagging when it comes to visual accompaniment. A new website called ‘inward’ is hoping to change all that. It provides a non-stop psychedelic barrage of visuals synced in realtime to a curated selection of underground techno radio stations and Soundcloud mixes.” As you might expect, a lot of bright flashing/flickering lights on this site, so be warned.
New-to-Me, From Kottke: Audio samples of 1500+ musical genres
New-to-Me, from Kottke: Audio samples of 1500+ musical genres. “Warning: you might lose an entire hour to this… Every Noise at Once is a one-page map of playable audio samples for more than 1500 musical genres, from deep tech house to Finnish metal to smooth jazz to geek folk to klezmer to deep opera.”
BusinessWire: Twist Bioscience and Collaborators Microsoft, University of Washington Preserve Archive-Quality Audio Recordings for UNESCO’s Memory of the World Collection (PRESS RELEASE)
BusinessWire: Twist Bioscience and Collaborators Microsoft, University of Washington Preserve Archive-Quality Audio Recordings for UNESCO’s Memory of the World Collection (PRESS RELEASE). “Twist Bioscience, a company accelerating science and innovation through rapid, high-quality DNA synthesis, today announced that, working with Microsoft and University of Washington researchers, they have successfully stored archival-quality audio recordings of two important music performances from the archives of the world-renowned Montreux Jazz Festival. These selections are encoded and stored in nature’s preferred storage medium, DNA, for the first time. These tiny specks of DNA will preserve a part of UNESCO’s Memory of the World Archive, where valuable cultural heritage collections are recorded. This is the first time DNA has been used as a long-term archival-quality storage medium.”
UCLA: More Ethnomusicology Archive Recordings Now Online at California Light and Sound
UCLA: More Ethnomusicology Archive Recordings Now Online at California Light and Sound. “The UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive is pleased to announce that more recordings from the Archive’s collections are now available online as part of the California Light and Sound Collection on the Internet Archive….This round of recordings represents two collections. Amy Catlin-Jairazbhoy’s fieldwork project, Khmer Dance and Music Project (you can also see more of Amy’s fieldwork on CAVPP, including additional Khmer recordings)……And Sephardic music, especially Turkish, Cuban, and Judeo-Spanish, recorded in California by Emily Sene and including performances by her husband, Isaac Sene, oud. ”
National Library of Wales: Launching the Welsh Music Archive
National Library of Wales: Launching the Welsh Music Archive. “The Library takes pride in the fact that the Merêd and Phyllis archive, which includes their detailed research into traditional music, has come to the Library and is grateful to the family for their generosity in transferring the collection to the Library’s care. The Library intends to provide access to this new resource to everyone who wants to find out more about folk music, and to create online access in digital format. The Merêd and Phyllis archive reflects their extensive knowledge of traditional singing and leads to further study of the Library’s collections such as the collections of J Lloyd Williams (one of the founders of the Welsh Folk Song Society) and Maria Jane Williams, a prominent collector of Welsh Folk Songs.” This blog post links to some resources which are already online.
New-to-Me: An Archive of Music Recorded at Burning Man
New-to-Me: an archive of music recorded at Burning Man. From the home page: “Music recorded at Burning Man from 2010 to 2017. Over 1,500 sets.” They’re divvied up into SoundCloud playlists by year.
