By Dimitris Gkoulimaris, PhD student
In the Butler School of Music’s older, western wing, confusingly termed Music Building East (MBE), there is a small room, no larger than 250 square feet, discreetly located in the third floor corridors between faculty offices and a seminar room.
On its door, a sign that reads “Ethnomusicology Lab” is placed underneath a black-and-white picture of two men listening attentively to a vinyl record. Few music students may be aware of what lies behind this door – that is, the vast collections of the Ethnomusicology Archive.
The UT Ethnomusicology Archives feature a marvelously rich collection of audio, visual, video, and text materials donated to the lab over the last seven decades.
The shelves of the Ethnomusicology Lab are stacked with over a thousand tapes, a few hundred 78rpm discs, 343 CDs, 62 vinyl LP records (in addition to a few 10-inch, 45rpm LPs), and a couple dozen VHS tapes.
The contents of these various media containers range from university course materials to original field recordings, and from commercial records to videos of ‘art music’ recitals.
Additional miscellaneous materials include publications by the Smithsonian Folklife Center and by the Society for Ethnomusicology, as well as small archival collections donated to UT by other universities like UC San Diego and the University of Indiana.
The lab also features significant multimedia equipment including an assortment of audio-visual recording machines and players from decades past.
The Ethnomusicology Archives underwent a significant re-organization in the year 1986. Six heavy black dossiers were compiled in the first several months of that year, which catalogue the hundreds of tapes that had been donated to UT prior to that point, beginning in 1962. The slimmer yellow folders found in the silver cabinet contain records of acquisitions made ever since.
Reading through these records myself, I encountered several engaging stories that transcended the archived materials themselves, or the arduous labor of the archivists.
I explored the story of the development of compact and portable audio media, from reel-to-reel to cassette tape to CD. Or the story about the reliance of earlier generations of ethnomusicologists and music teachers on now-outdated audio tools, for both research purposes and educational goals.
For a child of the late ‘90s, accustomed to accessing media within a matter of clicks and clacks, the use of reel-to-reel tape to demonstrate musical examples in a ‘World Music’ class seems unimaginable.
Yet the donations of UT professors to the archive demonstrate that this was standard practice – of course, how else would they provide sonic content to complement their lectures?
Finally, I read the stories of individual members of the UT community who made personal gifts to this archive. I was especially moved by the evidence of students, juvenile scholars at the outset of their scholarly careers, donating entire collections that they themselves meticulously compiled – or even recorded in faraway places.
On this blog, At the Archives, I will be writing about curated highlights from our lab, in an attempt to showcase the breadth and depth of the collections hidden away in this small, unassuming room.
Stay tuned – and welcome to the archives!
