This is the eighth blog post in a series featuring behind-the-scenes discoveries from the Ethnomusicology Archive & Lab at UT Austin’s Butler School of Music.
BY HAMIDREZA FALLAHI, PHD STUDENT
Our humble archive features the faint scent of bygone tapes kept in shelves while vintage machinery nestle in the corner. For a visitor inside the archive’s space, this atmosphere induces a sense of anticipation: shelves filled with 7” tapes waiting to be the unveiled and played on our retro OTARI MX-5050 tape decks.
This tape-unveiling process might appear confusing at first, until you realize the archive’s organization system. The only thing the archivist needs is the designated number of their desired collection. The archived collections are each labeled in fading ink on an Accessions Record, which reveals various details about each collection.
As an example, look at figure 3 below for information on a 7” tape from the collection of Iranian Classical Music, recorded by the prominent ethnomusicologist Bruno Nettl during the late 1960s. You can then proceed to delve into specific details related to the items of the collection by examining its designated folder kept inside one of the archive’s metal shelves.
The final piece of the puzzle falls into place if you exhibit enthusiasm (if not boomer-like interest) for the archive’s retro-tech machines. After carefully threading the tapes through the reels, melodies begin to transcend time and space. The room comes alive with the sounds of a bygone era, with forgotten archived treasures rediscovered in the present.
Here is the link to an excerpt of a tape from the collection of Iranian Classical Music, played on OTARI Mx-5050 tape decks in our archive. In his house in Iran, Hassan Kasa’i plays ney, and demonstrates daraamad-e chahargaah, an introductory melody to chahargaah, one of the main seven modes of the Iranian Classical music. The tape is recorded by Bruno Nettl, and its copy has been in our archive since 1986: https://www.instagram.com/p/C5ZxosXLMFT/
Various collections of field recordings such as this tape — compiled and documented by many distinguished scholars across music studies — are some of the priceless treasures kept in the archive, waiting to be rediscovered. In addition to the aural pleasures they offer, the tapes contain valuable insights in music scholarship and research processes across the years — demonstrating how field recording and its continuously changing approaches and applications have served as foundational aspects of ethnomusicological work.
