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.

Continue Reading Echoes of the Past: Tape Decks and Catalog Treasures

This is the seventh 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

Nowrooz, the Persian new year, occurs on the vernal equinox and marks the first day of the astronomical spring. Nowrooz celebrations are important to Persians and many of the Middle Eastern and Central Asian communities, during which families and friends gather together and celebrate the rebirth of nature – as the symbol of a new day and a new life.

Continue Reading Sounding Joy and Melancholy in Persian Records

This is the sixth 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

The Ethnomusicology Archive of the University of Texas at Austin hosts a captivating collection of audio files and formats, including 78rpm discs, VHS tapes, cassettes, and vinyl LPs featuring various musical traditions of the world.

Although most of the audio materials kept in the Archive have been digitized over the years and are accessible in the CD format, it is difficult to reject the temptation of enjoying the atmospheric and nostalgic sounds generated by playing vinyl and tapes on our analog devices.

Continue Reading Of Warm Sounds and Sensorial Vinyl Experiences

This is the fifth blog post in a new series featuring behind-the-scenes discoveries from the Ethnomusicology Archive & Lab at UT Austin’s Butler School of Music.

BY DIMITRIS GKOULIMARIS, PHD STUDENT

In our most recent blog post, I introduced a CD collection of field recordings made by the writer-folklorist-activist Alejandro Parédes, titled Mexican Songs. I discussed the issue of Mexican identity and cultural expression among Tejanos, as evidenced in the songs that Paredes recorded in Texan border towns.

In this post, I dive deeper into the genre of corridos (narrative ballads) as they are represented in Parédes’s collection. I specifically look at historical corridos, as an audible link between Tejano communities and the Mexican (and Mexican American) national imagination(s).

Continue Reading Retelling Histories in Tejano Corridos

This is the fourth blog post in a new series featuring behind-the-scenes discoveries from the Ethnomusicology Archive & Lab at UT Austin’s Butler School of Music.

BY DIMITRIS GKOULIMARIS, PHD STUDENT

Our humble archive is host to an impressive amount of material. The small room’s shelves are stacked to the brim with tapes, containing field recordings from far and wide. Luckily, previous archivists have made it easier for us to access these recordings by digitizing their audio and transcribing it onto compact discs — CDs. Most of these CDs are placed in three shelves towards the back of the room.

In this post, I discuss a particular collection of tapes-turned-CDs: Mexican Songs. The title appeared vague to me; after all, Mexico is a large and diverse country. As I browsed through the collection, I soon realized that, for the most part, these recordings feature Mexican American songs.

Continue Reading Tex-ican Songs and Cross-Border Connections