Wesleyan University's World Music Archives

The “world’s finest,” the “world’s largest,” a “one-of-a-kind set of recordings.” The World Music Archives at Wesleyan University’s Olin Library elicit these kinds of collection descriptions. In support of Wesleyan’s famous music department, the World Music Archives has a diverse collection of approximately 10,000 international and domestic recordings, much of it non-commercial, unique, and irreplaceable. And given the world’s growing fascination with the “world music” genre, the Archives is well qualified to satisfy new research demands in this area.

The World Music Archives has its roots in the collections of Wesleyan professor David McAllester, who brought his Native American field recordings to the University in the 1950’s. McAllester’s donation included one of the largest collections of Navajo recordings in the world. These recordings are a treasure to researchers and to the Navajo themselves. The Navajo periodically request copies. Besides the Navajo collection, the Archives has additional Native American recordings including those from the Comanche, Cherokee, and Northwest American tribal groups, most recorded during the 50’s and 60’s.

Today the Native American recordings make up only a part of the Archives’ collections. The World Music Archives website describes some of them :

Other important collections in the Archives include the only recordings in the United States of the Ulahingan, an epic of the Bagobo people in the Philippines; important collections of Iranian, Japanese, Spanish, Shetland Islands, Greek, Rhodesian (now Zimbabwe) mbira music, and North Indian (Hindustani); and exceptional collections of Indonesian and South Indian (Karnatak) music, two specialties of the world music program at Wesleyan.

Often the recordings are of complete performances in places and in circumstances that make commercial recording impossible. Many of these recordings come from the field research of Wesleyan faculty, alumni, and students, and are important resources in the current ethnomusicology program at Wesleyan. In particular, students make extensive use of the large collections of Indonesian and South Indian recordings. These collections are some of the largest and most extensive collections in the world. The Archives also received a recent donation of Afghan music.

Though the World Music Archives gets its name from its extensive international recordings, the Archives has diverse variety of domestic recordings. Among these include vintage tape recordings of one of the giants of jazz, pianist “Fats” Waller. Donated to the Archives by Clifford Morris Jr, a Connecticut jazz musician himself, this collection includes one-of-kind recordings made by Waller in the late 30’s and early 40’s. Other jazz recordings come from performances at Wesleyan by jazz artists Bill Barron, Ed Blackwell, Jay Hoggard, Anthony Braxton, Dave Brubeck, Joe Morello, Eddie Higgins, and others. Indeed, recordings from campus concerts and student recitals make up another large part of the World Music Archives collections. The concert collection includes Wesleyan concerts dating back to the1960’s.

The newest addition of domestic recordings comes from the Towne Crier Café, in Pauling New York, famous for jazz, folk, blues, country, cajun, zydeco, bluegrass, and world music performances by well-known and up-and-coming musicians. World music currently is one of the hottest and fastest-growing music genres. Collections such as this will attract increasing research interest. The Archives hopes to obtain grants to process this substantial collection.

Graduate students, researchers, and faculty are frequent visitors to the World Music Archives in Olin Library. As one might expect with these rare and hard-to-find recordings, most works have some restrictions on their use and are available for in-house listening only. Some recordings, like those of the Navajo, have especially stringent access restrictions. Other recordings, however, have fewer restrictions and sometimes may be copied after receiving necessary permission. Thanks to various grants, including two from the National Endowment for the Humanities, much of the World Music Archives collections have been preserved, and cataloged, and are available for searching through Wesleyan library’s online catalogs, and in OCLC. Researchers may search the catalog for relevant material before planning a visit.

The World Music Archives collections take up surprisingly little physical space and include videotape, open-reel, cassette, Digital Audio Tape, and compact disc media. Currently the Archives staff are beginning the process of transferring many of their recordings to a digital format. This will improve access to the collections through the use of streaming audio. Existing access restrictions will carry over to this digital medium. Nonetheless, researchers will appreciate the remote access that digital technology makes possible.

The World Music Archives is located in Middletown on the third floor of the Olin Library, Wesleyan University. Archives hours are normally Monday thru Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Staff include the Director, Alec McLane (who is also the Music Librarian), Jody Cormack Viswanathan and Jennifer Thom Hadley, Archives Assistants. Wesleyan graduate students assist the staff. Visit the World Music Archives website at http://www.wesleyan.edu/libr/srhome/srwma.htm . For information on the Olin Library, see http://www.wesleyan.edu/libr/ .

An edited version of this article appeared previously in Connecticut Libraries.