tumbani

met sound artist bhudaditya chattopadhyay last night.  very interesting fellow, doing great work here in kolkata.  we talked a lot about audio restoration, soundscape work, and, of course, gear.  particularly interesting was hearing the stories of strange collectors and collections.  there is a lot of wonderful music here that is being lost, archived haphazardly and outright thrown away.  the same issues are at play in egypt, where my friend alfred gamil is trying to revive the song repertoire of the early 20th century.  a large collection of cylinders and shellacs were given to the french government a number of years ago, and my naive questions about appropriation and such issues were dismissed by a wave of his hand.  he says that archive was the best thing that happened to egyptian music—everything is being stored in climate controlled conditions under high security, but open for all.  i wonder what is happening in canada. 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.