Think about lost records. How many sounds have disappeared with the unraveling decay of physical media like the cassette tape? How many stories and sides of history were never documented at all? Many forms of documentation are unrecoverable yet audio preservationists, which come in many forms - DJS, musicologists, corrupt presidents, take it upon themselves to record or compile auditory records of history.

So, how can audio preservation construct / reconstruct history?

The act of preserving or archiving can be a form of restorative justice, or it can be a form of exploitation. Two instances in US presidential history demonstrate both sides of the preservation coin. In the 1930s, under FDR’s New Deal rollout, the WPA (Works Progress Association) government agency initiated the Federal Writers’ Project, a storytelling project in which thousands of citizens were employed to document “everyday experiences of Americans.”  These recordings appear in programs like the Library of Congress’ “Voices Remembering Slavery”. The full WPA archive houses 409,000 items in the Library of Congress’ Manuscript Division.

Decades after FDR’s New Deal, another form of audio preservation went awry in the White House after Nixon installed his clandestine White House Taping system in 1971, which would eventually lead to his own Watergate scandal indictment when some of his own aides admitted to the taping system.

Although Nixon wasn’t the first president to record private meetings his legacy is tied to this karmic downfall. These tapes, kept by the National Archives have been digitally re-viewed and re-issued, much like vinyl reissue culture in which audiophiles re-release old records.

The power of the preservationist, be it the field recorder, archivist, or blackmailer, can be wielded for justice or extortion.

German philosopher Walter Benjamin (the one who got us thinking about art reproductions - NFT foreshadowing? -  in his 1935 seminal “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Production”) writes about the role of the collector in his 1931 essay “Unpacking My Library,” discussing “collecting” as a way of dealing with commodities, “the joy of ‘the locking of individual items within a magic circle in which they are fixed as the final thrill, the thrill of acquisition, passes over them.”

A 2008 essay "Archiving the Future: Unpacking Benjamin’s Collection” draws upon Benjamin’s 1931 essay asking “How does one unpack a virtual library?” The writers, Pil and Galia Kollectiv, argue that virtual spaces offer contemporary methods of collection with the transition from material information gathering (books, records, ephemera) into digital data gathering (geolocations, prices, domains).  “the accumulation of online data is driving cultural production even further from the notion of authorship as something from which these values emanate. Something of the object’s ‘life-story’ survives through online auctions, for example: bits of information about the item in the description, seller location…all tell something of its past ownership and situate it in a continuum with others like it.”

Collecting can ultimately become about control. “The collector’s collection is never complete – there is always a piece missing, which feeds the drive to collect further…” We see the tension between power and control play out today, as vinyl enthusiasts scavenge for records in places like Nigeria and Ghana (for the cult value and rarity) to then digitize them for mainstream consumption. These collectors claim ownership by securing reproduction rights, giving the artifact new value (exhibition value, ie distribution).

Foucault and Benjamin’s theories on collecting merge with colonialism, foreshadowing modern western DJs. Foucalt writes “...perhaps the collectors of the curiosity cabinets were right all along: the theatricality of their disrespectful colonialism seems far more contemporary than any care invested in artistic intention.”

Afropop Worldwide explores the “western obsession” with African music through the lens of neocolonialism in the 2017 episode “Reissued: African Vinyl in the 21st Century”, beginning with the global success of the Nigerian Afrobeat pioneer artist Fela Kuti. In light of Fela’s global fame, the west was hungry to repeat his success. Not a far cry from mining diamonds in the Ivory Coast, many people travel to Nigeria or other African countries to mine music. Both searches are about the object’s value.

Like most things, context and intention are key. One episode provides several examples of re-issue culture like NYC based blog Awesome Tapes from Africa and Nigeria-based blog Comb and Razor exploring: “What’s up with the west’s obsession with African music?” It comes down to the ego (the role of Benjamin’s “collector,”) and the outsider’s approach to getting in.

The “About” page on Awesome Tapes From Africa  begins “This is music you won’t easily find anywhere else—except, perhaps in its region of origin…” ​​ before a declaration of ethics, like acknowledging how many older African artists have felt ripped off by “outsiders.” Shimkovitz continues, “I do not seek to come across as an African person or as the person who produced the music that I DJ in sets…I don’t project my values on the music and avoid playing sacred or ceremonial music that would be inappropriate in a club or party setting….” Shimkovitz dedicates a full page of text to positionality, answering a lot of the questions one might have for the white Brooklynite founder.

Ghanaian hip-hop artist Ata Kak (Yam Atta-Owusu) is one AFTA “success story.” Ata Kak’s fan base grew when his mid-90s cassette Obaa Sima was digitized and re-issued on ATFA in 2015, around 20 years after its initial short-lived cassette run. This interview between Shimkovitz and Atta Owusu paints a story of “rediscovery.”

Atta Owusu writes “After I left Toronto for Ghana, I got a call from somebody I hadn’t met and had never heard of. He told me that he had been searching for me for a while, that he had my phone number from one of my children who was in Canada. He told me that the reason he was calling was about my music, and I was so fascinated by his story because of where he had been in his effort to search for me. It seems I’d forgotten about the music entirely, and then was suddenly resurrected when Brian came and told me that he was interested in it, and would I be willing to [establish] a contract [for its re-release]? So then we have a contract, and ever since then he’s done a marvelous job – he has [my music] all over the world!”

Other artists like Nigerian Afrobeat artist William Onyeabor are skeptical of the promise / lure of being “known” or “discovered” in other parts of the world. For the most part, Onyeabor, who self-released eight albums on his own Wilfilms Label between 1977 and 1985, was unknown outside his hometown of Enugu, Nigeria until NYC label Luaka Bop set out to release an Onyeabor compilation. For reference of Onyeabor’s current reach, his 1978 track “Atomic Bomb” has over 11 million streams on Spotify.

The Guardian describes Eric Welles’ (Luaka Bop owner) 5 year journey to answer the question “Who Is William Onyeabor?”, which would become the title of the compilation that was in 2013.

Initially, the label thought Onyeabor’s reluctance to work with Welles was a money thing (a western ultra-capitalist mindset), to which the Guardian quotes Onyeabor responding “I don't need the money. I'm not a hungry man.” Welles went to Enugu, Nigeria to visit Onyeabor himself. The Onyeabor he met was a wealthy and successful businessman with his own film studio and semolina farm, not a man desperate to be rediscovered.

This type of push-pull story repeats itself - with the avid re-issue specialist obsessing over an “unknown” African artist’s repertoire, thinking “I gotta have it. People NEED to hear this” In these frantic moments in which “the collector” obsesses, re-issues run the risk of leaving behind culture, place, and context. From the streets of Ghana to the turntables of Germany, the disc jockey’s spinning can become placeless and empty.

Field recordings, used in FDR’s initiative and widely utilized in the field of ethnomusicology, capture a singular time and place in history, the moment’s complete temporal context. Musicologist Alan Lomax, spent 60 years of his life gathering field recordings to promote the discovery of the world’s folk music. The Lomax Digital Archive, housed at the Library of Congress’ American FolkLife Center contains “650 linear feet of manuscripts, 6400 sound recordings, 5500 graphic images, and 6000 moving images of ethnographic material” gathered in US, Haiti, the Bahamas, Caribbean, Spain and Morocco to name a few countries Lomax visited (source).

Presently, Connecticut-based Folklorist Derek Piotr is following Lomax’s field recording footsteps by digging into and reviving early 20th century North Carolinian “Mountain Music”.

His recent 2022 compilation, “Ever Since We’ve Known it: More North Carolina Mountain Singing”, dives into the voice, history, and ancestry of 20th century North Carolinian singer, Lena Turbyfill. When Piotr discovered recordings of Lena’s “chrystaline voice singing dark murder ballads”, which were a part of the New Deal WPA recordings in the Library of Congress’ American Folklife Center, he wanted to know “what is with these sweet girls singing horrible songs?!” Piotr worked backwards, from finding the recordings to tracing lineage and history. Through findagrave.com, he embarked on a Lomax-like search for Lena’s descendants in Elk Park, North Carolina. We spoke to Piotr to hear how the field recorder operates now, in 2022.

Many believe the “traveling Lomax field recorder can’t exist anymore because there’s not a wealth of these stories and songs,” Piotr shares, continuing, “I’m trying to counter that with recordings of non-singers, someone who has never been on stage or in front of a microphone but still can remember their ancestors.” Piotr recorded Lena’s daughter Nicola “Aunt Nicky” Pritchard singing her mother’s songs after he met her in 2020. The two struck a close bond before her passing in 2021. Derek talks about the “magic” of meeting Nicky in the UK publication Folk Radio, providing further context on how he sparked connection with Turbyfill’s descendents.

With archived and unheard Appalachian recordings in “hand,” Piotr would meet families and ask “hey do you want to hear your grandpa singing?” and that would open the line of storytelling, “oh yeah grampy would sing that and my dad would play harmonica with him!” Some of the family had no idea these recordings existed at all, pointing to the museum-context debates of where and to whom does art belong to?

The Library of Congress has a policy for transferring record ownership - if you can legally prove descendants “officially”, the Library will transfer the records at no cost. But again, what about all of the undocumented descendants, the slave lineages that were never written and can’t be proven by paper? It sounds like the usual bureaucracies of institutional access, but in this instance, additionally riddled with one-sided / hegemonic histories.

Even if field recordings are taken under public federal programming like the WPA, do most of them end up locked in universities and libraries? “We need another WPA during COVID” Piotr laughs. He shares that some field recordings are fairly “gatekept” and others are available to the public. “It can come down to the policies people have. It’s interesting to see who is persnickety and who isn’t. I found the same recording deposited twice in two different universities. One said ‘absolutely do not broadcast this, do not distribute this. You’ve signed a contract for private research only. I said right but it’s streaming on this other university too, the same tape…” I wondered, who else listens to these recordings? Derek is currently digging into the archives of the Scottish murder ballad “Lamkin,” “I will bet you for some of them, it’s like me and the [original] field recorder are the only people to listen to these. I’ll bet you under 5 people, ever. It’s my duty to get it to above 5 people.”

With all of these audio seeking projects, it’s important to ask who is it for? There’s a big difference between the institutional gatekeepers and the DJ who wants everyone to hear his set.

All of these projects start from the same thing - hearing something you love. A song or sound that moves you so deeply that you feel the impulse to keep it, find more of it, and maybe share it.

Luaka Bop’s five year chase of Onyeabor bordered on the obsessive. The Guardian quotes Eric Welles saying,  “...That's what I'm most scared of. These guys will go to their graves and all the stuff that they consider so dear will be dispersed by people who have no idea what they're dispersing. Unless I persevere them only a few people will ever hear this music and that's a fucking shame.”

That is a shame. Those moments we hastily whip out Shazam, terrified we’ll never hear this really fucking good song again are real. Even listening to the Afropop episode, I shazamed three songs without realizing. It’s like, “gotta know it, gotta have it, gotta share it,” all in a flash of chaotic urgency. It was “Chapita” by Dick Khoza. I get it, the obsessive part.

Benjamin’s “collector” resembles the curious cat in all of us. We stumble upon a piece of art, a song, a page, and the curiosity might burn into a desire for possession and control. And then the way the object is preserved, whether its shared, digitized, locked in a trove, or kept secret, has the potential to turn preservation into other things, like acts of justice, extortion, or storytelling. The collector is not the discoverer, but a finder. And finding a new song or story that moves you is not something you want to let go of. How far will you go to get it?