Introducing our Music & Archives in Research Series

By Heather Hughes

Three rows of wax cylinder cases
Wax cylinders from UCSB’s Historical Recordings Collection (Photo credit: Heather Hughes)

Music is a shared love amongst those of us on the Hazine team, and we are excited to present this series on music sources and archives, and the interplay between historical recordings and performance. Inspired by projects and labels such Ian Nagoski’s Canary Records, Arshia Haq’s Discostan, Jonathan Ward’s Excavated Shellac, Chris Silver’s Gharamophone, and and Hatim Arbaab Eujayl’s The Sounds of Sudan, and having worked at an institution  with an amazing audio collection such as UCSB, has made me want to spotlight some of these amazing resources as well all as profile collections outside our area of knowledge, particularly outside the United States and Europe.

We are also cognizant of the fact that much audio archiving and preservation is happening with limited or no institutional support. ­­­­ We hope that this series would bring visibility to collections and archival work in the Middle East, Mediterranean region, and South Asia;  encourage greater use of music and sound sources in research and teaching; examine archival work in different contexts; and also look at the unique relationship between performers and historical records.

We’ll kick off the series with a helpful overview on the various institutions collecting music and materials on music from Palestine to California. Over the next few months we’ll release pieces exploring wax cylinders as a format and their impact on Nahda-era music, ways of finding the voices of South Asian women in archives and sources, and a critical look at musical compilations and labels that distribute music from the Global South. 

We would love to expand this series! Get in touch and let us know if you want to contribute something on music and sound: hazineblog {@} gmail.com.

al-hakawati.net, a Virtual Public Library of Arab and Islamic Heritage

Hakawati

 

Author: Nadia Barclay, Director of Outreach at the Arab Cultural Trust

Overview:

al-hakawati.net is a virtual public library of Arab and Islamic heritage. Our purpose is to make learning and knowledge about the Arab world easily available, and to promote understanding of Arab/Islamic culture in the Arabic speaking work and in the West.

Over the past 12 years we have built an extensive collection, including:

The library is organized into ten main sections: Stories & Tales, Personalities, States, Cities and Regions, Civilizations, Arts and Artists, Histories and Cultures, Environment, Architecture, and Religion.

Tips to Navigate the Library:

Our readers can find content using the freeform search toolbar or the drop down menus. Each of the 10 main sections in the menu has several sub-sections.  

We recently redesigned the homepage incorporating 9 frames where we highlight articles from the various sections as suggestions of what a reader can expect. This design also allows us to feature selections (paragraphs or chapters) from the canon of Arabic books, and thereby introduce a new generation to this valuable resource.

The library is mostly in Arabic; however, there is an English section, currently being updated. It covers the same 10 main topics, but the content was produced separately, and is not a translation of the Arabic texts.

To contact us with feedback or questions, please send an email to me, Nadia Barclay at:  nadia.barclay@gmail.com