African Music in the International Music Collection at the British Library National Sound Archive

Extract

It is widely accepted that the development of recording technology played an important role in the development of ethnomusicology as a discipline. For the first time, from late last century, music could be recorded for use in scientific comparison and analysis. Jaap Kunst once wrote that ‘ethnomusicology could never have grown into an independent science if the gramophone had not been invented’ (quoted in Seeger 1986:261). But the significance of recorded performance - the most objective way of capturing oral tradition - for the understanding of all aspects of culture must not be underestimated, particularly, but not exclusively, for non-literate societies. ‘Oral tradition should be central to students of culture, of ideology, of society, of psychology, of art, and…of history’ (Vansina 1985:xi). And sound archives should be perceived as essential to research, ‘equivalent to libraries in other disciplines insofar as their importance in research is concerned’ (Nettl in Seeger 1986:262).