Recording of the week: Mohamed Choukri at the ICA

This week’s selection comes from Steve Cleary, Lead Curator of Literary and Creative Recordings. Tangier, Morocco by Brett Hodnett – used under Creative Commons license CC-BY-SA-2.0 Today’s selection features the Moroccan writer Mohamed Choukri (1935-2003), recorded at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London, 22 September 1992. Choukri’s first volume…

Alan Bowness and Artists’ Lives

Cathy Courtney reflects on Sir Alan Bowness’ life and contribution to the oral history project Artists’ Lives.

Recording of the week: Friction drum song from Botswana

This week’s selection comes from Dr. Janet Topp Fargion, Head of Sound and Vision. This song, based on the lyric ‘The children of the traditional doctor can kill the medical doctor’, is performed by Sebata on the sevuikivuiki friction drum and other Mbukushu villagers in the Tsodilo Hills, in the…

250,000 sounds preserved by Unlocking Our Sound Heritage

By Katerina Webb-Bourne, Communications Intern for Unlocking Our Sound Heritage. Time is running out to preserve some of our most endangered sound recordings. The Unlocking Our Sound Heritage (UOSH) project is now four years into an ambitious, National Lottery Heritage Funded five-year project to safeguard at-risk recordings. Despite the challenges…

Recording of the week: Breathe in

This week’s selection comes from Giulia Baldorilli, Reference Specialist. Born in 1885 in a small town in the Free State province of South Africa, Tromp Van Diggelen had an unfortunate childhood. He suffered from various respiratory-related illnesses, such as pneumonia. Supported by his teacher at school, Tromp started studying the…