Recording of the week: Women’s lives in pre-war Leeds

This week’s selection comes from Daisy Lindlar, Marketing Manager for Sound. Women’s History Month is marked in March every year to celebrate and recognise women’s contributions to society and history. Our archives are full of sounds that lift the lid on the experiences of women through the decades. From Florence…

A Covid-19 radio archive

In September 2019 the British Library started recording radio. The Library already had a substantial collection of radio programmes, going back to the 1920s, and has been recording radio off-air – that is, from the live broadcast – since the 1960s. But this was a new project intended greatly to…

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…