This week’s selection was prepared by Dr Graeme Counsel, the archivist for the Syliphone record label digitisation project funded by the Endangered Archives Programme. Kébendo Jazz were one of Guinea’s greatest orchestras, super-stars when many groups, such as Bembeya Jazz, were still in their infancy. Adapted from an ancient Mandé… read more
This week’s selection comes from Liz Wright, National Life Stories Project Interviewer. Rod Kelly is a silversmith who specialises in the technique of chasing to create low relief decoration on the surface of silver vessels, which he often raises (hammers from sheet metal) himself. Rod depicts images from nature with… read more
This week’s selection comes from Jonnie Robinson, Lead Curator of Spoken English. Capturing authentic dialect and slang presents a considerable challenge, but documenting nonce-words is almost impossible. We have all probably coined a nonce-word on the spur of the moment – either intentionally or accidentally – to describe an action,… read more
This week’s selection comes from Dr Cai Parry-Jones, Curator of Oral History. In this extract, Holocaust survivor, Judith Steinberg, talks about her husband who arrived in Britain in 1939 on the Kindertransport from Germany. Steinberg’s husband was one of 200 Jewish refugee children who spent their early war years living… read more
This week’s selection comes from Kevin Lemonnier, Preservation Audio Engineer. This is the only known recording in existence of Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957) conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra performing Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro Op. 47. The performance took place during the 1937 London Music Festival and was privately recorded off broadcast,… read more