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 song, this recording from circa 1971 is an alternate version to that which appears on Syliphone SLP 25. The song celebrates Guinea’s grande artistes, with a reminder to “do what you have to do and do not worry about the hour of your death”.

Soumba performed by Kébendo Jazz

This example is part of a large collection of Syliphone record label recordings from the Radio Télévision Guinée archives, created in the Republic of Guinea under the Presidency of Sékou Touré (1958-1984) following independence from France. The collection was digitised as part of the Endangered Archives Programme (EAP) project whose work contributes to the preservation of archival material that is in danger of destruction, neglect or physical deterioration world-wide.

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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 a fluidity of line that seems effortless, but the process of decorating a three-dimensional object, based on a two-dimensional design, can be painstaking. In this clip, he describes the nerve-wracking process of composing a design on a silver form.

Rod Kelly_the nerve-wracking art of silversmithing

Silver vase, Philippe Wolfers c.1895 (Rijksmuseum) 

Visit Crafts on British Library Sounds to hear more from British artisans working with studio crafts such as pottery, metalwork, jewellery  and book arts.

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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, object or phenomenon for which no conventional term readily springs to mind. If sufficiently amusing or apposite, the term may subsequently be adopted within a family or among a group of close friends, but evidence of this linguistic creativity is hard to find and even harder to evaluate as nonce-words are by their nature restricted to private use and typically short-lived. But surely English would benefit from a word like chubble?

The meaning of Chubble

This recording was just one of the words and phrases contributed to the Evolving English WordBank by visitors to the British Library’s Evolving English exhibition in 2010/11.  People were invited to submit a word or phrase they felt was somehow ‘special’ in their variety of English. Contributions to the WordBank include local, regional and vernacular forms and idiolectal expressions used within families or friendship groups, creating a snapshot of spoken English at the start of the 21st century. 

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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 and working in Gwrych Castle, north Wales, one of several hachsharoat (agricultural training centres) established in wartime Britain by German-Jewish Zionist Youth Organisations such as Bachad and Youth Aliyah. Working on the land, the hachshara (singular of hachsharoat) at Gwrych sought to train its apprentices for kibbutz life in Eretz Israel. 

Jewish Holocaust Survivors_Judith Steinberg extract

Gwrych Castle, Denbighshire; The Seat of Lloyd Hesketh (National Library of Wales)

Judith Steinberg's full interview is part of the Jewish Holocaust Survivors collection on British Library Sounds.

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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, onto a lacquer disc, by audio engineer Kenneth H. Leech (1892-1995).

Toscanini conducting Elgar's Introduction and Allegro Op. 47

 Portrait of the composer Arturo Toscanini c.1926 (J. Paul Getty Museum)

The audio quality is rather poor due to wear and shrinkage of the cellulose nitrate but it still reveals a driving performance from the Italian master. 

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