Kristen Madsen is the Sr. Vice President of the GRAMMY Foundation® and the MusiCares Foundation®.
A music historian, when recently bemoaning the loss of an important music archive, referred to the collection as “fugitive recordings.” The phrase struck my fancy because it animated these objects with such a human and mischievous characteristic. I drew a very “cloak and dagger” image of these recordings on the lam. And frankly, the words “archive” and “animation” don’t often share the same breath.
But that’s really an opinion for the uninitiated. If you scratch the surface of any archive, particularly the music collections that the GRAMMY Foundation® funds, the challenge is to not be sucked into the stories behind the “record.” And what is also quickly recognizable is the common desire that weaves through these historical anecdotes just as strongly as it does with today’s musicians: innovators crave both creative and technical endurance – in essence, staying power.
Here are two examples of our recent work – dip your toes in just a little and see if you don’t want to take a further plunge.
- Last year, the GRAMMY Foundation provided funds to the National Jazz Museum in Harlem to preserve its recently acquired Savory Collection, 100 hours of live jazz performances from the swing era that haven’t been heard since their original broadcasts. The collection, recorded on aluminum discs, includes Billie Holiday’s first live version of “Strange Fruit,” accompanied only on piano. Because the song addressed racism and lynchings head-on, Billie’s record label, Columbia, wouldn’t allow her to record it, but instead granted her a one-session release from her contract to record it on Commodore. Ultimately, it became one of her biggest sellers. Creative staying power. Go on. YouTube it now and see for yourself.
- The earliest innovators in recording were engaged in a fast and furious race for patents in order to dominate the commercial marketplace for recordings and their playback devices. Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison and Emile Berliner submitted application after application to the Patent Office, and included examples of their infant technologies as substantiation. 400 experimental sound recordings exist now, at the Smithsonian’s American History Museum, almost none of which have been played back since the Museum acquired them. But check this out. The storage media they were experimenting with includes glass, beeswax, tin foil, plaster, rubber, brass, copper and iron. In search of technical staying power even back in 1877.
Every innovator and creator deserves the confidence that his or her work will survive any external threat – be it accident or obsolescence. And what a remarkable convergence when the tools that offer that assurance can also be used to unleash a higher creativity. This organic synergy between content creators and technologists, in the digital age is what makes partnering with Seagate so compelling to the GRAMMY Foundation.
So admit it. You’re just a little bit hooked by these tales from the musty archives, right? Don’t be shy. Just throw a little beeswax on your Seagate drive, crack open a cool drink, and relax into the stories you discover in re-captured fugitive recordings.
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