AFRICAN MUSIC ARCHIVE

JOHANNES GUTENBERG-UNIVERSITY, MAINZ

History Activities Main research projects Publications Structure

History

 The archive began to operate officially with the opening up of a new position at the opening at the Institute of Ethnology and African Studies at the Johannes Gutenberg-University, Mainz in October 1991. In the preceding years numerous activities in the direction of a coming archive were undertaken. Research, collecting and teaching in the area of modern African music, partially funded by outside grants, finally succeeded in convicting the Ministry and the University to provide at least one position to get this archive on a firm ground.
Teaching African music has a tradition in Mainz because the former head, Prof. Dr. E.W. Müller, fixed a permanent affiliation with Prof. Dr. Alfons Dauer, Institute for Jazz Research in Graz, Austria, starting in 1976 including regular yearly seminars. In 1984 Prof. Dr. Ivo Strecker came to Mainz and with him his expertise as a filmmarker and an ethnomusicologist.
In 1987 through Prof. Dr. E.W. Müller I began with a DFG funded research project on "Highlife" in Nigeria as a Popular Culture in Africa. From this time onwards the already existing collection of records and video tapes was enlarged and the basic necessary equipment added.
From 1991 onwards the now existing African Music Archive (AMA) was given several grants by the open minded University to acquire the necessary equipment to fulfill its function.

Activities

 The AMA sees its main area in modern African music (mainly from African South of the Sahara). As most of the existing archives for long did not consider modern popular music as an area of academic or archival interest it seems necessary to concentrate on the modern side. At the same time the archive does not exclude traditional music in its collecting activities. Besides collecting music on records (78rpm, 45rpm, 33rpm, CDs and Audio Cassettes), Video tapes of African music are acquired as well. Besides my own main research areas being Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Zambia, Zaire is given special attention as the Institute generally has a long tradition in Central African Studies.
A documentation of articles, i.e. reports, interviews, record reviews etc., culled from popular magazines from all over Africa has been started and can be regarded as a unique source for further studies.
Teaching is done by myself, offering a seminar on aspects of modern African music every semester, which is supplemented by a kind of lecture and hearing session open to all students. Excursions have been undertaken to the German Radio Archives in Frankfurt and to the Würzburg African Festival.
The archive supplies the students with the necessary audiovisual materials needed for their papers and presentations in class. It organizes lecture series, e.g. in conjunction with a Rasta/Reggae Seminar in Summer 1993 or an aspects of African and African-American musical traditions Winter 1993/94.
Within the Institute it cooperates with the Video section.

Main research projects

 Already preceding the official setting up of AMA, in 1986 a six months project was carried out in Freetown, Sierra Leone, to preserve the complete collection of 78rpm schellack discs of African music in the Sierra Leone Broadcasting Service gramophone library. It was completely funded by a German Foreign Office grant, as well as the compilation on 33rpm record and on audio cassette for Sierra Leone as a present to the bicentenary of Freetown (now avaiable on CD with Zensor Musikproduktion, Berlin). Cooperation with the cultural department of the Forgein Office continued with a project in cooperation with the Malawi Oral Literature Research Program of Moya Aliya Malamusi. Since 1990 he records region by region the music he can find, be it traditional xylophone players, church choirs or banjo boys. The notes are written in Cicewa. A archiving period follows in Mainz, where the notes are the basis for the data base input. It is now phase 3 of this project. Meanwhile recording was switched from UHER to DAT, which is now the main archiving medium at AMA.
In spring 1993 another Foreign Office funded project was inaugurated in Accra, Ghana. The University of Ghana, Legon, Institute of African Studies, has kept under Dr. Asiama over all those years a very valuable collection of original tapes beginning with the "Nketia-Tapes" from the 1950s. All these tapes are not in the best condition and retaping was of utmost necessity. This is now happening, and DAT is used here too.
The AMA possesses another collection of around 400 78rpm, mainly East African, records which were supplied by a PHD student working on East African music.

Publications

 Publications on bilingual editions of song texts by African musicians (Continuing the Series I started in Bayreuth at Iwalewa-House) are in preparation.

Structure

 The archive is in its early stages and has only the postions of its head. There are a number of students working on several projects and varying from 5 to 7.
The AMA is attatched to the Institute and is using its administrative facilities as well as the library, which by now holds most of the important literature in the field of modern African music.
The AMA is interested in all kinds of records of African music and in recordings and visual documents, as well as printed informations, especially of popular journals and wants to use this opportunity to ask anybody in possession of popular magazines, journals etc. and of records in wathever condition to contact us, as we most likely would be interested from the archival point of view. We are grateful for any hints about available collections which can be obtained.

Dr. Wolfgang Bender
Archiv für die Musik Afrikas /
African Music Archive /
Archive pour la Musique Africaine
Institut für Ethnologie und Afrika-Studien
Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
 		Forum 6
D-55099 Mainz
Germany
Tel. 06131 / 39 2789
FAX. 06131 / 39 3730
eMail:bender@goofy.zdv.uni-mainz.de

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