the world of music (new series)

Access to Waxes – The Collections from the Arab World of the Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv: Between Digitization, "Repatriation," and Online Publication

Nadia Bahra, Lando Kirchmair, Matthias Pasdzierny, Albrecht Wiedmann — Mon, 26 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The introduction summarizes the key topics of the themed issue "Access to Waxes – The Collections from the Arab World of the Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv (BPhA)” and its contributions. It discusses the ethical, legal, and technical considerations involved in making these culturally significant but also sensitive recordings from the Arab world accessible to the public, especially in the context of ongoing debates around “decolonization” and cultural restitution.

Interrogating "Access to Waxes" – Introductory Remarks on the Collections from the Arab World of the Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv

Salwa El-Shawan Castelo-Branco — Mon, 26 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This paper contextualizes the “Access to Waxes” workshop and publications within the broader context of the ongoing debates in ethnomusicology and related disciplines about the ethics and politics of historical sound recordings, archives, acoustic memory, cultural rights, intellectual property, musical repatriation, and access. Selected initiatives on the topic spearheaded by the two major scholarly societies focusing on the transdisciplinary study of music, the ICTMD and the Society for Ethnomusicology, are referred to. The contribution also critically evaluates the categorization and labeling of music in archives (like the term “Arab/Arabic music”) and emphasizes the need for a critical study of historical sound recordings like the collections of the Berlin Phonogrammarchiv. This would involve collaboration with source communities and local institutions ideally leading to the development of shared research practices and creating the conditions to access, revitalize, and sustain their musical heritage.

The Collections of Music from the Arab World in the Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv

Susanne Ziegler — Mon, 26 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The number of collections of music from the Arab world housed in the Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv (BPhA), 30 in all, is impressive, as is the great number of wax cylinders. In the beginning, Arab music was not the main concern of the Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv; there were a small number of collections of music from the Arab world until 1918, but even then, extensive research was being done (see Hornbostel's 1906–7 article on Tunisian music). Recordings made in German prisoner-of-war camps during World War I augmented the holdings. Fieldwork in Arab countries peaked around 1930, with recordings made by Robert Lachmann as the leading figure and several other scholars associated with the Berlin School of Comparative Musicology. This article presents an overview of the BPhA's collections from the Arab world, their status and content, and highlights their specific features compared to its collections from other regions of the world. Based on the historical documents associated with the collections (correspondence, publications), information will also be given about the collectors, their backgrounds, motivations, and fieldwork.

A Historical Glimpse of Music in Yemen in the 1930s: A First Approach to the Cylinders Recorded by Hans Helfritz

Jean Lambert — Mon, 26 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The 102 cylinders recorded by Hans Helfritz in Yemen in 1930–31 and held by the Berlin Phonogramm-Archive represent a precious asset for the study of music of this country. They are the first large number of recordings of Yemenite music carried out in the field, just before the beginning of the first commercial recordings in Aden a few years later. Unlike the Aden recordings, Helfritz's represent mainly popular musical genres from the different tribes from the Highlands and Hadramawt, soldiers' songs, work songs, women's songs, and Jewish songs. As a first approach to this collection, I re-documented an anthology of a dozen of these recordings. I brought together as much information as possible from different sources in order to contextualize this music and its collection: Helfritz's biography, his books, his two main travels to Yemen and how he recorded music, and some considerations about Helfritz's contribution to the knowledge of Yemenite music. I consider the ambiguities of his orientalist vision and approach as an explorer more than as a musicologist, which contributed to the form and content of the collection itself. Finally, I bring up a few ethical considerations about these "captured sounds" and the future of this collection.

Whom to Remember – How to Return? Brigitte Schiffer, the Voices of Siwa and the Entangled History of the Berlin School of Ethnomusicology

Matthias Pasdzierny — Mon, 26 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

For some years now, there has been an intense and controversial debate about the relationship between the culture of memory and research into the consequences of colonialism, on the one hand, and the Holocaust, on the other. Michael Rothberg's concept of multidirectional memory and Nathan Sznaider's contribution to the debate on the vanishing points of memory ("Fluchtpunkte der Erinnerung") provide only a few of several examples. Using the recordings of the German-Jewish composer and ethnomusicologist Brigitte Schiffer, made at the oasis of Siwa in the Sahara in 1932/33, as a case study, the article reflects on the implications of this debate for dealing with the so-called Berlin School of comparative musicology. Beyond that, the article asks how the complexity of competing memory discourses affects current approaches and efforts of decolonizing archives and identifies perspectives and strategies for how to handle such collections today, especially regarding the chances and challenges of so-called recirculation.

From Wax Cylinder to Metal Disc: Transplanting Robert Lachmann’s “Oriental Music” Project from Berlin to Jerusalem on the Eve of World War II

Ruth F. Davis — Mon, 26 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Of the multidisciplinary cohort of scholars associated with the Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv in its formative decades, it is Robert Lachmann (1892–1939) who, in his approach to fieldwork and the importance he attached to it, comes closest to adopting the methods of classic ethnomusicology. In April 1935, having been dismissed from his post in the Prussian State Library under the Nazi racial laws, he took up a temporary appointment at the newly founded Hebrew University of Jerusalem with a mission to create an Archive of Oriental Music. He brought with him copies of his entire collection of some 500 wax cylinder recordings held in the Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv. Between 1935 and 1938, Lachmann made 956 recordings on metal disc documenting musical traditions of different "Eastern" communities of Palestine. His writings from this period, however, relied predominantly on research carried over from his Berlin years. The most substantial, and the first to be completed, is his monograph Jewish Cantillation and Song in the Isle of Djerba (Gesänge der Juden auf der Insel Djerba) based on his fieldwork in Djerba in 1929. In this contribution, I argue that Lachmann's pioneering study of this Tunisian Jewish community provided the methodological blueprint for much of his work in Palestine. I focus on his series of 12 radio programs, entitled "Oriental Music," transmitted by the Palestine Broadcasting Service between November 1936 and April 1937. The programs, which feature different groups living in or around Jerusalem, were illustrated by live studio performances by local musicians and singers, simultaneously recorded onto metal disc. In successive lectures, Lachmann presents fundamental ideas about the nature and evolution of musical practices and systems that are explored more fully in his Djerba monograph.

Thwarted by inadequate finances and lack of institutional support, Lachmann's work was cut short by his premature death in May 1939 and it fell to his former student, Edith Gerson-Kiwi, to pick up the threads of his project. His collecting activities, together with the comparative vision that informed them, laid the foundations for the work of subsequent generations of ethnomusicologists.