RAI RESEARCH SEMINAR

SEMINAR SERIES AT THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE

Curating sound: views from the galleries, streets and rainforests

Dr Noel Lobley, Pitt Rivers Museum

Wednesday 22 October at 5.30 pm

Sound curation can link the most beautiful music in the world with cultural renewal projects and also with the senseless and violent destruction of militias. But how are we to make sense of this? How do you curate and relate the experience of sound? What are the possible future relationships between ethnographic sound archives, recorded communities and wider audiences? Drawing on my projects working with some of the world’s largest collections of ethnographic recordings - including Hugh Tracey’s the Sound of Africa Series (International Library of African Music, South Africa) and the Louis Sarno BaAka archive (Pitt Rivers Museum, UK) - I illustrate and analyse the practical value of proactive sound curation and repatriation. I argue that future ethical sound curation will connect archival recordings with the contemporary musical, social and political realities of local communities.

This event is free, but tickets must be booked. To book tickets please go to http://noellobley.eventbrite.co.uk.