See the GRAMMY Foundation press release and a complete list of recipients:
http://content.grammy.com/PressReleases/582_640_2009grantspr.pdf

click thumbnail to view full-size image

Well, sort of.  As the record industry laments the decline of the CD — and along with it, the “purchasable object” paradigm upon which the whole industry was built — in deference to the “downloadable content” model, there’s something of a counter-trend going on.  A small but growing number of musicians and labels are releasing their latest recordings on 12-inch-33-1/3-RPM-analogue-good-ol’-vinyl-records.  And a small but growing segment of the market is there creating demand for the stuff.  I don’t think anyone has delusions of a return to the days of LPs as the dominant mass-market format, but the trend is still significant.

The connection to archiving here is that the “purchasable object” for consumers has also been the collectible, shelvable, accessible, preservable object for libraries and archives.  While digital content management for both preservation and access is clearly our future (and is rapidly becoming our present), the technological and legal issues entangling digital file-based content are legion.  And they aren’t likely to be solved any time soon.

What’s not so clear is if and how the growing niche market for newly-minted LPs will impact library and archive collections.  My guess is that, since most new recordings issued on LP will be rather limited pressings (the current model seems to be the release of a “collector’s edition” LP in addition to MP3s and maybe a CD), the only way they will be heard in a generation or two from now is if some archive has acquired and preserved a copy.

This has in fact been the case with many of the “ethnic” recordings issued in the first half of the 20th century and held here in the Ethnomusicology Archive: produced by specialty labels in limited runs and often meant only for consumption by a particular immigrant community in the United States, they quickly went out of print.  Now, fifty to one hundred years later, many of these recordings are to be found, if at all, in either institutional archives or private collections.  This is especially true of 78 RPM shellac records, which both wore out more quickly from playing, and broke more easily (think of dropping Grandma’s fine china on a sidewalk) than their vinyl successors, LPs and 45s.  And as the private collectors die off, and their families decide what do do with all those records taking up so much space in the house, that leaves archives as the guardians of those bits of our cultural history.

Anyhow, about that evidence I mentioned… This was posted the other day by Tom Fine, one of the very knowledgable contributors to the ARSClist.  Note that what’s important is that most of these plants are re-starting, or starting for the first time, pressing vinyl LPs because of the recent increase in demand:

Here is the finalized list of vinyl pressing plants I could confirm. There is allegedly an old Russian plant about to restart, but I could get no first-hand confirmation. Also, I would be very surprised if there are zero vinyl pressing plants in Latin America, Africa and Asia outside of Japan. That said, I could track down no first-hand information of such plants.  This list may be used on your websites or blogs as you see fit.

CONFIRMED VINYL PRESSING PLANTS AS OF 4/8/09

RECORD TECHNOLOGY INC (RTI) – Camarillo, CA USA
http://www.recordtech.com/

UNITED RECORD PRESSING – Nashville, TN USA
http://www.urpressing.com/

RAINBO RECORDS – Canoga Park, CA USA
http://www.rainborecords.com/vinyl.htm

MUSICOL RECORDING – Columbus, OH USA
http://www.musicolrecording.com/vinyl/index.html

MMP – Neunkirchen-Seelscheid, GERMANY
http://www.master-media.net/en/index.php

ERIKA RECORDS – Downey, CA USA
http://www.erikarecords.com/

DYNAMIC SUN – Newark, NJ USA
http://www.dynamicsun.com/

CURVED LTD – Hackney, London, UK
http://www.curvedpressings.com/abou.htm

ZENITH RECORD PRESSING – Albion, Victory, AUSTRALIA
http://www.zenithrecords.org/

ARCHER RECORD PRESSING – Detroit, MI USA
http://www.archerrecordpressing.com/

BROOKLYNPHONO – Brooklyn, NY USA
http://brooklynphono.com/

RECORD INDUSTRY – Haarlem, Netherlands
http://www.recordindustry.com/

PORTALSPACE Records – Hayes, Middlesex UK
http://www.portalspacerecords.com/da/13007

BILL SMITH CUSTOM RECORDS – El Segundo, CA USA
http://www.billsmithcustomrecords.com/index.html

A&R RECORD MANUFACTURING – Dallas, TX USA
http://www.arrecords.com/

GZ VINYL – Lodenice, CZECH REPUBLIC
http://www.gzdm.cz/vinyl/

TOYOKASEI CO., LTD – Yokohama, Kanagawa, JAPAN
http://www.toyokasei.com/

PALLAS GROUP – Diepolz, GERMANY
http://www.pallas-group.de/

OPTIMAL MEDIA PRODUCTION – Röbel, GERMANY
http://www.optimal-online.de/Vinyl.341.0.html

R.A.N.D. MUZIK – Leipzig, GERMANY
http://www.randmuzik.de/english/home.html

MPO GROUP – Averton, FRANCE
http://www.mpointernational.com/en/services/vinyl.asp

TAIL RECORDS VINYL – Göteborg, SWEDEN
http://tailrecvinyl.com/index-eng.php

Editor’s Note: This is one in a series of selected reviews written by students in the course series Ethnomusicology 20A-B-C: Musical Cultures of the World.

Third World Child is Johnny Clegg and Savuka’s first album, the album that won Johnny Clegg international acclaim.  The name Savuka means “we have awakened,” and is indicative of the band’s political and musical objectives.  As a South African band, Johnny Clegg and Savuka created and released Third World Child in a country divided by apartheid, a context that would dominate the band’s career and this album in particular.  Only forty-four minutes in length, this album seeks to communicate three things: the value of diversity, the tragedy of apartheid, and the universality of its message. The value the band places on diversity is apparent in many of its creative choices.  A glance at the album cover tells us that the band itself is diverse.  Half of the members have light skin; half have dark skin.  This diversity in the band’s lineup facilitates its exploration and integration of various Western and African themes.  Johnny Clegg, the British-born composer and lead vocalist, finds inspiration in both Celtic and African musical styles.  He also mixes English and Zulu lyrics.  The band accompanies these lyrics with both Western and African instruments.  The guitar, keyboards, and saxophone are accompanied by drums, flutes, and the mouth bow.

Indigenous and Western influences also merge in the album’s spiritual references. In the song “Are You Ready” Johnny Clegg sings “Remember to cross yourself twice,” a clear Christian reference.  Later on in the album, however, the song “Great Heart” reflects more indigenous religious sentiments.  This song is about the search for the spirit of the Great Heart, and it references the power of natural elements like wind, thunder, and grass.  The inclusion of both types of religious belief ties the various cultures of South Africa together.  The overall sound of Third World Child is therefore a mix of Western and African traditions.  By making popular music that incorporates both of these traditions, the album proves the potency of such a union in music and in society. While the overall tone is thus one of general support for union, some songs on the album are more specific to South Africa and the conditions there.  “Asimbonanga,” the second song on the album, is one of the most powerful.  It calls for the release of Nelson Mandela — the leader of the South African anti-apartheid movement was imprisoned on Robben Island at the time — and it remembers those who have died for his cause.  The music for this song is simpler than for others on the album.  The track begins with a single voice, which is then gradually accompanied by percussion, and later by keyboards.  The voice is calm, which seems odd for a protest song until it is understood as a calm but tireless voice of resistance.  The music is a gradual yet inescapable buildup of passion.  The opponents of apartheid, the music tells us, will not stop, and they will only grow more forceful with time.

The homophonic texture of the song is also significant, as it is reminiscent of the Zulu people’s traditional use of harmony.  It is a reminder of the importance of indigenous culture.  The call-and-response vocals further emphasize this importance, as they recall a great African tradition of community.  South Africa’s development was not simply the result of Western contributions.  Much of the prosperity enjoyed by White South Africans came as a result of the foundations laid by Black South Africans.  Now that these Black South Africans have found a leader worthy of their cause, this song warns, they will not give in to such exploitation.  They will demand recognition and they will demand the return of their leader.

The sixth song of the recording, titled “Missing,” similarly addresses the unacceptable condition of South Africa, but it does so in a very different way.  This song begins with an instrumental introduction.  It has an intense beat and the voice is slightly relaxed; it cracks at points, as if the strain is too great.  This time, therefore, the pressure is on the band and the anti-apartheid movement, rather than the established government.  The Western bass is featured more prominently, and the Western element in South Africa seems to be the dominant force.  Thus while “Asimbonanga” encourages the anti-apartheid movement through its confidence about its inevitable victory, “Missing” encourages people to support the anti-apartheid movement out of fear of its possible failure, and of what that failure would mean.

These South Africa-specific songs are followed by songs that stress the universality of South Africa’s struggle.  The song “Third World Child” for example addresses the mentality of the West and the effect that it has on Africa and the entire underdeveloped world.  It looks at Western advice — like

You should learn to speak a little bit of English.
Don’t be scared of a suit and tie.
Learn to walk in the dreams of a foreigner.

– from the perspective of a third world child.  The message is that violent oppression in places like South Africa is not the only means by which Western forces have hurt local identities and freedoms.  Johnny Clegg and Savuka’s crusade against injustice does not, therefore, end with South Africa.

On an even more broadly inclusive scale, the song “Berlin Wall” ties the struggle in South Africa to a contemporary struggle in the West.  It asks Berlin and its people to take up the call for a global community.  The divisions it highlights feel artificial and inappropriate for a nation anywhere, whether it be in Europe or in Africa.  The global reach of this song thus helps to connect Johnny Clegg and Savuka with its Western audience.  There can be a common goal and a common community, but only if injustices like those in South Africa are mediated.

Third World Child thus comes out strongly against apartheid and oppression.  The bravery of such an act in its time is unarguable.  The artistry involved in the perfect match between music and lyrics is admirable too.  Johnny Clegg and Savuka are successful in conveying their message because of their understanding of the music and lyrics.  The often upbeat and dance-inducing music makes the initial connection and draws the listener in.  The lyrics then personalize the music and explain its meaning.  The variety of musical styles balances the consistency of the message, creating an overall enjoyable and yet simultaneously meaningful political commentary.

- Review by Erin Swen

Three week program June 28-July 19, 2009
Application Available at www.cudamani.org Register Early. Enrollment Limited!
Artistic Team: I Dewa Putu Berata & Emiko Saraswati Susilo

Intensive study of balinese music and dance with 6 master artists and a team of 12 assisting teachers using pedagogy developed collaboratively by Ibu Ni Ketut Alit Arini, Bapak I Nyoman Cerita and Çudamani; lectures and demonstrations by internationally renowned scholars and artists; observation of rehearsals, ‘backstage’ preparation and performances; visits to sacred sites and ceremonies. Participants engage with Pengosekan’s community of artists, well known as weavers, painters, dancers and musicians.With the success of the 2007 and 2008 summer programs, Çudamani will once again invite 35 individuals from around the world to participate in a rigorous study of Balinese music and dance in the village of Pengosekan, Ubud, Bali. Çudamani has provided gamelan and dance instruction to hundreds of youth and adults over the past eleven years. The company’s technical accomplishments on the seven-toned Semarandana are unparalleled. FEES Includes: Instruction, Shared Housing, Breakfast, Lunch & Excursions.  The program is suitable for experienced musicians and dancers as well as beginners. CONTACT: UCLA Center for Intercultural Performance. cip@arts.ucla.edu  T: 310-206-1335 .

Promotional Photo: Çudamani Music & Dance Summer Institute, Bali

Congratulations to Mariachi Los Camperos de Nati Cano.  For anyone who would like to listen to the CD, please come to the Archive and ask for ARCD 6856.

Archive Access Hours for the Week of 16-20 February

The Archive will be CLOSED on Monday February 16th for the Presidents’ Day holiday.

We will not have regular access hours from Tuesday the 17th through Thursday the 19th. If you wish to use the Archive during this time, please fill out an Appointment Request Form.

Regular access hours will resume on Friday February 20th, when the Archive will be open from 10 am – 2 PM.

Cheryl Keyes was nominated for an NAACP Image Award under the category of “world music” for her debut CD, “Let Me Take You There.” The 40th NAACP Image Awards airs live on February 12, 2009 on FOX.

The CD and Professor Keyes were recently the subjects of our inaugural EARcast and an extended recording review (with audio examples!) by a fellow scholar of African-American music, Dr. Miles White.  A copy of the album is available in the Archive, ARCD 7175.

Congratulations, Dr. Keyes!

See more information and a full list of nominees [PDF] at the 40th NAACP Image Awards site.

For this inaugural edition of the EARcast, Aaron speaks with Cheryl Keyes, Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology at UCLA.  Prof. Keyes discusses the roots and intersections of her musical and academic careers, as well as her newly released CD Let Me Take You There.

More information about the CD can be found at: http://www.cherylkeyes.com/
A review of the album by ethnomusicologist Dr. Miles White can be found in our Recording Reviews section.
And of course, the CD is available through CDBaby, iTunes, and other outlets.  It is also available for listening here in the Archive, call number ARCD 7175.

EARcast no. 1: An Interview with Cheryl Keyes

SEE ALSO EARcast no. 1: An Interview with Cheryl Keyes

In 1975, Smokey Robinson released an elegiac album and song entitled “A Quiet Storm” that became the basis for a new radio format by that name and which in turn influenced the development of a number of later styles of African American music such as smooth jazz and neo-soul. Targeted to a largely black, urban and adult audience, Quiet Storm music tends towards lush orchestrations, slower tempos, intimate themes, and impassioned yet restrained performances from instrumentalists and vocal stylists who draw from rhythm and blues, gospel, soul and jazz. Typically programmed in late-night time slots, these formats still thrive at a number of local and college-oriented radio stations in urban pockets across the country. The music appeals as much to lovers as to quiet evenings of personal reflection and welcome solitude, tends to be more sensual than sexual and is often as spiritual as it is soothing.

Let Me Take You There, the multifaceted debut CD by composer, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Cheryl Keyes, is more than simply an homage to Quiet Storm aesthetics, although it may be that as well since Keyes, a professor in ethnomusicology at UCLA, is an accomplished historian of African American music. Let Me Take You There certainly succeeds as the touchstone for a number of strains in African American music broadly interpreted to take in the eclectic mix of hybrid styles that issue forth from the Black Atlantic, a rich heritage that Keyes acknowledges in the Latin-influenced “Seven Wonders of the World” and “Hyacinth.” On the other hand, in its overall scope Let Me Take You There may be one of the more accomplished contemporary renderings of everything that made Quiet Storm programming an understated though defining musical revolution, one that has perhaps been relatively understudied in black music scholarship. At a moment when most African American popular music is hip hop driven, Keyes’ CD contains no such influences, which may be somewhat ironic since she is a scholar of hip hop music and culture. Then again, everybody’s “old school” is different; Keyes’ old school begins in another era altogether. Certainly the importance of a recording like Keyes’ is that it perhaps illustrates the fact that there is probably a great diversity of black music production that is not being heard over the din of hip hop programming, which has perhaps also skewed record company budgets for signing new artists. Quiet Storm programming has always been more or less an alternative to what was happening in the commercial mainstream.

Quiet Storm programming began in Washington, D.C., with the late Melvin Lindsey, who began hosting a late-night show in 1976 for WHUR-FM, a radio station affiliated with Howard University. The music that became identified with the show and others like it over the years included artists as varied as Grover Washington, Jr., Phyllis Hyman, Frankie Beverly, Teena Marie, Norman Connors, Ramsey Lewis, Jon Lucien, Angela Bofill, Marvin Gaye, George Benson, Patti Labelle and Luther Vandross. In more recent years, neo-soul and smooth jazz performers whose music embraces the Quiet Storm aesthetic range from Brian McKnight, D’Angelo, Erykah Badu and Maxwell to Lauryn Hill, Joss Stone, Jill Scott, John Legend, and Gerald Albright. Many of these performers owe their careers to the format because they were played there before they were played anywhere else.
Keyes composed, arranged and orchestrated all of the music for the CD’s ten tracks in addition to writing most of the lyrical content, demonstrating an articulate command of the full range of black music idioms from jazz and gospel to soul and funk. The album opens, appropriately perhaps, with Keyes handling the bass line with a Moog synthesizer for the mid-tempo funk jam “I’m Feeling Down,” recreating a sound that seemed ubiquitous in the seventies as these instruments were increasingly incorporated into styles of black popular music.

Audio example 1: “I’m Feeling Down”

Perhaps the most whimsical piece on the CD, and one of the most startlingly beautiful, is the melancholic “My Fantasy,” a lament of unrequited love that broods in delicate string and wind arrangements and pianistic flourishes that take on a cinematic sweep. Keyes’ vocal performance reveals a rather astonishing upper-register dexterity that is surprising considering her skill at working a gutbucket blues on the low end. The breathtaking operatic plateaus she achieves on the chorus ending with the plaintive refrain Oh why couldn’t he turn out to be/A friend for me reality or could it be my fantasy?, recalls Sarah Vaughan’s poignant excursions into heartbreak. Keyes’ consummate musicianship not undeservedly invites other comparisons to Vaughan that bear out on repeated listenings.

Audio example 2: “My Fantasy”

“Hyacinth,” a tribute to Keyes’ mother, recalls the fact that Quiet Storm music provided one of the earliest showcases for the instrumental music now labeled smooth jazz, a contemporary style that has perhaps also been understudied by jazz scholars. The fact that it is essentially rhythm and blues-based music probably accounts for this slight, which of course overlooks the fact that the quality of improvisation that is its most essential element is what separates that which is good from what is merely schlock. In this regard Keyes, a seasoned jazz performer, demonstrates consummate skill and virtuosity on both flute and piano, employing multi-tracking to perform the illusion of accompanying herself. The vocal performance reminds one of the joyous flights of improvisational fancy that Dianne Reeves has made her signature.

Audio example 3: “Hyacinth”

“Moondays (A Tribute to Lady Day)” calls up a smoky gin joint somewhere in some American city where in the wee hours of any given morning Billie Holiday might have graced a microphone. Keyes is evocative on her vocals but wisely does not attempt to mimic Holiday’s style. Instead she finds simpatico and communion in the context of the blues tradition using a trio setting with orchestral accents in the background. She takes it in the style of a torch song, vamping at the end and improvising vocal riffs that engage the full vocabulary of idiomatic techniques that any aspiring blues singer should have at the ready. Nancy Wilson once characterized herself as more of a vocal stylist than merely a jazz singer, a way to suggest that she sees no reason why she should accept categorical boundaries. “Moondays” suggests the same of Keyes.

Audio example 4: “Moondays”

“Let Me Take You There” and “It’s Gonna Be Alright” both appear at the midpoint of the CD and reveal the kind of contemporary R&B songwriting sensibilities that have been a staple of African American-derived mainstream pop balladry since about the early 1980s. Neither would have been out of place on the trilogy of albums Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones collaborated on over that decade, and yet they have that timeless quality about them that romantic ballads tend to have. Of the two, “It’s Gonna Be Alright” probably better reveals Keyes’ sense of dramatic timing, using modulations, dynamic shifts, and vocal colorations to create tension that always finds reassuring resolution.  The gospel chorus at the end, a practice that mainstream pop performers began to incorporate into secular material in recent decades, reconnects black sacred and secular traditions that have always coexisted in a variety of musical contexts, and provides a satisfying sense of closure that is uplifting without overdoing the convention.

Audio example 5: “It’s Gonna Be Alright”

Keyes ends the CD with what at first sounds like the most simple of love songs, introducing a descending melodic line on electric piano that forms the song’s recurring motif. The addition of flamenco sketches from an acoustic guitar pulls still more coloration from what has by now been a full palette of compositional techniques deployed with considerable craftsmanship. Like all of Keyes’ material, this song patiently reveals itself over time. Only after the final strains of its lyric have waned does one discover that it is deceptively something other than what it first appears.

Audio example 6: “No One But You”

Popular music studies have probably given short shrift to African American music in those academic settings that bother to pay attention to popular music at all. Where such attention is given, it has largely tended to focus on classes in American popular music defined as rock ‘n’ roll that marginalize all but the most undeniable black progenitors of mainstream rock styles. Jazz has fared somewhat better and gospel has also made inroads over time, which nonetheless renders invisible a diverse range of African American musical styles and performers who perhaps only survive because we cannot help but to continually conjure them up whenever we lift a voice or instrument in song. If that is true, then Let Me Take You There does qualify as a kind of homage to everything that has come before it, demonstrating a stylistic range in its songwriting that is as commanding for its time as Ellington was in his own, and a knowing intimacy with those styles that suggests Keyes has studied the nuance of every singer who has ever mattered in American song. If it is true that you can’t go home again, it does not mean you cannot revisit it, if only in memory and in songs that have the power to conjure up the evidence of things unseen.

- Review by Miles White, Ph.D.

For the week of 15 – 19 December 2008, Archive access will be by appointment only. To request an appointment, please use our online appointment request form, or call 310.825.1695.  The Archive will be closed from 22 December 2008 and will re-open on 5 January 2005.

Access Hours for Winter Quarter 2009

Monday … 10 am – 2 PM
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