"Staggering" is the word being used to describe a massive folk music archive placed online recently in the United Kingdom.
Billed as the largest digital archive of traditional English folk and dance music, "The Full English," contains more than 44,000 records and 58,000 images -- now all accessible with the click of a mouse.
The Brits aren't the only ones with archives on the mind. Here at Wisconsin Public Radio, we are the stewards of a substantial collection of folk field recordings dating back to the 1970s.
Whether setting up at summer festivals or competing with an espresso machine at the local coffeehouse, "Simply Folk" has been documenting Wisconsin's folk music scene in situ for more than three decades. From Pete Seeger and Stan Rogers to the Chieftains and the Milwaukee Mandolin Orchestra – it's a meaningful collection filled with fiddlers, singer-songwriters, accordionists, storytellers and characters of all kinds.
Recordings along with concert flyers and band brochures are stashed all over WPR’s Madison facilities and at the Mills Music Library at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Shelves of reel-to-reel tapes sit in boxes with fading and peeling labels, and the tape itself becomes more fragile with each passing day.
In the U.K., organizers received a £585,400 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund to begin the undertaking. Here in Wisconsin, the initial inventory should wrap up at the end of the summer, powered by an assiduously organized intern.
Once this collection is documented, the next step is to prioritize at-risk recordings, then begin the transfer to digital format, which involves baking tapes. Yes, baking in an oven.
We can't wait to delve into this wonderful resource, and we’re hopeful that we’ll be able to make elements of the collection available to WPR listeners, the general public and ethnomusicology scholars.
