ARCHIVING AND PRESERVING THE ENDANGERED ARCHIVES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY IRANIAN PERFORMING ARTS

The Association for Recorded Sound Collections presents the following program from its 2012 ARSC Annual Conference at Rochester Radisson Riverside, New York on Friday May 18, 2012:
ARCHIVING AND PRESERVING THE ENDANGERED ARCHIVES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY IRANIAN PERFORMING ARTS
presented by Jane Lewisohn, SOAS, University of Londong
In this presentation I will highlight some of the challenges facing the archiving of recordings of the 20th-century performing arts of Iran. Over the past seven years I have been occupied fulltime in collecting and archiving the Golha Radio Programs broadcast on Iranian radio from 1956 till 1979. These programmes covered the entire history of classical as well as contemporary Persian poetry, giving marvelous expression to the whole gamut of traditional Persian music and poetry.
I am constructing an online searchable relational database for these programs which is scheduled to go live over the Internet in the next few months. During this time many other archives have come to light which also need to be preserved and made accessible to scholars in a fashion and format that will facilitate serious research and scholarship. Much of this material is either very hard or virtually impossible to access; all is endangered and on the verge of disappearing.
On the one hand, one finds private archives of artists and composers, on the other, collections of recordings made for private audiences, as well as field recordings made under the auspices of research for the Ministry of the Arts and Culture or Iranian Radio. There are also a wide range of invaluable radio programs made during the 1950s, 60s and 70s (in which fabulous singers, musicians, writers, and poets often starred), which deserve to be collected and properly archived. Many of these programs shed a unique light on Persian cultural and literary history and life in Iran during this period.
One may mention in this context programs such as Barnama-yi hemayat khanavada or Barnama-yi deghan, which discuss social issues relating to families and rural communities and workers; Dar gusha va kenar-i shahr, which broadcast interviews from schools, factories, prisons and orphanages, as well as other programs devoted to children and music will give brief descriptions of the extent, content and significance of each of these programs and discuss the challenges and importance of collecting and archiving them.
THE ASSOCIATION FOR RECORDED SOUND COLLECTIONS (www.arsc-audio.org) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation and study of sound recordings, in all genres of music and speech, in all formats, and from all periods. ARSC is unique in bringing together private individuals and institutional professionals-everyone with a serious interest in recorded sound.
Videographers: Michael and Leah Biel
Editor: Nathan Georgitis