As a Special Collection, the archive of Afro and
Astro/Sonics and/or Jazz Poetry at Columbia University’s Music Library
will feature rare and often out-of-print lps, tapes, cds, and related
texts and ephemera, by and related to such writers as Langston Hughes;
Amiri Baraka; Joseph Jarman; Jayne Cortez; William ‘Smiley’ Winter,
Michael S. Harper, Jeanee Lee, William Parker, the list
goes on. This collection will be highly curated, as among its primary
aims is the gathering of material that occupies and defines a specific
and often repudiated aesthetic register, an expanse of tone science all
its own, with the belief that the aggregate, the critical mass of
recordings and related materials that define this vast expanse of tone
and technique, all assembled in one place as it never before has been,
will lead to a deeper and more lucid understanding of this body and type
of work. This collection reveals Afrosonics as a form unto itself; an
omni-poetics that exists in the interstices between genres, goes beyond
the commonly perceived scope of oral tradition, and is an enactment of
the Black Aesthetic and often the Black Avant Garde and Black Radical
Tradition, that responds, by mobilizing the powers of sound to alter
perception/destiny, and enhance comprehension— to the neglect ,
invisibility, fragmentation and fetishization, that characterize the
treatment of black artforms on every level of Western society from the
Academic sphere to Popular Culture to Religion to Folk Arts to Politics.
If there is a militant aspect to
this project, it is unique in that the most militant component to this
work is the act of doing it at all. To compile this
material in a thorough and loving manner before it goes out of print or
dissolves into pure lore and myth and oral history, and can no longer be
accessed en masse as collectors lose track of original recordings,
etc—to present these endangered recordings in one place is an act of
rebellion against the complacency and academic politics and whatever
other learned or de-ritualized behavior has prevented such an archive
from being built and made available on the University level (or any
level in the public sphere/commons) before now. In addition, this
archive will undoubtedly draw scholars from all levels of research and
art practice to the University, and create the space for the formulation
of new pedagogy around both archival and art practice. The collection
will likely fuel alliances with scholars at nearby universities like
NYU, BARD, and CUNY as the academic community as a whole is inundated
with interest in Digital Humanities and this archive offers a robust point of entry into that ecosystem while it is delicate and relatively young.
The optimal functioning of the Collection relies on three key, interdependent qualities:
*
The assembly of a critical mass of albums and sounds recorded by
writers and musicians that include but are not limited to, recitations
of poetry and poetic material, speeches, wordless vocals, etc., either
with or without musical accompaniment. We will begin with about 30 such
Albums and the collection will grow therefrom as we continue to locate
original copies of the works we plan to include.
**
The presentation of the materials in a manner that allows active
engagement with them including access to liner notes and related
reading, as well as equipment that allows for on-the-spot mixing of
spoken albums with instrumental ones so as to make clear that use of the
archive as a form or art practice or praxis is not only possible but in
some way imperative to genuine understanding of its aesthetic and
purpose and continued relevance to and application in, forms like djing
and mixing music as well as more traditional Jazz and Black Classical
forms. It needs to be noted that in the absence of traditional archives
and arts training Black music and musicians have taken to turning
so-called archival materials (jazz, blues, and soul records from the
parent’s collections for example) into instruments in order to both make
new music and learn about what predates it in the same gesture. Hip Hop
and electronic music forms are based in this and written forms can also
work in this way, grammar itself can work in this way.
***The
recording and release of new albums in this tradition by living
writers, musicians, thinkers, etc., also to be included in the
collection, (including materials assembled by way of the Beautiful Voices Project).
These new albums will feature liner notes and sometimes books and
essays to accompany them. At times the new lps will be devoted to
out-of-print books by such beloved authors as Gwendolyn Brooks, at other
times they will respond to in-print books that lend themselves to
oration and easily bloom into music, such as any title by Clarice
Lispector. This continuation of the legacy that the Afrosonics
Collection highlights will allow for courses and seminars on both theory
and practice of the symbiosis of: writing literature, poetry, and
theory/criticism, lyric essays, etc.; recording music; and archiving,
that we are positing and proving by way of the archive itself. These
courses will examine the relationship between collective improvisation,
devotion, archival practice, and the so-called black aesthetic as it
manifests in all forms of writing, listening, and music. We will also
examine listening as a form of its own, one that gives agility to other
artforms, as much of this collection will address the importance of
listening to scholarship, to the arts in general, to the human
heart/spirit/soul.
∞We plan to inaugurate the collection with a listening party and live dj/ ensemble event at a local jazz venue
