June 07, 2011
The USC Alumni magazine Tojan Family recently featured Music Preservation Project Director, Varun Soni.
Here is an excerpt from the article:
In a related project with USC communications scholar Josh Kun, Soni hopes to bring to USC several privately held music collections, including the largest reggae music archive in the world, an outstanding Sufi music archive, a rare collection of anthropological and ethnographic recordings from across Latin America and Africa, and a collection of field recordings of Buddhist chanting and Balinese rituals from the 1960s and 70s.
The current state of musical preservation in the United States is dismal, says Kun, noting that last fall the Library of Congress released a comprehensive study showing that major areas of America’s recorded sound heritage are disappearing. Only 14 percent of pre-1965 commercial recordings remain publicly accessible, the study found. As vintage record stores close and record labels go out of business, the race is on to salvage the physical back catalogues of LPs and master tapes.
“Varun and I are both big music fans and very eager to see what USC’s role can be in pioneering forward-thinking archival steps to make sure these valuable collections don’t get lost,” says Kun. “We’re here in Southern California, the hub of the music world, and we think we can play a really important role.”
Click here to read the entire article: "The Un-Chaplan"
March 07, 2011
Josh Kun is a music and cultural finatic, a professor at USC's Annenberg School of Communications, and one of the Directors of the Music Preservation Project. Check out Josh peforming at TEDxSF with the grammy winning band Ozomatli!
February 25, 2011
The vast collection of music that first inspired the formation of the Music Preservation Project was the World's largest collection of Jamaican music and culture collected by Roger Steffens. In the 1970's Roger had the pleasure of spending 3 weeks on the road with Bob Marley. This trip changed Roger's life and sparked his passion for all things reggae. Over the years, with the help of reggae fans all over the world, the Roger Steffens Reggae Archive has grown to include over 300,000 items. Select items from the archive are currently on display at the Music Preservation Project headquarters in Santa Barbara, CA. Check it out as Roger gives COX Television a personal tour. (Click the whole story to watch the video)
January 27, 2011
COX's Backbeat video magazine interviews Music Preservation Project Director Luke Archer. Archer is a veterain of music education and actively produces large quanities of content for the music industry. Previously, Archer was the CEO of the JustEnough Learning Company where he led the creative development of a series of instructional kits on how to play music. His work at JustEnough, and the work of his team, helped to conceive and assist with the launch of both the NAMM teen initiative called the MusicEdge and the build out of the music video channels at MSN Video. Currently Archer divides his time between his marketing consulting and production company, Cool Hand Look, and leading the development teams at the Music Preservation Project. Learn about the motivation and the urgent agenda of the Music Preservation Project in this short excerpt that aired in rotation on COX cable in Santa Barbara, CA. (Click the whole story to watch the video)
