Look What I Found: The “Music Time In Africa” archive


The Music Time in Africa archive is found on the University of Michigan website.  It aims to be a digitized audio collection of VoA radio broadcasts.  At the moment it mostly contains scans of scripts, but there are some digitized broadcasts available (e.g. MTiA of July 24, 1983).  The collection runs from 1966 to 1995, and covers broadcasts aired in and with artists from dozens of countries.

From the Voice of America site where I found it:

A journey from international shortwave to digital broadcast, the Music Time in Africa Archive takes audiences through an on-line experience of vintage Voice of America radio programs broadcast from 1966. The collaborative project with the University of Michigan digitized nearly 900 audio recordings and associated scripts of the weekly radio program. The archive now features 691 radio programs with a combination of program script and broadcast audio, with an additional 120 radio programs coming soon.

The broadcasts feature show hosts playing a variety of African music and original field recordings by VOA ’s “Music Man for Africa,” ethnomusicologist Leo Sarkisian.  Sarkisian recorded and collected music from the early 1960s through the late 1980s throughout the entire African continent, including pre-independence regions and states such as Balundo, Upper Volta, and Rhodesia. Visitors can play digitized broadcasts with original sounds and scripts, searchable by location or performer.

[. . .]

Launched in 1965 by Sarkisian, Music Time in Africa is VOA’s longest running radio broadcast to the African continent. The program continues to feature traditional and contemporary music from musicians throughout Africa.

This should be worth a few weeks or months worth sifting through.

This is as much for friends in Taiwan to click through as FtB readers.   In the past two years I’ve met a large number of people here from various countries, west, east and south.  Facebook doesn’t allow enough space or multiple links in its posts.