While scholars have criticized the extractive dynamics of sampling ethnographic recordings, such as using them as raw sonic materials without considerations for their original contexts and performers (eg. Seeger 1996, Théberge 2003, Zarza 2021), sampling has also been considered as a way to repurpose cultural materials among the communities where they were originally made (eg. Lobley 2020). In 1954, ethnomusicologist Klaus Wachsmann made around 200 recordings with Acholi musicians from Northern Uganda which, addressing recent debates on archival sound curation[1], I circulated in the region during the last two years with my associate Leo PaLayeng, an Acholi traditional musician and producer who pioneered acholitronix, an electronic genre based on Acholi traditional music. Integrating the recordings in his production, I discuss in this paper PaLayeng’s use of the recordings and its relation to current debates in archival sound curation.

[1] Under the umbrella term of ‘repatriation,’ a growing number of projects in the past 20 years have focused on the circulation of archival materials in the areas and communities where they were originally made. See for instance the 38 case studies collated in the Oxford Handbook of Musical Repatriation (2019), or the special issue of the British Forum for Ethnomusicology (2012) dedicated to this topic.

In 2019-2020, a survey was conducted of over 528 practitioners of Irish traditional music across North America. This was the first survey of its kind to develop a comprehensive understanding of the musical landscape in this region and to collect feedback about engagement with digital archive audio files. Insights emerged about the broader musical landscape and a diversity of cultural practices with archival audio. This is grounded by a publication (February 2024) that analysed some of these survey results, demonstrating overall trends, practitioner backgrounds, and their experiences with a wide range of media formats and materials. In this paper, I build upon that work and focus on demographics within the survey and follow-on interviews to examine three ways that respondents may relate to archival materials. Drawing upon participant-observation and narrative responses, this research engages deeply with participant insights. The evidence presented will demonstrate: 1) respondents' descriptions about their attitudes towards archives of Irish traditional music 2) resources that they shared and how those resources break down within different demographics and 3) suggestions that were presented by these practitioners on how material could be made more relevant to performers in North America. The description of an extended period of participant observation by the author served to contextualise participant responses and experiences.

From the inception of the Turkish Republic to the contemporary era, a pervasive trajectory of elimination, discrimination, and proscription has characterized the treatment of the Kurdish language, music, culture, and media within Turkish Kurdistan. Confronted with the absence of a sovereign state and a substantial media apparatus, the Kurdish community has preserved a noteworthy segment of its folk and traditional musical heritage through the efforts of foreign collectors, ethnomusicologists, researchers, and diasporic radio stations like Radio Yerevan in Armenia. Additionally, individual collectors within Kurdistan have played a crucial role in safeguarding and perpetuating Kurdish musical expressions.

My scholarly endeavor is dedicated to investigating the media encounters of the Kurdish population in Turkey, a demographic that has endured prolonged censorship and political persecution at the hands of the colonial Turkish state. My study concentrates on the documentation, circulation, and archival practices surrounding Kurdish music, predominantly recorded on audio cassette tapes from the 1970s to the 2000s. Examining connections between media materialities and technologies and diaspora, nationalization, and borders, my project will serve as an integrative nexus that enriches fields like ethnomusicology, media studies, and history, in a captivating and underexplored scholarly domain. Grounded in ethnographic research, my research elucidates how a community, previously hindered in its unity and conceptualization through written means, has achieved a sense of cohesion and collective identity through oral and auditory expressions.

Since its establishment in 1976, the National Museum of Anthropology (NMA) of Angola has played an important role in promoting traditional music in the capital Luanda. Not only does the Museum display a rich collection of Angolan musical instruments, but it is also known for having long been the main performance venue for players of the madimba, the famous xylophone from north-central Angola. While, in this way, the institution has provided a source of livelihood, albeit limited, to madimba players for decades, it has, however, facilitated their "museification," or objectification, borrowing Giorgio Agamben (2007)'s words.In an attempt to restore the memory of these musicians as active participants rather than static objects, my article explores a number of their songs recorded at the NMA in 1979. These recordings were made by the renowned Austrian ethnomusicologist and African music specialist, Gerhard Kubik, during a visit to Luanda, at the invitation of the Angolan Government's Secretariat of State. The analysis of the songs illuminates the agency of the madimba players who were part of the NMA staff at the time, challenging the objectifying gazes that still haunt the practitioners of this tradition. Moreover, it provides new insights into the capital's soundscape in the post-independence period: it questions dominant narratives of the Luanda music scene of the late 1970s, which emphasize musicians' self-censorship and ideological alignment with the socialist agenda. In the songs, the NMA's madimba players make the revolutionary messages of the time their own, without abstaining from criticism of social reality and political power.