With a mission to digitally preserve and provide global access to archival collections at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), the HBCU Digital Library Trust (HBCU Trust) is a collaboration between HBCUs, HBCU Library Alliance, Harvard Library and the Atlanta University Center Woodruff Library. This initiative will sustain institutional, cultural, and community memory, and ensure that stories of HBCUs are discovered, maintained, remembered and told through the HBCU Digital Collection repository. Within this Digital Collection, nearly 100 archival assets document musicianship at over 10 historic institutions.

Among the most recognized HBCU student ambassadors are institutional groups of musicians; in existence since the late 1800s when several HBCUs were founded. One of the most renowned ensembles featured in the HBCU Digital Collection is the Fisk Jubilee Singers, who primarily sang a cappella Negro Spirituals since 1871. Their legacy of excellence lives on today, including a 2021 Grammy Award, although they are not the only HBCU to uphold their institutions’ profile. This presentation showcases several campus sponsored glee clubs, choral groups, orchestras, marching bands, and other ensembles which have been integral to HBCU culture. In preserving and digitizing archival holdings, the HBCU Trust is expanding access to photographs, audio, and visual recordings of these important organizations ranging from the late 1800s to the 1990s, at over 25 HBCUs. Insight into the process for prioritizing the digitization of powerful imagery, compositions and documentation about the lives and works of many early, prominent music educators at HBCUs will also be featured in this presentation.

Post Custodial Archiving offers a transformative approach to archival practice, challenging traditional notions of ownership and control while fostering collaborative stewardship of cultural heritage. This paper examines the application of this model in the digitization of the Lloyd Best Archive, a collection of writings, publications, recordings, and personal papers of the influential Trinidadian economist and intellectual. By prioritizing community agency and ensuring that materials remain in Trinidad and Tobago, this project resists the historical extraction of Caribbean knowledge into foreign repositories.

Situating the Lloyd Best Archive within broader discussions of Black music archives, this paper explores how post-custodial methodologies intersect with Caribbean oral traditions, calypso’s lyrical historiography, and the improvisational ethos of Black musical expression. The project not only preserves Best’s intellectual legacy but also engages with the fluid, living nature of Caribbean knowledge production, challenging static archival frameworks. This case study demonstrates how post-custodial approaches can harmonize memory, affirm local epistemologies, and resist the erasures inherent in colonial archival legacies. By foregrounding community collaboration and digital repatriation, the paper contributes to ongoing conversations about more equitable and sustainable models of archival preservation in the Black diaspora.

In the 1950s, the São Paulo Folklore Commission conducted research and documented Afro-Brazilian music and dance practices in rural and urban communities throughout the State. According to Evanira Mendes, one of the commission fieldworkers, community participants were aware that all of these research materials were going to be “archived, where they would be remembered.”

Through participatory action research—observing, dancing, and engaging with practitioners, these documents were incorporated into the Folklore Archive at the Conservatório Dramático e Musical de São Paulo. This archive later developed into the Museu de Folclore Rossini Tavares de Lima, recognized as one of the first museums of folklore in the country. Unfortunately, this museum was closed in the late 1990s and its collection was divided and moved to various locations. Some of these materials continue to be inaccessible today. This paper presentation documents a 20-year process attempting to access materials within this collection and highlights approaches to search for alternative archival documents. These ancillary materials were used to affirm and supplement data acquired through ethnographic research that described individual experiences of those conducting fieldwork in the 1950s. It will also outline strategies for developing partnerships with institutions to help advance material preservation, provide access to documents, and advance initiatives for dissemination.