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Folk
Heritage Collections in Crisis
Symposium Keynote Addresses
Access Keynote | Preservation
Keynote | Intellectual Property Keynote
Three keynote addresses were presented
at the Folk Heritage Collections in Crisis Symposium with comments
by participants at the end of each address. The presenters were
Virginia Danielson, speaking about access to collections; Elizabeth
Cohen, speaking about preservation of audio; and Anthony Seeger,
speaking about property rights. This page provides a brief biography
of each presenter along with links to a print version of each presentation
and a video version of Cohen and Seeger's addresses. The video
includes the comments that follow the talk, while the print version
does not. Print versions of the papers may be more extensive and
include footnotes and references.
Stating the Obvious:
Lessons Learned Attempting Access to Archival Audio Collections
Virginia Danielson, Director, the Archive of World Music, Harvard
University
Read the Address
(No video available)
Biographical Information:
Virginia Danielson is the Richard F. French Librarian of the
Music Library at Harvard University and the Curator of the Archive
of World Music at Harvard University. In these capacities she has
overseen the development of a state-of-the-art digital audio studio
intended to foster the reformatting of unique recordings. She has
had primary responsible for acquisition, preservation, and cataloging
of ethnographic audio and video recordings at Harvard.
She has been active in ARSC, IASA, the Music Library Association,
the Society for Ethnomusicology, and the American Musicological
Society. She has participated in University Library committees
at Harvard that are responsible for preservation and access to
non-book materials.
Danielson holds a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from the University
of Illinois. Her research has focussed on musics of the Arab world.
She is the author of numerous articles on Arabic song, female singers
and Muslim devotional music. She is a co-editor of the forthcoming
volume on musics of the Middle East and Central Asia in the
Garland Encyclopedia of World Music. Her book, The Voice
of Egypt: Umm Kulthum, Arabic Song and Egyptian Society in the
20th Century, was nominated for an ARSC award in 1998.
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Elizabeth Cohen, President, Cohen Acoustical Inc.
Read the Address
View the Video of the Address (RealPlayer)
With comments by Mark Roosa, Preservation Directorate, Library of Congress
Biographical Information:
Elizabeth Cohen is the president of Cohen Acoustical, Inc., and
publisher of The Sound Report, a subscription only newsletter
analyzing the impact of audio on technology and technology on audio-related
industries.
She is the past president of the Audio Engineering Society, and
has served as the Acoustical Society Science and Engineering Fellow
to the White House National Economic Council, where her portfolio
consisted of Arts and Humanities Applications on the Internet,
promoting telecommuting, and accessibility issues. She led the
acoustical design teams for Aspen's Joan and Irving Harris Concert
hall and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Samuel
Goldwyn theater.
Cohen is considered one of the premier designers of home theaters,
and has designed screening rooms for DTS, Dolby, and Sony. In February
1998, she received the Touchestone Award for her contributions
to the music industry.
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Professor Anthony Seeger, UCLA
Read the Address
View the Video of the Address (Real
Player)
With comments by Peggy Bulger, American Folklife Center; John Simson,
Recording Industries Association of America; and Rayna Green, Museum
of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution
Biographical Information:
Anthony Seeger is an anthropologist, ethnomusicologist, archivist,
and musician. He received a B.A. from Harvard University and an
M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Chicago.
His research has concentrated on the music of Amazonian Indians
in Brazil, where he lived for nearly ten years between 1970 and
1982, for much of that time a member of the Graduate Faculty of
the Department of Anthropology at the National Museum, in Rio de
Janeiro. While living in Brazil he was elected president of the
Pro-Indian Commission of Rio de Janeiro, a Brazilian Indian rights
activist group, and served as chairman of the Department of Anthropology
of the National Museum as well as coordinator of its Graduate Program.
He also participated in establishing a M.A. in Musicology and Ethnomusicology
at the Brazilian Conservatory of Music.
In 1982 he returned to the United States as associate professor
of anthropology and director of the Indiana University Archives
of Traditional Music. In 1988 he moved to the Smithsonian Institution
to assume the direction of Folkways Records and to become the curator
of the archival collections of the Smithsonian's Center for Folklife
and Cultural Heritage. He has held executive positions in a number
of professional organizations, including the Society for Ethnomusicology
(president 1989-91) and the International Council for Traditional
Music (president 1997-99). He was elected a Fellow of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1993. In 2000 he accepted a position
as professor in the Department of Ethnomusicology at the University
of California at Los Angeles, and was appointed Curator Emeritus
at the Smithsonian.
Seeger is the author of four books and over 50 articles on anthropological,
ethnomusicological, archival, intellectual property and Indian
rights issues. Among the books are Nature and Society in Central
Brazil: The Suya Indians of Mato Grosso (Harvard University
Press 1981); Early Field Recordings: A Catalogue of the Wax
Cylinder Recordings at the Indiana University Archives of Traditional
Music (Indiana University Press 1987); and Why Suyá Sing:
A Musical Anthropology of an Amazonian People (Cambridge University
Press 1987). He produced many recordings as Director of Smithsonian/Folkways
Recordings at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. He
began writing about intellectual property from the perspective
of archives in 1986, and has written a number of articles on those
issues directed specifically at ethnomusicologists as he moved
from being an archivist to running a record company as well as
its archival collections.
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