Date:         Thu, 16 Oct 2008 22:30:21 -0400
Reply-To:     Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List
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Sender:       Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List
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From:         Joel Bresler <[log in to unmask]>
Subject:      Sephardic music website
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Dear Friends:

I am very pleased to announce the launch of my site, www.sephardicmusic.org.
The site chronicles the first 100 years of commercial Sephardic recordings.
It includes survey articles on the 78 and modern eras, a comprehensive
discography of Sephardic 78s, and a sample of what a proposed discography of
modern-era recordings could look like. 

I have tried to take advantage of the web's multimedia capabilities to
expand well beyond the normal contents of a discography (artist, title,
place and date recorded, etc.) Wherever possible, I include label graphics
and sound samples. A Union Catalog feature shows which public institutions
own a particular recording, and I have normalized the songs' titles so that
users can find all versions of any given song. Last, I have included
information on the labels that published these recordings, the artists that
made them, and the stores that sold them. I would welcome your comments. 

With more and more collectors digitizing their titles, I think there is a
great opportunity for hosting vernacular 78s on the Web. Instead of
satisfying ourselves with a limited diet of CD re-releases, we can now
contemplate the prospects of access to the majority of the releases. (While
I am no lawyer, Canadian and European releases of traditional songs on 78
should all be in the public domain by now.) 

I will be glad to explore the possibilities in this discussion thread. I
would like to thank the ARSC for supporting this project with a travel
grant, and thank the participants of this mailing list for their assistance
as well.

Joel Bresler
ARSC member

sephardicmusic.org
Joel Bresler, Publisher
250 E. Emerson Road
Lexington, MA 02420
United States

www.sephardicmusic.org
1-781-862-4104 (Telephone & FAX)
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