<font><font face="georgia,serif">Digitizing some Native American recordings while keeping others sacred<br><br>February 15, 2012<br>By Peter Crimmins<br>USA<br> <br>[media link available] Listen to a Delaware tribal dance, recorded in 1928.<br>
<br>There are 3,000 recordings, representing languages and songs of more than 40 Native American tribes, in the archives of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia.<br><br>Some of them are over 100 years old, recorded on wax cylinders and wire spools. Most have been digitized, a couple dozen made readily available online.<br>
<br>Many more will never be heard by the general public. Digital technology presents new challenges to sacred sound, challenges the APS is learning to face.<br>"We've come to realize some recording are of sacred formulae," said Timothy Powell, director of the APS Native American Project. "To the Cherokee, it's dangerous; they can cause people harm. They believe if those recordings are digitized and put on the web — we would never do that, but should that happen — it kills the formulae."<br>
<br>Access full article below:<br><a href="http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/local//item/34079-digitizing-some-native-american-recordings-while-keeping-others-sacred/">http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/local//item/34079-digitizing-some-native-american-recordings-while-keeping-others-sacred/</a><br>
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