Digitizing some Native American recordings while keeping others sacred (fwd link)

[Phillip E Cash Cash]

Digitizing some Native American recordings while keeping others sacred

February 15, 2012
By Peter Crimmins
USA

[media link available] Listen to a Delaware tribal dance, recorded in 1928.

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.

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.

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.
"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."

Access full article below:
http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/local//item/34079-digitizing-some-native-american-recordings-while-keeping-others-sacred/
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