BBC Launches World Music Archive

in Music | July 22nd, 2010 5 Comments

Today, the BBC has unveiled a new archive of world music, allow­ing you to sam­ple the musi­cal tra­di­tions of more than 40 coun­tries. India, Cor­si­ca, Chi­na, Cuba, Iran, Brazil, Mozam­bique, Turkey – they’re all rep­re­sent­ed in this eclec­tic col­lec­tion of indige­nous music. Often assum­ing a fair amount of risk, BBC 3 trav­eled to each coun­try (includ­ing sev­er­al con­flict zones) to record the music. But it pays off when you get to hear the lit­tle known music com­ing out of North Korea, for exam­ple. Fea­tur­ing 100s of hours of free record­ings, this archive is now avail­able to a glob­al audi­ence. You can start explor­ing right here, right now.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Intro­duc­ing the Free Music Archive

via NZHer­ald and @freemusicarchiv


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Comments (5)
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  • Shelley says:
    July 22, 2010 at 4:08 pm

    I hope the coun­try of Texas is includ­ed.…

    Reply
  • bloger says:
    July 22, 2010 at 10:28 pm

    I think Indi­an cul­ture is upper then oth­er cul­ture.

    Reply
  • yeah, about that.... says:
    July 22, 2010 at 11:14 pm

    While nation­al­is­tic ideas might cloud your vision, it’s naive and ulti­mate­ly short-sight­ed to say that one cul­ture’s music is bet­ter than any oth­er. Music is a dia­logue and exchange above all else. When deal­ing with folk music, it’s also impor­tant to remem­ber that the music ful­fills a spe­cif­ic func­tion in life and is con­cerned more with that than pre­serv­ing “her­itage” and deny­ing out­side influ­ence. This is also true in clas­si­cal music styles as well. Specif­i­cal­ly, the great musi­cal cul­ture of India, and espe­cial­ly Hin­dus­tani clas­si­cal music, was high­ly influ­enced by for­eign cul­tures, espe­cial­ly Mid­dle East­ern music via the Per­sians and Mughals. Of course, this is a two-way street as well. The Ara­bic maqam and the Indi­an raga sys­tems (both Car­nat­ic and Hin­dus­tani) are not bet­ter than eachother or nec­es­sar­i­ly more com­plex, they are just dif­fer­ent ways of nam­ing spe­cif­ic groups of frequencies–in fact, they share quite a bit in com­mon (rhyth­mi­cal modes, quartertones/shruti [more preva­lent in maqa­mat], etc.). Any­way, in some cas­es on is more com­plex, in oth­ers the oth­er is more com­plex, but noth­ing makes one BETTER than the oth­er. All I’m say­ing is don’t be fooled by nation­al­is­tic musi­cal dia­tribe.

    Reply
  • zafrika says:
    July 26, 2010 at 9:05 pm

    @yeah, about that

    No,no! I think, bloger is right.

    Indi­an cul­ture is real­ly “upper then” oth­ers.

    Get it? “upper then”! ;-)
    LOL

    Reply
  • Cameron Waddel says:
    September 8, 2020 at 1:01 am

    The link for the World Music Archive is now:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1QYgDsWdg6pfC7gSf3VCSD7/world-music-archive

    Reply

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