There Is No Cat

Groovy '60s Sounds from the Land of Smile!

Thursday, October 30, 2003

Knifing the baby

Back in March, I wrote about Global Sound, a web site being put together in Seattle by the Smithsonian Institute that would eventually be providing access to some fascinating recordings of indigenous music, in particular the holdings of the International Library of African Music, repository of a staggering collection of recordings by South African musicologist Hugh Tracey. Much of the music he recorded in the 1950s and 60s has vanished as live art forms, making the collection an invaluable window into a disappeared world. Most of the music has never been easily accessible to the public, having been published mainly on records that were made available only to libraries.

Today comes the sad news that a funding crisis has strangled this baby in the crib. The site was apparently finished, but whoever controls the purse strings apparently decided that enough was enough. Global Sound sent out a message to the members of its mailing list pointing to their beta site, where you can listen to samples of the music (sadly, the ability to download entire tracks has been removed). The soon-to-disappear site shows a lot of promise, and I can see that I would have been spending way too much money there. I suppose I should be grateful to an administration that considers no garbage truck too expensive for Iraq but can't find the money for this project; my wallet will be fuller as a result and I'll be able to spend more money on home improvements. There's a possibility that Smithsonian Folkways Records may resurrect the site in some form. I hope so.

Feh.

Posted at 10:43 PM

Comments

Note: I’m tired of clearing the spam from my comments, so comments are no longer accepted.

Trackbacks

This site is copyright © 2002-2024, Ralph Brandi.

What do you mean there is no cat?

"You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat."

- Albert Einstein, explaining radio


There used to be a cat

[ photo of Mischief, a black and white cat ]

Mischief, 1988 - December 20, 2003

[ photo of Sylvester, a black and white cat ]

Sylvester (the Dorito Fiend), who died at Thanksgiving, 2000.


Stylesheets


This site is powered by Missouri. Show me!

Valid XHTML 1.0!

Valid CSS!

XML RSS feed

Read Me via Atom

new host

Me!

Home Page
Resume
Married
Photographs
Flickr Photostream
Instagram Archive
Twitter Archive

last.fm

There Is No Cat is a photo Ralph Brandi joint.


Archives

Search



Family Blogs

Geneablogy
Jersey Girl Dance
Awakening
DullBlog
Mime Is Money

Blogs I Read

2020 Hindsight
AccordionGuy
Adactio
Allied
Apartment Therapy
Assorted Nonsense
Backup Brain
Burningbird
Chocolate and Vodka
Creative Tech Writer
Critical Distance
Daily Kos
Dan Misener likes the radio
Daring Fireball
Design Your Life
design*sponge
Doc Searls
Edith Frost
Elegant Hack
Emergency Weblog
Empty Bottle
Five Acres with a View
Flashes of Panic
Future of Radio
Groundhog Day
Hello Mary Lu
iheni
Inessential
Interllectual
Jeffrey Zeldman Presents
Jersey Beat
John Gushue ... Dot Dot Dot
john peel every day
JOHO The Blog
Kathryn Cramer
Kimberly Blessing
La Emisora de la Revolucion
Lacunae
Loobylu
mamamusings
Medley
mr. nice guy
MyDD
Orcinus
oz: the blog of glenda sims
Pinkie Style
Pinkie Style Photos
Pop Culture Junk Mail
Seaweed Chronicles
Shortwave Music
Slipstream
Talking Points Memo
The Unheard Word
Tom Sundstrom - trsc.com
Typographica
Unadorned
Vantan.org
WFMU's Beware of the Blog