Protecting and Consolidating the Afropop Archive

Help Afropop Worldwide Move, Protect and Consolidate its 30+ Year Archive

 
If you have listened to Afropop Worldwide’s  radio program or podcast any time in the past 31 years, you have heard just a small part of our vast archive of live concerts and performances, interviews, rare audio releases and field recordings from far corners of the world. We have produced over 800, hour-long radio programs, and many additional podcasts and web-videos as well as countless text/image web features. Our Peabody Award-winning body of work is based on over 100 field research trips to most of the countries in Africa, South America and the Caribbean, as well as locations in Europe, the Middle East and, of course, the U.S. 

In the past year, we have been preparing to consolidate the archive in Middletown, Connecticut, where the program concept was incubated long ago at Wesleyan University. The archive consists of audio recordings in seven different formats—ranging from old-school cassettes to flash drives and memory cards—lots of vinyl, more CDs than you would ever want to see in one place, VHS and Beta tapes, original video from our own fieldwork going as far back as the era of Hi-8, photographs, notebooks, publications, promotional materials, posters, souvenirs…  Back in the day we did a lot of recording on DAT tapes which turn out to be very vulnerable to decay. These will get priority treatment in the digitization lab we are setting up in Middletown. Out of this transformed archive will come cool new products and services. In the video in our GoFundMe page (click arrow above), Banning Eyre illustrates the story, featuring lively video moments from our visits to Madagascar, Egypt, Mali, Ghana. . 
 
All this material has been stored in three different locations in Brooklyn and in Connecticut. Now it’s time to pull the pieces together. We’ve been preparing for an early summer move in which all these holdings will be reunited in a spacious new location so that the long work of digitizing, preserving, cataloguing and indexing can begin. 

The good news is that we have found enthusiastic partners to help with the processing work, and also, innovative educational initiatives keen to partner with us to incorporate elements of the archive for use in school curricula and a new generation of cutting-edge educational tools: interactive maps and timelines, graphic interfaces to rich multi-media databases, and new tools emerging all the time. We are also working with Stevie Van Zandt’s TeachRock.org to develop a prototype high school curriculum based on Afropop archival data. 

But there are considerable expenses involved in this undertaking, beyond the costs of producing our ongoing content.  Specifically:

-    The moving van and workers: there’s a fair amount of heavy furniture associated with all these materials

-      Rental costs for the space in Middletown

-      Additional storage furniture for safe and efficient access to vulnerable items, such as Digital Audio Tapes and analog photographs, slides and negatives

-      Three basic laptops to be used in the digitization lab we are setting up in Middletown (we have most of the other gear we need)

-      Bulk photo digitization (This is work more efficiently done by industry professionals)

-      Compensation for archiving interns and consultants 



AFROPOP THANK YOU GIFTS
Feel free to opt out, but we'd love to repay you in a small way for your help. We will try to keep this space updated, but donate early and often before the best prizes are gone!

$25 and up: download of first Afropop program "A Visit to South Africa" (unlimited)

$50: Afropop Souvenir pack incl. classic Afropop Listener's Guide and Afropop Summer Concert guide beautiful artist photo, signed copy of sleeve of Angelique Kidjo's acclaimed "Eve" project. (~50)
 

$100: Afropop Souvenir pack plus Pape Diouf CD OR Boubacar Diabate "Badian" CD. (~40)


$250: Afropop Souvenir pack plus one of two groundbreaking books by John Storm Roberts (~10)

 
$250: Afropop Souvenir pack plus:
                  Vieux Farka Toure's "Samba" LP (~4) OR 
                  Afropop t-shirt (depending on size, ~10) OR
                 Afropop sweat shirt (~1) OR
                 Cuban maracas (~1 set) Or
                 Fulani leather sheperd's hat (1)


CLAIMED: Seven LP box set of Fela Kuti classics, curated by Erykah Badu

DISCLAIMER: Gifts are in response to donation. Gifts available as supplies last. Size and design on t-shirts not guaranteed.