The voice of Jack Johnson – heavyweight boxing champion of the world

By Jonathan Summers, Curator of Classical Music Jack Johnson c.1908 The legendary Jack Johnson (1878-1946) is remembered as the first African-American world heavyweight boxing champion, a title he held from 1908 to 1915. At a time when race relations were extremely volatile in the United States, Johnson caused a sensation…

Recording of the week: Touch Radio 035 – THE FREQ_OUT ORCHESTRA

This week’s selection comes from Dr Eva del Rey, Curator of Drama and Literature Recordings and Digital Performance. Live recording of THE FREQ_OUT ORCHESTRA performing freq_out 7 as part of the Happy New Ears Festival celebrated in the city of Kortrijk, Belgium, 13 September 2008. Kortrijk. Photo by: Erf-goed.be on…

GDPR day – changes to data protection law

Amanda House, Data Protection and Rights Clearance Officer for Unlocking Our Sound Heritage reflects on how the new data protection regulation will impact the sharing of audio archives online. GDPR is a new regulation designed to strengthen and combine the existing protection provided by the Data Protection Act (1998) for…

Sounds from beyond the Iron Curtain: Soviet classical recordings at the British Library Sound Archive

HMV SEOM 20 (BL Collections 1LP0144447) Guest blog by British Library Edison Fellow Evgeniya Kondrashina What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear of ‘Soviet music’? Is it the Red Army Choir with their military band songs, or the enigmatic symphonies of Dmitri Shostakovich? The…

Recording of the week: "We regret to inform you" – bad news from the sound archives

This week’s selection comes from David Govier, Oral History Archivist. An Oral History of the Post Office includes memories of telegram delivery boys who delivered telegrams by hand with news of war casualties during the Second World War, and their reflections on what it was like delivering the bad news….