Ripples of history: Sıbızğı recordings from northern Xinjiang

The Sıbızğı Recordings from Northern Xinjiang Coll…




Recording of the week: Recalling the 1981 Hunger Strike at Maze Prison

Photo of the inside of Maze Prison, licensed under CC BY 2.0. The clips for this Recording of the Week come from Pat Sheehan’s 2019 interview in the Voices of Our National Health Service collection. The 3rd October 2023 marks thirty-two years since the end of the 1981 hunger strikes…




Emmanuelle Olivier’s ‘Damara-Nama’ recordings and their return to Sesfontein, Namibia

In March 2022 a full set of digital copies of recordings of ‘Damara-Nama’ musics now archived in the British Library was returned to the Indigenous rights holders in Sesfontein, north-west Namibia. These recordings were made in 1999 by French ethnomusicologist Emmanuelle Olivier, assisted by the late Minette Mans, an ethnomusicology…




Unlocking Our Hidden Collections: Sue Steward and Edmundo Ros

Above: Edmundo Ros in Amsterdam, 1957. Photo by Harry Pot. The Unlocking Our Hidden Collections initiative is the British Library challenging itself. With over 170 million items in the Library’s collections and an average of over 8,000 new items added every day, it is impossible to keep up. Processing and…




Recording of the week: Chanting

Many yoga classes begin and end with the practice of chanting. Chanting aims to purify the mind by increasing both the mind and body’s attention. This in turn helps various people focus on the present, silencing the noise around them by releasing a smoothing feeling. One of the benefits of…