Sunday Feature: Taking it All Back Home

Singer and song collector Sam Lee explores how archives and institutions around the world are seeking to repatriate sound recordings. In what sense can a sound be 'taken back'? And what is the impact on the families and communities reacquainted with the voices of their past? Sam reflects on how digital technology and the opening up of archives has impacted on the practices and ethics involved in conserving and championing singing traditions and oral cultures. Sam visits the archives of the British Library, discussing with lead curator Janet Topp Fargion the role of recording technology in the work of salvage ethnographers and UNESCO-driven programmes aimed at 'safeguarding intangible heritage'. He hears from sound curator Noel Lobley about how the most exciting examples of the archive 'opening up' occur when the material is used in creative ways and also learns about how Xhosa recordings were given new contexts through the work of DJs and promoters in South Africa. Sam also travels to Window Rock in Arizona to meet members of a Navajo family for whom song is crucial to their own history