For every great archival release made by the record companies, ten times as many pieces of recorded history are lost to the ages. The Grammy Foundation has awarded $250,000 in grants to eighteen individuals and organizations to help fund activities that will help us better understand the music of the past and make sure that it is preserved for future generations.
"For nearly 25 years, our Grammy Foundation Grant Program has been a leader in funding an extraordinary range of scientific research, archiving, and preservation projects," said Neil Portnow, President/CEO of The Recording Academy® and the Grammy Foundation. "We have provided support for research that seeks to help individuals with speech and movement difficulties, and for a project that will prepare a significant collection of African-American gospel and blues from Memphis and the Mississippi Delta for digitizing and preservation. Each year, we continue to build upon the impressive diversity and quality of our grant recipients, which makes us proud of the role that our Grant Program is playing in protecting our shared musical heritage, and enabling the medical and scientific advances of the future."
In all, the program has awarded almost $5.8 million to over 300 projects. Highlights from this year's grants:
Cafe Lena (Saratoga Springs, NY) - To clean, store, digitally transfer and provide access to its many tapes of performances and oral histories recorded between 1960 and 1989. The final recordings will be stored at the Library of Congress.
Los Angeles Philharmonic (Los Angeles, CA) - The digital transfer, storage and management of a collection of 1,500 analog tapes recorded between 1953 and 1960, including live recordings of such greats as Marian Anderson, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald and Nina Simone.
Oklahoma Historical Society (Oklahoma City, OK) - The archiving of lacquer disks and tapes of Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys dating from the 40's through the 60's.
The Ravi Shankar Foundation - Preserve, digitize, catalog and provide access to live and studio recordings from Shankar's career.
University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA) - Stabilize and digitize 49 reel-to-reel tapes of concerts, rehearsals and personal recording sessions by Dave Brubeck.
WGBH Educational Foundation (Boston, MA) - Preserve and make available interviews from the PBS series Rock & Roll.
Louis Guida (Lexington, KY) - Assess, prioritize and prepare material from the Indiana University Bloomington's Black Film Center/Archive of gospel and blues from Memphis and the Mississippi Delta.
Northwest Folklife (Seattle, WA) - Assess, stabilize, preserve and catalog a collection of recordings from over 40 years of the music of the Pacific Northwest.
The complete list of 18 recipients with additional information, courtesy of the Grammy Foundation, is after the cut:
