Music of Man Archive

The Music of Man Archive is a collection for research on ethnomusicology. It contains a wide variety of sound recordings and artifacts around musical practices. The collection was established between the University of Hildesheim and the Hanover University of Music and Drama. The collector Mr. Laade was the driving force behind the archive, which contains tape recordings, records, books, instruments, videos and artifacts. The goal of the heterogeneous content is the holistic analysis of social and cultural practices around ethnographic music. If, for example, masks or costumes are necessary for a ceremony accompanied by music, these objects should also be collected and their use should be documented e.g., by video.

The collection contains 1,000 music instruments from all continents, 45,000 sound storage media, 2,800 video tapes and 8,700 books. Some of the videos are recorded from television; others were recorded by the Laade himself. Also, most audio tapes were recorded by Laade during performances and ceremonies in Africa and Asia. Sound is currently being partially digitized and covers of LP records are scanned. The collection is currently being indexed by specialists and will be integrated in the project DISMARC (Discovering Music Archives), “which makes varied audio material and the related metadata of broadcasters, archives, museums, institutions and private collections available online”. The library catalogue system for the universities in Northern Germany (GBV) is involved in the metadata creation and the objects can be found in its catalogues.