International Library of African Music

Digital conversion of audio, photographic and film collections in sound and audiovisual archives for purposes of preservation and accessibility has been the norm in archival practice since the 1990s. As a result, analog to digital conversion of many music heritage collections, such as the field recordings of Hugh Tracey at the International Library of African Music (ILAM) in South Africa, has been accomplished. With funding secured from the Mellon Foundation, Rand Merchant Bank Expressions Fund, South African National Heritage Council (NAC) and National Research Foundation (NRF), the recordings, films, photos and documents in the Hugh Tracey Collection (hereafter referred to as the Collection) were catalogued and preserved in digital format from 2006-2008. The audio files and 1,000 images in the Collection have been accessible in compressed form via the Internet since late in 2008. Plus, Tracey’s well-known Sound of Africa  and Music of Africa LP series are available as CD compilati...

In this essay, I focus on how attention to music’s therapeutic efficacy is important to the praxial music education philosophy espoused by Elliott and Silverman. I note, despite the use of the term praxis from Aristotle’s philosophy dating back to antiquity, there is no mention in Music Matters 2 of what historical evidence tells us about how music was valued for its therapeutic efficacy during Aristotle’s lifetime— from antiquity to the early modern era—before the rise of staged performance for an audience of spectators became the norm. Further, I note the scant attention to how music is valued in indigenous cultures. I discuss how pre-modern and—from my research as an ethnomusicologist—how indigenous African conceptions of music and its value found in Shona and Xhosa practices in southern Africa can inform and argue that these conceptions are essential to a praxial philosophy of music education.

A Legacy to UpholdBorn to follow in his father Hugh Tracey’s footsteps, Andrew Tracey has inspired countless people with his knowledge of African music. This he has done through his publications and films and his teaching and performing from the early days of his career in the 1960s through his Directorship of the International Library of African Music (ILAM) from 1978-2005; and this he continues to do in the present. Andrew’s vision for his work has always been in accord with that of his father who, according to J.H. Kwabena Nketia (1998, 51), was a leading scholar of the colonial period who saw African music as an artistic heritage that needed to be ‘shared, preserved, and promoted’ and who worked tirelessly to encourage recognition of the significance of African music in social life. Nketia notes (1998, 53):