Funds Will Provide Support for Archiving and Preservation Programs and Research Efforts that Examine the Impact Of Music on Human Development
SANTA MONICA, Calif. (April 11, 2013) — The GRAMMY Foundation® Grant Program announced today that more than $200,000 in grants will be awarded to 14 recipients in the United States to help facilitate a range of research, archiving and preservation projects on a variety of subjects. Research projects include a study that will investigate a potential core deficit in rhythm processing in developmental stuttering, combining behavioral and neuroimaging studies in children with studies in songbirds. Preservation and archiving initiatives include a project that will preserve and provide access to a unique organ recording collection of master organ player rolls and noteworthy arrangements produced in the 1920s; and an effort to preserve and digitize the audiovisual collections of imperiled media of the Andrews Sisters, Bing Crosby, Benny Goodman, and Bob Hope, among others. A complete list of grant awards and projects is below. The deadline each year for submitting letters of inquiry is Oct. 1. Guidelines and the letter of inquiry form for the 2014 cycle will be available beginning May 1 at www.grammyfoundation.org/grants.
“Since its inception, our GRAMMY Foundation Grant Program has awarded more than $6 million dollars to more than 300 noteworthy projects,” said Neil Portnow, President/CEO of The Recording Academy® and the GRAMMY Foundation. “This year we have another remarkable slate of selected grantees. Funds will be used for activities as varied as the preservation of unique live radio broadcasts from the ’30s and ’40s and the digitization of more than 90,000 Mexican-American recordings on 78s, 45s and cassettes to studies and programs that investigate the effects of music on children and their development — including one that will assess the biological effects of musical training on child brain development in collaboration with a nonprofit organization that provides free musical training to children in the gang reduction zones of Los Angeles. The GRAMMY Foundation Grant Program is truly at the forefront of philanthropy across the areas of archiving, preservation and scientific research.”
Generously funded by The Recording Academy, the Grant Program provides funding annually to organizations and individuals to support efforts that advance the archiving and preservation of the recorded sound heritage of the Americas for future generations, as well as research projects related to the impact of music on the human condition. In 2008 the Grant Program expanded its categories to include assistance grants for individuals and small- to mid-sized organizations to assist collections held by individuals and organizations that may not have access to the expertise needed to create a preservation plan. The assistance planning process, which may include inventorying and stabilizing a collection, articulates the steps to be taken to ultimately archive recorded sound materials for future generations.
Preservation Implementation
New York Philharmonic — New York
Awarded: $20,000
The New York Philharmonic Archives will digitize and preserve 52 hours of brittle lacquer discs documenting 36 unique live radio broadcasts from the 1930s and 1940s. The total cache of 245 radio broadcast recordings made between 1932–1962 comprise a total of approximately 350 hours of audio in various formats to be made available to the public at the philharmonic’s reading room and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. www.nyphil.org
New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation — New Orleans
Awarded: $3,095
The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation Archive will digitally preserve and make access copies of the 10 reel-to-reel master 2-inch tapes of the “Professor Longhair Fire Relief Benefit”, held April 22, 1974, to benefit Professor Longhair (Henry Roeland Byrd, 1918–1980). This work will result in the creation of preservation and access digital files, and the public will be welcomed to listen to the recordings in the archive. The original master tapes will be permanently stored in Iron Mountain’s special audiovisual vault. www.jazzandheritage.org
Center for Popular Music at Middle Tennessee State University — Murfreesboro, Tenn.
Awarded: $19,993
There are nearly 4,000 tapes in the Charles K. Wolfe Audio Collection at the Center for Popular Music, many of which are oral histories of musicians or field recordings. Dating from the 1930s–2000, this is likely the premier collection in the American Mid-South region. The center will inventory the contents, conserve the recordings, transcribe to digital format when appropriate, and make the collection publicly accessible. www.popmusic.mtsu.edu
American Organ Institute Archive and Library at the University of Oklahoma School of Music — Norman, Okla.
Awarded: $20,000
American Organ Institute Archive and Library will preserve and provide access to an incredibly unique organ recording collection. The collection’s emphasis is on the original and irreplaceable master organ player rolls produced by Moller Pipe Organ Co. in the 1920s (16 tons total), as well as recordings of organ arrangements by notable performers on organs lost to time. Many of the collection’s most treasured items are made of paper and are deteriorating rapidly. These will now be restored and shared with the public. www.ou.edu/aoi
The Arhoolie Foundation — El Cerrito, Calif.
Awarded: $20,000
Since 2005, the Arhoolie Foundation has digitized more than 90,000 Mexican-American recordings on 78s, 45s and cassettes from their Strachwitz Frontera Collection. The collection has been made accessible through a partnership with the UCLA Digital Library Program. Arhoolie will complete their final stage to digitize the rare LPs and unissued reel-to-reel master tapes. The Strachwitz Frontera Collection is a one-of-a-kind, unique cultural treasure that needs preservation and accessibility. www.arhoolie.org http://frontera.library.ucla.edu/
ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the University of Southern California Libraries — Los Angeles
Awarded: $10,000
This implementation project will preserve, digitize, and provide public online access to one-of-a-kind, fragile, and historically significant audio recordings in the ONE Archives, the world’s largest LGBT historical collection. This project will make available 177 hours of recorded lectures, interviews, and oral histories that preserve the voices of the pioneering activists, scholars, and artists who launched the LGBT struggle for equality over the past six decades. www.onearchives.org
Preservation Implementation, cont’d. Pacifica Foundation — North Hollywood, Calif.
Awarded: $10,000
Pacifica Radio Archives will digitize, catalog, preserve, and promote 72 hours (93 tapes) of fragile reel-to-reel analog audio tapes holding unique broadcasts from Pacifica Radio’s listener sponsored noncommercial radio station, New York City’s WBAI-FM. Two significant series are to be preserved: The Free Music Store featuring Phil Ochs, Arthur Miller and Bill Vanaver and the Mind’s Eye Theatre, which produced radio plays created by premier artists and technicians. www.pacificaradioarchives.org
Preservation Assistance Michael Feinstein Great American Songbook Initiative — Carmel, Ind.
Awarded: $5,000
The Feinstein Initiative will determine necessary storage, rehousing, remediation, conservation, preservation, and digitization of audiovisual collections that include but are not limited to 16″ transcription discs, lacquer discs, cassette tape, CD, analog reel-to-reel, 16mm film, and slides that document the music of songbook legends such as Rudy Vallée, Meredith Willson and the Andrews Sisters. The preservation assessment will allow the initiative to find funding for preservation so that these items can be made accessible to researchers and the public. www.feinsteininitiative.org
Freedom Archives — San Francisco
Awarded: $5,000
Art Sato, a leading authority on contemporary jazz and new music, has hosted “In Your Ear,” a two-hour weekly radio series on KPFA-FM from 1981 to the present. The Freedom Archives will prepare for the digital preservation of more than 80 in-depth, unique, extended, and exclusive interviews over the last 30 years. The collection contains great artists and innovative practitioners of jazz and Latin music, including many who are now deceased. www.freedomarchives.org
Scientific Research Northwestern University — Chicago
Awarded: $19,895
This study will assess the biological effects of musical training on child brain development in collaboration with the Harmony Project, a nonprofit organization providing free musical training to children in the gang reduction zones of Los Angeles. Specifically, the study will examine the effects of musical training on the neural processing of speech as well as on the development of critical language and learning skills. www.brainvolts.northwestern.edu
John Devin McAuley — East Lansing, Mich.
Awarded: $19,500
Stuttering affects 3 million Americans. Children with chronic stuttering face lifelong struggles that can impact academic achievement and lead to negative psychosocial consequences. The project goal is to investigate a potential core deficit in rhythm processing in developmental stuttering, combining behavioral and neuroimaging studies in children with studies in songbirds, which under controlled conditions can be induced to stutter. psychology.msu.edu/TAPlab/index.htm
Scientific Research, cont’d Regents of the University of California, University of California, San Diego — La Jolla, Calif.
Awarded: $19,860
The SIMPHONY project is a unique collaboration designed to understand how music training affects children’s brains and the development of general cognitive skills like language and attention. It is the first study of its kind and will track 60 children annually starting at ages 5–10 as they engage in ensemble music training (versus nonmusic controls) using an extensive battery of neural and behavioral testing. www.chd.ucsd.edu/research/simphony-study.html
University of Washington — Seattle
Awarded: $10,000
Research shows that musical experience can enhance and promote healthy child development. Synchronization between players is a key aspect of playing music together. Synchrony can also strengthen bonds and affiliation between individuals. The dual aims of the proposed project are to: (a) determine whether children prefer synchronous as opposed to asynchronous rhythms and (b) examine whether children’s preference for synchrony is enhanced for musical interactions involving pitch, harmony and melody. We expect a musical context to increase the difference between synchronized and asynchronous interactions, illustrating music’s role as a vehicle for positive interpersonal interaction. ilabs.washington.edu
Pitzer College — Claremont, Calif.
Awarded: $19,900
To what extent do music and language share neural resources? We propose to evaluate music perception and cognition in a group of 40 aphasic individuals whose language deficits and brain lesions are well characterized. Using voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping, we will identify the areas of the brain that are most essential to the perception of melody, harmony, and rhythm, and compare these with similar VLSM analyses of language in the same participants. www.pitzer.edu/academics/faculty/justus/index.asp
The GRAMMY Foundation was established in 1989 to cultivate the understanding, appreciation and advancement of the contribution of recorded music to American culture. The Foundation accomplishes this mission through programs and activities that engage the music industry and cultural community as well as the general public. The Foundation works in partnership year-round with its founder, The Recording Academy®, to bring national attention to important issues such as the value and impact of music and arts education and the urgency of preserving our rich cultural heritage. In recognition of the significant role of teachers in shaping their students’ musical experiences, the GRAMMY Foundation and The Recording Academy are partnering to present our first Music Educator Award. Open to current U.S. music teachers in kindergarten through college, the Music Educator Award will be given out during GRAMMY Week 2014. The nomination process is online at grammymusicteacher.com and the deadline for submissions is April 15. For more information about the Foundation, please visit www.grammyfoundation.org. For breaking news and exclusive content, please like “GRAMMY in the Schools®” on Facebook at www.facebook.com/grammyintheschools, follow the GRAMMY Foundation on Twitter @GRAMMYFdn at www.twitter.com/GRAMMYFdn and join us on Instagram @GRAMMYFdn at www.instagram.com/GRAMMYfdn.