SmithsonianGlobalSound

March 4, 2005 12:18 PM

Smithsonian Global SoundSmithsonian Global Sound (SGS) is a project of the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. By preserving and disseminating a broad range of the world's music, SGS assists local traditions by using the power of the Internet for global cultural communication and exchange. SGS joins with institutions around the world to document, record, archive, catalog and digitize music and other verbal arts and distribute them via the World Wide Web. Royalties go to artists and institutions, and honor the intellectual-property rights of composers, musicians, and producers.
posted by srboisvert (2 comments total)

Thanks for this. Hopefully the money will actually get back to the artists.

Michael Brown has written an interesting book called Who Owns Native Culture?, which questions turning native culture into intellectual property. He argues that culture should be free, just as other kinds of information should be free.

As far as sound recordings go, it seems pretty unproblematic that native artists should have the same protections as other artists. But it gets more complicated when you deal with things like religious symbols, stories, and languages, which less clearly conform to existing paradigms of property, and with historical recordings, whose copyright, if any, would have expired already under existing law.
posted by insideout at 5:38 PM on March 4, 2005

Guthrie, Chinese lessons, french-Canadian folk songs, Inuit throat-singing, crap loads more I've never heard of...all indexed by country, instrument and artist....man, I just blew two hours at this site. Thanks srboisvert!
posted by Popular Ethics at 10:36 PM on March 4, 2005