Fifty years of music collecting at Turnbull

Speakers

Joan McCracken, Keith McEwing

Mihi and acknowledgements

Joan McCracken:
Haere mai e te iwi
Kia piri tāua
Kia kite atu ai
Ngā kupu whakairi e.

Welcome oh people
Let us work together
To search the collections
They are a wealth of knowledge.

And now it's my great pleasure to introduce Keith McEwing. Keith has worked with the National Library's music collections for 32 years. He's currently the Alexander Turnbull Library's Curator, Music, a very warm welcome, Keith.

Introduction

Keith McEwing: Kia ora Joan. Tena koutou katoa. Ko Keith McEwing toku ingoa. Kaitiaki pouro aho. As Joan said, I am the Curator of music in the Archive of New Zealand Music in the Alexander Turnbull Library. Thank you Joan for the introduction and thank you all of you for coming to this presentation. 50 years of music collecting at the Alexander Turnbull Library. We'll be looking at how music is represented in the Turnbull Library, particularly in the Archive of New Zealand Music, which will mark its 50th anniversary next year.

But firstly I'd like to start with some definitions of how I will be using these terms. Music particularly refers to both scores and recordings. So I'll be using that term music in the broadest sense. Art music is another term, sometimes also called classical music or serious music. This is to distinguish it from jazz and popular music genres but also using art music as opposed to classical music distinguishes it from the specific classical music period, which is the late 18th century, and from the neoclassical musical style, which was about in the early 20th century.

Of course, I want to avoid any philosophical debates here about what is art, but for now, we'll call it art music. Another term I'd like to mention before I start is collections. We're using this interchangeably between referring to the collections of the Turnbull and National Library and also collections which donors or vendors have put together and the Library is acquiring.

And one more definition, records. This also can be confusing, but I'll be using it interchangeably between documenting process and practices such as business records or catalogue records and also using it as for sound recordings or video recordings, those kinds of records.

Hopefully, this will be clear from the context. I'd also like to start with the disclaimer, there are no musical examples which may surprise you in this presentation on music. You might say, however, that the definition, a broader definition of music is the music that we make ourselves.

So this being a webinar set up, your microphones and cameras are fixed in the off position, so feel free to make your own music and movements whatever you like while this talk is going through. Failing that, however, I do invite you to visit the National Library YouTube channel at the end of playlists which we will post a link for you soon.

Archive of New Zealand Music

So the Archive of New Zealand Music was formed in 1974. Douglas Lilburn, New Zealand composer, instigated this formation in collaboration with his colleague and musicologist, John Mansfield Thomson, and they enlisted the support of the newly formed Composers Association of New Zealand, usually referred to as CANZ. They approached the newly appointed Chief Librarian at the Turnbull Library, Jim Traue. And so just to take this moment to acknowledge the sad news of Mr Traue's passing last week and acknowledge his work for the Library and particularly in this instance for forming formation of the Archive of New Zealand Music.

Worthy of note as well is the secretary of CANZ when it was formed in 1970, when the Archive was formed in 1974, was Dorothy Freed. She was a musician, composer, and Librarian so she would have been very instrumental, I think, in the formation of the Archive of New Zealand Music as she was very instrumental in forming the New Zealand branch of the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and Documentation Centers.

So the Archive of New Zealand Music, its aim is to build and conserve a comprehensive national collection of historic and contemporary music material. Its scope is New Zealand music, musicians, groups, and musical organizations, so very broad to do with New Zealand music. Its purpose is the Archive should be capable of sustaining advanced research in New Zealand music studies.

Prior to the Archive of New Zealand Music being formed, however, there was music in the collections already. Notable examples are Alexander Turnbull himself acquiring purchasing Boethius' De Musica, which is the oldest, most complete, oldest and complete manuscript in New Zealand. Alexander Turnbull purchased this in 1900.

Lilburn also collected musical settings of texts of John Milton. This includes "L'Allegro il penseroso, ed il Moderato", which was set to music by George Frederic Handel, the morning hymn which is taken from Paradise Lost which was set to music by John Ernest Galliard. As well early printed music editions are continuing to be added to the rare books collection and published music in New Zealand relating to New Zealand composers and performers are also added to the New Zealand and Pacific published collections.

Legal deposit was initially set up and was administered by Parliamentary Library of print and print New Zealand publications and these have been acquired through legal deposit over the century. Now this is taken over by the National Library. Sound recordings were not included in legal deposit, however, until the National Library act was revised in 2003, which was extended to include electronic publications which included compact disks and online publications, and become part of the legal deposit. Prior to this, the Alexander Turnbull Library had started purchasing sound recordings for the collections since the 1960s.

Scores, recordings and books with New Zealand content continue to — published overseas are also purchased for the Alexander Turnbull published collections. There's music in the National Library collections as well and the general music collections. These are international in scope providing for New Zealanders the facility to research, play, perform, listen to, and watch all types of music from around the world. These collections are generally available for interlibrary loan, so ask at your local library if you are interested in borrowing through the scheme.

There are also orchestral sets of scores and parts and multiple copies of choral works that are available for orchestras and choirs through the music hire service. In 1974, Christchurch hosted the Commonwealth Games with the official song sung by Steve Allen 'Join together'. Other events, Labor prime minister, Norman Kirk died while in office, ACC came into being, and the Archive of New Zealand Music was established. Douglas Lilburn was made honorary curator on its formation. Douglas was amongst the first donors for the collection along with CANZ.

They in turn encouraged other New Zealand composers to either deposit or make long-term loan their collections to the archive. Soon realised the shortcomings of not having a dedicated librarian to build and promote the archive, Jill Palmer was appointed to this role in 1980. Lilburn continuing a strong association with the Turnbull Library formed the Lilburn trust in 1984, for which the Alexander Turnbull Library Endowment Trust manages and the Library provides secretarial support.

Because of these beginnings, collections of New Zealand composers of art music have always been a strength of the Archive of New Zealand Music. Since the archive began, collections from composers such as Lyle Criswell, David Farquhar, Jenny McLeod, Edwin Carr, Jack Body, Gillian Whitehead, John Psathas, Helen Fisher, to name just a few have been added to the archive. And the list of New Zealand composers continues to grow. This focus on art music was never intended to be the primary goal of the Archive, however.

So without wanting to diminish the significance of having these collections of significant New Zealand composers, I will now shift to other collecting areas that have been added to the Archive of New Zealand Music, and how the variety of collections has grown in the 50 years that the Archive has existed. And consequently, the broader and fairer representation of music and the role it plays in New Zealand.

Dinah Lee, the Queen of mod

One collection was made by Dinah Lee in 1995. Material representing the Queen of Mod, originally known as Diane Marie Jacobs. Dinah Lee was a New Zealand pop singer debuting in 1964 with the song, Don't You Know Yockomo, she went on to record Reet Petite, I'm Walking and Do The Blue Beat.

She had several number one hits both here in New Zealand and in Australia. Her collection comprises 19 folders of scrapbooks, newspaper clippings, correspondence and ephemera, and also a large collection of 77 photographs and two photo albums. This collection is very useful for providing a background of the music industry in New Zealand and as represented internationally from the late 60s and the 1970s. It is also very useful as you can see from the photos here of fashions of the time and other trends advertising, et cetera.

Dinah Lee's work in Vietnam, entertaining the troops, is also well documented in this collection and shows an important piece of history through this. Here is the catalog record from the Turnbull Library finding aid for unpublished material, also known as Tiaki. You will see that here is the group record, here is the listing of what's in the collection. So this is just the manuscripts component of the collection, 19 folders.

Earlier this year, I had the pleasure of meeting Diana Lee when she came into the Library to remind herself what was in her collection in the Library. She has just released a complete collection of 3 CD set which came out in October this year. She was also fitting in a visit to the Library around touring with Tami Neilson as part of this Rock and Roll Revue, so some of you may have seen her perform very recently. Those of you who heard Nick Bollinger give this year's Lilburn Lecture will be familiar with the importance of immigrants to New Zealand — immigrants to music in New Zealand.

And for those who didn't, a small plug here. It will be broadcast on Radio New Zealand Concert on Sunday 3rd of December at 7:00 PM.

Paul and Diny Schramm

Paul and Diny Schramm are two such migrants who came to New Zealand. Paul Schramm of Jewish descent, born in Vienna, was uneasy with the political climate in Europe, so he emigrated with his Dutch wife to New Zealand in 1937 coming via Indonesia bringing their music with them. Both of them were concert pianists and they toured extensively throughout New Zealand playing together.

Paul Schram was also a composer of note bringing with him influences of New Zealand — European jazz of the 1920s and '30s to New Zealand in his compositions and performances. Here again you will see the catalog record from Tiaki. It's a much bigger collection than Dinah Lee's with 220 folders as well as volumes and the like and a short — catalogue also has scope and contents and other details which I couldn't fit on the screen, but if you do search you will see what there is.

Dennis Huggard Jazz Archive

A very large significant collection of jazz in New Zealand has been the Dennis Huggard Jazz Archive. Comprising of a vast number of recordings, including many CDs which Dennis compiled from original recordings he had collected. The story of jazz in New Zealand is thoroughly documented through this collection. Dennis Huggard may be known to you through his catalog of books that he produced on relating to New Zealand jazz. Several of them making it into their fourth and fifth editions.

Dennis corrected and expanded the booklets as he went in the series as well as adding new booklets, so very significant for music lovers, particularly New Zealand music lovers is the Tanza catalog. Stebbing is also a very significant recording catalog and the National Jazz Festival is also, well, I've used it for at least three that are important to me in my work.

This is representative of Dennis Huggard's collection. As well as recordings, there are nearly 2,000 photographs.

It also contains ephemera, biographical notes of New Zealand musicians, over 80 years of jazz concerts, in a chronological listing, which is what these folders are from here. Subject files and a venue and music industry organisation index. Recordings in the collection are both published and unpublished, as you can see here, both this is a Tanza published disc and a Stebbing private pressing, as it's referred to.

They are all described in Tiaki which has made some problems for discoverability of the published material, people not knowing to look in the unpublished catalog as it's often referred to for published material. To get around this, we have also added the published disks to the National Library catalogue. Here you can see this is a National Library catalogue record and here is the Turnbull heritage copy, which was acquired separately. This is the copy that is in part of the Dennis Huggard Jazz Archive. As it's listed there, and it also has item details saying it's from the Dennis Huggard collection.

Another significant collection of over 1,000 CDs and 500 recordings and other formats is this collection of live recordings from performance venues, The Space, and Happy. These were Wellington venues from 1998 to 2008, mostly for free jazz performances and experimental music. Many collections in the Archive of New Zealand Music have recordings and mostly they are live performances of composers works, et cetera. They are not always done professionally, however.

So to have this collection which was recordings made through a mixer's desk in the venue is give some guarantee of some quality. Now here's the Tiaki record again. I said there were 1,000 CDs. This listing here we may not see it, but in the 10 boxes is where the CDs are. Ideally this catalog would be more specific about the collection so it does need to be updated and will make a note to do it after this talk.

So recordings in both the Dennis Huggard Jazz Archive and the Jeff Henderson collections will be digitised as part of the Utiana project which the Turnbull Library has committed to. The project is preserving audio-visual materials in the National Library, National Archives and the Ngā Taonga Sound and Vision collections.

Preservation and accessibility by digitising A/V collections has always been Turnbull's approach to fulfilling statutory obligations. The next two collections are not included in Utaina project because of agreements already made with the donors by the Library to digitise on receipt of those collections.

Record labels Viking Seven Seas, Ode and Flying Nun

The first collection is the record label Viking Seven Seas. Some of you may recognise the album covers and style as shown here. Once digital copies are supplied by the Library to Viking, they have remastered and made these recordings digitally available and rejuvenating what was originally on LPs, now available digitally. This is one way the Turnbull is able to make material in its collections accessible. Mostly stereo masters of 1/4 inch gauge tape is what the Viking collection comprises of, so the ATL Sound Conservators already had the equipment for playback and digitising these tapes.

Playback of the digital files once made can be made from the Library's digital archive and is possible currently through a stereo MP3 access file able to be listened to at in the Katherine Mansfield reading room. Not so straightforward is the case for other collection's master tapes, which include multi-track tapes which I'll explain soon. These collections are from record labels such as Ode, music producer Ricky Morris, and the Flying Nun Records collection.

Viking along with Ode and Flying Nun record labels have agreed for the Library to use their music via the digitised copies made by the Library on Air New Zealand's in-flight entertainment channel, called In the Vault. These playlists are subsequently made available on the National Library YouTube channel. And so if you're flying overseas in the next while, you make sure you — with Air New Zealand, I should say — make sure you check out the in-flight channel In the Vault.

So here is [inaudible] from the Flying Nun collection. As the name suggests, multi-track tapes consist of multiple tracks on one original recording, which are then mixed down to two tracks to give you a stereo sound. ATL agreeing to digitise Flying Nun collections has meant first acquiring machines to be able to play back these tapes of various tape gauges that enable up to 24 tracks to be recorded as one session. So you can see here that boxes are different sized.

So these would be tapes, 2 inch gauge tapes, this is probably one inch, and so this is 2 inch, these maybe 1/2 inches and these smaller boxes, narrow boxes are the 1/4 inch gauge like the tapes we got from Viking. Digitisation of the Flying Nun collection is nearing completion and Flying Nun have released several remastered recordings from digitised files supplied by the Library.

These include The Chills "Brave Words", "Tallyho", and "Boodle Boodle Boodle" by the Clean, "Hellzapoppin" and the "Venus Trail" by the 3Ds, Headless Chickens album, "Stunt Clown", to name just some of them.

Māori and Pacific artists or composers

Now I have not mentioned music of Māori or Pacific artists or composers but this is still a focus of our collecting. An extensive collection of recordings of traditional Waiata and Moteatea is held by the Archive of Māori and Pacific Sound at the University of Auckland. So we would not want to either compete or duplicate what they have in their collection, but the Turnbull Library still has a strong representation of te ao Māori. Viking records as I mentioned earlier, had a large focus on Māori and the Pacific in its albums released.

Archive of New Zealand Music has collections of Māori artists and composers including Dame Kiri Te Kanawa on the left and Johnny Cooper on the right, and also Dame Gillian Whitehead, to name just three. There are also the large collection of Richard Nunns who was instrumental in the resurgence of Taonga Puoro the Māori musical instruments with his work with musician and composer, Hirini Melbourne, and musical instrument maker, Brian Flintoff — and carver.

Pacific collections are also represented, examples are ethnomusicologist Allan Thomas's work and collection working with Tokelau communities, and along with dance anthropologist and dance historian Jennifer Shannon and photographer Julia Brooke White, ATL holds documentation and video, ephemera and photographs of many of the pan-Pacific arts collections as these photos are taken from.

I now move to the final category of material that we are collecting, which will become more of a focus into the future, and that is collecting digital materials.

Collecting digital materials — Luke Rowell collection and composer John Cousins collection

Luke Rowell is the man behind New Zealand vaporwave groups of Disasteradio and Eyeliner. He has donated some of his collections to the Turnbull Library and making what he has denoted more relevant to the researcher, Luke provided detailed descriptions and slides of his creative process. Here's the Tiaki record. And so the digital images show screenshots of his work and the digital video recordings are him explaining this process. Should also point out that 1,000 digital recordings, is not 1,000 songs, but in this case 1,000 digital files, so there may be several digital files per song just like there are on multitracks for the master tapes that I've shown you previously. Here we have multiple files or stems as they are called in the digital world for compiling into one song which are also then mixed down to stereo files for release.

And for the last collection I'd like to highlight, I'm returning to where I started. So the original strength of the Archive of New Zealand Music was with art music. And I will finish here with a donation of New Zealand composer John Cousins, which is another largely digital collection working primarily on electronic music medium,

John's sonic artworks continue the pioneering work of Douglas Lilburn and the electronic music studios that Lilburn established in the Victoria University of Wellington.

Many of Cousin's works were originally composed for listening to in his specially built Acousmonium which is in his studio employing up to 28 channels of surround sound. To make them more accessible for the Library, John has supplied both the original sound files and stereo research copies for listening.

Described in many layers and series and subseries, the collection is arranged and described to help researchers find their way through the large collection of sound files as you will see here. Similar to Luke Rowell's collection, John has 7,000 digital sound recordings and so these would be digital files per channel often, so it would be not 7,000 works or compositions, but 7,000 files comprising various much smaller number of digital soundworks.

This collaborative approach that we have with working with the donor and working around how to make these collections more accessible for researchers has been a significant change for the Archive of New Zealand Music.

And it is paving the way for future donations with such similar complex digital formats to make them meaningful for future researchers. It seems a very sensible and forward way to deal with these multifaceted works and collections.

So where to from here?

Collections and collecting reflect the way music has been documented and recorded over 50 years. And over the next 50 years and beyond, the Archive of New Zealand Music aims to continue moving with trends and to enable collecting, preserving, and making accessible whatever documentation methods involve for New Zealand music and music making.

In Tiaki, the finding aid for unpublished collections, is one way that you can search the catalogues, the catalogue of unpublished material. If you're interested, you can search on the phrase 'part of the archive of New Zealand music', and capitals are optional, which is a typo on my fault, but capitals are optional. And they will bring up all the collection records that are part of the archive of New Zealand music.

There is also the published catalogue of published materials in the Alexander Turnbull Library and the National Library collections.

Some of the collections I should mention, some of the collections in the unpublished collections are unrestricted and open access so you will be able to open the digital files at home, at your leisure. This is often indicated by a green button on the catalog record. Others however, require further permissions for accessing and some have rights which the library protects through making the collections available only on site in the Wellington reading room. So do check the access and use statements in the finding aid of collections that you were interested in.

If you have any questions which can't be answered through looking at the catalog or the National Library website, there is the Ask a Librarian page this is a link to the online form. And as I mentioned at the start, there is the National Library's YouTube channel, which includes playlists of In the Vault selected initially for the Air New Zealand's in-flight entertainment channel. So I hope you've enjoyed my whirlwind tour of the archive in New Zealand music over 50 years and thank you for listening.

Questions/Patai

Joan McCracken: Ngā mihi Keith, thank you so much. That was fantastic. We do have a little time for questions if anybody's got questions. Could you put them in the chat or in Q&A, I'm not quite sure which one will work best for you. So if you'd like to put them in one of those links, that would be fantastic.

Could you just talk a little bit more about the list here Keith that you've put. They are all records as far as I can see that would be found on Tiaki, is that correct?

Keith McEwing: The collections are referred to in this talk. So take a screenshot or a photo of your page. So these are all unpublished collections, this is the title of the collection and this is the group number or collection number that you find in Tiaki.

Joan McCracken: And from that group number, if you go to that big description of a whole collection, then you can work down the layers of the collection, is that correct so you'd go to a smaller level like a recording, is that the way it works usually?

Keith McEwing: So if you go to the collection, if you go to the bottom of the screen of the collection record, there is a listing of what is called child records or item records and if you click on that link, that will take you to all the items within that collection. Or if it's a particularly large collection, it'll just take you to a series, so that will be a grouping of items which then will take you to the items. Or in the case of John Cousins, it will take you from the collection record to a series, to a subseries, and then sometimes to a subseries of that subseries before you get to the collection record. So do click through all those links.

Joan McCracken: So if that's a wee bit confusing for people and we absolutely understand that it can be. Do ask staff in the reading rooms or we do have the link that Keith mentioned earlier to our Ask a librarian page.

Do you have favourites in the unpublished collection that a wider audience will be excited about when they are published?

We have a question here from Brent Giblin who's asking, if could only open it properly, who's asking do you have favorites in the unpublished collection that a wider audience will be excited about when they are published?

Keith McEwing: Favorites? And lots of favorites. I enjoy looking at the Lilburn works partly because of its significance to the Archive in New Zealand Music and Lilburn's significance to New Zealand music. But equally the Flying Nun works there, it's a great project to be working on.

Joan McCracken: And that's an example of an ongoing project Keith, it's not one that's going to finish tomorrow for instance?

Keith McEwing: That's right, yes. So it's been digitised and then Flying Nun Records have a program of what albums they are planning to release and they will be working through that list and we're providing them the digital files as they ask for them.

Joan McCracken: Thank you. Along with the actual music and recordings that you've been talking about, what if people were interested in looking at the biography of a musician or a group, would we have material to support that as well?

Keith McEwing: Yes we do, for the likes of the Dennis Huggard Jazz Archive, there are biographical files of New Zealand jazz musicians, so that's a great resource for biographies of New Zealand, jazz musicians there and of course, you would have started with published resources which there aren't a lot of biographies of New Zealand composers and musicians, but the list is growing and with the likes of Jenny McLeod's recently published biography by Norman Leon for instance and... Yes.

What's your favourite type of music to listen to?

Joan McCracken: That's really useful. I don't think there's actually any more questions coming through in the chat, so if anybody would like to add one, we have a couple more minutes. This is a most unfair question and didn't ask you this before we started. What's your favourite type of music to listen to, not just what might be in our collections, but do you have favourite music?

Keith McEwing: Well I have fairly eclectic musical tastes, very broad. Jazz would probably be one of the ones. Jazz piano if you would want me to be more specific. And do you want me to go into a genre and sub-genre as well or just leave it at that?

Joan McCracken: And I also know that you dance Keith so I imagine that that's another area of interest for you.

Keith McEwing: Yes.

Joan McCracken: Thank you. We haven't had any more questions coming through, so think I will wind it up there. So thank you again Keith for such a fascinating talk and congratulations to the Archive of New Zealand Music on turning 50, that's a great achievement for all of those who've worked with the collection over those 50 years and it's of course, a lot of people now, not only the curators, but all of those people who are doing the cataloguing and the research staff who make the material available through our reading rooms and online.

And thank you also to my colleagues who supported today's presentation and those of you who've joined us today and throughout the year. If you'd like to hear about future events being held at the library on-site or online, and you're not already on our What's on mailing list, please do sign up. You can subscribe on the Events page on the National Library website. We've added the address to chat a little earlier. Remember that you can save the chat and the links we've added by clicking on the ellipses by the chat button. Let's finish with a whakataukī.

Mā te kimi ka kite
Mā te kite ka mōhio
Mā te mōhio ka mārama

We look forward to the next time you can join us.

Ka kite ano.

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