The ARChive of Contemporary Music (ARC)

A conversation with Co-Founder and Director B. George about the not-for-profit archive and its aim to create a public Center for Popular Music.

Posted on August 28, 2024 in Ask an Archivist

In this Ask an Archivist, Choice chats with B. George, Co-Founder and Director of the ARChive of Contemporary Music (ARC). B. details how the not-for-profit archive grew out of his personal collection of 47,000 music recordings and provides fascinating examples of members of the entertainment industry utilizing the collection. B. also explains ARC’s expanded definitions of “popular” and “contemporary” music, along with the value of preserving multiple versions of a single record. B. closes with an inside look at ARC’s plan to relocate and create a public Center for Popular Music.

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How would you describe the ARChive of Contemporary Music to a stranger?

ARC is an independent, not-for-profit archival collection that strives to preserve every genre and style of popular music, from every culture and nation. It is a somewhat sloppy and impossible task that we’ve been working at for the past 39 years. In that time, we’ve grown larger than any other popular music collection in the world, with more than three million music recordings and an even greater number of music related materials, including books, photographs, press kits, posters, fanzines, memorabilia—anything and everything music related.

ARC began in 1985 with your personal collection of 47,000 sound recordings. How did you obtain the records, and how has ARC grown into what it is today? How does the archive currently acquire music?

I have worked on the fringes of the music industry since coming to New York City in 1974. The Whitney Museum hired myself and Laurie Anderson to teach a high school program and I began working with Laurie on her stage show and music. In 1977, I released the first recording of “Performance Art,” a two-record set titled, “Airwaves.” In 1980, I authored the first major Punk discography titled, “Volume.” In 1981, I released the single, “O’Superman” by Laurie Anderson on my label, One Ten Records. The record rose to number two on the UK Charts. That same year, John Peel at the BBC asked me to do the first of 14 shows with him of music I liked, mostly new American releases. I began doing radio shows throughout Europe and releasing African records and doing dance mixes. Because of these activities, everyone who wanted me to produce something, be on a radio program, have me release a record, or be in my next book were sending me records or tapes. My personal collection grew to 47,000 sound recordings.

Almost everything is donated. There is no acquisitions budget. Donors have purchased the few rare and expensive things we have. To date, there have been 9,643 individual material donors, and more than a third are repeaters. I go to a lot of flea markets and record stores and only buy very odd recordings. We spend a lot of time in people’s basements.

Could you describe ARC’s work with the Internet Archive? Why preserve both digital and physical records?

ARC has worked both closely and casually with the Internet Archive (IA) since 2006 when we began sending second copies of our CDs to be digitized. Since then, we often send whole collections their way, mostly 78 rpm shellac discs. All in all they have digitized a quarter million of our recordings and 3,000 or so books. There are many more items yet to be processed including 80,000 large format music video tapes. We have consulted about necessary fields, language, and procedures, but all processing is their purview.

ARC believes that only analog media and mechanical systems will survive. Our work with the IA is precisely because we may be wrong. It is unlikely that any institution or company will be able to migrate, or afford to migrate, materials to the next readily available, sustainable playback system. That the physical sound carrier is slowly vanishing is the real problem.

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ARC’s about page underscores that the archive was created “because for decades the recording industry had neglected the preservation of it’s [sic] own heritage.” The page further notes that, “In general libraries and sound archives have also been slow or resistant to preserving emerging popular music.” Why do you think this is, and what are the challenges of operating a not-for-profit archive centered on an often undervalued history?

Record companies are commodities, despite doing amazing things—taking risks as often as staying pat. Profitability, changing tastes, acquisitions, mergers, bankruptcies, lawsuits, theft, storage costs, death, natural disasters, and man-made disasters all contribute to things gone missing.  

In 1984, when I wanted to give away my collection, no library or archive was interested. We were heavy on hip-hop, punk, 12″ dance singles, and reggae. Look at how late major institutions came to collecting hip-hop, techno, dubstep—hundreds of emerging forms—and singles. We have more than 300,000 singles and have cataloged more than half of them. Except for Bowling Green, few major institutions collect seven-inch singles, yet for decades the format was the first step in launching a career. 

Institutions take on the character of their administrators and determine focus. Notions that “value” stems from a consensus of current tastes, popularity, or age-old standards can freeze an institution in time. We chose the word “Contemporary” in our name to indicate we were “now.”

Music is global in scale, how does the archive manage that? Does ARC have self-imposed limitations on what it ingests and preserves?

As I’ve mentioned, we use a network of friends, artists, and music industry contacts to know what is happening around the world and do our best to acquire some of this material. The massive crowd-sources and live World Music events we have initiated, with focuses on Cuba, Brazil, India, and the greater Muslim World, have garnered incredible participation and donations. 

As to what we collect; ARC is not nostalgic or interested in quality. We are interested in what happened. We’ve been called the “dumpster of pop” because we collect everything. I think of us as more like Molly Bloom saying “Yes, yes…yes” to everything and more.

ARC has several databases, galleries, and special collections. How do these help organize ARC’s content? Related to that, how does the archive help users search and discover what they need? Are there any prominent examples of how the collection has been employed thus far?

ARC databases are our bins holding the data on the things we own. All are in-house, that we’ve created and only staff populate. Some hold items grouped by genre, some by areas of interest, and some by format. Cataloging the collection is a major activity. We have catalogued a portion of our holdings to date including 127,000 seven-inch singles, 156,000 LPs, 280,000 CDs, and 16,400 music books. Galleries are created when we find a lot of the same thing in our collection that we find fascinating or preposterous, like 368 record covers of people wearing space helmets. Special collection pages highlight large, unique, or important donations. Every recording donated is tagged with the name of the donor.  

Users are primarily the entertainment industry. Anyone can call, email, or write for simple inquiries. Major searches are fee based. Only some of the database info is online, but a very low priority, and not updated since our relocation. Visits, public access, and educational programs are not now available, but are planned once we move to a new permanent home. We have hosted occasional projects and events, like our outdoor Bhangra dance party attended by 50,000 people at the South Street Seaport.

You can see research projects and clients here. Beyond keeping a house from sinking, other projects include going into Little Italy in New York City to sing and identify an old Italian pop song for Martin Scorsese; tracking down rare Beatles 78s in New Delhi, India; traveling under the protection of a cartel in Columbia to visit a vallenato accordion competition in Valledupar; helping Chic reform so they could perform at one of our fundraisers hosted by David Bowie; organizing and shipping more than 40,000 78 shellac discs from Copenhagen, Denmark to be digitized; providing all the multimedia imaging for the opening exhibits at The Nesuhi Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame in New York and the Grammy Museum in California; and loaning Mandy Patinkin a collection of Jewish 78s in preparation for his album, Mamaloshen.

The collection’s theoretical mission statement explains that “…the ARChive collects and preserves everything that’s issued, hoping to define ‘what happened’ in terms broader than those usually described by selectiveness or availability.” In what ways does preserving not only “the greats” help ARC put forth a more inclusive history of music and push back against the industry’s often narrow definition of what constitutes as “popular”?

Notions of popular are just that, often driven more by publicity than quality. With 342 million people in the US, and you sell 30 million of anything over 20 years, you’re reaching a small percentage of the US population, let alone the world. Lata Mangeshkar cut the most recordings in history, her voice is on more than 50,000 songs on decades of film soundtrack. Beloved by generations of Asian Indians, it’s unlikely that anyone will ever be that popular again, or so unknown by most of the world. 

When radio play charts were relevant, the music industry did not count plays from College Radio or from many of the Indie stations. Many artists/groups had the sales and an audience, but the music struggled to enter the Billboard charts or reach an older demographic. Charts were also hyped until the advent of electronic monitoring redefined popularity, at least from a sales point of view.

One of the reasons we save everything is that it’s difficult to judge quality in your own time. It’s even harder to predict future uses. As we say in our Theoretical Mission Statement, our job, the job of all archives, is to make sure things will be there when they’re needed.

In terms of “popular music” as an overarching style or genre or category, ARC collects everything but Western classic era art music. For us, everything else is “popular.”

ARC has contributed to the creation of several music weeks and music days including Muslim World Music Day and Cuba Music Week. How do these events help amplify music from different cultures and further ARC’s reach?

These online and live events offer videos, histories, seminars, concerts, lectures, sound files, sheet music, broadcasts, narrowcasts, album cover art galleries, essays, blogs, photos, and links on massive websites attracting millions of visitors and hundreds of contributors. We also use this focus to build our collections, make connections, and create some of the largest online reference tools on the web, freely available to all. 

What is the value of preserving different versions of the same record? Why is it useful to catalogue music as soon as it’s released?

We believe our archive has a better chance of doing our job, sussing out and gaining a better understand of an emerging form, when we are in touch with the creators. Playing catch-up is time consuming and expensive. Talking with artists is time consuming and fun. Small runs disappear quickly, bands fall apart, record companies fail, recording gets pricey. Artists die. 

ARC contains over three million sound recordings, including records from David Bowie, Jimi Hendrix, and The Rolling Stones. Do you have a favorite record or artifact from the collection, or any that stand of in relation to ARC’s overall mission?

Ha…ha…ha! One favorite record? No. But I have a long list of songs I’ve listened to incessantly, maybe 30 or 40 times in a row, for many days straight over the years. More emotional than rational, always linked to people or personal events. Here’s a few: The Raincoats – “No Side To Fall In” / Kareem Salama – “A Land Called Paradise” / Narciso Yepes – “L’Atalante” / Marvin Gaye – “What’s Going On” / The Avengers – “The American in Me” / Lizzy Mercier Descloux – “Jim On the Move” / Anna Domino – “Land of My Dreams” / Explainer – “Lorraine”  / Gilberto Gil – “2222” / Philip Glass – “Music in 12 Parts” / Las Musas del Vallenato – “Me Dejaste Sin Nada” / Jackie Edwards – “What’s Your Name – Version Girl” / Incredible String Band – “The First Girl”  / Golden Earring – “Radar Love” / Twilight Zonerz – “Twister” / Wire – “1 2 X U” / Scritti Politti – “Lions After Slumber” / all of Brian Eno’s “Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy” and the Beatles’ “Revolver.” Then there’s the greatest song ever recorded (insert another laugh here), the A side of the 1978’s Olumo Records eponymous release by Deli Abioden & His Top Hitters Band.

I understand that ARC is seeking a new home and hopes to eventually create a public Center for Popular Music. Could you speak more about this aim and what opportunities the Center would provide?

The Center will offer film showings, concerts, exhibitions, listening facilities and listening parties, conferences, seminars, lectures, classes, rehearsal and practice facilities, a recording studio, record sales, a public library, and dances. Preservation resources will include a conservation lab and a digitization facility. A book imprint is planned, as are record releases of unavailable material discovered in the collection. The primary academic focus will be on research. The space we seek is zoned for dormitories and housing. We envision resident scholars using the collection as a basis for research and creating new works.

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About the interviewee:

Mr. George is the Co-Founder (1985) and current Director of the ARChive of Contemporary Music (ARC).  He almost graduated from The University of Michigan, lived in India for all of 1970, and came to New York City on a scholarship from the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in the mid 70s.

His record label, One Ten Records, released the first commercial compilation of audio work by visual artists, Airwaves, that included the initial recordings by performance artist Laurie Anderson and unreleased work by Meredith Monk. From 1975 to 1979, he co-directed Ms. Anderson’s stage show and released Laurie’s first single “O’Superman.” In 1980 he authored Volume, the first comprehensive discographical reference work on Punk and New Wave music, a later edition running 600+ pages.

As a consultant, Mr. George selected soundworks for the Paris Biennale (1981, 1983), New Music America (1984), Arts & Events at NYC’s World Financial Center (1985–1989) and produced an occasional survey of new American pop and experimental music for the BBC, UK, as part of “The John Peel Show” (1982–1985). He has written for many music and general interest magazines and was the music editor for Benetton’s Colors magazine.  He has contributed research, fact checking and audio for a variety of films, including Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas, Ken Burn’s Baseball, and Jonathan Demme’s Something Wild, Beloved and The Manchurian Candidate. His interest in World music led him to extensive travel in North and West Africa, touring with bands and producing singles and mixes for Orchestra Jazira (Ghana/UK) and Sonny Okuson (Nigeria). Commercial work included mixes for Dr. John and compiling “MAS! A Caribbean Christmas” for Rykodisc.

His work in 2011 earned the “Innovative Use of Archives Award” by the Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York for the creation of Muslim World Music Day.  For five years he was Curator of Sound Collections for The Internet Archive in San Francisco. Mr. George sat on the Blue Ribbon Awards Committee (books) for ARSC (Association for Recorded Sound Collections) and was a member of the Yahoo Academy, voting on the Internet Life Awards for outstanding websites. He has been a juror for the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise, honoring the contributions of immigrants to the American cultural landscape.

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Learn more about the ARChive of Contemporary Music.

This interview was conducted by Ashley Roy. She is the digital media assistant at Choice.

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