Performers First: Gift Exchange and Digital Access to Live Folk Music Archives

Abstract

Archives commonly hold full, unedited, and unpublished recordings of live musical performances, particularly those archives that focus their collecting on local communities. Much of this content resides on deteriorating magnetic tape with highly restrictive intellectual property constraints that threaten its digital future. This article explores a possible resolution of this dilemma of preservation and access by giving preference to the perspectives and prerogatives of the musical artists represented on live folk music recordings. The article characterizes The Ark in Ann Arbor and the at-risk recordings made at this nationally recognized coffeehouse between 1969 and 1980 in the context of the late-era folk revival scene in the United States and the challenges that copyright restrictions pose for making digitized copies available to contemporary audiences. The authors present and discuss the findings of innovative memory triggering interviews with folk music performers that point toward a way to extend into the realm of digital surrogates a philosophy of the gift exchange cycle. The article argues that archives could embrace asynchronous digital streaming as an extension of the well-established folk process that is so central to the intimacy of the coffeehouse and sidestep if not completely mitigate the barriers imposed by today’s intellectual property framework.