Collected Scatterings : a digital anthology in the making

Over the past year I, along with my technologically minded colleagues, created an industry collaboration project entitled Collected Scatterings. The premise is a simple one: to provide good quality recordings and ethnographic films for local musicians and dancers in exchange for free learning opportunities for our ethnomusicology and studio recording students. The musicians and dancers recruited all practice art forms that hail variously from Brazil, Ethiopia and the Gambia/Senegal-region; diasporic art forms found scattered throughout the UK for a variety of reasons. Consequently, despite the simplicity of our initial expectations of lessons, participant-observation and professional recording opportunities, it became evident that ideas of diasporic identities, place and displacement and, what some of the participants call ‘authenticities’ are deeply at play. For, not only are these scattered art forms herein gathered, but highlighted are its repositioned and reimagined stances, for both the practitioners of these arts, and for those responsible for its transmission. Where some hope to convey the ideas of the art form with the same aplomb of that found in the originating country, others constantly change their practices, linguistically, performatively, technically and in its position held within society. This then influences its analyses both theoretically and practically, or as questioned by one of the engineers “What do you want that drum to sound like?” This is then a mixed media presentation based on our experiences and includes short films, audio recordings and photographic images