The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #43849   Message #3028886
Posted By: GUEST,Chris B
10-Nov-10 - 08:59 PM
Thread Name: BBC Treasure Hunt
Subject: RE: BBC Treasure Hunt
Seems like there is a lot of rare archival material out there. But it is in scattered and private ownership. And folks like Guido (?)have announced that they have e.g. 13 acetate trans. disks of Folk Song Cellar - and then have disappeared from the forum. So his/her material is now lost forever. With regards to Folkweave I have had email correspondance with someone - a banjo player from Manchester - who claimed that he had 'found' a skip full of junked masters of Folkweave behind the BBC Manchester Studios. Apparently he took all of them them home and eventually digitised them to CD. But then he too 'disappeared' and emails of enquiry went unanswered. I also know of a collection of Folk Song Cellar recordings in NZ. But again these are in a private collection and said owner maybe thinks that the BBC is going to pay big bucks to get them back. No chance. So what's the point of owning all of this stuff if it is still in private hands. It needs putting back into the public domain. I emailed the NWFolk Archive about my own recordings of Folkweave. But no-one replied. So my own tapes will get lost. And my relatives have no interest whatsoever in such material if my clogs are popped anytime soon. I understand that the British Library has a collection of folk programme recordings - but again these are out of reach of most, may be only listened to, but certainly can never be copied or released into the pubic domain aka uploaded to the web. BTW emails to the Treasure Hunt also get ignored. I say again - what's the point?