Listening to music from the 20th century pour from a vinyl record player, students explored the music-themed exhibit hosted by the Libraries, Archives and Museums (LAMs) organization on Tuesday.
The workshop encouraged students to recognize the various ways music is used in society and the different kinds of media associated with performing and listening to music. Students also had the opportunity to explore the history of music at Andover.
The event contained resources from the Oliver Wendell Holmes Library (OWHL), the Robert S. Peabody Museum, the W.B. Clift Music Library and the Addison Gallery of American Art. Each institution offered a different perspective on music in our community.
“Music is a theme that actually runs through all of the different institutions [of LAMs],” said Carl Johnson, a Music Librarian in the W.B. Clift Music Library.
The library’s archives, directed by Paige Roberts, Director of the Archives and Special Collections, contain boxes full of music album covers, including a cover created for an album by a 1981 Andover student rock band. The archives also include music concert programs from the 1800s.
Additionally, the archives own copies of “The Andover Song Book,” a collection of cheers and songs Andover students used to shout in support of the football team.
“Someone could easily write a research paper on any one of these topics,” said Roberts as she described the massive collection to a group of students.
The Peabody has a collection of musical instruments discovered underground in Pecos, NM., and even has a guide to creating a bone flute. The Peabody searches for musical artifacts in addition to all the artwork it collects.
“Music is not just used for enjoyment purposes, but also for ceremonial purposes,” said Bonnie Sousa, Senior Collections Manager at the Peabody.
The OWHL also runs a music streaming service on their website that allows students to listen to various genres of music from a variety of decades in addition to their collection of e-books about music and music history.
The Addison hosted an exhibit called “Colorsound,” a project created by an artist to convey the sound of colors by taking any color terms found in scores of music and combining them to create a unique concoction of artistic representation.
The W.B. Clift Music Library hosts a collection of music that most students do not take advantage of. Anybody can go into the library and take out CDs or even borrow a guitar or record player.
“These resources prove you can think outside the box when it comes to music,” said Emily Goss, Circulation Assistant at the OWHL.
The school offers such resources to students at any given time. Not all students know about the resources offered through the LAMs institutions, however.
“I would never have known that there is an entire library of jazz music free for streaming on the OWHL website had it not been brought up in a conversation about music,” said David Kwon ’17.
The LAMs committee hopes that community involvement in the school’s hidden treasures will continue to grow.
“That’s actually what the whole mission of the LAMs is: to get people to come in and actually spend time with the collections and the objects,” said Johnson.
