Hopi oral traditions to get digital voice

FLAGSTAFF—Thanks to major grants and gifts, unstable audio recordings of Hopi oral traditions will soon be converted to digital formats. Approximately 200 plus reel-to-reel tapes and audiocassettes, recorded between 1950-1980, will be converted.

The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, the Arizona Humanities Council, and the Target Corporation recently gave grants and gifts totaling $22,000 to the Museum of Northern Arizona (MNA) to fund the archival project. The $14,000 Delmas Foundation grant, the $5,000 Target Corporation gift, and the $3,000 Arizona Humanities grant will fund the conversion. Hopi scholars will transcribe and interpret them for the MNA archives, the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office, researchers and scholars, as well as for MNA public programs and exhibits.

Because the conversion will preserve Hopi migration, origin, and cultural affiliation stories in oral form, it will be an invaluable resource for Hopi speakers said project manager Dottie Howell. “When languages get translated in text form, often meaning and nuances are lost,” Howell explained. “But to hear the voices, sounds, inflections, dialect, and historic bits of daily conversation provides a much richer understanding of culture than reading a translation.”

The audio conversion will contribute to a related MNA project called the Southwest Mural Project, planned as a national traveling exhibit for 2004, that includes Hopi murals. MNA Senior Vice President of Research, Curatorial, Fine Arts/Ethnology Edwin L. Wade sees a potential for a relationship between the Hopi chants or songs that will be revealed upon the digital conversion to the visual structure of Hopi murals. The question and answer nature of Hopi songs, which were sung during ceremonies when murals were painted, are echoed in motif bands that appear above and below the murals representing the spirit and physical worlds.

Greg Crosman, who owns Clear Aire Audio in Flagstaff, will begin the conversion from the reel-to-reel tapes and audiocassettes to digital formats this month. The results may prove to be some of America’s most valuable audio collections and will provide the Hopi Tribe an opportunity to use this information for their educational, cultural, and historical benefit for generations. Some recordings will be made available to the public through a virtual listening station in the Museum.

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