Brian Moser and Donald Tayler Colombia recordings online

A significant collection of field recordings made by anthropologists Brian Moser and Donald Tayler in Colombia in 1960-61 has been added to the British Library’s Archival Sound Recordings website. The expedition’s aim was to record music among a range of indigenous Indian peoples, perceived even then to be disappearing. The expedition ventured to 5 different regions in Colombia:

  • The delta of the Río San Juan in the Pacific coastal region - Noanamá [Woun Meu] people
  • Amazonia, on the Río Piraparaná, close to the frontier with Brazil – Tukano people
  • The northern slopes of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta - Kogi [Cogui], Bintukua people
  • The Guajiro Peninsula near Venezuela border - Guajiro Indians [Wayuu] people
  • The hills bordering Venezuela – Molitón people

The collection features individual and communal song, such as lullabies and mixed choral singing and dancing at burials, as well as instrumental traditions, most notably solo and duet performances on a range of different flutes. Some recordings from the Sierra Nevada area are of music from the mission stations, and some forms of popular music (such as vallenato and conjunto), included partly to show the process of musical change. Recordings are made available completely unedited. The expedition is excellently documented by Brian Moser and Donald Tayler in their book The Cocaine Eaters (1965), which makes for fascinating reading.

[BL shelfmark: HUS 789.298 Open Access]. Submitted by Janet Topp Fargion, Curator, World and Traditional Music, British Library