Tradition is a Temple: Upcoming music documentary

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Documentary filmmakers call for pledges to “crowd-fund” post-production on this musician owned documentary on New Orleans music culture.

Tradition is a Temple highlights the dynamic resilience of New Orleans musicians, acclimated to hard times and dedicated to their city, the way of life, and the music. The artists discuss how, as children, they were inspired to pursue music, the trials of jazz today, and how the traditional sounds of the streets will survive.

The non-fiction film aims to show that Katrina, the economic downturn, and the BP Oil Spill can’t quiet this small, buoyant, and totally unique American sub-culture. After all, children still dance along with brass bands on Sunday afternoon Second Line parades as they have for generations.

Filming began in 2006, when director Darren Hoffman was a film-school-graduate-turned-music-student attempting to capture the nuts and bolts of New Orleans music by video taping his drum lessons with prominent local musicians. After several years and hundreds of DV tapes, Hoffman’s video project had slowly grown to include intimate interviews with his teachers, multi-camera studio recordings, and live concert footage. That wasn’t all, Hoffman’s passion for the music had evolved into a commitment to his teachers; he gave all of the featured musicians a majority share in the film.

“I don’t know if any of the artists actually believe that there will be any profits coming back to them.” Darren admitted, “Unfortunately, a lot of guys are used to getting the short end of the stick when they sign contracts” Either that or they don’t think anyone wants to watch a movie about jazz.”

The filmmakers are raising money in order to complete the costly post-production process through online “crowd funding”. On sites like Kickstarter.com and IndieGoGo.com artists, filmmakers, musicians and designers can raise significant amounts of money from hundreds of donors, each pledging small amounts of money. Tradition is a Temple offers pre-orders for the DVD and Soundtrack as just a few of the many rewards in exchange for pledging toward their campaign, which continues until Feb 3rd.

“With a little luck” Hoffman added, “We’ll be able to prove to [the artists in the film] that we’re legit, and to the world that jazz music still has some kind of resonance in American culture.”

http://traditionisatemple.com/

Featuring: Shannon Powell, Jason Marsalis, Lucien Barbarin, Roland Guerin, Steve Masakowski, Ed Petersen, Topsy Chapman, The Treme Brass Band, The Baby Boyz Brass Band, and spoken word performer Chuck Perkins.
Writer/Director: Darren Hoffman
Producers: Darren Hoffman, Patrick Stafford, and Kristen McEntyre.
Executive Producer: Darren Hoffman
Director of Photography: James Laxton
Sound: Steve Reynolds and Kevin Schneider
Editor: Darren Hoffman

Frances G. Spencer Collection of American Popular Sheet Music & Black Gospel Music Restoration Project: A Comparison

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Amanda Harlan presented at the Music Library Association Annual Meeting, Wednesday, March 24th. She did a comparison of the metadata workflow between two major digital music collections at Baylor University: the Frances G. Spencer Collection of American Popular Sheet Music and the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project. She wanted to show the similarities and differences that an audio collection has with a sheet music collection. The presentation covers four main points: 1. What type of staff does the metadata creation work and how are they trained; 2. What legacy metadata is re-used and enhanced in the project; 3. What technologies and systems are used for the metadata creation and quality control processes; and 4. What metadata formats are involved and how the selection was made? — amh

Link to Presentation: http://tinyurl.com/y27tdo3

I think we all have our ministries, but gospel music is such a compelling ministry, because souls don’t come in cultures Lea Gilmore

Update on Copyright and the Collection

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As a result of the preservation work of the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project, these recordings are presented here free for personal, non-commercial use as a contribution to education and scholarship. Baylor University does not own the rights in this collection and therefore cannot grant or deny permission to distribute material in this collection. It is the user’s obligation to determine and satisfy copyright or other use restrictions when publishing or otherwise distributing music from the BGMRP.

If you have any more information about the music available from the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project, or if you are the copyright owner and believe this collection has not properly attributed your work to you or has used it without permission, we want to hear from you. Please use the BGMRP Interest/Comment form to get in contact with the project staff, including your contact information and a link to the relevant content.