The Harry Arends Sound Archive (HASA) brings American popular music to audiences young and older, through lectures, online interactive broadcasts and other events, drawing from Harry Arends’ collection of 150,000 original records from the late 1800s through the late 1950s.
Harry Arends’ extensive collection of over 150,000 original American popular and spoken word recordings on cylinders and disc records, as well as promotional and test recordings, are the foundation for our outreach. Spanning the late 1800s to the 1950s, along with recording-related artifacts and ephemera, the archive creates entertaining educational musical experiences for everyone be they a professional musician or a first grader. These recordings are a window into our past, allowing for contemporary context, while touching our minds, hearts and memories.
WEBCAST RECORD PARTIES allow online participants to request to hear items from the Archive in real time and engage in chat about the history. All previous shows are archived on YouTube.
SPEAKER/LECTURE SERIES explores our Popular Music heritage and how music reflects our culture and vice versa. While some of this is nostalgia for our older audience, to younger generations it is new experiences and revelations exposing them to everything from Ragtime to Be-Bop, Vaudeville to Radio. These family-friendly programs also illuminate the careers of the people who created the music and an understanding how the music “business” worked.
FRIDAYSONGS
For over 18 years Harry Arends has been sending out a song from this archive every week to an ever-growing email family. The Archive strives to ensure that this joyous jump start to our weekends will be continued and shared with a much larger circle for generations to come.
LIVE PERFORMANCE
HASA will sponsor live performances specifically produced for a young audience, and where students can attend free events that expose them to our musical heritage.
RESOURCE FOR RESEARCH
HASA is accessible for research and collaborations for students, scholars, journalists, artists, contemporary musicians and others, including film and television production. Included in that is insuring and expanding accessibility, including online, of our holdings.
PARTNERSHIPS
HASA partners with other artists, sponsors and corporate and non-profit organizations in bringing this music more frequently into public eyes and ears. This includes institutions and libraries where our collaboration compliments their scholastic, accessibility, entertainment and preservation goals.
ARCHIVE PRESERVATION, MAINTANENCE & GROWTH
The growth, preservation, housing, digitization and cataloging of this vast and expansive collection is of utmost importance.
HISTORY OF THE ARCHIVE
What began as a fascination with spring-wind, open-horn phonographs for Harry Arends, evolved into a passion for collecting the artifacts that are played on them. The collection has grown into these Archives and are a precious and valuable educational asset. HASA is one of the largest collections outside of a library or institution, defined by its accessibility.
MOVING FORWARD
HASA long term plans include the acquisition of Harry Arends’ library collection of recordings and ephemera, and to continue to build on that collection, focusing particularly on materials that are at risk or on the periphery of traditional archival interests. The museum’s preservation efforts complement the work by our sister institutions and ensure that this legacy will be not only protected for future generations, but exposed and shared in entertaining ways.
HASA welcomes your support and involvement in shaping the archive’s future and ensuring its continued success.
Harry Arends Sound Archives 