April 2014 Archives

By Sue Strachan, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune

The exuberant brass band of students from the Trombone Shorty Academy and Cha Wa, a Mardi Gras Indian, performing with them aren't the usual sights one might see at Tulane University's Wilson Center Atrium, the building that houses the athletic department. Yet, for the April 23 debut of the Music Rising at Tulane website, it provided a both a location and a reminder of why Music Rising was founded.

Music Rising was started by U2's the Edge and music producer Bob Ezrin as an organization that could help restore and preserve New Orleans diverse musical traditions after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. It now also does national disaster relief funding. Music Rising at Tulane is a partnership between Music Rising and Tulane University's School of Liberal Arts, and its mission is to study, preserve and promote the musical cultures -- and its ancillary facets, such as dance -- of the Gulf South region, including the states of Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama and Texas, as well as the Caribbean, Latin America and the African diaspora.

Speakers at the press conference included Michael Bernstein, the school's Provost; Carol Haber, dean of the School of Liberal Arts; Joel Dinerstein, director of New Orleans Center for the Gulf South and of the school's American Studies program; Blake Haney of Canary Collective, the group that designed the site; and Bob Ezrin, who is also the vice chair of the board of Mr. Holland's Opus Foundation, which administers Music Rising.

U2's 1987 disc The Joshua Tree is among 25 new additions to the US Library of Congress's National Recording Registry.

BBC News

The Irish band's fifth studio album spawned such hits as With or Without You and Where the Streets Have No Name.

The original cast recording of Stephen Sondheim's 1979 musical Sweeney Todd and Isaac Hayes' Theme from Shaft have also been added to the archive.

Established in 2000, the registry contains recordings deemed important enough to be preserved for posterity.

Each year, 25 recordings that are at least 10 years old are added to the registry, which now includes 400 deemed to be "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant".

The oldest of this year's additions is The Laughing Song, a track by George Washington Johnson - the first African-American to make commercial records - that dates from around 1896.

The most recent, Jeff Buckley's version of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, was recorded in 1994.

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