Brazilian World Music Day (BWMD)

The ARChive of Contemporary Music (ARC) is creating Brazilian World Music Day (Sept. 7, 2012) and the Brazilian Music Collection. ARC is a not-for-profit music archive in partnership with Columbia University.

In 2011 we launched our first “World Music Day” celebrating Islamic music and culture – please see: (www.muslimworldmusicday.com), this online site was accessed by more than 250,000 people worldwide on the initial date and still gets over 2,000 visitors daily. The project was awarded the prestigious “Innovative Use of Archives Award” by the Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York.

Building on this success ARC is developing the first Brazilian World Music Day (BWMD). BWMD will be an online website to present, promote and explore the rich cultural heritage of Brazilian music of the past, present and future. BWMD will offer videos, histories, seminars, concerts, lectures, sound files, sheet music, album cover art galleries, essays, blogs, photos and links all highlighting the importance and beauty of Brazilian music as well as educate a global audience about it’s many genres and facets.

A major component of BWMD will be the database describing ARC’s Brazilian Music Collection and Brazilian recordings held by all archives and libraries around the world. ARC is already the largest collection of Brazilian music outside of Brazil, with more than 5,000 recordings. Our goal is to grow this collection of 78s, LPs and CDs in partnership with a cultural institution in Brazil. Information on all Brazilian recordings in the world will be posted in a freely available online database for reference and research as part of the website.