Voices Across Generations:
A Native Alaska Preservation Project
Voices Across Generations: A Native Alaska Audio Preservation Project is a preservation initiative of the Alaska Music Archives focused on protecting Alaska Native voices, stories, and recorded histories through community partnership and culturally respectful archival practices. The project is supported through a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), part of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), helping preserve recordings before aging formats and media deterioration place them at risk.
Working alongside communities, elders, organizations, schools, and families, Voices Across Generations supports preservation that respects community authority and cultural knowledge. This funding ensures that Alaska Native elders’ voices, stories and songs are preserved with care, accuracy, and respect—by their own communities and for future generations. It allows us to document living knowledge that would otherwise be lost while honoring cultural protocols and responsible public access.
Through digitization, historical data creation, and long-term archival stewardship, the Alaska Music Archives and Voices Across Generations seek to strengthen preservation and appropriate access to Alaska Native recorded heritage across the state. The project preserves not only recordings themselves, but also the contextual information that gives them meaning for future generations.
for more information about how we can help you
preserve your own audio and video recordings.
1958 painting by Robert Mayokok - Alaska Music Archives collection
The Alaska Music Archives - who we are.
The Alaska Music Archive is a growing, living collection of recordings by Alaskans, both historical and contemporary. We collect music and language recordings of all types, in all formats, from the last century to the present.
The Archive actively seeks material including single recordings and large collections. If you have any rare Alaskan music, recorded communication, or Native Alaskan language tapes or records, contact us.
Founder and Curator Kurt Riemann speaks to the Cook Inlet Historical Society about the Archives
What we collect and archive.
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Alaska Native language recordings
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Symphonic recordings
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Alaskan bands
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Recorded letters and communication
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Alaskana of all sorts
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Spoken word recordings
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Alaska Native language recordings
We preserve anything that represents the musical history of Alaska and all audio representations of Alaska’s unique history and people. If it made a sound, sang a song, or told a story, we want to know about it.
See the list of recordings already in the archive here.
Why we collect it.
The Alaskan Music Archive is a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving and promoting the rich history of independent Alaskan music. For over 70 years, we have been capturing, recording, and releasing the music and stories of our state's musicians. Our collection includes nearly 10,000 recordings, many of which are one-of-a-kind tapes and small-scale productions.
However, these precious recordings are at risk of loss, damage, and degradation. That's why we are committed to digitizing and preserving these sounds so that they can be enjoyed, studied, and heard for generations to come. We also strive to promote and cultivate the 20 distinct Native languages of Alaska. By creating a rich, diverse resource library, we aim to provide access to these precious recordings for everyone.
We value Alaska’s history in sound as a living, ongoing story, and as such we are always creating new material with the vital participants in Alaska’s music and language communities of today. We also provide robust cataloging effort for other data such as venues, reviews, titles, and personnel, making the Archive a solution to the widely scattered resources that have made up the historical records of the musical arts in Alaska.
If you're interested in supporting our mission, we welcome underwriters and sponsors to join us in our efforts. Browse our website and feel free to contact us about our collection. Together, we can ensure that the sounds of Alaska are heard for years to come.
The Alaska Music Archives proudly acknowledges the generous support of the National Archives, Atwood and Rasmuson Foundations.
NEW!
The Alaska Band WIKI
The Alaska Band WIKI is a currently open database of hundreds of Alaskan artists who have created music in the state since the Sixties. It's an editable document, so get in there and add information so that we all can share in the great history of independent Alaskan music!
Contact us!
Alaska Music Archives
445 East 5th Ave
Anchorage AK 99501
Tel: 907-632-0515
