Our Mission

 

We are collecting and preserving the entire recorded history of Alaskan Music and Spoken Word. Over the decades, thousands and thousands of voice recordings, albums, CDs and cassettes have been created in Alaska. The artists, composers and musicians created an enduring legacy of music that has  spanned all imaginable styles and genres.

As time goes on, these recordings may be lost to time. Master tapes are damaged, tapes and CDs are mislaid or mislabeled, personal collections leave the state. Before the sound heritage of Alaska is lost, we are collecting, digitizing, and permanently archiving everything we can.

Little by little the musical and oral history of Alaska and the music of the people disappears. The mission of the Alaskan Music Archive is to collect and digitize as much of the musical history of our people as possible. Tapes, CDs and reels of music and sound are collected and digitized and the covers are scanned. Titles and musical personnel are cataloged for future research into the rich legacy of Alaska.

Recordings in the archive include the Surreal Studios collection from 1979-2022 of hundreds of commercial recordings, including rare recordings from the Sixties and Seventies. Other collections include thousands of orchestral and choral recordings from the past sixty years, as well as several collections of Alaska Native oral history.

In partnership with Alaska's Digital Archives, some of the music in the archive (with artist permission) will be made permanently available online.

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If you are in Alaska, you can view the UAA link to an example of some historically interesting music HERE.