Gallery
Islamic 45's
There are over 350,000 seven-inch 45 rpm vinyl singles at the ARC, and finding them from other cultures is a special delight - and a real chore. I once purchased a great cache in a tailor's shop in the Medina in Fez, carefully stored under a plank, under bolts of cloth. The owner used them to make cassette copis to sell. So while the condition was not all that great, scarcity had made them defacto 'masters' and therefore expensive. In the 90s I found that I could do better trading Madonna CDs for old vinyl throughout North Africa. Here are a few 45 covers we like from the ARC collection, Chris Bishop and filmmaker/ethnomusicologist George Murer.
