Muslim World Music Day, April 12 2011. The ARChive of Contemporary Music

Gallery

Cassettes

Up until the mid-1990s most of the world listened to commercially released music on cassette. Innexpensive to manufacture and purchase, inventory free, reproduceable at home, durable, portable, casettes were the first and longest lived medium embraced by start-ups, amatures and emerging artists. I was hooked when I saw rich Hippies in Afghanistan in 1971 grooving to the latest in truely far-out places. I bought them blind from then on, often not being able to read any of the information on the package, vendors happy to play a bit to help you decide. We've sorted them by country/region when we could, from the ARC collection and filmmaker/ethnomusicologist George Murer.