The Music Academy – Tag Digital Archives

The Archives has had with it several music tapes donated by the families of Shri.G.Narasimhan, Shri S.Natarajan Shri P.Obul Reddy and Smt.Padma Narasimhan.

These archives consisting of music tapes constitute a treasure trove.A long time dream project of digitizing Academy’s music recordings has been successfully fulfilled. The Academy has now in its possession its own recordings as well as those of about 10,000 hours donated by well-wishers. Shri.R.T.Chari, our esteemed Vice President, a passionate connoisseur of fine arts and heritage, particularly Carnatic Music has handed over a collection of about 6000 hours of Carnatic Music to the Music Academy’s archives besides setting up The Music Academy – TAG Listening Archives at his cost which has 10 touch screen monitors with ear phones through which connoisseurs can listen to any individual musician or a composition or a concert of their choice at the touch of the screen. This was inaugurated in 2008.

The Music Academy is indeed grateful to Shri R.T.Chari representing TAG Corporation and Ramu Endowments for this wonderful generosity. The Music Academy – TAG Digital Listening Archives has been making steady progress since then. In the coming months, the digitization and storage of many more hours of music is expected to give that extra momentum to membership and usage.

Many well-wishers have come forward to donate copies of their recordings to our digital archives. Notably, we have received about 8 thousand hours and recorded music through the munificent donation of Shri. AL ARC Narayanan. The process of digitization is going on and as of now we have about 10,000 hours of music available on the touch screen monitors, comprising 4,490 concerts featuring 560 artistes.

The Music Academy has also introduced the viewing facility of its Dance Festivals by way of a digital archive with effect from June 28, 2013. This archive now has 332 hours of dance programmes comprising 208 video recordings. There are besides 36 hours of lecture demonstrations also available for viewing.