The Leo and Mary Sarkisian Collection consists of recordings of the Music Time in Africa radio program (1966-2021), the contents of the Leo Sarkisian VOA Music Library, and related contextual documents and artifacts, including the personal papers of its creator Leo Sarkisian and his wife Mary Sarkisian. The bulk of the collection is source material for the production and broadcast of Music Time in Africa, including copies of the radio broadcasts and scripts, recordings of African music compiled for use in the show, and original field recordings made by Leo Sarkisian between approximately 1959 and 1975. Other recordings include commercially produced content in LP, 45 rpm and cassette tape formats. The collection documents the public diplomacy exercised by the United States through Voice of America programming in Africa and the wide variety of musical styles of newly independent African nations.
The Leo and Mary Sarkisian collection (220 linear feet) consists of recordings of the Voice of America's Music Time in Africa radio program (1965–2021), the contents of the Leo Sarkisian VOA Music Library, and related contextual documents, personal papers, artifacts, and musical instruments. The University of Michigan Library established the Leo and Mary Sarkisian Collection in 2018 by consolidating previous gifts and donations from the Sarkisians, long-term loans of archival materials from the Voice of America, and digital reproductions created by the University of Michigan. In 2004, Leo Sarkisian formally donated musical instruments from his personal collection to the Stearns Collection of Musical Instruments. He followed up in 2012 and 2015 with donations of personal papers and artifacts collected during travels in Africa, documented by a signed deed of gift. In 2008, the University of Michigan negotiated a Memo of Understanding with the Voice of America to digitize and make available for teaching and research 360 rare and unique audio recordings made by Leo Sarkisian in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2015, the Voice of America transferred the entire contents of the Leo Sarkisian Music Library to the University of Michigan for purposes of research and teaching. An extended Memo of Understanding between UM and VOA governs the archival processing of the loaned materials as well as permissions to digitize materials and make them available for teaching and research.
The bulk of the collection is source material for the production and broadcast of Music Time in Africa, including copies of the radio broadcasts and scripts, recordings of African music compiled for use in the show. Because Sarkisian had no mandate from VOA to create and retain an archival copy of every broadcast show, the completeness of the surviving MTIA radio shows varies. The most complete representation includes the audio recording of the full broadcast and the full script. Some instances of the show include only the musical inserts (without the host's voice) and the script. A number of complete show audio recordings lack associated scripts. Some individual scripts are not matched with surviving radio show recordings.
Among the VOA Music Library materials are recordings from Sarkisian's prior work with Tempo records, where he trained as a recording engineer. This small group of materials dates back as early as 1949, when Sarkisian began traveling in Asia (Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh) making field recordings for the Hollywood-based label. In 1958, Irving "Colonel" Fogel, the president of Tempo sent Sarkisian to Ghana, where he made over 100 recordings and donated the tapes to Radio Ghana. He and Mary established a Tempo office in Conakry, Guinea. There in 1962, Leo met Edward R. Murrow, who was then head of the United States Information Agency. Murrow invited Sarkisian to join the Voice of America (VOA) as Music Director of VOA's Africa Program Center in Monrovia, Liberia.
Leo and Mary traveled extensively to make field recordings and launch a new radio show focused on traditional African music. Leo recounted that the Music Time in Africa radio show first broadcast in May1965; the earliest recorded broadcast of MTIA in the collection is from May 22, 1966. The geographical coverage of the collection includes 46 African countries, the US, and other locations where Sarkisian worked. The African countries represented in the collection are: Algeria, Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, Democratic, Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, The Gambia, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, United States, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
The collection contains evidence of Sarkisian's work through VOA's Program Center in Monrovia, Liberia, to train recording technicians and program directors at radio stations in several African countries. Notable among these were Radio Tanzania, Radio Comores, Radiodiffusion Nationale Tchadienne (Chad), Radio Dahomey, Radio Rurale (Burkina Faso), Radio Burundi, and Radio Douala (Cameroon). The VOA Music Library Tape Recordings series includes tapes sent to the VOA from these stations.
The collection documents the production of Music Time in Africa as a pre-recorded analog program. Leo Sarkisian worked primarily with quarter-inch open reel magnetic audio tape. He assembled the musical selections for each Music Time in Africa program, and composed and typed the scripts for the host to read, almost verbatim. A recording engineer interspersed the musical selections on cue and simultaneously created a full recording of the 30-minute show. The show typically followed a format that book-ended field recordings of traditional music with several commercially recorded popular songs. Traditional musical content was drawn from Leo's field recordings and other sources.
The show's theme music was composed and performed by Geraldo Pino and the Heartbeats of Sierra Leone from an original recording that Leo made of the band. The shows are remarkable for the breadth of genres represented in the programming selections and the geographical coverage of the collection. Sarkisian collaborated with composers and scholars including J.H. Kwabena Nkeita, Duro Ladipo, Bai T. Moore, and representatives of the radio stations where he trained engineers and program directors. The Voice of America broadcast Sarkisian's pre-recorded shows on Sundays at 18:30 GMT across the African continent, via shortwave radio relays. Originally the VOA was broadcast only outside the United States. Legislation signed in 2013 made the broadcasts accessible to US audiences. Today the MTIA show is one hour long and encompasses a variety of social media content including blogs and videos of interviews with guest artists.
Four hosts gave voice to Music Time in Africa during the four decades that Leo Sarkisian produced the show. Bryn Poole, the spouse of a VOA station officer in Monrovia, Liberia, hosted the program between 1965 and 1967. Miatta Fahnbulleh, a Liberian musician, served as interim host in 1968 while the VOA broadcast facilities in Monrovia relocated permanently to Washington, DC. In 1968 VOA staff broadcaster Susan Moran assumed hosting responsibilities in Washington, DC and served continuously in this role until April 1978. Leo Sarkisian recruited experienced radio announcer Rita Rochelle in 1978 to be the host and public face of Music Time in Africa, a role she filled until April 2004. Occasionally, Leo Sarkisian, dubbed the Music Man in Africa, joined the formal host in the studio to narrate the context of particular musical selections or to regale the audience with stories of his recording trips to the African continent.
In addition to announcing the songs, the scripts provide contextual information. The hosts often explain the song lyrics and describe the places, peoples, and styles (e.g. dance, lullaby, or ceremonial), or musical instruments. The scripts also include announcements of birthdays, requests, and other responses to fan mail, especially during the height of the broadcast years coinciding with Rita Rochelle's tenure as host. The MTIA shows include occasional interviews with guest performers. Under the general direction of Leo Sarkisian, ethnomusicologist Matthew Lavoie assumed responsibility in April 2004 for producing and hosting Music Time in Africa. Recast as an hour-long program broadcast from Washington, DC to the African continent via shortwave and FM signals, Lavoie's MTIA also utilized digital recording technologies to assemble the audio portions of the program from the extensive analog resources in the Leo Sarkisian Music Library at VOA.
To supplement his hosting responsibilities, Lavoie wrote a blog, "African Music Treasures," for the VOA website. The 52 currently existing blog posts compare and contrast music from across the African continent, provide biographical background on musicians, describe musical genres and instruments, and highlight aspects of Leo Sarkisian's original field recordings. The blog posts also engage other contemporaneous bloggers from Europe and the US (e.g., Likembe, Awesome Tapes from Africa, Benn Loxo du Taccu, Worldservice) in a growing discussion on the topic of African musical recordings. The blogs represent Lavoie's areas of special interest. Matthew Lavoie's blog posts remain available through the VOA website and are preserved as fixed PDF files as part of this series. The Internet Archive preserves a small selection of Matthew Lavoie MTIA shows that were uploaded by an anonymous third-party user not affiliated with VOA.
In 2012, Heather Maxwell, an ethnomusicologist with a Ph.D. from Indiana University specializing in African music, took over producing and hosting the Music Time in Africa radio show. She continues to the present day. She has maintained the MTIA-VOA blog and expanded the format of the show to include video interviews (available on YouTube). Maxwell's shows (audio or audio/video only) since 2014 to the present and her blog posts are accessible through the VOA website.
Archival processing established thirteen archival series groupings on what was a richly organic working music library of audio recordings, program documentation, and personal artifacts. The organization of the collection reflects the processes that went into producing the Music Time in Africa radio show, the administrative functions and history of Leo Sarkisian's career, and the structure of the reference library that he built and maintained at the Voice of America's headquarters in Washington, DC.
The majority of the collection consists of audio recordings in analog and digital formats. Audio recordings include complete and incomplete copies of extant Music Time in Africa broadcasts, along with the audio source materials that Leo Sarkisian used to construct the radio broadcasts. The extant MTIA radio shows are compound objects of audio recordings and typed scripts, often existing in multiple copies and multiple versions. Source media range from a preponderance of open-reel quarter-inch magnetic tapes (acetate or polyester base) to LP and 45 rpm records, cassette tapes, digital minidiscs, and CD's. Complementing the extensive audio materials are small collections of supporting documents, personal papers, artifacts, and musical instruments.
The National Endowment for the Humanities supported the digitization of the most complete versions of Leo Sarkisian's MTIA broadcasts. MTIA broadcasts produced and hosted by Matthew Lavoie and Heather Maxwell are in born digital formats as separate parts of the collection. The University of Michigan digitized a selection of unique field recordings created by Leo Sarkisian during his travels in Africa, along with distinctive portions of the source materials that Sarkisian utilized in the MTIA shows. The Internet Archives contains a small portion of Matthew Lavoie's MTIA radio shows. Heather Maxwell's radio shows (also born-digital) broadcast since 2016 are available through the VOA News website. Blog posts on Music Time in Africa and its African musical heritage created by Matthew Lavoie and Heather Maxwell are available on the VOA website.