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Meet the Guardians of Early Recorded Sound

Panel Discussion with Los Angeles Times writer Randall Roberts, collectors John Levin and Michael Khanchalian & UCSB Library Performing Arts Curator David Seubert

Audio cylinders contain some of the earliest recordings made and heard by the public over a century ago. The UCSB Library has long played a leadership role in preserving and making these recordings accessible. Less well known is the important role of private collectors in these preservation efforts.

LA Times writer Randall Roberts explored the efforts to find and preserve these recordings in a series of articles in the November 14th LA Times. The UCSB Library invites you to a virtual panel discussion with the individuals behind these preservation efforts.

These ‘guardians of early recorded sound’ will discuss how the brown-wax audio cylinder era laid the foundation for LA’s music scene, provide insight into UCSB’s collection of thousands of cylinders acquired from around the world, and play the oldest audio recorded in Southern California.

UCSB’s University Librarian, Kristin Antelman, will moderate the discussion.

Thursday, January 7, 2020

5:00 to 6:00 PM PST

Please contact Heather Silva at heathersilva@ucsb.edu for any questions.

Featured Speakers

Michael Kanchalian was born and raised in Southern California, and currently maintains a dental practice in Pasadena, CA. He began collecting and researching the sound industry in 1969. Mr. Kanchalian began the Southwest Museum - Autry Center cylinder restoration and transcription project in 1990, which has digitized ~1000 cylinders of Native American and early Californio Mexican content. He has restored cylinders for the British Library, National Library Catalonia, Library of Congress, UCSB, and many other national libraries and museums. In 2006, Mr. Kanchalian and his team received a Grammy Award for “Lost Sounds,” which involved the restoration of the earliest surviving cylinder recording of an African American musician. In 2017, Mr. Kanchalian was also nominated for a Grammy Award for “Waxing the Gospel” with Archeophone Records.

Randall Roberts is a staff writer covering music and pens the weekly California Sounds column for the Los Angeles Times. His recent Times series on the geography of L.A. music has explored Sunset Boulevard and Rosecrans Avenue. In his career with The Times, Roberts has been music editor and pop music critic. A St. Louis native, he was schooled in the power of sound as a radio and club DJ, and schooled in supply and demand as an indie, punk and electronic buyer at a major Midwest record store.

David Seubert has been the curator of the Performing Arts Collection at UCSB since 1998 where he manages the performing arts archives and the recorded sound collections and audiovisual archives. He is project director of the UCSB Cylinder Audio Archive, the library’s online collection of early sound recordings, and the Discography of American Historical Recordings, a research project documenting early sound recordings. He is a Past President of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections, a professional association of audio archivists and librarians and an appointed member of the Library of Congress’ National Recording Preservation Board.

John Levin is a seasoned media professional, having worked in public radio, at several movie studios and, most recently, running a digital media production company. Concurrently, through a deepening interest in turn-of-the-century music recordings, he has amassed over 3,000 pre-1902 wax cylinder records. Because of the unique challenges associated with playing these fragile recordings, John developed new technology in use at the Temianka Audio Preservation Lab at UCSB and at other sound collections.

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