The workshop brings together archivists, scholars, lawma­kers, lawyers, business people and musicians. Participants will focus on the tensions between increasing the accessibility of collections and respecting copyright laws, on questions of digital restitution or repatri­ation, as well as the ethical, legal and technical framework for making African music.

Since the last two decades, archives collecting African music – both on the continent and in the Global North find themselves increasingly confronted with a growing interest in historical recordings of popular music. Resear­chers, musicians and representatives of the music industry have come to appreciate these recordings as scholarly sub­jects, as artistic inspiration, or as untapped commercial re­sources. With more and more collections being digitized, access to the material could easily be granted globally and the interests of the above-mentioned groups could be met. Especially, African academics and artists could access the music easily from their respective countries, and thus, a digital repatriation of the music would be possible. Howe­ver, given that currently most popular music recordings fall under copyright legislation, archives face a situation where they may want to grant access but are prevented to do so by law.

The public part of the workshop will include a keynote lecture on 21 September by Prof. Dr. Martin Kretschmer (University of Glasgow) on “Copyright and Non-use”.