As of April 30, 2021 Detroit Sound Conservancy is pleased to announce that we have moved the majority of our archive out of storage and into a large and wonderful climate-controlled room at the WGPR building on East Jefferson in Detroit. Our Detroit music artifacts and audio-visual collection has been largely inaccessible-but-safe, secured quietly in […]
Join us at 7pm April 29th, 2021 for “Sounds of Detroit Archaeology Series” presented by The Detroit Chapter of the Michigan Archaeological Society. Our Executive Director and Director of Collections, Michelle McKinney shares our ongoing archival work and preservation of the Blue Bird Inn.
Detroit Sound Conservancy has been awarded $100,000 for Community-Based Archives from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation! The grant will provide two years of funding for our archive to complete physical processing and inventorying, as well as digitization, processing, inventorying and description, of our audio-visual collections. With this grant, we are focusing on three largely hidden […]
An internationally significant Black historic site where world-altering music was recorded is to be put at risk for a highway service road. Is this OK?
Some good news! Earlier this year, we submitted a letter of intent to partially fund the restoration of the Legendary Blue Bird Inn through the National Trust for Historic Preservation‘s very competitive African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund. The grant is worth $50-$150,00. The National Trust got 537 other letters so we are honored to […]
We are proud to announce that our Executive Director Dr. Carleton Gholz will be traveling to Wollongong, Australia this fall to participate in “Sounds of our Town.” “Sounds of our Town” will explore the role of popular music heritage in the revitalization of cities that have experienced industrial decline. Featuring panelists involved in popular music […]
Has Detroit become a sonic desert? Musical expression has been a long-standing pivot point for debates about Detroit’s successes and failures. Though the Detroit area has a wide range of cultural expressions for which it is associated—including art, design, architecture, literature, and, critically, industrial production—music has been the dominant site for articulating exactly how Detroit […]
This summer, I consulted for Oakland Avenue Urban Farm which had just purchased the abandoned Red’s Jazz Shoeshine Parlor located at 9148 Oakland Avenue. The business itself still exists further south at 8348 Oakland. Our friend Jean-Louis Farges and his team, working on behalf of the farm, had discovered a stage in the back of […]
On Monday September 11th, the property management company Bedrock Detroit publicly announced their plans to demolish the National Theatre and move a portion of its façade to serve as a pedestrian walkway. We are deeply concerned. On August 24, the first public kickoff meeting for Bedrock’s proposed Book Tower and Monroe Block development projects was […]
We just got a great message from United Sound Systems: Greetings United Sound Supporter! We are very excited to announce that United Sound Systems Recording Studios has been deemed a Historic site by the Michigan Historical Commission! We invite you to celebrate this great milestone with us on Sunday, June 25, 2017 from 4pm-6pm at […]