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Why We Need You
A Letter from Archives Director Brian DeShazor
Dear Listeners,
Pacifica Radio Archives: Pacifica Radio Archives (PRA), based in North Hollywood, California, is the repository for approximately 50,000 reel-to-reel audio tapes of programs broadcast on Pacifica Radio Stations. Many of these recordings are extremely rare and seldom heard by scholars, producers, artists or the general public. Many are fragile and in dire need of repair.
Our 2006 fund drive, simulcasted nationally, is dedicated to the preservation of Pacifica's rare Radio Archives collection, from the earliest recordings in 1949 to the present, from the politics of dissent to one-only recordings of iconic artists' interviews and unique musical gems.
From the remarkable lectures of Aldous Huxley on human responsibility and potentiality to the radical sounds of Rage Against the Machine in the streets of Los Angeles in 2000, the voices are brave, hard, true, inspiring, depressing, outraging, uplifting, eloquent, sad, courageous, noble, brilliant, educating, painful and honorable, because they speak truth to power.
Pacifica's Archives stand as the collective memory of the last century's sounds of progressive reporting at its most courageous. By saving and sharing these immortal voices, we can illuminate our common heritage with a power and immediacy unique to radio.
It is vitally important that the essential movements, experiments and musings of the latter half of the 20th century be documented for history.
At the Pacifica Radio Archives, preservationists are working against the clock to make sure that these recorded voices survive to tell our collective history. With every foot of tape that is lost, we lose a link to our unique culture, to the world around us and to ourselves. Pacifica is the first line of defense to "preserve, protect, and defend" the American experience.
Rob Bamberger, in his invitation to Pacifica Radio Archives Director Brian DeShazor to give testimony to the National Recording Preservation Board / Library of Congress, described PRA as "both large and hugely significant."
In 2003 the Pacifica Radio Archives embarked on a Preservation and Access Project, an effort to preserve and make available the precious, fragile history of the latter part of the 20th Century as broadcast by the Pacifica Network. Thus far, thanks to support from the Pacifica Radio stations, donations from PRA friends and modest grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ford Foundation, and the GRAMMY Foundation, PRA has saved several hundred hours of unique recordings of our cultural and political history.
Please consider making a pledge.
Sincerely,
Brian
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