Jeremy Smith, director and archives administrator, submitted a pitch to the Grammy Museum, earning him a $20,000 award for his Digitizing Rare Festival Recordings from the Archives of Appalachia pitch.

“The Grammy Foundation has an annual grant program where they can fund projects usually up to $20,000, and that’s just always in the back of my mind,” stated Smith.

A headshot of Jeremy Smith. (Contributed/ETSU)

The Archives of Appalachia was given a collection of a festival that occurred in East Tennessee from the 1970s to the 1990s. A year ago, they received some audio from Southwest Virginia, which led Smith to believe that these two tapes needed to be digitized, but they needed proper cleaning due to mold and dirt, which is what started the Grammy grant process.

“We knew we were going to have to get that grant funded. When I looked at those two collections together and got quotes from vendors, I realized this could be a really nice opportunity to apply for a Grammy grant,” stated Smith.

This one-of-a-kind content needed to be digitized to allow people around the world to listen to it. Without the grant, there would be no way to digitize these tapes due to catastrophic loss, which was one of Smith’s concerns.

With a big task like this, challenges were faced. These challenges were meeting deadlines and figuring out how to name and describe the collections correctly, which would help the readers reviewing the pitch understand the importance and meaning.

Smith mentions another thing that has helped him in this process is learning from past mistakes. This isn’t Smith’s first rodeo when it comes to submitting a pitch to the Grammy Fund, but after reviewing his several attempts, he was able to figure it out and push through.

“What these two festivals did was provide an opportunity for local and regional musicians to play. The folks documented here never had a major recording deal because they were just local artists who were carrying on these localized traditions of old-time and Appalachian music,” said Smith.

The reasoning behind pushing these audios to get funded was that those localized practices and performances and musical styles would not appear again and you can’t get them from anywhere else. Smith mentioned that figuring out how to describe that in a few paragraphs was challenging but with the help of reflection and co-worker Ryan Bernard, it made things easier.

The overall goal is to upload all 250 audio reels to the archive streaming platform so that people all over the world can tune in and listen whenever. These audios will also be found in the reading room, located in the archives for those without internet access. Congratulations to Jeremy for earning this reward and discovering these artifacts that can change the world.

Author