As part of the RILM – Smithsonian partnership during the Year of Music, on Tuesday 12 November, at 4pm, Associate Executive Editor Tina Frühauf will give a timely talk in Washington, D.C., about the role music organizations have today. “Tearing Down Walls”, so the title of her lecture, leans on the concept of ontology in its two-fold meaning—as a metaphysical branch dealing with the nature of being and as a relation between a set of concepts. Using RILM as a model, her inquiries pertain to the following questions: What is and what should be the nature and mission of a music organization in a world whose state has been described as global and postglobal? What impact can a music organization have when political events around the world threaten to build walls between nations, disconnect communities, block the free movement of peoples across cultures? How can it contend with such divisive attempts, defying and traveling freely across many different kinds of literal and metaphorical borders? The event is free and open to the public

Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (RILM) is collaborating with the Smithsonian Year of Music, which aims to increase public engagement, advance understanding, and connect communities by highlighting and sharing the Smithsonian’s vast musical holdings. RILM, which documents and disseminates music research worldwide, supports this initiative by drawing on its comprehensive digital resources to create blog posts about a selection of the Year of Music’s Objects of the Day. Each post is enhanced with an expertly curated bibliography.

The bibliographic references stem from one of the richest and most exhaustive resources of global music research, RILM Abstracts of Music Literature with Full Text™, which contains over a million bibliographic records from relevant writings on music published from the early 19th century to the present in 178 countries and in 143 languages.

RILM is contributing blog posts for the following Objects of the Day:

• Grand Wizzard Theodore’s Turntables
• African-American Banjo
• Charlie Parker’s Saxophone
• Patsy Cline’s Performance Outfit
• Spacecraft Voyager “Sounds of the Earth” Record Cover
• Elaine Brown’s “Seize the Time” (1969)
• Grand Piano Gifted to Prince Albert from Queen Victoria
• Fred Becker’s “Beale Street Blues”
• Duke Ellington’s “I Got it Bad (And That Ain’t Good)” Manuscript
• Jenny Lind Concert Program
• Harmonica Used Aboard Gemini 6
• David Bowie and Bing Crosby Christmas Single

Blog posts are published on both institutions’ music blogs: RILM’s Bibliolore at https://bibliolore.org/ and the Smithsonian’s blog at https://music.si.edu/blog.

Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (RILM), New York: RILM is committed to the comprehensive and accurate representation of music scholarship in all countries and languages, and across all disciplinary and cultural boundaries. It publishes a suite of digital resources aimed at facilitating and disseminating music research. It’s flagship publication is RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, the international bibliography of writings on music covering publications from the early 19th century to the present, now available in an enhanced version that includes the full text content of 240 music journals. RILM Abstracts is available on the EBSCOhost platform along with RILM Music Encyclopedias, a full-text repository of a wide-ranging and growing list of music reference works, and the Index to Printed Music, a finding aid for searching specific musical works contained in printed collections, sets, and series. Distributed worldwide on RILM’s own platform are the continually updated music encyclopedia MGG Online and RILM Music Encyclopedias (coming in early 2020). RILM is a joint project of the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and Documentation Centres (IAML); International Council for Traditional Music (ICTM); and the International Musicological Society (IMS). www.rilm.org

The Smithsonian

Since its founding in 1846, the Smithsonian Institution has been committed to inspiring generations through knowledge and discovery. It is the world’s largest museum, education and research complex, consisting of 19 museums, the National Zoological Park, and nine research facilities. There are 6,300 Smithsonian employees and 7,300 volunteers. There were nearly 29 million visits to the Smithsonian in 2018. The total number of objects, works of art and specimens at the Smithsonian is estimated at nearly 155 million, of which nearly 146 million are scientific specimens at the National Museum of Natural History. www.si.edu.

For further information, please contact Tina Frühauf, at RILM.