The music library at Unicamp's Institute of Arts (IA) had its collection enriched by the collection CDSON, donated by the Interdisciplinary Center for Sound Communication (NICS), linked to the Coordination of Interdisciplinary Research Centers and Nuclei (Cocen). There are more than 5 thousand vinyl records, from various countries, eras and musical genres, with classics and rarities of classical, sacred and popular music, now available to the public.
Most of the collection CDSON It was donated to Unicamp in the 1990s by the then cultural attaché of the French embassy in Brazil, Pierre Montouchet — who, in addition to the collection, left several valuable assets to the university in his will.
"These are records that we didn't have, including some very rare ones, that go beyond the conventional and come to enrich our collection", says Daniel Beraldo, responsible for the IA's music library, which, after the NICS donation, has around 11 thousand LPs in its collection. total. "Anyone who is interested can come, consult the collection, choose the album and listen to it on the sound system we have in the service", he advises.
NICS coordinator, Manuel Falleiros, highlights the historical and cultural value of the records collected by Montouchet. "In the pre-internet era, this collection was of unique importance for music and arts students, as it was a selection of musicological interest.” In recent years, however, the collection CDSON It was stored without effective use.
After evaluating several possibilities for making better use of the LPs, the NICS team came to the conclusion that the most suitable option would be to donate them to the IA's music library, which has a continuous cataloging service.
“We managed to bring this set of works to the right place. Now, we will have a new use of this collection, in the sense of cultural dissemination. Another issue is also that there is an interest in media archeology. We have students today who have never seen an LP, they don't know how it works. This is also a form of learning. Currently, we work in a very digital way, but explaining how the nature of a medium develops is also explaining innovation processes — what it was like, for example, moving from physical media to digital media”, says Falleiros, who took over the coordination of NICS in 2022.
Sound mining
"We spoke with former researchers at the university to recover the history of the collection. Thus, we learned that the Pierre Montouchet He was a record collector and traveled the world, acquiring LPs in several countries”, says NICS administrative affairs professional, Dante Pezzin.
“For someone who is a very modest collector of vinyl, like me, it is incredible to go through this collection. One of the first records I picked up, for example, was by Milton Nascimento, one of those copies that, in used bookstores, cost a lot”, says Dante, who, together with intern Geovana Marchezoni, also from NICS, worked on mining the mine. of LPs, reconstruct its history, locate its catalog and formalize its donation to the music library.
The NICS team also notes that, in addition to making the collection available to the public, the music library has a more appropriate physical structure for maintaining the collection.
Geovana, who studies social sciences at the Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences (IFCH), highlights the cultural value of the collection and the importance of making it available to the community. "Knowing that the records are in an appropriate place, within the public university, where people can access them, is something excellent for those who work with science and art, especially because we come from a very difficult process of devaluing culture", evaluates the student.
The dissemination of the collection will also be expanded through a new NICS podcast. Guest professors will analyze the musical and historical relevance of the records in the collection. The podcast project was approved in the latest notice from the Dean of Extension and Culture (Proec), and should be launched at the beginning of the second half of this year.
