On June 14 the GRAMMY Museum announced $200,000 in grants awarded to music research and preservation projects in the U.S. and Canada. The long-standing annual support ensures that a selection of the most deserving and important projects advocating for music receive funding.
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Grants were awarded in three categories: Scientific research, preservation assistance and preservation implementation. The scientific research portion of the grants goes to ongoing investigations at McGill, New York, Tufts, and Washington Universities. The projects that received funding include examining how music can boost memory, how music can enhance long-term memory, looking at a potential link between music and dopaminergic and/or opioid transmission, and how using one's own singing voice can support those with Parkinson's disease.
Awards for preservation implementation address the extensive hands-on challenges of executing preservation plans, and this year's grants will help digitize several great collections' precious audio archives. Awarded institutions include the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, The Juilliard School, and the UCLA Film & Television Archive, which is restoring kinescopes of the 1950s TV series "Stars Of Jazz."
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Folklorists know the Arhoolie Foundation's regional archive, which was a grant recipient this year. Columbia University Libraries will digitize 400 hours of pioneering electro-acoustic music, and the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology and T. Christopher Aplin are both preserving one-of-a-kind recordings of Native American music.
The three organizations receiving preservation assistance grants go to support Native American reel-to-reel preservation at Gualala, Calif.'s Native Media Resource Center and in Quebec, Canada, preserving the French-Canadian collection recorded by folklorist Jean Trudel. Brooklyn, N.Y.'s Tri-Centric Foundation will organize hundreds of scores and more than 1,000 audio and video recordings in preparation for a celebration of composer, jazz performer and instructor Anthony Braxton's 75th birthday in 2020.
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"The Recording Academy has proudly supported our GRAMMY Museum Grant Program since its inception," said Recording Academy President/CEO Neil Portnow, who is also Chair of the GRAMMY Museum Board. "To date, we have awarded more than $7.3 million to more than 400 grantees. The work we help fund includes an impressive array of projects that are at the forefront of exploring music's beneficial interchange with science, and that maintain our musical legacy for future generations. The initiatives announced today exemplify the Academy's and GRAMMY Museum's pledge to uphold music's value in our lives and shared culture."
You can view more information about this year's grant recipients via the grant award announcement. The deadline to apply for next year's program is Oct. 15 with more information available via GRAMMYMuseum.org.
