Band Geek: a study of the Toronto independent music scene

Digital technologies have revolutionized the music industry over the last decade and have fundamentally altered production, distribution, consumption and promotion of music. As a result, there have been fewer sales of physical recordings, less support from record companies managing musical artists and more self-promotion by musicians through social media and streaming services. My research examined how independent musicians in Toronto are handling the changed music-making scene and the challenges they face as a consequence of these changes. This paper addresses topics such as: the benefits of connecting with music audiences on social media; musicians striking licensing deals with streaming services (Spotify and Apple Music); and current strategies used to promote music online. My research findings led to my developing a new online social media page, Band Geek, that creates original documentary journalism exclusively for burgeoning local Canadian artists in the music industry.

Band Geek: a study of the Toronto independent music scene

Digital technologies have revolutionized the music industry over the last decade and have fundamentally altered production, distribution, consumption and promotion of music. As a result, there have been fewer sales of physical recordings, less support from record companies managing musical artists and more self-promotion by musicians through social media and streaming services. My research examined how independent musicians in Toronto are handling the changed music-making scene and the challenges they face as a consequence of these changes. This paper addresses topics such as: the benefits of connecting with music audiences on social media; musicians striking licensing deals with streaming services (Spotify and Apple Music); and current strategies used to promote music online. My research findings led to my developing a new online social media page, Band Geek, that creates original documentary journalism exclusively for burgeoning local Canadian artists in the music industry.

Documentary Constellations in Late-Mamlūk Cairo: Property- and Waqf-Related Archiving on the Eve of the Ottoman Conquest of Egypt

The scholarly discussion of archives in the premodern Islamicate world is beset by problematic generalisations. Such a view to some degree stems from a top-down view of archiving that focuses on state archives at the expense of practices of archiving occurring outside a chancery context. This article challenges the assumptions that support an enduring narrative of paucity, by examining non-chancery archival practices in Mamlūk Cairo on the eve of the Ottoman conquest in 922/1517. In doing this, it looks to some of the surviving original documentary material: legal property deeds with connections to waqf endowments whose potential to shed light on archival history has largely remained untapped. Surviving in large numbers in modern collections in Cairo, these documents contain abundant traces of their own archival histories. By presenting a micro-scale case study drawn from this material, this article shows the energetic and meticulous documentary and archival practices that surrounded property transactions in late-Mamlūk Cairo.

PRICE OF COSSACKS' BLOOD: IN THE PUBLISHING HOUSE OF SFU IN ROSTOV-ON-DON A.YU. PERETYATKO PUBLISHED THE ORIGINAL COLLECTION OF DOCUMENTS ON THE HISTORY OF THE DON COSSACKS

The article is devoted to the latest original documentary research of the historian Artyom Yuryevich Peretyatko, presented in a large three-volume edition at the Southern Federal University in Rostov-on-Don. The publication of new archival documents on the history of the Don Cossacks is of great interest to specialists - historians of the Cossacks. The newly discovered sources introduced into the scientific circulation make it possible to re-evaluate the history of the Cossacks in the period of the "Great Reforms" of Alexander II and "Counter-Reforms" of Alexander III. Previously, this period in the history of the Cossacks was not given sufficient attention. Three-volume A.Yu. Peretyatko filled the existing gap in the published sources on the history of the Cossacks in the second half of the 19th century. The innovative format of the publication of sources integrated with the lengthy reasoning of the author of the publication, both of a historical and source study nature, is of undoubted historiographical and bibliographic interest. However, such an original approach of the author to the academic publication of documents can cause justified criticism, both by conservative historians and source researchers and historiographers. But, despite the potential criticism of specialists, one cannot but welcome the innovative search of A.Yu. Peretyatko. It is a topical form of presenting such conservative academic work as the publication of a commented collection of archival documents. In the article, the author included a detailed own historiographic review and a short bibliography of publications on the research topic by Peretyatko.

‘A Poor Prospect Indeed’: The State’s Disavowal of Child Abuse Victims in Youth Custody, 1960–1990

Child abuse in youth custody in England and Wales is receiving an unprecedented degree of official attention. Historic allegations of abuse by staff in custodial institutions which held children are now being heard by the courts and by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), and some criminal trials have resulted in convictions. A persistent question prompted by these investigations is that of why the victims of custodial child abuse were for so long denied recognition as such, or any form of redress. Drawing on original documentary research, this article aims to explain why and how state authorities in England and Wales failed to recognise the victimisation of children held in penal institutions between 1960 and 1990, and argues that this failure constitutes a disavowal of the state’s responsibility. We show that the victims of custodial child abuse were the victims of state crimes by omission, because the state failed to recognise or to uphold a duty of care. We argue further that this was possible because the occupational cultures and custodial practices of penal institutions failed to recognise the structural and agentic vulnerabilities of children. Adult staff were granted enormous discretionary power which entitled them to act (and to define their actions) without effective constraint. These findings, we suggest, have implications for how custodial institutions for children should think about the kinds of abuse which are manifest today.

Observation in the cinema

In this chapter the author notes that for some people ‘observation’ connotes an attitude of surveillance towards the subject. Despite this, the term is a useful summation of the original documentary idea, which was to show viewers as accurately as possible what the filmmaker had seen. ‘Observational cinema’ emerged as one of several closely related documentary approaches of the 1960s, with close ties to anthropology. Unlike other forms, it placed the filmmaker at the centre of the film as an investigator of on-going events, a position shared with the viewer. This approach was encouraged by the introduction of new, light-weight cameras and sound recorders and was inspired partly by Italian Neorealism and partly by live television. While often perceived as aspiring to detachment and scientific objectivity, it was in fact a highly authored form involving a close relationship between filmmaker and subject and representing the limited point of view of the individual observer. The author argues that while the long camera take is often regarded as the primary characteristic of observational cinema, its true marker is a commitment to the sustained witnessing of specific events. A further consequence of observational filmmaking is that it has stimulated reflection on what it means to observe.

Climatic information of Western Sahel (1535–1793 AD) in original documentary sources

The Sahel is the semi-arid transition zone between arid Sahara and humid tropical Africa, extending approximately 10–20° N from Mauritania in the West to Sudan in the East. The African continent, one of the most vulnerable regions to climate change, is subject to frequent droughts and famine. One climate challenge research is to isolate those aspects of climate variability that are natural from those that are related to human influences. Therefore, the study of climatic conditions before mid-19th century, when anthropogenic influence was of minor importance, is very interesting. In this work the frequency of extreme events, such as droughts and floods, in Western Sahel from the 16th to 18th centuries is investigated using documentary data. Original manuscripts with historical chronicles from Walata and Nema (Mauritania), Timbuktu and Arawan (Mali), and Agadez (Niger) have been analyzed. Information on droughts, intense rainfall, storms and floods, as well as socioeconomic aspects (famines, pests, scarcity, prosperity) has been codified in an ordinal scale ranging from −2 (drought and famines) to +2 (floods) to obtain a numerical index of the annual rainfall in the region. Results show wet conditions in the 17th century, as well as dry conditions in the 18th century (interrupted by a short wet period in the 1730s decade).

A Fifteenth-Century Plan of the Cathedral of Seville

This article focuses on a recently identified and hitherto unpublished drawing of Seville Cathedral, recently located in the Bidaurreta convent (and thus described in this article as the ‘Bidaurreta drawing’). This document is of international importance as it constitutes a rare example of a medieval drawing of a Gothic cathedral, and is indeed the oldest known complete ground plan of any Gothic cathedral. It is also the only plan preserved intact that depicts any fifteenth-century Gothic building in Castile. The drawing, which this article suggests dates from the third quarter of the fifteenth century, is a modified copy of a 1433 plan of Seville Cathedral. It records the building as it was in 1433 and some of the subsequent changes, undertaken as part of a building campaign that ultimately lasted until 1506, by means of which the cathedral took on its present form: 126.18 m in length, 82.6 m in width and 30.48 m high (Figs 1-2). This article traces the reconstruction work in detail by examining the original documentary sources, many not previously discussed in English, together with the evidence of the drawing itself.

The Parkers of Heytesbury: Archaeological Pioneers

This paper uses original documentary evidence held in the archives of the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society in Devizes to reassess the work of William Cunnington, FSA, carried out on behalf of Sir Richard Colt Hoare, and the contribution of his two principal excavators, Stephen and John Parker, of Heytesbury, in Wiltshire. Previously the Parkers have been regarded as little more than regular labourers on Cunnington’s pioneering excavations; the evidence now suggests that they (and in particular John) were, in fact, key to the success of Cunnington’s work. By the time of Cunnington’s death in 1810, John Parker was identifying new sites on the Wiltshire Downs and, on occasion, taking sole responsibility for excavating and interpreting them. After 1810 Hoare sponsored few further excavations and, though John was employed on at least one occasion, in 1814, the Parkers dropped back into obscurity and poverty without the regular employment, and perhaps protection, provided by Cunnington. Although John’s obituary in 1867 described him as Cunnington’s ‘principal pioneer’, no research has previously been undertaken that specifically considers the contribution of the Parkers in those early British excavations. This paper seeks to redress that oversight.