The British Library’s Alfred Cort Haddon 1898 Expedition (Torres Strait and British New Guinea) Cylinder Collection includes 141 wax cylinders recorded on the Torres Strait Islands and in British New Guinea as part of the 1898 Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits. This cylinder collection constitutes the earliest collection of sound recordings in the Library’s Sound Archive and the earliest from Oceania.
This page documents the history of the wax cylinders that were recorded in the Torres Strait Islands.
A note on institution names
The British Library Sound Archive and the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) have previously been known under different names.
The British Institute of Recorded Sound (BIRS) was established in 1955 by Patrick Saul, who was its Director until 1978. The BIRS became part of the British Library in 1983. It was renamed as the National Sound Archive (NSA) (Day 2001) and is now referred to as the British Library Sound Archive.
AIATSIS was founded as the Australian Institute for Aboriginal Studies [AIAS]. In 1989, AIAS became AIATSIS following the passing of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Act.1AIATSIS. 1 May 2020. Our History. Available at: https://aiatsis.gov.au/about-us/our-history [Accessed 19 May 2020]
Research by Rebekah Hayes, British Library, in partnership with Grace Koch, AIATSIS.
The C80 Torres Strait collection comprises 101 cylinders, 94 of which have been digitised with further information about the contents of the recordings provided in the Recording entries2Recording entries are the metadata records that describe the actual content of the recordings. of the Library’s Sound and Moving Image catalogue [SAMI].3Sound & Moving Image Catalogue http://sami.bl.uk/
One Torres Strait cylinder – C62/1469 – was originally catalogued as a British New Guinea cylinder. Further research has confirmed that this cylinder was recorded in the Torres Strait; the cylinder insert note mentions the performer as Peter of Mabuiag. This cylinder will be reintegrated into the C80 Torres Strait cylinder collection, along with the 1898 British New Guinea recordings that were also recorded as part of the Cambridge Expedition.
In February 2021, an additional three cylinders in the Library’s Sound Archive were identified as belonging to this collection. These include C666/797 (previously part of the Borneo cylinder collection), C680/722 and C680/1008. In October 2021, C662/471 and C662/479 were also identified as part of this collection having been previously catalogued as cylinders recorded by Edith Durham. They are duplicates of C80/1482 but have been miscategorised due to the red-ink labels “15 Europe” and “16 Europe” on their lids.
Seven cylinders do not have Recording entries. C80/1015, 1044, 1056, 1057, 1106, and 1494 are broken and have not been digitised. C80/1066 is a blank cylinder.
The cylinders have little accompanying documentation aside from inscriptions on the card (or sometimes metal) cylinder containers and small paper inserts. Not all cylinders have corresponding paper inserts. A couple of inserts have been previously documented at the Library but the original items are now not available. Where this is the case, it has been mentioned in the metadata for the cylinder recordings.
Categorisation and Numbering
The cylinders are categorised according to a number of different systems.
As well as the British Library’s shelfmark, Alice Moyle assigned each cylinder in the Torres Strait collection a short alphanumeric code, usually prefixed by A, B or C (Moyle 1983:133). These are written on a small sticker stuck to the lids of the Torres Strait cylinders. Moyle used, “as far as possible, the numbering systems appearing on the cylinders themselves”.4Moyle, Alice. 1 November 1984. Letter to Lucy Durán. [Held at British Library World and Traditional Music section] She added numbers only when cylinders had “handwritten inscriptions” only.
The “A” and “B” cylinders are stored separately to the “C” series in “two specially made boxes, twelve compartments to each”, as found by Moyle in 1978 (Moyle, n.d.:1).
Any numbers prefixed with “D” were issued after Moyle’s work; Ward suggested they should be ignored. He also noted discrepancies between Alice Moyle’s audition sheet notes and Ward’s own copies of the inserts and cylinder boxes.5Ward, Alan. 23 January 1990. Correspondence with Grace Koch. [Held at British Library World and Traditional Music section] It is not yet clear who provided these ‘D’ codes, which often appear alongside the Moyle codes.
Dubbing / transfer history
Patrick Saul mentioned the transfer of the cylinders to tape in correspondence with Wolfgang Laade in 1977, although it is not clear that this referred to the Haddon cylinders specifically.6Laade, Wolfgang. 18 July 1977. Letter to Patrick Saul. [Held at British Library World and Traditional Music section] 7Laade, Wolfgang. 25 September 1977. Letter to Patrick Saul. [Held at British Library World and Traditional Music section]
Lloyd Stickells dubbed the Torres Strait cylinders in 1979, with two copies made of each, one filtered and one flat.8Durán, Lucy. 24 October 1979. Letter to Alice Moyle. [Held at British Library World and Traditional Music section] Stickells had visited Wilfried Zahn at the Rundfunkarchiv, Frankfurt, to learn the techniques. BIRS shared a copy of the filtered set of 7” reels with AIAS at Alice Moyle’s request along with some examples of the flat copies.9Moyle, Alice. 12 November 1978. Letter to Lucy Durán. [Held at AIATSIS]. 10Durán, Lucy. 3 December 1979. Letter to Alice Moyle. [Held at British Library World and Traditional Music section] The tape masters of the dubbings were kept at the BIRS and treated as a special collection. Will Prentice has noted that the cylinders would have been transferred onto ¼” tape.11Prentice, Will. 21 April 2020. Email to Vicky Barnecutt.
This work was completed before Lloyd Stickells had constructed an improved reproducer; Ward hoped to re-dub the cylinders with this new equipment.12Ward, Alan. 18 October 1984. Correspondence with Alice Moyle. [Held at British Library World and Traditional Music section]
Prior to the incorporation of the BIRS into the British Library, the Governing Body approved a scheme for the dubbing of the cylinder collections as ‘utmost priority’ (Ward 1984:11).13Durán, Lucy. 28 July 1982. Memo to Lloyd Stickells. [Held at British Library World and Traditional Music section] Dubbing of the “C” and “D” series of cylinders was completed in late 1982 and copies were sent to AIAS.14Durán, Lucy. 13 October 1982. Letter to Alice Moyle. [Held at British Library World and Traditional Music section] 15Durán, Lucy. 21 October 1982. Letter to Alice Moyle. Lloyd Stickells subsequently dubbed the “A” and “B” series, described as ‘large cylinders’. It is not clear to which series the Torres Strait cylinders belonged.
Grace Koch arranged with Alan Ward to have a second transfer made of the Torres Strait cylinders. By early 1990, Alan Ward sent new dubbings and documentation to AIAS.21Ward, Alan. 2 January 1990. Letter to Grace Koch. [Held at AIATSIS with a copy held by British Library World and Traditional Music section] and Ward, Alan. 23 January 1990. Letter to Grace Koch. [Held at British Library World and Traditional Music section] Lloyd Stickells produced these on a new machine he had created.22Ward, Alan. 2 November 1989. Letter to Grace Koch. [Held at British Library World and Traditional Music section]
The cylinder collection was included in a 1994 digitisation project. This resulted in digitised copies of the Haddon material, which should have been made available to AIATSIS.23Ward, Alan. 24 August 1994. Letter to Grace Koch. [Held at British Library World and Traditional Music section]
Transfer work for cylinders C80/446 and C80/447 was completed in October 1999 by Will Prentice.
Transfer work for the rest of the collection was completed by Will Prentice from April to May 2001.
In a report from 2001, Prentice notes that this cylinder collection originally consisted of cylinders 1010 to 1107.24Prentice, Will. 2001. Report on the Torres Straits Cylinder Collection, C80. [Held at British Library World and Traditional Music section] However, he added “a further short set of cylinders” so that the Torres Strait cylinder collection now included cylinders with running numbers 446, 447, 796, 816, 818, 1011 – 1033, 1036 – 1061, 1063 – 1081, 1091 – 1094, 1095 – 1099, 1101 – 1107, 1382, 1482 – 1489, 1493 – 1497. The report mentions that “Cardbox entries” were created by Martin Clayton with transcriptions of the cylinder inserts.25Cardbox is a database software. However, these were not seen by Prentice. Prentice’s sorting of the collection was based on Moyle (1985).26Moyle, Alice. 1985. The Torres Straits phonograph recordings: a preliminary listing of contents. Australian Aboriginal Studies, 2.
The collection was transferred from Digital Audio Tapes [DATs] to CD-R by Claire Gilliam in October 2003. Recordings were transferred to two CDs; one for playback access and one for preservation.
Two CD-Rs from this process do not correspond to the same cylinder recordings. The first access/playback copy includes C80/1063 to C80/1078 whereas the preservation copy includes C80/1061 to C80/1076.
One batch of transfer work includes C80/446-447, 796, 816, 818, 1382,27C80/1382 is a Veddas recording and should be moved to the Seligmann Vedda Cylinder Collection (C86). 1482-1485, 1488-1489, 1493, 1495 and 1497. This group of recordings includes the first and last series of running numbers (the “bookends”) of the Torres Strait cylinder collection.
C80/1048 is included in this transfer, suggesting the broken cylinder was mended at some point before October 2003.
DATs for cylinders C80/1097, 1098 and 1101 were not transferred, perhaps because these are duplicate recordings of other cylinders.
Transfer work for the Torres Strait Cylinder Collection was completed by Gosha Shtasel (now Preservation Audio Engineer & Trainer) on 3 November 2009.
Rights issues
In 1989, Ward and Koch had discussed the access and copying rights in regards to the reel copies held by AIAS. Koch understood that Aboriginal people, Torres Strait Islanders and researchers may listen to the tapes and may have cassette copies as long as they would not be used for commercial purposes.28Koch, Grace. 12 September 1989. Letter to Alan Ward. [Held at British Library World and Traditional Music section] In March 1990, Ward noted that the cylinder recordings were likely to be out of copyright but any transcriptions would be subject to copyright until 50 years after the author’s death.29Ward, Alan. 27 March 1990. Letter to Alice Moyle. [Held at British Library World and Traditional Music section] The dubbings of these recordings deposited at AIAS were subject to access and usage restrictions, especially for commercial purposes. In 1993, Ward authorised AIATSIS to allow access to copying of the Haddon recordings for the purpose of private study, educational and research purposes. He noted that requests for public use of the material should still passed to the National Sound Archive so they can receive acknowledgement and track the use of materials.30Ward, Alan. 4 January 1993. Letter to Grace Koch. [Held at British Library World and Traditional Music section]Use of the recordings
The recordings in this collection have been used in a variety of contexts over the past 120 years.
The Mabo Case
In 1982, several court actions were brought against the state of Queensland by three Murray Islanders, Eddie Mabo, Dave Passi and James Rice, who sought to assert their rights to their homeland, Mer / Murray Island. Their actions resulted in changing the legal concept of Indigenous land rights for all of Australia.
Once of these cases, Mabo v Queensland [1986] included numerous references to song, dance and ceremony and the long-term continuity of these practices. Eddie Mabo, a Meriam man and first named plaintiff, specifically spoke about how he was taught the Malo-Bomai songs and dances, and the published Reports of the 1898 expedition were cited as part of the case (Koch 2013:15-16). Anthropologist Jeremy Beckett’s testimony stated that he had witnessed the performance of Malu-Bomai songs in 1961 and that they were “virtually unchanged” when compared with Myers’ transcriptions of the 1898 recordings (Koch 2013:16-17).31See Related Collections
The disputes finally went to the High Court of Australia in Mabo v Queensland (no 2) [1992] and the resulting determination recognised that a type of land rights, native title, extended to all of the mainland of Australia and its islands.
Further information about the Mabo Case is available at https://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/mabo-case.
Alice Moyle played (or planned to play) a number of the recordings at the Conference for Ethnomusicologists, Goroka,37 Moyle, Alice. 1985. BIRS Cylinders – Jan 1985 – AM’s notes. [manuscript] Alice Moyle Collection, MS 3501. Canberra: AIATSIS. New Guinea from 18-25 August 1982. In her notes, she selected the following cylinders: C54 (C80/1070), C58 (C80/1074), C63 (C80/1079), C77 (C80/1093), C104 (C80/1096), C106 (C80/1099), C108 (C80/1102), and C109 (C80/1103). The conference paper was published the following year (Moyle 1983).
Grace Koch, AIAS, asked the National Sound Archive and Prof. Trevor Jones whether they wanted to participate in the publication of a cassette of materials from the Cambridge Expedition.60Koch, Grace. 13 September 1989. Letter to Prof Trevor Jones. [Held at AIATSIS] This project did not go ahead.
Jeffrey Waia (Saibai) and Bua Benjamin Mabo (Murray Island) requested copies of the recordings for their respective islands via AIAS. Koch also requested permission for providing cassette copies.61Koch, Grace. 18 April 1989. Letter to Alan Ward. [Held at British Library World and Traditional Music section]
Trevor Graham (Yarra Bank Films, Melbourne) requested copies for some of the Malu-Bomai songs for use in an Australian Broadcasting Commission and Channel 4 documentary Land bilong ilan man (A10, C108, C109). This documentary related to Murray Island and the Mabo land ownership court case.62Graham, Trevor. 7 November 1989. Letter to Alan Ward with cover note to Grace Koch. [Held at British Library World and Traditional Music section] Grace Koch forwarded a tape copy of some of the Haddon recordings and requested a copy of the film for AIAS.63Koch, Grace. 8 November 1989. Letter to Trevor Graham. [Held at AIATSIS]. This film was released in 1997 as Mabo: Life of an Island Man.64More information is available on AIATSIS’ Mura catalogue [994.380049915 GRA DVD]
Grace Koch sent a copy of the Haddon recordings to Jeremy Beckett.67Koch, Grace. 25 June 1991. Correspondence with Jeremy Beckett [Held at AIATSIS].
Grace Koch sent three reels of tapes copied from the earliest version of the recordings held by AIATSIS. She requested a quote for audio restoration. Director of Larrikin Records, Warren Fahey, was interested in producing a CD of the recordings.70Koch, Grace. 14 April 1993. Correspondence with David Macquarie, EMI Studios 301, Sydney. [Held at AIATSIS].
The Torres Strait cylinders were discussed in the BBC Archive Hour programme The Torres Strait Expedition, written and presented by Janet Topp Fargion and produced by Pete Nash and David Corser. This aired on BBC Radio 4 on 9 July 2005.
From the Library’s Sound and Moving Image catalogue [SAMI] (British Library reference BNR000124783): Presented by Dr Janet Topp Fargion, curator at the British Library Sound Archive, this programme tells the story, through the sounds of the cylinders and contemporary interviews, of the year-long Cambridge University expedition and the effect it has had on the islanders, which continues right up to the present.
Robin Isherwood used C80/1072 [C55, Dance of Dead Man] within a church musical piece, 7 Canons for Good Friday.86Topp Fargion, Janet & Prentice, Will. November 2006. Correspondence with Robin Isherwood. [Held at British Library World and Traditional Music section]
Cylinder recordings were made available to stream on the BL Sounds website.
Torres Strait recordings were used at a showing of the 1898 Torres Strait film at the Barbican. Michael Eaton had been researching Haddon expedition. Songs used include cylinders A7 (4A Malu), C17, and B5 (Song 9 Keber). Permission was also sought to use the recordings at another showing at Il Giornate del Cinema Muto, Italy.87Sweeney, John. 12 August 2009. Letter to Janet Topp Fargion. [Held at British Library World and Traditional Music section] [Michael Eaton wrote the 2015 radio play Head Hunters, a 90 minute BBC Radio 3 play about Haddon and the Cambridge Expedition.]
Eaton requested the use of C80/1016, 1020, 1012, 1027, 1033, 1028, 1483 and 1485 for use at the British Silent Film Festival on 15 April, Leicester.88Eaton, Michael. 30 March 2010. Letter to Janet Topp Fargion. [Held at British Library World and Traditional Music section]
A Torres Strait sound recording was requested for use in an exhibition at the Science Museum, London.89Topp Fargion, Janet. n.d. Letter to Jeff Bunn, Science Museum. [Held at British Library World and Traditional Music section]
Previous research on the cylinder recordings
In 1964, AIAS sponsored Wolfgang Laade to visit the Torres Strait Islands to determine whether the music and dances documented by Haddon and Myers were still being performed. Unfortunately, Laade found that this was not the case, especially as singers passed away (Durán 1985, Laade 1977:2).90Durán, Lucy. c. 1984. Draft of The Cylinder Project: Tape transference of Australian Aboriginal recordings on cylinder in the National Sound Archive. Laade had had access to the Cambridge Reports, and sang at least three of the songs notated by Myers to various Torres Strait Islanders. They recognised the songs and sang them back to Laade (Koch 2020, pers. comm.). These recordings can be heard on AIATSIS audio collection Songs and stories from Eastern Torres Strait [LAADE_W02], tape no. 85.91AIATSIS. 2016. Interim Finding aid – LAADE_W02 – Sound recordings collected by Wolfgang Laade, 1963-1965. Available online: https://aiatsis.gov.au/sites/default/files/catalogue_resources/laade_w02_finding_aid_interim.pdf Laade documented the connection in his Catalogue of field tape recordings 1963-1965 [MS 2883], also held at AIATSIS.
Martin Clayton worked on a catalogue for the Library’s ethnographic wax cylinder recordings in 1995. Clayton contacted Alice Moyle, the Royal Anthropological Institute, Royal Commonwealth Society, Royal Geographical Society, Sally Beales [MAA], Wren Library [Trinity College, Cambridge], British Psychological Society Archives, and the Myers family.92Copies of these letters are held at the British Library’s World and Traditional Music section.
Clayton also noted that Alan Ward had conducted some preliminary research a decade earlier.93Clayton, Martin. 27 March 1995. Letter to Wren Library, Trinity College. Ward consulted the Haddon Papers at Cambridge University Library.94Ward, Alan. n.d. Borrowing receipts from Haddon Papers, Cambridge. [PDF] [Held at British Library World and Traditional Music section] There is evidence that he consulted further collections in Cambridge, including the papers of Ray, Myers and Seligmann.95Ward, Alan. n.d Handwritten list of Haddon papers. [Held at British Library World and Traditional Music section]
As part of work on the 1997 documentary Cracks in the Mask, Ephraim Bani translated C80/1043 (C10) and C80/1074 (C58).96Notes on cylinders C8 and C10 [PDF]. Possibly the document created by Ephraim Bani. [Held at British Library World and Traditional Music section] Director Frances Calvert suggested that the former was well-known and that the latter was about a pelican.97Calvert, Frances. 1996. Note to Janet Topp Fargion. [Held at British Library World and Traditional Music section]
AIATSIS also had two grantees who researched the artefact collection from the Cambridge Expedition.
On 21 April 1977, David Moore (Curator of Anthropology, Australian Museum) applied to AIAS for a grant to “systematise, document and publish a catalogue of the ethnographic collections made by the Cambridge Expedition to Torres Straits, 1898-99” which were in the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology. In the application, Moore noted that this project was “enthusiastically received by the Museum Committee.”98Moore, David. 1977. Application for Research Grant, Doc. No. 77/2124. [Held at AIATSIS].
AIAS offered him a grant-in-aid of $1000 “on the understanding that such support would provide the Institute with photographic material for its Resource Centre.”99Lambert, Jacquie. 20 October 1977. Letter to D.R. Moore. [Held at AIATSIS]. Moore sent three interim reports between 1979 and 1980, which set out how the catalogue would be structured based upon categorisation of the artefacts. A draft of the catalogue was submitted to AIAS in 1980 and lodged in the manuscript collection.
Moore submitted a request to the AIAS Publications Committee, as AIAS had expressed earlier interest. On 10 March 1981, Graham Pike (Executive Officer, Publications at AIAS) sent a letter to D. Moore stating that AIAS could not publish the transcript and Moore was free to negotiate with Queensland University Press or another publisher. The catalogue was published by British Museum Publications in 1984 as The Torres Strait collections of A.C. Haddon: a descriptive catalogue.100Moore, David. 1984. The Torres Strait collections of A.C. Haddon: a descriptive catalogue. London: British Museum Publications. [BL shelfmark: General Reference Collection X.425/5068]
Prof George Kearney had also been a grantee at AIAS. His major interest was in psychometric testing and he had conducted work on this topic in Australia and Papua New Guinea. Kearney had previously enquired about the cylinders but they had not yet been catalogued at the time.101Kearney, George. 12 August 1976. Letter to the Principal of AIAS, Peter Ucko. [Held at AIATSIS]. 102Kearney was also interested in Haddon’s film and photographs. In 1976, he arranged for the film to be copied and received a copy of Ephraim Bani’s comments on the film. In 1978, Kearney requested to borrow a copy of the film from AIAS for a viewing in Townsville by a Torres Strait Islander. He also requested a copy of his own bibliography that he had made on the work of Haddon and Rivers and suggested that AIAS should purchase a copies of Haddon’s photographs. [AIATSIS filename 1964_64-2 KEARNEY, PROFESSOR GEORGE, held at AIATSIS]. In 1976, he suggested to Peter Ucko – Principal of AIAS – that they should “encourage [the BIRS] to get on with the job as quickly as possible.”
In 1984, Kearney enquired as to whether the cylinders had been copied.103Kearney, George. 29 May 1984. Letter to Eric Willmot, Principal of AIAS. [Held at AIATSIS]. He had been sent Alice Moyle’s preliminary report, but noted that the report did not reference the 1898 Cambridge Expedition. Grace Koch advised him that AIAS held tape copies of the cylinders and forwarded a copy of Moyle’s article from the newsletter of the Australian Branch of the International Association of Sound Archives.104Koch, Grace. 6 June. Letter to Prof George Kearney [Held at AIATSIS].
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