Thanks to generous support from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, UC Santa Barbara Library recently completed a project to digitize portions of its historical sound recording collection of recordings made by Columbia Records in Italy between 1923 and 1950. During this golden age of Italian recording, Columbia created approximately 15,000 Italian sound recordings, including opera, popular, jazz, ethnic and film music recordings. The recordings not only documented the country’s culture before and after World War II but also shaped musical tastes of the era internationally, as they were widely distributed among Italian immigrant communities in the United States and Latin America.
The Delmas Foundation’s 2022 grant award enabled the Library to digitize 600 Italian Columbia recordings, update metadata on over 2,000 other recordings, and make both the recordings and data available through the Library’s American Discography Project (ADP) and its Discography of American Historical Recordings (DAHR). DAHR is an online database that documents and describes for research the 78-rpm disc recordings made by American record companies from the inception of disc recording in the 1890s until the transition to 33 ⅓ vinyl Long-Playing records (LPs) after World War II. The award followed the Foundation’s first grant award to the Library in 2020, which supported the cataloging and digitization of Italian and Italian-American diaspora recordings.
Columbia Records, America’s oldest recording company, established a branch office in Milan, Italy, around 1903 to record important opera performers of the era. In 1923, Columbia Records’ European operation became a separate, new company run from London, with Milan as the hub of Italian recording. The scale of operations dramatically expanded under local control and broadened to include popular, jazz, ethnic and film music recordings.
Italian Columbia offers a fascinating area of study. Its complex relationship with its American counterpart, and its significant yet under-documented output, particularly in genres like opera, jazz and regional folk music, underscores the importance of continued research and preservation efforts. In the course of the project, several significant threads emerged, including the proliferation of Italian jazz recordings such as Jazz Sinfonico Cannobbiana, the recordings of Italian film soundtracks like Vittorio De Sica, and the recordings associated with the rise of fascism in Italy. The recordings made by Italian Columbia deserve greater attention not just for their historical significance but for their role in shaping the musical tastes of an era.
“We are eager to continue this important work, and with future projects or funding, hope to expand our efforts to include these smaller labels and further explore the contributions of Italian Columbia.” said David Seubert, the Curator of the Library’s Performing Arts Collection. “The ongoing documentation of these recordings will not only enrich our understanding of this pivotal period in music history but also ensure that these recordings are preserved and accessible for future generations.”
UCSB Library’s internationally-renowned collection of early sound recordings on 78 rpm discs is utilized by scholars and the public worldwide. While many libraries and archives in the U.S. collect sound recordings, UCSB Library is one of the few with a robust cataloging program for early recordings and a process for digitizing recordings and making the digital copies accessible online. DAHR includes more comprehensive information on historical recordings than any other online or print resource. It is the largest online database documenting sound recordings of the standard-groove era (before 1955) and provides digital access to over 75,000 recordings.
