Discographie der ethnischen Aufnahmen, vol. 1 (review)

Discographie der ethnischen Aufnahmen. Vol. 1. By Rainer E. Lotz, Andreas Masel, and Susanne Ziegler. (Deutsche National-Discographie, Ser. 5.) Bonn: Birgit Lotz Verlag, 1998. [x, 275 p. ISBN 3-9805808-2-2. DM 100.]

Rainer Lotz is the rugged individualist of discographers. A mechanical engineer, economist, and political scientist, he compiles discographies as a hobby. He began collecting historical recordings, mostly jazz on 78-rpm discs, in the fifties, and he has since become a noted expert on German ragtime, jazz, radio broadcasting, and historical discography. He has published some sixty monographs and one hundred articles, and in 1998 he was given the ARSC (Association for Recorded Sound Collections) Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of his work. In the eighties, Lotz initiated the German National Discography, a systematic listing of all German commercial sound recordings (primarily 78-rpm "shellac" discs) produced from 1890 to 1960. (It is estimated that there are more than a million.) Lotz undertook this work with a handful of fellow collectors and discographers, and the project has progressed with no outside financial support. The first volume appeared in 1991, and since then, Lotz and his colleagues have maintained a publication schedule of two volumes per year.

The fact that the project is self-supporting led to a number of decisions about its structure. Comprehensive discographies are typically arranged by record label, making it possible to account for every recording produced in the numerical sequence of a record company. But individual collectors may not purchase a large and expensive label discography just to find listings for the few recordings that interest them. The German National Discography is arranged in topical series, and so far, volumes have appeared in the following six: Entertainers, Dance Bands, Opera and Lieder, Spoken Word, Ethnic and Traditional Music, and Instrumental Music. Each volume has been kept under three hundred pages in length and has a print run of only 250 copies, and each is reasonably priced at around DM 100 so that individual collectors might purchase the volumes that interest them. Within each series, pagination is continuous, and volumes are arranged in chronological order beginning with the oldest recordings. Each volume includes an index with the contents of all previous volumes in that series. The entire discography, when complete, will amount to hundreds of volumes, but an individual or library will be able to buy only those volumes or series of greatest interest.

The present volume is the first in the Ethnic and Traditional Music series. Entries are arranged alphabetically by performer, title, or type of music. In a description at the beginning of each entry, Lotz includes all the essential discographical information: record company numbers, matrix numbers, where and when the recordings were made, information about composers and texts, and many other details. In addition to ethnic 78-rpm discs, the present volume contains many citations for cylinder recordings, most found in the Berlin Phonogramm-Archive. It also features a fine essay on the history of the archive written by ethnomusicologist and current director Susanne Ziegler.

Lotz is certainly to be admired for his vision and tenacity in undertaking such a massive and important project. As Richard Spottswood, compiler of Ethnic Music on Records: A Discography of Ethnic Recordings Produced in the United States, 1893-1942 (7 vols. [Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990]) said at the 1999 meeting of the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology, "A recording is only as good as its documentation." The important lessons learned from decades of compiling national bibliographies should also be applied to sound recordings. The time is long overdue for national discographies. I wish Lotz well in his efforts.

Carl Rahkonen
Indiana University of Pennsylvania

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