Diane Thram

Diane Thram is Professor Emerita at Rhodes University where she was Senior Lecturer in Ethnomusicology from 1999-2005. She then served as Director of the International Library of African Music (ILAM), an audio-visual heritage archive and research institute, from 2006-2016. As Director of ILAM she secured funding for cataloguing and digitizing of ILAM’s holdings. This made on-line access to ILAM’s audio and photo collections a reality in 2008-09. Her research, outreach and education, and repatriation (digital return) initiatives included the launch of ILAM’s Pilot Project in Restudy and Repatriation of Hugh Tracey Field Recordings in Tanzania and Kenya (2014) and ILAM’s collaboration with the Beating Heart Remix Project (2016). Digital return of Hugh Tracey recordings has since been carried out in Zanzibar, Mombasa, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi, Botswana and South Africa. Seen as a step toward decolonization of the ILAM Hugh Tracey Collection, this work seeks to promote sustainability of the music heritage Tracey preserved.