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Library of Congress highlights 1896 Arirang wax-cylinder recordings cited in BTS video
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Summary
A Library of Congress presentation described Alice Cunningham Fletcher’s July 1896 wax-cylinder recordings of Korean music — including the folk song Arirang — explained their transfer to tape in the 1980s, and outlined modern inspection and playback techniques used to preserve fragile cylinders.
The Library of Congress highlighted early Korean music recordings made in July 1896 by anthropologist Alice Cunningham Fletcher, noting one of the songs recorded was the traditional folk song Arirang, which was echoed in a recent animated video released by K-pop group BTS, the presenter said.
The recordings, the presenter added, were made on brown wax cylinders — an early commercial medium for sound — and captured three Korean men who were students at Howard University at the time. "One of the songs that they recorded was in fact Arirang, the very traditional much beloved Korean folk song," the presenter said.
An audio preservation specialist at the Library of Congress provided technical context for how the collection has been cared for. The specialist said Fletcher’s cylinders were transferred to tape in the 1980s "using a different method than what we would use today," and described the current workflow for unplayed or undigitized cylinders.
"This is the machine that we would use today for any new cylinders that come into the collection, or old cylinders that we haven't digitized yet," the preservation specialist said, and noted the Library holds many thousands of cylinders. The specialist pointed to a later example from 1917 and contrasted it with the 1890s brown-wax cylinders in Fletcher’s set.
Conservators rely on close visual inspection to plan playback. "It's really helpful to be able to diagnose things like crosscut grooves or discontinuous grooves or look at damage such as cracks or surface scratches," the preservation specialist said, describing a microscope with a camera and a live feed used to examine groove condition. That diagnosis informs whether staff use approaches such as half-speed playback or reverse playback to reduce damage during transfer.
Fletcher's handwritten notes and the cylinders arrived at the Library of Congress in 1948 and were placed in the archive of the American Folklife Center, the presenter said. The presentation emphasized the historical and cultural value of preserving these early sound documents, and framed the BTS reference as a contemporary moment drawing attention to the Library’s holdings.
No formal actions or policy decisions were announced; the talk focused on the provenance of the cylinders and on ongoing preservation practices. Library staff described current digitization and playback methods as part of longer-term archival stewardship.
