GRAMMY Museum Grant Program Awards $200,000 For Music Research And Sound Preservation

Their goal is to uncover how choir singing impacts communication (voice, articulation, listening) and auditory cognition in older adults, supporting healthy aging through a randomized training study. We further explore neurobiological mechanisms underlying these changes via multimodal brain imaging. This project aims to inform community choirs and music-based interventions, aligning with the foundation’s mission to enhance quality of life through music.

Stroke typically leads to persistent deficits in arm and hand function. This project will examine the feasibility, acceptability and preliminary effectiveness of a 6-week piano training intervention aimed at improving manual dexterity and the functional use of the arm and hand. For the first time, such intervention will be delivered as part of a home-based, early, and intensive rehabilitation program for individuals with stroke.

Many people struggle with speech-language disorders due to developmental issues or brain injuries. Although music therapy can help these individuals regain speech functions, its effectiveness varies because we don’t fully understand the underlying brain mechanisms. By combining neuroimaging and machine learning, this study will explore how the brain can ‘bypass’ damaged speech-language networks by leveraging musical networks to enhance communication.

This randomized trial will examine the effects of a novel woodwind program on neural responses and respiration function in adults 50+ with Long-term COVID (LTC). Adults will complete measures of cognitive processing (EEG) and respiration function (spirometer), pre and post-10 weeks of either Nuvo jsax lessons or an attentional control task. We predict that a woodwind program will enhance cognitive processing and respiration function in adults with LTC.

Rhythmic Auditory Stimulation (RAS^®) uses rhythmic sound cues to help people with Parkinson’s disease (PD) start and maintain stable movement. This project is the first to examine how these cues impact brain chemistry in PD, revealing the brain’s response to these cues. Their findings could improve the use of RAS as part of PD care, refining clinical applications that work alongside standard medication to support movement and enhance quality of life in PD.

The project will preserve 75 interviews from the 10-hour Peabody Award-winning public radio series, “Whole Lotta Shakin’.” It tells the story of rockabilly, the exciting 1950s mix of blues, gospel and country that is the cornerstone of rock and roll. This diverse collection features singers, musicians, producers, disc jockeys, and record company owners. The goal: to digitize these decaying recordings for use by scholars, content providers and the public.

GRAMMY Museum Preservation Assistance funding will enable the Memphis Listening Lab (MLL) to hire an expert consultant to conduct a Preservation Assessment of MLL’s extensive collection of recorded music. The consultant will be drawn from the GRAMMY Museum’s list of recommended experts and will provide MLL with a written report detailing their observations and recommendations for preserving MLL’s collection, which is freely accessible to the public.

The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum (CMHFM) seeks funding to assess, catalog, re-house, and make accessible a collection of 18,000 12-inch radio transcription discs containing historically significant, non-commercial recordings. This collection features interviews and performances with various country artists. Building on a successful project with 16-inch discs, CMHFM aims to begin “Phase Two” of cataloging this larger, unprecedented collection.

Louis and Bebe Barron were American electronic music pioneers, whose archive is a national treasure. This project digitizes nearly 800 magnetic tapes. It will make available to the public, for the first time, their sci-fi, experimental and commercial sounds. The Barrons, moving in parallel to European composers of musique concrète, were DIY artists who lacked crucial institutional support. It is time to fully preserve and honor their significant legacy.

The “Preserving the Legacy of Bluegrass Music” project will digitize and make accessible precious audio and visual materials from the 40-year history of the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA). Recordings include industry awards show performances and speeches, special performances, conference presentations, workshops, and other IBMA events, featuring first, second and third-generation bluegrass musicians from 1985 to the present day.

Through GRAMMY Museum support, Louisiana Folk Roots (LFR) will digitize and preserve at-risk audiovisual tape recordings of Cajun and Creole heritage folk music performances and presentations that occurred from 2001-2015. This LFR archival collection of analog formats is not currently available online. Following digitization, this collection can become publicly accessible in partnership with the University of Louisiana at Lafayette’s Library and Institutional Repository.

Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz stands as NPR’s longest running cultural program, airing from 1978 to 2011. Currently, those programs exist on a server at SCETV (where the show was produced), along with over 5,000 physical documents, including Marian’s notes, photos, sheet music, and promotional materials. This proposal is to complete the digitization of these materials and create a free website where these materials can be accessed and enjoyed by the public.

Philadelphia Jazz Legacy Project, through its fiscal sponsor Painted Bride Art Center and in partnership with Temple University Libraries, seeks a GRAMMY Museum Grant to digitize, preserve and make available several dozen interviews with Philadelphia jazz musicians. Conducted from the early 1980s to early 2020s, the interviews are a treasure trove of jazz history, documenting the lives and careers of both world-famous and local Philadelphia jazz musicians.

Acclaimed Memphis historians have donated interviews of Memphis music legends. These unstable digital tapes required urgent care and represent the richest collection of black music history interviews ever received by the Stax Museum. The interviews will allow for enhanced storytelling in future exhibitions and online presentations.

American Indian Soundchiefs was a record label owned by Kiowa Linn D. Pauahty—the earliest, longest running label launched with an ear toward Indigenous aesthetics. This project will help Pauahtyʼs granddaughter Mary Helen Deer, the Linn D. Pauahty Foundation, and Kiowa tribe digitize surviving American Indian Soundchiefs instantaneous discs, reel-to-reels, and cassettes featuring vital Kiowa-language songs for cultural revitalization purposes. In the spirit of Reverend Linn D. Pauahty, Kiowa tribal members are prolific audio documentarians. May GRAMMY^® recognition stimulate future Kiowa digitization work to rebuild language, history and song long into the future.