Recording Old People
January 13, 2009
I’ve been thinking lately about the benefits of recording interviews of some of my older relatives. I’ve always liked the idea, since those who have lived long generally have exciting stories. I’m planning on beginning some sort of project to accomplish this task in the early summer with my grandparents. Unfortunately, they don’t know about this yet, but that’s alright.
I was inspired to do this project by two main works: First, I recently heard an interview that some of my more distant relatives had done with their grandfather, and I was intrigued a bit. This reminded me of a collaboration I had heard about several years ago, the second work that inspired me. The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography began in the late 1930s when the Works Project Administration (WPA) organized interviews of more than 2,300 former slaves. In 1972, George Rawick began publishing a 19-volume (plus supplemental volume) set which compiled these numerous interviews. Although I haven’t been able to find it, I saw at some point a film in which contemporary African American celebrities read selections from these interviews. I would love to find that, if anyone knows where I can get a copy. I’d recommend checking out the written version, as well, much of which can be easily found on Google Books or Amazon.
Anyway, inspired by those two extremely-equally-important sets of interviews, I’ve decided to go ahead with this project on my own. I’m writing about this mostly to gather some thoughts on the project. I’m curious to see if any of you have participated in such an undertaking in the past and would have any sort of advice. Do you recommend video or will audio alone be sufficient? How much content should I try to get (in other words, an hour of content or one hundred hours)? Any other useful hints or tips for me in this? Let me know. And I hope to share some of this once I’ve completed it, so stay tuned.
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