Hartford Library wants music fans to check out The Beat
New archive featuring local artists is curated by professionals and can be streamed for free online
Hartford Public Library has created The Beat, a new archive of local music, curated by professionals, that can be played online by anyone with an internet connection. People with Hartford library cards can download the albums.
The collection is being built gradually. Only a handful of albums have been uploaded to the new thebeathartford.co site launched by the library this week. Twice a year, 20 more albums will be added during the winter/ spring and summer/fall seasons.
Nygel White, the library’s program production and engagement coordinator, helped design the site in conjunction with Rabble MUSICAT, a Wisconsin-based software development company that specializes in new programs and formats for libraries.
The inaugural albums are:
“Poetic” by jazz drummer Jonathan Barber.
“City Lights” by Black Phonze, who is currently based in New York state but grew up in Hartford.
“Afro Algonkuin” by the indegenous jazz/folk artist Lee Mixashawn Rozie.
“Lavender” by hip-hop/jazz poet Ghazi Omair.
And a compilation of tracks from the largely instrumental hip-hop ensembler The Lost Tribe which includes some live performances done in Bushnell Park.
That initial grouping is heavy on hip-hop and jazz, but White says The Beat is “open to any Hartford music. We’ve already had submissions of dancehall, R&B and folk.”
Submissions are being sought to complete the first batch of 20 albums. The submission deadline for this initial period is July 5. The curators will take a couple of weeks to make selections, and the albums will be uploaded to the site by the end of July.
Only albums produced within the last five years are eligible, and only one album by a musical act can is considered in any one selection period.
The artists selected must be from “the greater Hartford area, those who have a major impact on the Hartford music scene,” White says. The specific requirement on The Beat’s FAQ page is that artists are “currently performing and/ or based in the Greater Hartford area.”
The initial group of curators includes jazz-inspired visual artist Andres Chaparro, The Bushnell’s vice president of education and community relations Yolande Spears, longtime local
jazz booster Maurice D. Robertson of WWUH-FM, and the Hartford Jazz Society and musician/ writer/producer June Archer of Eleven28 Entertainment.
There’s nothing slapdash about the site, which couldn’t be more respectful of the artists it selects. There are separate pages for the albums and for the biographic info on the artists who created those albums. Links to the musicians’ websites or social media are included, and some even have ways to contribute money directly to the artists through Paypal or cash.app.
White hopes to add a page of Hartford music history to the site.
White created the short video promo that appears on The Beat’s home page, featuring one of the inaugural artists, Ghazi Omair. White says The Beat is the first local music archive at Hartford Public Library (not counting some hard-to-get-at items in the Hartford History Center area).
“It’s a first for the library, and may be a first for Connecticut.”
When an album is chosen, the artist receives a $250 honorarium, which also represents a licensing agreement for the library to post
and share the music. Funding for the project currently comes out of the library budget.
Only albums are allowed into the collection, White explains, partly due to the way the collection sets up licensing fee and honoraria, but also because of the desire to promote “a body of work” from each artist rather than a single song. The main idea, White says, is “an example of new initiatives and new visions, to amplify and empower local creative voices of Hartford.”
One of the project’s partnerships is with The Bushnell, which may lead to live concert opportunities for some of the artists.
Given its exclusivity and curatorial heft, inclusion in the collection is an honor. White is designing a graphic similar to the wreathlike awards symbols you see on the packaging for prize-winning films so that artists chosen by The Beat can promote themselves.
“From the beginning of this project,” White says, “the feedback I’ve gotten from the artists is ‘Oh, this is great; this is cool!’ ”