The Minnesota Music Archive, a newly launched digital repository of music made by Minnesota artists, is intended to highlight lesser-known material. Here, a visitor attends the launch party, hosted by Diverse Emerging Music Organization, on April 2. (Karen R. Nelson)
The new Minnesota Music Archive (MMA) is, in a word, ambitious. It is intended to honor and preserve all of Minnesota’s music — from “polka to hip-hop, metal to country, classical to Tejano, jazz to Indigenous traditions” — through a searchable, digital repository at www.minnesotamusicarchive.org.
“Every note and every beat of music created in Minnesota will be archived, catalogued and made accessible for all time,” says Mark Wheat, who was a DJ at The Current, in the site’s introductory video. “It’s a promise to all Minnesota artists that their work will always matter.” Wheat is rebooting the Making Music video series with features for MMA.
The collection focuses on digital material, but some phyical items have found their way into the archive. (Karen R. Nelson)
To date, nearly 2,000 recordings from 1956 to the present — ranging from Curtiss A to Zuzu’s Petals — have been donated or loaned by some 1,200 artists. More are on their way.
The MMA was launched online by the local nonprofit Diverse Emerging Music Organization (DEMO), on April 1, followed by a public party at Hennepin Arts. The archive represents a “statewide initiative to collect, digitize, preserve and curate Minnesota’s recorded and released musical history across all genres, generations and communities.”
The MMA website, designed by Werner Elements through a donation from Paul Lindner and a grant from the Minnesota Historical Society, has links to Minnesota artists and their recordings, an upcoming “genealogy” tab, media clips, videos, stories, staff picks, FAQs and a donate section.
Right now, MMA doesn’t offer full access to albums or songs due in part to copyright issues, but embedded players, including Spotify links, provide access to snippets of the recordings. Any and all Minnesota-based artists and labels are encouraged to submit recordings to which they hold the rights.
Annie Enneking, frontwoman of the group Annie and the Bang Bang, commented on the site: “Connection is at the heart of sharing songs. This’ll be like a treasure trove representing that connection.”
DEMO was founded in 2005 by Steve McClellan, the legendary former general manager of First Avenue, as the organization’s nonprofit music offshoot. DEMO has worked on other projects, including music industry seminars and a short-lived 2015 Center for Music. It has since evolved to re-emerge with the MMA. McClellan has stepped back and referred comments to Mitch Thompson, DEMO’s new executive director.
Thompson is a drummer, son of a polka musician and a current Minneapolis resident who grew up in Albert Lea, Minn.
Interviewed at DEMO’s offices in the Twin Ignition Keg House on 13th Avenue in Northeast, he has a big mission — to build the archive infrastructure, collect material for volunteers to digitize, get it online and seek financial and other donations.
Come Art-A-Whirl®, on May 15-17, DEMO will host a music lineup at Twin Ignition Garage, the tech startup incubator next to Dusty’s Bar on Marshall Street NE. People can
donate Minnesota-made music on Archive Saturday to get entries into a giveaway for swag and a First Avenue membership.
Mitch Thompson
Preserving legacies
“Music is one of Minnesota’s best-known exports,” Thompson said. “For every artist whose work reached a national or global audience, there are countless musicians, producers and communities whose contributions have shaped our culture locally.
“This project is not about Prince, Bob Dylan, Hüsker Dü, the Suburbs or the more recognized artists from Minnesota. Their legacies are assured. Our focus is on the rest, the not-so-known local musicians who were part of creating the rich local music scene that Minnesota is known for. I’ve talked to artists about the project, and they say, ‘You don’t want my stuff.’ But that’s exactly what we want. It’s a promise that their work mattered.
“There is a pressing need to shine a light on this work. Preservation alone isn’t enough. There is more music being released than ever before. Often, with old albums or cassettes, there’s no digital footprint. The risk for the artist is that material can be ephemeral; lost to physical deterioration, digital obsolescence or an inability or lack of desire to preserve, like when MTV removed its archive.”
At the launch event, he told the crowd: “The music output is immense for a market this size. Minnesota has a tradition of punching above its weight. It’s a state that refuses to be small.”
Indeed, the MMA may be the first of its kind in the United States. Thompson said they’ve not been able to discover anything similar. “If anything, it’s by region or metro area, and not as granular as what we’re doing.”
Who will use it?
Beyond the value of preserving and making history accessible for the general public, the archive will likely be most useful to researchers, historians, scholars, teachers, writers, people with print disabilities and the artists themselves. Representatives from Meet Minneapolis said they would find it helpful.
Music journalist Andrea Swensson was clear at the launch about the MMA’s value to writers and researchers trying to learn about Minnesota music. “It’s long overdue,” she said. “We take what we have for granted. There’s so much that’s not online that needs to be saved.” Her own in-production documentary about 98-year-old Minnesota musician James “Cornbread” Harris is a good example of a legacy deserving preservation.
The archive’s emphasis right now is on creating a digital record, rather than amassing a permanent collection of vinyl, CDs or cassettes. (So far, they haven’t encountered an eight-track tape.)
Looking ahead
DEMO is relying on donations of money and recordings, grants and volunteers to help digitize materials. The board includes music fans with technical expertise, skills in library science and archival processes. Collectors, including McClellan and Swensson, have already contributed. The archive’s ownership is trusting more will follow.
When asked about the future, Thompson said the archive is “Rooted in community…. We’re very open about the fact that this is a challenging funding moment for the arts, and we’ve built our approach with that reality in mind. Keeping our overhead lean. Volunteers are not a stopgap; they’re foundational to the work, and the public launch helps create the visibility and narrative needed to broaden that base.”
There is, however, some skepticism. Philip Blackburn, a longtime sound artist, composer and head of Neuma, a contemporary/new music label, fears that despite promises to cover “all,” the MMA will end up being a rock and pop-focused subset of the “groovy First Avenue types.” At the launch event, “Minneapolis Sound” was mentioned more than once, calling into question the organization’s statewide mission.
“Without collective action, too much of our recording history will be lost,” concludes Thompson. “There are things that are already gone. The archive preserves those stories and keeps music firmly within the broader arts conversation. This is an opportunity to honor great work that has been going on for over a century. That’s what we’re all about. We truly believe we’ve only scratched the surface of the support that exists for preserving and sharing Minnesota’s musical history.”