Intriguing Audio Mystery

Our Digital Transfer Operator Sandy Ditchburn came across an enigmatic audio recording this week.

Sandy and the rest of the Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision sound archivists have been working on a project to digitise our valuable audio heritage. One of the discs she came across in her digitisation work was a mysterious one, with minimal descriptive labelling, containing this recording:

[Archival audio from the Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision collection. Any re-use of this audio is a breach of Copyright. To request a copy of the recording, contact sound@ngataonga.org.nz]

One of our preservationists suggested that it may have come from the Pitcairn Islands. Or is this avant-garde band?

Can you help us solve the mystery? If you can shed any light on this recording, we’d love to hear from you. Please contact news@ngataonga.org.nz

This disc is part of the Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision D-Series, which is an assortment of over 10,000 audio disc recordings spanning 1935-1958. Amongst the recordings in the D-Series are wartime radio newsreels, election addresses, current events programmes, and numerous recordings of music by New Zealand composers, including early broadcasts by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.