São Paulo – Record collector Henrique Tabchoury donated 22 digitized records to the Arab Immigration Memory Digitization Project in Brazil, 17 of which are Arabic and five were recorded in other countries, mainly Brazil, but featuring songs in Arabic. All the records are 78-rpm models.
Tabchoury received the originals from the Arab-Brazilian Chamber of Commerce (ABCC), which entrusted them to the collector on the condition that they be digitized to join the Arab Immigration Memory Digitization Project in Brazil. The project aims to reconstruct the archive of immigration to Brazil, an initiative spearheaded by the Holy Spirit University of Kaslik (USEK) in Lebanon, with the ABCC as one of its partners. Physical documents from families, individuals, and institutions are received and digitized to form the archive. Afterwards, the documents are returned to their owners along with the digital version.
Tabchoury said digitizing this collection is a way to preserve the recordings, as 78-rpm records are made of a fragile material and break easily. “These records are a record of people’s history,” Tabchoury said on Wednesday (19) while handing over the USB drive with the recordings to the ABCC’s Vice President of Marketing, Silvia Antibas.
Read more:
Lebanese descendant collects Arabic records in Brazil
Translated by Guilherme Miranda
