Dr Janet Topp Fargion is an ethnomusicologist with particular research
interests in South Africa, the Swahili Coast, ethnomusicology and
audiovisual archiving methodologies. From 1994 - June 2020 she was Lead
Curator of World and Traditional Music at the British Library, with
responsibility for the collection, preservation and dissemination of
recordings and related materials documenting musical traditions from all
around the world. She has published extensively on 'ethnomusicology and
archiving' being author of an essay on Adam Matthew Digital
Ethnomusicology resource entitled 'Archiving in a post-custodial world:
an audiovisual perspective' (2019) and co-editor with Dr Carolyn Landau
of 'We're all Archivists now: Towards a more Equitable Ethnomusicology',
_Ethnomusicology Forum_ (Special Issue: Ethnomusicology, Archives and
Communities: Methodologies for an Equitable Discipline, 21/2, 2012). She
is author of _Taarab Music in Zanzibar in the Twentieth Century: a story
of 'old is gold' and flying spirits_ (Ashgate Publishers, 2014). She was
co-curator, with Dr Marion Wallace (the British Library's Lead Curator,
Africa Collections) for the British Library's major exhibition _West
Africa: Word, Symbol, Song_ (October 2015 - February 2016). As of June
2020 she has moved to the broader role of Head of Sound & Vision, with
responsibility for 7.5 million recordings on all formats and across all
subjects.