Tape Collection Koch – Gilbert Archipelago 1963/64

The Media Department of the Ethnologisches Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, holds a tape collection from Kiribati, an atoll nation in the central Pacific, which Dr. Gerd Koch and his wife Sigrid Koch assembled and documented in 1963–64 during an eight-and-a-half-month ethnographic expedition. Held under the shelfmark VII_OA_0122, the collection comprises 229 archival sound documents on 12 analog audio tapes (BASF LGS 52, mono, 9.5 cm/s). The songs and dance chants were recorded in the south of the Gilbert archipelago, on the atolls of Tabiteuea, Nonouti and Onotoa. According to Koch, the expedition's main task was the general cultural documentation of the region, with a focus on economic methods and material culture, while the sound recordings and their accompanying text documentation were a secondary undertaking, intended for the ethnomusicological holdings of the museum.