The World Oral Literature Project is an urgent global initiative to document and disseminate endangered oral literatures before they disappear without record. The Project supports local communities and committed fieldworkers engaged in the collection and preservation of all forms of oral literature by providing funding for original research, alongside training in fieldwork and digital archiving methods.

For many communities around the world, the transmission of oral literature from one generation to the next lies at the heart of cultural practice. Local languages act as vehicles for the transmission of unique cultural knowledge, but the oral traditions encoded within these languages become threatened when elders die and livelihoods are disrupted. These creative works are increasingly endangered as globalisation and rapid socio-economic change exert complex pressures on smaller communities, often eroding expressive diversity and transforming culture through assimilation to more dominant ways of life. Of the world’s living languages, currently numbering over 6,000, around half will cease to be spoken by the end of this century.

Islamic Studies students may be interested in two collections:

– the historical collection of Iranian Literature collected by Susan Wright. The audio material in this collection was recorded between 1974 and 1976 in Iran as part of field research for a D.Phil. Details of the collection can be browsed here

– “Voices and Faces of the Adhan: Cairo” containing video & audio recordings of 6 muezzins reciting the adhan (Muslim call to prayer), as well as audio recordings from 10 locations in Cairo representing the city-wide call to prayer (over 30,000 muezzins reciting each of the 5 times per day). These are accompanied by photographs taken at the recording locations. It is accessible here.