Underground Sound: Preserving Calgary's Rich Music History - A Mini-Documentary

    I recently had the great pleasure and opportunity to direct a mini-documentary about the Calgary Cassette Preservation Society and the importance of archiving music. For those of you who are unfamiliar, CCPS is a site run by Arif Ansari which holds a vast archive of Calgarian, Albertan and Canadian music dating back to the 1970s. The project started sometime in the 90s when Arif began to digitize some of his favourite cassettes as a passion project. From there, the project spiralled into a full-fledged, extensive archive of hundreds of musicians' and bands work over the last few decades. Each posting has a write-up about the artist, giving it some context and info on the members and style of the music, scans or photos of the physical media as well as a link to listen to it. 

    As an archivist myself, it's mind-blowing to think about the amount of work Arif and the others who have helped him have done. Any city would be lucky to have someone who cares as much as Arif and who puts so much of his time into a project like this. Not many cities have such a vast catalogue of music solely based on the local scene, and I think without Arif and CCPS, so much of this music would have been lost to time. As someone who was born and raised in Calgary, Alberta, it's a fascinating resource that I have learnt so much from and found so many cool bands through. Calgary has such an interesting and distinct scene due to its location and culture and I genuinely never knew that Calgary had such a vibrant punk/emo scene in the late 90s and early 2000s. 

    Getting the chance to speak to Arif himself, as well as Helen Young and Adam Kamis of CJSW has been a life-changing experience that I will never forget. All three of them are treasure troves of information, anecdotes and knowledge I one day hope to have! I think that the documentary I directed with the help of my production/post-production team is very valuable for a city like Calgary where this underground music as well as the importance of archiving goes unnoticed by most. It's a great feeling getting to speak with people who value this sort of archival work as much as I do because, without resources like CJSW's incredible library of physical media or Arif's work with CCPS, we would lose so much music, info and culture that has made Calgary the city it is today. 

Check out the documentary below!