A happy new year to all of you. At Europeana Sounds we’ve just recently had another publication of metadata onto Europeana: we have now aggregated just shy of 200,000 records, very much on track to meet our targets.
As everyone has been returning back to work after the break, I’ve been struggling to think of a topical theme for January. As we’re in the zodiacal sign of Capricorn, I searched Europeana Sounds for the ibex in particular and goats in general. Here’s what I found.
First of all, there’s a collection of animal stories in Cholim – one of the main dialects of the Naga, Tase language of Myanmar. These recordings, from the Max Planck Institute, include a story of the dog and the goat.
Goats from BL Sloane 4016, f. 107, The British Library. Public domain marked
There’s also a song in the Ugandan language, Karamojong, about having too many goats for the gathered to care for. “Ngakinei” is a happy song about plentiful abundance, recorded by Klaus Wachsmann in 1954.
Over to Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg now, for a recording of “Capra (The Goat)”.
And here’s a 78 recording of Paddy McGinty’s Goat from the Comhaltas Traditional Music Archive.
Finally, there’s a recording from the Internet Culturale, Italy – it’s a Welsh song, “Gifri’r geifr” (gouting the goats), sung by the Morriston Orpheus Choir, conducted by Ivor E. Sima.