Join us for North African History at 78 Rotations Per Minute, a listening session with historian and archivist Christopher Silver.
Programme Committee
Events
NewBridge Gallery is now closed until Friday 16 October.
You can join us on 5 September and 3 October for Saturday Social. You can still shop NewBridge Books throughout the weekdays!
Join us for North African History at 78 Rotations Per Minute, a listening session with historian and archivist Christopher Silver.
This is a ticketed hybrid event—whether you attend in person or online, you’ll need to book a ticket at the bottom of the page.
Thousands of shellac records, spinning at 78 rotations per minute, were shared across North Africa after the invention and popularisation of the phonograph, in the late nineteenth century. These records span a dazzling variety of popular, classical, and folkloric sounds, sketches, and monologues.
Many of these recordings faded from public memory amidst decolonisation, migration, and the shift to vinyl. Since 2017, Chris Silver’s Gharamophone archive has unearthed and preserved nearly 500 of these “lost” recordings, offering insight into a complex era of history and transformation.
The event will journey through this expansive archive and draw on Silver’s book Recording History: Jews, Muslims, and Music across Twentieth-Century North Africa (Stanford University Press, 2022), which explores North Africa’s Jewish musical heritage — deeply intertwined with Muslim cultural life — and the legacies of colonialism, collaboration, resistance, and displacement.
Christopher Silver is the Segal Family Associate Professor in Jewish History and Culture in the Department of Jewish Studies at McGill University. He is also the founder and curator of the website Gharamophone.com, a digital archive of North African records from the first half of the twentieth century.
The Reading Room is a collaborative project opening up local spaces and providing a wealth of educational tools which will be a catalyst for creative thinkers and critical minds in partnership with Pluto Press and Left Book Club.
The Reading Room is part of a wider network, and sites its libraries across several venues across the UK. These include: Sustainable Studio (Cardiff) and Left Bank (Leeds), Metal (Peterborough), TOMA & The Old Waterworks (Southend-on-Sea). All organisations involved share a common goal – to support and empower people within their communities.
The Reading Room at NewBridge offers a programme invites artists, authors and researchers to host workshops, screenings and discussions inspired by the books housed in the library. Taking the lead from our communities, the topics of these events may include, the environment, LGBTQ+ issues, structural racism and much more.
This event is hybrid—you can attend online or in-person.
A Zoom link will be sent out to all ticket holders on the day of the event via email.
Our building has lifts to the gallery, accessible and gender-neutral toilets, baby changing and breastfeeding facilities and two accessible parking bays. You can watch a walkthrough of our building and learn more about accessibility here.
Contact admin@thenewbridgeproject.com if you have any questions or need support to take part in this event.
NewBridge has a Safer, Braver Spaces policy. Everyone here treats each other with respect and consideration. Transphobia, misogyny, racism or harassment of any kind is not welcome.
Attend the event online
https://newcastleuniversity.zoom.us/j/85180345903
Meeting ID: 851 8034 5903
Passcode: RESOUNDING
Resounding Diasporic Sonic Worlds has been developed by artist Ellie Armon Azoulay with The NewBridge Project’s Programme Committee: Holly Argent, Ellie Armon Azoulay, Dan Goodman, Kaan K, Shelly Knotts, and Seymour Mace.
Thursday 12 June 2025
6–8pm
Free
The NewBridge Project
Shieldfield Centre
4-8 Clarence Walk (off Stoddart Street)
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE2 1AL
The NewBridge Project is accessible. You can find out more here, or feel free to contact us prior to visiting if you require additional information regarding access and facilities.
The NewBridge Project is a charity, registered charity no. 1173849.
We are grateful to our funders, including Arts Council England, Newcastle City Council, Garfield Weston Foundation, Jerwood Foundation, Community Foundation North East, Newcastle University and the The North East Mayoral Strategic Authority.
We are proud to be a Gallery of Sanctuary.
