Collection Highlights
Folklorist Bruce Bastin started Interstate Music in the 1970s to reissue important folk, jazz, country, blues, and ethnic recordings on LP. Over the years, he issued some 850 compilations on LP and later on CD, featuring music from the Americas and the Caribbean, Europe, Asia, and Africa.
In 2008, the UCSB Library acquired a portion of his collection consisting of about 10,000 78rpm ethnic and folk recordings from Latin America and Europe, as well as recordings in such popular traditions as Argentine tango and Brazilian samba. The collection arrived in 2008 and 2009.
Portions of the collection have been cataloged with the support of the Council on Library and Information Resources "Hidden Collections" program funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Recordings that have been cataloged can be found in UC Library Search. Digital copies can be requested through a Special Collections Research Account. Master tapes for Interstate Music releases are at the Southern Folklife Collection at UNC-Chapel Hill.
For more information on the collection or assistance in using the materials, please contact Special Collections staff at special@library.ucsb.edu.
