ECurator

Lijuan Qian

About this app

The ECurator is an app to sustain endangered oral music traditions across the world which have existed and are transmitted primarily in oral form. The App is conceived for tradition-bearers, teachers, community archivists and local institutions. It allows communities to curate their own recordings, align lyrics and translations, and use the results to teach, learn and share their music on their own terms. In practical terms this means a school can build lessons around aligned audio and text; a small museum can manage and retrieve materials at low cost; and performers can produce accurate subtitles and translations for wider audiences without ceding control of their material.
In many communities, the most authoritative performers are now elderly; without a usable platform, comprehensive repertoires will be difficult to pass on. The database collects the audio recording of commonly used words in minority languages (at moment are Yi [Yi Central dialect], Miao [Northeast Yunnan Miao] and Bai [Southern Bai dialect]) that refer to music and dance genres and activities among minority communities, which mainly exist in their oral tradition. Taking the audio recording of the words with the spoken and sung lyrics as a central point, the database connects these words and lyrics to their corresponding written scripts: Chinese, English and International Phonetic Alphabet.
On the top menu, you can switch between Chinese and English interfaces. In the search bar, you can select an ethnic minority, then enter the word you are interested in, such as “tree”, “flower” or “mountain” in Chinese or English. On the bottom menu, use “Dictionary” to access full information from the Database.