Even before the first campaign of excavations at Tell Half, Oppenheim contacted Erich Moritz von Hornbostel, the director of the Berlin Phonogram Archive which had been founded in 1904.The archive (preserved today in Berlin’s Ethnologisches Museum) was eager to increase its collection of recordings systematically by outfitting expeditions with its own equipment and by instructing explorers how to use it. Journal entries for 1913 document that the architect Karl Müller, a member of Oppenheim’s staff at Tell Halaf, recorded traditional songs, some with instrumental accompaniment, at Ras al-Ain near Tell Halaf for the Phonogram Archive. The value of these cylinders which are among the earliest audio documents from Mesopotamia cannot be overestimated. Many recordings could be attributed to a specific group of musicians and dancers belonging to the ethnic minority of the Roma. Other recordings include an improvised song praising Oppenheim, recited by Said ibn Muhammad while playing the rubab/rabab (a lute-like instrument). The event, including the arrival of the musician’s family – some of them dancers and acrobats – was captured on film, now sadly lost, along with some of the transcript of the text, but photographs in Oppenheim’s collection survive to document it.
Sixteen of Oppenheim’s Edison cylinders – W. 6–9, 15–18, 20–24, 27, 31, and 32 – survive intact of thirty-three which were deposited at the Phonogram Archive in 1930. Comprehensive scholarly study (including cataloguing) – despite the good quality of sound exhibited by some – has not yet begun.
