Secret Museum of Mankind – Atlas of Instruments: Fiddles Volume 1

A curio and a labour of love, Fiddles Vol 1 is a compilation in the intriguingly-named Secret Museum of Mankind series curated by ethnic music audiophile Pat Conte, drawing from his collection of over 30,000 78rpm records.

To hear these 17 tracks of fiddle music from all corners of the world, recorded from the 1920s to the 1950s, is indeed to enter a virtual museum. Despite being lovingly restored, mastered and engineered, the gloriously evocative scratch and hiss of the original recordings remains. It’s released digitally and on vinyl, with the vinyl coming in a gatefold package with liner notes and original drawings of rare fiddles.

Some tracks are a serendipitous result of migration to New York, such as ‘Raks Jamili’ (by an anonymous Syrian-Lebanese group, recorded in Brooklyn) and ‘Sligo Maid’s Lament / Trip to the Cottage’ – a set of reels by Irish fiddler Paddy Killoran. With music from Crete, Quebec, Sicily, Madagascar, China, Uganda, Serbia, India, Norway and more, this is a fascinating, globetrotting time capsule.