Our Heritage is a Trust is a project aiming to support the preservation of lyrical heritage in Yemen and prevent its loss, disappearance, theft, and distortion. Al Shargabi elaborates on the challenges “Natural degradation and poor state of some of the collections puts the recordings at high risk. We need to digitize these collections to make sure they remain accessible to future generations.” Due to the war in Yemen and the country’s instability, audio heritage in Yemen is highly at risks and demands emergency intervention to digitize and archive the musical heritage of the country. This precious heritage is currently archived on gramophone records, reel tapes and cassette tapes, facing risks of technical obsolescence.

Through this project, around 10,000 recordings will be digitized and classified on a digital database that will be made accessible, while ensuring ownership rights, to encourage heritage promotion and revival as well as research around them. Al Shargabi explains “To preserve our collections, we first clean the material of the recordings, then transfer the analogs to digital formats, then list them in the database, which will include information such as the music genre, composer, author, singer, instruments etc.”