About
The Archives and Research Center for Ethnomusicology (ARCE) of the American Institute of Indian Studies is India's foremost archive for the study of ethnomusicology and the performing arts. Established in 1982 and based in Gurugram, it houses some 25,000 hours of recordings of Indian music and oral traditions and is recognised worldwide as a model audiovisual archive.
ARCE was established in 1982 to bring to India recordings of Indian music and oral traditions that were held in collections abroad, and to stimulate the study of ethnomusicology within the country. Building a centralised archive acquired entirely by voluntary deposit, it grew to hold recordings as old as the 1930s, preserved in a climate-controlled vault, alongside a specialised reference library. Under director Shubha Chaudhuri it has become a resource centre of international standing, disseminating its collections through collaborations such as Smithsonian Folkways while respecting the wishes of artists and communities and Indian copyright.
Founding & Leadership
Non-profit, funded through the American Institute of Indian Studies and its member universities, grants and project support; collections acquired entirely by voluntary deposit.
Leadership & Trustees
Cultural Funding
Recognition
[{"name": "Recognised worldwide as a model audiovisual archive of its type", "year": "", "note": ""}]
AIIS-ARCE is the single most important archive of India's recorded music and oral traditions, safeguarding an irreplaceable sonic heritage - from classical music to ritual, epic and folk performance - and enabling its study by scholars, performers and communities across India and the world.
[Atlas Perspective] ARCE is an archive-and-research operator, not a funder: it preserves, documents and makes accessible India's recorded performing-arts heritage. Its collections are a foundational resource for the entire ecosystem the Atlas maps - artforms, artists and living traditions - and it is ideally positioned to partner on digitisation, community access and folk-tribal-arts documentation. A model of ethical, artist-respecting archiving.