Earth's musical heritage finds an icy home next to global seed vault

From work by Indigenous musicians to songs from a sci-art pioneer, the Global Music Vault is open for business as a cultural equivalent to the Svalbard Global Seed Bank

By Chelsea Whyte

TOWERING over the frozen island of Spitsbergen, the largest in the archipelago of Svalbard, Norway, is a “doomsday vault”. Over 1 million seed varieties from around the world are being held in this mountainside facility, which is designed to preserve agricultural biodiversity and shield global food supplies from disaster. Now, a new kind of deposit is on its way to the mountain – the Global Music Vault …