The Leeds University Union Music Library is known primarily through word of mouth, and its location is hard to find without prior direction. It’s hidden away past the end of a bright and bustling corridor, un-signposted, where a shiny wood panel floor abruptly cuts off to cement. It’s as if this border marks your own transition from the functional and impersonal community of the main student union into the more raw and exposing musical community. At the end of the corridor you must walk around a dusty staircase, go through ‘the secret door’, and here awaits the library. To have made it here already requires commitment, and no community can exist without some kind of commitment. So, feeling committed and open hearted, I entered the library. There are 40 years’ worth of collected records and CDs in there, representing 40 years of effort and involvement from student members. New students much like myself, perhaps feeling a bit lost, in the past would have found their way into this attic and felt a touch of the familiar. It has the feel of your old man’s den, with its rich aroma of record sleeves, dusty shelves, and its lovingly arranged selection of music. A happy
volunteer always sits at the table in the corner, and there’d often be a few people chatting. Coming up the stairs there might be a song you know leading you in. All this happened and meant it was pretty great when I first came here, ‘a nice breather from the usual campus bustle’ as their description promised, and so I spent a long break browsing through their music. The Music Library polls its members to decide which albums it is next going to bring in. Everything is there because a group of students were excited about hearing it and this makes it quite a unique arrangement. As I imagined who had chosen these CDs, who had listened after them, how they felt from it, I realised that, through this setup, it’s almost like a thread of love gets weaved through time. It also makes it easier for someone looking for new music to get something decent - it’s overwhelming trying to just dive into a new genre or era without some guidance and pre-selection, which the members and their votes provide. Coming from a smaller place where there were only a few people I knew who are into the weirder experimental side of music, to Leeds - and this
group which alone had hundreds - was great but a strange feeling. It was good seeing so many other people who like the same stuff, but the small satisfaction of being different and ‘in the know’ fell away suddenly. My precious uniqueness gone! Shallow, I know, but I think a lot of people experience it, especially as a reaction to feeling apart from most of the people that you know when you’re somewhere smaller. It wasn’t hard to get over though, I mean, finding new people with similar interests was a large part of why I came to Leeds, and in getting older you realise the small-mindedness of this, finding that there are more important and interesting things to worry about, so overall this was new and exciting. So mainly, the library is just a huge number of great albums, providing musical nourishment for students across Leeds, and it creates a friendly network of thoughtful and sensitive people, which music and libraries could of course never fail to attract. So, if you want some help finding new music or want to find some people with a taste for odd music then it’s worth checking out! Jim Clemoes
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