Journals and Periodicals
- American Music (Journal, JSTOR) (Opens in new window)Publishes articles on American composers, performers, publishers, institutions, events, and the music industry, as well as book and recording reviews, bibliographies, and discographies.
- Black Music Research Journal (Journal, Project Muse)Begun in 1980, this journal includes articles about the philosophy, aesthetics, history, and criticism of black music.
- Journal of the Society for American Music (Journal, Cambridge) (Opens in new window)An international, peer-reviewed journal.
- RIPM Jazz Periodicals This link opens in a new windowFacsimiles of 105 full text American jazz journals published between 1914 and 2006. Significant journals include, among others, Cadence, Down Beat, Mississippi Rag, and Record Changer. Images, advertisements included.
- Sing Out! Magazine and Resource Center (Opens in new window)Published since 1950, Sing Out! Magazine is a quarterly folk music journal and support site. Each issue includes traditional and contemporary folk songs, feature articles on the best of folk music and the artists who make it ... plus news, reviews and more!The Sing Out! Resource Center is a multimedia collection of folk music recordings, photos, books, periodicals (and much more) collected over the last 60+ years, available free to Basic and Sustaining members of Sing Out!
Select Books
- Music Is History (e-book) byISBN: 9781647001841Publication Date: 2021-10-19New York Times bestselling Music Is History combines Questlove's deep musical expertise with his curiosity about history Focusing on the years 1971 to the present, Questlove finds the hidden connections in the American tapes, whether investigating how the blaxploitation era reshaped Black identity or considering the way disco took an assembly-line approach to Black genius.
- Songbooks byISBN: 9781478011941Publication Date: 2021-05-28A critical guide to books on American popular music from William Billings's 1770 New-England Psalm-Singer to Jay-Z's 2010 memoir Decoded. The authors of these works are as diverse as the music itself: women, people of color, queer writers, self-educated scholars, poets, musicians, and elites discarding their social norms.
Scores and Historical Archives
- Archives of African American Music and Culture (Indiana University) (Opens in new window)A repository of materials covering a range of African American musical idioms and cultural expressions from the post-World War II era.
Online Archives and Resources
- American Archive of Public Broadcasting (Opens in new window)This collection is a collaboration of resources between the Library of Congress and the WGBH Educational Foundation to preserve at-risk public media and provide a central web portal for access to unique programming.
- American Folklife Center (Opens in new window)Established in the Library of Congress Music Division in 1928, this is one of the largest archives of ethnographic materials from the United States and around the world.
- Lomax Digital Archive (Opens in new window)Alan Lomax's massive archive of songs and interviews. "Alan Lomax recorded a staggering amount of folk music. He worked from the 1930s to the '90s, and traveled from the Deep South to the mountains of West Virginia, all the way to Europe, the Caribbean and Asia." Includes recordings of his father, John Lomax.
- Next Level (Opens in new window)Next Level is an initiative of the U.S. Department of State, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Meridian International Center. Its mission is to use hip hop music, dance, and art to foster cross-cultural creative exchange in diverse communities. We work to promote understanding and conflict transformation in these audiences, and support the professional development of artists in those communities.
- Oral History of American Music (OHAM) Yale University (Opens in new window)Since the 1960s, OHAM collects and preserves audio and video memoirs in the voices of major musical figures of our time.
- Sounding Spirit Digital Library (Opens in new window)"This Sounding Spirit pilot digital library features songbooks and hymnals published across the southern United States from 1850 to 1925. Spanning holdings from four partner archives, the digital library’s twenty-two books include words-only hymnals, gospel songbooks, spiritual collections, and shape-note tunebooks, demonstrating the wide variety of form, content, and presentation in southern vernacular sacred songbooks.
Streaming Media
- DRAM (Database of Recorded American Music) This link opens in a new windowDiverse American recorded music, from folk to opera, Native American to jazz, 19th century classical to early rock, musical theater, contemporary, electronic and beyond, available for streaming.
- American Music (Alexander Street Press) This link opens in a new windowSongs and music by and about Native Americans, miners, immigrants, slaves, children, pioneers and cowboys. Included are the songs of Civil Rights, political campaigns, Prohibition, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, anti-war protests and more.Includes streaming music, album art and liner notes.
- NU Libraries Streaming Media Guide (Opens in new window)Includes music content we license or own.
Country Music
- Ken Burns: Country Music (8 part series) (Opens in new window)Explores the history of country music in the United States, with a focus on its beginnings in marginalized communities and the gradual development of the Nashville establishment. Highly acclaimed.
- Country Music: A Time Line (Opens in new window)PBS created this to accompany Ken Burns' film.