Ethnomusicology

Holdings include the papers of British anarchist and art critic Herbert Read; activist and prison abolitionist Jim Campbell; Keith McHenry, founder of the international activist organization Food Not Bombs; and Ann Hansen, author of Direct Action: Memoirs of an Urban Guerrilla. Issues relevant to the collection include Indigenous struggles, anti-war activism, ecological militancy, prison abolition, decolonization, feminism, queer politics, and radicalism in the arts. The Archive also houses a Digitization Centre devoted to scanning materials for preservation purposes and to facilitate on-line accessibility for researchers across Canada and internationally.

Collections include those of Barry Jean Ancelet, Elizabeth Brandon, Carl A. Brasseaux, Joseph Medard Carriere, Donald Hebert, Otis Hebert, Catherine Joliecoeur, John Laudun, Alan Lomax, Sylvie Marchand, Harry Oster, William Owens, Harry Prochon, Helena Putnam, Patricia Rickels, Ralph Rinzler, Corinne Saucier, Wiskes and Crutcher, and various student recordings.

The MLBSSA also collects materials in support of BGSU's College of Musical Arts, including scores and recordings for study and performance, anthologies and collected works of individual composers. The Music Library is the repository for works performed at the New Music Festival, held annually by the MidAmerican Center for Contemporary Music.

Archival recordings include: instantaneous disc recordings of arranger Ferde Grofé, John W. Work III of Fisk University and fiddler Tommy Magness, among others. 147 hours of oral history recordings, including the Cusic Collection of interviews with southern gospel composers, publishers and singers, and the Gayle Dean Wardlow Collection of interviews with Mississippi Delta African-American musicians. 270 hours of taped lectures, performances and interviews, including lectures by music industry executives to students of the MTSU recording industry program, 21 hours of Alabama African-American religious singing, and 136 hours of tapes from Center programs, lectures, concerts and field work.

The Chicago Blues Archive holds a significant collection of recordings, commercial and non-commercial, from 78s to compact discs. Included are live recordings from WXRT's Blues Breaker Specials, including artists such as Willie Dixon, Buddy Guy, John Lee Hooker, Taj Mahal, and Johnny Winter performing in Chicago clubs. The Archives' video collection includes tapes from Soundstage, Chicago public television station WTTW's live music program of the 1970's, including the remarkable Muddy Waters episode.

The Canadian Centre for Ethnomusicology is an archive and research resource documenting musical and cultural traditions locally and internationally. The collection includes diverse instruments and more than 4000 titles in audio/video recordings. The Centre helps users understand how people use music to connect, express, and create community and identity. The Centre serves a wide range of students, researchers and community groups, collaborating with music communities, and bringing together scholars, students, musicians and others in performances, workshops, and recordings.

The collection includes weekly news/ poetry/ music programs broadcast on several educational radio stations; in-depth interviews and reports on social and cultural issues; diverse activist voices; original and recorded music, poetry, original sound collages; and an extensive La Raza collection.

With an online directory of more than 230 separate collections, L.A. as Subject ensures that researchers know what materials are available, where they are located, and how to access them.

Author and music historian Frank Driggs first became enamored with jazz and swing while listening to late night broadcasts from hotels and ballrooms. After graduating from Princeton in 1952, Driggs moved to Manhattan where he joined with Marshall Stearns and other jazz scholars in documenting the history of jazz. Realizing the importance of preserving the eyewitness accounts of those who pioneered the jazz tradition, Driggs began recording oral histories of early jazz musicians. The musicians interviewed often gave or lent Driggs scrapbooks, photos and memorabilia, which he lovingly archived.

Their collections represent the four fields of anthropology – ethnology, linguistics, archaeology, and physical anthropology – and include field notes, journals, manuscripts, correspondence, photographs, maps, sound recordings, film, and video created by Smithsonian anthropologists and other preeminent scholars.

Centered around the John Edwards Memorial Collection, the SFC is especially rich in materials documenting the emergence of old-time, country-western, hillbilly, bluegrass, blues, gospel, Cajun and zydeco musics. There is also extensive documentation of the folk revival movement reflecting the tremendous interest in traditional music that has blossomed since the late 1950s. Photographs, recordings, ephemera, periodicals, and manuscript materials trace the rise of folk and bluegrass festivals in the United States; promote the study of folksong clubs, coffeehouses, fan clubs, and grassroots organizations; and chronicle the output of recording companies.