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Popular Musicians and Bands

How to research popular musicians and bands, including rock, hip hop, rap, country, classic rock, 50's, etc.

Articles on the Internet (by Subject)

Music has good indexes to journal and magazine literature and a lot of the articles (but not all) are online. Here are the best sources for popular music and tips on using them. They are all linked from the Music Library page under Indexes to Music Journals.

  • MPA: Music and Performing Arts Online (Full Text). The key general index to music journals and magazines, covers both scholarly journals (like Journal of Popular Music) and magazines (like Rolling Stone). It works best if you click on Search Articles rather than just using the Quick Search. 
  • Rock's Back Pages. An index to music criticsm, not scholarly literature, for music from the 50s through the 90s. RBB will provide source material and information rather than a scholarly viewpoint. Very easy to browse by band or artist's name.
  • Rock Jazz Roots. "World's largest free magazine index." No article text online here, but useful for independent publications and fan zines.
  • Academic Search Premier. Not just music scholars write about popular music. This general magazine and journal index covers a wider range of published resources, Newsweek, Billboard, People Magazine, etc. etc.

Articles on the Internet (Citation in Hand)

If you have a citation (article title, journal or magazine title, author of the article, year published, volume and issue information, etc.), you can go right to the article by finding the journal. From the UCLA Library Catalog (the library's "search engine") find your article by searching the title of the journal or magazine. Essential-> Change the search box type to Journal Title; don't do a Keyword search. Once you have the information on your journal, you can click on the link to access it online.

If your article is not on the internet see the next tab: In the Music Library.

Collection of L.A. Philharmonic Photographs

id="Photos">Lena Horne

These photos are from the Los Angeles Philharmonic Archives and are made available via Calisphere