Ethnomusicology

Its holdings contain the recordings of Ankole rites of passage and solo ndere flute players, along with jazz and blues players and groups, and African-derived music in contemporary Caribbean nations performing arrangements based on African musical aesthetics. Printed collections of musical materials and songs keep company with dissertations on traditional music and handbooks of ethnomusicology.

As one of the largest collections of field recordings from Ghana, this digital collection includes recorded interviews, musical demonstrations, field notebooks, photographs, commentary, and other original source material surrounding Koetting's research. The collection highlights his extensive work with Kasena musicians in Accra (Nima) and in the Kasena region near the country's border with Burkina Faso and also documents Akan, Ewe, Ga, Dagomba, and other musical types and activities of the time.

The Singing Wells Project is a partnership between The Abubilla Music Foundation, a UK registered charity (no. 1142173) and Ketebul Music, a non profit music & video studio based in Nairobi. Their goal is to record, archive and share the tribal music of East Africa for two important reasons – to preserve and celebrate the extraordinary cultural music heritage of the region and to help make this legacy relevant and fresh to today’s musicians. As a group of sound and video engineers, producers and musicians, they set out on this mission not to become ‘fossil collectors’ but to make sure this wonderful music becomes and remains influential within East Africa’s contemporary music industry.

Blacking, an English anthropologist and ethnomusicologist, had been invited to the University of Washington as a Jessie and John Danz Lecturer in 1971, and his series of talks became the basis for this published work. "How Musical Is Man?" explores the role of music in society and culture and, conversely, the role of culture and society in music. Blacking draws on his field research with the Venda people of the Northern Transvaal, South Africa as well as his own musical background to demonstrate the relationships between patterns of sound and patterns of human organization inherent to all societies.