Recommended Resources
- Britannica Academic
Britannica Academic provides access to high-quality, comprehensive reference information. Includes access to the Britannica encyclopedia, atlas, world data, the Classics, biographies, news, multimedia, and more. You can also use Britannica Academic to search an Internet directory that includes more than 300,000 links to Web sites selected, rated, and reviewed by Britannica editors. This database also includes the Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate® Dictionary.
- Cambridge Core
Cambridge Core is the home of academic content from Cambridge University Press. The collection includes access to nearly one million articles and more than 300 books covering a wide variety of subjects. In addition, users can access more than 100 Cambridge Elements - original, concise, authoritative, and peer-reviewed scholarly and scientific research, organised into focused series edited by leading scholars, and providing comprehensive coverage of the key topics in disciplines spanning the arts and sciences.
- Oxford Music Online & Grove Music Online
An online music reference source, offering comprehensive coverage of music, musicians, music-making, and music scholarship. This platform is a powerful resource for music research with over 52,000 articles written by nearly 9,000 scholars charting the diverse history and cultures of music around the globe.
Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World, Volume 9 by Call Number: ML3486.A1 B56 2014ISBN: 9781441141972Publication Date: 2014The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Popular Music Volume 9 is one of six volumes within the 'Genre' strand of the series. This volume discusses the genres of the Caribbean and Latin America relation to their cultural, historical and geographic origins; technical musical characteristics; instrumentation and use of voice; lyrics and language; typical features of performance and presentation; historical development and paths and modes of dissemination; influence of technology, the music industry and political and economic circumstances; changing stylistic features; notable and influential performers; and relationships to other genres and sub-genres. This volume features over 300 in-depth essays on genres ranging from Afro-Cuban Jazz to Alcatraz, from Carnaval to Charanga, and from Dancehall to Dub.
Encyclopedia of African American Music [3 Volumes] by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780313342004Publication Date: 2010African Americans' historical roots are encapsulated in the lyrics, melodies, and rhythms of their music. In the 18th and 19th centuries, African slaves, longing for emancipation, expressed their hopes and dreams through spirituals. Inspired by African civilization and culture, as well as religion, art, literature, and social issues, this influential, joyous, tragic, uplifting, challenging, and enduring music evolved into many diverse genres, including jazz, blues, rock and roll, soul, swing, and hip hop. Providing a lyrical history of our nation, this encyclopedia showcases all facets of African American music including folk, religious, concert and popular styles.
St. James Encyclopedia of Hip Hop Culture by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781410380814Publication Date: 2018-03-07The St. James Encyclopedia of Hip Hop Culture presents more than 200 entries that examine the history and contributions of hip hop to American and global culture. It provides academic and public libraries with a much-needed authoritative reference resource defining, exploring, and analyzing this significant aspect of culture and history. Entries in the work discuss the music (rap and DJing), dance (breakdancing), and visual arts (graffiti) that are the artistic expressions of hip hop culture, and feature the people, places, events, and works that started the movement and established hip hop as a global phenomenon.
Best Bets
- Dissertations & Theses Global (ProQuest)
A comprehensive collection of dissertations and theses from around the world, offering millions of works from thousands of universities. Full-text coverage spans from 1743 to the present, with citation coverage dating back to 1637.
- JSTOR
A multidisciplinary digital library that includes all 2,800+ academic journals on JSTOR; spanning more than 60 disciplines across the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Access also includes more than two million primary source documents.
And, with the incorporation of Artstor's collections, JSTOR is now home to more than two million images.
- Naxos Music Library
Naxos Music Library (NML) offers streaming access to more than 177,230 CDs of both standard and rare repertoire. Over 600 new titles are being added to the library each month.
- Naxos Music Jazz LibraryStreaming audio performances from over 32,000 jazz musicians, from legends to contemporary stars.
- Oxford Music Online & Grove Music Online
An online music reference source, offering comprehensive coverage of music, musicians, music-making, and music scholarship. This platform is a powerful resource for music research with over 52,000 articles written by nearly 9,000 scholars charting the diverse history and cultures of music around the globe.
- RILM Abstracts of Music Literature with Full Text (EBSCOhost)
A comprehensive bibliography of writings about music featuring citations, abstracts, and indexes. It covers over one million publications from the early 19th century to the present on traditional music, popular music, classical music, and related subjects, enhanced with the full text of more than 200 periodicals.
Other Useful Databases
- Education Magazine Archive (ProQuest)
An archive of magazines in the field of education, ranging from 1910 to 2015. The publications are aimed at teachers and other educational professionals and constitute valuable primary sources through which the evolution of educational policy, practice, and theory during this period may be delineated and interpreted. This content also pertains strongly to several related fields such as social history, psychology, and childhood studies.
- ERIC (EBSCOhost)
The Education Resource Information Center (ERIC), provides access to education literature and research. It includes access to information from journals included in the Current Index of Journals in Education and Resources in Education Index. Content includes journal articles, research reports, curriculum and teaching guides, conference papers, dissertations and theses, and books dating back to 1966.
- Taylor & Francis eBooks
Taylor & Francis eBooks offers approximately 100,000 full-text resources including content published within the past year.
- American MusicAmerican Music publishes articles on American composers, performers, publishers, institutions, events, and the music industry, as well as book and recording reviews, bibliographies, and discographies. The journal also includes interviews with composers and reviews of books, recordings, films, websites, and concerts.
- Black Music Research JournalCoverage 1980-2016. Includes articles about the philosophy, aesthetics, history, and criticism of black music. Many issues are devoted to a single theme, such as Blind Lemon Jefferson or black music in Europe.
- Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music EducationThe Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education provides a forum where contemporary research is made accessible to all with interest in music education. The Bulletin contains current research, and reviews of interest to the international music education profession.
- Early MusicA journal that seeks to explore every aspect of earlier musical repertories, present vital new evidence for our understanding of the music of the past, and tackle controversial issues of performance practice.
- EthnomusicologyCoverage 1953-2018. The official journal of the Society for Ethnomusicology, Ethnomusicology is the premier publication in the field. Its scholarly articles represent current theoretical perspectives and research in ethnomusicology and related fields, while playing a central role in expanding the discipline in the United States and abroad.
- Journal of Audiovisual Ethnomusicology (JAVEM)A bi-annual, peer-reviewed streaming journal of ethnomusicological film and video sponsored by the Society for Ethnomusicology. JAVEM aims to advance the use of multimedia as a method for exploring music and its entanglements, and as a medium for presenting those explorations.
- Journal of MusicologyThe Journal of Musicology (JM) is a refereed, international quarterly journal devoted to exemplary scholarship across the spectrum of music studies.
- Journal of New Music ResearchThis journal publishes material which increases our understanding of music and musical processes by systematic, scientific and technological means. Research published in the journal is innovative, empirically grounded and often, but not exclusively, uses quantitative methods.
- Journal of the American Musicological SocietyAvailable on campus. Journal of the American Musicological Society publishes scholarship from a broad array of musical inquiry: from historical musicology, critical theory, music analysis, iconography and organology, to pedagogy, performance practice, aesthetics and hermeneutics, ethnomusicology, gender and sexuality, popular music, and cultural studies.
- Journal of the Royal Musical AssociationThe Journal's editorial policy is to publish outstanding work in the field of music studies, broadly conceived including historical and critical musicology, theory and analysis, ethnomusicology, popular music studies, music pedagogy, audiovisual media, and practice-led research. The journal works to disseminate knowledge across the discipline and communicate specialist perspectives to a broad readership, while maintaining the highest scholarly standards.
- Musical QuarterlyA musical journal that has published the writings of important composers and musicologists. The journal focuses on the merging areas in scholarship where much of the challenging new work in the study of music is being produced.
- Music and LettersMusic & Letters is an international journal of music scholarship, providing a critical forum for discussion, debate, and in-depth consideration of a wide range of topics.
- Music Research Annual (MRA)Music Research Annual a peer-reviewed journal devoted to publishing review essays from the full range of academic disciplines that study music. Each article explores the current state of scholarship on a key topic within a discipline or interdisciplinary juncture and charts ways forward to new research.
- Music Research ForumMusic Research Forum is published annually by the graduate students of the University of Cincinnati's College-Conservatory of Music. The journal's articles present new research in the fields of musicology, theory, ethnomusicology, music education, music therapy, performance practice, music and culture, music criticism, and electronic media.
- Music Theory SpectrumThe official journal of the Society for Music Theory. Publishes articles on a wide range of topics in music theory and analysis, as well as interdisciplinary articles that reveal intersections with topics in other fields.
- SEM Student NewsA student-run and -focused biannual publication from the Society for Ethnomusicology since 2010.
- eBook Academic Collection (EBSCOhost)
This collection contains over 246,000 eBooks on a wide variety of academic subject matter.
- eBook Central (ProQuest)
eBook Central is a collection of nearly 250,000 academic e-books on a wide variety of subjects.
- Taylor & Francis eBooks
Taylor & Francis eBooks offers approximately 100,000 full-text resources including content published within the past year.
Brick City Vanguard by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781625345141Publication Date: 2020-04-28Amiri Baraka is unquestionably the most recognized leader of the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, and one of the key literary and cultural figures of the postwar United States. While Baraka's political and aesthetic stances changed considerably over the course of his career, Brick City Vanguard demonstrates the continuity in his thinking about the meaning of black music in the material, psychic, and ideological development of black people. Drawing on primary texts, paratexts (including album liner notes), audio and visual recordings, and archival sources, James Smethurst takes a new look at how Baraka's writing on and performance of music envisioned the creation of an African American people or nation, as well as the growth and consolidation of a black working class within that nation, that resonates to this day
Music Education: Source readings from ancient Greece to today by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780415506885Publication Date: 2013-02-05A collection of thematically organized essays that illuminate the importance of music education to individuals, communities and nations.
Writing about Music by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780520281530Publication Date: 2014-09-05This essential volume covers some of the thorniest issues of musical discourse: how to go about describing musical works and procedures in prose, the rules for citations in notes and bibliography, and proper preparation of such materials as musical examples, tables, and illustrations. One section discusses program notes, while others explain the requirements for submitting manuscripts and electronic files, and outline best practices for student writers. An appendix lists common problem words. Updates include greatly simplified citations of Internet locators, the recognition of multiple platforms, and the expectation of paperless transmission and storage of work. Cited as the authority by The Chicago Manual of Style, this classic handbook is the go-to source for anyone writing about music.
- Academic Video Online (AVON)
Academic Video Online delivers video titles spanning a wide range of subject areas including anthropology, business, counseling, film, health, history, music, and more.
- DocuseekDocuseek streams essential independent, social-issue and environmental films, providing access to content from leaders in documentary film distribution.
- Feature Films for Education (Infobase)
Infobase Feature films for Education Collection has almost 800 full-length titles. This collection focuses on both current and hard-to-find titles, including dramas, literary adaptations, blockbusters, classics, science fiction, environmental titles, foreign films, social issues, animation studies, Academy Award® winners, and more.
- Films on Demand: Archival Films & Newsreels Collection
Films Media Group (FMG) Archival Films & Newsreels has over 4,514 titles and over 578 hours of programming it is a treasure trove of archival and historical films from multiple sources.
- Films On Demand: Master Academic
This comprehensive collection includes 26 core academic collections with over 280,100+ video clips, 26,900+ full-length videos, and 14,500+ hours programming in various subject areas.
- Kanopy
Kanopy is a video streaming collection with over 26,000 films ranging from documentaries, indie, foreign, classic and blockbuster movies in several subjects and sub-subject areas. PBS, New Day Films, Kino Lorber, and California NewsReel are just a few of the content providers.
- Boosey & HawkesBoosey & Hawkes Online Scores, you can view works from the B&H catalogue in digital format after you register for a free account.
- Choral Public Domain LibraryHere you will find free choral/vocal scores, texts, translations, and other useful information.
- Digital Image Archive of Medieval MusicDIAMM (the Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music) is a resource for the study of medieval manuscripts. We present images and metadata for thousands of manuscripts on this website. We also provide a home for scholarly resources and editions, undertake digital restoration of damaged manuscripts and documents, publish high-quality facsimiles, and offer our expertise as consultants.
- Eastman School of Music - Sibley Music LibraryMusical scores from the University of Rochester Eastman School of Music. Over 23,500 publications in the public domain.
- Harvard Loeb Music Library's Digital Scores and LibrettiLoeb Music Library's digital collection of scores and libretti, selected for their rare or unique natures and their popularity as objects of research and teaching.
- Hymnary.orgA comprehensive index of hymns and hymnals.
- IMSLP Petrucci Music LibraryThe International Music Score Library Project shares scores in the public domain. Has over 232,000 works.
- Juillard Manuscript CollectionThe Juilliard Manuscript Collection is an extraordinary collection of 140 priceless autograph manuscripts, sketches, engravers proofs and first editions, which were donated to the school in February 2006 by Juilliard Board Chairman Bruce Kovner.
- Lester S. Levy Sheet Music CollectionThe Levy collection in the Sheridan Library of John Hopkins University has over 30,000 pieces of American popular music.
- Morgan Library & Museum Music Manuscripts OnlineMusic Manuscripts Online provides access to a selection of more than 700 digitized music manuscripts from the Morgan’s collections, for study and enjoyment.
- PartifiPartifi is made for musicians by musicians. By freely offering this part-making tool and maintaining a publicly accessible library of user-contributed scores, we seek to support the study and performance of historical music.
- Sheet Music Digital Collection, Ball State UniversityThe Sheet Music digital collection provides online access to historic sheet music predominantly from the United States dating from the 1840s to 1922. Most of the music is for piano and voice. Styles documented include popular music, secular art song, sacred art song, and songs pertaining to the United States in wartime.
- Black Futures: The art of resistance [Podcast]Black History/Black Futures: The Art of Resistance features Hampton Roads’ Brittney S. Harris, in conversation with Endowed Professor of Virginia Black History and Culture, Dr. Cassandra Newby-Alexander, will moderate this discussion, exploring each guest’s artistic genre.
Together, they uncover stories of resistance through music and theatre in the past and present. What does resistance look like or sound like in an artistic medium? How can art affect lasting change? How do their genres intersect to tell the past story of resistance and represent the ongoing resistance to racism in the artistic field? What does the future of composing and playwrighting look like? How does their work now shape the future of African Americans in the arts? - Black Music History Library (BMHL)BMHL is a living register of books, articles, documentaries, series, podcasts and more about the Black origins of traditional and popular music dating from the 17th century to present day.
- The Center for Black Music ResearchThe Center for Black Music Research Collection contains materials reflecting many areas of black music including composers, ethnomusicologists, music researchers, music journalists, scores, published music, and audiovisual collections across all genres.
- Doctoral Dissertations in MusicologyDoctoral Dissertations in Musicology (DDM) is an international database of bibliographic records for completed dissertations and new dissertation topics in the fields of musicology, music theory, and ethnomusicology, as well as in related musical, scientific, and humanistic disciplines.
- Institute for Composer DiversityThe Institute for Composer Diversity housed at the State University of New York at Fredonia, is dedicated to the celebration, education, and advocacy of music created by composers from historically excluded groups through database resources and programming analysis.
- Rebalancing the Music CanonThis open-access music data project aims to make works by historically marginalized and un(der)-represented people more discoverable, to decenter the musical canon, and make data-driven music scholarship more diverse and inclusive.