Voices Remembering Slavery: Freed People Tell Their Stories
The recordings of former slaves in Voices Remembering Slavery: Freed People Tell Their Stories took place between 1932 and 1975 in nine states. Twenty-three interviewees discuss how they felt about slavery, slaveholders, coercion of slaves, their families, and freedom. Several individuals sing songs, many of which were learned during the time of their enslavement. It is important to note that all of the interviewees...
Contributor:
Library of Congress. National Digital Library Program
Florida Folklife from the WPA Collections, 1937-1942
Florida Folklife from the WPA Collections combines sound recordings and manuscript materials from four discrete archival collections made by Work Projects Administration (WPA) workers from the Joint Committee on Folk Arts, the Federal Writers' Project, and the Federal Music Project from 1937-42. This online presentation provides access to 376 sound recordings and 106 accompanying materials, including recording logs, transcripts, correspondence between Florida WPA workers...
Contributor:
Kennedy, Stetson - American Folklife Center - Library of Congress. National Digital Library Program
Voices from the Dust Bowl: the Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection, 1940-1941
Voices from the Dust Bowl: The Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection is an online presentation of selections from a multi-format ethnographic field collection documenting the everyday life of residents of Farm Security Administration (FSA) migrant work camps in central California in 1940 and 1941. The collection as a whole consists of approximately 18 hours of audio recordings (436 titles on...
Contributor:
American Folklife Center - Library of Congress. National Digital Library Program
Southern Mosaic: The John and Ruby Lomax 1939 Southern States Recording Trip
This recording trip is an ethnographic field collection that includes nearly 700 sound recordings, as well as fieldnotes, dust jackets, and other manuscripts documenting a three-month, 6,502-mile trip through the southern United States. Beginning in Port Aransas, Texas, on March 31, 1939, and ending at the Library of Congress on June 14, 1939, John Avery Lomax, Honorary Consultant and Curator of the Archive of...
Contributor:
Lomax, John A. (John Avery) - Lomax, Alan - Lomax, Ruby T. (Ruby Terrill) - Archive of American Folk Song
Fiddle Tunes of the Old Frontier: The Henry Reed Collection
Fiddle Tunes of the Old Frontier: The Henry Reed Collection presents traditional fiddle tunes performed by Henry Reed of Glen Lyn, Virginia. Recorded by folklorist Alan Jabbour in 1966-67, when Reed was over eighty years old, the tunes represent the music and evoke the history and spirit of Virginia's Appalachian frontier. Many of the tunes have passed back into circulation during the fiddling revival...
Contributor:
Glenroy, William - Reed, Henry - Reed, Gene - Reed, Watha - Jabbour, Alan - Ricci, Glenn - American Folklife Center
California Gold: Northern California Folk Music from the Thirties Collected by Sidney Robertson Cowell
This online presentation, California Gold: Northern California Folk Music from the Thirties, comprises 35 hours of folk music recorded in 12 languages representing numerous ethnic groups and 185 musicians. It includes sound recordings, still photographs of the performers, drawings of folk instruments, and written documentation from a variety of European ethnic and English- and Spanish-speaking communities in northern California in the 1930s. This New...
Contributor:
Cowell, Sidney Robertson - American Folklife Center - Library of Congress. National Digital Library Program
The Danny Kaye and Sylvia Fine Collection
Danny Kaye and Sylvia Fine in London American actor, singer and comedian Danny Kaye arrives with his wife, Sylvia Fine, for an appearance in London. November 1948. Following the professional lives of the husband-wife artistic duo, this presentation features a wide variety of materials, including manuscripts, scores, scripts, photographs, sound recordings and video clips from the Danny Kaye and Sylvia Fine Collection. Kaye, a...
Contributor:
Kaye, Danny - Fine, Sylvia - Halsman, Philippe - McDowall, Roddy - Dena Pictures, Inc - Kaye (Danny)/Fine (Sylvia) Collection (Library of Congress)
Coptic Orthodox Liturgical Chant and Hymnody
With its roots in Ancient Egyptian music, Coptic Christian chant is one of the oldest liturgical genres still performed today. Drawing on the Ragheb Moftah Collection, this presentation explores some of the earliest music transcriptions by explorers, missionaries, and scholars in Egypt, highlighting Moftah's efforts to notate, record, and preserve all Coptic Orthodox hymns. Learn more about current scholarship and what is happening in...
Contributor:
Moftah, Ragheb - Newlandsmith, Ernest - Tóth, Margit - Wilson, Marian Robertson
The Gerry Mulligan Collection
[Portrait of Gerry Mulligan, ca. 1980s] by William P. Gottlieb. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress. As a saxophonist, composer, arranger and band leader, Gerry Mulligan (1927-1996) is a jazz legend. The Library of Congress serves as the repository for the Gerry Mulligan Collection, which it obtained in the late 1990s. In this initial Web offering, the Library of Congress is making available...
Contributor:
Mulligan, Gerry - Boras, Tom - Brookmeyer, Bob - Cohn, Al. - Dankworth, John - Forman, Mitchel - Grusin, Dave - Handy, George - Holman, Bill - Lee, Julian - Mandel, Johnny - McFarland, Gary
Patriotic Melodies
Patriotic Melodies tells the stories behind many of the songs that have now become part of the American national heritage. A combination of hymns, national songs, music of the theater, radio and television, military themes, and poetry, all of this music demonstrates that while over history many things have changed, this expression of pride and hope remain a constant part of the American experience....
The Roger Reynolds Collection
Roger Reynolds' compositions incorporate elements of theater, digital signal processing, dance, video, and real-time computer spatialization, in a signature multidimensionality of engagement. This Web site provides a glimpse into the process of this Pulitzer prizewinning American composer.
Contributor:
Reynolds, Roger - Daniel, Oliver - Druckman, Jacob - Eaton, John - Gaburo, Kenneth - Ichiyanagi, Toshi - Kraft, William - Lockwood, Lewis - Luening, Otto - Subotnick, Morton - Tilbury, John - Zukofsky, Paul
Transit of Venus March
Transit of Venus The Library of Congress joins with NASA in celebrating the second "transit of Venus" since December 6, 1882, by providing access to the score and band parts of John Philip Sousa's "Transit of Venus March." In addition to the score and parts, which can be printed directly from this Web site, we also provide a recording, additional sheet music, and other...
The March King: John Philip Sousa
Painting of Sousa during US Marine Band era, [n.d.]. Performing Arts Reading Room. An online presentation of selected music manuscripts, photographs, printed music, historical recordings of the Sousa Band, copies of programs and press clippings, and more from the Sousa Collection at the Library of Congress. About the John Philip Sousa Collection at the Library of Congress John Philip Sousa began donating his music...
Omaha Indian Music
Presented here are selections from the American Folklife Center's collections documenting Omaha music traditions. The sound recordings include 44 wax cylinder recordings made in the 1890s (first published on a 1985 LP entitled Omaha Indian Music: Historical Recordings from the Fletcher/La Flesche Collection), 323 songs and spoken-word segments from the 1983 Omaha harvest celebration pow-wow, 24 spoken-word segments from an interview with an Omaha...
Contributor:
American Folklife Center - Library of Congress. National Digital Library Program
Quilts and Quiltmaking in America, 1978-1996
Contains 181 segments from recorded interviews with quiltmakers and 410 graphic images (prints, positive transparencies, and negatives) from two collections in the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress: the Blue Ridge Parkway Folklife Project Collection (AFC 1982/00) and the Lands' End All-American Quilt Contest Collection (AFC 1997/011). The images of the quilts convey the range of contemporary quiltmaking styles in the United...
Contributor:
American Folklife Center - Library of Congress. National Digital Library Program
American Leaders Speak: Recordings from World War I
The Nation's Forum recordings were made between 1918 and 1920 in an effort to preserve the voices of prominent Americans; in most cases, they are the only surviving recordings of a speaker. The project originated with St. Louis attorney Guy Golterman (1879-1967), an active supporter of the opera and other performing arts. With the endorsement of the Department of State's Committee on Public Information...
Contributor:
Baker, Newton Diehl - Butler, Nicholas Murray - Clark, Champ - Colby, Bainbridge - Coolidge, Calvin - Cox, James M. (James Middleton) - Cummings, Homer S. (Homer Stillé) - Daniels, Josephus - De Valera, Éamon - Gerard, James W. (James Watson) ...
Baker, Newton Diehl - Butler, Nicholas Murray - Clark, Champ - Colby, Bainbridge - Coolidge, Calvin - Cox, James M. (James Middleton) - Cummings, Homer S. (Homer Stillé) - Daniels, Josephus - De Valera, Éamon - Gerard, James W. (James Watson) - Gompers, Samuel - Harding, Warren G. (Warren Gamaliel) - Hays, Will H. (Will Harrison) - Hitchcock, Gilbert M. (Gilbert Monell) - Lane, Franklin K. - Lewis, James - Lodge, Henry Cabot - Long, Breckinridge - McAdoo, W. G. (William Gibbs) - Owen, Robert L. (Robert Latham) - Palmer, A. Mitchell (Alexander Mitchell) - Pershing, John J. (John Joseph) - Poindexter, Miles - Purdy, Richard A. (Richard Augustus) - Robinson, Corinne Roosevelt - Rockefeller, John D., (John Davison) - Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano) - Vanderlip, Frank A. (Frank Arthur) - White, George - Wise, Stephen S. (Stephen Samuel) - Wood, Leonard
Emile Berliner and the Birth of the Recording Industry
This collection showcases the work of Emile Berliner, a prominent inventor at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. Overlooked by today's historians, Berliner's creative genius rivaled that of his better-known contemporaries Thomas Alva Edison and Alexander Graham Bell, and, like the works of these two inventors, Berliner's innovations helped shape the modern American way of life. In America...
Contributor:
Library of Congress. Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division - Library of Congress. National Digital Library Program
Traditional Music and Spoken Word
The audio recordings represented in the catalog were recorded between 1897 and 1962. The majority of these are lacquer and aluminum-based instantaneous disc recordings made between 1933 and 1950. The handful of collections that fall outside this date range is described at the end of this page. The card catalog represented in this online database was first created by Work Projects Administration (WPA) workers...
African-American Band Music & Recordings, 1883-1923
The core of this presentation consists of "stock" arrangements for bands or small orchestras of popular songs written by African Americans. In addition, we offer a smaller selection of historic sound recordings illustrating these songs and many others by the same composers (the arrangements might not necessarily be the same as those on the stocks). Educational materials include short biographies of composers and performers...
Alan Lomax Collection of Michigan and Wisconsin Recordings
In 1938 the Library of Congress dispatched the pioneering folklorist and song collector Alan Lomax—already a seasoned field worker at age 23—to conduct a folk song survey of the Great Lakes region. He traveled in a 1935 Plymouth sedan, toting a Presto disc recorder and a movie camera. When he returned nearly three months later, having driven thousands of miles on barely paved roads,...
Contributor:
Aho, Lillian - Aho, Pekka - Allen, Perry - Bangac, Petar - Baratono, Art - Basrak, Stjepan - Bellaire, Exilia - Bellaire, Mose - Berky, Nandor - Bonner, Daniel ...
Aho, Lillian - Aho, Pekka - Allen, Perry - Bangac, Petar - Baratono, Art - Basrak, Stjepan - Bellaire, Exilia - Bellaire, Mose - Berky, Nandor - Bonner, Daniel - Bonner, Patrick - Brideup, Louis - Cadeau, Ed - Cadeau, John - Cadeau, Mathilda - Carrière, Dolphis - Carrière, Fred - Cloud, Joe - Cloud, Clarence - Delmas, Adolphus - Dobričan, Lazar - Dragić, Todor - Erickson, Max - Floriani, Margaret - Floriani, Veko - Floriani, Vladimir - Forster, Yalmer Eino - Frazier, Belle - Frazier, Calvin - Frazier, Clara - Frazier, Lonnie - Frazier, Viola - Fredrickson, John - Fredrickson, Kaisa - Gallagher, Dominic - Gallagher, Andrew E. - Gallagher, Emerald - Gaza, V. Sipoo - Graham, Bert - Green, John W. - Grbić, Ludevit - Guzal, Frank - Halinen, Selma Elona - Happy Jack Woodward - Härkönen, Amanda - Hirvelä, Wäin - Hulan - Hyvönen, John - Jackson, Andrew - Juhani, Aapo - Kallio, Kalle - Kania, Felix - Ketvirtis, Charles - King, Edward - Korvenpaa, Charles - Krawezak - Kruczynski, Clara - Kubesh, John G. - Kubien, Rose - Larson, Nils - Larson, John - Larson, Steen - Lathrop, Carl - Leclaire, Leilia - Lewandowski, Edwina - Lewandowski, Stephan - Lewandowski, Stephanie - Lewandowski, Ted - Mahoski, Henry - Maki, Emil - Maki, Frank - Marczis, Joseph - Marinetti, Victor - Marinetti, John - Marttila - Maté - McBride, Bill - McCauley, Edward - McCarthy, Barney - McCormick, Ed - McDonough, Patrick - Meyers, Herman - Miron, Joe - Nemeth, Kalman - Niewiadomska, Frances - Norman, John - O'Donnell, Mike J. - Olah, Julius - Palmer, Mason - Pischner, Helen - Pittman, Sampson - Pohjala, Aina - Pol, Thomas - Pope, Allan C. - Preda, Emil Milan - Rajčević, Stepan - Rautanen, Vernon - Ricksgers, Joseph - Romel, Adolph - Romel, Leo - Romel, Sylvester - Romel, Ted - Romel - Rudzinski, Alex - Sainović, Ilija - Scheffer, Peter - Sielvankiewiez - Similä, Gusti - Strzelecki, Tony - Styes, Archie - Szilagyi, Dizso - Szabo, Andy - Thrasher, Ed - Tomić, Pajo - Trivanović, Stefan - Trueblood, Asel - Vasvary, Steve - Velin, Maria - Viita, Frank - Vizina, Adelore - Vujanović, Stjepan - Wallen, Mr. - Warslzyk, Tony - Wells, Lester - Lomax, Alan - Archive of American Folk Song
Amazing Grace
This collection highlights the history of the hymn “Amazing Grace” from the earliest printing of the song to selected performances of it on published and field recordings. These items have been collected from several divisions in the Library of Congress, including the Music Division, the American Folklife Center, the Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division, and the Rare Books Division. Also available here...
American English Dialect Recordings: The Center for Applied Linguistics Collection
The Center for Applied Linguistics Collection contains 118 hours of recordings documenting North American English dialects. The recordings include speech samples, linguistic interviews, oral histories, conversations, and excerpts from public speeches. They were drawn from various archives, and from the private collections of fifty collectors, including linguists, dialectologists, and folklorists. They were submitted to the Center for Applied Linguistics as part of a project...
Contributor:
Abbott, Fortis - Aspinall, Wayne N. - Emerson, Lee - Earhart, Amelia - La Guardia, Fiorello H. (Fiorello Henry) - Marshall, Fred - Mencken, H. L. (Henry Louis) - Mele, Joseph C. - Christian, Donna - Center for Applied Linguistics - National Endowment for the Humanities - Library of Congress. National Digital Library Program - American Folklife Center
Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music, ca. 1870-1885
Consists of over 47,000 pieces of sheet music registered for copyright during the years 1870 to 1885. Included are popular songs, piano music, sacred and secular choral music, solo instrumental music, method books and instructional materials, and music for band and orchestra. In 1870 the United States Congress established the Library of Congress as the sole agency for copyright registration and deposit. The law...
Ancestral Voices
Among the very first activities of the American Folklife Center (AFC) -- created in 1976 -- was the Federal Cylinder Project (FCP), a large-scale initiative to preserve and provide access to historic and fragile field recordings captured on wax cylinders, many dating back to the late nineteenth century. The goal of the FCP (1977-1987) was to gather together thousands of such historical recordings held...
Archive of Hispanic Literature on Tape
Listen to audio recordings of prominent Hispanic writers including Nobel Laureates Gabriel García Márquez, Juan Ramón Jiménez, Gabriela Mistral, Pablo Neruda, and Octavio Paz, and renowned writers Jorge Amado, Jorge Luis Borges, and Julio Cortázar reading from their works at the Library of Congress. The Archive of Hispanic Literature on Tape at the Library of Congress dates back to 1943. It contains nearly seven-hundred...
