Music: World Music

African music and music of the African diaspora - Streaming of current artists' work, and interviews with musicians. Historical maps tracing the legacy of Al-Andalus, podcasts, photos and much more.

The Association for Cultural Equity now houses a good portion of the Alan Lomax Archives -- recordings made between 1946 and 1994 - throught the world. Sound background reading in the history of ethnomusicology.

An audiovisual archive, maintained by Indiana University, that documents music and culture from all over the world. With over 100,000 recordings that include more than 2,700 field collections, it is one of the largest university-based ethnographic sound archives in the United States.

Free visual images, sound recordings, books and periodicals dealing with Francophone culture are provided by the Bibliothèque nationale de France, with extremely thorough search and retrieval mechanisms.

The Internet Chinese Music Archives is an interesting compendium of recordings varying from traditional vocal music to contemporary "art" music. This appears to be a privately maintained site, and the provenance of the recordings is not apparent, but the sounds and variety are worth a listen.

Presents traditions that are linked to the roots of the world's peoples. One may explore historic collections of music, dance, and speech from almost every corner of the globe, recorded by hundreds of pioneering ethnographers. N.B: please log in as "guest," or register for free.

A multi-media reference archive and resource center for traditional music from Africa and the Americas, hosted by Vanderbilt University. It currently features a database of discrete performances from Uganda, sorted by region, language and instrument type.

The collection was compiled in the 1970’s, and is housed at Brown University. Interviews, musical demonstrations, field notebooks, photographs and commentary are also included. Excellent sound reproduction!

Includes music, lyrics, videos and essays on Jewish musical culture.

Deals mostly with popular and traditional music, listing upcoming events and job ads, in addition to interesting essays.

Provides a wealth of links listed under “Humanities” which pertain to music. Resources are grouped by categories of region, country and international topics.

Audio and videotaped recordings of Liberian music and dance, with links to historical and ethnographic documents and photographs.

Good historical demographic background information for ethno research

Educational site explaining the maqam(modal) system used in classical Arabic music, wonderful musical examples and images of instruments – a very thorough approach.

The United Kingdom’s largest collection of historical musical instruments from around the world, with some audio tracks provided.

The world's largest freely accessible database for information on musical instruments held in public collections.

Excellent overview of Puerto Rican music from the official territorial site.

A wonderful resource created to preserve a wide variety of traditions. Videos and sound recordings are included.

Scottish Song Index from the National Library of Scotland.

Includes a narrative history, commentaries on individual artists and recordings, as well as many audio clips.

Collection includes field recordings principally of Southeast Asia, South Asia, Africa and the music of Native North Americans. Recordings stream from the Internet Archives (free registration required).