Research Guides
African-American Traditions in Song, Sermon, Tale, and Dance, 1600s-1920 by
The 2,328 entries identify books, articles, sermons, pamphlets, and broadsides, among other formats, all centered on black folk culture with emphasis on the manifestations of that culture from 1600 to 1920 through song, dance, games, sermons, and illustrations. The bibliography is divided into four major chronological sections: Colonial-Federalist, Antebellum, Post-Emancipation, and Early Twentieth Century. A fifth section, The WPA Slave Narrative Collection, includes materials (collected in the 1930s) that are essential to a serious discussion of American slavery. Within these five sections materials are classified as literature, artwork, and/or collections. Literature and artwork subsections are further divided into social activities, religious experience, song, and tale. Iconographical entries often compliment the literary ones and some themes run throughout the book. The materials are indexed by names of authors and artists, by subject, and by first lines of songs.
Call Number: Con Ref Z5956.A47S68 1990ISBN: 0313249180Publication Date: 1990-09-11
- Exploring the Aesthetics of African-American Classical Music: An Annotated Bibliography by Chris JenkinsThis annotated bibliography addresses the history and aesthetics of “classical” music compositions by African-American composers .
Folk Song Index by
Based on her own collection of books, scores, and recordings, Brunnings gave each item an accession number as she painstakingly recorded the contents for her index. Brunnings’s collection became the core of the Folk Song Society of Greater Boston’s (FSSGB) library
Call Number: Con Ref ML128.F75 B83ISBN: 082409462XPublication Date: 1981-08-01
An Index to African-American Spirituals for the Solo Voice by
The spirituals are neatly organized in four indexes: a title index, first line index, alternate title index and a topical index that includes twenty major categories. A bibliography of indexed sources serves as a guide for further research.
Call Number: Con Ref ML128.S4 A27 1999ISBN: 0313305773Publication Date: 1999
Spirituals: a multidisciplinary bibliography for research and performance by
This annotated bibliography documents articles, books, and dissertations published since 1920. Of those, 150 are books; 80 are chapters within books; 615 are journal articles, and 150 are dissertations, along with a selection of highly significant items published before 1920. The most recent publications included date from early 2014. Disciplines researched include music, literature and poetry, American history, religion, and African American Studies.
Call Number: Con Ref ML128.S4 A272 2015ISBN: 0895797992Publication Date: 2015-01-01
Africana Databases that Contain Music Information
- African American Periodicals (1825-1995) This link opens in a new window More than 170 periodicals by and about African Americans, published in 26 states. Includes academic and political journals, commercial magazines, institutional newsletters, bulletins, annual reports and more.
- African Journals Online This link opens in a new window Use African Journals OnLine (AJOL) to find articles written by scholars on the continent of Africa. Although there are not many articles on the art of Africa it is still an important place to check.
- Black Studies Center This link opens in a new window Covers the Black experience from ancient Africa to the modern day from perspectives in history, literature, political science, sociology, philosophy, music, visual arts, and religion. Also includes the full text backfile (1935 to 1975) of the influential black newspaper The Chicago Defender.
- Oxford African American Studies Center This link opens in a new window African American and African history and culture including biographies, topical entries, primary source documents with commentary, images, maps, charts, tables, and more.
- Oxford Bibliographies This link opens in a new window Authoritative guide to reliable peer-reviewed resources and scholarship in African Studies, Buddhism, Latin American Studies, Linguistics, Medieval Studies, and Political Science. Bibliographies are selectively curated and annotated by expert academics and offer high-level overviews that provide non-experts with a point of entry into unfamiliar areas of study.
Music Research Databases
- Arts & Humanities Citation Index (via Web of Science) This link opens in a new window Indexing and abstracts of millions of peer-reviewed articles in the arts and humanities disciplines. Also includes book chapters, conference papers and other formats. Cited and citing reference searching.
- Musical America This link opens in a new window Contains international industry news, all contact information and articles.
- Music Index Online This link opens in a new window Music Index Online covers topics concerned with every aspect of the classical and popular world of music. Dates of coverage: 1979-present.
- Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive: Music This link opens in a new window A series of digital collections focused on 20th and 21st century music genres such as Rock, Folk, Hip-Hop, and Rap. This collection contains 1,461 issues comprising 100,696 pages and 91,441 articles. Note: Oberlin only has access to Music Magazine Archive through this platform, not the full Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive.
- Répertoire International d'Iconographie Musicale (RIdIM) International association for the recording and development of music and dance performances in the field of visual arts and crafts.
- RILM Full Text This link opens in a new window Comprehensive music bibliography providing international coverage of music literature. Dates of coverage: 1775 to the present.
- RIPM Jazz Periodicals This link opens in a new window RIPM Jazz Periodicals is a collection of 105 American full-text jazz journals and magazines published. Developed in collaboration with the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University and partner libraries, RIPM Jazz Periodicals is an essential documentary resource that chronicles American jazz culture as seen through the eyes of its contemporaries. (Dates of coverage: 1914-2000)
- RIPM – With Full Text This link opens in a new window Citations to articles in scholarly and popular music periodicals. Contains more than 500,000 entries. Dates of Coverage: 1800 and 1950
- RISM: Repertoire International des Sources Musicales This link opens in a new window An international, cooperative effort to identify and describe the world's pre-1850 musical sources, to record what primary sources exist, and to identify their locations. These sources include manuscripts or printed music, writings on music theory, and libretti.
Links
- The folk song index : an Oberlin College Library and Sing out collaboration An index to traditional folk songs of the world with an emphasis on English-language songs. A collaborative project organized by Kathy Abromeit from the Oberlin Conservatory Library and Mark Moss of Sing Out!
- Spirituals Database A searchable access to recorded track information for concert Negro Spiritual settings performed by solo Classical vocalists. The resource contains a selection from a century of historic and contemporary concert spiritual recordings produced on compact discs, long-playing (33 1/3 rpm) albums, 78 rpm records, 45 rpm discs, audio cassettes and streamed audio files, as well as demonstration recordings from musical score collections.
- WPA Federal Writers’ Project, Spirituals results This is a University of South Carolina digital collection.
Useful Subject Headings
- Minstrel music
- Minstrel shows
- Popular music -- United States -- To 1901 - minstrel
- Spirituals (Songs) -- Social aspects
- Spirituals (Songs) -- United States -- 19th century -- History and criticism
- Work songs -- Southern States -- History and criticism
- Work songs--United States--History and criticism
Many thanks to Rebecca Belford for her help with the above information!