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.
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.
Research Guides
Creative Improvised Music: an international bibliography of the Jazz avant-garde, 1959 - Present by Call Number: Con Ref ML128.J3 G695 2019ISBN: 9780984413485Publication Date: 2019-07-15
Fire Music by
Organized by subject and artist, the over 7,100 sources are further divided by type of materials, including films, video, and audio cassettes as well as books, dissertations, and journal and newspaper articles in all major Western languages. A New Jazz Chronology places events in the jazz world in a social, political, and musical context; and a section on African-American Cultural History and the Arts provides background materials. Appendixes offer general reference sources, a directory of archives and research centers, and lists that classify artists by country and instrument. Indexes of artists, subjects, and authors complete the work.
Call Number: Con Ref ML128.J3G7 1991ISBN: 031327892XPublication Date: 1991-09-25
Jazz Books in the 1990s by
Jazz Books in the 1990s: An Annotated Bibliography contains over 700 entries covering adult non-fiction books on jazz published from 1990 through 1999. Entries are organized by category, including biographies, history, individual instruments, essays and criticism, musicology, regional studies, discographies, and reference works. Three indexes--by title, author, and subject--make this a valuable and comprehensive reference guide.
Call Number: Con Ref ML128.J3 H63 2010ISBN: 0810869853Publication Date: 2010
Jazz Research and Performance Materials by
Includes bibliographical references and indexes
Call Number: Con Ref ML128.J3 M33 1995ISBN: 0815303734Publication Date: 1995
Jazz Scholarship and Pedagogy: A Research and Information Guide by
An annotated bibliography to books, recordings, videos, and websites in the field of jazz.
Call Number: Con Ref ML128.J3 M34 2006ISBN: 0415939658Publication Date: 2005
Miles Davis : A Research and Information Guide by
This research and information guide provides a wide range of scholarship on the life, career, and musical legacy of Miles Davis, and is compiled for an interdisciplinary audience of scholars in jazz and popular music, musicology, and cultural studies.
Call Number: Con Ref ML134.D254 H46 2018ISBN: 1138652466Publication Date: 2017
ebooks - Oberlin login required
- Jazz History ebooks
- Jazz history and criticism
- Latin Jazz ebooks
- Rhythm and Blues ebooks
- Soul ebooks
Search for more ebooks at Oberlin
Many thanks to Rebecca Belford for her help with the above information!
Useful Subject Headings
- African American jazz musicians
- African American women jazz singers
- "blues music" and "history and criticism"
- Blues musicians
- Doo-wop (Music)
- Jazz--Analysis, appreciation
- Jazz--History and criticism
- Rhythm and blues music--History and criticism
- Soul music--History and criticism
Many thanks to Rebecca Belford for her help with the above information!
Discography
- The jazz discography (Tom Lord) General discography of all categories of recorded jazz, from 1896 to today. Covers all categories of jazz and other creative improvised music, including Traditional, Swing, Bop, Modern, Avant-Garde, Fusion, Third Stream, etc
- Jazz Discography These are mostly jazz discographies, but country and pop music are represented also. We hope that fans and collectors will find the information useful and we invite other discographers to join the growing ranks
- James R. and Susan Neumann Jazz Collection Part of Oberlin's Special Collections, The James R. and Susan Neumann Jazz Collection has as its focal point over 100,000 jazz recordings in a variety of formats (78s, 45s, LPs, CDs, DVDs). The Collection also contains a large number of print materials, including several thousand books on jazz and over 100 titles of jazz and blues periodicals that encompass 125 linear feet of shelf space. There are thousands of musicians’ photographs and autographs, along with additional memorabilia including film and concert posters, concert programs, sheet music, record catalogs, and artifacts.
Browse the books in the Conservatory Collection under ML156 to find discographies. This call number contains discographies by performers, labels, genre, etc. The title below represents an example of these types of books, but there are many more in the library.
Women in Jazz: A Discography of Instrumentalists, 1913-1968 by Presents a complete picture of women instrumentalists' recording activity from 1913 to 1968.' Jan Leder also shows the significant contributions made by women in jazz and their involvement playing jazz since its beginnings.
Call Number: Con Ref ML156.4.J3 L44 1985ISBN: 0313247900Publication Date: 1985-10-22
Streamed Jazz Audio
- Association for Cultural Equity Founded by Alan Lomax to explore and preserve the world's expressive traditions and cultural practices. Dedicated to ensuring that children learn about the oral traditions of their families and localities.
- Naxos Music Library: Jazz This link opens in a new window Thousands of streaming titles from the Fantasy catalogue and Naxos Jazz. Search by album or song title, featured artist(s), or catalog number. Includes album covers and liner notes.
- The Free Music Archive (FMA) A library of high-quality, legal audio downloads in many genres - classical to hip hop to experimental - maintained by radio station WFMU, and curated by partner radio stations, museums, music festivals, and record labels. Each mp3 can be downloaded for free, and is pre-cleared for other uses, such as remix projects, production soundtracks, etc. (these permissions vary by track, as determined by the rightsholders).
- Friday Night Jazz with Reuben Jackson features 145 three-hour programs from the popular Vermont Public Radio (VPR) weekly series, with 17 programs selected for online access by the host himself, music critic, poet, and jazz curator Reuben Jackson. Covering the years 2012, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018.
- The Jim Cullen Riverwalk Jazz Collection An archive of the Riverwalk Jazz radio program and website, featuring streaming audio of nearly 400 programs broadcast since 1989, with illustrated essays, information about band members and guest artists, complete playlists, supplementary recordings, and stories written by Jim Cullum.
- The Joe Smith Collection at the Library of Congress While president of Capitol Records/EMI in the 1980s, Joe Smith recorded 238 hours of interviews with over 200 musicians, producers, and music executives, documenting oral histories of popular music. Streaming audio of the unedited interviews will be added to this site as the original tapes are digitized.
- Louis Armstrong House Museum The world's largest archives devoted to a single jazz musician: sound recordings, photographs, films, scrapbooks, correspondence and papers, and six trumpets. Search the catalog of the museum for information about its holdings, and to see representative photographs from the collections.
- The National Jukebox Over 10,000 historical 78 rpm sound recordings (as of 5/10/2011), streamed from the Library of Congress' collection of Victor Records Co. discs: jazz and other popular music, opera, political speeches, novelty recordings, and early sound effects. The collection is updated monthly; users can create and share playlists, in addition to browsing through individual recordings.
- The Evolution of Jazz 40 episodes originally broadcast from WGBH from 1953-1954. The series was produced, written, and hosted by Nathan “Nat” Hentoff, a jazz historian, author, music critic, and civil liberties advocate, who went on to be the first non-musician to be named an NEA Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts in 2004
- Smithsonian Jazz The Smithsonian Institution's portal for jazz research, education, and appreciation, with oral histories of jazz artists, links to research collections, jazz education resources, and information about exhibits, events, and performances.
Blues & Jazz Collections and Archives
- All About Jazz Jazz reviews, interviews, news, forums, videos, downloads, photos, clubs, calendar and much more.
- The Blues Foundation Preserve blues heritage, celebrate blues recording and performance, expand worldwide awareness of the blues, and ensure the future of this uniquely American art form.
- The Chicago Jazz Archive was founded in 1976 to preserve materials on the birth and early growth of Chicago jazz. The Chicago Jazz Archive was founded in 1976 to preserve materials on the birth and early growth of Chicago jazz.
- The David W. Niven Collection of Early Jazz Legends, 1921-1991 Artists include Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton, Frank Sinatra, Chet Baker, Thelonious Monk, Benny Goodman, Charlie Parker, Barney Kessel, Django Reinhardt, Coleman Hawkins, Stan Getz, Clifford Brown, Bud Powell, Charlie Christian, Billie Holiday, Art Tatum, Dinah Washington, Al Grey, King Oliver, Oscar Peterson, and Bill Evans.
- Hogan Jazz Archive The Hogan Jazz Archive is the leading research center for the study of New Orleans jazz and related musical genres, including New Orleans ragtime, gospel, blues, rhythm and blues, and Creole songs.
- The Louis Armstrong House Museum & Archives The Louis Armstrong House Museum & Archives sustains and promotes the cultural, historical, and humanitarian legacy of Louis Armstrong by preserving and interpreting Armstrong’s house and grounds, collecting and sharing archival materials that document Armstrong’s life and legacy
- National Jazz Museum in Harlam he Museum, a Smithsonian Affiliate, was founded in 1997 by Leonard Garment who was Counsel to two U.S. Presidents and an accomplished jazz saxophonist, Abraham D. Sofaer who is a former U.S. District Judge who gave the initial gift in honor of his brother-in-law Richard J. Scheuer, Jr., and matching funds from the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone.
- The National Ragtime and Jazz Archive The archive documents early recorded jazz and in particular the lives of notable jazz musicians from the St. Louis area. The John Randolph Collection, with approximately 10,500 78-rpm records, provided the original basis for the NRJA Record Collection. Today there are more than 20,000 records in the archive. Audio and videotapes, sheet music, piano rolls, photographs, and oral history materials are also included.
- Rutgers Institute of Jazz Studies Archival Collections The Institute of Jazz Studies archives program collects, preserves, and provides access to jazz and its heritage to the world for research, creative expression, and enjoyment. The Institute’s archives include unique and unpublished materials with enduring value created and/or compiled by people and organizations related to jazz culture. The IJS is a public research repository and accepts donations of collections with the primary purpose of making those collections available to students, scholars, and the general public.
- Smithsonian Jazz Oral History Program Established by the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History in 1992, the Program seized the opportunity to document more than one hundred senior jazz musicians, performers, relatives, and business associates. Each interview was conducted by a jazz authority and was recorded on digital audiotape by a professional audio engineer. The interviews average six hours in length and cover a wide range of topics including early years, initial involvement in music, generally, and jazz specifically, as well as experiences in the jazz music world, including relationships to musicians.
- Willis Conover Collection Willis Conover (1920-1996) was a jazz producer and broadcaster on the Voice of America for over forty years. He produced jazz concerts at the White House, the Newport Jazz Festival, and for movies and television. Conover is credited with keeping interest in jazz alive in the countries of eastern Europe through his nightly broadcasts during the cold war when jazz was banned by most of the communist governments. The online audio includes interviews with luminaries such as Duke Ellington, Bill Evans, and Chet Baker.
Encyclopedias
The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz by
Arranged alphabetically according to last name, each entry of this book chronologically lists the highlights of every jazz musician's career.
Call Number: Con Ref ML102.J3 F4 1999ISBN: 0195074181Publication Date: 1999
Encyclopedia of the Blues (ebook) by
A full-length, authoritative encyclopaedia on the Blues as a musical form, this A-Z resource covers not only the performers, but also musical styles, regions, record labels and cultural aspects of the blues, including race and gender issues. Special attention is paid to discographies and bibliographies.
Call Number: Con Ref ML102.B6 E53 2006 (also available in print)ISBN: 0203950720Publication Date: 2006-01-01
The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz by
The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, second edition is the largest, most comprehensive and accurate reference work on jazz ever published, putting the world of jazz at your fingertips. With articles on every aspect of the field, from jazz groups, composers and arrangers to instruments, terms,record labels and venues, the new edition is the ideal companion for scholars and enthusiasts in this rapidly growing field.
Call Number: Con Ref ML102.J3 N48 2002 v.1-3ISBN: 1561592846Publication Date: 2003
Virgin Encyclopedia of Jazz by
Contains over 3,500 entries detailing every artist who has had an impact on the development of Jazz. Legends such as Ella, Duke, Bird and Miles are described alongside modern-day artists including John Scofield, Dave Holland and Norah Jones.
Call Number: Con Ref ML102.J3 V58 2004ISBN: 1852271833Publication Date: 2004
