Primary Sources: Arts and Culture

An online collection that presents historical records on tap dance performance searchable by the title, date, and venue of performance; dancer, choreographer, director, producer; and performance medium (film, television, radio, stage, club); as well as by the names of “tap numbers” and tap choreographies.

An online exhibit featuring materials illustrating the diverse forms of variety theater that dominated the burgeoning entertainment world in the United States from 1870 to 1920.

The online Carnival Collection from the Louisiana Research Collection at Tulane University currently features more than 5,500 original float and costume designs. Most are from Carnival’s “Golden Age” (the 1870s through the 1940s) with about three hundred designs from 1950 to 1970. The great majority of designs are from the Carnival krewes of Comus and Proteus, with Rex and Momus also represented. Included are artworks from many of Carnival’s most noted designers, including Jennie Wilde, Bror Anders Wikstrom, and Charles Briton.

Emile Berliner and the Birth of the Recording Industry is a selection of 108 Berliner sound recordings from the Library of Congress's Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division.

Features 81 Edison Diamond Disc sound recordings from 1913 to 1922 of instrumental, vocal, spoken word, spoken comedy, foreign language and ethnic, religious, opera and concert recordings. Histories of the Edison cylinder and disc phonographs are available as well as other related materials, such as photographs and original magazine articles.

Considered a master of the electronic media, Tony Schwartz changed the face of radio and television advertising by creating socially conscientious campaigns such as the nation’s first anti-smoking ad. Throughout his career Schwartz was a pioneer in the field of soundscape recording, capturing the people, sounds and events of his native New York City. Click "selected recordings" to listen to some of Schwartz's historic radio broadcasts.

A rare resource for the study of the history of the political, cultural, and commercial ties between the United States and Cuba via public broadcasting during a pivotal moment in the 2oth century. The collection offers new perspectives and insights into the use of media as political and cultural propaganda by Cuba and the United States during the Cold War era, as well as the history of popular culture and mass media in the wake of the 1959 Cuban Revolution among Spanish-speaking audiences in the United States and the Spanish-speaking countries to which the programs were exported.

Roger Reynolds' compositions incorporate elements of theater, digital signal processing, dance, video, and real-time computer spatialization to create his uniquely contemporary and multidimensional style.

Includes thousands of individual songs, tunes, folk tales, sermons, monologues, and life stories from the Library of Congress Archive's collections. Included are the John and Alan Lomax's Library of Congress field recordings (Leadbelly, Woody Guthrie, Jelly Roll Morton) as well as hundreds of well-known and lesser-known treasures by other notable collectors including Herbert Halpert, Zora Neale Hurston, Henrietta Yurchenco, Vance Randolph, and Helen Creighton, among many others.

Consists of approximately one hundred sound recordings, primarily blues and gospel songs, and related documentation from the folk festival at Fort Valley State College (now Fort Valley State University), Fort Valley, Georgia.

This searchable filmography documents the work of some 1,000 major jazz and blues figures in over 25,000 cinema, television and video productions.

Alan Lomax Archive, a priceless collection of recorded music, dance, and the spoken word preserved by the Association for Cultural Equity.

An interactive music database allows users to listen to and learn about more than 6,000 songs from 1,000 cultures. Drawn from Alan Lomax's field recordings, the songs are organized by map and culture and digitized from hard copies at the Library of Congress.

The Songs of America presentation allows you to explore American history as documented in the work of some of our country's greatest composers, poets, scholars, and performers. From popular and traditional songs, to poetic art songs and sacred music, the relationship of song to historical events from the nation's founding to the present is highlighted through more than 80,000 online items. The user can listen to digitized recordings, watch performances of artists interpreting and commenting on American song, and view sheet music, manuscripts, and historic copyright submissions online.

This collection makes available 19 examples of brass band music that flourished in the 1850s in the United States and remained popular through the nineteenth century.

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.

collects over 50 photographic portraits and audio interviews with New Orleans rappers, DJs, producers, photographers, label owners, promoters, record store personnel, journalists and other parties involved in the New Orleans hip-hop and bounce scene from the late 1980's through Hurricane Katrina, as well as ephemera including original fliers, posters, vintage photographs and an extensive collection of record, CD and cassette tape scans.

Contains information on the nearly 11,000 U.S. feature films released between 1912-1929, and holdings information about 3,300 of those titles for which elements are known to exist.

Since 1988, the Sports Byline USA radio series has regularly presented interviews with notable figures from the world of sports. To this point, they have aired over 6,400 such interviews with athletes, coaches, trainers, managers, owners, writers and others in the areas of baseball, football, basketball, hockey, soccer, tennis, golf, track and field and other sports. Notable interviewees include John Wooden, Reggie White, Mickey Mantle, Elgin Baylor, Hank Aaron, Oscar Robertson, John Elway, Jose Canseco, Charles Barkley, Mike Krzyzewski, Jimmie Johnson, John Mackey, Archie Griffin, Bonnie Blair, Bill Bradley, Willie Mays, Jim Brown, Barry Sanders, John McEnroe, Natalie Coughlin and Meadowlark Lemon.

This collection covers 100 years in the history of publishing (1838-1938) and represents a wide range of styles of popular and vernacular music, including Creole songs, nineteenth-century dance music, Confederate anthems, Mexican and Cuban danzas and danzon, ragtime, blues, and jazz.