Canadian Folk Music is a journal published by the Canadian Society for Traditional Music containing articles, notices, reviews, and commentary on all aspects of Canadian folk music.
This collection provides access to digital images for over 3,000 pieces from the collection, published in the United States between 1850 and 1920.
From Duke University Libraries
GEMS: The Best of The Country Dance and Song Society Diamond Jubilee Music, Dance and Song Contest
This online collection contains American (e.g., contra, mixer, triplet) dances, English dances (with music), tunes, and songs composed by the country dance and song community.
From CDSS
The Performing Arts in Colonial American Newspapers, 1690-1783
This publication fills a major gap in access to eighteenth-century American sources for research in the performing arts and related humanities fields. It includes all references to music, poetry (lyrics), dance, and theater in American newspapers, from the earliest extant copy (1690) through the end of the Revolutionary War (1783).
Compiled by Mary Jane Corry, Kate Van Winkle Keller, and Robert M. Keller
Digital Library of Appalachia (Music Collection)
A searchable database of several thousand non-commercial sound recordings that document much of Appalachian music’s geographic, ethnic, vocal, and instrumental diversity.
From the Appalachia College Association
Peter and Mary Alice offer more than 30 (and adding more all the time) free downloads of sheet music of accessible choral arrangements, mostly a cappella SATB, that are steeped in traditional music. Most are Amidon arrangements; there are a few by other old and new composers and arrangers, including a selection of classic American shape note songs.
From Peter and Mary Alice Amidon
The Music Box is an extensive searchable online database of more than 2500 songs that includes information on the song (where it can be found in songbooks, composers, song genre, culture) as well as a way to listen to recordings of the song by various artists.
From Rise Up and Sing
Broadside Ballads Online presents a digital collection of English printed ballad sheets from between the 16th and 20th centuries, linked to other resources for the study of the English ballad tradition. The collection includes many primitive woodcut illustrations, and words, but rarely musical notation.
From the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford
Jon Boden’s project to record a folk song a day yielded a total of 365 folk songs with introductions and notes. This is a searchable database, or you can scroll through an alphabetical list of the songs.
From Jon Boden
The Full English Project is the world’s biggest free digital archive of traditional folk music and dance tunes, and songs.
From EFDSS
Thanks to the Massachusetts Cultural Council for their generous support.