Shared Weight: Dance Musicians Discussion List

This mailing list welcomes dance musicians and those interested in dance music for any form of traditional social dance. This includes contra, English country, traditional squares (e.g., Appalachian, New England, Quebecois, Cape Breton, etc), community/family/barn, ceili, bal folk, and more. Dance musicians ask/answer questions, discuss issues that come up for them, and share helpful resources. This is a great way to talk to dance musicians from throughout North America and beyond. Join the discussion!

Early American Secular Music and Its European Sources, 1589-1839: An Index

This is a series of indexes derived from a database of musical information compiled from primary sources covering the 250 years of the initial exploration and settlement of the United States. It consists of over 75,000 entries that are sorted by text (titles, first lines, recitatives, chorus and burden), by music incipits (represented in scale degrees, stressed notes and interval sequences), with additional indexes of names and theater works.

Compiled by Robert M. Keller, Raoul F. Camus, Kate Van Winkle Keller, and Susan Cifaldi

Early American Songsters, 1734-1820: An Index

This resource is an index of all of the known songsters currently available. Lowens defines a songster “as a collection of three or more secular poems intended to be sung.” Most of the songsters do not include music, although many contain references to the names of tunes to which the song could be sung. References to where to find the songsters is provided.

Compiled by Robert M. Keller