The Archives of Traditional Music is an audiovisual archive that documents music and culture from all over the world. With over 100,000 recordings that include more than 2,700 field collections, it is one of the largest university-based ethnographic sound archives in the United States.
Its holdings cover a wide range of cultural and geographical areas, vocal and instrumental music, linguistic materials, folktales, interviews, and oral history, as well as videotapes, photographs, and manuscripts.
See and hear highlights from our collections
Alan and Barbara Merriam, Central Africa, 1951-1952. The Merriam's recordings in eastern, west central, and Ituri Forest areas of the Congo, and Ruanda-Urundi from 1951 to 1952 document a large number of ethnic groups and genres including political and war songs. A decade later this research would form the foundation for Merriam's discipline-altering work, The Anthropology of Music.
