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

Charles S. Bird Mandingo recordings 1961-1990.  Linguist Charles Bird documented master musicians/poets/historians  in Mali for almost 30 years. This collection contains exceptional recordings by master musicians on the kora and donso-ngoni with performances of hunters music, of praise singing, and the Epic of Sunjata by master griots.