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Library

African American Studies

Research Guide

African American Music

Encyclopedia of Rap & Hip Hop Culture
Short entries provide an introduction to the development of Rap and Hip Hop music and the culture surrounding it.
Icons of Hip Hop: An Encyclopedia of the Movement, Music, and Culture
The two volume set offers lengthy biographical entries examining the personal histories and work that has made these artists iconic. Includes a timeline from 1973 to 2006.
Icons of R&B and Soul: An Encyclopedia of the Artists Who Revolutionized Rhythm
The two volume set offers lengthy biographical entries examining the personal histories and work that has made these artists iconic. Includes a timeline from 1940 to 1983.
Encyclopedia of the Blues
Two volumes of historical, musical, and cultural entries including biographies, geographic regions, record labels, and instruments.

Additional Internet Resources

Archives of African American Music & Culture (Indiana University)
Center for Black Music Research at Columbia College
Collects materials across the African diaspora. Multiple bibliographies available online, plus an extensive non-circulating collection at 618 S. Michigan.
Music Division of the Performing Arts Reading Room - Library of Congress
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
From the collections of the New York Public Library
Southern Voices - UNC-Chapel Hill and Library of Congress
Institute of Jazz Studies (Rutgers University)
All About Jazz
William Ransom Hogan Archive of New Orleans Jazz (Tulane University)
The Blues Archive (University of Mississippi)
Honey, Where You Been So Long? - Pre-War Blues (Blog)
Uncensored History of the Blues -Delta Blues Museum (Blog)
Hip-Hop Archive (Harvard University)
Black Grooves - Archives of African American Music & Culture
Music Review Site
Wax Poetics