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Historic U.S. Music 

African American Sheet Music, 1820-1920

http://dl.lib.brown.edu/sheetmusic/afam/index.html 

This collection of sheet music--ballads, love songs, military tunes, minstrel music, ragtime classics, spirituals, and other popular songs--has  been digitized from Brown University's John Hay Library.  Browsable by composer, title or subject or, searched by keyword, the website also features an extensive Reference section and "About" page. "Particularly significant in this collection are the visual depictions of African Americans which provide much information about racial attitudes over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries."

Association for Cultural Equity (ACE)

http://www.culturalequity.org

"Alan Lomax was a musicologist, writer and producer who spent his life researching and promoting unrecorded and unrecognized music, dance, and oral traditions. ACE is custodian of the Alan Lomax Archive, a priceless collection of recorded music, dance, and the spoken word."

E. Azalia Hackley Collection of African Americans in the Performing Arts

https://tinyurl.com/2p9pzzx6

Collection includes photographs, manuscripts, and sheet music. See the digitized collection of over 600 pieces of sheet music published between 1799 and 1922. Song themes cover early 19th century plantation life in the American South, the Civil War period, including abolitionism, emancipation and Reconstruction, early 20th century popular music, and the stereotypical themes associated with black face minstrelsy. A few pieces include audio files. There is also an extensive bibliography section. 

Library of Congress - Collections with Audio Recordings

https://www.loc.gov/audio/collections/

This multiethnic, multi-format sound collection encompasses children's songs, dance tunes, and religious music.  Supplemented with interviews, reading lists, and other documents, it is indexed by genre, language, ethnic group, and performer.

Frances G. Spencer Collection: American Melting Pot

https://digitalcollections-baylor.quartexcollections.com/documents/filteroption/fine-arts-frances-g.-spencer-collection-of-american-popular-sheet-music/e42416d2-1cc5-4be3-8565-e34d06d9c1ea/view

This collection of about 30,000 pieces of sheet music ranges from the late 18th to early 20th century. It includes first editions such as Jingle Bells and Battle Hymn of the Republic, as well as first editions of prominent American composers of the time such as Stephen Foster and Scott Joplin. To date, digital images are available for over 17,000 pieces. 

Historic American Sheet Music

http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/hasm

From the 19th and early 20th century American sheet music, digital images of over 3,000 compositions published between 1850 and 1920.

Historic Sheet Music

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/html/volcano/volcano-home.html

"...9,000 items, most published from 1850 to 1920. ... Most of the music is written for voice and piano. ... Notable in this collection are early pieces by Irving Berlin and Jerome Kern, as well as music by other popular composers such as Victor Herbert, Jean Schwartz, Paul Dresser, Ernest R. Ball, Gussie L. Davis, Charles K. Harris, and George M. Cohan. Numerous arrangements of classical tunes by Bach, Beethoven, Schubert and other famous classical composers are also well-represented."

Innovations of Note Sheet Music Collection

https://dome.mit.edu/handle/1721.3/188939

A quirky collection of sheet music from MIT's Lewis Music Library.  All the songs included in this collection in some way feature a technological innovation.  Songs topics, which are listed on this website by title or are browseable, include the telegraph, the airplane, subways, sewing machines, hot air balloons, the telephone and automobiles. 

Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music

http://levysheetmusic.mse.jhu.edu

"Contains over 29,000 pieces of music and focuses on popular American music spanning the period 1780 to 1960. All pieces of the collection are indexed on this site and a search will retrieve a catalog description of the pieces. An image of the cover and each page of music will also be retrieved if the music was published before 1923 and is in the public domain."

Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music, 1870-1885 

https://www.loc.gov/collections/american-sheet-music-1870-to-1885/about-this-collection/

Over 47,000 songs, searchable by author, title, or keyword.

National Jukebox

http://www.loc.gov/jukebox

"The Library of Congress presents the National Jukebox, which makes historical sound recordings available to the public free of charge. The Jukebox includes recordings from the extraordinary collections of the Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation and other contributing libraries and archives."  With more than 10,000 recordings made by the Victor Talking Machine Company between 1901 and 1925, this compilation includes Civil War, ragtime, opera, and other music.

Now What a Time:  Blues, Gospel, and the Fort Valley Music Festivals

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ftvhtml/ftvhome.html 

Spanning the years 1938 through 1943, one hundred sound recordings, featuring notable African American artists.

Robert Cushman Collection of Sheet Music

http://digitalcollections.oscars.org/cdm/landingpage/collection/p15759coll6

"The music in the collection is often from, related to, or inspired by a film, and many covers contain images of film stars, often tied to a film company or specific production."

Union Songs

http://unionsong.com 

"For over two centuries working people across the world have built trade unions. This site documents the songs and poems that they made in the process, union songs." 

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