The American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress has announced the availability of this new American Memory collection of recorded music. Now What a Time provides access to over 100 sound recordings and related documentation from what may have been the "first folk festival organized entirely by and for African Americans." The recordings feature guitar, banjo, harmonica, and choral...

February is African American History Month, and, as the Library of Congress site notes, it's an area of history that should be incorporated into all discussions about American history. The Library of Congress listened to its own advice and created this most useful site to help students, teachers, and others to do just that. Visitors can read about a number of notable African Americans, including...

During the 19th and early 20th centuries, sheet music was produced in enormous quantities in the United States. To historians and other interested parties, much of this material serves as a way to look at social and cultural mores of the times. This digital collection from Brown University takes a look at the sheet music that reflected attitudes towards African-Americans. Containing several...

The indefatigable Library of Congress American Memory collection has expanded yet again with these a new exhibit. This site contains 1,305 pieces of African-American sheet music dating from 1850 through 1920. The pieces span from the antebellum black face minstrelsy of the 1850s to the Civil War to Reconstruction to the early period of urbanization and the northern migration of African Americans....

BMG Entertainment provides this portal to three avenues of modern music: country (Twang This), alternative (BUGjuice), and urban (Peeps Republic). Each site contains news, star information, upcoming concerts, and of course, video and or audio clips (RealPlayer or QuickTime). The design of each site, as well as the content, should appeal to the fans of that music. Note that sites open in their own...

Take a tour of African American music through the ages. As part of Carnegie Hall’s Honor! A Celebration of the African American Cultural Legacy exhibit, Portia K. Maultsby’s timeline of African American music illustrates the dynamic flow of genres from the sacred and secular traditions of the 17th century to the hip-hop, techno, and new jazz swing movements of today. Click on any of the genres to...

This site pays homage to one of America's most prestigious and creative composers, Duke Ellington. Offering an introduction to the many accomplishments of Mr. Ellington's career, which lasted over fifty years, is quite challenging, but the site serves as a nice introduction, particularly for younger students. Divided into five sections, users may want to start with the short biographical essay...

The Electronic Urban Report (EUR), a service of Rabercom, presents "factual, online infotainment" daily. It presents African American entertainment news, along with an EUR Web site of the day. The report is also available via e-mail.

Located in Nashville, Tennessee, the National Museum of African American Music (NMAAM) uplifts and preserves "the central role African Americans play in creating the American soundtrack," through exhibitions and educational materials. From Nothing to Something fulfills part of NMAAM's educational mission. While the complete curriculum covers several instruments, the online version (courtesy of the...

This visually-appealing and musically-enhanced site serves as the official John Coltrane site, developed by the John Coltrane Foundation as a home for information about one of the most influential jazz musicians of the past century. Over his brilliant music career, Coltrane was responsible for creating many albums that have become jazz standards, such as "My Favorite Things," "Africa Brass," Giant...