Ethnomusicology: the relationship between music and human culture in different social contexts.
Folk music: heritage or oral-tradition music associated with a particular geography, nation, or social group.
World Music: any music from outside of North American & European contexts.
Anthropology Plus has ethnographic, folklore, and cultural articles related to ethnomusicology.
RILM Abstracts covers articles, conference papers, essays, books, and dissertations, with an international scope. Click "UC eLinks" to find the full text.
Music Index Online has news and articles about music, musicians, and the music industry--including reviews and obituaries.
Music Periodicals Database (IIMP) includes both peer-reviewed and popular magazine articles in music.
JSTOR has academic articles; under Advanced Search, choose Journal Filter for "anthropology" and "music."
Search both Contemporary World Music and Smithsonian Global sound through Music Online:
Contemporary World Music includes full discs. Try "dombra" to listen to a two-stringed Kazakh instrument.
Alan Lomax’ Sound Recordings include music, jokes, and stories from around the world. Browse by culture, genre, location, and more.
British Library Sounds includes ethnographic recordings organized by geography and culture.
UCSB Cylinder Audio Archive has folk and international music and speeches originally recorded on wax cylinders.
The Global Music Archive has East African (and Appalachian) music and dance recordings.
For streaming ethnographic or ethnomusicology films, see Ethnographic Video Online as well as Kanopy.
The EVIA Digital Archive has raw clips of music and video. You'll need to create a login while on campus.
Reference books are a great place to start when learning about an instrument, musical style, or culture.
Oxford Music Online lets you search Grove Music Online (music biography encyclopedia), the Oxford Companion to Music (explore forms and styles of music), and the Oxford Dictionary of Music (musical terms and instruments) all at once.
Garland Encyclopedia of World Music has liner notes, articles, and access to audio, organized by instrument and culture.
Oxford Bibliographies (Music) help you find articles on world musical traditions, including a discography of recordings.
Other online encyclopedias that the UCB Library has purchased for you include the Cambridge History of World Music and the Music in the Social and Behavioral Sciences.
There are three ways to find books and ebooks at Berkeley:
1. Search with "keywords" to find words in the title, author, or description of a book. Note that this doesn't search the full-text! Try using words like "folk music" "national music" "ethnic music" "ethnomusicology" and your country or people group.
2. Search by "subject" to find book topics as organized by the librarians. Any time you see a subject, you can click the link to see similar books! Subjects to search:
3. Browse on the shelves! Check these sections of the Anthropology and Music libraries:
M 1685-1853 |
for national music, by country |
ML 3544-3785 |
for research on music, by region or country |
ML 3797-99 |
for ethnomusicology |
For more general resources in music, see our music guides.