June is Black Music Month

In honor of Black Music Month, Chesnutt Library would like to highlight the following database: African American Music Reference Database

The African American Music Reference Database brings together 50,000 pages of text reference, biographies, chronologies, sheet music, images, lyrics, liner notes, and discographies which chronicle the diverse history and culture of the African American experience through music. The database is constantly expanding to include comprehensive coverage of blues, jazz, spirituals, civil rights songs, slave songs, minstrelsy, rhythm and blues, gospel, and other forms of black American musical expression. The first release includes over 3,900 pages of reference, including a comprehensive set of biographies on the top 185 African American composers, edited by Samuel Floyd, Jr., as well as 5,000 pages of liner notes from Document Records. Other materials in this release include African American iconography, collections of spirituals and slave lyrics, and reference on important ensembles and musicians such as the Fisk Jubilee Singers, Jelly Roll Morton, Wynton Marsalis, Stevie Wonder, and more.