The World Library of Folk and Primitive Music

The World Library of Folk and Primitive Music is a great resource for those interested in learning more about the music of other cultures.

Introduction

The World Library of Folk and Primitive Music is aproject of the International Folk Music Council, begun in 1952 with the aim of collecting and preserving the world’s folk music heritage.

The Library now contains over 6,000 hours of recordings from all over the world, as well as a large collection of printed music, photographs and manuscripts.

The Library is open to the public by appointment and is a valuable resource for folk musicians, ethnologists, historians and music lovers alike.

The British Library

The World Library of Folk and Primitive Music is a project of the British Library, with locations in the United Kingdom, Denmark, Sweden, and the United States. The project aims to create a definitive collection of folk music from around the world, with an emphasis on oral traditions and endangered music.

The World Library of Folk and Primitive Music was founded in 2012 by ethnomusicologist Simon Broughton, with support from the British Library. The library has amassed a collection of over 10,000 recordings from over 100 countries. The library is open to the public by appointment only.

The World Library

The World Library of Folk and Primitive Music is one of the world’s most comprehensive collections of folk and primitive music. It was founded in 1954 by American musicologist, Charles Seeger, and currently contains over 300,000 recordings from all over the world. The library is open to the public and houses a large research collection, as well as a performance space.

The World Library of Folk and Primitive Music

The World Library of Folk and Primitive Music is a compilation of folk and primitive music from all over the world. It was assembled by Wilkinson in the early 20th century and published by Oxford University Press. The collection contains music from Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas.

The World Library of Folk and Primitive Music in America

The World Library of Folk and Primitive Music in America is a project of the American Folklore Society and the Library of Congress. The aim of the project is to collect, preserve, and make available folk and primitive music from all over the world.

The World Library of Folk and Primitive Music in America was founded in 1943 by Alan Lomax, then Assistant Librarian at the Library of Congress. Lomax was appointed Director of the Library’s Archive of American Folksong in 1937, with the mandate to collect and preserve folk music from all over the United States. In his role as Director, Lomax began to realize that there was a larger world of folk music beyond America’s borders, and that if the Library was to truly represent the diversity of human culture, it needed to expand its focus.

In addition to collecting folk music from around the world, the World Library of Folk and Primitive Music also aims to provide educational resources about folk and primitive music, including essays, liner notes, and audio recordings. The website includes a searchable database of folk and primitive music recordings from the library’s collection, as well as a blog featuring articles about various aspects of folk and primitive music.

The World Library of Folk and Primitive Music in Europe

There are many ways to define and describer ‘folk music’. In Europe, the terms ‘folk music’, ‘traditional music’ and even ‘popular music’ have been synonymous at times – and often used interchangeably. It is only in more recent years that a clearer distinction has been made between the three genres, with folk music being defined as the music of the people, traditional music as the music of a particular region or country, and popular music as the commercialized form of both.

Folk music in Europe has its roots in the oral traditions of the region’s peasantry – often simple songs or ballads about love, loss oraharvest time that were passed down from generation to generation. In some cases, these songs were written down by folklorists or scholars, but more often they were simply memorized and sung by the people themselves. Over time, some of these songs became so well-known that they began to be performed by professional musicians – both in their original form and as part of a more modern sound.

Today, folk music can be heard all over Europe – played in small pubs and village halls, at open-air concerts and on radio stations. It has also been increasingly used in film and television, particularly in recent years as a way of adding an authentic ‘European’ feel to productions.

The World Library of Folk and Primitive Music in Asia

The World Library of Folk and Primitive Music in Asia is one of the most comprehensive collections of folk and primitive music in the world. It includes music from all over Asia, including China, Japan, Korea, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines. The music is divided into four main categories: folk music, court music, religious music, and popular music. There are also numerous subcategories within each main category.

The World Library of Folk and Primitive Music in Africa

The World Library of Folk and Primitive Music in Africa is a compilation of folk and primitive music from Africa. The collection was originally issued as a series of 10 LPs by Folkways Records in 1954. It was later reissued on CD by Smithsonian Folkways in 2001.

The collection includes music from Algeria, Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Ivory Coast, Djibouti, Egypt, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia , Libya , Madagascar , Malawi , Mali , Mauritania , Mauritius , Morocco , Mozambique , Namibia , Niger , Nigeria , Rwanda , Senegal , Sierra Leone , Somalia , South Africa , Sudan , Tanzania , Togo , Tunisia , Uganda Zambia and Zimbabwe

Conclusion

The World Library of Folk and Primitive Music is an attempt to gather together in one place a wide variety of folk and primitive music from all over the world. It is hoped that this will be a useful resource for students, teachers, and researchers working in the field of ethnomusicology.

The collection includes recordings of songs, instrumental music, and dances from a variety of cultures. Many of the recordings are of traditional music that is no longer performed, or that is only seldom heard. In some cases, the recordings are the only known examples of certain types of music.

The World Library of Folk and Primitive Music is a work in progress, and new recordings will be added as they become available.