This is a project by Brian Foo as part of the 2020 Innovator in Residence Program at the Library of Congress.
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Inventing Entertainment
Music and Spoken word
Inventing Entertainment: The Early Motion Pictures and Sound Recordings of the Edison Companies features 341 motion pictures, 81 disc sound recordings, and other related materials, such as photographs and original magazine articles.
Variety Stage Sound Recordings and Motion Pictures
Music and Sketches
The 61 motion pictures in the Variety Stage Sound Recordings and Motion Pictures include animal acts, burlesque, dance, comic sketches, dramatic excerpts, dramatic sketches, physical culture acts, and tableaus. The films represented date from copyrights of 1897 to 1920. Although not actually filmed on a theatrical stage, they sought to recreate the atmosphere of a theater performance by showing the types of vaudeville acts and performers that were popular at the time.
The Joe Smith Collection
Interviews
More than 25 years ago, retired music executive Joe Smith accomplished a Herculean feat—he got more than 200 celebrated singers, musicians and industry icons to talk about their lives, music, experiences and contemporaries. In 2012 Smith donated this treasure trove of unedited sound recordings to the nation's library.
Free Music Archive
Music
Free Music Archive is a website devoted to distribution and curation of rights-free music. The Library of Congress has archived this website as part of its Web Cultures Web Archive, which includes sites documenting the creation and sharing of emergent cultural traditions on the web.
MusicBox Project
Music
In January 2010 Dyann Arthur, independent folklorist, musicologist and Berklee College of Music alumni, founded MusicBox Project, a non-profit corporation in the state of Washington, whose mission it is to document and preserve our musical history while advancing music education and occupational avenues of creation and performance. Beginning in 2009, Dyann and Rick Arthur travelled through America meeting and interviewing women musicians of all ages and career levels. “Americana Women” was conceived as a three-pronged research approach: 1) an oral history interview; 2) an acoustic performance at the time and place of the interview; 3) a public performance.
Tony Schwartz Collection
Radio, Conversations, and Found sounds
Considered a master of the electronic media, Tony Schwartz changed the face of radio and television advertising by creating socially conscientious campaigns such as the nation’s first anti-smoking ad, which led the tobacco industry to stop advertising on television and radio. Those and other materials are part of the vast archives of sound recordings and moving images created and collected by the renowned New York City sound documentarian, producer, author and teacher.
American English Dialect Recordings
Interviews, Oral histories, and Speeches
The Center for Applied Linguistics Collection contains 118 hours of recordings documenting North American English dialects. The recordings include speech samples, linguistic interviews, oral histories, conversations, and excerpts from public speeches. They were drawn from various archives, and from the private collections of fifty collectors, including linguists, dialectologists, and folklorists.
The National Screening Room
Government film
The National Screening Room showcases the riches of the Library's vast moving image collection, designed to make otherwise unavailable movies, both copyrighted and in the public domain, freely accessible to the viewers worldwide.
The National Jukebox: Blues
Music
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 National Audio-Visual Conservation Center and other contributing libraries and archives. This sub-collection contains blues and blues-like works and performances.
The National Jukebox: Jazz
Music
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 National Audio-Visual Conservation Center and other contributing libraries and archives. This sub-collection contains jazz and musical forms that are considered to be among the roots of jazz, including ragtime.
The National Jukebox: Folk Music
Music
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 National Audio-Visual Conservation Center and other contributing libraries and archives. This sub-collection contains American folk music of various forms.
The National Jukebox: Opera
Opera
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 National Audio-Visual Conservation Center and other contributing libraries and archives. This sub-collection includes excerpts from operas and similar works such as operettas and oratorios.
The National Jukebox: Musical Theater
Music and Theater
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 National Audio-Visual Conservation Center and other contributing libraries and archives. This sub-collection includes works originally introduced in popular musical theater productions.
The National Jukebox: Classical Music
Music
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 National Audio-Visual Conservation Center and other contributing libraries and archives. This sub-collection contains classical works and performances.
The National Jukebox: Popular Music
Music
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 National Audio-Visual Conservation Center and other contributing libraries and archives. This sub-collection contains music considered popular at the time of recording.