Music Online: American Music (Alexander Street Press)

American Music is a history database of 50,000 songs that users listen to over the Internet. It will allow people to hear and feel the music from the past. Much more than a repository of well known classics like Yankee Doodle and The Star Spangled Banner, this new resource includes music that relates to almost every walk of American life, every ethnic group, and every time period. You’ll find songs by and about American Indians, miners, immigrants, slaves, children, pioneers, and cowboys. There are the songs of Civil Rights, political campaigns, Prohibition, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and anti-war protests. Hymns, funny songs, college songs, sea shanties, shape note songs, and about topics as diverse as New York and electricity.

The music comes from Rounder Records, the Smithsonian Institution, Document Records, and other labels and sources. There will be fully searchable lyrics where available, beginning with the second release, along with links to Web resources, sheet music, and more.