American Song

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On August 14, 1769, John Adams wrote in his diary, “After Dinner was over and the Toasts drank we…had the Liberty Song—that by the Farmer, and that by Dr. Church, and the whole Company joined in the Chorus. This is cultivating the Sensations of Freedom.”

American Song is a history collection that will contain 50,000 songs that users listen to over the Internet. It will allow people to hear and feel the music from our 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.

What was the human impact of the industrial revolution? Listen to songs sung by coal miners (Eight Hour Day) to understand the long hours and strife that workers and their families endured. During the influx of immigrants to America in the early 1900s, the backlash toward specific immigrant groups was expressed in songs such as No Irish Need Apply. Propaganda during World War II took the form of songs to inspire patriotism, as in I’m Gonna Put My Name Down and If You Want to Do Your Part.

CONTENT

American Song will become the definitive source for American roots music and pre-1960 American popular music. It encompasses the great American musical genres including country, folk, bluegrass, Western, old time, American Indian, blues, gospel, and shape note singing—combined with powerful recordings by artists such as Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Peggy Seeger, Si Kahn, Lead Belly, Sleepy LaBeef, the New Lost City Ramblers, Otis Clay, Eddy “The Chief” Clearwater, Nanci Griffith, The Lilly Brothers, Merle Travis, and many others.

The music comes from Rounder Records, the Smithsonian Institution, Document Records, King Records, American Music Recordings, County Records, Native Ground Music, Arhoolie Records, Stomper Time Records, Tompkins Square Records, WEM Records, and more.

HOW WILL YOU USE IT?

Listening to the music of the American experience brings an entirely new dimension to studies in history, music, literature, diversity, sociology, and related disciplines.

American Song gives music scholars a rich resource for research in its own right. Students and instructors can at last bring the music of a time or a topic into nearly every discipline in the humanities and social sciences. Music lovers can enjoy traveling back in time to discover new favorites and moving into the present to enjoy the familiar.

Songs like the following provide a rich source for understanding the American experience: New Massachusetts Liberty Song (1775); Hurrah for Grant! (1868 election song); Influenza Blues (1919; The Titanic Disaster (1912); The Battle of Saratoga (1777); The Ludlow Massacre (1914); Prohibition is a Failure; If You Miss Me From the Back of the Bus (Civil Rights song); The Wreck of the Old 97 (1903 railroad song); Chisolm Trail (cowboy song); The Harrison Song (War of 1812); Poor Paddy Works on the Railway (railroad song); I Rode Southern, I Rode L&N (railroad song); Zion’s Walls (shape note song); and tens of thousands more.

INDEXING

Deep indexing and multiple, combinable search fields allow users to search by artist, ensemble, label, geographical region, instrument, album, and time period. Specially created controlled vocabularies for genre, instrumentation, performer, and time period are musically authoritative and are applied consistently across all Alexander Street music collections.

Answers to queries such as find all songs with banjo or find all examples of songs that mention the Civil War are a single click away. Browse lists can be sorted and then further narrowed. For example, sort by musical category, go to bluegrass, and then specify a region—to find bluegrass music from Tennessee in a single search. Once users identify the tracks they want, they will hear their selections over the Internet through their headphones or speakers.

“Civilization is spread more by singing than by anything else, because whole big bunches can sing a particular song, where not every man can join in on the same conversation.”

—Woody Guthrie

EDUCATIONAL TOOLS

Key teaching tools, common to all our streaming music and video databases, help direct educators and students in course study:

• Custom playlists: All users can create and save their own password-protected playlists.
• Playlist sharing and annotation: Librarians and educators can organize and share course music with students in a secure and simple way. This tool can either tie in with an existing digital audio reserve or serve as a standalone access point.
• Static URLs: All playlists and individual recordings reside at permanent URLs that can be emailed or posted to online teaching applications such as Blackboard or WebCT. A new feature will even let you select precise sections within tracks and put them on reserve.

PUBLICATION DETAILS

American Song is available on the Web through annual subscription. Upon completion, the collection will contain 50,000 tracks of audio that you can listen to on the Internet. The service works on PCs or Macs and is easy and quick to set up. Contact sales@alexanderstreet.com or your sales representative for more details, and to learn about the other collection in Music Online.