Want to hear a Bollywood movie tune, a Delta blues song from the twenties, a Beethoven symphony, a classic American protest song, or the harmonies of an a capella singing group from Ghana? With the addition of five new music databases from Alexander Street Press, Oesterle Library now offers more than 50,000 tracks of music from around the world in streaming audio.

The five new databases–African American Song; American Song; Classical Music Library; Contemporary World Music; and Smithsonian Global Sound–each include thousands of recordings of great music, ranging from medieval to modern. The databases include the original recordings of American legends like Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie, as well as folk and popular songs recorded for famous labels like Folkways. Classical compositions are often represented by several different high-quality recordings of performances by first-rate musicians and conductors. Serious students of music, music history, and ethnomusicology will find the rich and expansive content of these databases to be indispensable. And everyone else is sure to find music they’ll enjoy listening to here–whether it be Tejano, Afropop, Celtic, gospel, ragtime, raga, reggae, jazz, or Baroque.

All of the recordings in the Alexander Street Press databases are available to current NCC students, faculty, and staff in streaming audio. Each database also includes liner notes, CD cover art, and information about the featured artists, composers, albums, recordings, and musical styles. All can be accessed via the “Choose a Database” pulldown menu on the library homepage; on the Articles page; or on the Research by Subject page for Music.

The databases:

African American Song includes more than 16,000 African-American songs; genres include blues, jazz, gospel, ragtime, and more.

American Song includes more than 14,000 American songs; genres include folk, rock, jazz, zydeco, bluegrass, and more.

Classical Music Library includes more than 50,000 classical music recordings of all styles and time periods, as well as substantial reference material on the history of Western music.

Contemporary World Music includes more than 9,000 songs from contemporary artists from around the globe; genres include reggae, Tejano, Afropop, Bollywood, flamenco and more.

Smithsonian Global Sound includes tens of thousands of folk, traditional, classical, and popular music recordings. Here you’ll find the entire published catalog of the Smithsonian Folkways label–the single most important collection of recordings of classic American folk music, and also the best source for field recordings of traditional music from around the globe.