Smithsonian Global Sound

Smithsonian Global Sound is a collection of over 3000 digitized albums (over 45,000 tracks) of folk, blues, bluegrass, jazz, spoken word, and world music. It includes the published recordings owned by the non-profit Smithsonian Folkways Recordings label and the archival audio collections of Folkways Records, Cook, Dyer-Bennet, Fast Folk, Monitor, Paredon, and other labels. It also includes music recorded around the African continent by Dr. Hugh Tracey for the International Library of African Music (ILAM) at Rhodes University. Another highlight of the collection is material collected on the South Asian subcontinent from the Archive Research Centre for Ethnomusicology (ARCE), sponsored by the American Institute for Indian Studies.

Index terms are assigned to each recording to aid in searching. The Alexander Street platform offers the ability to create playlists, permalink recordings, and embed recordings in course management systems. Smithsonian Global Sound can also be cross-searched with other Alexander Street music resources through the Music Online interface.