ON THIS PAGE: Reference Documents & List of Resources (categorized by topic)
REFERENCE DOCUMENTS (created for the SAT)
Articles and links that submitters and reviewers might find helpful
The views, thoughts and opinions expressed in this list of articles, books, videos, etc, belong solely to the author(s)/presenter(s)/creator(s),
and not to Sweet Adelines International.
Abbott, Lynn. “‘Play That Barber Shop Chord’: A Case for the African-American Origin of Barbershop Harmony,” 10 American Music 289-32510 (992) - requires Jstor account access
Barbershop Wiki Project: The most comprehensive barbershop encyclopedia in the world
Roots of Barbershop Harmony: A Rich African-American Tradition - from the Barbershop Harmony Society
Black History Now: Black History Biographies from the Black Heritage Commemorative Society
Biographies.net: The Web's Largest Resource for Biographies & History
Biography - associated with A&E Television Networks
Songwriters Hall of Fame - biographies, discographies, audio clips, and photo galleries of the over 400 inductees enshrined in the Hall of Fame.
Zinsser, William, Easy to Remember: The Great American Songwriters and Their Songs (2000) - Google Books preview pages
While blues has its roots in African traditions that influenced the songs of the enslaved in the American South, it was their descendants—freed African Americans—who birthed the blues in the late 1860s, arguably the most vicious and violent period in the United States. (The Historical Roots of Blues Music | AAIHS)
The Great Migration directly influenced the blues’ many evolutions, as Black people escaped the South to northern and western cities. (The Great Migration).
Information about the blues abounds, but here are a couple more references to consult:
15 Convenient Websites for Theatre Reviews - from Theatre Links
Broadway: The American Musical - companion website to 2012 PBS series
Broadway Musicals: A Jewish Legacy - companion website to 2013 Great Performances segment
Furia, Philip & Lasser, Michael L., America’s Songs: The Stories Behind the Songs of Broadway, Hollywood, and Tin Pan Alley (2006) - Google Books preview pages; no preview pages available for 2008 update
IBDB (Internet Broadway Database) archive: The Official Source for Broadway Theatre Information - presented by The Broadway League
IMDb (Internet Movie Database) - includes information on movies and tv series as well as biographies and reviews
Murguía, Salvador Jimenez, ed., The Encyclopedia of Racism in American Films (2018) - Google Books preview pages
Musicals101.com: The Cyber Encyclopedia of Musical Theatre, Film & Television
The Musical Lyrics - songs, song lyrics, and synopses from musicals
Playbill Vault - "Largest Broadway database online"
Bradford, K Tempest, The Cultural Appropriation Primer, Medium (March 14, 2016)
Cuncic, Arline, What is Cultural Appropriation?, Verywell Mind (August 29,2020)
Holley Jr, Eugene, Cultural Appropriation: From Culture Stealing to Culture Sharing, Chorus America (June 24, 2019)
Jones, Dorian D, “Walking the Line of Cultural Appropriation,” Backstage Pass (2021) - video essay
Nittle, Nadra Kareem, A Guide to Understanding and Avoiding Cultural Appropriation, ThoughtCo. (Updated February 4, 2021)
Nittel, Nadra Kareem, Cultural Appropriation in Music: From Madonna to Miley Cyrus, ThoughtCo. (December 14, 2020)
The Trouble with Dixie / Dixieland -- this is the document referenced in research documents for songs containing "Dixie" or "Dixieland."
Cox, Karen L., Dreaming of Dixie: How the South was Created in American Popular Culture (2011) - Google Books preview pages
Hutson, Cecil, The darker side of Dixie: southern music and the seamier side of the rural South (1995) - dissertation
Levin, Steve, ‘Dixie’ now too symbolic of old South, not of origins (September 4, 1998, post-gazette.com)
Lost Cause, The, Encyclopedia Virginia
Ottens, Nick, Lost Cause: Genre Trope to Avoid, Never Was (September 5, 2020)
Note: As the result of a 2018 change to U.S. copyright law, on January 1, 2022, sound recordings published prior to January 1, 1923 entered the public domain in the United States.
Discography of American Historical Recordings - University of California, Santa Barbara and Packard Humanities Institute initiative database with information on more than 350,000 American master recordings from 78rpm era
The Great 78 Project: Community Preservation, Research, Discovery of 78rpm Records
Library of Congress African-American Band Music & Recordings, 1883 to 1923 - includes small number of recordings of popular songs written by African Americans as well as short composer and performer biographies
Library of Congress National Jukebox - collection of over 15,000 digitized historical recordings from the Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center and other contributing libraries and archives
Sullivan, Steve, Encyclopedia of Great Popular Song Recordings - information about performances from 1889-2016, including stories behind the songs, the recordings, performers, and songwriters - Google Book preview pages:
Volumes 1 & 2 (2013) - 1,051 songs from 1889-2012
Volumes 3 & 4 (2017) - 1,700 more songs from 1890-2016
UCSB Cylinder Audio Archive - digital collection of over 10,000 cylinder recordings from late 1800's to early 1900's held by University of California Santa Barbara's Davidson Library. Includes barbershop quartets.
Hymnary.org: a comprehensive index of hymns and hymnals
negrospirituals.com - index of songs with lyrics. Site also includes brief history of negro spirituals
Spirituals - from Wikipedia
20sJazz.com - “The Internet’s Continuously Growing Archive of All That is 1920's Jazz!” - rare clips and vintage recordings
Jazz: A Film by Ken Burns - website companion to 10-part PBS series
JazzStandards.com - information on 1,000 most-frequently recorded jazz standard compositions, along with biographies, jazz history, and research references on songs
RagPiano.com: Ragtime Piano Recordings, Sheet Music Art, Nostalgia, and Ragtime Research Resources Center - focus on 1895-1925
The Syncopated Times: Exploring the World of Hot Jazz, Ragtime, and Swing - includes duplicate of discographies and biographies of early jazz from Red Hot Jazz Archive (redhotjazz.com), which went dark in December 2019
Abbott, Lynn, and Seroff, Doug, Ragged but Right: Black Traveling Shows, “Coon Songs,” and the Dark Pathway to Blues and Jazz (2007) - Google Books preview pages
Barnes, Rhae Lynn, "Yes, politicians wore blackface. It used to be all-American 'fun'." The Washington Post (February 8, 2019)
Blackface: The Birth of An American Stereotype - American Museum of African American History & Culture
Blackface Minstrelsy Resources - University of Pittsburgh Library System (A list of songs sung in blackface can be found under "Music Scores, Songsters, and Recordings")
Blackface Montage from Spike Lee's Bamboozled - YouTube
Blackface! - The History of Racist Blackface Stereotypes
Ermolaeva, Dr. Katya, Dinah, Put Down Your Horn: Blackface Minstrel Songs Don’t Belong in Music Class (2019)
Grovesnor & Toll, Blackface: the Sad History of Minstrel Shows, American Heritage (Winter 2019)
History of Minstrelsy From "Jump Jim Crow" to "The Jazz Singer" - online exhibit from USF Libraries Special & Digital Collections; includes further reading list
IMdB, List of Classic films with blackface
Minstrel Show - resource links from Theatre Links
Salem, James A, "African American Songwriters and Performers in the Coon Song Era: Black Innovation and American Popular Music", The Columbia Journal of American Studies
Szwed, John, Billie Holiday: The Musician and the Myth (2016) - link to discussion of coon songs and blackface in Google Books
Taylor, Yuval, “That’s Why Darkies Were Born”: Black Singers and the Minstrel Tradition in New York City, 1931-33 (January 7, 2013)
The Coon Caricature - from Jim Crow Museum of Racial Memorabilia
Wikipedia List of blackface minstrel songs
Wise, Timothy E, “Coon Song”, from Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World, Vol. 8, Genres: North America
Mason and Dixon draw a line, dividing the colonies - from the History Channel, a.short explanation of the history behind the Mason-Dixon Line.
Ransom, Patricia Fox, “Message in the Music: Do Lyrics Influence Well-Being?” (2015) Master of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) Capstone Projects -dissertation
Urbach, Martin, “You Might Be Left with Silence When You’re Done”: The White Fear of Taking Racist Songs Out of Music Education, NAfME (September 12, 2019)
ACS Inclusivity Style Guide - Open Access section of American Chemical Society Guide to Scholarly Communication that addresses DEI issues, including age, disability, gender, and race
Association of University Centers on Disability (AUCD), Portrayal of People with Disabilities
Brown, Lydia X.Z., Ableism/Language - blog containing glossary of ableist terms and phrases
Colloquy “On the Disability Aesthetics of Music”, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 69, no. 2 (2016) pp 525-63 - pdf
List of disability-related terms with negative connotations (Wikipedia)
Novac, Sara, The harmful ableist language you unknowingly use, BBC (April 5, 2021)
Pulrang, Andrew, It's Time to Stop Even Casually Misusing Disability Words, Forbes (February 20, 2021)
Respectful Disability Language: Here's What's Up!
Kavanaugh, Carly-May & Cassidy, Camilla, 'No homo': The unnecessary act of changing pronouns in song covers, The Edge (March 20, 2016)
Paige, Chris, Beyond "Brothers and Sisters", To Be Otherwise blog (November 12, 2016)
Wamsley, Laurel, A Guide to Gender Identity Terms, NPR (June 2, 2021)
What is Heteronormativity?, verywell mind (January 2, 2022)
What is the gender binary?, LGBTQ and ALL
What is gender diversity?, A Gender Agenda (AGA)
FlourishAnyway, 65 Popular Songs From the ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80 & ‘90s That Wouldn’t Fly Today (September 12, 2021) - examples of problematic songs categorized by sex role stereotyping and misogyny; racism or intolerance towards a specific group; inappropriate or illegal relationships; and/or illegal drugs
Greene, Jayson, How Do We Live With Music Made by Problematic Artists? (January 9, 2019)
Myers, Gregory, Top 10 Whimsical Songs with a Dark Story (May 25, 2014) - Oh My Darling, Clementine; My Old Kentucky Home; Oh! Susanna; Blue Tail Fly; Black Betty; Cotton-Eyed Joe; Git Along, Little Dogies; Banks of The Ohio; Oh Shenandoah; and Buffalo Gals
Nasheed, Jameelah, The Racist History of America’s Patriotic Anthems, Teen Vogue (July 3, 2020)
O For Tuna Orff blog: Being Sensitive with Our Song Culture and History (Updated 3-12-2021)
Songs with a Questionable Past compiled by Lauren McDougle - well-referenced lists of songs with racist or derogatory terms or themes, with questionable origins, meanings, or authenticity, with adult themes, and in alphabetical order
Library of Congress Collections with Notated Music - two webpages of links to numerous collections, including "America Singing: Nineteenth Century Song Sheets ", "Civil War Sheet Music Collection", "Music for the Nation", World War I Sheet Music", "Songs of America", and "Sheet Music of the Musical Theater". Go to the individual collections or search all notated music via the search box on the upper right corner of the two main webpages
Sheet Music Consortium - Hosted by UCLA Digital Library Program, the site provides access to sheet music collections from over thirty participating repositories
Historical Dictionary of American Slang
HubPages: 1940's Slang: Hepcats and All That Jive
The Phrase Finder - 2,000 English idioms, phrase and proverbs. UK website includes some American originated expressions
The Slang Dictionary: Etymological, Historical and Anecdotal (1913) - Project Gutenberg Ebook
Urban Dictionary - crowd sourced definitions vetted by site's moderation team
SecondHandSongs - searchable database of cover songs which includes information about who performed the original version of a particular song
WhoSampled - samples, cover songs and remixes
AllMusic - information about albums, artists and genres, including artist biographies and song and album reviews
Cafe Songbook: Catalog of The Great American Songbook - song origins (i.e., written for a particular show), song background, and links to performances as well as information on composers and lyricists
Discogs: Music Database and Marketplace - search albums, songs and artists
dbopm: the database of popular music - searchable by song, songwriters, recording artists, shows, films, and TV musical productions
MusicBrainz: The Open Music Encyclopedia - open source information database on songs, releases, and artists
Songbook - focuses on classic American popular songs from 1890-1970s as well as the composers and lyricists who created them; songs categorized by year and songwriters
Songview - database of comprehensive U.S. music copyright ownership and administration shares developed by ASCAP and BMI
All Musicals - musical song lyrics by song or musical
AZLyrics: Song Lyrics from A to Z
Genius - "the world's biggest collection of song lyrics and musical knowledge"
Lyrics.com: The Web's Largest Resource for Music, Songs & Lyrics
Lyricsworld: Lyrics Search Engine
Metrolyrics.com, a popular dedicated lyrics website, went offline in June 2021
Behind the Music: Every song has a story
Singing the Song in My Heart: Stories of your favorite songs, composers and performers - blog on story and inspiration behind a song, with focus on music popular in the 20th Century
Songfacts - "searchable database of song information where you can find out the stories behind the songs, get the lyrics, and watch the videos"
SongMeanings - song lyrics and crowd-sourced comments/interpretations. The site has licensed over a million lyrics from artists, record labels, and copyright owners.
Song Meanings and Facts - meanings and facts about songs as well as artist biographies
Arabface! - The History of Racist Arab Stereotypes
Brownface! - The History of Racist Latino/Hispanic Stereotypes
Perry, MacKenzie "Taylor, Complex Ramifications: Musical Short Films of the 1930s-1940s & African American Jazz Musicians , The Classic Journal (2016)
Jewface! - The History of Racist Jewish Stereotypes
Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Ferris State University- includes information on origins of Jim Crow, anti-black caricatures and imagery, and scholarly essays
Popular and Pervasive Stereotypes of African Americans - from National Museum of African American History & Culture
Racial Stereotypes in the Civil War Era - an American Antiquarian Society Online Resource
Reclaiming Identity: Dismantling Arab Stereotypes - Arab American National Museum
Redface! - The History of Racist American Indian Stereotypes
Thompson, Cheryl, I am not your nice ‘Mammy’: How racist stereotypes still impact women, The Conversation (February 19, 2019)
Yellowface! - The History of Racist Asian Stereotypes
Yellowface: What it is, why it's bad, and action steps to fight it - Consortium of Asian American Theaters and Artists
Garafolo, Reebee, Rockin' Out: Popular Music in the U.S. A , Chapter 1, Constructing Tin Pan Alley: From Minstrelsy to Mass Culture (2011)
Hischak, Thomas S., The Tin Pan Alley Song Encyclopedia (2002) - Google Books. No preview pages, but allows you to search "From Inside the book"
Jones, John Bush, Reinventing Dixie: Tin Pan Alley's Songs and the Creation of the Mythic South (2015) - Goggle Books preview pages
Jasen, David, Tin Pan Alley: An Encyclopedia of the Golden Age of American Song (2003) - Google Books preview pages
Musical Styles & Venues in America: Tin Pan Alley - from acousticmusic.org
Al Jolson: Ultimate Vaudeville Superstar
The American Vaudeville Museum
Musical Styles & Venues in America: Vaudeville - from acousticmusic.org
Vaudeville: 25 Fascinating Teaching Resources - from Theatre Links