Music and Dance Research Guide

Sponsored by Indiana University's prestigious school of music, this Website hosts a number of databases useful to students and scholars of music. They include The Thesaurus Musicarum Latinarum, "an evolving database of the entire corpus of Latin music theory [in Latin] written during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance;" Saggi Musicali Italiani, a database of Italian Renaissance texts on music theory and aesthetics; Doctoral Dissertations in Musicology Online, "an index to dissertations-in-progress and a bibliography of completed dissertations reported since mid-1995," as well as a listing of all dissertations previously cited in the American Musicological Society's Doctoral Dissertations in Musicology. Finally, the site makes available an exhaustive, annotated bibliography containing references to hundreds of scholarly works on musical borrowing. The bibliography is updated through August of last year. Each section of the site may be searched or browsed.

Readers interested in discovering new music or tracing the evolution of musical trends across time may enjoy Radiooooo, a streaming platform that allows listeners to travel across virtual space and time to listen to a "radio station" in a country and decade of their choosing. The five os are for the five continental landmasses included in the project: Africa, Eurasia, the Americas, Australia, and-- a bit surprisingly--Antarctica. Radiooooo was created by artist and DJ Benjamin Moreau, music producer Raphael Hamburger, and Anne-Claire Troubart, who currently directs the site. To use Radiooooo, visitors simply select a decade (from the 1900s through the present) and a country. Listeners may also select a mood (fast, slow, or weird). Once listeners make their selection, they will begin hearing music from their selected time period and country. In addition, users can create a multi-destination trip to create a radio station that includes songs from multiple decades and countries.

History and social studies educators may be interested in this set of lesson plans from TeachRock, a project of Steven Van Zandt's Rock and Roll Forever Foundation that provides free arts integration curricular materials. This collection features four standards-aligned lesson plans appropriate for use in AP History classes that may be taught individually or as a unit. These lessons "[draw] on the rich archive of Alan Lomax's Association for Cultural Equity, enlivening American history of the 18th through early 20th centuries with the sounds of regional folk musics and the personal stories of its performers." Each innovative lesson focuses on a different aspect of US social history, incorporating music as well as other resources. For example, one lesson uses the music of Nimrod Workman as part of its discussion of the mining industry and unions during the Gilded and Progressive Ages, while other lessons focus on the abolition of slavery, Cajun farmers, and more. Classroom handouts, media clips, and readings are included, as are suggestions for extension activities and further exploration. Visitors can access two lesson plans without logging in, and free account registration is needed to access all of TeachRock's available curricula.

Launched in 2016, Musicmap is a fascinating interactive visualization of music history that "attempts to provide the ultimate genealogy of popular music genres," including the relationships and influences between genres. Visitors to Musicmap will find a colorful infographic designed to resemble a city skyline, with each "building" color-coded and labeled as a different musical "super-genre." Clicking a building brings up a synopsis of its genre with a list of subgenres at the bottom; for example, the Country block leads to subgenres ranging from Classic Country/Hillbilly to Nashville/Countrypolitan to Americana/Alternative Country. Users can then click a subgenre to read a short description and find a playlist of examples linked to embedded YouTube videos. Returning to the main map, visitors can also zoom in to see an intricate genealogy of the connections between subgenres, denoted by solid and dotted white lines. In addition, Musicmap includes a helpful menu on the left side, containing detailed information about its background and intentions, explanatory guides, and a glossary of musical terms. Musicmap is the brainchild and passion project of music enthusiast Kwinten Crauwels, who by day is an architect in Belgium, with the assistance of his brother Dries Crauwels, a web developer.