Encyclopedias and Dictionaries
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The Garland Encyclopedia of World MusicThe Garland Encyclopedia of World Musics offers a comprehensive view of music as a vital part of the social and cultural life of people around the world. Expert contributors have conducted fieldwork in the communities they profile, and their firsthand experience is reflected in the immediacy of their observations. Each volume emphasizes the contexts of musical performance and presents the fresh insights and analyses of musicologists and anthropologists of diverse national origins.
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Oxford Music OnlineSearch across key music reference sources (like The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians). While the majority of content focuses on the Western music canon, there are articles focusing on other musics and ethomusicological topics.
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The Harvard Dictionary of MusicThis classic reference work includes articles on the music of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East; descriptions of instruments enriched by historical background; and articles covering popular music, jazz, and rock. Available in print: ML 100.A64 2003
Books and ebooks
One helpful resource for your research is the Oxford Global Music Series, which has books devoted to specific music cultures. You can browse the list of titles in this series via the library catalog. Here's an example of one volume:
You can use the USU library catalog to find more books and ebooks on your topic by selecting the appropriate Material Type (in Advanced Search) for the resource you are looking for:
Scholarly articles
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RILM Abstracts of Music LiteratureRILM is a database that allows you to discover articles and scholarly publications about many facets of music.
When searching RILM, you can use Major Topics to search for articles in broad areas of music research. If just keyword searching lets you down, combining a Major Topic with a keyword helps you refine your results more efficiently. Examples of Major Topics related to world musics include:
- 39.21 Popular music of North Africa
- 41.33 Vocal music in Southeast Asia
- 97 Music and Islam
Look up the Major Topics associated with your research question on RILM's Classification System website.
Articles in RILM are also tagged with Subjects, which tell you more specifically what an article is about. You can also search by Subject to find more articles on that narrower topic. The following example shows how detailed subjects can be:
Tip:
Need the PDF/full-text?
Use Article Linker to search for full-text across all databases. If the article isn't available, choose Request via ILLiad or use interlibrary services to request a copy from another library.
Musical Instruments
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UW Ethnomusicology Musical Instrument CollectionImages, audio, and video for over 400 musical instruments from around the world housed at the University of Washington.
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Museum of Fine Arts Musical InstrumentsMusical instruments from around the world, housed at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. Scroll down to view collections by instrument type or region.
Your Librarian
Set up your InterLibrary Loan account
Set up your account here so you can quickly and easily request article PDFs, chapter scans, and books we don't have in the USU Libraries collection.