The Music of the People

People today cannot imaging a time without music pervading every part of our lives. How did our forefathers ever manage without an iPod or a radio?

Before the iPod, or the radio, or the television, or even the phonograph music was still an important part of every functioning society on earth. From English laborers to an African tribesman, music has always been an extension of the community it was born in. Today, however, native folk music has all but died out as the people of the world have become more interconnected.

Luckily there were many people in the early 20th and late 19th centuries that felt compelled to find a way to preserve these last reminants of agriculturally based societies using at first pen and paper and later the newly invented wax cylinder phonograph.

Many of these amazing recordings are now being digitized and made available both online and for purchase in other media. Sites such as the Wax Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project at UC Santa Barbara are just one example of the old folk arts being made available to a new generation.