Center for Popular Music"The Center's collections document the diversity of American music. We take as a starting point the multicultural and international origins of American society, and archive materials that document those traditions and the ways in which they contributed to the formation of national musical cultures. From the 18th to early 20th century music was often disseminated in printed form: sheet music, songsters, broadsides, instrumental instruction books, song anthologies, and the like. After 1920, recorded sound gained dominance. The Center's collections reflect these forms of music commodification."
