Map Gallery
Welcome to our Maps page! This portfolio features a wide range of projects that discuss engaging research questions using mapping techniques. Our research teams consistently add new projects that we think are worth sharing. To access a project you would like to explore, simply click on the corresponding image, and the map's page will appear.
Francis Johnson’s Tours
Francis Johnson’s Tours Francis Johnson was a musician, bandleader and composer in antebellum America. A Black man in an institutionally racist society that was sometimes hostile towards him, Johnson nevertheless found great success as a result of his skill in...
Four Case Studies on the Spread of Early Jazz
One of the most heavily debated topics in modern music history is the origins of jazz in the United States. With jazz being a quintessential example of American art, scholars have extensively researched and debated its origins in order to understand both how jazz began and the great impact it has had on American culture…
Lillian Evanti: The Life and Career of One of America’s Unsung Opera Powerhouses
Welcome to our digital exhibit showcasing Lillian Evanti, one of America's first Black female opera singers. Through these pages, we will take you through what we have found about her life and career. She was an incredible woman and performer and we hope this...
Indigenous Song Collection of Frances Densmore
Despite the benefits of her efforts toward preservation of Native American musics, Frances Densmore’s work is and always has been problematized due to racist attitudes and methods. Through this project we hope to create a collection of maps that represent the entirety of research collected by Frances Densmore in relation to the Indigenous tribes she studied and songs she archived. We plan to utilize the Library of Congress’ online catalog and the bulletins published by Frances Densmore. Specifically, we are representing all of the over 2,500 songs collected and recorded by Densmore on wax cylinders through clusters of locations that then give specific song information in relation to individual tribes.
Mapping Washington Conservatory Alumni in Black American Musical Life
The Washington Conservatory of Music was the first conservatory founded by and for Black musicians. Between 1903 and 1960, the conservatory strengthened musical communities across the country, but it is largely forgotten today. That may be because of its role in...
Cathedrals, Colonization, and Conversion: Mapping the Music of New Spain
Cathedrals, Colonization, and Conversion: Mapping the Music of New SpainNew Spain was a vast geographical area spanning from modern-day Texas through Mexico, reaching Central America. The period of activity we are looking at began in 1521 with the fall of the Aztec...
Marching Bands at HBCUs
The role marching bands played in the development of music programs at HBCUs
Mapping Black Minstrel Troupes: Identifying Patterns and Impacts
Mapping Black Minstrel Troupes: Identifying Patterns and Impacts By Elsa Buck, Emma Byrd, Tess McCarty, Emma Rosen and Jack SlavikContent Warning: This webpage includes readings, media, and discussion around topics of racism, blackface, racial violence, racial...
Mapping Black Women in Vaudeville : T.O.B.A Circuit
“Mapping Black Women in Vaudeville: Theatre Owners Booking Association” was designed to collect performances of Black women that Theatre Owners Booking Association (T.O.B.A.) circuit featured in the 1920s. T.O.B.A was a circuit of theaters that booked African American vaudeville performers in the 1920s and 30s. We chose to focus on women performers both to narrow the scope of our project and to highlight the contributions of a group that faced unique barriers due to the intersection of their race and gender.
Native American Song Collection
Native American Song Collection Frances DensmoreFrances Densmore was one of the first ethnomusicologists to study Native American music in the United States. She dedicated 40 years of her life traveling throughout the Northern Hemisphere. She spent time with...
Re-Drawing the Map of American Music History
Like so many other aspects of the history and culture of the United States, its music has been profoundly shaped by racism and racialized discourse. But unlike those other aspects, music’s role in reflecting and informing racialized identity and experience in the...
17th Century Music Centers of Italy
Research into the musical aspects of Italian life over political boundaries due to their fluctuation throughout the 17th century.
The Life and Legacy of H.T. Burleigh (1866-1949)
The Life and Legacy of H.T. Burleigh (1866-1949) Harry Thacker (H.T.) Burleigh is a name that joins countless others on a list of understudied composers and performers throughout history. Best known for his arrangements of concert spirituals, Burleigh was also...
Polyphonic Composers of the the 15th and 16th Centuries
An introduction to the travels of major polyphonic composers in Western Europe during the late medieval and early Renaissance periods This original map is from the Atlas Historique de la Musique, titled...
American Southern Folk Song Collecting
Introduction ______________________________________________________ Welcome to the wonderful world of American Southern Folk Song! On this page, you will find: maps comparing different genres of music collected in the American South from 1923-1939, narrative maps...
Mapping the Salon
Introduction This summer, I pursued an independent research project focusing on the salons of late 19th and early 20th century Paris. I set out to create a comprehensive map of salons from the era that listed relevant information so that students, scholars, and the...
Me, Milhaud, and the Motherland: Travels in Russia 90 Years Apart
In March of 1926, Milhaud set off for the USSR to give a concert tour with fellow French pianist Jean Wiéner. Milhaud gave three concerts in Leningrad, and three in Moscow. Years later, he devoted nearly four pages in his autobiography My Happy Life to the...
Mapping Black Gospel Music
Gospel is a musical culture that was born centuries ago. In the 16th century, when the slave trade began in North America, gospel music found its source. African men and women, who sang in different Homelands in Africa, now would sing together in America. From morning...
Mapping the Collection of Russian Folk Songs in the Long 19th Century
This project is meant to demonstrate how the techniques of digital mapping can contribute to the fields of cultural and social history, as well as illuminate aspects of the complex relationship between geography, nationalism, and music in Russia in the long 19th...
Mapping the Tours of the Fisk Jubilee Singers from 1871 to 1881
Introduction George L. White founded The Fisk Jubilee Singers in Nashville, Tennessee in 1871. The group was comprised of students attending Fisk University, an institution organized by the American Missionary Association for the education of freed slaves after the...
Comparative Composer Premieres
Welcome... This interactive map is meant to be a resource for scholars and the general public to delve into the world of 20th-century musical scholarship. The maps on this page encompass the premieres of Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, Arthur Honegger, and Igor...
The Global Reception of Darius Milhaud’s Music, 1922-1933
A French composer best known for his participation in the avant-garde “Groupe des Six” in the early 1920s, Darius Milhaud (1892-1974) struggled to win critical approval in the early part of his career. By documenting trends in concert programming and music criticism between 1922, when Milhaud first signed a contract with Vienna-based publisher Universal Edition, and 1933, when Milhaud’s reputation in France was firmly established, we’ve shown that Milhaud accurately reported his popularity in Central Europe, adding a crucial piece to the puzzle regarding his hard won official recognition in France.
The Travels of Josephine Baker and Sidney Bechet
Harlem, Paris, and Beyond This map explores the travels of Sidney Bechet, a jazz saxophonist and clarinetist, and Josephine Baker, a singer and music-hall star, during the 1920s. Both of these individuals were American performers who gained success during the Harlem...
London Performances of Music by the Second Viennese School: 1912 – 1936
Studying the reception of foreign music has always been an attractive task, especially one focusing on the turmoil age of early 20th century Europe. Musicologists have long been doing reception studies of the Second Viennese School, yet few have specifically connected...
Mapping “Slave Songs of the United States”
Mapping Slave Songs of the United States Introduction Slave songs - spirituals, Old Plantation songs, songs of the contraband - form an important if often difficult to quantify or categorize phenomenon of American music history. Around the time of the Civil War...
Music in the Gulag
Music in the Gulag Maps Scroll down to read about the project, see the maps, and find other related information. Or, use the navigation center below. Read about the project and research methods Overview Map Gulag "Theater Ensemble Collective" Map Lina Prokofiev Map...
Programs of Modern-Music Societies in New York, 1920-1931
This project is a companion to the appendix of Carol J. Oja's Making Music Modern, in which Oja compiles a list of programs of the following new-music organizations: Pro Musica Society American Music Guild International Composers' Guild League of Composers...
Venues in Paris and Worldwide
This Google Maps tool shows every single venue that is listed in our database to date. There are hundreds of them, yet clear patterns emerge. In Paris, you can see the tight cluster of jazz nightclubs around Place Pigalle in Montmartre, and the scores of venues in the...
Venues in Paris by Type
Both of the following maps visualize the locations of various musical venues around the city of Paris in 1924, with each category of venue (different kinds of theaters, concert halls, churches, etc.) represented by a different layer. The first map projects the layers...
The Unsuspecting Tour Guide
The ultimate pursuit of this research has been to create interactive maps capable of displaying performances, venues, residences, and other geographical...