3rd Ear Music is a comprehensive resource of South African music, past and present. The organization started its collection in 1964 and it now offers links to several South African artists, history of SA music and recordings.

This encyclopedia entry gives a brief history of rap and hip hop and the influences of the music on modern culture.

African-Canadian music encompasses the West Indies, Africa, the United States, South American and the Maritimes. This excellent reference resource provides information about the many kinds of music and the talented individuals who make it.

Online exhibit from the Library of Congress explores black America's quest for equality from the early national period through the twentieth century. Exhibit contains a wealth of items including books, government documents, manuscripts,...

Presented as an ABC list of cultural features of South Africa. Each letter links to a topic, and each topic has a paragraph with a link to more in-depth, and often fascinating, information about that topic, and about the history of South...

This site offers the first chapter of Ted Gioia's book, "The History of Jazz." This chapter focuses on the prehistory of jazz, including the Africanization of American music, country blues and classic blues, and Scott Joplin and Ragtime.

A supplement to a ten-part film series on jazz, this resource describes the growth and development of jazz music from the gritty streets of New Orleans to the Lincoln Gardens on Chicago's south side, where Louis Armstrong first won fame,...

The First World War had a crippling effect on any notions of positivity in the artists, writers, and intellectuals of that time and they became known as the Lost Generation. This page discusses this group of people, the emergence of jazz...

Access the educational resources developed by a Seattle-based museum to supplement the PBS documentary series "The Blues." Includes background essays on the blues; biographies, video clips, and sound clips from the series; a blues...

This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Louis Jordan, an American saxophonist-singer prominent in the 1940s and '50s who was a seminal figure in the development of both rhythm and blues and rock and roll. The bouncing, rhythmic...

This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features De La Soul, an American rap group whose debut album, 3 Feet High and Rising (1989), was one of the most influential albums in hip-hop history.