Consists of approximately 100 sound recordings, primarily blues and gospel songs, and related documentation from the folk festival at Fort Valley State College (now Fort Valley State University) in Fort Valley, Georgia. This collection contains eleven recordings of banjo player Sidney Stripling. The documentation was created by John Wesley Work III in 1941 and by Lewis Jones and Willis Laurence James in March, June, and July 1943. Also included are recordings made in Tennessee and Alabama (including six Sacred Harp songs) by John Wesley Work III between September 1938 and 1941.

The Alan Lomax Collection includes ethnographic field documentation, materials from Lomax’s various projects, and cross-cultural research created and collected by Alan Lomax and others on traditional song, music, dance, and body movement from the 1930s to the 1990s. The collection contains approximately 650 linear feet of manuscripts, 6,400 sound recordings, 5,500 graphic images, and 6000 moving images. This collection contains over an hour of recordings of Sid Hemphill (fiddle), Lucius Smith (banjo), and Will Head (bass drum). More recordings of these artists can also be found in the Lomax Digital Archive Online.External

The core of this presentation consists of "stock" arrangements for bands or small orchestras of popular songs written by African Americans. In addition, it offers a smaller selection of historic sound recordings illustrating these songs and many others by the same composers (the arrangements might not necessarily be the same as those on the stocks). Educational materials include short biographies of composers and performers of the time and historical essays. This collection includes information on Horace Weston, an African American performer of minstrelsy, and notes on other African-American banjo players in early sound recordings. This collection is held by the Music Division at Library of Congress.