American Folklife CenterThe American Folklife Center Archive is one of the largest archives of ethnographic materials from the United States and around the world, encompassing millions of items of ethnographic and historical documentation recorded from the nineteenth century to the present. The archival collections of the American Folklife Center include the largest body of early recordings of indigenous American music recordings in the United States: about ten thousand wax cylinders of songs and stories. The majority of these document American Indian cultures.