Welcome to the Southern Music Research Center

The Southern Music Research Center is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit devoted to the preservation and public presentation of the American South’s many music histories and ongoing forms of musical expression.

The real center of our Center is this website: a public archive of rare photos, rescued recordings, oral histories, ephemera and artifacts from a diversity of musical communities and traditions. We encourage visitors to get to know our site by browsing our collections — and to come back often, as we are actively acquiring and adding new material to the site.

You can support our mission and growth by making a financial contribution. To donate materials to the archive, please contact our executive director, Burgin Mathews: burgin@southernmusicresearch.org. To keep up with our latest archival collections and other updates, please join our mailing list.