Department of Anthropology and African Studies
Faculty of Historical and Cultural Studies 07 · Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz · Forum 6 · 55099 Mainz · Tel: +49-6131-3922798 · Fax: +49-6131-392373

African Music Archive (AMA)

The African Music Archive (AMA), established in 1991, presents researchers and students with a truly unique resource. While the collection focuses primarily on modern music from sub-Saharan Africa, a musical genre underrepresented in collections elsewhere, it also includes traditional music, which forms the backbone of any solid collection. Material is available on different media such as shellac and vinyl records, CDs and DVDs, video and audio cassettes. The regional focus includes Ethiopia, Cameroon, Congo (formerly Zaire), Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and Tanzania. Apart from music out of these countries, the collection contains musical material from almost each and every country south of the Sahara. Secondary material such as journal articles, reports, interviews, and reviews published in both the African and European popular press complements the collection of music and makes available a rich corpus of source material for further research. Founded by Wolfgang Bender who left the Institute in 2008, the archive was supervised by Matthias Krings until February 2010, when Hauke Dorsch was appointed as its current director.