Voices of the First People is a project created to honor the life and work of Vi Hilbert by making accessible audio and video recordings that are part of the Vi Hilbert Collection.

View a selection of the Archives' unique films on the Internet Archive.

In 1971, Seattle's Milton Simons (1923-1973) formed the band Jasis and recorded an album with Paul Dusenbury (piano and flute), Milt Gerard (bass), Jimmie Williams (drums). The masters came to UW as part of Kearney Barton’s archive. We’ve posted them below for your own spontaneous academic journey. And if free jazz is your go-to study soundtrack, check out John Coltrane Live in Seattle (UW NetID needed).

Check out a selection of the Archives' ZM Dagar recordings on Spotify. 

5 years of unique live audio and video recorded at the Crocodile Café by audio engineer Jim Anderson between 2002 and 2007, with 2,000+ artists performing in a variety of contexts: indie rock to punk, shoegazer to noise, hip-hop to math rock. Click here for more info: 

Selections from Professor Sakata's Afghanistan Collections were released on Lyrichord in the 1970s. Now hear them online.

Global Field Recordings  

Unique field recordings from UW and UCLA. UW content features recordings made by UW ethnomusicology founder Robert Garfias and includes music from Bali, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Japan, Korea, Laos, Spain, Thailand, Turkey, Nicaragua, Mexico, Myanmar, the Philippines, Romania, Zimbabwe and beyond (UW login required). 

Learn about the Archives' work in a WSU-led, 36-month, Mellon/CLIR funded project to to advance the practice of collaborative curation with nine regional Tribes. 

Online collection developed by UW faculty that serves as a companion to their book American Sabor: Latinos and Latinas in US Popular Music / Latinos y latinas en la musica popular estadounidense. 

Ethnographic Sound Archives Online brings together over 2,000 hours of previously unpublished historic field recordings from around the world, alongside their supporting field notes, photos, films, and ethnographers' metadata. UW's Hiromi Lorraine Sakata collections featuring music from  Afghanistan and Pakistan are included.

We partnered with Light in the Attic Records on Kearney Barton Architect of the Northwest Sound. We provided the music from our underground archival recesses, and they provided the exquisite (and green) double LP release.