About
Music Means is a multimedia digital platform that explores music and meaning in America. It aggregates expert knowledge about music and culture in support of classroom teaching, civic education, self-motivated learning, and public discourse. This research focuses on recording, mapping, and exemplifying the variety and complexity of music in America and illustrates the many ways music has been used to understand and define what is American and explore the many ways music has been used as a means to an end in America: mobilized to serve national identity, community reinvention, commerce, war, ideology, protest, unity, religion, morality, and more.
Music Means is part of the Many Musics of America Project, a landmark event series organized by the AMS to spotlight the richness and diversity of America’s musical traditions as the country approaches its 250th anniversary. Partially funded by a grant from the National Writing Project and the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Many Musics of America Project is anchored and co-organized by volunteers from the American Musicological Society’s network of fifteen regional chapters.
Mexican Music and the South
Music in the South is strongly influenced by Spanish-language musical traditions. In this Music Means post, Sophia M. Enríquez explores the impact that Mexican musical cultures have had in shaping music of the US South.

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