About the Digital Collections

About the Digital Collections

The Arhoolie Foundation Digital Collections showcase the history of tradition-based music and its makers. Our collections include photographs, videos, and sound recordings created by documentarians of North American vernacular music and culture, as well as a large body of commercial recordings, ephemera, and research material. 

The Arhoolie Foundation is proudly rooted in the work of our founder, Chris Strachwitz. Chris started the Arhoolie Foundation in 1995 to digitize the Frontera Collection of Mexican and Mexican American Recordings, the world's largest commercially recorded vernacular music collection. Those efforts were the beginning of what is now an expansive digital archive.

Chris's work and spirit—eagerly documenting and proudly celebrating "down-home music" wherever he found it—inspire our efforts to preserve and share our growing digital collections.