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Waxing lyrical

Listen to over 200 rare wax cylinder recordings from the World and Traditional Music collections of the British Library Sound Archive. The selection features music, songs and speech from around the world, captured on the first portable recording machines between 1898 and 1915.

Curator's choice

You can listen to the curator's favourites shown on the left, or follow the links below to browse the whole collection and find out more

Browse whole collection

Read curator's introduction

Choose another collection

Related links

British Library Sound Archive

www.tinfoil.com an independent website dedicated to early sound recordings

Copyright notice

Due to copyright restrictions the recordings featured here are only freely available as streaming audio files. They are not available to download. If you wish to obtain a copy of any recording featured here, please send an email to sound-archive@bl.uk to request further information.

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Ethnographic Wax Cylinders

Shahnai duet,
Punjab, Pakistan,
1911

Curator's choice

Mabuiag Song,
Torres Strait,
1898

Curator's choice

'Died for Love',
and hornpipe (John Locke),
Herefordshire,
c.1908

Curator's choice

Yekhee song,
Edo Region, Nigeria,
1909

Curator's choice

Flute solo,
Edo Region, Nigeria,
1909

Curator's choice

Tom Miles, former researcher, Wax Cylinder Collections

Tom Miles
former Researcher,
Wax Cylinders Collections