Federal Music Project

The Federal Music Project (FMP) was a part of the New Deal program Federal Project Number One provided by the U.S. federal government which employed musicians, conductors and composers during the Great Depression.^[1] In addition to performing thousands of concerts, offering music classes, organizing the Composers Forum Laboratory, hosting music festivals and creating 34 new orchestras, employees of the FMP researched American traditional music and folk songs, a practice now called ethnomusicology. In the latter domain the Federal Music Project did notable studies on cowboy, Creole, and what was then termed Negro music. During the Great Depression, many people visited these symphonies to forget about the economic hardship of the time. In 1939, the FMP transitioned to the Works Progress Administration's Music Program, which along with many other WPA projects, was phased out in the midst of World War II.^[2]