The Federal Music Project (FMP), part of the United States federal government New Deal program Federal One, employed musicians, conductors and composers during the Great Depression. People in the music world had been particularly hard-hit by the era's economic downturn. 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 "Negro" music. The FMP's director—for the majority of its brief life—was Nikolai Sokoloff .

Further reading

• Bindas, Kenneth J., All of This Music Belongs to the Nation: The WPA's Federal Music Project and American Society, Knoxville, Tennessee: The University of Tennessee Press, 1995. ISBN 1572332522
• Sokoloff, Nikolai, The Federal Music Project, Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1936.