Historical Research

Of the many brass bands that have flourished across the world over the last 200 years very few have documented records covering their history. Even less is known about the players in those bands.

Over the last 27 years I have researched, collected and collated a range of information about the history of the brass band movement, and made it available to all via the IBEW. In recent years this work has also resulted in a number of books, articles and blog posts on a wide variety of banding historical topics.

At the forefront of these are the Brass Band Bibliography, with over 14,200 entries, and the various historical directories, in particular Brass Bands of the British Isles, which lists nearly 20,000 bands, with some 10,300 additional cross references for alternative or previous names. Over 9,500 "overseas" bands are included in Brass Bands of the World, with around 2,700 cross references. A full list of my publications is given HERE - all of these are available as PDF downloads here or from https://gavinholman.academia.edu/research, and the IBEW Blog.

Numerous books and articles about the history of bands are listed in the Brass Band Bibliography (currently 14,200 entries).
Some 5,500 of these are available via the IBEW Document Archive

A number of historical documents have been scanned, and are available to view/download. See the General Scanned Items page.

For those wanting to find out more about the history of brass bands, I have suggested a few key books as a starting point. See the Basic Brass Band History Books page.

Further information and discussion about historical brass bands can be found in the Facebook Group History of Brass Bands [Facebook]

Details of other band historians and researchers can be found on the Brass Band Historians and Researchers page.

A guide to resources available can be found in my document: Researching the History of Brass Bands

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