Containing details of 390 L.P. and E.P. recordings, African Music on LP: An Annotated Discography contributed to the scholarship of African music at a time when very little had been written. Organized by record label and arranged in alphabetical order, Allen P. Merriam assesses the stylistic characteristics of each recording, providing new insights on the subject and the recording industry at the time of publication.  African Music on LP also contains 18 indexes cross-referencing each of the records. 

ALAN P. MERRIAM (1923-1980) was an ethnomusicologist and professor of anthropology at Indiana University. He co-founded the Society for Ethnomusicology in 1952 with Willard Rhodes and David McAllester. Merriam was the author of the seminal The Anthropology of Music in 1964.