The purpose of this workshop is to introduce music education scholars and practitioners to Smithsonian Folkways Music Pathways: “an innovative new teaching tool designed to illuminate lesser-known corners of music history using the sounds and resources available in the label’s iconic catalog” (Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, 2025). Well-researched, contextualized, engaging, and free, Music Pathways place the transformative power of music at the center of learning experiences across subject areas in the K-12 curriculum (Campbell & Mellizo, 2024).In a nutshell, Music Pathways are curated, yet flexible journeys of discovery that provide a solid basis for teachers to explore important cultural and musical themes with their students. They are based on the premise that ALL students deserve to see their histories, their cultures, and their musical experiences and preferences represented in curricula used in schools. Each Pathway has one broad, overarching theme (e.g., Women in the Blues) and is which is divided into 10-12 Lesson Hubs, based upon sub-themes (e.g., historical event, type of instrument, featured musician, smaller geographic region). While some Music Pathway themes are culturally responsive in nature (Lind & McCoy, 2016), others are more culturally expansive (Dahm, 2023). Teachers and learners engage with the lesson content by proceeding down one of three distinct Paths (20-30-minute segments of curricular content), which are tailor-made for different school subjects (e.g., social studies/history, general music, music performance ensembles, etc.)Music Pathways are written collaboratively by teams of educators, ethnomusicologists, and culture-bearing musicians/cultural knowledge keepers, who draw from their own cultural value systems and music transmission methods which with they are familiar. They are delivered through a series of interactive online slideshows and detailed teacher’s guides. Audio and video recordings from the vast Smithsonian Folkways collection are streamed directly through the slideshows, which also integrate a wide variety of resources from other Smithsonian museums and contain a plethora of rich, interesting, and accurate contextual information.In this workshop, participants will experience these resources for themselves, choosing several learning experiences from a menu of possibilities (Women in the Blues, Cajun and Zydeco Music, Music of the Chicano Movement, Music of Puerto Rico, and Music of the Asian Courts.) The facilitator will lead participants through the experiences, offering moments for listening, storytelling, reflecting, connecting, and/or hands-on music making. At the end of the session, participants will engage in critical dialogue about the unique promise and potential shortcomings of these resources.