Music, like history, is iterative. Nobody knows that better than hip-hop artists, for whom sampling other songs is a core component of making new tracks.

Now everyone has a chance to experience what it feels like to sample and mix beats, thanks to the Library of Congress’s new hip hop music project, Citizen DJ. The open-source web application allows people to create new music using the library’s vast audio collections, which date back more than a hundred years.

“My dream is that there’s a whole new generation of sounds that can be made using this shared material,” says Brian Foo, the library’s “innovator-in-residence” and Citizen DJ’s creator. He hopes everyone from amateur musicians to Kanye West uses the new tool.

Foo fell in love with hip-hop culture as a teen in the 1990s. He became enthralled by the idea of the DJ as a collector of sounds (he also took up break dancing). He held onto those interests even as he transitioned into a career in computer science and data visualization.

Citizen DJ includes six vast collections of audio files, ranging from motion picture soundtracks from the early 20th century to an archive of dialect samples from oral histories, public speeches and linguistic interviews. (Heads up, Washingtonians: About a dozen files in that collection are recordings of D.C. children from 1968.)

The thousands of hours of recordings have no copyright restrictions — they’re all free to sample, download and share.

Users can search the recordings by subject, pitch or musical note and then feed their selections into a mixing program, where they can mess around with different drum machines and beat patterns.

The process of browsing through the collections is perfectly suited for the quarantine era, even without the goal of making music. It feels like being lost in a colorful maze of sound.

Lots of strange stuff is in there waiting to be discovered: A 1922 recording of Santa Claus laughing maniacally; the score of a 1902 silent film about a crazy baker; and a recording from the early 1980s of a 12-year-old boy talking about immigrating to Virginia from Vietnam.

When he’s not working in the Library of Congress’s LC Labs on Citizen DJ, Foo works as a data visualization artist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, where he lives. Until the pandemic hit, his one-year gig with the Library of Congress brought him to D.C. about once a month.

Foo hopes the project provides people quarantined at home with a fun way to listen to music and explore new genres and historical eras.

“I’m hoping the public can find more weird stuff and share it,” he says. “There’s a lot that I dream about for this project.”

Today’s launch is a partial rollout ahead of the full launch slated for this summer. Foo and other library staff will host a live demo and answer questions at 3 p.m. on Facebook Live, and they’re accepting feedback on the beta version for the next few months.

This story originally appeared on WAMU.