Guitarist and banjo player Erik Darling died last Sunday at age 74. His arrangements of traditional songs played a significant role in the folk music revival of the late 1950s and early 1960s.
posted on Aug 9, 2008 - View this thread

Pansori (aka P'ansori) is a genre of Korean folk music produced by travelling musicians, a singer accompanied by a lone drummer. Rooted in seventeenth century folk tales, by the 1960's, Pansori was in danger of dying out completely, when the director Im Kwon-taek made the film Sopyonje.
posted on Jul 3, 2008 - View this thread

Tom Dula was a real person. Who knew? The Kingston Trio's version of Tom Dooley is the most famous. It says here that Doc Watson's great-grandparents were the Dooley's neighbors. They say Ann Melton confessed before she died... "Folk music is serious business."
posted on Jun 4, 2008 - View this thread

Casual fans of Irish folk-punk bands like The Pogues, Flogging Molly and the Dropkick Murphys rarely take the time to investigate the sources of their inspiration. Those who do, cannot avoid coming across the The Dubliners.
posted on May 19, 2008 - View this thread

Stan Kelly-Bootle began his career as a member of the earliest wave of computer programmers, who wrote prolifically about a wide range of computing issues. Back in his home town though, he's probably best known for his contributions to a lexicon of local slang, Lern Yerself Scouse, and for his canonical and not-so-canonical contributions to the British folk repertoire.
posted on May 12, 2008 - View this thread

Streaming audio of traditional music from the former Soviet republic of Georgia. This is some of the strangest, most haunting and blissed-out singing you can hear on this planet. (And check out those swell outfits, fellas!)
posted on Mar 11, 2008 - View this thread

By the time Russian folksinger Venya Drkin (Веня Д’ркин) died of cancer in 1999, he had written over three hundred songs. Love songs, happy songs, angry songs, sad songs. He also sketched pictures: strange, lonely, menacing, redemptive. And wrote folktales. He was only 29.
posted on Jan 14, 2008 - View this thread

The pleasant but hagiographical Pete Seeger: The Power of Song (production company website w/ trailer) is playing in New York and Los Angeles. The movie is entirely uncritical... prompting this response by Ron Radosh who is interviewed in the film, but whose critical comments were left out. But most interesting is this followup article by Radosh describing Seeger's response and a new song against Stalin. The filmmaker comes out worst in Radosh's account...
posted on Nov 16, 2007 - View this thread

Tonight's tribute concert for Red House Records was a glimpse of heaven for lovers of roots and folk music. More than fifteen recording artists of Red House Records put on an amazing show on September 9th at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul in tribute to Bob Feldman, founder of the label who died last year. Each musician sang or played two songs. They all appeared gratis, with the proceeds going to benefit the redwood forests. The vibe was by turns friendly, poignant and joyous. Eliza Gilkyson nearly stopped my heart - I couldn't breathe until I heard 'My love s/he's like some raven at my window with a broken wing.'
posted on Sep 9, 2007 - View this thread

You've got just over two weeks to make it to the John Henry celebration in Leeds, Alabama, where some folks believe the legendary steel driving contest actually took place. Maybe you already made it to John Henry Days in Talcott, West Virginia (or read a fictionalized account), where some more folks claim the same. John Garst, Scott Nelson, and other folklorists weigh in here, supplemented by a wealth of links and resources on the subject. While you think on it let Mississippi Fred McDowell, The Boss, Ralph Stanley, John Jackson, Merle Travis, and Jason Isbell tell their own versions. John Garst and his research mentioned previously.
posted on Aug 28, 2007 - View this thread

Isaac Guillory was widely regarded as probably the best acoustic guitarist in Britain. These three clips from a Berkeley performance in 1989 show why he is still much missed.
posted on Jul 2, 2007 - View this thread

The Florida Memory Project has a great audio section. In addition to podcasts and lots of individual files, they've compiled three mix cds of their offerings (Music from the Florida Folklife Collection, More Music, and Shall We Gather at the River). The real gem of the collection, though, may be the WPA recordings Zora Neale Hurston made while she was collecting folk tales in Florida. (Previous y2karl omnibus folklife post)
posted on Jun 29, 2007 - View this thread

On November 25th, 2006, Valentin Elizalde was killed in the city of Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico. Elizalde, a singer of a style of song known as the narcocorrido, was warned not to step foot in Tamaulipas because of a video for his song “A mis Enemigos," which showed footage of (WaPo article) the deaths of drug traffickers from the Gulf Cartel. In December of 2006, Javier Morales Gómez was killed in Huetamo, Michoacán while talking on his cell phone. Morales Gómez was the singer for Los Implacables del Norte, another group closely associated with narcocorridos. The most famous death of a narcocorrido writer/singer has to be Chalino Sanchez, killed in 1992, and spawning several imitators known as Los Chalinillos that are still prevalent 15 years after Sanchez's death. (previously) [more inside]
posted on May 25, 2007 - View this thread

I used to wonder where all the protest songs had gone. Now I’ve found where over 17,000 (and counting) of them have gone. Audio conditionally NSFW. via
posted on Apr 24, 2007 - View this thread

Uyghur goes pop! Fully downloadable album (with samples to try before you don't have to buy) of pop music from Xinjiang, aka East Turkestan, home to the Uyghur.
posted on Mar 22, 2007 - View this thread

Before you do anything else, just listen to this. That's eefing, a 100-plus-year-old vocal technique from rural Tennessee that's, well, the original hillbilly beatboxing. The undisputed master of the art was Jimmie Riddle. His unique skill landed him recording* and TV (youtube) work. Want more weird sounds from the deep south? Try Hollerin & Whoopin and Ringing the Pig. *[warning: on the "Little Eefin Annie" page, avoid the "click here to hear Rolf Harris Eeefin'!" link: it's a pesky popup.
posted on Jan 6, 2007 - View this thread

Harry Everett Smith was a, "20th-century Renaissance man, working as an abstract film-maker, painter, musicologist, anthropologist, theoretician, self-mythologizer and connoisseur of arcana". His Anthology of American Folk Music was hugely influential on American music, while his alchemical, synæsthetic films were to have a similar impact on experimental film and animation. Enjoy his mesmerising and astonishing "Early Abstractions" on Youtube [part 1 or 4], hear Harry lecture, or listen to some tracks from The Anthology.
posted on Dec 8, 2006 - View this thread

The Virtual Gramophone. A massive database of early Canadian 78 RPM recordings, now available in mp3 and rm format. Over 13,000 titles available, freely downloadable. Includes biographical notes on the artists, notes on the history of Canadian recording, interesting technical notes on media conversion, a few videos from the olde dayes, and podcasts. This collection is particularly strong on Quebecois and Acadien folk/fiddle music. Courtesy of the Library and Archives Services of the Government of Canada. Mentioned once before in passing, five years ago on Metafilter, but much improved since them realaudio only days.
posted on Oct 31, 2006 - View this thread

Joanie Anderson, singer/songwriter (YouTube)
posted on Jul 24, 2006 - View this thread

The Morris dance is common to all inhabited worlds in the multiverse. It is danced under blue skies to celebrate the quickening of the soil and under bare stars because it's springtime and with any luck the carbon dioxide will unfreeze again. It is danced innocently by raggedy-bearded young mathematicians to an inexpert accordion rendering of "Mrs Widgery's Lodger" and ruthlessly by such as the Ninja Morris Men of New Ankh, who can do strange and terrible things with a simple handkerchief and a bell.
(from page one of Terry Pratchett's "Reaper Man")
posted on Apr 29, 2006 - View this thread

Victor Jara in English. Tribute page to the Chilean folk singer.
posted on Sep 13, 2004 - View this thread

Folk Songs For The 21st Century was recorded in the late '50s. Sheldon Allman wrote all the songs, and sings them in a strange, warped baritone voice. His tongue had to be firmly planted in his cheek when writing something like "Space Opera". Then again, maybe not... [via Buzz.]
posted on Apr 13, 2004 - View this thread

Streaming video documentary films about American traditional music. Great American roots music films for free! Click and watch full length documentaries about the Popovich Brothers Tamburitza band of South Bend Indiana, Louisiana creole fiddler Canray Fontenot, the last Black medicine-show performer, sacred harp singing and much more. An amazing collaboration between folklorists and indie film makers.
posted on Mar 8, 2004 - View this thread

Folk singer Adam Brodsky is planning to tour 50 states in 50 days, nonstop, striving for that American dream of a listing in the Guinness World Records. Anyone wanna lend the guy a couch to crash on?
posted on May 15, 2003 - View this thread

A Mighty Wind - courtesy of Christopher Guest, folk music finally gets the spinal tap treatment.
posted on Feb 25, 2003 - View this thread

Alan Lomax , the legendary collector of folk music who was the first to record towering figures like Leadbelly, Muddy Waters and Woody Guthrie, died yesterday at a nursing home in Sarasota, Fla. He was 87. Mr. Lomax was a musicologist, author, disc jockey, singer, photographer, talent scout, filmmaker, concert and recording producer and television host. He did whatever was necessary to preserve traditional music and take it to a wider audience. (NY Times- Registraion Required) And... Additionally... And this. Also...
posted on Jul 20, 2002 - View this thread