Vivian Williams of Voyager Recordings has put up 50 videos of Northwest Coast fiddlers (mostly WA, but also ID and MT) on YouTube.
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Nikolai Fox’s film Music for the Sky premiered at Space Gallery in Portland, ME. The film, which explores a community of eccentric old-time fiddlers playing southern-style fiddle music in the mountains of VT and western MA, revolves around the personalities of eight musicians, each described in a cinematic portrait. Info: Nikolai Fox, www.nikolaifox.com.
The American Folklife Center Card Catalog, covering field recordings made between 1930 and 1950, is now available online. The new resource, called Traditional Music and Spoken Word Catalog, will provide researchers the convenience of accessing the AFC’s card catalog without traveling to the library. It contains fully researchable bibliographic data representing approximately 34,000 ethnographic sound recordings of the Archive of Folksong Archive. Included among these are the seminal field recordings associated with John A. Lomax’s and Alan Lomax’s Library of Congress collecting work (e.g., Leadbelly, Woody Guthrie, Jelly Roll Morton), and countless other treasures recorded by collectors such as Herbert Halpert, Zora Neale Hurston, Henrietta Yurchenco, Vance Randolph, and Helen Creighton. The new catalog will be part of the site The Library of Congress Presents Music, Theatre & Dance, at http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/html/afccards/.
The University of Rochester has digitized and made available online its collection of public domain scores and music ephemera. This includes copies of S. S. Stewart’s Banjo and Guitar Journal from the 1890s. Originally published as a magazine to promote their instruments, the journal is filled with fascinating commentary on the state of music of the day. The site is: https://urresearch.rochester.edu/handle/1802/2586.
Oregon Public Broadcasting's Oregon Art Beat has aired the piece they did a few years ago on the monthly Portland square dance, with Foghorn playing and Bill Martin calling. It is archived at the website:http://www.opb.org/programs/artbeat/videos/view/35-Bill-Martin-Square-Dancing.
The following radio shows are free for downloading through the PRX website: www.prx.org/pieces/177 pre-blues with Robert Crumb and Jerry Zoltan. www.prx.org/pieces/3187 a history of black religious music with interview clips from Ira Tucker of the Dixie Hummingbirds, Isaac Freeman of the Fairfield Four, and many others.
Musician and fiddle maker Joe Thrift will appear on PBS’s the Woodwright’s Shop with host Roy Underhill on Nov. 10. Joe will also be playing some old-time music along with Kelly Breidling, Nick McMillan, and Tom Riccio. For more info, check Joe’s new website: www.josephthriftviolins.com.
New River is a musical documentary directed and produced by Tom Sims, about North Carolina’s Campbell and Brooks families (that included Ola Belle Reed and Guy Brooks of the Red Fox Chasers). It will be broadcast on Public TV WHYY’s Arts Comcast Cable Channel (date TBA). Info: www.abovethelinefilms.com.
West Virginia’s Mountain Stage radio show, based in Charleston, has featured live bluegrass, folk and old-time music performances since 1983. Larry Groce is the host and artistic director, and recent perfomers have included Ken Bloom, Bob Shank, and Rachel Eddy and the Morgantown Rounders Find out more at www.mountainstage.com.
Tune up that radio! Dick Gordon (The Story, North Carolina Public Radio) has a one-hour program about Joe Thompson and The Carolina Chocolate Drops. If you go to http://www. thestory.org, you can download the whole show in mp3 format.
The Tallboys and Paul Silveria can be heard on a radio story on NPR about square dancing in Seattle, WA, and the Northwest. Go to: http://www.kuow.org/DefaultProgram.asp?ID=12524
Radio YUR is North Carolina’s only website 24/7 audio stream to focus exclusively on the traditional music, art, and culture of the Western North Carolina region. With its small-town, friendly format, Radio YUR.com welcomes over 18,000 domestic and international visitors each and every month. Streaming locally produced programs like The KingPup Radio Show, Carolina Live, Carolina Tales, The Liberty Flyer, and Best of the Blue Ridge, radio YUR.com continues to showcase the sights and sounds of North Carolina’s rural communities. Feel free to contact Phil Johnson (www.radioyur.com) with any of your thoughts and suggestions.
Musician and scholar Schlomo Pescoe is currently working on setting up a Banjo Roots Website. His hope is that the site, still a work in progress, will serve as a cyber-meeting place and information center for the online the banjo roots community. Check it out: www.banjoroots.com. |
