General Folk links .....................Put your comments in my
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l Links and resources - menu of the various
links pages
l Songs, writing - my own, and other
people's
l Hiring Fair - looking
for a local band or musician?
l What's on - folk clubs, sessions, festivals, and other things
On
this page:
Signposts....Publications.....Finding Songs.....Making Music....Around the Net ...
Local Folk websites ....Putting songs on the net
English folk and traditional music on the Internet ("Martin Nail's pages") Simple, comprehensive and admirable. No frills to get in the way.
National and Regional Folk Publications on the Web is a site with a similar approach, but with a slightly different focus (offshoot of Folk London.)
UK Folk Index is a way of findig out if there is a folk club in a particular town.
Ceolas celtic music archive But if you're after Celtic music, try here instead. Tunes, songs, stuff about instruments, and lots of links.
Pay the Reckoning - "Pay The Reckoning uses 21st Century technology to further the cause of a centuries-old musical form - Irish traditional music. We're in our infancy ... but we hope to grow over time. " Tunes, songs, links. Based in London. Well worth visiting.
West Gallery Music Association Alongside the secular folk traditions, other traditions exist.This is one of them.
Village Carols And this is another - a cracking good sing.
folkmusic dot org I suppose this is an American equivalent of Martin Nail's pages. (Functionally that is - but this is nowhere near as likeable.)
Folk Music Home Page A less polished American approach, and the links are interesting.
Pete Shaw's Home Pages, Whittlesea Straw Bears, and lots of other stuff from the Fens - and other places (eg Broadstairs Festival)
Folkworks A North Country site (English North Country, that is) with some interesting links.
FolkFax A colourful and informative site - and its sister site FolkWise takes you trips on the waterways, and gives you songs to go with it.
Mad Nanny Folk Club in Letchworth has a great list of excellent folk links, especially to sources of tunes.
Open Directory Project - this is a general find anything catalogue, ,based on a network of volunteers applying their expertise to make it as good as they can - and on folk music it is especially good.
Local:
Essex Folk News (officially called "efn" because it also covers things happening in the bits of Essex that got engulfed in London. It also includes some information about some bits of Essex that have been in Hertfordshire for the past 1000 years or so, but used to be in the Kingdom of Essex, such as Stortford and Hertford.). It comes out quarterly, and has a website as well http://www.pvcw.freeserve.co.uk/efnlink.htm Contact: John New 37 Sidwell Avenue, Benfleet, Essex, SS7 1LF 01268 793905. e-mail address: essex_folk_news@hotmail.comUnicorn Magazine Another quarterly that covers the Three Counties of Beds Herts and Cambs (and includes stuff across the border, e.g. in Harlow.) Contact is Alan 01582 724261; address is 6 Dudley Street, Luton LU2 0NT. email address: trpthomas@aol.com.
Puddingstone "Hertfordshire Folk Magazine" - three times a year, Hertfordshire Folk Association; editor Mrs Libby Byne-Grey, Musley House, 9 Homefield Road, Ware, Herts SG12 7NG 01920 460553. Very much folk dance oriented.
Less Local:
An online community around folk, and blues, incorporating a massive archive of songs, discussion threads, articles... Based in America, linking folk people around the world. For a song about it.
Folk Roots Festival list More festivals than you could get to in a lifetime, all over Europe from Galway to Greece. (Though for the Irish Festivals you do better to go via the Irish Times site.) For some odd reason Folk Roots seem to think that Ireland is in "mainland Europe", and that Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Channel Isles are in Britain. But it's still a good list...
Musical Traditions Folk Roots is all very well, but this on-line magazine leaves it standing.
Dirty Linen This is the American equivalent of Folk Roots
Sing Out But this is the real stuff - it's got still Pete Seeger writing for it at 80.
The Digital Traditions Folksong Search Page A vast repository of songs. You can get it on a floppy if you send them a few dollars. (They are right now being hassled by the American equivalent of the Performing Rights Society, but I reckon they'll pull through ok.) This is part of the Mudcat Cafe site, which has all kind of good stuff. Enormous set of relevant links, interesting and good-natured discussion threads. For a song in support of free song/speech, click here. For another song about the Mudcat Cafe, try this Blue Clicky Thing.
And here is an unofficial mirror site for Digital Tradition, with the tunes of songs in staff notation. A spin-off of the Mudcat Cafe is the Mudcat Songbook, which has masses of new songs from members.Australian Folk Songs But if it's an Australian Song this might be a better bet.
For songs and tunes from Celtic traditions, try Ceolas or closer to home for me (Leicsestershire) is Prof's Traditional Irish Music pages.
For French Chansons (may not be folk in most definitions, but so what?) - try here. (This site, by a Russian studying in Minnesota has some other great stuff in it.(For a translation I've made of one memorable chanson, click here)
Thrift Music in Frinton-on-Sea, Essex - very good value and good service from Jon and Pam Fitzgerald, mainstay of Walton-on-the Naze Folk Festival. With a good website, including catalogue at http://www.thrift-music.com/
Hobgoblin Music International Index Splendid shops in London Crawley and Bristol. I wish I had the money to buy some of these instruments. And enough room to hold them. And the time and skill to learn to play them, and use the music books they also sell. No balalaika tutors or Alaska fingerpicks or strum roses (which are vicious looking multiple plectrums that noone seems to use apart from me), but noone's perfect.
The Music Room. Used to be Dave Mallinson Music, and they are based in Yorkshire. Very helpful and comprehensive. No balalaika tutors or Alaska fingerpicks - but they do stock strum roses.
Pub Prop A brilliant device for pub sessions, which saves fiddles and mandolins from getting trodden on, and guitars or bouzoukis from falling over in pubs. (Made by Lancashireman Brian Rathmill. He also makes an ingenious little device called a Pub Rest which doubles as a way of holding a heavier instrument like a banjo - or a guitar for that matter in a pub where the tables have sloping edges - and also as a way of hanging the instrument up on the wall at home. He's working on other related devices - maybe one to stop musicians falling over in pubs would be useful...) Just in case the link doesn't work, here's the snail-mail address: Briar Mill PO Box 35 Ashton-U-Lyne, Lancs OL7 9PJ
Noteworthy Composer A music writing program that really works, and doesn't cost the earth. At last I can find out what all those dots sound like, and see what my own tunes look like. (And what they sound like on the fiddle, the bagpipes, or with a string ensemble...)
Interesting stuff about squeezeboxes or here. As for hurdy gurdies...
(And of course there is also efn )
A bit less local, but near enough:
Pay the Reckoning - "Pay The Reckoning uses 21st Century technology to further the cause of a centuries-old musical form - Irish traditional music. We're in our infancy ... but we hope to grow over time. " Tunes, songs, links. Based in London. Well worth visiting.
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