WHILE finding Lyn Colbeck's editorial in the January issue of FoT amusing, it occurred to me that there are still too many people who avoid the Internet because it is either too complicated, too nerdy or too boring. It is none of these, unless you want it to be. It is an extremely useful resource, and while surfing for its own sake can be fun, it does help if you know what you are looking for and how to find it.
The reason you are reading an article on the Internet in a folk magazine is that it has become widely used for the distribution of information about traditional music, initially of course in America, but increasingly in this country. And the purpose of this article – which may become a regular feature – is to demystify this resource, and provide a few starting places to visit.
There are four principal ways of obtaining information – sending and receiving e-mail messages, posting and reading messages in newsgroups, subscribing to newslists and visiting sites on the World Wide Web.
If you have a Mac or a PC, a modem and an account with an Internet Access or Service Provider (ISP) e-mail messages are a piece of cake. In most of your travels around the Net, you will be given your correspondents' e-mail addresses, so keep a note of them, automatically if your software allows, and if you want to know which day Artisan is appearing at Wakefield Folk Festival, send a polite e-mail to Jacey Bedford and I'm sure she will tell you.
Newsgroups – and most ISPs have forums or clubs available as well – are sites where users post messages relevant to a particular interest. Most relevant to FoT are rec.music.celtic, rec.music.folk and uk.music.folk. The last one is only a recent addition, so has less postings than the others, but is more likely to provide gig dates in Sussex, discussions about Huw and Tony Williams or the Web address for Chichester Folk Club.
Newslists are similar to newsgroups but postings are automatically e-mailed to you daily, so if there is an option to have a weekly digest it is probably worth trying that first. For a month or so before last Christmas I was subscribed to the list devoted to traditional Irish music – otherwise known as IRTRAD-L – and eventually unsubscribed when I realised I was spending an hour a day wading through megabytes of messages, too many of them turning into slanging matches of a very non-musical nature. I did however make quite a collection of whistle tunes and found out all the pubs in the Kingston area that hold Irish sessions, but be warned!
A Web site is no more than a file on a remote computer that you have access to. Most sites have text, graphics and links – highlighted bits that you can click on, to take you to another file or site. A good site will have sensibly sized files – so they don't take too long to appear on your monitor or save to your hard drive – and will contain USEFUL INFORMATION. Your local folk club is having a themed singaround? Visit the Digital Tradition, enter a search word – I tried 'death' as an example and was offered 50 out of 649 possible songs, and the Coppers' 'Admiral Benbow' was in the first few. 'Flowers' gave me 148 possibilities, and I even downloaded the tune of 'Among the Blue Flowers and the Yellow' from the singing of Gordeanna McCulloch.
I will finish with some recommended sites. Both Folk Roots and the Ceolas Celtic Music Archive contain pages jam-packed with useful links. Chris Newman's Old Bridge Music is regularly updated and contains information on Boys of the Lough, Tom McConville and Steve Tilston and Maggie Boyle, as well of course as Chris and Maíre, and I found the Chichester Folk Club page very useful as it told me about the change of venue, which saved a lot of embarrassment.
Oh, and if you want Jacey Bedford's e-mail address, subscribe to uk.music.folk. You'll find it soon enough.
If you have a site you want publicised, or you have discovered a site you want others to hear about, or if you need help finding your way around while on-line, please e-mail me.