Cyberfolk Spring 2001

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Cyberfolk Summer 2001

What is Folk Music?

For the last six years, Cyberfolk has been talking about folk music related sites on the Internet. It has covered topics from accapella singing to blues to science fiction "filk" songs. So what exactly is folk music, anyway? Ask a few folks and you'll get more opinions that there are strings on your autoharp. So let's see what folks on the Internet have to say.

For starters, you can hear a good sampling of what constitutes folk music from WUMB in Boston. Listen to it online at http://www.wumb.org

With WUMB in the background, take a look at Meryl Neff's dissertation on the definition of folk music. It presents several opinions as well as a nice history of folk music in America in the 20th century. Find it at http://www.coe.ufl.edu/courses/EdTech/Vault/Folk/Definition.htm

The Folkie's Dictionary include definitions for everything from folk music itself to music theory terminology to Flanders and Swann to words in dialect that you might find in a Scottish ballad. Be careful, you can get stuck at this site for hours... Find it at http://www.accad.ohio-state.edu/~spencer/FF/

If you favor the more traditional definition of folk music, you may be interested in Mark Dvorak's Song Notes, in which he gives a brief history of each of the songs in the Old Town School of Folk Music song book. Find it at http://www.oldtownschool.org/Resource/songnotesmain.html

Finish off by listening to an interesting folk music radio station from South Australia at http://www.folk-sa.asn.au/FolkCentre/infolkus_radio.html

Read this article online with live links and visit the Cyberfolk archive at http://shark.dls.net/~chrismac/cyberfolk

If you have any favorite sites or topics you'd like to see mentioned in Cyberfolk, please let us know. Write to me care of Common Times, or email me at chris.mcintosh@usa.net. See you in Cyberspace!