Created by Dick Glasgow in 2006, Scots-Irish music presents information on the traditional instruments and music of Ulster, with additional information on the music’s relocation in the U.S. Appalachian region. The site includes numerous links to other online resources relevant to Ulster’s musical traditions.
The giant lambeg drum, above, is typically heard with traditional Ulster fife playing (below).
Fonoteca: Radio Nacional de Colombia presents over 29,000 historical recordings, including speeches by presidents and public employees since 1940, serials since 1941, interviews since 1944, religious music festivals, llanera, bagpipes, porro, vallenato, rock, reggae, and Native American music from 1975 to date, as well as lectures and high school class broadcasts from 1960 through 2004.
The site also features the virtual Fonoteca radio station, whose broadcasts have long been part of the youth-oriented Radionica, the Radio Nacional de Colombia FM station.
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Filed under Popular music, Resources
Seosamh Ó hÉanaí (Joe Heaney, 1919–84) was considered by many to be the finest Irish traditional singer of his generation. Born and raised in rural western Ireland, over his lifetime he brought his vast repertoire of sean-nós (old-style) songs and stories, and his majestic, richly ornamented performances of them, to audiences around the world.
Cartlann Sheosaimh Uí Éanaí/Joe Heaney Archives, launched by Ollscoil na hÉireann, Gaillimh/National University of Ireland, Galway in 2010, is a repository of recordings of Heaney’s singing, storytelling, and traditional lore in both Irish and English, along with videos, interviews, transcriptions, translations, and notes. Below, Heaney sings Contae Mhaigh Eo; the images are views of his native Connemara.
Launched by the Institute of Musical Research at the University of London in 2010, Francophone Music Criticism, 1789–1914 is a repository of digitized, searchable reviews relating to French music and ballet. Texts are grouped into collections devoted to particular works, events, series, performers, or authors. Bibliographical resources and work in progress of a more general nature are also included. The database’s development network is headed by Katharine Ellis and Mark Everist.
The Centro de Documentación Musical de Andalucía released Manuel de Falla 1876–1946: Grabaciones históricas in 2009 as part of its series Documentos Sonoros del Patrimonio Musical de Andalucía. The earliest recording included is Fantasía Bética, performed by Mark Hambourg in 1923; the most recent is Fuego fatuo, recorded by the Orquesta Sinfónica de Radio Televisión Española, directed by Antoni Ros Marbà, in 1976.
The accompanying booklet provides complete discographical information, numerous historical photographs, and notes in Spanish, English, and French by Andrés Ruiz Tarazona. Additional performers include Andrés Segovia, the Orquesta Bética de Cámara de Sevilla, which Falla founded in 1923, and the composer himself at the piano.
Above, Alicia de Larrocha performs Falla’s own piano transcription of “Danza del fuego” from his El amor brujo.
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Filed under 20th- and 21st-century music, Resources
The universal availability and divergent imagery of coffee in people’s lives has been expressed in popular music more often than many of us realize. “You’re the cream in my coffee: A discography of java jive” by B. Lee Cooper and William Schurk (Popular music and society XXIII/2 [summer 1999] pp. 91–100) lists over 100 coffee-related popular songs from the 1920s to the 1990s. The songs are grouped both alphabetically and by subject; topics include addictive stimulants, commercial jingles, companionship and socialization, and sexual metaphors.
Click here to hear the Ink Spots performing their 1940 hit Java jive by Ben Oakland and Milton Drake.
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Filed under Food, Popular music, Resources
On 17 November 2010 Na Píobairí Uilleann launched Na Píobairí Uilleann: Source, an Internet resource that includes Irish music web tutors, Irish music collections dating back to 1724, reed-making and pipe-making videos, recitals, and historical data on iconic musicians.
While the site is specifically intended to support students of uilleann piping, pipe-making, and maintenance, it includes material of interest to players of other traditional instruments, traditional singers, and all lovers of Irish traditional music.
Source is a free collection; membership in Na Píobairí Uilleann enables use of organizational tools to create personal bookmarks and galleries. Content will be added regularly, and the site’s design provides for possible future enhancements such as the ability for members to upload and share their own content.
Many thanks to Patrick Hutchinson for bringing this to our attention! Below, Séamus Ennis plays Pat Ward’s jig on the uilleann pipes.
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Filed under Ethnomusicology, Europe, Instruments, Resources
Sephardic music: A century of recordings showcases and discusses over 100 years of recorded Sephardic music, from the 78 rpm era to the present. Created by Joel Bresler, this resource includes information on repertory and performance practice and a comprehensive discography of Sephardic 78s in Hebrew and Ladino ordered by label, song, or artist. Numerous illustrations are provided, including reproductions of record labels and covers.
Above, the label from Haim Effendi’s 1907 recording of the popular Sephardic song A la una; the recording can be heard here.
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Filed under Europe, Resources, World music
Folkstreams is an archive of hard-to-find documentary films about traditional cultures that gives them new life by streaming them on the Internet. Founded in 2002 by the filmmakers Tom and Mimi Davenport, the idea grew out of “our love of filmmaking, a respect for the traditional culture of ordinary Americans, and a desire to get our work to the general public.”
Partnering with Ibiblio, the School of Information and Library Science, and the Southern Folklife Collection, all based at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Folkstreams preserves and disseminates priceless historical documents, including many whose subjects are music and dance.
Above, the Landis family of Granville County, North Carolina, sings “Jezebel” in A singing stream: A black family chronicle (Tom Davenport, 1986).
Related post: Pete Seeger, filmmaker
Filed under Ethnomusicology, North America, Resources
The Charles Ives Society maintains an online resource that includes a biography by Jan Swafford; a list of tunes borrowed by Ives from other composers, with sound files; a catalogue of Ives’s published works ordered by medium, also with sound files; a descriptive catalogue by James Sinclair ordered by genre, with incipits, performance data, and other listings; and a programming guide that suggests relationships between Ives’s works and specific holidays, months, seasons, topics, and anniversaries.
Above, a rare performance of one of Ives’s pieces for two pianos tuned a quarter-tone apart, played by the Paratore brothers. Today is the composer’s 136th birthday.
Filed under 20th- and 21st-century music, Resources
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