Celtic music on the Internet
This is the hypertext version of the list maintained at celtic.stanford.edu and
posted monthly to rec.music.celtic Please let me know of any corrections,
additions or comments to the email address below.
Gerard Manning ceolas@ceolas.org
Current version: June 6 1998 (partially updated)
Contents:
- Where can I discuss celtic music on the internet?
- What are the major online sites for celtic music?
- What magazines are available online?
- How can I find tunes on the internet?
- Where can I find out about concerts and festivals?
- Where can I discuss and find out about particular instruments?
- Where can I discuss and find out more about particular musicians?
- How can I buy celtic music through the internet?
- Other celtic resources
- A few technical notes
Usenet newsgroups
Chief celtic music group on Usenet. About 30-80 messages per day.
Higher traffic than rec.music.celtic and much broader coverage, especially of
American folk. Most of the celtic discussion is cross-posted to
rec.music.celtic.
Discussion of Enya (Eithne Ni Bhraonain) and some similar artists, such as
Loreena McKennitt and Sarah McLoughlin.
soc.culture.celtic
soc.culture.irish
soc.culture.scottish
soc.culture.welsh
soc.culture.cornish
soc.culture.breton
soc.culture.asturies
soc.culture.catalan
Occasionally deal with musical matters, as well as other celtic questions.
Mailing lists
Mailing list on Irish traditional music, oriented towards players and
traditional, as opposed to popular, music. Membership is over 600, with up to
50 messages per day. A daily digest is also available.
Subscription address: listserv@listserv.hea.ie
List address: irtrad-l@listserv.hea.ie
Archives: http://listserv.hea.ie/lists/irtrad-l.html
Maintainer: Hammy Hamilton (ARMU6001@bureau.ucc.ie)
Cape Breton Music mailing list
Discusses the music of the Cape Breton area of Canada, which maintains a strong tradition of celtic music, espcecially in Scottish-style fiddling.
List address: cb-music@chatsubo.com
Subscription: Send message with 'subscribe' or 'subscribe digest' to list address.
Maintainers: listmaster@chatsubo.com (Jamie Foulds and Mike Gurstein)
Folk Music radio shows
This is primarily for hosts of folk/bluegrass/celtic radio shows, but all are
welcome to join. Runs about 5-10 messages per day usually, includes playlists,
band information, Folk Alliance news and chat. Very much US-based.
Subscription address: listserv@psuvm.psu.edu.
List address: folkdj-l@psuvm.psu.edu
Maintainer: Tina Hay (tmh1@psuvm.psu.edu)
(if you are on Bitnet, use the addresses listserv@psuvm and folkdj@psuvm)
American Folk Music
Moderated mailing list, concertrating on American singer-songwriters, more
folk than celtic.
Subscription address: listserv@nysernet.org
List address: folk_music@nysernet.org
Maintainer: Alan Roworth (alanr@nysernet.net)
Celtic Music in Houston, TX
Unmoderated list covering Celtic music events in the Houston, Texas area.
Messages are accumulated and sent out in a digest form once per day.
Subscription address: majordomo@chron.com
List address: celtic-houston-digest
List Maintainer: Chuck Ivy (cei@po.cwru.edu)
This is the largest celtic music archive on the net, with information on artists,
tunes, schedules, instruments and much more.
All-Music Guide
This is a listing of almost a quarter of a million albums by the biggest
names in almost every genre of music, including celtic. It is available in
book, CD-ROM, and online form. The listings have most of the albums by the
group/artist, along with a brief descriptive note, rating of most of the
albums and some details for each album.
Gopher: allmusic.ferris.edu
Web: http://www.allmusic.com/
Internet Musical Archives
This is the grand-daddy of internet musical archives, containing lyrics,
discographies, reviews and other information, sorted alphabetically by artist.
It's so huge, it can be difficult to search completely: a partial list of
celtic artists covered by this archive is available by FTP from
celtic.stanford.edu as /pub/uwp-list
The archive is no longer being actively maintained, and the original site has ceased to be, but a parital mirror may be found at AOL:
FTP: ftp://mirrors.aol.com/pub/music/
The archive is often overloaded, it may take several attempts to get through.
Sunsite Gaelic archive
This archive has a lot of information on gaelic and celtic matters,
including the bagpipes archive and information and sound samples for a few
north american celtic musicians.
WWW: http://sunsite.unc.edu/gaelic/gaelic.html
FTP: sunsite.unc.edu/pub/academic/languages/gaelic
Dalriada celtic heritage society
At the same site as the Living Tradition, this gopher has information on celtic
culture including music.
Gopher: gopher.almac.co.uk.
Lark in the Morning
A new Web site run by Lark in the Morning who sell all kinds of celtic and
other instruments. They have several good articles on instruments, maintenance
etc.
WWW:
http://www.mhs.mendocino.k12.ca.us/MenComNet/Business/Retail/Larknet/larkhp.html
The Living Tradition
This Scottish folk/trad magazine is now being made available by Gopher. The
online version includes album reviews, articles news and Scottish events
guide.
Gopher: gopher.almac.co.uk.
Editor: Pete Heywood (living.tradition@almac.co.uk)
Dirty Linen
American folk/celtic/world music monthly, now has a sample of each month's
articles available on the Web.
WWW: http://www.dirtynelson.com/linen/
Maintainer: Cliff Furnald (cliff@rootsworld.com)
Hot Press
Irish rock magazine also has some celtic coverage.
WWW: http://www.iol.ie/hotpress/
Folk Roots
English folk and world music magazine.
WWW: http://www.cityscape.co.uk/froots/
Editor/Maintainer: Ian Anderson (froots@cityscape.co.uk)
The Digital Tradition
This giant database contains over 6000 lyrics and over 2000 tunes of
folksongs from around the world, including a fair amount of celtic-related
music. Versions for Unix, Mac and PC are available by FTP, but be warned, the
whole database is over 10 megabytes. Recent legal wranglings have shut it down,
but now at least the lyrics are available for search on the Web, and the full
database is promised soon.
WWW: http://www.mudcat.org/folksearch.html
Maintainer Dick Greenhaus (digitrad@world.std.com)
Ceolas
This has several hundred tunes in abc and bagpipe.tex formats as well
as transcriptions of the abc tunes to postscript, software for viewing and
manipulating tunes and several descriptive files.
FTP: celtic.stanford.edu/pub/tunes
WWW: http://www.ceolas.org/ceolas.html
St. Olaf tune index
This is an index of printed collections of tunes, with over 28,000 entries,
mostly of celtic or American-celtic origin. It is broken up into 25 files in
the form a_index.prn for each letter; the whole set comes to about 2.7
megabytes. There is also a biblio.txt file listing the source books and Intro
and a Readme for more information. The collection is copyright but freely
available for non-commercial use.
Maintainer: James Stewart (jnstewart@ualr.edu)
FTP or
Gopher.
WWW: http://www.ceolas.org/tunesearch.html
Now updated, with just over 35,000 entries!
Richard Robinsons' Tunebook
This is a nice listing of Richard's personal collection of tunes, available by
WWW; each tune has an associated graphic file (gif) which will display
the staff notation for that tune.
WWW: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/music/Info/RRTuneBk/tunebook.html
WWW: http://celtic.stanford.edu/pub/tunes/RRTunebook/tunebook.html
FTP celtic.stanford.edu/pub/tunes/RRTunebook
Richard Darsie's TuneWeb
Similar project to that of Richard Robinson.
WWW: http://darsie.ucdavis.edu/music/tuneweb/
Maintainer: Richard Darsie (rfdarsie@ucdavis.edu)
Dan Beimborn's Virtual Tunebook
Another collection of gif tunes.
WWW: http://www.celticmusic.com/cgi-localbin/tunes.pl
Maintainer: Dan Beimborn (danb@execpc.com)
Michael Loehr's collection
This has a collection of tunes in postscript format, including John Walsh's
collection of about 60 of the most popular session tunes. Most WWW browsers
cannot display postscript, but the files can be saved and printed using
software such as the Macintosh LaserWriter Utility.
WWW: http://este.darmstadt.gmd.de:5000/~loehr/music.html
Irish folksong lyrics collection
The lyrics to over 300 Irish folk songs are at:
WWW: http://www.cs.hut.fi/~zaphod/search
Maintainer: Seppo J Niemi (zaphod@cs.hut.fi)
Gaelic Song Archive
Contains songs in Irish, Scots Gaelic and Manx, with accompanying tunes
in abc format.
WWW: http://www.webcom.com/~liam/gaelsong/song.html
Maintainer: Liam Hart (wahart00@pop.uky.edu)
Ceolas
Ceolas carries information on most of the big touring groups and some local
musicians in the US and Canada. It also has spotty information on European
and other locations and has listings of festivals around the world.
WWW: http://www.ceolas.org/events/
Listings for individual states and provinces are also available:
FTP: celtic.stanford.edu /pub/schedules/Listing-by-state/
WWW: http://www.ceolas.org/events/calendar.html
You can subscribe to a monthly posting of each state-wide calendar by email.
For more information, mail majordomo@celtic.stanford.edu a message with the
single command "info lists", or see:
http://www.ceolas.org/lists.html
Ceolas also carries George Keith's list of Irish/celtic open sessions around
the world:
WWW: http://www.ceolas.org/pub/session.list
Electronic Dirty Linen - Tour Schedules
Dirty Linen, the American folk music magazine maintains publishes an
extensive monthly calendar of folk and celtic events, mostly North American
concerts and festivals. The nysernet.org site carries the calendar in a
single, ~300kb file, while the psu site and the Web site have it broken down
by artist and by state.
FTP: nysernet.org/listserv/folk_music/dirty_linen
FTP: ftp.cac.psu.edu/pub/folk_music/dirty_linen
WWW: http://www.dirtynelson.com/linen/special/tour.html
Calendar of New England Folk Events
FTP: theory.lcs.mit.edu in pub/wald/concert-calendar.
WWW: http://theory.lcs.mit.edu/~wald/calendar.html
email: send mail containing the line "send wald concert-calendar" to
archive-server@theory.lcs.mit.edu.
Maintainer: David Wald (wald@theory.lcs.mit.edu)
Houston, Texas Celtic mailing list
This is a new (Aug 1994) list designed to spread the word on celtic events in
Houston. All mailings are sent out in digest form, daily.
Subscription address: majordomo@Chron.com
List address: Celtic-Houston-digest@chron.com
Maintainer: Michael Croft (kaetron@neosoft.com)
General
Lark in the Morning sells all kinds of celtic (and other exotic) instruments
and their Web site has a large collection of background information.
WWW:
http://www.mhs.mendocino.k12.ca.us/MenComNet/Business/Retail/Larknet/larkhp.html
Ceolas: See the instruments section:
Web:http://www.ceolas.org/instruments/
Accordion
Newsgroup
rec.music.makers.squeezebox
Mailing list
Covers all kinds of accordions and concertina. 10-15 messages a week,
discusses contemporary accordion music of all sorts, instrument building and
repair. The archive has lots of information on magazines, builders, tutors
and tips.
Subscription address: accordion-request@cs.cmu.edu
List address: accordion@cs.cmu.edu
Maintainer: Phoebe Sengers (accordion-request@cs.cmu.edu)
Web Archive
http://www.cs.cmu.edu:8001/afs/cs/user/phoebe/mosaic/accordion.html
Concertina FAQ
http://www.cs.cmu.edu:8001/afs/cs/user/phoebe/accordion/concertina-faq.html
Bagpipes/Uilleann Pipes
Archive
FTP/Gopher cs.dartmouth.edu/pub/bagpipes
WWW FAQ: http://info.acm.org/~mscully/faq.html
Another Bagpipe Web site: http://www.rootsworld.com/rw/feature/gaida.html
Mailing List
Discusses all kinds of bagpipes, including Scottish, Irish (uilleann),
Northumbrian, Spanish, Macedonian, Swedish and others. Covers technical issues
and news mainly of interest to players.
Subscription address: pipes-request@sunapee.dartmouth.edu
List address: bagpipe@cs.dartmouth.edu
Maintainer: wbc@quimby.dartmouth.edu (Wayne Cripps)
Uilleann pipes mailing list
Subscription address: listproc@lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
List address: uilleann@lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
Maintainer: David Daye (daye.1@osu.edu)
Newsgroup
rec.music.makers.bagpipe
Bodhran
Web Archive
http://www.ceolas.org/instruments/bodhran/
Bodhran-making guide
Web: http://www.ceolas.org/instruments/Bodhran.making
Bouzouki
Web Archive: http://www.ice.el.utwente.nl:80/~han/bouzouki/
Cittern
Mailing list
Subscription address: majordomo@ice.el.utwente.nl
List address: cittern@ice.el.utwente.nl
Flute
Mailing list
Subscription address: flute-m-request@unixg.ubc.ca
Maintainer: Cara Camcastle (camcastl@unixg.ubc.ca)
Irish Flute FAQ
Web: http://www.sover.net/~bhurley/flute.html
Hammered Dulcimer
Mailing List
Started up around July, so still finding it's place. Plans to go to listserv
system soon
Subscription address: hammerd@mcs.com
List address: hammerd@mcs.com
Maintainer: Bill Paulson (hammerd@mcs.com, hdulcimer@aol.com)
Web Site
http://tfnet.ils.unc.edu/~gotwals/hd/dulcimer.html
Newsgroups
rec.music.makers.dulcimer
Harp
Mailing List
Subscription address: harp-request@mit.edu
List address: harp@mit.edu
Web Site
file://tns-www.lcs.mit.edu/pub/mail-archive/harp/harp_archive.html
Harmonica
Newsgroup
alt.music.harmonica
Discography
Web: http://www.ceolas.org/instruments/harmonica.discog
Lute mailing list
Subscription address: lute-request@cs.dartmouth.edu
Maintainer: Wayne Cripps (wbc@cs.dartmouth.edu)
Mandolin mailing list
Subscription address: listserv@vm1.nodak.edu
List address: comando@vm1.nodak.edu
Tin Whistle (pennywhistle) Guide
Web: http://www.ceolas.org/instruments/Tin.Whistle
Ceolas artist profiles
Ceolas carries profiles on about 30 major celtic groups and musicians, as
well as an omnibus file with short snippets on many groups, and links to all
of these other pages.
WWW: http://www.ceolas.org/artists/
Boiled In Lead
Mailing List
Subscription address: leadheads-request@apocalypse.org
Maintainer: John Romkey (romkey@elf.com)
Archive
FTP: ftp.apocalypse.org/pub/leadheads
WWW: http://www.apocalypse.org/leadheads/home.html
WWW: http://www.omnium.com/pub/omnium/bil/ ('official')
Sinead O'Connor Mailing list
jitr ("Jump in the River") mailing list: discusses music and activism
of Sinead O'Connor. About 240 members worldwide; volume is 1 or 2
messages per day.
Subscription address: majordomo@postmod
ern.com
List address: jitr@@postmodern.com
(jitr-digest also available)
Maintainer: Michael C. Berch (jitr-approval@postmodern.com)
List Archive: http://www.postmode
rn.com/~mcb/jitr/
Information: http://www.postmodern.com/~mcb/jitr/jitr-info.html
Enya
Newsgroup
alt.music.enya
Mailing List
Subscription address: majordomo@cs.colorado.edu
List address: enya@cs.colorado.edu
FTP archive: refuge.colorado.edu/pub/enya
Maintainer: Tim Hunter (tim@boulder.colorado.edu)
Archives
WWW: http://www.bath.ac.uk/~ccsdra/enya/
FTP: ftp.uwp.edu /pub/music/artists/e/enya
FTP: celtic.stanford.edu /pub/artists/Enya.FAQ(FAQ)
Hothouse Flowers Mailing List
Subscription address: yaboss@cc.bellcore.com
All postings get distributed in digest form, 1-2 times per week.
Loreena McKennitt Mailing List
Subscription address: old-ways-request@lists.mindspring.com
List address: old-ways@lists.mindspring.com
List Maintainer: Christian Walters (cwalters@mindspring.com)
Oyster Band Mailing List
Subscription address: majordomo@best.com
List address: oysters@best.com
Maintainer: Christophe Pettus (cep@best.com)
Pogues
Web site
WWW: http://crow.acns.nwu.edu:8082/kultur/pogues
Mailing List
Contact rocco@rocyn.demon.co.uk for more information
Newsgroup
alt.music.pogues has been created but does not seem to be widely available.
Richard Thompson Mailing List
Subscription address: listserver@listserver.njit.edu
List address: r-thompson@listserver.njit.edu
Maintainer: Brian White (brw@hertz.njit.edu)
Runrig
Mailing list
Subscription address: listserv@westwater.com
List address: runrig@westwater.com
Maintainer: Jason Westwater (jwestwat@ix.netcom.com)
Web sites
http://www.worldserverpipex.com/nc/scotty
http://dux.dundee.ac.uk/~azmilne/runrig/
Silly Wizard mailing list (Ramblin' Rovers)
Subscription address: rovers-request@lists.mindspring.com
List address: rovers@lists.mindspring.com
(rovers-digest also available)
Maintainter: Christian Walters (cwalters@mindspring.com)
Van Morrison
Mailing List
Fairly quiet list, several messages per week
Subscription address: van-request@fish.com
List address: van@fish.com
SUBSCRIBE van-digest to get a digest form of the list
Maintainer: zen@bi.fish.com
Archives
Discography (FTP): ftp.netcom.com /pub/kevin/van.txt
WWW: http://www.harbour.sfu.ca/~hayward/van/van.html
Wolfstone mailing list
Subscription address: Majordomo@mystery.com
List address: wolfstone@mystery.com
Incredible String Band mailing list
Subscription address: ranauro@fas.harvard.edu (manual)
Maintainer: Michael Ranauro (ranauro@fas.harvard.edu)
CDnow is the latest and greatest in online CD stores. It claims to supply
140,000 titles, with low postage rates (<$5) and shipping within a week to
US addresses. They have the usual popular celtic groups, but also a fair
listing from specialist labels such as Gael Linn and Claddagh. If you do
business with them, please let me know how good they are.
email: manager@cdnow.com
telnet: cdnow.com
WWW: http://cdnow.com/
For more traditional options, check out the list of mail-order celtic music
sources on www.ceolas.org
I carried a number of such items on this list in the past, but now have been
admirably superseded by the FAQ for soc.culture.celtic, which can be found on
that newsgroup and also at the Ceolas archive in
/pub/misc/SCC.FAQ
Mailing lists
If the subscription address has 'listserv' or 'majordomo'
somewhere in it, subscription is handled by a computer program. To subscribe,
send a one-line message saying
subscribe <mailing list name> <your real name> (listserv) or
subscribe <mailing list name> (majordomo)
If not, it's a person who reads the name, so just drop them a nice note. Most
automatic lists can be set up in digest format, so that all the postings for one
day are delivered in a single message. It's less interactive, but helps a lot
with mailbox clutter.
FTP by mail
You can search FTP archives by email; send a message saying
'help' to ftpmail@gatekeeper.dec.com for more information.
Mailing list etiquette
Be considerate when sending a message to a mailing
list; hundreds of people may read what you write. Read the list for some time
before posting a message, to gather the tone of the list. When replying to a
posting, it is often best to reply to the sender of the posting than to the
whole list. If you simply type 'reply' on your mail program, chances are, the
reply will be sent to the whole list: it is safer to retype the senders address
when replying personally.
Copyright (c) Ceolas, 1995, 1996
Back to the Ceolas home page.
Gerard Manning