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:

  1. Where can I discuss celtic music on the internet?
  2. What are the major online sites for celtic music?
  3. What magazines are available online?
  4. How can I find tunes on the internet?
  5. Where can I find out about concerts and festivals?
  6. Where can I discuss and find out about particular instruments?
  7. Where can I discuss and find out more about particular musicians?
  8. How can I buy celtic music through the internet?
  9. Other celtic resources
  10. A few technical notes

1. Where can I discuss celtic music on the internet?

Usenet newsgroups

rec.music.celtic

Chief celtic music group on Usenet. About 30-80 messages per day.

rec.music.folk

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.

alt.music.enya

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

Irish Traditional Music

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)

2. What are the major online sites for celtic music?

Ceolas

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

3. What magazines are available online?

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)

4. How can I find tunes on the internet?

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)

5. Where can I find out about concerts, festivals and sessions?

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)

6. Where can I discuss and find out about particular instruments?

* 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

7. Where can I discuss and find out more about particular musicians?

* 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)

8. How can I buy celtic music through the internet?

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

9. Other celtic resources

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

10. A few technical notes

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