The following article appears in the Sept.-Nov. '98 issue of FolkNotes.

Folknerds on the Internet

By Larry Hoyt

Make of this what you will: On the Internet's Yahoo search engine, there are more websites listed for "folk music" than there are for "rock music." But before you jump to any conclusions about folk music being on the verge of taking over the music world, remember that the acoustic sub-culture spawning the current wave of folk-dom shares a good part of its membership with those cutting-edge technophiles sometimes referred to unkindly as being computer-nerds and techno-geeks.

Regardless of reasons why, folk music's high profile on the Internet has helped bring together like-minded music fans around the world, forming a virtual community that daily compares notes on folk artists and releases, checks out what's being played on folk music radio shows, and promotes live acoustic music in every conceivable venue.

And, of course, there's also the recurring discussion of 'what is folk music', a topic so over-examined and worked to death on some Internet e-mail listserves (discussion groups) that the topic is now only barely tolerated, treated as if it were some nastily resistant strain of flu.

At the beginning of the Nineties, when the Internet's web started stretching across the public communications landscape, information about folk music was soon being transmitted across its strands.

"When I first got on the Internet in 1990, I discovered the 'all music' discussion group," says Alan Rowoth, computer guru for the Liverpool library, a folk music maven, and founding member of the Central New York Friends of Folk. "'All music' was a melee, but it was also interesting. What I realized was the Internet could be a solution to the high cost and distribution problems musicians had in reaching their fans and prospective audiences through direct mail. With the Internet, the incremental costs of distribution were paid for by the recipients. So in early 1991, I went to my boss (at the Liverpool Public Library) and said I wanted to start a discussion group about folk music, and she said 'Fine, go nuts.'"

And so began another phase in the evolution of folk music. Rowoth's fledgling listserve discussion group, folk_music, soon found a home on the web through Nysernet (NYS Education and Research Network), a non-profit group that helped get the cyber-ball rolling into the public playground. "Through 'folk_music,' I was trying to raise awareness of this great music that was being ignored by the traditional media," Rowoth observed.

As more and more acoustic music fans became folk_music subscribers, it became apparent that the specialized interests of some subscribers would best be served by the addition of new, more focused discussion groups. Thus were born the listserve discussion groups known as FolkBiz (for working folk musicians); FolkVenue (for folk music presenters); Folk & Bluegrass DJ (for those involved in folk radio); and FolkTalk (for general discussions of folk and acoustic music). The original listserve, folk_music, with a base of 3,500 subscribers worldwide, now focuses on North American singer/songwriters.

"If I had it to do over again, I wouldn't have called it folk_music," listserve moderator Rowoth says now. "The underscore too often got misprinted as a dash, which is a different character, and I didn't realize how many people think they own the concept of folk. There's so many arguments about what that word really means. I chose it because it is amorphous, and because 'new American singer/songwriter' was too long a title."

Currently, there are thousands of webpages devoted to folk music and folk musicians (the Infoseek search engine lists 24,498 pages), with new links and new websites popping up every day. All told, folk related webpages may now number in the millions. Among the most important for fans seeking live performance information is the Musi-Cal service that contains a comprehensive listing of upcoming concerts around the country. In addition to the many websites that offer folk information, there are also many specific folk-related listserve discussion groups, including the CNY Friends of Folk listserve that focuses on Central New York State.

Folk Sites on the Web

To explore folk music on the web, it helps to 'bookmark' a few websites that can serve as starting points for future information exploration. Here's a few link-friendly suggestions:

The FolkBook Website
www.folkmusic.org
An easy-to-use Internet guide to all things folk and folk related.

The Musi-Cal Calendars
http://concerts.calendar.com
A handy guide to live performances, venues, and artists on tour.

Listserve Discussion Groups
Listserves are like Internet bulletin boards, where subscribers post messages that often lead to extended discussions (threads). Different listserves have different ways to subscribe, but for several of the most common folk listserves - FolkBiz, FolkTalk, FolkVenu, and FolkDJ-L - the method is very similar. All of these are on the same Pennsylvania State University listserver; for subscribing purposes, only the listname changes.

Send a message to the listserver; leave the subject line blank; in message area, write (what will be the) command listname yourname

In this case:

listserv@lists.psu.edu

subscribe FOLKBIZ yourname

This page maintained by Dana Cooke. E-mail me at djcooke@aiusa.com.