Folk & Ethnic Music

Databases

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Pittsburgh Region

• Balkan Women's Ensemble of Pittsburgh (Balkan Babes)
  including real audio sound clips

• Calliope
  The Pittsburgh Folk Music Society offering classes and concerts.

• Carnegie Mellon Pipes and Drums
  A bagpipe band that teaches students to play the Scottish bagpipes or the drums as part of the band. They participate in school ceremonies and perform in Scottish festivals and parades.

• Center for American Music
  This is a department within the Special Collections of the University of Pittsburgh Library System, housed in the Stephen Foster Memorial Building, which engages in research, teaching, interpretive performance, and conservation of music in the context of its cultural and social roles in the history of the United States of America.

• Comhaltas Ceiltoiri Eireann Pittsburgh
  CCE Pittsburgh is an organization devoted to Irish traditional music, dance and culture with over 400 branches worldwide.

• Duquesne University Tamburitzans
  a unique ensemble of talented young folk artists dedicated to the performance and preservation of the music, songs, and dances of Eastern Europe and other related folk cultures.

• Echoes of Erin
  on WEDO 810 AM, an Irish and Celtic radio programming, broadcasting every Sunday at 1:00pm

• Hooley
  Hooley is a collection of Pittsburgh’s finest traditional Irish musicians and dancers who perform at concert halls, festivals, colleges and high schools, clubs and pubs, dances, receptions, and weddings throughout western Pennsylvania and the Ohio valley.

• Jalsah Pittburgh
  A jalsah or qa'dah is an informal musical gathering, in this case a community event designed to promote awareness about middle-eastern music, culture, and dance.

• NewLanders
  Performing songs documenting the evolution of southwestern Pennsylvania, combining folk, rock and blues to make old tunes sound new again.

• Pittsburgh Banjo Club
  The Pittsburgh Banjo Club is a non-profit organization whose goal is to promote the encouragement and preservation of the banjo, America’s Native Instrument. It has over 100 members, including banjos, trumpets, tubas, and bass, and its repertoire consists of sing-alongs, vocals, banjo solos, music from the ’20s and ’30s, polkas and Dixieland.

• Pittsburgh Folk Festival
  Food and music from 15 countries. Organized by Pittsburgh area ethnic associations on Memorial Day Weekend

• Pittsburgh Irish Festival
  Cultural and musical festival held the weekend after Labor Day (September) at its new location at Riverplex near Sandcastle. Family fun! Festival highlights include Irish food, music, dance, language, sports, history, instrument demos, native dogs, and much more! Call 412-422-1113 for more information.

• Poltava Ukrainian Dance Company
  For thirty years, Poltava Ukrainian Dance Company has been a vital part of the Ukrainian community in Western Pennsylvania and the tri-state area, providing the youth of the Ukrainian community an opportunity to experience their Ukrainian heritage and to presenting this rich heritage to the general public.

• Saturday Light Brigade
  The Saturday Light Brigade is broadcast live from 6:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon (Eastern) on Saturday mornings and originates live from WRCT-Pittsburgh. You can also hear broadcasts at www.wrct.org.

• South Wind
  Annie Trimble and Curt Cooper combine their vocal and acoustic instrument talents to create South Wind, a duo presenting a variety of traditional and contemporary folk, including Appalachian and Celtic music, and original compositions.

• Tangueros de Ley
  Pittsburgh's only Tango ensemble

• Thompson, Chris and Meredith
  an acoustic group composed of identical twins, Meredith and Christina Thompson that have been writing and playing original acoustic music for five years. Both women sing, and Meredith plays the flute, drum and bass, while Christina writes the music and plays the guitar. Their songs feature haunting melodies, beautiful harmonies and poetic lyrics.

• Tuesday Night Folk Dancers
  Come dance on Tuesdays from 7:30 until 10:30 pm at 4836 Ellsworth Ave (Friend's Meeting House) in the Oakland section of Pittsburgh.

• UMOJA African Arts Company
  UMOJA is a nonprofit arts organization dedicated to the promotion and dissemination of African culture through the public performance of authentic traditional and neo-traditional music, dancing, and storytelling, and through demonstrations and educational lectures and workshops in African heritage, culture, and arts.

• WYEP Radio
  Bluegrass, contemporary and traditional folk music, rhythm and blues, Celtic music.

Pennsylvania

• Philadelphia Folksong Society
  The Philadelphia Folksong Society is an organization dedicated to furthering folk music in the Greater Philadelphia area, offering concerts and workshops and producing the Philadelphia Folk Festival, which is held on the weekend before Labor Day weekend at the Old Pool Farm near Schwenksville, PA.

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• Ceolas
  "the home of celtic music on the internet," contains a Fiddler's Companion, plus other tune resources, as well as numerous links to other Celtic music information.

• Country Dance and Song Society
  an association of people with a common interest in folk dance, music and song rooted in English and Anglo-American traditions.

• Folk Music of England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and America
  This web site includes tunes, lyrics, information and historical background, as well as related links.

• FolkLib Index : A Library of Folk Music Links
  The FolkLib Index is an on-going attempt to index information on the World Wide Web that is related to the fields of Folk Music, Bluegrass and Old-Time Music, Acoustic Blues, Fingerstyle Acoustic Guitarists, Harp (the stringed kind) Players, and a very special emphasis on everything to do with Wisconsin music and musicians.

• Jammin Reggae Archives
  information about reggae music (including lyrics, catalogs, discographies, sound clips, and events) and numerous links to reggae-related Web sites.

• Jewish Music WebCenter
  "information on academic, organizational, and personal activities in Jewish music today." Includes both online and book sources. Check in our Library Catalog to see if the resources are available locally.

• Latin American Folk Institute
  A non-profit organization in Washington DC, founded in 1997 as a center to promote, study and develop Latin American arts and culture by examining the folkloric traditions of Latin America and the Caribbean. Their website contains articles from their quarterly magazine on Latin American music.

• Mudcat Cafe: Folk Song Database
  Lyrics of 9000 songs

• Max Hunter Folk Song Collection
  An archive of almost 1600 Ozark Mountain folk songs, recorded between 1956 and 1976 by Max Hunter, a traveling salesman from Springfield, Missouri, who took his reel-to-reel tape recorder into the hills and backwoods of the Ozarks, preserving the heritage of the region by recording the songs and stories of many generations of Ozark history. A joint project of the Southwest Missouri State University Department of Music and the Springfield-Greene County Library in Springfield, Missouri, where the permanent collection is housed.

• National Council for the Traditional Arts
  a private not-for-profit corporation dedicated to the presentation and documentation of traditional arts in the United States. Sponsors the National Folk Festival, held in East Lansing, Michigan, for three years (1999-2001).

• Smithsonian Folkways Recordings
  Smithsonian Folkways Recordings is the nonprofit record label of the Smithsonian Institution, the national museum of the United States. Topics included traditional, ethnic, and contemporary music from around the world; poetry, spoken word, and instructional recordings in numerous languages; and documentary recordings of individuals, communities, current events, and natural sounds. You can order the music on this website and listen to samples of the music online, as well as access the lyric transcriptions.