Internet Helps Bring Home Music From Around the World

World music on the World Wide Web? Absolutely, and logically. Where better to go than the medium that taps into every part of the globe? Even the phrase itself has a compatible sound.

But where to start to find the action around the Web? One way is right inside your browser.

Windowsmedia.com/radio, for example, (accessible in Windows Explorer by selecting view, then toolbars, then radio) lists dozens of stations specializing in virtually every flavor of world music. Some are Internet outlets, others are U.S. stations with eclectic programming, and still others specialize in Latin, Celtic, reggae, Brazilian, African, ska, etc. (Charts from around the world logging top world recordings can be accessed at https://www.lanet.lv/misc/charts/#us.)

Numerous record companies with world music catalogs--Green Linnet, Rounder, Rykodisc, Amiata, Nonesuch, Allegro Music Imports, Putumayo, ARC World & Folk Music, Luaka Bop, Tinder and Triloka, among dozens of others--are also present on the Web, usually at addresses that signify their name with a dot-com (i.e. https://www.rykodisc.com, https://www.rounder.com, etc.). Virtually every artist has a personal Web site of one sort or another (official or unofficial)--again, usually reachable at addresses based on their names (or via a search engine).

For those interested in scholarly detail, the music departments of many university sites provide access to a variety of ethnomusicology information. The University of Washington, for example, has a particularly extensive set of links connecting to archives and research centers, periodicals and online publications, record labels and distributors, and sites related to various parts of the world, broken out geographically (https://www.lib.washington.edu/music/world.html).

The Web is also seeing a growing number of periodicals with world music content, providing a continuing stream of monthly articles, reviews, etc. One of the most prominent, Dirty Linen (https://www.dirtylinen.com), is available on the Web as well as newsstands (in somewhat different editions). Among its many intriguing areas, it includes an amazingly detailed “Gig Guide” covering North American tours, events and festivals.

RootsWorld (https://www.rootsworld.com), a sharezine, identifies itself as “a content-heavy site that focuses on the world’s ‘local’ music, folk and folk-rooted music.” It is an electronic periodical only, making its full content freely available. In addition to its numerous articles (the current issue touches on subjects ranging from African and Turkish music to the Caribbean, Okinawa and the music of the Gypsies), the site offers regional areas devoted to Africa, Europe, Asia, the Americas and the Pacific.

Music critic Cliff Furnald, who created the RootsWorld site, views it as an effort to sustain the content-oriented aspect of the World Wide Web. “We are not a planet of shopkeepers,” he noted in a recent interview with, interestingly, Dirty Linen. “If there’s one thing I want to do, it’s to resist that shopkeeper mentality that has completely overwhelmed the dot-com planet.”

Toward that end, Furnald and RootsWorld are about to launch the third annual Free Reed Festival. And if you think you’ve heard all you ever want to from the much-maligned accordion, think again. The festival takes place throughout the entire month of June, solely in the virtual world of the magazine’s Web site (https://www.rootsworld.com). Featured artists include Zydeco legend Boozoo Chavis, Alan Bern (from the klezmer group Brave Old World), Finnish chromatic accordionist Maria Kalaniemi and Indian harmonium player Shiv Dayal Batish.