The traditional "Hawaiian" nose flute (actually played in a number of other places) is a true woodwind, with finger holes, a fixed-note scale, and a proud history. The other version, often sold as a novelty, is microtonal, like a kazoo or slide whistle, and uses the slightly open mouth as a resonating chamber for pitch changes. The Vancouver Noseflute Ensemble performs on the latter type, and has one of the lowest thresholds of entry of any musical group around.
iDIDJ Australia: Australian Didgeridoo Cultural Hub
Welcome to the home of iDIDJ Australia, the Australian didgeridoo cultural hub. You can find all sorts of interesting information here about the didgeridoo and its place in Australian Aboriginal cultures.
The Thai Elephant Orchestra CDs of elephants in the Thai jungle playing specially designed musical instruments. The elephants improvise the music themselves.
Candombe (can-dome-bey) http://candombe.com/english.html is an African derived rhythm that has been an important part of Uruguayan culture for over two hundred years. This rhythm traveled to Uruguay from Africa with black slaves, and is still going strong in the streets, halls and carnivals of the country.
Library of Vinyl Experience (L.O.V.E.) online. L.O.V.E. is a cultural and educational organization dedicated to preserving, researching and representing the experience of the "vinyl" record. This online version will digitally preserve and represent segments of large and/or thematically coherent collections of rare and interesting recordings. We will focus on music that is old enough to have entered the public domain and will disseminate this music along with curatorial and contextual information about it via a wiki.
2007 Guitar Woods -- Recent developments in CITES regulation enforcement, which are starting to make it very difficult to travel internationally with most stringed instruments on almost any itinerary. The intent to protect endangered species has created an inconsistent maze of red tape, so that players had best not chance, for example, crossing a border with pernambuco (most fiddle bows) or Brazilian rosewood (even fingerboards or bridges on older guitars) before doing some serious legal preparation. For further discussion of this situation, see the p. 35 article in the Jan-Mar newsletter of the AFM Nashville local
Also the March newsletter at the website of instrument dealer George Gruhn: Greenpeace has been working with most guitar manufacturers using specific woods to help them work with lumber companies to adopt forest certification practices and sustainable harvesting. If you go to the greenpeace site under forests they have a huge campaign on this. The problem is that these types of wood will be clear cut and gone within the next 10 years at the present rates, and guitar manufacturers were really freaked out by that -- ie their business will be severly impacted.
