Since 1996, Alaska Folk Music and More has been providing comprehensive statewide folk and traditional music resources in Alaska and the Yukon.
Alaska may have more musicians per capita than most other places in the world (anyone with metrics to verify this?). It is not unusual for some classical musicians to cross over to play folk music as much as it is the dry cabin dweller that comes out from the winter with a bunch of new songs. Alaska (and the Yukon) have this mystique about them, but only some of them are true. Yet there is a broad Alaskan culture and some of this bleeds off into folk music. There is also the element of community, not exclusive to Alaska, that forms around playing music and those who enjoy listening or dancing to music benefit from that.
It is no small testament to the power of traditional/folk music that it takes over the town of Juneau every April for a week, nearly derailing the final week of the Alaska Legislature.
In 1996, there were only a few festivals and venues that had websites. Google didn’t exist. Now it is easy to find out much of what this site was meant to offer. This site will now focus on aggregating aspects of folk music scene here in Alaska that might be hard to filter through a web search.
Special news: Musicians should have less trouble bringing instruments on airplane flights and getting them through TSA. Here’s the skinny.