Nearly half a century ago, only two years after graduating from college with a B.A. in theology, I started down a whole new life path and became a folklorist/ethnomusicologist. It took a while to earn my PhD, with a dissertation written on square dance in a rural community in the Midwest. A friend marked that achievement by dubbing me "the Doctor of Dosido." It fit and it stuck.
Over the last half century I have delved into all kinds of community-based music and social dance traditions in my home region: the Old Northwest, the Great Lakes, or whatever you want to call it. Along the way, I have played a lot of music, danced a lot of dances, and made a lot of friends. I have also built up a large collection of audio and video recordings, field notes, and a smattering of published scholarship and commentary.
The black side bar lists all the projects, programs, and community occasions at which I made the recordings shared here. A full roster for each category can be found under Events in the blue menu bar at the top of this page. The event rosters provide a multitude of links to artists on both Recordings and Stories &c pages.
Recordings includes four pages devoted to Fiddlers from Indiana, Chicago, the Great Lakes and Here & There. Plus there are two pages devoted to individual fiddlers who have loomed large in my life. Pages devoted to other Folk Musicians, both singers and instrumentalists, and Ensembles can be accessed. Many more recordings will be added to these in the next few months.
Stories &c. comprises Field Notes (sketches, event reports and interviews); Words About Music (an illustrated bibliography of my writings and reflections); and Stories (a page under construction that will be coordinated with posts on DrD's Blog).
In 2010, as I reached my 60th birthday, I went online with an html selfie called drdosido.net in order to share gems and rarities from my music collections. I was a novice at coding, and it showed. Still, DrDosido 2.0 succeeded in making one-of-a-kind recordings accessible. 3.0 is offered here to make good on unfulfilled promises and widen this presentation of my work as a folklorist and tune catcher.
Please feel free to listen as much as your heart desires, and to peruse the writings and reflections that I have set down over the last half century. Many of my articles and program notes can be downloaded. The recordings, however, are not downloadable, out of respect for the artists. I have no pecuniary stake and receive no monetary gain from this website.
-- Paul L. Tyler, PhD (aka DrDosido)