Version 1.0 appeared in 2010 as I marked my 60th birthday by posting fiddle tunes and other traditional folk music I had recorded over the previous 30-plus years. Some weird obsession led novice me to build my own website from scratch. I learned html coding as I went. And it all worked, but with some degree of clunkiness and a considerable measure of over-complication.
My coding proficiency improved, and within a year I introduced a revised version that smoothed over a number of rough edges. While the over-complicated details were still fully there, DrDosido.net 2.0 tried to streamline pathways that users could take to get to their desired targets: traditional tunes from the musicians I had recorded “in the field.”
I uploaded a lot of material. As designed, my web pages had room for much more. But I never finished it. Real life intruded. The tools I relied on changed. A lot of the recordings I wanted to use were either not yet digitized or were not fully analyzed into usable bits. My attention turned to other matters: family, work, teaching, etc. DrDosido.net went dormant, though a number of folks let me know they still found it useful.
Now the time has come to reawaken my snoozing beast. I still have a lot of valuable stuff to share: music, stories, memories. Since I retired from teaching, I have been free to digitize and/or analyze a host of recordings that have long cluttered my basement office. So I have just now made the first steps to upload DrDosido.net 3.0 as a greatly expanded and hopefully improved online folk music resource.
The real work, however, is not the digitizing and coding and uploading, but in organizing the recordings I have made, along with the personal encounters I have experienced, in order to tell a meaningful story about music and musicians in my time and place in the world. I chose not to follow the conventional path of arranging things by tunes, musical genres, or performative provenance, though all these aspects are important considerations.
What matters most to me are the musicians I have met and learned from, and the communities and traditions I have connected with through these musicians. Admittedly, I am near the center of nearly all the life episodes to be represented on DrDosido.net. Nevertheless, this is not a narrative of my achievements, but of the relationships that have blessed my life. I count myself extremely fortunate that much of my life’s work, as well as my leisure, has allowed me to be engaged with a rich variety of creative artists, communities, traditions, and histories.
While the construction of web pages for DrDosido.net 3.0 continues, I promise to post frequent updates with samples of the treasures I have uncovered in the nooks of my basement office. In a few days, I will explain the what and why of two major expansions to my online collections: 1) Old 78s (Compilations) and 2) The Midwest (Published Albums). In the meantime, enjoy this gem: