About Rainlore's World

Artist in Residence - As of January 2013, Rainlore's World is proud to announce that acclaimed fine artist Alban Low has kindly consented to be Artist in Residence of Rainlore's World. Alban Low is renowned especially for his covers and artwork for CDs, live illustrations of gigs and studio sessions (with a primary focus on jazz), and animations, including commissions for the BBC, and in 2012 already illustrated several gigs in collaboration with reviews on Rainlore's World. We hope our collaboration will be a long and fruitful one.

More about Alban Low and his art on his web site and his blogs, Art of Folk and Art of Jazz.

Why "Rainlore's" World?

"Rainlore" is a word I first encountered in a poem, long forgotten, many years ago, but it kind of stuck. It is an Anglish word meaning the study of rain, or hyetology. Very poetic, somehow. "Rainlore" also sounds like it could be a name, and indeed, it also makes an anagram for "Lorraine", and it also has a delicious gender ambiguity. It appealed to me, and hence Rainlore's World (formerly Rainlore's World of Music).

What is Rainlore's World about?

Rainlore's World aims to feature all the best in music of all and any 'genres,' the arts and literature with a mix of reviews, news, info, features, articles, and interviews. The aim is to provide wider exposure also for lesser known or emerging musicians, artists and authors and share some of the wonderful music, arts and literature around with a wider audience.

All and any 'genres' of music means just that - fundamentally, there really are only two kinds of music, good music and bad music. Whether jazz, world music (inc. folk music), classical (whether western or eastern traditions), rock, hip hop or whatever, it's all covered on Rainlore's World. That said, there are major foci on jazz, world music, classical music, and the steel pan music of Trinidad & Tobago.

The definition of world music used here is somewhat broader, as well as perhaps somewhat narrower elsewhere, than was generally expressed by one of the 'inventors' of that term, the late great Charlie Gillett. Gillett had a problem with the 'f word,' folk music. Yet ultimately, a lot of world music is folk music, or at the very least strongly rooted in folk music or traditional music! Hence, it is only logical to include all types of folk music, including of course the folk music of the British Isles, whether English or Celtic, in the world music category. On the other hand, some would include world-beat music under world music, but on Rainlore's World it is felt that this is often better accommodated under 'Other Music.'

Often, of course, there will be significant overlap between/among all kinds of silly "genre" classifications, and that has to be a good thing anyway. 'Genres' sometimes are a convenient way for sticking a given recording into a box/stack/shelf of broadly similar ones, but generally, 'pigeon-holing' is a loathsome thing, it smacks of little minds.

Similarly, in the arts and literary world, everything is always of interest, and Rainlore's World does not recognise any conventional boundaries or categorisations.

The Future of Rainlore's World

So far, Rainlore's World has been an entirely non-commercial, non-sponsored (apart from the odd bit of financial assistance from a few anonymous, non-musical, friends or anonymous donors) spare-time activity.

Although I gladly give all the time I can to running Rainlore's World, there simply aren't enough spare hours in the day to keep up. Nonetheless, I do it happily as best I can, giving it every minute I can.

In addition, the very popular gig reviews involve not only even more time, but also considerable cost and expenses of all kinds which are hard to meet and restrict the number of gigs that can be covered.

The impending re-development and re-design of the site also will take up considereable time and effort over the next year or two and is not envisaged to be finished before the end of 2013/14.

All donations to help with the upkeep and continued devopment of Rainlore's World will be gratefully received. Remeber, this site is run on a purely voluntary, non-commercial basis.

Rainlore's World/Rainlore © 2008-2013. All rights reserved.