About Rainlore's World Of Music

Why "Rainlore's" World of Music?

"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 of Music.

What is Rainlore's World of Music all about?

Rainlore's World of Music aims to feature all the best in music of all kinds, with a mix of reviews, news and info, with a particular emphasis also on providing exposure for generally less well-known artists, and thus share some of the wonderful music around with a wider audience. Sometimes, further information, hints, and contacts and links for specific types of music or unfamiliar instruments that might be poorly (or not at all) covered in textbook literature, will also be made available in order to disseminate this further and as an aid to composers and arrangers who might wish to try their hand at a new "genre" or perhaps a new instrument or group of instruments. Steel pan music and the steel band particularly spring to mind.

Although I love all kinds of music, any good music at all, regardless of so-called genre or type or tradition or ethnicity, broadly "Jewish" music where my earliest exposure consisted of the cabaret songs of Spoliansky, Heymann, Weill, Hollaender, and others, and the steel pan music of Trinidad & Tobago to which I was first exposed through various London clubs and pubs having "Caribbean" nights in the late 1960s with the odd steel pan ensemble (often just one or two players) and of course the early Notting Hill Carnivals as well as recordings of the (then) "Gay Desperadoes" (now plain "Desperadoes"), Jewish music and steel pan music then occupy a very special place in my heart. And jazz has been a life-long obsession for me, with some of my earliest exposure including "Bird" (Charlie Parker), Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Artie Shaw, Sidney Bechet, Dizzy Gillespie, Yusef Lateef, Eric Dolphy, Herbie Mann, and generally broadly "Latin jazz", not to mention, somewhat later of course, "Trane" (John Coltrane), and by no means least, the legendary "Sergeant Pepper" album of jazz, Mark Weinstein's revolutionary 1967 album Cuban Roots.

It will therefore come as little surprise that Jewish music, steel pan music and jazz provide the principal focus of Rainlore's World of Music. However, any other kind of music will also be covered and indeed has been, from classical to folk and Hip Hop and anything in between and beyond. 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. I loathe "pigeon-holing", it smacks of little minds.

The Future of Rainlore's World of Music

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

And although I gladly give all the time I can to running Rainlore's World of Music, there simply aren't enough spare hours in the day to keep up, especially given the rate at which albums were submitted for review around the time the site was last "active" and even beyond (from time to time, albums still keep turning up on my door step, being sent by record labels, agents, etc. - I don't even have a clue where they got the address from!). A full-time reviewer for a newspaper or magazine would find it near impossible to cope in his working hours! 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 (not least of which is the photography) which regrettably in general I will no longer be able to meet.

The re-development and re-design of the site also would have proved prohibitive had it been commissioned on a commercial basis and has only been possible thanks to the generous "donation" of time by the webmasters and the application of a lot of persistent hard work and a lot of time by myself.

It is therefore with a heavy heart that I will have to consider the future of Rainlore's World of Music. It seems inevitable to me at this point that some kind of sponsorship at the very least will have to be found.

Update 2008/11/09:

Sadly, the time has come to look at the future further. While the physical existence of the site is secure for the next year or two, its future as an ongoing project at this point alas looks extremely uncertain, and even just catching up with "porting" and completing the 'missing' reviews from the 2004/5 period (and later!) is not unproblematic in this context. As much as I would love to do so, it is now extremely unlikely that I will be able to devote anything like the time required to keep Rainlore's World of Music going even in the near future due to financial pressures, unless some form of substantial sponsorship or similar can be found or arranged. (I would, of course, wish to preserve the site's non-commercial, not for profit status.) A contact form relating to this will be made active within the next week or so. Realistically, to have even just kept up with the amount of CDs coming in during 2004/5 and beyond, and to give each the fair and full review it deserves, would, at the very least, approach the amount of time spent on a full time job! Sadly, I simply will not have that kind of time available to me.

Rainlore's World of Music/Rainlore © 2008. All rights reserved.