Do it yourself (DIY) tunes? Weren't they born at a barn dance? Harp, flute, penny whistle and step dance... aren't they made from human play? The warp and weave of a tartan, ribs of a canoe, carved wooden duck, and well-tied fly are artifacts of our need for cloth, identity, mobility and sustenance. The carved wooden spoon that feeds the mouth offers a feast for the ears as well, when applied the knee in pairs.

As the 21st century unrolls, there's an exciting marriage of old tradition and new technology at New Hampshire Folklife, on the Web at www.nh.gov/folklife, where New Hampshire's old world meets its new.

The site is the culmination of a long, rich research process overseen by the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts. Its origin-and its artistic heart-can be traced back to an event that took place five years ago.

Each year one of the 50 states and a couple of foreign countries are invited by the Center for Folklife Studies and Culture Heritage to venture to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., for the Smithsonian Institute's Folklife Festival. New Hampshire was invited to participate in 1999, joined by South Africa and Romania.

The musical and artistic possibilities were myriad. Lynn Martin Graton, NHSCA's Traditional Arts Coordinator, marshaled living examples of New Hampshire's musical tradition and culture and then deputized folks as the state's musical and cultural ambassadors and sent them to Washington.

Folks of local renown like Jeff Warner, Bill Zecker, David Surrette, Regina Delaney, Jacqueline and Dudley Laufman, Sarah Bauhan, Gary Sredzienski, Lucie Therrien, and Ryan Thomson served musically, along with hundreds of other craftspeople and artisans, musicians and dancers. Ask Sredzienski sometime about teaching the South Africans an accordion "bellows shake" in a late-night jam session. His tune "Romanian Shopping Spree" was also an outgrowth of his musical ambassadorship.

Graton paired with a co-curator at the Smithsonian for two phases: research, which began in New Hampshire in 1998, and production, slated for the following summer in D.C.

Graton says that unlike a museum show's curation, in the production phase "we had to focus on living traditions and people rather than static objects. Certain kinds of distillation and interpretation had to take place on the mall in order to place the events we presented in the proper cultural context."

Folklorists and documentarians often work in this manner, first gathering and then weaving together or collaging stories. Parts had to be united into wholes; complex essays and completed research had to be translated into signage.

With research, Graton-who had spent 15 years as the Hawaiian state folklorist, and shepherded Hawaii through its invitation to the Folklife Festival in 1989-established the Festival's possible tropes and identified the state's folk tradition stakeholders, 35-plus museums and nonprofit organizations, and a raft of state economic and cultural agencies. All wanted to share their abundant knowledge of politics, music and dance, food traditions, fine art and domestic crafts, recreational crafts (carving, fly tying, dogsled building), boat building, forestry and land stewardship.

Folklorist and musicologist Jack Beard of WUNH's "The Folk Show" (10 a.m. Sundays on 91.3 FM) worked with Graton to gather and chronicle musical traditions liberally sprinkled throughout New Hampshire. Beard also contributed his particular working knowledge of square dance and contra dance music and ethnic folk traditions. He'd done some of the legwork already in the process of producing an audio documentary, "New Hampshire Worlds of Music," several years earlier. The Smithsonian Folkways record label partnered with NHSCA to produce a CD called "Choose Your Partners" in which Beard was instrumental: identifying musicians, compiling musical histories, and coordinating and writing liner notes.

The event served as a de facto cultural inventory and census of sorts.

Once people were identified, NHSCA's Community Arts and Traditional Arts rosters both grew (I'm on their Artists in Education roster). Interest swelled in the summer of 2000 when the New Hampshire slice of the Folklife event was restaged locally at Hopkinton Fairgrounds.

When Graton decided to develop the New Hampshire Folklife site, it was due to the amazing abundance of resources that surfaced during the project.

"The Smithsonian Folklife Festival was a particular window in time," she says, but she also relishes that the window opened in New Hampshire still hasn't closed.

The Web site, created by Portsmouth-based PixelMEDIA, highlights these traditions in keen documentary photographs by Graton and brings new opportunities, particularly for teachers and for musicians. "The Learning Center" will help develop and debut New Hampshire-based curricula. For all curious browsers there's a great quiz on the subject of "NH Firsts and Bests," which offers historical tidbits about the nation's largest bicameral legislature, the invention of Tupperware in Berlin by Earl Tupper, the inspiration for the first national celebration of Thanksgiving by Sarah Josepha Hale (also of "Mary Had a Little Lamb" fame), the first racially integrated baseball team, the first state Constitution, and the nation's longest wooden bridge.

For musicians (and dancers) the "Traditional Music Index" is a place where appreciative listeners and musicians can find one another. During the research phase, Graton compiled several shelves of traditional music that she worked diligently to catalog and archive. Eventually a working collection of this music will be housed at the University of New Hampshire's Dimond Library, in Milne Special Collections. The idea of information sharing (not file sharing... sorry, no MP3s ) in an online index came next. Graton asked folks to submit their work to be archived.

The response was enthusiastic. Discs and recordings are still flowing. A 2003 compilation of traditional songs from some of the index's participants is entitled "Songs of the Season." It was produced in partnership with the NHSCA, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the good old N.H. Lottery (another N.H. first, in 1963). Beard helped get the ethnic folk flavor of Wilson Langlois, a recently deceased Franco-American fiddler, recorded for the disc. He also brought Hector Canales' Puerto Rican jibarro music and a Polish choir, the St. Cecelia Choir of the St. Joseph Church in Claremont, to the disc. Other DIY folks have been busy for years recording jams and pub sessions, contra, square and barn dances, folk festivals, ceilis and live shows. Finally there's a place for sharing it with the public. The Index offers traditional musicians the opportunity to join as well by submitting recordings for consideration.

New Hampshire Folklife is in its infancy and like any baby it will have its (technological) burps and hiccups. But New Hampshire as a state and New Hampshire Folklife reveal an embarrassment of cultural riches. Access to our history and traditions will arouse curiosity among the inquisitive and offer promises for our ears.