Glad to see you getting into the music, anna; it's the music I've loved all my life. Boston has been kind of the epicenter since the 50s, and still is today. Two sites that might interest you are
www.wumb.org which is the radio station associated with U. Mass. Boston, and is the only full-time folk station in the country (and is noncommercial to boot, so you don't wade thru a lot of ads to get to the music). They play everything from traditional stuff to bluegrass to Celtic to singer-songwriters. They stream live over the web, and they actually have several different streams, including a traditional folk one.
Also check out
www.clubpassim.org which streams live shows in the evenings from Club Passim in Harvard Square, which started out as Club 47 in the 50s, and is now a nonprofit cultural organization. Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Gordon Lightfoot, Mississippi John Hurt, Muddy Waters, and a whole host of other legendary names played there.
Happy listening. I'll work on a list of names. Winnowing it down to a manageable number will be hard.
Oh, while I'm here, go to the Passim site, click on the schedule, go to the individual days, and you'll find a link which says "click on the artist's homepage" or something similar. A lot of those homepages have either clips or whole songs of the performers,( MP3s play under Windows Media Player). so you can get a whole lot of information in a short time.
Stumble It!
Tweet This
Bookmark on Delicious
Share on Facebook
Share on MySpace