A provincial folk-festival conference might not seem the place to look for evidence of the state of the local music scene, but that was my ulterior motive for being at a downtown hotel Saturday afternoon.

"The Ottawa Scene" was the title of one panel at the Ontario Council of Folk Festivals conference, held at various sites in Ottawa over the weekend. The conference is an annual opportunity for festival representatives to collect business cards from booking agents and CDs from artists. Scheduled showcases and impromptu jams are also part of the fun.

I was a panelist, along with Ottawa folkfest artistic director Chris White and Black Sheep Inn impresario Paul Symes, both esteemed music connoisseurs with oodles of insight into the cultural well-being of eastern Ontario and western Quebec. And me? I confess that I just wanted to eavesdrop on the latest buzz.

We didn't limit ourselves to folk and roots music and it was generally a fruitful session, although Zaphod Beeblebrox owner Eugene Haslam tended to dominate the discussion. The dreadlocked impresario turned it into a primer on how to make the most of a booking at his club (not entirely his fault, by the way -- blame it on an ineffective moderator.)

Still, I collected useful tidbits to add weight to the theory that an increasing amount of decent music is being made in Ottawa. Singer-songwriter Ana Miura was a high-profile example throughout the conference: her mopey drinking song, He Swallows Whiskey, won the Songs From the Heart competition, earning her a showcase spot at the conference, a full page in the program and the rank of hometown darling.

At the panel, her producer, Coqi Records' Dean Watson, mentioned how impressed he was with the quality of indie-rock acts he's been recording. He described it as "the cream rising to the top."

There was also talk of an Ottawa blogger's list of the city's Top 20 indie bands, found at Iheartmusic.net. The compilation serves as a nice introduction to a burgeoning part of the Ottawa scene: adventurous pop-rock, played by the likes of Department of Foreign Affairs, the Empiricals, My Dad Vs. Yours, Hilotrons, The Acorn and As The Poets Affirm. The list was topped by Jetplanes of Abraham, an ambitious collective barely six months old -- our very own Broken Social Scene, some are saying.

A rival list posted at punkottawa.com also makes note of the noise generated by Ottawa's top four breakout punk/hardcore bands: The Fully Down, F--k The Facts, Million Dollar Marxists and Forty Cent Fix. Further research revealed that F--k the Facts has more than 100,000 hits on their Myspace.com page, a couple hundred more than major-label rocker Sam Roberts

Promoter types provided more stats that speak to the volume of gig-worthy musicians in the capital region. Symes believes there are thousands, based on the dozens of inquiries he gets daily from acts wanting to play his Wakefield club. The National Arts Centre's Michel Dozois, the BMW motorcycle enthusiast who books the community-oriented Fourth Stage, said his room is booked almost a year in advance.

Every artist I bumped into on the weekend had something to share. World-music artist Alicia Borisonik and her Argentinian Project were selected to showcase at the Folk Alliance conference in Memphis next year. Singer-songwriter Lindsay Ferguson is tickled that people believe in her music enough to invest in her career. Guitarist and bandleader Mighty Popo has a fine new album ready for release early next year and is leaving this week to visit family and soak up music in Rwanda.

But it's still difficult to make a living as a musician in Ottawa. As singer Amanda Rheume noted, you can't play every week and expect to draw a full house. The truth of that was evident at a recent gig by The Acorn. Despite a growing international buzz, the band drew only a few dozen to Babylon the other night.

Too bad. They are a great band with great songs. And now that their singer, Rolf Klausener, isn't hiding behind a big bushy beard, well, the world should be their oyster.

Lynn Saxberg's music column appears each Tuesday.