Broadside Day, 25th February 2011
TSF and EFDSS will jointly present the third Broadside Day at Cecil Sharp House on Saturday 25th February. There is a charge for this event and you should buy a ticket on the EFDSS website - the room was overfull last year. Further details here, and on the EFDSS website.
(Added 30th Dec 2011)
TSF Meeting - Aberdeen, 26th November 2011
The meeting in Aberdeen was a great success and enjoyed by all who attended. Brief notes of the networking session and of the papers presented are now available and can be seen here. I hope to make the PowerPoint slides used by the speakers available on-line shortly. A recording of the talks will also be available to members - details in January. The event was supported by social events, including a sing-around and a grand concert of Scottish songs. We also had the opportunity to visit Fyvie and the Mil o' Tifty and to hear the ballad of Mill o' Tifty's Annie sung in its location. Unfortunately, two of the wives who had supported the weekend suffered falls on the Sunday - we wish Norma Russell and Shan Graebe a rapid recovery from their injuries.
(Added 30th Dec 2011)
Gloucestershire Carols
A group associated with the Gloucestershire folk music enthusiasts, GlosFolk have launched a new site of folksongs and related activity collected in Gloucestershire. It is at www.gloschristmas.com. This modest site is a Christmas pilot and a launch-pad for a bigger effort next year when they hope to put as many songs from Gloucestershire as possible onto the web. This pilot site contains information on about 20 Christmas songs collected in Gloucestershire with notes on the songs, the singers and the context, plus a large bit on mummers and wassailing. There are also sound files, some of which are archive recordings and some more contemporary versions. Musical transcription of the songs is provided plus MIDI files to help those who can't read music. You are invited to have a look at the site and send comments to them.
(Added 30th Dec 2011)
Dying Speeches and Bloody Murders
Steve Roud recently discovered this website, operated by the Harvard Law School Library, which has some excellent examples of broadside ballads about crime, criminals and consequences. Go tohttp://broadsides.law.harvard.edu/home.php
(Added 30th Dec 2011)
New Publications
Two new books have recently been published that will be of interest to TSF Members.
In Search of Song: The Life and Times of Lucy Broadwood by Dorothy de Val (194 pages) is a long awaited biography of one of the leading Victorian collectors. It is publsihed by Ashgate as part of their 'Music in Nineteenth Century Britain' series. List proice is £50.
Child's Unfinished Masterpiece: The English and Scottish Popular Ballads by Mary Ellen Brown (284 pages) contains important biographical information about Francis James Child but focuses in particular on the book of ballads for which he is justly famed. It is published by the University of Illinois Press. List price is £29.99.
Full
English is on the menu!
EFDSS has been successful in it's lottery bid for the
next stage of digitising key folk song manuscripts. The Full English project
will publish the manuscript collections of Harry Albino, Lucy Broadwood, Clive
Carey, Percy Grainger, Maud Karpeles, Frank Kidson, Thomas Fairman Ordish,
Cecil Sharp, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Alfred Williams - through a single web portal,
allowing public access to 39,179 items via 70,862 individually digitised pages.
For more details see here
Charles
Marson Biography
David Sutcliffe has now published his biography of Cecil
Sharp's friend and collaborator, Charles Marson. The book is called 'The Keys
of Heaven' and you can find out more (and purchase it) at www.charlesmarson.co.uk. David will be talking about Marson and his folk song collection at the meeting
in Woking on 21st May.
'Broadsides', London 26th Feb 2011
Our next meeting is another special day which has been arranged in conjunction with EFDSS. It is a follow-up to our successful meeting on street literature last year and we will be spending a full day exploring aspects of street literature and popular print traditions. There will be a charge for the event, but for TSF members, there will be a concessionary rate of £8. To book a place go here or ring 0207 485 2206.
The speakers will include Steve Gardham, Ewan MacVicar, Gregg Butler, Lucie Skeaping, Roy Palmer, John Hinks, Pete Wood, and Vic Gammon. The event starts at 10:00 and finishes at 17:00. There will be a one hour break for lunch at 13:30.
The (draft) programme for the day is as follows: 10.00 - Welcome
10.15 Steve Gardham -Where's that Song from? The Historical Links between Popular Song, Street Literature and Oral Tradition
11.00 Ewan MacVicar - The Eskimo Republic: Scottish Political Song on Broadsides and Song Sheets from 1705 to 1965
12.00 Gregg Butler - John Harkness, Preston printer (Work in progress)
12.30 Lucie Skeaping - Have I Got News For Thee!: Broadside Ballads of 17th Century England
1.30 - 2.30 - Lunch
2.30 Roy Palmer - In Moor Street was a Printer: Aspects of the Ballad Tradition in Birmingham
3.15 John Hinks - Chapbook Bibliography Project (Work in progress)
Pete Wood - Newcastle broadsides & chapbooks (Work in progress)
4.00 Vic Gammon - The Street Ballad Singer in Pre- and Early-Industrial Society
5.00 - end of session
(18 Jan 2011)
Folk Mapping the Singing Landscape
Yvette Staelens has written to tell me about the completion of this project. She writes:
"This two-year AHRC funded knowledge transfer fellowship awarded to fellow Yvette Staelens and post doc researcher C J Bearman of Bournemouth University has now produced folk maps for Gloucestershire and Hampshire, and is touring an exhibition of Cecil Sharp's photographs of Somerset folk singers. To date there are 40,000 Somerset, 20,000 Gloucestershire and 20,000 Hampshire Folk Maps in circulation, each one busily creating impact beyond academia. This is probably the largest distribution of academic folk song research print literature ever produced. Free copies can be obtained from the following Singing Landscape Project partners:
Somerset Heritage Service - lbostock@somerset.gov.uk
Hampshire County Council Museums and Archives Service - alison.carter@hants.gov.uk
Gloucestershire from Gloucester Folk Museum - Nigel.Cox@gloucester.gov.uk"
(18 Jan 2011)
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