Are you a Trad Musician, Influenced by English Folk Tradition? A Bursary!

The English Folk Dance and Song Society has just announced a fabulous opportunity. Quoting directly from their tweet, here it is:-

Applications are now open for the TheEFDSS Alan James Creative Bursary! If your work is inspired by or draws from traditional English folk music, apply for research and development funding here: http://ow.ly/pk1230oQ4j6

If you use Folk Music in your Teaching ...

The English Folk Dance and Song Society website has a great resource bank with materials which could help you.

Even if you're more into Scottish than English folk music, there's still useful information there.  We particularly liked the Jargon Buster.  There's much more there than just musical terms, as it covers folk traditions, costume details and other intriguing facts.  (For example, if you go busking, then technically you're "cadging" rather than begging, ie, you're getting money in exchange for providing entertainment, and not just because you begged for it ... a useful distinction!)

• Resource bank
• Jargon Buster
• EFDSS Home Page (http://www.efdss.org/)
• Vaughan Williams Memorial Library - a real gem in the folk music world, and well worth a visit if you have a spare couple of hours in London.

Have you had your Full English? (Digital Archive, English Traditional Music)

The English Folk Dance and Song Society recently launched a brand new digital archive of English traditional music.

Since national songs don't live in watertight compartments (and we could argue all day about what exactly you consider to be a national song, anyway!), you'll also find some Scottish and other traditional music in the archive too.

Take a look - it's a big and significant initiative!

• Click here for the EFDSS Full English
• Click here for the EFDSS homepage

BBC Radio 2's Cecil Sharp Collection

True, we are the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.  But Cecil Sharp was one of England's foremost folklorists, and founded the English Folk Song and Dance Society - his approach to folk music was influential upon many of his peers in the early twentieth century, so it must be of interest to folklorists everywhere - it's part of the history of song collecting.

Radio 2 wants listeners' submissions of their recordings of music that Cecil Sharp collected.  So if a Cecil Sharp specimen is now part of your repertoire, that's what Radio 2 wants to hear about.  Read more here.

Artists' Development Conference - and we MISSED it!

Whittaker is kicking himself.

He missed all mention of the EFDSS 2013 Artists' Development Conference.  It might be the English Folk Dance and Song Society, but artist development is what we're all about, here at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland!

Read the conference report, and see if you don't agree with me?  It must have been epic!

efdss homepage