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.

You Can Access Alan Lomax's Folk Music Archive Online!

Alan Lomax, 1915-2002

Alan Lomax was one of the twentieth century's great folk-music collectors.  You can read the blogpost from NPR Music: Alan Lomax's Massive Archive Goes Online - there's an audio-clip, too.

(The Hands Up for Trad blog has just posted Elizabeth Hepburn's commentary on the story.  You can read Elizabeth's commentary here - she quoted the NPR heading:-
Alan Lomax's Massive Archive Goes Online).

Scottish versus English, Folk versus National, Tradition Versus Revival

And NOTHING to do with the referendum!

Karen wrote a blogpost about folk music last night - find it on her own blog, Karen McAulay Teaching Artist.  She has been reading a Faber reprint of a biography of the ardent folk music collector and educator, Cecil Sharp.  It was written by his close associate, Maud Karpeles.

Would you be interested in reading this book?  Royal Conservatoire of Scotland staff and students should contact the Whittaker Library if they're keen!

Folk Musician Mike Seeger would have been 80 today, Bibliolore reminds us

Bibliolore blog commemorates what would have been Mike Seeger's eightieth birthday.  Read their blogpost.
 
Bibliolore is the blog authored by RILM music indexers.  Always quality information, on a variety of music related topics.  Bibliolore homepage here.

http://bibliolore.org/

The Full English (Music, not Breakfast!)

The Full English is a newly launched database for traditional English music. The CB3 music blog tells you about it here:-

http://musicb3.wordpress.com/2013/07/12/the-full-english/

Then visit The Full English, hosted by the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library.  Enjoy!

Heavy Metal at Belladrum Festival Site?

Not my pun, I hasten to add.  Roman coins found after Festival organisers clear up ... Read it on BBC News.

Today's Featured Website - The Folktrax Archive

Folktrax.org

 

Beryl and Peter Kennedy
image from Folktrax.org

Folk music specialists Peter and Beryl Kennedy were prominent figures in the folk music world for a very long time.  Indeed, Peter was a descendant of Marjory Kennedy-Fraser.  They died in 2006 and 2007 respectively, but the Folktrax Archive website lives on here:-

http://folktrax-archive.org/index.htm
 
Browse the index for customs, songs, tunes, stories and more.  The website is also a retail outlet for audio and video recordings that the couple made or were involved with. 
 
There's a wealth of useful info here.  Recommended to our Scottish Music students!

A 19th century Swedish fiddle music collector

Collecting Tunes in 19th Century Sweden

The Whittaker Library at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland has just been given an unusual gift: a book and CD about a 19th century Swedish folk music collector.
 
So if you're curious about Abraham fran Godegard, aka Abraham Hagholm (1811-1890) and his tune-collecting exploits, you know where to look for the book.
 

For those of us not fluent in Swedish - the book has an English summary, and the CD will speak for itself!
 
Peter Berry, the book's author, is Librarian at the Music Conservatoire attached to Lunds Universitet in Malmo, Sweden.
 
Details of both items here.

Lomax and the Rising Sun

Another great posting from Bibliolore, about the 'Rising Sun' song, and the story of how it was collected by ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax.

Globalization of The Rising Sun - Click here

Of interest to anyone studying ethnomusicology - the traditional, 'folk music' (don't get me started on that term!) of different nations.  World music, in modern parlance.

Hebridean Celtic Festival - Feis Cheilteach Innse Gall

13-16 July 2011, Stornoway, Isle of Lewis, Scotland

Website