Traditional Song Forum Meeting, 16 Sep 2017

Traditional Song Forum Meeting, 16 Sep 2017

Held atHRI, University of Sheffield

This was a very special meeting as it marked the twentieth anniversary of the meeting that led to the formation of the Traditional Song Forum. We werethe guests of Sheffield University, who have hosted many TSF meetings in the past and to whom we are very grateful for continued support. This was also the occasion for the second Roy Palmer lecture, which was given by Ian Russell. The meeting also gave Julia Bishop and Steve Roud an opportunity to talk about the inclusion of the archives of James Madison Carpenter and Ken Stubbs in the forthcoming relaunch of the Vaughan Williams memorial Library’s Digital Archive (formerly known as the ‘Full English”. The day ended with a series of short presentations and discussion designed to help think about the direction that the Traditional Song Forum would take over the next twenty years. The morning session consisted, as customary, with a round-table discussion of members recent interests and activity.

Welcome

Steve Gardham welcomed everyone and thanked Fay Hield and Julia Bishop for organising the day.

TSF business

1 Finances

Doc Rowe was going to be arriving late, but had advised that the TSF account currently stands at £1118.

2 Membership Secretary

Shan Graebe has now taken on the role of TSF Membership Secretary and will be maintaining the membership and interest lists. There are currently 122 people listed as members of TSF, though only 54 have paid their subscriptions for 2017. Several people said that they would be happy to be reminded.

3 Communications with members

Martin Graebe reported that he had been using Mailchimp for communications for a year now and it has proved successful. The statistics show that 60% of the e-mails sent were opened (the industry average is 15% so we are doing well). Out of the 122 people on our mailing list there are 28 people who have opened every one of the 21 messages that have gone out during the year. Just 14 people haven’t opened any. I haven’t had much feedback but I believe that people are responding more and better to this way of communicating.

4 Event management

We have been running a trial of the use of Eventbrite for booking TSF meetings. Of those present, 17 had booked tickets beforehand. The benefits are that it makes it easier for the people organising the meeting to make provision for the right numbers of chairs and of tea and coffee. The Liverpool meeting, for example, became overcrowded because the numbers were unexpectedly high – which is good news in terms of attendance, but we could have arranged things differently had we had a better forecast.

5 TSF Website

Martin reported that the new TSF website was about to be launched. The URL for the new site is but the plan is to change to the present tradsong.org in the near future. The old site will not be updated from now on. Thanks are due to Steve Rowley for his help in setting up the new site.

6 Future meetings

The next event in the calendar will be ‘Songs in Tradition and Print’ on 25 November. Booking for this is now open on Eventbrite where details of the programme can be seen. The annual Broadside Day will take place in Cambridge on 24 February. The programme of meetings for the rest of 2018 is being discussed and negotiated.

Networking Session

Chris Foster, is currently on tour from Iceland where he is engaged in a number of projects, many of them with his wife, Bara Grimsdottir, working with traditional material. Icelandic song texts are written in a fixed metre so it is possible to fit the lyrics to a number of different tunes. He is involved in programming an annual festival in Akureyri. He continues to sing and record English song and has just made a CD, ‘Hadelin’. In the 1970s he lived in Leiston, Suffolk and, while he was there, got to know a number of the old singers including Jumbo Brightwell, who he visited regularly as he lived nearby. Brightwell have him a number of songs, written on old Christmas cards, which he have to the EATMT archive. Jumbo gave Chris a set of words for ‘The Faithful Plough’ and later discovered that Peter Kennedy had recorded the song from his father, Velvet, in 1953. The recording included verses that Jumbo didn’t sing, but Jumbo had verses that didn’t come from his father.

Derek Schofield reported that he was going to be at the Pat Shuldham Shaw Day the following weekend and would be talking about Shaw’s work with song – particularly the Greig Duncan collection. He also with Marie Slocombe when she recorded the singing of Cecilia Costello. He was interested in the question of how folk songs should be sung and wrote an article about it in 1961. Also wrote an interesting article on modes. His recordings are scheduled for inclusion in the British Library Sound Archive.

Ken Fackrell has been interested in folk song for five years and is interested in the Fewston Assemblage – a group of more than 150 skeletons removed from the graveyard at Fewston (near Harrogate) which are a rare example of post-medieval human remains becoming available for study (see washburnvalley.org/churchyard-secrets). The village is well documented, particularly by a farmer, John Dickinson, who recorded village events, including songs. He went on a Folkworks course and came away determined to learn the concertina. He heard about Frank Kidson’s play ‘The Golden Wedding’ and gor a copy from Pete Coe – he ishoping to put the play on next year. And then he discovered that his great, great-uncle, gave two songs to Cecil Sharp.

Sue Allan has completed her PhD after 10 years work (applause!) and is now mining her thesis for talks. She listed a number of events at which she will be talking.She is hoping to do a book about Cumbrian songs, music, dance, and plays. A version of her paper about John Peel is to be published next year in a book called Music and the Idea of the North.

Arthur Knevett has been interested in folk song and after retiring he completed his PhD on the history of the Folk Song Society. His father had been hopping in Kent, but had not heard any songs. There will be an article by him in the next FMJ on the National Song Book controversy.

Ian Russell was slowed down by problems with his eyes but enjoyed visiting Whitby and the TradMad event in the USA. The Carol Festival is not taking place in 2017 but the Derbyshire Carol Workshop will be taking place in Hathersageon 2 December. A new carols CD has been produced – ‘The Theme, The Song, The Joy’ – a double CD of village carols from around the world. He is looking at reissuing the Sheffield Carols Book as well as producing a new book of carols from the Eastern side of Sheffield. Mentioned the Cullerlie Traditional Singing Weekend in July 2018 and also the North Atlantic Fiddle Convention which will also take place in July next yearin Aberdeen.

Martin Graebenow has copies of his new book and will be doing a number of promotional events over the coming months. He is now looking at other projects as well as tidying up a few aspects of his work on Baring-Gould.

Bob Askew is preparing a talk on Grace Kimmins, the founder of the Guild of Play, for the Southeast London Folklore Society. He is also working on woman singers, particularly Patience Vaisey who sang to Lucy Broadwood. He is hoping to produce a CD. He is also intending to do more work on the Axford eomen who sang to George Gardiner.

Julia Bishop has been working on the James Madison Carpenter project (more in her presentation later) and is starting to work with the Opie Collection. She has contributed chapters on the music of folk songs to Steve Roud’s book and also that by Martin Graebe. She is also a principal organiser of the EFDSS tunes conference coming up shortly.

Fay Hield talked about the Royal Traditions Folk Club and Soundpost - both ways of getting more people involved in folk music. Frances Watts has now joined Soundpost as a director. She talked about work being done by her students. She has failed to turn her PhD into a book but is mining it for articles. Her latest research is about ‘Making music now’ – looking at audience response to old themes in music.

Lewis Jonesis working on a peper for the meeting in November about the tunes Butterworth collected and Nineteenth Century street literature. The transcription of manuscripts in the VWML collection continues with music being put onto the Folklopedia website and transcriptions being put up on the VWML Digital Database. His colleague, Simon Furey, has added to Lewis’s article on modes on the Folklopedia site. He is working on a guide to analysing folk tunes.

Steve Roud has discovered that his grandmother was arrested for singing in the street. He also discovered that his great, great-grandfather was arrested for poaching and his daughter was arrested for receiving stolen goods. Has been working to get more stuff online, firstly on the VWML Digital Database and also the Sussex Traditions website. He has been working on the Opie collection with Julia Bishop. He has also been helping the British Library to put new material onto their ‘Sounds’ pages, including the Grainger cylinders and the Pat Shaw recordings. He and David Atkinson have produced a new book: Street Literature of The Long Nineteenth Century. There is a code that can be used to get 20% of the price – contact Steve.

David Atkinson is working on the next issue of the Folk Music Journal. As mentioned earlier it will include Arthur Knevett’s article on the National Song Book, Brian Peters on Sharp in Appalachia and a paper on Street Ballads and Singers in the Eighteenth Century. Derek Schofield has taken on the role of Reviews Editor. He apologised for failing to paginate the last issue properly. When referencing it writers should include volume as well as page number. Fay Hield mentioned the difficulty of getting students to submit articles to FMJ. David suggested that it would be appropriate for the to submit shorter pieces as research papers.

Ron Day reported that the book, Wanton Seed, had now sold out. Clive Boutle, the publisher, is considering a reprint.Southern Harvest is selling well. Bob Askew asked whether there were plans to do another volume of material from the Hammond or Gardiner volumes.

Sarah Lloyd has completed her dissertation on how people choose and learn songs to perform in contemporary folk music settings. She writes for Folk London and would welcome articles for the magazine.

Nicola Beazleyis one of Fay’s PhD students, on her first year. Looking at how musicians working today interact with traditional styles and singers

Steve Gardhamhas been concentrating on local stuff and work in schools. He has enjoyed writing songs for use in schools.

Carpenter Folk Online and the VWML Digital Database – Julia Bishop and Steve Roud

Julia Bishop talked about James Madison Carpenter and his collection, made in Britain in the 1920s and 30s. Getting to the point where his recordings and manuscripts are to go online has taken a long time because it is a very complex collection. She gave a brief outline of Carpenter’s background and the way he went about making his collection, including some example of recordings. He also took a lot of photographs. The recordings are not of great quality – but are very variable. He would record verses from the singer and then get them to dictate the words while he typed them, a line at a time.The project team produced the catalogue of the collection but the original hope that the Library of Congress to put the material online did not come to fruition. But now they have allowed the recordings to be incorporated into the VWML Online collection.

Steve Roud talked about the stages that the VWML digital archive has been through, culminating in the version to be launched shortly. The Carpenter collection is the last of the big collections of British song and, for the first time, it makes recordings available. TSF members were invited to test the beta version before the launch of the new site. To do so, go to

If you have any comments, please send them to Julia -

For more background on the Carpenter Project have a look at the Folk Music Journal Vol 7, No 4 (1998) which was devoted to 5 articles about Carpenter.

Roy Palmer Lecture

Prof. Ian Russell – Why Study Traditional Song/Singing? A Personal Quest for Meaning.

Ian opened by talking about Roy Palmer as an inspiration to many working in the field. He also reflected on his contribution as a member of the Editorial Board of the Folk Song Journal.

He talked about his background and hearing his father sing when he was little. He became a choral scholar at Ely at the age of nine. When his voice broke he rejected choral music and joined the Nottingham Cooperative Folk Workshop at the age of 14,becoming its secretary three years later. He taught at primary schools until, in 1999, he moved the Elphinstone Institute to become director there. His PhD was based on research carried out in a small area to the west of Sheffield.

He continued his talk with a number of examples of singers that he had met in his travels such as Frank Hinchliffe and Arthur Howard describing their meeting, their life and their songs.

It was a fascinating talk and enjoyed by all present. A recording of it is available to members – see below.

The Changing World of Traditional Song

The final part of the afternoon was comprised of a series of short presentations dealing with one aspect of traditional song, looking at how it has changed over the last twenty years and considering it’s future. Each presentation was followed by a discussion and questions.

Martin Graebe - The Traditional Song Forum; how have we done over our twenty years of existence and what might we achieve in the future?
Fay Hield – Performance; how has the performance of traditional song changed in the last two decades and where might the future lead us?
Arthur Knevett – Academic study; what has happened in the academic study of folk song and what may happen in the future?
David Atkinson – Publication; how has the publication of folk songs changed and what might its future be?
Derek Schofield – Collections and Archives; many new archives have been discovered in recent years and new ones are being created. What is the future for collections and archives?
Steve Roud – Broadsides; Interest in broadsides has increased significantly in the last twenty years . Why is this and what might happen next?
Concluding questions and discussion

A recording of this session is available. Some of the ideas emerging from the discussions were:

We need a succession plan if we are to survive for another twenty years
It follows that we need to get younger people involved.
A role for TSF is as curator of the traditional material, sharing their knowledge.
Do more stuff!
The information that singers provide about songs (sleeve notes, introductions, etc.) is valuable and makes for a knowledgeable audience.
Print remains an important source of information – accuracy may be better than online sources.
Digital archives can be daunting – as can specialist archives.

And many other interesting thoughts. This will be useful as we plan for the future.

Thanks

We are very grateful to the University of Sheffield for making the facilities available to us, to Fay Hield andJulia Bishop, and to Nicola Beasley for practical help on the day.