Conference of the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, English Folk Dance and Song Society
Saturday 20 July and Sunday 21 July 2024
For over two hundred years, and for a variety of reasons, ‘folk’ song and music enthusiasts have ventured into the field and become collectors – gatherers of material which has greatly enhanced our understanding of the vernacular culture of the past.
Their activities have come under increasing scrutiny in recent years, and to mark the centenary of the deaths of two key figures – Cecil Sharp and Sabine Baring Gould – and the 150th anniversary of the birth of Ella Mary Leather, we are organising a wide-ranging assessment of the collectors’ lives and works, with a major two-day conference.
We will investigate collectors as individuals and networks, their achievements and failures, motives, methods, strengths and weaknesses, social and political context, the contemporary collector, and the underlying ethics of collecting itself.
The full programme will be announced in due course, but papers accepted include:
• Sabine Baring-Gould – 100 years on
• 'Not to bury Sharp, but to crucify him': A critical appraisal of the academic assault on England's foremost folk song collector'
• Context and interaction – issues in writing about historical song collecting
• Anne Geddes Gilchrist: Folk Song Collector and Scholar
• Joanna Colcord: A Sailor’s Life, a Collector’s Legacy
• “Your last proposal about music hunting sounds charming. We must think it over.” W.H. Gill and J.F. Gill as Manx Folk Song Collectors
• “They Call Me Jack of All Trades”: Four multi-tasking ballad collectors born in nineteenth-century Ireland, and how their several occupations and experiences coloured their interest in gathering songs
• Collecting with the Dictaphone: James Madison Carpenter's Recordings and Transcriptions of English and Scottish Ballads
• Welsh Folk-Songs in Aberystwyth, London and Paris
Lunch on both days is included in the ticket price.
Tags:
History