Martin Elizabeth Bennett has published a new book: Performing Folk Songs Affect, Landscape and Repertoire (Bloomsbury). It is, she says, the first full-length volume to explore English folk singing from the perspective of performance studies. Using archival sources, family repertoire and recorded performances of interviewees, this book argues that archives and repertoires are produced in sensory environments and … Read more
The video of this year’s Roy Palmer Lecture, given by Dr Margaret Bennet, is now available on YouTube – https://youtu.be/EeSbJ11YOBI. The title of Margaret’s lecture was ‘Seasonal Customs Outside Our Borders’. It was a very lively and enjoyable talk and definitely not one to miss. The lecture took place at the Whitby Folk Week in August … Read more
Matt Quinn has just launched a second series of the ‘In the Roud’ podcast in which he will be looking at Roud Numbers 11 to 20, starting with ‘The Baffled Knight’, for which the ‘Historical Guest’ is Steve Roud and the ‘Singer Guest’ is Vic Gammon. Search for the podcast on your usual provider. Matt … Read more
The fourth volume in the series of essays on street literature and cheap print will be available from October 2024, entitled Father Christmas and the Deck of Cards: Further Adventures in Cheap Print, edited by David Atkinson and Steve Roud. It is a collection of eleven essays based on papers presented at the Traditional Song Forum’s … Read more
It is a matter of great concern to us that we are finding it very difficult to get people to volunteer presentations for our meetings. We have been enormously successful in providing a platform for people to talk about their interests in folk song, as our back-catalogue and our videos on YouTube testify. Though some … Read more
‘In the Roud’, is a new folk Song podcast, which is being produced by Matt Quinn. It takes the form of a journey through the Roud Index, looking at each song in depth with the help of an ‘historical guest’ (such as Steve Roud and Vic Gammon), and a ‘singer guest’ (such as Jon Boden … Read more
You may like to have a look at a new website, www.100ballads.org, compiled by Christopher Marsh and Angela McShane. In fact there are 120 Seventeenth Century ballads to explore on the site and you can see a facsimile of the ballad, read a transcription, and hear it sung, as well as learn details of the history … Read more
Editing the videos of the Sheffield Conference was a steep learning curve for your only moderately tech-savvy Secretary, but they are now complete and can be found on the Presentations at Past Meetings page. Thank you to all the speakers at this event, which was well attended, despite the train strike that kept Steve away … Read more
The team of Steve Roud and David Atkinson has been busy again and have two new books to their credit.First up is Vaughan Williams and Folk: 150th Anniversary Essays, a selection of papers presented at last year’s EFDSS conference to celebrate 150 years RVW’s birth, with reprints of other key material by him and others. The cost … Read more
Last month, the programme for the Whitby Folk Week included a ‘Traditional Song Forum Concert’ which included several of our members who have given talks at our meetings, but who are also regular performers. They included Judy Cook, Vic Gammon, Katie Howson, Brian Peters, Ian Russell, and Peter and Barbara Snape. It was a very … Read more