We are excited to say that we have booked the wonderful Portico Library (https://www.theportico.org.uk/) in Manchester for our next Spring Conference 2025, where we will be using the Dome Room. The event will take place on the 18th April 2025 and the topic is “Women and Song”. Please save the date – we expect this … Read more
CALL FOR PAPERS Folk Songs in the archive – Where can we find them, and are they safe? When the Traditional Song Forum was formed in January 1998 the key topic of discussion was how we could make the many different archives of traditional song more available to researchers. In the years since, much has … Read more
Steve Roud and Julia Bishop will be running a second level of their online evening classes called Folk Song in England, for the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library of the EFDSS (6 weekly sessions) in October / November. Details can be found at https://www.efdss.org/whats-on/61-conferences/15355-folk-uncovered-online-course-level-2-folk-song-in-england-with-steve-roud
Songs from a West Country travelling family sung by Sophie Legg, Betsy and Charlotte Renals, recorded in 1978 by Pete Coe. With previously unreleased interviews. (VTR119)This new edition of Catch Me if You Can (the first for 23 years) includes rediscovered interview excerpts, bringing the singers’ stories to life in their own words. Updated booklet notes … Read more
The Open University has announced that our Chair, Steve Roud, has been awarded an Honorary Doctorate ‘in recognition of his exceptional contribution to education and culture’. The award will be presented in Birmingham in October—many congratulations on this well-deserved honour.
Regular attendees of our Zoom meetings will be sorry to hear this news from Martin: Conrad Jay BladeyI have heard from Mary, the wife of TSF Colleague Conrad Bladey, that he passed away on 16 June following complications with Parkinson’s Disease. Conrad was a long-time member of TSF and, until recently, a regular attendee at … Read more
The latest book in the “Marrowbones” series, “A Yorkshire Songster”, is being launched at Whitby Folk Week. The event will be in the Coliseum Theatre (1B Victoria Place, Whitby YO21 1EZ) on Wednesday, 30th August at 10.00 am.There will also be a concert to celebrate the whole series of “Marrowbones” books on Thursday afternoon in … Read more
This looks like a very interesting looking book on ballad history. The book includes an examination of the complex musical and cultural context from which Anna Gordon sprang. Threaded throughout are discussions of the ballads that brought her fame, revealing the deep importance of traditional music in Scottish society and the centrality of women as … Read more
Irish-Traditional-Song-Research@groups.ioA moderated discussion group for those interested in research into traditional song in Ireland – the songs, the singers, the styles, the contexts – in English and Irish; functioning primarily as a forum for communication, support, and information exchange, focusing on research rather than performance, and old-style tradition rather than revival or artistic extension.To subscribe, go tohttps://groups.io/g/Irish-Traditional-Song-Research
A Yorkshire SongsterFolk songs collected in Yorkshire since the Second World War The Marrow Bones series of English folk songs — Volume 7 Yorkshire has been noted as a ‘singing’ county and this has been reflected in the excellent musical collections published by Frank Kidson. The post war song collections, however, have not been so … Read more