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
‘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
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
News of two new books from The Ballad Partners. First off the stocks is Vaughan Williams and Folk: 150th Anniversary Essays, Edited by Steve Roud and David Atkinson. A selection of essays celebrating Ralph Vaughan Williams’ lifelong involvement with folk song and music, as collector, editor, arranger, and composer. Many of them were first presented at the … Read more
This year’s Roy Palmer Lecture will be given by the American folklorist, Steve Winick, and is called ‘Lessons Learned from Robin Hood’. His talk will look at the question ‘what do the Robin Hood ballads communicate, and how can we help them keep communicating to today’s audiences?’ The lecture will be given at the Whitby … Read more
Another very successful year – and I think we can quietly congratulate ourselves on doing more than our bit at keeping the flag of traditional song research flying.In 2022 we mounted 15 online meetings, with over 40 presentations on an astonishing range of topics, and these are all available on our YouTube channel, which has … Read more
Jill Bennett and Elizabeth James have been studying the detail of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ visit to King’s Lynn in January 1905 for some years, and this book is the result of that work. The book is published in a large A4 format containing the songs collected on that visit as well as details of the … Read more
The latest volume from TSF’s companion organisation, The Ballad Partners, is a collection of 12 chapters, based on presentations given at Traditional Song Forum Zoom meetings over the past couple of years, and is a particularly strong set of papers, including topics from England, Ireland, Scotland, Canada and the USA. It is called Thirsty Work and … Read more
This year’s Roy Palmer lecture was given by Dr Julia Bishop at Whitby during the annual Folk Week. Her topic was ‘What shall we do with folk song music’. It was a fascinating talk with a live demonstration of folk song collecting using an interesting new piece of software for the iPad and a terrific … Read more