EFDSS News Page - July 2009 |
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EFDSS events in July 2009 Friday 3 & Saturday 4 July - New Wave: University of Newcastle Graduates Plus...
Sharp's Folk Club Forthcoming Featured Singers
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| Ledbury Poetry Festival 3 – 12 July 2009 Child Lore Past and Present A Talk by Steve Roud Find out where children’s rhymes come from and what they mean. Please feel free to bring along rhymes you remember from your childhood or that you hear your children or grandchildren singing and chanting. Steve Roud is working on a book called Lore of the Playground, based partly on historical research and partly on a national survey of children’s lore, past and present. Previous publications include The Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore, the Penguin Guide to the Superstitions of Britain and Ireland, The English Year (customs and traditions) and London Lore. He also compiles the Folk Song Index, which is a database of traditional song of the English-speaking world. Other Festival highlights include poets Alice Oswald, Ben Okri, Iain Sinclair and Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin. Musical events include Aidan Moffat performing his spoken word album I Can Hear Your Heart. Plus the Ledbury Lyricists, a gathering of folk musicians and poets. You can join in or simply listen and enjoy. www.poetry-festival.com 0845 458 1743
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Sarah Foqué & Open: 10 – 6pm, Tuesday – Saturday
Responding to a sites history and peoples movement through it, Sarah Foqué creates installations with straight bands of colour. Drawing on histories of philosophy and anthropology, Foqué focuses on the mapping and exploration of space and boundaries. Typically using coloured tape as a material to visualise her understanding of the space she is working in, Foqué will create a fluid portrait of the space and its activities, alluding to traditional dance figures.
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Photograph: Elaine Bradtke
The Take 6 Archives Team: Keri Myers, Malcolm Taylor, Steve Roud and Richard Butterworth, with CE Katy Spicer and EFDSS President, Shirley Collins
EFDSS President Shirley Collins |
The Take 6 Archives Website Goes Live! At 6.30pm on Tuesday 9th June, 2009, our President, Shirley Collins, punched the key that launched the Take 6 Archives website. Funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, this site hosts six of our major manuscript collections - those of Janet Blunt, Anne Gilchrist, George Gardiner, the Hammond brothers, Francis Collinson and George Butterworth. 22,000 digital images display the actual papers and notebooks that have been locked away in a small room in Camden Town for over half a century. Now they are at your finger tips. Go to: In 2007 the Heritage Lottery Fund awarded the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS) a grant of £154,500 for a.. implement a conservation treatment programme and collection care plan for the EFDSS archives collection b.. catalogue and digitise six of its major manuscript collections and provide access to some 22,000 images through this website c.. use the materials from the collections with eleven primary schools in London, Hampshire and Lancashire d.. create an educational websites for children and teachers -- www.funwithfolk.com and www.teachingfolksong.com (to be launched 2nd July, 2009) e.. promote Take 6 in the community through leaflets and display boards at various locations and folk music events in Hampshire and Lancashire f.. run a reminiscence project with Redriff Primary School in Rotherhithe, London g.. hold celebration events at Cecil Sharp House, the headquarters of the EFDSS This website is the result of archival work carried out within this project and will form the platform for more materials to be made available in the future. Further folk art related materials can be found on VWML Online, the site for the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library.
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Thursday 2 July, 16.00 – 17.30
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Friday 3 July & Saturday 4 July
Ruth Ball, Ben Church, Rosy Coggle, Lucy Coggle, Beth Coyle, Tom Cronin, Sarah Dorward, Lucy Farrell, Cathy Geldard, Isla Hughes, Pip Ives, Paul Knox, Jo Lindsay-Dunn, Jenny Page, Will Pound, Matt Price, Georgia Shackleton, Fynn Titford-Mock Dan Walsh, (Friday only) Nick Wiseman-Ellis
Tutors:
Vic Gammon, Stewart Hardy, Sandra Kerr
£8, £5 conc. A chance to hear a wide variety of music performed by students and tutors from the Newcastle course in an informal setting. Performance: The climax of the weekend - an array of talent will be on display featuring a wide variety of music in Trefusis Hall.
10.30- 12.00 Northumbrian music with Paul Knox and Ruth Ball
12.00-1.30 Southern English music with Pip Ives, Will Pound and Vic Gammon
1.30-3.00 North American music with Matt Price and Tom Cronin
2.00-4.00 Focus on Song Performance 3.00-4.30 Breton and French music with Nick Wiseman-Ellis, Jenny Price and Isla Hughes
4.30-6.00 Irish music with Rosy Coggle, and Nick Wiseman-Ellis 6.00-7.30 Scots music with Sarah Dorward and Cathy Geldard
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Family Friendly Events The Family Friendly programme will draw on a range of folk art forms from the British Isles – dance, song, music, visual arts, storytelling, drama – complemented by traditional and folk art forms from other parts of the world, as well as contemporary, urban and classical arts. These events are for children of all ages and their parents, carers and families.
Family Dances! Tickets on the door only: Child £5, Adult £1 Jane Pfaff. Absolutely no previous experience needed! This is an event for children of all ages and their parents, carers and families.
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The Building of Cecil Sharp House An Illustrated Guide by Brenda Godrich
This fascinating and insightful booklet tells the story of how Cecil Sharp House came into being. The narrative starts with the man who instigated the English Folk Dance and Song Society, and to whom the headquarters building was dedicated after his death. It explains the external look of the building, why particular materials were used in construction, and tells how the early, and in many ways ground-breaking acoustic panels were built.
The involvement of members of the Art Workers’ Guild and the work of designer Betty Joel added to the lavish feel of the interiors as the many contemporary photographs show.
When the building was opened in 1930 it received widespread praise from the architectural profession, and it gave a tremendous amount of prestige to the Society. The war years brought partial destruction and the loss of some distinctive features, but the booklet concludes with the rebuilding and subsequent changes made in the second half of the twentieth century.
The Building of Cecil Sharp House: An Illustrated Guide by Brenda Godrich ISBN 978-0-85418-204-6
The Building of Cecil Sharp House is available from the English Folk Dance and Song Society, Cecil Sharp House, 2 Regent’s Park Road, London NW1 7AY. Tel: 020 7485 2206. It is £5.00 plus £2 p&p. |
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Beryl Marriott
for her lifetime contribution to folk music John Heydon for his work with the National Folk Festival and Haddenham Ceilidhs The Skiffle era of the mid fifties introduced John Heydon to Lonnie Donegan and the Vipers where he then trace their sources to Woody Gutherie and Leadbelly, This led in 1958 to John making his first foray to the Ballad and Blues club run by Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger.John’s work with the Herga Folk Club would see him take over the running of the club by1966. For the next twenty-three years John ran the venue almost every Monday evening. In 1972 he discovered Haddenham Village Hall and by December of that year was organising ceilidhs there on the first Saturday of every month, an event that continues to this day. The December ceilidhs at Haddenham soon evolved into the Haddenham Festival, with John still staging the event, now in its 26th year. In the late 60’s the Herga Club organised charabanc trips to the Bromyard and Sidmouth Festivals. John caught the Morris bug through attending the Simouth workshops run by Hugh Rippon and this led to the formation of the mighty Herga Morris. In 1980 John took over the running of the Loughborough Festival but by the following year John had recognised that the festival was not financially viable and it was cancelled. In 1984 the festival was reborn as the National Festival and held at Sutton Bonnington Agricultural College, with John in full control. Through his many contacts, his reputation and his considerable personal charm, he was able to attract the best traditional singers from the British Isles, Ireland and beyond. From his love of traditional song, John created an outstanding festival and ran it successfully for 22 years.To this day John continues to run the Haddenham Ceilidhs and Dragon Records, an outstanding and on-going resource for folk music enthusiasts which he set up in 1977. John has recently renewed his long association with the organisation of Sidmouth Festival which started in 1979 and included running the Festival with Steve Heap from 1987 to 1995.
John Heydon receives his Gold Badge award from EFDSS President Shirley Collins, at Haddenham Festival on 6 December 2008. Ray Fisher for her contribution to traditional song Ray was born in Glasgow, into a family to whom music and song were very important. Her father was a soloist with the City of Glasgow police choir, with a repertoire ranging from traditional songs to operatic arias. Her mother, from the island of Vatersay in the Western Isles, spoke and sang in Scots Gaelic.In the late fifties Norman Buchan established the Ballads Club, which attracted many young singers and musicians, including Ray, who were eager to learn more about their own traditional songs. The club would be the place where Ray would meet and form an influential friendship with Scottish singer Jeannie Robertson.Ray made regular appearances on Scottish Television. With her continuing success Ray performed all over the country. During one visit to the Bridge Folk Club, Newcastle, Ray met Colin Ross and in 1962, she and Colin married, moving to Tyneside permanently. That same year, Ray was also part of Arnold Wesker’s Centre 42 project, and was asked by Bert Lloyd to sing on his album of industrial folk songs, The Iron Muse. Ray has taught on numerous Folkworks courses and most recently peformed at Whitby Folk Festival. Louis Killen for his contribution to traditional song Louis Killen grew up in
a family that sang everything from Catholic hymns, to songs from their
native Ireland and Tyneside music-hall pieces. In his teens in the early
1950s, he began singing to audiences, and by 1955 moved to study at
The Catholic Workers’ College in Oxford. Here he came across
the University’s Heritage Society, the University’s folk
club, and discovered the rich diversity of traditional British folk
song. He sang regularly at London’s
legendary Troubadour, and was a member of the folk music tour that
was part of Centre 42. The next wave of singers was emerging from
behind the founding fathers, MacColl and Lloyd, and Louis Killen was
their leader. He was the key person to popularise some of the standard
songs of the revival – ‘Pleasant and Delightful’,
‘The Leaving of Liverpool’ and ‘The Wild Rover’,
and his repertoire also notably featured mining and sea songs. Louis contributed to albums
for Topic, including three EPs which became the LP Along the Coaly
Tyne, the sea songs album, Farewell Nancy, and his own solo record,
Ballads and Broadsides in 1965.In 1966 Louis went to America
on a three month tour, and returned to live there in 1967. In 1971
Louis joined The Clancy Brothers and for six years toured the world
with them. By the 1980s, he was living on the west coast and working
in the Maritime Museum in San Francisco. Visits home to England were
rare. This changed with a major tour in 1990 that drew large audiences.
Regular tours followed and a few years ago he returned home to his
native Gateshead.
Colin has been actively
involved in the promotion of the traditional music of North East England
for nearly 60 years. He first joined the Earsdon Sword dancers, playing
the fiddle, and then saw and heard the Northumbrian pipes played by
Colin Caisley and Forster Charlton, and was immediately attracted
to them.
Left to right: Louis Killen, Ray Fisher and Colin Ross after being presented with Gold Badges of the English Folk Dance & Song Society at the 50th anniversary celebrations of the Bridge Folk Club, Newcastle upon Tyne, 17 November 2008. _________________________________________________________ |
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FESTIVAL
LISTINGS - 2009 _________________________________________________________ |
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VOLUNTEERS
NEEDED Verity, Stewart, Jon and Jane
can always use a bit of extra help in the Society's administration
office. Roles range from picking and packing CD's and books, through
to general secretarial support. |
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