Folk Music Journal 2024
The English Folk Dance and Song Society has published the 2024 issue of Folk Music Journal (FMJ) – the annual scholarly journal of the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library.
Editor David Atkinson introduces the new issue (Volume 12 Number 4):
This year’s journal begins with the two trips Maud Karpeles took to the Appalachians to revisit some of the singers she and Cecil Sharp had met when they made their collecting trips in 1916–18. In 1950, not only had times changed in the Appalachians but Karpeles was now accompanied by the American folklorist Sidney Robertson Cowell, and the two collectors’ approaches to folk song differed markedly. Catherine Kiebert Kerst and Brian Peters chart the collecting trip and the singers, and also these changing paradigms for the study of folk song. In 1955, Karpeles was accompanied by her old friend Evelyn Wells, whose company and views she clearly found more congenial.
Joe Oldaker explores morris dancing at Polesworth in north Warwickshire between 1910 and 1915, when a morris ‘troupe’ was started by a local lady, Mrs Fowler. The troupe and its repertoire were influenced by prevailing notions of ‘Merrie England’ and by the teaching of the Espérance Club, but in the end the performances in Polesworth and the neighbourhood were an independent phenomenon, adapted to the local community.
In 1840 three Irish navvies working on the construction of the Glasgow–Edinburgh Railway were convicted of the murder of a ‘ganger’, or foreman. The incident was widely reported in the press and a song was made on the events, though (surprisingly) no print copies have been identified. The song, however, has persisted in the repertoires of a number of traditional singers. Ian Russell uses this framework to explore the notion of ‘truth’ in folk songs, a long-standing focus of scholarly interest going back to the work of Herbert Halpert as long ago as 1939.
The final article this year concerns the songs of Belgian lacemakers. Although the focus of the journal is usually the English-speaking world, on occasion comparative reference can be both fascinating and instructive. Lacemakers in England habitually sang at their work, and their songs ranged across the canon of folk song, but in Catholic Europe the repertoire was much more of a focus of contention. David Hopkin describes the political – ideological – struggle in which the lacemakers of Middelburg in East Flanders
were caught up in the 1840s.
This issue also contains notes on Welsh traditional music and the Goathland Plough Stots.
There is the usual healthy crop of reviews, beginning with Michael Heaney’s eagerly awaited and monumental history of morris dancing. Following the anniversary year in 2022 there are two new publications on Ralph Vaughan Williams, who, of course, did so much to support the work of EFDSS, which we at Folk Music Journal endeavour to continue. There are further contributions on step-dancing, clog dancing, morris in the North-West, and cultural dance in Australia. Songs and revivals are well represented in various guises, both English and American, and there are second editions of a couple of books that may already be known to readers, Robin Morton’s admirable Folksongs Sung in Ulster, and Michael Brocken’s study of the folk revival. The Anglo-Scottish triple hornpipe and the Anglo-concertina both attract attention. So there is something for everyone.
Members of the English Folk Dance and Song Society can search and view all previous issues of the Journal, and of its various predecessors dating all the way back to the first Journal of the Folk-Song Society in 1899, by logging into the Members’ area of this website and following the link to the digital library JSTOR. The members-only area also allows members to download PDFs of complete issues from 2014, strictly for their own personal study, and to search these same issues using various criteria.
As well as this increasing range of digital options, personal (non-group) members can opt-in to receive the printed Folk Music Journal by post. All Institution and Library members receive the printed FMJ by default.
Other benefits of being a member of the English Folk Dance and Song Society include English Dance and Song magazine three times a year and discounts on learning and safeguarding programmes from partner organisations, An exclusive FOLK pin badge, with a design by artist Amy Goodwin, was introduced in autumn 2023. Membership also directly supports the organisation’s charitable activities.
