A new online archive from the English Folk Dance and Song
Society (EFDSS) will make more than 58,000 documents from twelve of
England’s most important folk music collections freely available to
all, including a wealth of fiddle- and string-related
material.
The Full English will be the most comprehensive digital archive of
English folk music in the world, featuring manuscripts, notes,
letters, recordings and other items from collections including
those of Percy Grainger, Cecil Sharp, Ralph Vaughan Williams
(pictured) and Frank Kidson. It has been made possible by a grant
of £585,400 from the Heritage Lottery Fund.
Malcolm Taylor, director of EFDSS’s library and archive and the
driving force behind the project, explained: ‘We’ve been talking
about it for about ten years. The whole idea is about getting this
music back to the people. Not everyone is comfortable or confident
using libraries or archives, and there’s also a geographical
problem – a lot of people simply can’t get to them. Our idea was to
break down those barriers.’
He continued: ‘It’s a remarkable body of material, and you can see
all the regional variations. A lot of people think folk music is
very regional, but that’s nonsense –tunes move around all the time.
If someone wants to look up fiddle tunes, they’ll find lots of
variations over time and location – and also lots of books of
traditional fiddle music.’
The archive also contains Sharp’s photography collection of early
20th-century fiddlers, as well as early cylinder recordings by
Sharp and Grainger of regional English fiddlers. ‘There’s also a
geographical component to the archive,’ Taylor explained, ‘so you
can discover what’s been collected literally down the road from
you.’
The launch of The Full English also marks the start of a
collaboration between EFDSS and nine regional partners in a UK-wide
community and schools learning programme, which begins in July and
includes participatory events, concerts, and archive and history
projects, as well as creative projects in primary and secondary
schools. The launch is also marked with the release of a CD of
specially commissioned new and newly arranged music, which includes
contributions from fiddlers Seth Lakeman, Nancy Kerr and Sam
Sweeney.
The Full English is launched on 20 June at www.vwml.org.uk.
No comments yet