Subject: Dear Companion: Cecil Sharp in America
From:
Matthew Edwards
Date: 28 Nov 04 - 08:27 AM
In view of some recent complaints about there being too little American folk material here is news of a publication from (ahem!) the English Folk Dance and Song Society which may help redress the balance.
On this thread Song books from Cecil Sharp House Joe Offer was asking about a reissue of Cecil Sharp's Appalachian collection. The publication announced below by the EFDSS isn't quite that, but it promises to be something just as exciting:-
NEW FROM THE EFDSS……….
DEAR COMPANION
Appalachian traditional songs and singers
from the Cecil Sharp Collection
Cecil Sharp, a music teacher from south London, is England's most renowned collector of folk music and dances, noting down nearly five thousand tunes on his travels throughout England and the Appalachian states of North America up until his death in 1924. The previous volume in this series, Still Growing, demonstrated the richness of the song tradition that he found in his native England. But perhaps the most significant part of his vast collection is that assembled during the First World War years in North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and Kentucky. At the instigation of American enthusiast Olive Dame Campbell, he embarked with assistant Maud Karpeles on a truly remarkable journey through America's southern uplands, to discover a living tradition of songs and ballads, largely of British origin, which had all but died out back home.
Dear Companion is a collection of fifty-three songs and ballads from Sharp's American collection. An authoritative introductory essay by collector Mike Yates, together with biographical sketches of the singers and notes on the songs, are copiously illustrated by previously unpublished photographs, extracts from diaries, letters, and biographical writings.
Dear Companion is a celebration of the close links between the musical traditions of Britain and North America.
Dear Companion: Appalachian Traditional Songs and Singers from the Cecil Sharp Collection
Published by the English Folk Dance & Song Society in association with Sharp's Folk Club, November 2004
ISBN 0-85418-190-3
[vi], 137p, illustrated.
£14.99 plus £2 p&p (UK) / £3.95 (Europe); air mail: £8.60 (Zone 1), £10.10 (Zone 2); surface mail: £4.75 (Zones 1 & 2)
Trade terms available on application to:
EFDSS, Cecil Sharp House, 2 Regent's Park Road, London NW1 7AY
Tel: 020-7485 2206
Fax: 020-7284 0523
Email: admin AT efdss.org
Copied from:News from efdss
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sj
