The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #94985   Message #1843095
Posted By: GUEST
25-Sep-06 - 03:26 PM
Thread Name: MIT Open Courseware
Subject: MIT Open Courseware Ango-Am Folk Course
Don't know if this info has yet been posted, but there is a FREE course on Anglo-American Folk Music here.

Course Description
This subject will introduce students to scholarship about folk music of the British Isles and North America. We will define the qualities of "folk music" and "folk poetry," including the narrative qualities of ballads, and we will try to recreate the historical context in which such music was an essential part of everyday life. We will survey the history of collecting, beginning with Pepys' collection of broadsides, Percy's Reliques and the Gow collections of fiddle tunes. The urge to collect folk music will be placed in its larger historical, social and political contexts. We will trace the migrations of fiddle styles and of sung ballads to look at the broad outlines of the story of collecting folk music in the USA, especially in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

This is a link to the page listing all of MIT's free and downloadable courses.

Open Source rocks.