The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #146180 Message #3547486
Posted By: Jim Carroll
10-Aug-13 - 03:21 AM
Thread Name: Bill Leader/Dave Bulmer
Subject: RE: Bill Leader/Dave Bulmer
"Bulmer's archives contain the recordings of source singers as well as singers from the revival." Thank you Dita - you are the first, other than my brief reference (above), to have pointed this out. Bill Leader has been a major (nearly said "Leading", but that could have been taken as a pun) presence on the folk scene for as long as I have been involved (over half a century) His inestimably valuable work ranges across a huge field - mainly traditional. It seems to me totally and destructively insane to concentrate on a handful of performers who have been adversely affected by Bulmer's behaviour because they are 'folk stars'. I have neither the desire nor the intention of spending the rest of my days carrying out a vendetta against a dead man - I have seen the damage that is still being done in making it virtually impossible to discuss the valuable research on singing techniques and analysis carried out by Ewan MacColl because of the garbage heap of personal abuse you have to scramble over to get within a mile of his work - (Ewan has now been dead for a quarter of a century). I have no doubt that the Bulmerphobes are driven by sorting out some of the mess he left behind him - quite right - pity it's not ALL the mess, just the bit that interests them personally. Kennedy did what he did and that's that - most of the singers are now dead and there's nothing we can do about it (I'm not just talking about the financial aspect of things - there were far more consequences arising from how he behaved). When Pat and I started collecting in the early 1970s we took a decision that we would never attempt to make money from it (not for entirely ethical or altruistic I admit - credibility as collectors also played a part) Every penny that came from the recordings we made and the singers we met was put back into the music - mainly in donations to support traditional music organisations. All profits from our two Irish CDs of Travellers and Clare singers go directly to The Irish Traditional Music Archive. We got six copies of the Tom Lenihan album as payment from Topic and they gave us a set of Voice of the People for the tracks we contributed to the series (the highest payment we have ever received) In the unlikely event of any songs we found being recorded by Elvis or The The Beatles (don't know who tops the charts nowadays) any royalties will go back to the singers' families or, failing that, to I.T.M.A. There is no earthly reason, as far as I can see, why any money coming from the songs and music passed on from all field singers should not in some some way or other be treated similarly (in certain cases, once the expenses have been covered, of course). If today's singers are going to make use of these songs (especially if they are going to insist on copyrighting "arrangements", I see no reason why they should not be 'asked' to donate some of what they make from this back into the preservation of the music. We have always been aware that the Folk Arts in Britain have led a hand-to-mouth existence. Let's face it, very few people have ever made major bucks from folk music, so this is not going to be a cure for all ills, but at least it might just help to keep it on life support. The other major aspect of all this is making the material available. The internet has opened up undreamed of possibilities of "passing on the songs" - what it has been all about for us from the beginning (not true of course - we couldn't begin to put a value on the pleasure we have gained from traditional music). I suggest that those who haven't, take a look into what organisations like I.T.M.A. and The School of Scottish Studies have done in this respect. As we witnessed a few months ago, The Vaughan Williams Memorial Library staff are slaving away at this moment (in a couple of hours time maybe) to make their holdings available (this could and should have included the fruits of the 1950s BBC mopping-up campaign, but, thanks to Kennedy's shenanigans it doesn't and won't). The National Sound Archive at the British Library has made tremendous strides in this endevour since we deposited our collection there a few decades ago - thanks to the dedication of a few and a hard won and insufficient grant. Our collection is deposited at I.T.M.A. - thanks to their interest and work some of it went on line earlier this year and all our Clare recordings will be on the Clare County Library website by the end of the year, again, thanks to hard slog by a handful of dedicated people. Accessibility is the key to the survival of our music; it won't be got if what we have been given is owned, claimed, copyrighted, stuck on inaccessible shelves, hoarded....... This goes against the promise we made to every traditional singer we ever met, that we wanted to take what they had because "we didn't want it to die". Jim Carroll