The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #146180   Message #3547901
Posted By: Jim Carroll
11-Aug-13 - 11:33 AM
Thread Name: Bill Leader/Dave Bulmer
Subject: RE: Bill Leader/Dave Bulmer
Hi Richard,
Thanks for the input.
I have to say my heart gave a leap when I read your 'Full English' collection - until I discovered that it numbered 174 of the 1500 items Kennedy is said to have collected - no Harry Cox, Sam Larner, Cecilia Costello, Robert Cinnamond, Thomas Moran..... and none of the unreleased items - a tiny tip of a very large iceberg and hardly a great deal.
Many of those tracks I don't recognise as being from the BBC project.
This is in no way to denigrate the efforts of The British Library and EFDSS, certainly given the economic straights which have been forced on Traditional music in Britain and Ireland since the BBC project sixty years ago.
My argument is, and has always been that to a large extent the behaviour of Kennedy, Bulmer and their ilk that has contributed to our failure to popularise our music and put it on the map.
The fate of this collection, is only a tiny part of the Kennedy problem, which itself is only a tiny part of a greater problem fleas upon fleas in fact.
It didn't seem too much to ask that Kennedy's behaviour and the general and long-running problem be given some attention on the latest one of fifteen threads on Dave Bulmer - apparently it was.
The argument that Kennedy/Bulmer, "whoever, did some good" (not saying that it is your overall position, but since you brought it up) is not unlike saying that Mussolini made the trains run on time.
Thanks again for being a lone voice in the wilderness.
Jim Carroll