The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #166001 Message #3988332
Posted By: Jim Carroll
20-Apr-19 - 06:05 AM
Thread Name: Important new article on Cecil Sharp
Subject: RE: Important new article on Cecil Sharp
"if not perhaps the primary source."
In thirty years collecting I never once came across a singer who tried to sell us his/her songs - as Walter Pardon told us, "They're not my songs, they're everybody's"
If it had been a question of payment, we would not have been able to afford to spend thirty years doing what we did
We paid our share socially and that was all that was expected of us - I would think the Lomax's were in the same position
Kennedy's dishonesty was in marketing the songs he had been paid to collect and, in some cases, claiming them as his own - I have spent a great deal of time working on the BBC collection and am still astounded at how much remains largely unheard - we were all victims of Kennedy, not just the singers
Still my favourite story of collecting which bears repeating, told to us by veteran Irish traditional music broadcaster, Ciarán Mac Mathúna
He was recording tunes from a very elderly Kerry fiddle player in his home
At the end of the session, he said to the old man, "now there's the question of a recording fee"
The old man thought for a moment, then said, "I have no money in the house at present, but I'm taking a bullock to the market tomorrow, if you don't mind waiting".
The memory of the generosity of those people has never left me - we all did a deal with them that we would make sure their songs, tunes and stories didn't die - I often wonder whether fulfilled our part of the bargain
Jim