'Folk Song in England' explores England’s traditional songs with Steve Roud
Today EFDSS announces a brand new series of online library courses, Folk Uncovered. We're delighted the series will launch with Steve Roud, creator of the Roud Folk Song Index, presenting 'Folk Song in England': a six-week evening course on the social history of traditional song and singing in England up to about 1950 (when the post-war Folk Revival changed things dramatically).
The Folk Uncovered courses will be suitable for beginners and those already interested in the different subject matters. They will be a unique opportunity to learn from experts in the field.
Topics covered in 'Folk Song in England' will include the changing definitions of ‘folk song’ over the last 200 years, the legacy of the early collectors such as Cecil Sharp and Ralph Vaughan Williams, and what the ‘folk’ themselves thought about their songs.
Who is Steve Roud and what is the Roud Folk Song Index?
Steve Roud is widely recognised as an expert on folklore and superstition. He was formerly Local Studies Librarian for the London Borough of Croydon and is Honorary Librarian of the Folklore Society.
He is the creator of the Roud Folk Song Index, which he began in around 1970 as a personal project, assigning a number to each folk song. Folk song titles are highly unstable – the same song can have dozens of different, or differently spelled, titles, the same title can be used for many songs, and many are published under headings like A New Song. To compensate for this, Steve assigns a number, to enable the user to pull together versions whatever their titles.
For the first 20 years, the system used 3x5-inch filing cards stored in shoeboxes. In 1993, Roud implemented his record system on a computer database, which he continues to expand and maintain and which is now hosted on the website of our very own Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, allowing for the Index to be more widely used and it is now accepted in academic circles
'Folk Song in England' starts on Thursday 1 May at 7.30pm (GMT) on zoom. The course runs until 5 June.
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