Paul Wilson - Is Devon singing? A talk about folksong collectors and music educators

Dr Duncan Williams - Introducing Pathway, Online Song Collecting Course

Angela Impey – From the struggle for citizenship to the fragmentation of justice: Reflections on the place of Dinka songs in South Sudan’s Transitional Justice Process

Great recording of The Ladies Stepdance played by Brian Holland

SCC Gathering 2016
26th November
St Mark’s Church, Colvestone Crescent, Dalston, London E8 2LJ

Highlights from the Song Collectors Collective annual Gathering. This year at St Mark’s Church, we present a celebration of the art of song collecting. Featuring insightful talks from ethnomusicologist Angela Impey and Wren Music founder Paul Wilson, an introduction to the new song collecting course 'Pathway' with Dr Duncan Williams and our panel discussion including Hugh Lupton, Wilson, Sarah Edwards and  Doc Rowe.

Produced with the help of www.soasradio.org

www.songcollectors.org

SCC Gathering 2016 Highlights

The Factory Girl - Tom Stokes

As I Went Out Walking One Fine Summer's Morning - Molly Collins

These tracks are from cassette tapes recorded by Willy at home in the 1980s. They are published with his kind permission so that others will sing them and share them.

Lord Courtown

Oh how happy our countrymen when seasons do come on,
To hear the lark and linnet melodiously sing songs.
Likewise the thrush in every bush, its melting notes do ring
To welcome home Lord Courtown in the day approaching spring.

The trees grow tall and handsome, the leaves with honey droop
And underneath the swan does swim with his long neck and stoops.
Likewise the common angler with his long line and hook
To convey the trout and salmon out of the charming brook.

This lord he built a castle at the rising of yon hill.
The works of it were marvelled on with artifice and skill.
There's no sort of stroke work with it could e'er be equalised
It's embellished with green ivy that never fades or dies.

This lord he sank a river more plainly to be seen,
He sank it to a certain depth - full fifteen feet run clean.
The straits of Gibraltar could ne'er so rapid roar
The straits of Ounavarra joins to the Courtown shore.

One day I was a-musing on this sweet Courtown bank,
The sun shone bright and clearly where kind Neptune played some prank
Till at length I spied the most charming maid most charming to be seen,
In her figure she came bidding down; her measure maids wore green.

There was Flora at the helm, Aurora to the stern
All her gallant fine seamen her course for to steer on.
I being so much delighted in her sails all o'er
I thought myself in paradise down by the Courtown shore.

I had been in New Zealand and likewise in Peru
And many other ancient places my eyes have took a view
But such places as Courtown my eyes did ne'er behold
And it far ourshines proud Mexico where her banks are lined with gold. 


Willie O'Connor - Lord Courtown T1S1-01 (digitisation of home recording)

This is a new community of song-collecting enthusiasts who strive to empower a new generation of collection and distribution of old, orally-transmitted song and wider culture.

Despite wide assumption that all the traditional singers have long passed away and no more culture is passed on through the oral tradition, there is in fact a wealth of song held by those unknown by the wider traditional music community. 


SCC Gathering 2016 Highlights

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