116-516: Fairport's Cropredy Convention (formerly Cropredy Festival ) is an annual festival of folk and rock music, headed by British folk-rock band Fairport Convention and held on the edge of the village of Cropredy in Oxfordshire, England. The festival has taken place in August annually since 1976. Fairport's Cropredy Convention attracts up to 20,000 people each year. The festival features a single stage at
232-482: A chuigushou . Ensembles consisting of mouth organs ( sheng ), shawms ( suona ), flutes ( dizi ) and percussion instruments (especially yunluo gongs ) are popular in northern villages; their music is descended from the imperial temple music of Beijing, Xi'an , Wutai shan and Tianjin . Xi'an drum music, consisting of wind and percussive instruments, is popular around Xi'an, and has received some commercial popularity outside of China. Another important instrument
348-430: A melody , often with repeating sections , and usually played a number of times. A collection of tunes with structural similarities is known as a tune-family . America's Musical Landscape says "the most common form for tunes in folk music is AABB, also known as binary form ." In some traditions, tunes may be strung together in medleys or " sets ." Throughout most of human history, listening to recorded music
464-605: A pipa , as well as other traditional instruments. The music is generally sorrowful and typically deals with love-stricken people. Further south, in Shantou , Hakka and Chaozhou , zheng ensembles are popular. Sizhu ensembles use flutes and bowed or plucked string instruments to make harmonious and melodious music that has become popular in the West among some listeners. These are popular in Nanjing and Hangzhou , as well as elsewhere along
580-512: A "Traditional music" category that subsequently evolved into others. The term "folk", by the start of the 21st century, could cover singer-songwriters, such as Donovan from Scotland and American Bob Dylan , who emerged in the 1960s and much more. This completed a process to where "folk music" no longer meant only traditional folk music. Traditional folk music often includes sung words , although folk instrumental music occurs commonly in dance music traditions. Narrative verse looms large in
696-401: A class dynamic to popular understandings of American folk music. This was the final element of the foundation upon which the early folk music revivalists constructed their own view of Americanism. Sandburg's working-class Americans joined with the ethnically , racially , and regionally diverse citizens that other scholars, public intellectuals, and folklorists celebrated their own definitions of
812-419: A cultural dichotomy , the other side of which is found not only in the lower layers of feudal, capitalist and some oriental societies but also in 'primitive' societies and in parts of 'popular cultures'". One widely used definition is simply "Folk music is what the people sing." For Scholes, as well as for Cecil Sharp and Béla Bartók , there was a sense of the music of the country as distinct from that of
928-540: A daily National Express coach service to and from London Victoria, via Heathrow Airport. There is a regular bus service to and from Stonehenge . Devizes is approximately 15 miles (24 km) from the M4 . Several main roads pass through the town, including the A360 , A361 and A342 . The Kennet and Avon Canal was built under the direction of John Rennie between 1794 and 1810, linking Devizes with Bristol and London. Near Devizes
1044-579: A great body of English rural traditional song, music and dance, under the aegis of what became and remains the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS). Sharp campaigned with some success to have English traditional songs (in his own heavily edited and expurgated versions) to be taught to school children in hopes of reviving and prolonging the popularity of those songs. Throughout the 1960s and early to mid-1970s, American scholar Bertrand Harris Bronson published an exhaustive four-volume collection of
1160-399: A lower class" in culturally and socially stratified societies. In these terms, folk music may be seen as part of a "schema comprising four musical types: 'primitive' or 'tribal'; 'elite' or 'art'; 'folk'; and 'popular'." Music in this genre is also often called traditional music. Although the term is usually only descriptive, in some cases people use it as the name of a genre. For example,
1276-406: A mighty crossing tower ...". The western part of the church was rebuilt in the 15th century. restoration was carried out in 1844 and 1862–3, including the west front designed by Slater . The ornate Beauchamp south chapel is similar to the 1492 Beauchamp and Tocotes chapel at Bromham ; the north Lamb chapel has a fine panelled ceiling. The organ case is late 17th century. St. Mary's was built in
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#17328526747721392-689: A number of private schools, beginning in the 18th century and proliferating in the 19th. Brownston House , a Grade I listed building, was the home of Miss Bidwell's Ladies Boarding School from 1859 to 1901. A private Devizes Grammar School was established in Heathcote House in 1874 by the Reverend S.S. Pugh and carried on until 1919 by his twin sons. The closest third-level institution is the University of Bath . Devizes has four Church of England parish churches , and has had nonconformist congregations since
1508-404: A particular interest in folklore. Carl Sandburg often traveled the U.S. as a writer and a poet. He also collected songs in his travels and, in 1927, published them in the book The American Songbag . Rachel Donaldson, a historian who worked for Vanderbilt, later stated this about The American Songbird in her analysis of the folk music revival. "In his collections of folk songs, Sandburg added
1624-401: A people's folklore , or music performed by custom over a long period of time. It has been contrasted with commercial and classical styles . The term originated in the 19th century, but folk music extends beyond that. Starting in the mid-20th century, a new form of popular folk music evolved from traditional folk music. This process and period is called the (second) folk revival and reached
1740-673: A possible better system, through the lens of the Great Depression. Woody Guthrie exemplifies songwriters and artists with such an outlook. Folk music festivals proliferated during the 1930s. President Franklin Roosevelt was a fan of folk music, hosted folk concerts at the White House , and often patronized folk festivals. One prominent festival was Sarah Gertrude Knott 's National Folk Festival , established in St. Louis, Missouri in 1934. Under
1856-597: A reference to beautiful women, while in the past they were notorious for their erotic content. The village "mountain songs" ( shan'ge ) of Jiangsu province were also well known for their amorous themes. Other regional song traditions include the "strummed lyrics" ( tanci ) of the Lower Yangtze Delta, the Cantonese Wooden Fish tradition ( muyu or muk-yu ) and the Drum Songs ( guci ) of north China. In
1972-537: A revolutionary tool to preserve vanishing musical forms. The earliest American folk music scholars were with the American Folklore Society (AFS), which emerged in the late 1800s. Their studies expanded to include Native American music , but still treated folk music as a historical item preserved in isolated societies as well. In North America, during the 1930s and 1940s, the Library of Congress worked through
2088-531: A single theft from the campsites was reported to festival control over the whole three days, underlining the unique and friendly atmosphere for which the festival is famous. In 2010, highlights of the festival were televised on Sky Arts for the first time, with a documentary presented by radio DJ and television presenter Bob Harris . This continued through to 2012. In 2013 and 2014 the Whispering Bob Broadcasting Company uploaded highlights of
2204-473: A town hall and a green in the centre. Devizes Castle was built by Osmund , Bishop of Salisbury in 1080, but the town is not mentioned in the Domesday Book . Because the castle was on the boundaries of the manors of Rowde , Bishops Cannings and Potterne it became known as the castrum ad divisas ("the castle at the boundaries"), hence the name Devizes . On John Speed 's map of Wiltshire (1611),
2320-567: A traditional song would undergo a process of improvement akin to biological natural selection : only those new variants that were the most appealing to ordinary singers would be picked up by others and transmitted onward in time. Thus, over time we would expect each traditional song to become more aesthetically appealing, due to incremental community improvement. Literary interest in the popular ballad form dates back at least to Thomas Percy and William Wordsworth . English Elizabethan and Stuart composers had often evolved their music from folk themes,
2436-434: A tragic or regretful nature, prominently figures in many folk traditions. Nursery rhymes , children's songs and nonsense verse used to amuse or quiet children also are frequent subjects of traditional songs. Music transmitted by word of mouth through a community, in time, develops many variants, since this transmission cannot produce word-for-word and note-for-note accuracy. In addition, folk singers may choose to modify
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#17328526747722552-451: A very large bar which specialises in cask ale which was formerly provided by Wadworth , a brewery based in Devizes , Wiltshire until 2020. Hook Norton Brewery took over the bar for the 2021 festival, serving their real ales, real cider, wines and spirit. The bar is used by festival-goers and performers alike (there is no back-stage bar), making Cropredy one of the few major festivals where
2668-464: A zenith in the 1960s. This form of music is sometimes called contemporary folk music or folk revival music to distinguish it from earlier folk forms. Smaller, similar revivals have occurred elsewhere in the world at other times, but the term folk music has typically not been applied to the new music created during those revivals. This type of folk music also includes fusion genres such as folk rock , folk metal , and others. While contemporary folk music
2784-664: Is a market town and civil parish in Wiltshire , England. It developed around Devizes Castle , an 11th-century Norman castle, and received a charter in 1141. The castle was besieged during the Anarchy , a 12th-century civil war between Stephen of England and Empress Matilda , and again during the English Civil War when the Cavaliers lifted the siege at the Battle of Roundway Down and
2900-494: Is a music genre that includes traditional folk music and the contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival . Some types of folk music may be called world music . Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted orally, music with unknown composers, music that is played on traditional instruments, music about cultural or national identity, music that changes between generations (folk process), music associated with
3016-445: Is a Community Special School for boys aged 11–16. Braeside is an outdoor education centre run by Wiltshire Council. Devizes has six primary schools: St Joseph's Catholic Primary School, Southbroom St James Academy, Southbroom Infants' School, Wansdyke Community School, Nursteed Community Primary School and The Trinity CofE (VA) Primary School. Nearby is Rowde CofE Primary Academy in the adjacent village of Rowde . Long Street has had
3132-502: Is a genre generally distinct from traditional folk music, in U.S. English it shares the same name, and it often shares the same performers and venues as traditional folk music. The terms folk music , folk song , and folk dance are comparatively recent expressions. They are extensions of the term folklore , which was coined in 1846 by the English antiquarian William Thoms to describe "the traditions, customs, and superstitions of
3248-408: Is an ancient folk song from India, a country of Asia, of Meiteis of Manipur , that is an example of Asian folk music, and how they put it into its own genre. Archaeological discoveries date Chinese folk music back 7000 years; it is largely based on the pentatonic scale . Han traditional weddings and funerals usually include a form of oboe called a suona , and apercussive ensembles called
3364-515: Is generally no "authoritative" version of song. Researchers in traditional songs have encountered countless versions of the Barbara Allen ballad throughout the English-speaking world, and these versions often differ greatly from each other. The original is not known; many versions can lay an equal claim to authenticity. Influential folklorist Cecil Sharp felt that these competing variants of
3480-504: Is now at the heart of Devizes School . The town was a coaching stop for mail coaches and stagecoaches on the road from London to Bristol , as evidenced by the number of coaching inns in the town. The Kennet and Avon Canal, fully open by 1810, passes close to the centre of the town. The town gained a railway station in 1857 but the line was closed in 1966. In 1853 the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society
3596-402: Is the sheng , a type of Chinese pipe , an ancient instrument that is ancestor of all Western free reed instruments, such as the accordion . Parades led by Western-type brass bands are common, often competing in volume with a shawm/chuigushou band. In southern Fujian and Taiwan , Nanyin or Nanguan is a genre of traditional ballads. They are sung by a woman accompanied by a xiao and
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3712-652: Is the provenance of the American Folklife Center" at the library of Congress. Africa is a vast continent and its regions and nations have distinct musical traditions. The music of North Africa for the most part has a different history from Sub-Saharan African music traditions . The music and dance forms of the African diaspora , including African American music and many Caribbean genres like soca , calypso and Zouk ; and Latin American music genres like
3828-521: Is the starting point of the annual Devizes to Westminster International Canoe Marathon . National Cycle Route 4 follows the canal towpath through the town. Devizes School , a secondary school with a sixth form, takes pupils from the town and surrounding area. It is situated in the grounds of the Southbroom House estate and the Grade II listed house forms its administrative core. Downland School
3944-512: The Parliamentarian Army of the West under Sir William Waller was routed. Devizes remained under Royalist control until 1645, when Oliver Cromwell attacked and forced the Royalists to surrender. The castle was destroyed in 1648 on the orders of Parliament, and today little remains of it. From the 16th century Devizes became known for its textiles, and by the early 18th century it held
4060-467: The English Civil War , Parliamentary forces under Sir William Waller besieged Royalist forces under Sir Ralph Hopton in Devizes. The siege was lifted by a relief force from Oxford under Henry Wilmot, 1st Earl of Rochester , and Waller's forces were almost totally destroyed at the Battle of Roundway Down . Devizes remained under Royalist control until 1645, when Oliver Cromwell attacked and forced
4176-461: The Grammy Award previously used the terms "traditional music" and "traditional folk" for folk music that is not contemporary folk music. Folk music may include most indigenous music . From a historical perspective, traditional folk music had these characteristics: As a side-effect, the following characteristics are sometimes present: In folk music, a tune is a short instrumental piece ,
4292-466: The Great Depression . Regionalism and cultural pluralism grew as influences and themes. During this time folk music began to become enmeshed with political and social activism themes and movements. Two related developments were the U.S. Communist Party's interest in folk music as a way to reach and influence Americans, and politically active prominent folk musicians and scholars seeing communism as
4408-523: The Local Government Act took effect in 1974, Devizes was a municipal borough with its headquarters at Devizes Town Hall . It then became the administrative centre for the much larger District of Kennet , until that was abolished as part of the 2009 structural changes . The town has four electoral wards . The North and East wards follow the boundaries of the civil parish, while Devizes and Roundway South ward extends southward to include part of
4524-745: The PRC . Folk songs have been recorded since ancient times in China. The term Yuefu was used for a broad range of songs such as ballads, laments, folk songs, love songs, and songs performed at court. China is a vast country, with a multiplicity of linguistic and geographic regions. Folk songs are categorized by geographic region, language type, ethnicity, social function (e.g. work song, ritual song, courting song) and musical type. Modern anthologies collected by Chinese folklorists distinguish between traditional songs, revolutionary songs, and newly invented songs. The songs of northwest China are known as "flower songs" ( hua'er ),
4640-664: The Royal Wessex Yeomanry , based in Old Sarum and Swindon respectively. A new Devizes Prison , or County House of Corrections, was opened in 1817. This replaced the Bridewell that had been built in Bridewell Street in 1579. The new prison was built of brick and stone, and was designed by Richard Ingleman as a two-storey polygon surrounding a central governor's house. It had an operational life of more than ninety years and
4756-475: The Traditional 18 Dances display the dancing of birds and animals. For example: Musical types include: The classical Sinhalese orchestra consists of five categories of instruments, but among the percussion instruments, the drum is essential for dance. The vibrant beat of the rhythm of the drums form the basic of the dance. The dancers' feet bounce off the floor and they leap and swirl in patterns that reflect
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4872-439: The samba , Cuban rumba , salsa ; and other clave (rhythm) -based genres, were founded to varying degrees on the music of enslaved Africans , which has in turn influenced African popular music . Many Asian civilizations distinguish between art /court/classical styles and "folk" music. For example, the late Alam Lohar is an example of a South Asian singer who was classified as a folk singer. Khunung Eshei/Khuland Eshei
4988-459: The 12th century. The castle held important prisoners, including (from 1106) Robert Curthose , eldest son of William the Conqueror . The town has had churches since the 12th century and today has four Church of England parish churches . During the 12th and 13th centuries, the town of Devizes developed outside the castle with craftsmen and traders setting up businesses to serve the residents of
5104-434: The 17th century. The two 12th-century churches, St. John's and St. Mary's, are Grade I listed buildings. They serve the parish of St. John with St. Mary which has always had one rector. St. John's stands close to Devizes Castle and may have begun as its chapel. The oldest parts of the building are from 1130, shortly after Roger, Bishop of Salisbury rebuilt the castle. Pevsner writes "A major Norman church, dominated by
5220-432: The American folk, definitions that the folk revivalists used in constructing their own understanding of American folk music, and an overarching American identity". Prior to the 1930s, the study of folk music was primarily the province of scholars and collectors. The 1930s saw the beginnings of larger scale themes, commonalities, and linkages in folk music developing in the populace and practitioners as well, often related to
5336-560: The Association for Cultural Equity, is "distinct from the thousands of earlier recordings on acetate and aluminum discs he made from 1933 to 1942 under the auspices of the Library of Congress. This earlier collection—which includes the famous Jelly Roll Morton, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, and Muddy Waters sessions, as well as Lomax's prodigious collections made in Haiti and Eastern Kentucky (1937) —
5452-579: The Friday and other sets by Toyah & Robert Fripp , Kiki Dee & Carmelo Luggeri, Gilbert O’Sullivan and the UK farewell performance from Strawbs . In 2021 the festival did not take place due to the COVID-19 pandemic . In 2020 the festival did not take place due to the COVID-19 pandemic . Appearances prior to 2017 are documented at Fairport's Cropredy Convention appearances Folk music Folk music
5568-513: The Grade II* listed former Devizes Assize Court , northwest of the town centre, where facilities for community events will also be provided. There was a military presence in the town at Le Marchant Barracks , from 1878 until the 1980s. In 1999, a hill figure of a white horse was cut onto a hill close to Roundway Hill . Known as the Devizes White Horse , it replaced an earlier one which
5684-512: The Green in Devizes is a Grade II* listed building; its history is associated with the church and education. No 8 Long Street was the house of the clothier Samuel Powell, as well as Admiral Joseph Tayler , one of the inspirations for C.S. Forester 's fictional hero Horatio Hornblower . Southbroom House , close to the Green, was built in 1501, then burnt down and was rebuilt by the Eyles family in 1772; it
5800-689: The Monday and Tuesday before the festival each year, fans get a foretaste of what is to come at the festival when Fairport Convention stage "warm-up" concerts at a local club venue. Until 2007 these concerts were held at the Mill Arts Centre in Banbury . From 2007 until 2010 the concerts were held at Woodford Halse Social Club ( Woodford Halse is a village in Northamptonshire approximately nine miles northeast of Cropredy) but returned to The Mill in 2011. In 2017
5916-583: The Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry were called out to quell the disturbances. The mutiny came to a head when the two forces faced off against each other with loaded firearms in the Market Square, at which point the militia ringleaders surrendered. The Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry went on to serve at home and abroad, including in the Boer War , both World Wars, and live on as B (RWY) Squadron and Y (RWY) Squadron of
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#17328526747726032-411: The Royalists to surrender. The castle was destroyed in 1648 on the orders of Parliament, a process known as slighting , and today little remains of it; almost all of the present structure is from the 19th century. From the 16th century, Devizes became known for its textiles: initially white woollen broadcloth but later the manufacture of serge , drugget , felt , and cassimere or Zephyr cloth . In
6148-530: The Wharf Theatre, a former warehouse alongside canal. The local radio station is Fantasy Radio, a community radio station that broadcasts on 97 FM. The Gazette and Herald is the town’s local weekly newspaper. In 1857 the Great Western Railway built its Devizes branch line eastward to Devizes, from Holt Junction on its Chippenham - Weymouth line, to Devizes railway station just south of
6264-519: The air – the public are invited into the Market Place to throw as much confetti as possible at one another. The annual Devizes Arts Festival has a broad spectrum of musical events, poets and authors, literary talks, comedians and other performers. Each autumn, the Devizes Food and Drink Festival includes opportunities to dine in unusual places. There is an active thespian community that performs at
6380-436: The canal rises 237 feet (72 m) by means of 29 locks, 16 of them in a straight line at Caen Hill . In the early days the canal was lit by gas lights at night, enabling boats to negotiate the locks at any time of day. The canal fell into disuse after the coming of the railways in the 1840s, but was restored between 1970 and 2003 for leisure uses. The Kennet and Avon Canal Trust run a museum at The Wharf in Devizes. The town
6496-580: The castle. As this is the centre of the east–west extent of the Ordnance Survey mapping grid, True North and Grid north align exactly in Devizes. Towns close to Devizes include Melksham , Pewsey , Calne and Westbury . Suburbs of the town include Hartmoor, Jump Farm, Northgate, Nursteed, Roundway , Southbroom and Wick . Devizes is a civil parish with an elected town council . As of 2024 , 11 councillors are Devizes Guardians , 7 Conservatives , 1 Labour and 2 Independent. The parish includes
6612-403: The castle. The first known market in Devizes was in 1228. The original market was in the large space outside St Mary's Church, rather than in the current Market Place , which at that time would have been within the castle's outer bailey. The chief products in the 16th and early 17th centuries were wheat, wool and yarn, with cheese, bacon and butter increasing in importance later. In 1643, during
6728-458: The classical suite was based upon stylised folk-dances, and Joseph Haydn 's use of folk melodies is noted. But the emergence of the term "folk" coincided with an "outburst of national feeling all over Europe" that was particularly strong at the edges of Europe, where national identity was most asserted. Nationalist composers emerged in Central Europe, Russia, Scandinavia, Spain and Britain:
6844-427: The complex rhythms of the drum beat. This drum beat may seem simple on the first hearing but it takes a long time to master the intricate rhythms and variations, which the drummer sometimes can bring to a crescendo of intensity. There are six common types of drums falling within 3 styles (one-faced, two-faced, and flat-faced): Other instruments include: Devizes Devizes ( / d ɪ ˈ v aɪ z ɪ z / )
6960-470: The early 18th century. In the centre of the Market Place is the Market Cross , rebuilt in 1814 to designs of James Wyatt . Brownston House is another Grade I house, on New Park Street; it has been home to four MPs and two Army Generals from 1700, and housed a young ladies' boarding school from 1859 to 1901. It was conserved in 1976 by Wiltshire Council and is now a business head office. Heathcote House on
7076-541: The elements of nature, and have been enjoyed and developed in the Buddhist environment. The music is of several types and uses only a few types of instruments. The folk songs and poems were used in social gatherings to work together. The Indian influenced classical music has grown to be unique. The traditional drama, music and songs of Sinhala Light Music are typically Sri Lankan. The temple paintings and carvings feature birds, elephants, wild animals, flowers, and trees, and
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#17328526747727192-475: The end of the 1930s these and others had turned American folk music into a social movement. Sometimes folk musicians became scholars and advocates themselves. For example, Jean Ritchie (1922–2015) was the youngest child of a large family from Viper, Kentucky that had preserved many of the old Appalachian traditional songs. Ritchie, living in a time when the Appalachians had opened up to outside influence,
7308-415: The festival on their YouTube channel. From 2015 onwards, highlights from Fairport Convention's Saturday night set have been uploaded on their official YouTube channel. In 2020 the festival did not take place due to the COVID-19 pandemic and so a broadcast of Richard Thompson and Fairport Convention's full sets from the 2019 festival was streamed on the official YouTube channel. To celebrate forty years of
7424-568: The festival, a documentary called Summer by The Cherwell was released in 2020. The event is organised largely by Gareth Williams, the Festival Director, and also Simon Nicol and Dave Pegg , both members of Fairport. Fairport themselves open the festival on the Thursday evening with an acoustic set, and close the festival on the Saturday night. The majority of attendees camp for the duration of
7540-412: The festival. There are eight separate camping fields adjacent to the arena, one of which is reserved for family parties. Fairport's Cropredy Convention is aimed at all ages with an emphasis on families and has developed a reputation as a particularly friendly and safe festival. As well as a wide range of live music, the event features three dozen stalls selling clothing, books, CDs and food. It also boasts
7656-478: The first reunion in 1980 the festival was expanded from a one to a two-day event with increasing numbers of guest acts. In 1981, lacking a suitable site at Cropredy, it was shifted to the grounds of Broughton Castle , a performance released as Moat on the Ledge – Live at Broughton Castle (1982). The festival returned to Cropredy the next year (and has remained there ever since although the actual site has expanded over
7772-485: The first time a joint parish council; at the same time, adjustments to the boundary with Bishops Canning were made. The town is within the area of the Wiltshire Council unitary authority , on which the four elected members for Devizes are Conservatives . Most significant local government services are the responsibility of Wiltshire Council, while the town and parish councils have a more consultative role. Before
7888-534: The historic Shambles, off the market square. There are over 70 independent retailers in the town centre, many around the Market Place, Little Brittox and Brittox (both pedestrianised), and in Sidmouth Street. At the town's wharf on the canal, the Kennet and Avon Canal Trust has a small museum and cafe. Construction of the new Devizes Health Centre, a 1,588sq m, two-storey building, began in 2021. This will replace
8004-399: The laborers who sing them to coordinate their efforts in accordance with the rhythms of the songs. They are frequently, but not invariably, composed. In the American armed forces , a lively oral tradition preserves jody calls ("Duckworth chants") which are sung while soldiers are on the march. Professional sailors made similar use of a large body of sea shanties . Love poetry , often of
8120-660: The largest corn market in the West Country , constructing the Corn Exchange in 1857. In the 18th century, brewing , curing of tobacco, and snuff -making were established. The Wadworth Brewery was founded in the town in 1875. Standing at the west edge of the Vale of Pewsey , Devizes is about 10.5 miles (16.9 km) southeast of Chippenham and 11 miles (18 km) north-east of the county town of Trowbridge . The town has nearly five hundred listed buildings , some notable churches,
8236-556: The last 20 years of his life working on an Interactive Multimedia educational computer project he called the Global Jukebox , which included 5,000 hours of sound recordings, 400,000 feet of film, 3,000 videotapes , and 5,000 photographs. As of March 2012, this has been accomplished. Approximately 17,400 of Lomax's recordings from 1946 and later have been made available free online. This material from Alan Lomax's independent archive, begun in 1946, which has been digitized and offered by
8352-408: The loss of traditional music is slowed in nations or regions where traditional folk music is a badge of cultural or national identity. Much of what is known about folk music prior to the development of audio recording technology in the 19th century comes from fieldwork and writings of scholars, collectors and proponents. Starting in the 19th century, academics and amateur scholars, taking note of
8468-496: The lower end of the sloping arena field. There are also ancillary events, such as Morris dancing in the streets and live music at the village's two pubs . The festival began as a private performance to about 750 people by the British folk rock band Fairport Convention in a village back garden in July 1976. The next year the performance was repeated and opened up to the public. In 1978 it
8584-502: The market place. From the end of the 18th century the manufacture of textiles declined, but other trades in the town included clock-making, a bell foundry , booksellers, milliners , grocers and silversmiths. In the 18th, century brewing, curing of tobacco and snuff -making were established in the town. Brewing survives in the Wadworth Brewery , but the tobacco and snuff trades have now died out. The pond known as The Crammer, east of
8700-465: The market place. In 1862 GWR extended the Reading-Hungerford line westward to meet this line, providing a direct route between Paddington and the West Country through Devizes. Pans Lane Halt , southeast of the town in the suburb of Wick , opened in 1929. The building of a by-pass line through Westbury in 1900 diverted most traffic from the Devizes line and British Rail closed it in 1966;
8816-584: The mid 18th century, Devizes held the largest corn market in the West Country of England and also traded hops, cattle, horses and various types of cloth. Before the Corn Exchange was built in 1857, the trade in wheat and barley was conducted in the open, with sacks piled around the market cross . The cross erected in 1814 displays the tale of a woman, Ruth Pierce, who dropped dead suddenly after being discovered cheating. Prosperous wool merchants built town houses in St. John's and Long Street, and around
8932-454: The modern movie Songcatcher . One strong theme amongst folk scholars in the early decades of the 20th century was regionalism , the analysis of the diversity of folk music (and related cultures) based on regions of the US rather than based on a given song's historical roots. Later, a dynamic of class and circumstances was added to this. The most prominent regionalists were literary figures with
9048-567: The music of Dvořák , Smetana , Grieg , Rimsky-Korsakov , Brahms , Liszt , de Falla , Wagner , Sibelius , Vaughan Williams , Bartók , and many others drew upon folk melodies. While the loss of traditional folk music in the face of the rise of popular music is a worldwide phenomenon, it is not one occurring at a uniform rate throughout the world. The process is most advanced "where industrialization and commercialisation of culture are most advanced" but also occurs more gradually even in settings of lower technological advancement. However,
9164-572: The musical traditions being lost, initiated various efforts to preserve the music of the people. One such effort was the collection by Francis James Child in the late 19th century of the texts of over three hundred ballads in the English and Scots traditions (called the Child Ballads ), some of which predated the 16th century. Contemporaneously with Child, the Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould and later Cecil Sharp worked to preserve
9280-408: The offices of traditional music collectors Robert Winslow Gordon , Alan Lomax and others to capture as much North American field material as possible. John Lomax (the father of Alan Lomax) was the first prominent scholar to study distinctly American folk music such as that of cowboys and southern blacks. His first major published work was in 1911, Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads . and
9396-472: The original Roundway parish, the remainder of which makes up the fourth ward, Roundway. The total population of these wards at the 2011 census was 12,491 but in 2017 with the addition of Roundway as the fourth ward, the population grew to over 17,700. Devizes is part of the Melksham and Devizes Westminster constituency, created following boundary changes and first contested at the 2024 general election, when it
9512-700: The other. In the proliferation of popular music genres, some traditional folk music became also referred to as " World music " or "Roots music". The English term " folklore ", to describe traditional folk music and dance, entered the vocabulary of many continental European nations, each of which had its folk-song collectors and revivalists. The distinction between "authentic" folk and national and popular song in general has always been loose, particularly in America and Germany – for example, popular songwriters such as Stephen Foster could be termed "folk" in America. The International Folk Music Council definition allows that
9628-794: The outcomes of battles or lament tragedies or natural disasters . Sometimes, as in the triumphant Song of Deborah found in the Biblical Book of Judges , these songs celebrate victory. Laments for lost battles and wars, and the lives lost in them, are equally prominent in many traditions; these laments keep alive the cause for which the battle was fought. The narratives of traditional songs often also remember folk heroes such as John Henry or Robin Hood . Some traditional song narratives recall supernatural events or mysterious deaths. Hymns and other forms of religious music are often of traditional and unknown origin. Western musical notation
9744-449: The pace of many activities such as planting , weeding , reaping , threshing , weaving , and milling . In leisure time , singing and playing musical instruments were common forms of entertainment and history-telling—even more common than today when electrically enabled technologies and widespread literacy make other forms of entertainment and information-sharing competitive. Some believe that folk music originated as art music that
9860-400: The preservation of songs as artifacts of deceased cultures. "Functional" folklorists (e.g. Botkin and Alan Lomax) maintained that songs only retain relevance when used by those cultures which retain the traditions which birthed those songs. "Left-wing" folk revivalists (e.g. Charles Seeger and Lawrence Gellert) emphasized music's role "in 'people's' struggles for social and political rights". By
9976-702: The public can mingle with the musicians playing there. In recent years, the running times for live music have been 4 p.m. until 11 p.m. on the Thursday and noon until midnight on the Friday and Saturday. Also recently, there has been a wider spread of genres of music, expanding out from the original folk roots of the festival. Status Quo , the Buzzcocks , Dreadzone and Supergrass have played at Cropredy in recent years. Among many well-known acts appearing in recent years are Robert Plant , Alice Cooper , Lonnie Donegan , Procol Harum , Steeleye Span , Eliza Carthy , Yusuf Islam and Oysterband (see below for others). On
10092-466: The second full weekend in August. Originally known as just "the Cropredy reunion", the event was branded Cropredy Festival until 2005 when it was retitled Fairport's Cropredy Convention. In 2007, all available tickets were sold in advance for the first time (this would not happen again until 2014). In 2008, a live on-stage video screen was introduced. The year was also notable because, for the first time, not
10208-500: The services at Devizes Community Hospital and provide a range of outpatient and GP services. There is a lively arts and culture community in the town, with the Arts Council funded Devizes International Street Festival attracting thousands to the town for two weeks leading up to August Bank Holiday each year, beginning with a long-standing "confetti battle" where, at a given signal – usually cannons firing confetti hundreds of metres into
10324-457: The small settlement of Dunkirk , on the northeastern slopes of the hill, which was transferred from Rowde parish in 1835. Much of the built-up area of the town, to the north, east, and south, is within the neighbouring civil parish of Roundway , while a smaller part is in Bishops Cannings parish, and each of those has its own parish council. In April 2017, Roundway and Devizes elected for
10440-471: The songs they hear. For example, around 1970 the song Mullā Mohammed Jān spread from Herat to the rest of Afghanistan , and Iran where it was recorded. Due to its repetitive refrain and the predictability of the second half of each verse, it allowed for both its popularization, and for each singer to create their own version of the song without being overly-concerned for a melody or restrictive poetic rhythm. Because variants proliferate naturally, there
10556-492: The southern Yangtze area. Jiangnan Sizhu (silk and bamboo music from Jiangnan ) is a style of instrumental music, often played by amateur musicians in tea houses in Shanghai. Guangdong Music or Cantonese Music is instrumental music from Guangzhou and surrounding areas. The music from this region influenced Yueju (Cantonese Opera) music, which would later grow popular during the self-described "Golden Age" of China under
10672-630: The sponsorship of the Washington Post , the festival was held in Washington, DC at Constitution Hall from 1937 to 1942. The folk music movement, festivals, and the wartime effort were seen as forces for social goods such as democracy, cultural pluralism, and the removal of culture and race-based barriers. The American folk music revivalists of the 1930s approached folk music in different ways. Three primary schools of thought emerged: "Traditionalists" (e.g. Sarah Gertrude Knott and John Lomax ) emphasized
10788-517: The station was demolished soon after. Today the nearest railway stations are at Melksham , Chippenham and Pewsey , although as of 2020 there is a proposal to open a station on the Westbury line at Lydeway , 2 + 1 ⁄ 2 miles (4 km) southeast of the town. Devizes has bus connections to surrounding towns including Swindon (via Avebury ), Trowbridge , Salisbury , Bath and Chippenham , each of which have rail services. Devizes also has
10904-558: The term "folk music": newly composed songs, fixed in form and by known authors, which imitated some form of traditional music. The popularity of "contemporary folk" recordings caused the appearance of the category "Folk" in the Grammy Awards of 1959; in 1970 the term was dropped in favor of "Best Ethnic or Traditional Recording (including Traditional Blues)", while 1987 brought a distinction between "Best Traditional Folk Recording" and "Best Contemporary Folk Recording". After that, they had
11020-485: The term can also apply to music that, "...has originated with an individual composer and has subsequently been absorbed into the unwritten, living tradition of a community. But the term does not cover a song, dance, or tune that has been taken over ready-made and remains unchanged." The post– World War II folk revival in America and in Britain started a new genre, Contemporary Folk Music , and brought an additional meaning to
11136-602: The term folk music should be used. Folk music may tend to have certain characteristics but it cannot clearly be differentiated in purely musical terms. One meaning often given is that of "old songs, with no known composers," another is that of music that has been submitted to an evolutionary "process of oral transmission ... the fashioning and re-fashioning of the music by the community that give it its folk character." Such definitions depend upon "(cultural) processes rather than abstract musical types...", upon " continuity and oral transmission ...seen as characterizing one side of
11252-933: The texts of 217,996 Latvian folk songs, the Latvju dainas . In Norway the work of collectors such as Ludvig Mathias Lindeman was extensively used by Edvard Grieg in his Lyric Pieces for piano and in other works, which became immensely popular. Around this time, composers of classical music developed a strong interest in collecting traditional songs, and a number of composers carried out their own field work on traditional music. These included Percy Grainger and Ralph Vaughan Williams in England and Béla Bartók in Hungary. These composers, like many of their predecessors, both made arrangements of folk songs and incorporated traditional material into original classical compositions. The advent of audio recording technology provided folklorists with
11368-520: The then-known variations of both the texts and tunes associated with what came to be known as the Child Canon. He also advanced some significant theories concerning the workings of oral-aural tradition. Similar activity was also under way in other countries. One of the most extensive was perhaps the work done in Riga by Krisjanis Barons , who between the years 1894 and 1915 published six volumes that included
11484-550: The town centre, is claimed to be site of the 18th-century Moonrakers story which led to a colloquial name for Wiltshire people. In 1794, a meeting at the Bear Hotel decided to raise a body of ten independent troops of yeomanry in the county of Wiltshire. These would later be brought together to form the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry , the senior yeomanry regiment. In 1810 the county militia, quartered at Devizes, mutinied and
11600-449: The town's name is recorded as The Devyses . The first castle on the site was of the motte and bailey form and was probably made of wood and earth, but this burnt down in 1113. A new castle was built in stone by Roger of Salisbury , Osmund's successor. Devizes received its first charter in 1141, permitting regular markets. The castle changed hands several times during the Anarchy , a civil war between Stephen of Blois and Matilda in
11716-477: The town. Folk music was already, "...seen as the authentic expression of a way of life now past or about to disappear (or in some cases, to be preserved or somehow revived)," particularly in "a community uninfluenced by art music" and by commercial and printed song. Lloyd rejected this in favor of a simple distinction of economic class yet for him, true folk music was, in Charles Seeger 's words, "associated with
11832-478: The traditional folk music of many cultures. This encompasses such forms as traditional epic poetry , much of which was meant originally for oral performance, sometimes accompanied by instruments. Many epic poems of various cultures were pieced together from shorter pieces of traditional narrative verse, which explains their episodic structure, repetitive elements, and their frequent in medias res plot developments. Other forms of traditional narrative verse relate
11948-635: The twenty-first century many cherished Chinese folk songs have been inscribed in the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity . In the process, songs once seen as vulgar are now being reconstructed as romantic courtship songs. Regional song competitions, popular in many communities, have promoted professional folk singing as a career, with some individual folk singers having gained national prominence. The art, music and dance of Sri Lanka derive from
12064-514: The uncultured classes". The term further derives from the German expression Volk , in the sense of "the people as a whole" as applied to popular and national music by Johann Gottfried Herder and the German Romantics over half a century earlier. Though it is understood that folk music is the music of the people, observers find a more precise definition to be elusive. Some do not even agree that
12180-510: The warm-ups moved from The Mill to Banbury Trades And Labour Club, following in the footsteps of P J Wright (fellow band-member with Dave Pegg in the Dylan Project) who had moved his annual TRADarrr pre-Cropredy Wednesday gig to the same venue in 2016. These performers are generally listed with the headline act last. On 12 December 2022 it was announced that the festival would be happening on 10, 11 and 12 August 2023 with headliners 10cc on
12296-426: The years). Despite the fact that Fairport Convention was not active as a band from 1980 to 1985, the festival continued to grow. After the band reformed in 1985, the festival became Fairport's major platform for showcasing new material as well as revisiting the old. Between 1981 and 1999, the festival was a two-day event. From 2000, it was expanded to three days—Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The festival takes place on
12412-529: Was arguably the most prominent US folk music scholar of his time, notably during the beginnings of the folk music revival in the 1930s and early 1940s. Cecil Sharp also worked in America, recording the traditional songs of the Appalachian Mountains in 1916–1918 in collaboration with Maud Karpeles and Olive Dame Campbell and is considered the first major scholar covering American folk music. Campbell and Sharp are represented under other names by actors in
12528-424: Was changed and probably debased by oral transmission while reflecting the character of the society that produced it. In many societies, especially preliterate ones, the cultural transmission of folk music requires learning by ear , although notation has evolved in some cultures. Different cultures may have different notions concerning a division between "folk" music on the one hand and of "art" and "court" music on
12644-483: Was closed in 1922. It stood on the north side of the Castle's Old Park, across the Kennet and Avon Canal by way of a bridge still called Prison Bridge. The House of Corrections was demolished by 1928. Devizes has more than 500 listed buildings, a large number for a town of its size. The Trust for Devizes has a Town Trail map which provides a guide to many of them. 17 Market Place is a substantial Grade I listed house from
12760-525: Was cut in 1845. In 2014, the town celebrated the 200th anniversary of the Market Cross, marked by Viscount Sidmouth and his cousin, High Sheriff of Wiltshire Peter Addington. Devizes lies about 90 miles (140 km) west-southwest of Central London , almost 2° west of the Greenwich Meridian , with the two-degree line running through the western edge of the town, just a few hundred yards west of
12876-567: Was founded in the town, and later opened a museum in Long Street. Now called the Wiltshire Museum , its collections are designated as being of national significance. The museum has extensive Bronze Age collections and includes finds from the Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage Site , including West Kennet Long Barrow , Marden Henge and Bush Barrow . There are plans to move the museum into
12992-405: Was not possible. Music was made by common people during both their work and leisure, as well as during religious activities. The work of economic production was often manual and communal. Manual labor often included singing by the workers, which served several practical purposes. It reduced the boredom of repetitive tasks, it kept the rhythm during synchronized pushes and pulls, and it set
13108-411: Was originally created to preserve the lines of Gregorian chant , which before its invention was taught as an oral tradition in monastic communities. Traditional songs such as Green grow the rushes, O present religious lore in a mnemonic form, as do Western Christmas carols and similar traditional songs. Work songs frequently feature call and response structures and are designed to enable
13224-443: Was properly organised and moved to a larger site behind the Cropredy village school. It became a significant event in the band's history as they played their farewell performance there on 4 August 1979 to around 4,500 people, who were cheered by a promise to continue with annual reunions. From this point the festival became the main mechanism for preserving the identity of the band and for their many fans to show their appreciation. At
13340-489: Was university educated and ultimately moved to New York City, where she made a number of classic recordings of the family repertoire and published an important compilation of these songs. In January 2012, the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress , with the Association for Cultural Equity, announced that they would release Lomax's vast archive of 1946 and later recording in digital form. Lomax spent
13456-668: Was won by Brian Mathew for the Liberal Democrats . The council has twinning associations with Mayenne in France, Oamaru in New Zealand, Tornio in Finland, and Waiblingen in Germany. Devizes has always been a market town and the market square is still used for that purpose every Thursday, and for farmers' markets on the first Saturday of each month. Indoor traders set up each day in
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