99-582: Towersey Festival is an annual festival of folk , world music and traditional dance , previously held in the village of Towersey , relocated to neighbouring Thame in Oxfordshire, England through 2019. It moved to the Claydon Estate Middle Claydon in Buckinghamshire from 2020. It has taken place every August bank holiday weekend since its founding in 1965. The festival set out as
198-891: A British indie folk band from the Cowley area of Oxford . As of 2023 the band is led by ornithologist Brian Briggs as singer, guitarist, and main songwriter, with multi-instrumentalists Jon Ouin and Oli Steadman . Their sound incorporates an ever-changing selection of stringed instruments and keyboards , supported by a typical pop backline of guitar , drums and bass guitar , embellished with avant-garde percussion including DIY hardware (saw & axe), cutlery, and Welsh gravel. The trio typically performs live with additional musicians including Thomas E Hodgson on trumpet and percussion; Susie Attwood on violin and percussion; Charlotte Glasson on violin, percussion, saxophone and flute; Felix Higginbottom on drums, percussion and backing vocals; and Adam Briggs on trumpet and percussion. The band
297-482: 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
396-605: 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
495-474: A tune is a short instrumental piece , 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
594-512: 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
693-401: 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
792-1787: A collection of images shot at the festival by the official festival photographer, Phil Sofer. In April 2020 it was announced that the Towersey Festival would not go ahead in that year, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic . The event was postponed until August Bank Holiday 2021. It was announced in May 2024 that that year's festival would be the last, after 60 years. 2012: The South, Bellowhead , Nic Jones , Edward II, Kathryn Tickell , The Albion Band 2013: The Unthanks , Show Of Hands , Home Service , Eliza and Martin Carthy, The Blockheads 2014: Topic Records 75th Anniversary Concert (featuring Norma Waterson , Eliza Carthy , Martin Carthy and guests), The Bootleg Beatles , Richard Thompson , Seth Lakeman , Lau , Conservatoire Folk Ensemble 2015: Bellowhead, Stornoway , Joan Armatrading , Show Of Hands, Simpson Cutting and Kerr 2016: Billy Bragg , Kate Rusby , The Wonder Stuff , Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain , 9 Bach , Midge Ure , Tom Robinson , The Young'Uns 2017: Jon Boden , KT Tunstall , Eliza Carthy and The Wayward Band, Newton Faulkner , Show Of Hands, Lindisfarne , Demon Barbers XL, Coope Boyes and Simpson 2018: The Shires , The Proclaimers , Richard Thompson Electric Trio, Beth Orton , Big Country , Sharon Shannon Band, Fisherman's Friends , Blair Dunlop , Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band , Peter Knight and John Spiers 2019: The Selecter , Hothouse Flowers , Newton Faulkner , Seth Lakeman , From The Jam , The Unthanks , Steve Harley , Oysterband , The Bar-Steward Sons of Val Doonican and
891-463: A fundraising event to rescue the decaying Towersey Village Memorial Hall – a building that commemorated the 14 men who had lost their lives in the First World War. In that first year (1965), it was a one-day village fete with morris dancing and a folk singing session in the pub barn. Its success can be measured by the money raised, the enjoyment of the day by the village residents and visitors, and by
990-579: 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
1089-650: A great number of UK and European festivals. The rest of the year saw the band tour England, North America and, in February 2011, Australia as part of the St Jerome's Laneway Festival . Their last performance in their home country for 2010 was in London at the Shepherd's Bush Empire, to a sold-out crowd of 2,000, their biggest headline audience to date. The band performed the music from Beachcomber's Windowsill with extensions and additions to
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#17328766444751188-641: A label has since faded: "we were used to doing it our own way. We'd put out EPs ourselves in Oxford and we were used to being the decision makers on everything. Having never worked with a label before, we were nervous that it would mean we would lose some say or having people twisting our arms doing certain things. And 4AD convinced us that wouldn't be the case and that we would have creative control over everything and they were supportive of that and it's worked really well so far, and they've stayed true to that." The band organised three small shows to 300 hometown fans at
1287-475: A live recording there in 1995 while Roy released Live at Towersey Festival 2015 during 2016. A Towersey Festival Patron, Roy performed at the very first festival, and his annual Monday afternoon concerts are greeted by capacity crowds. The Unthanks and John Spiers and Jon Boden had successful performances there in their early careers, while Eliza Carthy played her first solo show at the festival. Eliza said: "Towersey gave me my first ever solo gig ... and one of
1386-549: 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 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
1485-525: A number of UK summer festivals later that year (including six sets at Glastonbury festival 2009 ) and writing a series of articles about their experiences for the Daily Telegraph newspaper. On 1 September 2009, they played a free concert at Tate Modern , London , supported by Reverend and the Makers , to celebrate the launch of the new climate change campaign 10:10 . Their second single, "Unfaithful",
1584-404: 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
1683-673: 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
1782-597: 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
1881-505: A return in May 2011 with Sea Of Bees, and again in May 2013 with Horse Thief). Following a second successful German tour and their first performances in Italy , Luxembourg and Switzerland , Stornoway spent several weeks in early 2011 at home in Oxford writing towards their second album. In April it was announced that the band would be returning to Glastonbury for the third year in a row to open
1980-537: 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
2079-472: A simple distinction of economic class yet for him, true folk music was, in Charles Seeger 's words, "associated with 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
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#17328766444752178-539: A special tribute to Roy Bailey with Tom Robinson, Martin Simpson and guests. Roy Bailey 's Monday afternoon concert, featuring invited guests, was a Towersey tradition until Bailey's death in 2018. For the 2019 festival, the organisers announced a celebration of Bailey's life, featuring many of the artists who had played as guests at his concerts. The festival traditionally ends with a Festival Finale singalong in Venue 65, with
2277-727: A statement the band announced: "Today we bring you some sad news. After a whole decade of wonderful adventures together, we have decided to call it a day. Stornoway will become 'Stor-no-more'. Our friendship and love of music remains as strong as ever, but over the last couple of years the winds of change seem to have blown us all in different directions" . They conducted a farewell tour of the UK during spring 2017, and played their final public show on 12 March 2017. The band reformed for sets at Truck Festival in Oxfordshire and WOMAD Charlton Park in July 2022. At this event, Oli brought Brian and Jon to view
2376-567: 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,
2475-434: 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
2574-408: 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
2673-515: 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
2772-539: Is named after the Scottish town of Stornoway on the Hebridean Isle of Lewis , having never been to Stornoway when they decided to name themselves after the town. They have since visited multiple times, the first expedition comprising a performance on 9 April 2010 and the signing of their recording contract with label 4AD . They have explained "We were looking in books about knots and [...] guides to natural history of
2871-486: 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 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
2970-402: 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
3069-652: 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
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3168-475: 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 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 ...
3267-466: 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
3366-745: 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 ),
3465-546: The Pyramid Stage on Saturday 25 June, one of their many festival billings for the summer. Returning to America in May 2011, they would then spend the rest of the year performing at home in the UK and recording in Oxford. Their English homecoming concert for summer 2011 was at London's Somerset House on Saturday 9 July, with support from Cloud Control and orchestral backing from North Sea Radio Orchestra . A secret Somerset House warm-up show, with support from Dry The River ,
3564-475: 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
3663-467: The Woodland Trust . Briggs and Ouin met during Freshers' week at Oxford ; Briggs thought Ouin looked like a member of Teenage Fanclub , a band both of them liked that became a topic of their first conversation. Soon after, the two began playing music together. They advertised for a bass player, and Oli Steadman was the only person to respond. Oli's younger brother Rob Steadman later auditioned for
3762-439: 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
3861-430: 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 a people's folklore , or music performed by custom over
3960-840: The A1 Pool Hall in Oxford in Summer 2010, just prior to the launch of their album. On 30 May 2010, Beachcomber's Windowsill entered the UK Albums Chart at number 14, spending five weeks in the UK Top 100. An "unplugged" session of four songs was recorded for 4AD at the Rotunda, an abandoned doll's house museum in Iffley Village, Oxford in August 2010. They played at Glastonbury Festival 2010 and Womad Charlton Park in July 2010, along with main-stage slots at
4059-432: 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
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4158-560: 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) —
4257-870: The BBC's Sound of 2010 competition, having been selected by a panel of some 165 UK-based tastemakers. They toured Scotland and Ireland in March 2010 (dubbed the Highlands, Islands and Ireland tour), and signed their record deal in the castle grounds at Lews in Stornoway, after playing in their namesake town for the first time. The band signed to the independent record label, 4AD , and on 22 March 2010, they released their third single, "I Saw You Blink". They released their debut album Beachcomber's Windowsill on 24 May 2010. Brian Briggs said in December 2010 that any initial apprehension to signing to
4356-513: The Concert Tent); The Festival Dance House (FDH); The Festival Green (formerly known as The Market Square and the Arena); and Venue 65. Other features include The Den (for storytelling and spoken word), the craft tent and the craft market, Creative Quarter and dedicated areas for children (5-11yrs) and youth (11yrs+). Regular performers at Towersey include Roy Bailey and Les Barker . The latter made
4455-574: The Oxford Millennium Orchestra. The album was released on 13 April 2015, entering the UK Albums Chart at number 20. On 21 April, the band embarked on a tour of the UK, including two sold-out shows at Islington Assembly Hall . A steady stream of live performances continued into 2016 including four dates with Forestry Live, supporting Paul Heaton & Jacqui Abbott. However, in October the band announced that they would be splitting up. In
4554-529: The RSPB. On 19 November 2012 Stornoway announced the release of their second studio album, Tales from Terra Firma , which was released on 11 March 2013, after spending most of 2012 recording the album. The album's first and lead single, "Knock Me on the Head", premiered on 1 January 2013 and was released alongside the album on 11 March 2013. The music video for the single premiered in late February 2013. The album entered
4653-872: The UK Albums Chart at number 26, receiving generally positive reviews from critics, with the Guardian giving the album a 5-star rating. In September 2013, Stornoway announced a surprise mini-album, You Don't Know Anything , containing outtakes from the Terra Firma album, to be made available exclusively to fans in time for their UK tour to close a successful year. The album was streamed exclusively by AllMusic , following free downloads of lead single "Tumbling Bay" by Rolling Stone and BBC 6 Music 's Lauren Laverne in November. The band received some of their first reviews from music specialist magazines Uncut and Q . The EP
4752-584: The UK, singing along to the words of the song which is explicitly about Ash Dieback . The single saw Stornoway return to George Shilling as mixing engineer, with whom they'd mixed the majority of all tracks since 2011. A follow-up tour was announced via social media, for February 2024 incorporating regional UK towns and cities, for April 2024 incorporating mainland European touring, and for summer 2024 including Greenbelt festival , Wychwood , Wood , Beautiful Days , Glastonbury Festival 2024 (their 7th appearance there since 2009), as well as Deer Shed and
4851-498: The band announced on their Facebook page and on BBC Radio 6 that their fourth studio album Dig the Mountain! would be released on 8 September 2023 followed by a tour of the UK and Ireland. This was ultimately pushed back by a month for unknown reasons, but the album entered the official UK Sales Chart in the top ten, their highest chart position on any release to date. Yijia starred in the band's music video for "It's Not Up To You" which
4950-458: 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:
5049-413: The closing act leading the audience in a rendition of The Beatles ' " Hey Jude ". Monday evening also sees the festival's traditional Lantern Parade. The lanterns are made by members of the audience over the duration of the festival. In a tradition dating to 1990, many men wear dresses on the last night of the festival. This began as a hen party for a Towersey regular, where the bride agreed that, due to
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#17328766444755148-406: 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: Stornoway (band) Stornoway are
5247-541: 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
5346-475: 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,
5445-452: The end of the campaign. Fans were invited to purchase their copies of the album alongside day-trips with the band to go zorbing and/or birdwatching. The campaign came in the middle of an intensely busy summer of touring and festival appearances, including headlining their first festival in the UK, and returning to Oxford's Sheldonian Theatre for two sold-out shows celebrating five years since their previous appearance there, again accompanied by
5544-515: The fact that, in the following year, a three-day event was held. The festival attracts approximately 10,000 people each year although the 2004 event (26 to 30 August) attracted much higher numbers than ever before. This is partly due to that year being the festival's 40th anniversary. The 40th Ruby festival ran from 26 to 30 August 2004 and featured appearances from Rory McLeod, Flook and Martin Simpson. The venues/ stages in which festival activities take place include The Big Club (formerly known as
5643-505: 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 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
5742-403: The first-ever unsigned band to appear on Later... with Jools Holland , and performed alongside Sting , Norah Jones , Jay-Z , and Foo Fighters . The attention gained by this appearance led to tens of thousands of views of their homemade YouTube videos, and the band were playlisted on the BBC's national radio stations. In December 2009, Stornoway were announced as entrants onto the longlist of
5841-526: The instrumentation for many songs; in addition one older song and two new ones were performed, including two unplugged performances with acoustic instruments. Beachcomber's Windowsill won Album Of The Year at the 2010 XFM New Music Awards. Capitalising on a brief visit made during mid-2010, in December the band undertook their first formal tour of the USA touring with Head and the Heart (which would later lead to
5940-399: 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
6039-538: The lack of female friends attending, men could attend if they dressed appropriately. The following year, the bride and groom held a Sunday afternoon cocktail party , before the Sunday evening session in the Barn, with guests asked to wear their wedding outfits. In time, this evolved into 'Dress Up Sunday'. The bride still attends the festival regularly as a steward. The festival has released three compilation albums to date. The first
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#17328766444756138-556: 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
6237-408: 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
6336-454: 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
6435-399: The most memorable gigs of my life; a Chipolata 5 gig so full and rowdy that they had to take the sides of the marquee down." Discussing the festival's appeal and longevity, Roy Bailey stated: “Children play safely and many lifelong friendships have been developed here. People met here and got married here and generations of families return every year.” The festival's 50th anniversary in 2014
6534-567: 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,
6633-622: 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
6732-408: 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
6831-700: 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
6930-794: 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
7029-449: 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
7128-488: The performance of Chinese musician Yijia Tu with whom he'd performed in 2017 and attended WOMAD 2019, and who was billed in 2022 to perform as part of orchestra " Cheng Yu & Silk Breeze". Impressed and moved to tears by Yijia's individual vocal performance, they invited her to collaborate on their forthcoming album, and eventually tour together during the band's Autumn 2023 comeback tour, alongside other guests including Fyfe Dangerfield and Sam Lee . On 13 April 2023,
7227-400: 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
7326-464: The role of drummer. Stornoway's first radio play came in March 2006 with a demo version of "I Saw You Blink" on BBC Oxford Introducing . Radio presenter Tim Bearder was an early champion of the band and was suspended from work after barricading himself in the studio and playing an hour of Stornoway songs from their demo EP The Early Adventures of Stornoway , which had been positively reviewed by local scene mag Nightshift . That collection of 5 demos
7425-657: The seashore [...] this [Stornoway] was the only one that stuck, and it was reinforced by the fact that if you see the BBC weather forecast, Stornoway is up there... so we get this wonderful free promotion every time there's a weather report" . Starting with Dig The Mountain! (and followed rapidly by Beachcomber's Windowsill & Tales From Terra Firma on reissued vinyl), the band have released their music chiefly on recycled materials and packaged in sustainable card packaging . They are informally linked to many nature conservation trusts including HIWWT , RSPB , Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust , British Trust for Ornithology , and
7524-471: 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
7623-492: 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
7722-630: 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
7821-524: The term folklore , which was coined in 1846 by the English antiquarian William Thoms to describe "the traditions, customs, and superstitions of 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
7920-558: 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
8019-485: 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
8118-520: The term is usually only descriptive, in some cases people use it as the name of a genre. For example, 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,
8217-933: 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
8316-520: 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
8415-478: 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
8514-635: 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
8613-556: 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 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
8712-621: Was announced exclusively to fans in April. The band's first concert in Oxford since November 2010 was held at the Regal, Cowley Road, on Saturday 3 September 2011 alongside fellow Oxford bands The Epstein and Dreaming Spires. Proceeds from the evening, as well those for an auctioned-off Epiphone S-210 signed by all members of the band, went to the Sumatran Orangutan Society, the Earth Trust, and
8811-529: 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
8910-424: 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
9009-463: Was followed by a further 2 self-released EPs: Letters From Lewis (2007), and On The Rocks (2008). They played the inaugural Wood Festival the same year. One of the band's first high-profile live appearances was at Radio 1's Big Weekend in 2009, held in Lydiard Park , Swindon , for which they'd been booked on the strength of self-released debut single "Zorbing"; this led to their playing at
9108-422: Was headlined by Richard Thompson . The anniversary was also marked by the publication of a book, Towersey Festival: 50 Years In The Making which explored the 50-year history of the festival, from its inception to present day. Since 2015, the festival has been based at Thame Showground. 2019 saw the festival present an exhibition at Thame Museum entitled Capturing Towersey: Festival Photographs By Phil Sofer -
9207-405: 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
9306-411: 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
9405-442: Was premiered on 28 July in a live interview with author Robert Macfarlane . They toured and also played several major UK festivals including Moseley Folk & Arts Festival , the 2023 schedule culminating in a performance at O2 Forum Kentish Town with Cor Meibion Gwalia , to launch Christmas single "Excelsior", whose video featured Stornoway fan video contributions: singers stood in front of ash trees at various locations across
9504-484: Was released 11 November, followed by a UK tour finishing at the Barbican Centre on 8 December, the band's final show before returning to the studio to prepare their third full album. In June 2014, Stornoway announced a forthcoming 3rd LP, to be made available for pre-order through PledgeMusic – a campaign which saw the band smash 222% of their target funding just 4 days after the announcement, finally raising 513% by
9603-404: Was released in 1969, featuring acts recorded live at the 1968 festival, while the next two included (mostly) studio recordings of artists due to appear at the festival that year, and were released via digital distribution platform NoiseTrade . Folk music Folk music is a music genre that includes traditional folk music and the contemporary genre that evolved from the former during
9702-505: Was released on 28 September 2009 on CD, 7-inch vinyl and download, and the launch concert was held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London on 21 September. Their first UK tour took place from 16 to 30 October 2009, culminating in a concert at Oxford's Sheldonian Theatre , accompanied by the Oxford Millennium Orchestra. They were the first non-classical group ever to play in the centuries-old building. In November 2009 Stornoway became
9801-489: 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
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