Tenterden Folk Festival 2004
Friday 1st to Sunday 3rd
October
One of the guests at Tenterden Folk Festival 2004
will be American ballad singer and banjo player Sara Grey. How does this fit in with our objective of
promoting traditional English folk song, music and dance? Although Sara is from the States she has been
living in Scotland, and briefly in
England, for the last
32 years. For the last few years she has been concentrating on tracing the
migration of songs from the British Isles to North America.
Sara
has always been interested in the migration of songs across the Atlantic and it was as a
result of a collecting trip to Scotland in 1970 that
she moved to the UK. She has been
working closely with other traditional singers from Scotland and Ireland to look at the
movement of Celtic songs and how they change.
Many of these Celtic songs are equally well known in England or also have
English versions.
Sara
grew up in New Hampshire but has lived
in North Carolina, Ohio, Montana, New York, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Wales, Scotland and England. As a youngster
in North Carolina she first heard
a lot of mountain music and her love for the old time banjo music and songs
developed from this experience. She has carried this interest into her adult
life studying folklore and collecting and performing music from the various areas
in which she has lived.
Now,
after more than 25 years of singing and playing her banjo in public, Sara's
repertoire is as fresh and relevant as ever. She lives for her music and works
as a musician with the result that her music is not only technically excellent
but also filled with her warmth and spirit.
Once you have heard Sara you will never forget
her. She has a certain quality of voice that compels you to give her your
undivided attention. Her voice is powerful but sweet with a distinctive and
tremolo. It is a voice well suited to the native
American ballads and ballads of Ireland and Scotland. One of the
best things about her singing is that it reflects her great knowledge of and
feeling for traditional music. She just seems to know what is right in the
interpretation of a traditional song. She is a ballad singer of great strength
with a fine understanding of the importance of understatement in the art of
ballad singing. Her singing is richly emotional and she is equally at home with
a gentle lyric or a harsh account of life on the frontier.
It is not only Sara's
lovely voice that makes her one of the most popular singers on the folk scene,
on many of her songs Sara accompanies herself by frailing a five string banjo and,
when playing tunes, it is obvious why she is regarded as one of the foremost
exponents of the old-time style. As well as singing and playing superbly Sara
is a fine story teller specialising in
stories from New England where she grew up and learned many of her
stories from her father. How many of
those New England stories originated in old England is another
question waiting to be answered.
We are also very pleased to have Sussex’s own Shirley Collins on the guest list again
this year. Shirley will be presenting her talk
on “America over the
Water”. The talk is illustrated with
music and pictures and covers Shirley’s field recording trips to the Southern
Sates of the USA with folk song
collector Alan Lomax in 1958. The music covers a wide range from white mountain music of Kentucky, Virginia and Arkansas, blues from Mississippi, work songs
from the Mississippi Penitentiary, Sacred Harp singing from Alabama, shanties and
spirituals from The George Sea Islands and loads of anecdotes. Shirley’s book “America over the Water”
is due to be published in May so more about that later.
The latest details of the Festival and the full guest list will be
posted on our web site at www.folkspots.btinternet.co.uk
To receive our regular email updates
send an email to folkspots.btinternet.com
with "add to festival news list" in the subject box.
Join the mailing list by sending a s.a.e. to
Tenterden Folk Festival (mailing list)
Alan Castle, Tenterden Folk Day
Trust, 15 Repton Manor Road, Ashford, Kent, TN23
3HA
News and press release – 27th March 2004
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updated 13th March 2004
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