Performing Folk Songs is the first full-length volume to explore English folk singing from the perspective of performance studies. Using archival sources, family repertoire and recorded performances of interviewees, this book argues that archives and repertoires are produced in sensory environments and through embodied encounters. Autoethnography, sensory ethnography, life-writing and landscape writing are used to explore the affective and emotional aspects of learning songs 'by heart'.
Drawing on her experience as a folk singer, Bennett contributes to discourse on English folk traditions in the 21st century and brings performance scholarship to the contemporary folk song resurgence. In analyzing the performance of English folk songs in the affective context of the archive and the landscape, the book engages with and contributes original insights to scholarship on folk music, performance studies, affect theory, cultural geography and intangible cultural heritage studies.
Rezensionen / Stimmen
Original in both form and content, Performing Folk Songs will come to be seen as a significant text in terms of critical scholarship on the interrelations of Englishness, folk song and feminism. It arrives at an important moment in British debates over folk traditions, nationalism, diversification and decolonization and engages with these openly and courageously. * Robert Macfarlane, Professor of Literature and Environmental Humanities, University of Cambridge, UK * This rich and thoughtful study combines extensive research with an autoethnographic approach that is very moving to read. A vital contribution to thinking about folk song, and to folk singing itself as an affective, embodied, relational practice. * Angeline Morrison, folk singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist, creator of The Sorrow Songs: Folk Songs of Black British Experience (Topic Records, 2022) * Bennett's work casts a refreshing new light on folk song scholarship with her focus on performance, diversity and inclusivity and the framing of traditional repertoires in contemporary society. Through theoretical engagement and an autoethnographic account, folk song in the performative present is eloquently interrogated here through the voices of academia, other singers and, most strongly, her own. * Fay Hield, Professor of Music, University of Sheffield, UK * [A] moving and rigorously researched book ... A core text for the study of folk songs ... The book [offers] a template into how to synthesize artwork, diverse forms of data, and lived experience into a research practice that is questioning, creative, and emotionally articulate. -- Nancy Kerr Elliott * Folk Music Journal *
Sprache
Verlagsort
Verlagsgruppe
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Zielgruppe
Maße
Höhe: 229 mm
Breite: 152 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-5013-9018-0 (9781501390180)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Klassifikation
Elizabeth Bennett is an interdisciplinary researcher and lecturer, based in the UK. Her research and teaching areas include music, theatre, performance studies and creative writing. She was co-organizer of the ground-breaking conferences 'Women in the Folk' (2018) and 'Street Music' (2019).
Autor*in
Lecturer in DramaUniversity of Essex, UK
List of Songs
List of Figures
Prelude
Introduction
Part 1: Theory and Methodology
1:1 Affect Theory
1:2 Auto/Sensory/Ethnography
1:3 The Archive in Performance
1.4: Landscaping
Part 2: Practice
2:1 Footpaths
2:2 Women
2:3 Lines
2:4 Childhood
2:5 Legacies
2.6 Dorothy Marshall: A Small Story
2.7 Life-writing
Conclusion: Part 1: 2017
Conclusion: Part 2: 2022
