Wiltshire Folk Arts
Contact Us :
Wiltshire Folk Arts
19 Whistley Road, Potterne, Devizes, Wiltshire, SN10 5QY
email: mail@wiltshirefolkarts .org.uk
Office: 01380 726597
Bob : 07714 550990
Newsletter : August 2008
Hi all
A few things this month including:
Tinkers Bag news
Wiltshire Folk Song database
Folk Clubs
August saw the successful performances of Tinkers bag in their new show "Songs of Old Wiltshire. First up was Sidmouth Folk festival in the Bedford Hotel on Sunday 3rd at 11.30 AM!. A bit early in the day but the band rose to the challenge of a 2 hour performance at that time of day to a packed room. It was a really momentous happening for the band to perform some songs that have not seen the light of day for some 60 years or more.
Quite a few of the tunes had to be made up and Bob rose to that challenge and came up with the goods to some songs that will surely be picked up and sung around the country. Some of the best of these are the "Shearers Song" , which has turned out to be a real cracker, "My Jolly Waggoner" and "Barbara Allen".
Other songs getting the new tune treatment are "Deny No Man his Rights" (Barbara Berry), "The Knight" (Richard Rees) and some new arrangements to "Through The Groves", "Broken Down Gentleman" and "Oft in the Stilly Night".
The band hope to have some early recordings of some of these new songs up on their myspace page soon www.myspace.com/tinkersbag
The next performances by Tinkers bag are: Wiltshire History Centre, Chippenham , 6th September (details below) Potterne Medieval fayre, September 20th, Ogbourne St Andrew Church, Oct 8th and Warminster Arts Festival on 7th November 2008.
Contact us for details of tickets and timings.
The 6th September sees a significant step forward in the Folk song collection of Wiltshire Songs etc with a launch of over 1000 songs available to all on the Internet. This has been a huge amount of work undertaken by Chris Wildridge, in association with Wiltshire County Council, and the work will include transcripts of all the songs collected by Alfred Williams, Gardiner, Vaughan Williams and others. The database will also extend in time to include recordings, tunes and genealogy on the singers, collectors. These will then be connected to the village or town extensive community history in Wiltshire from where they were collected.
It is a superb resource for singers, historians and genealogists and those interested in their local history. Wiltshire Folk Arts will be working closely with this, and various other resources, to produce a series of albums and accompanying booklets and literature about Wiltshire folk song & music. We will provide links and further information on our web site from 6th September onwards.
Congratulations are very much in order to Chris Wildridge, Mike Marshman and the Community Website team of the Wiltshire County Council. We think this will pave the way forward for other county councils to follow suit and maybe, eventually, we will have a huge connected database country wide. (Now there's a dream idea!)
The Launch and Concert
The launch of this wonderful facility will be at the History Centre (a truly fabulous building) in Cocklebury Rd, Chippenham on the 6th September.
There will be a fiddle workshop in the afternoon for young people with Ruth Behan, the official launch at 3pm along with a performance from the Chippenham Morris Men. The day will finish with a concert featuring Wiltshire Monologues and Dialogues by legendary performers Merv Grist and Sid Bloomfield and a selection of Songs from the collection by members of Tinkers Bag. Please call us for information on these events and tickets for the evening event (£5)
This is a great moment in the restoration of Wiltshire Folk Songs and it will be wonderful if you could let as many people know as possible so the day is a huge success.
Devizes Folk Club starts again on the 1st September with a singers night and swiftly followed by a guest night on the 8th with Vinegar Tom, which is Oxford's own Ian Giles, Darren Ormandy and Bristolian actress/singer Kathryn Nutbeem. This will be a memorable night so book up those tickets straight away.
Other guests coming soon are Mike Nicholson 6th October, Roy Clinging and Neil Brookes 10th November and Craig, Morgan, Robson on December 8th. Great artists and we all look forward to your company on any other Monday too for a good old sing and play. We will be sending out an update of other Folk clubs in the county soon
That's it for the minute. We'll send some more info out again soon
Keep on singing
Bob
Wiltshire Folk Arts team
