News
Fundraising appeal 2008: stepdance DVD
Traditional Music Day 2008: tickets on sale now!
Blyth Voices song book to be republished
Before the Night Was Out: new East Anglian tunebook
Online shop for East Anglian Traditional Music
This page is updated regularly, and older news items are now archived on a separate webpage - click here.
This year's Stepdance Day is again at the Swan, Worlingworth, Framlingham, Suffolk on Sunday 3rd August 2008. It will feature the 9th annual Steve Monk Memorial Stepdance Competition and the 1st Font Whatling Traditional Stepdance Competition. The event kicks off with a stepdance workshop at 12.30, followed by a music, song and dance session until the Steve Monk Competition at 2.30 (allcomers welcome) followed by the Font Whatling Competition (hard-soled shoes, no taps or blakeys). Steve Monk lived near Framlingham, and was a great character who influenced many people to 'have a go' at joining in with music and dance, and the competition was set up by some of his friends to keep this spirit alive. This year we have introduced the Font Whatling competition in memory of the Swan's resident musician and stepper (1919-1998) who was for a number of years also a member of the Old Hat Concert Party and became well known at folk festivals around the country. The aim is to keep the older style of dancing with hard-soled shoes going. Dancers are welcome to enter both competitions. Free entry, real ale, food, raffle and collection in aid of the forthcoming East Anglian stepdance DVD (see below).
Our next publishing project is a DVD about the region’s stepdance tradition. We have started an appeal for funds to help us produce a professional quality product that will include archive clips from various sources, together with interviews and footage of some of the current crop of dancers.
For several years we
have been working towards the production of a DVD of stepdancing, which will
both document the tradition and act as a resource for budding dancers.
We started filming several years ago, with Barry Callaghan, who has produced
films for the English Folk Dance & Song Society, and who was a great enthusiast
for East Anglian music and dance. Barry died very suddenly last year, and we are
now picking up the project again with Chris Metherell, another experienced
film-maker and no mean stepdancer himself.
We are also planning to include several archive clips of steppers, and as well
as demonstrations, there will be interviews etc. All those involved are giving
their time for free, but there are going to be costs incurred soon, when it
comes to licensing, editing and production.
Linda Callaghan has very generously donated some of Barry’s old melodeons to
EATMT, which we are selling, to raise funds towards this project, and we have
also recently been donated a dulcimer to sell in support of the appeal. For
further details of these instruments,
click here.
We are now inviting donations from individuals and interested groups who would
like to support this project, and hope to be able to progress significantly with
the project over the summer.
Please send any donations to: EATMT, The Old Stables, Museum of East Anglian
Life, Stowmarket, Suffolk IP14 1DL.
If you pay tax, you can make your donation go even further at no cost to
yourself, through the Gift Aid scheme, which enables us to claim the tax back
(for every £10 paid, we receive £12.80). All you need to do is state that your
donation is a Gift Aid donation, and we do the rest.
The seventh annual Traditional Music Day takes place on Saturday 30th August 2008 at the Museum of East Anglian Life in Stowmarket, Suffolk.
The guest line-up includes The Orchard Family, Mike Waterson & Lou Killen, Taffy Thomas, Simon Ritchie and ceilidh band The Watch. Special events under the 'Tall Tales' banner feature storytelling and song events, and we are also lucky to have Neil Wayne, an authority on the concertina, giving an illustrated talk on The History of the Concertina.
Day tickets are needed for the concerts and other indoor events. The evening concert in the Tithe Barn is ticketed separately. Please note: the evening concert is now sold out (1.7.08).
Click here for reports and photos of the 2007 event, to give you an idea of this lively, relaxed day.
Click here for more details of this year's event, where you will also find links to a timetable and a printable booking form.
The big session in the Barn, 2006
Blyth Voices song book to be republished
The book, first published in 2003, contains 14 songs (scores and lyrics) and one
instrumental collected by the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams in the town of
Southwold on the Suffolk coast in 1910.
It also includes original research into the singers, and traditional music in the town throughout the twentieth century, together with a number of fascinating old photos.
The books
was republished in June 2008, and you can now order a copy once again from
our
online shop, (price £6.75).
Before the Night Was Out ... East Anglian music book
'If I heard a good tune, I'd have it before the night was out!'
Through the twentieth century, music has been recorded from traditional musicians in Suffolk and Norfolk, and now many of the most important and unusual of these lively dance tunes are available in a printed collection.
Tune books from various regions in England have been published in recent years. To present something from East Anglia, a region renowned for its traditional music throughout the twentieth century, has proved something of a conundrum: how to portray in written form what is essentially an oral tradition? Before the Night Was Out aims to shed light on the way in which traditional music in Suffolk and Norfolk has thrived and mutated during the twentieth century, as well as providing a resource for practising musicians.
It is therefore a rather different kind of tune book…
Polkas, hornpipes, jigs, schottisches and waltzes, including comparative versions, transcribed from recordings of more than twenty different melodeon players, fiddlers and dulcimer players
Biographies, photographs and contextual information about the East Anglian
musical tradition, plus a comprehensive discography
Fascinating details about the musical, social and geographical journeys these
tunes have made through time
Guidance on how to interpret and play this music
A sample of the contents is available here. You can order it now from our online shop.
Click here to view updates.
We launched our new book Before the Night Was
Out on Twelfth Night 2008, at the Riverside Centre, Stratford St Andrew,
Suffolk, with a large gathering of musicians and most of the editorial
team. Many of the tunes in the book were played, and Tom Knight brought along
Billy Bennington’s dulcimer for the occasion, and played some of Billy’s tunes
on it.
What the readers say ...
“What a wonderful book! (in terms of immediate, joyous impact , it puts me in mind of when I first stumbled across the Sussex Tunebook many moons ago.) Great presentation of tunes, biogs and pictures … makes me realise how little I know of the East Anglian music tradition.”
Andy Lyddiatt
“The book is excellent … it’s not often that a tune book is a really interesting read as well!”
“Even when you know the 'versions' and their idiosyncracies it somehow highlights them to see them transcribed. I feel I am a step closer to them now. “
“I am very pleased with the book and have started learning tunes from it, including some I failed to master from recordings.”
“This is, in my opinion, almost exactly what a good tunes book should be; one which centres its attention on the players and their musical contexts, and uses the tunes as illustrations. By the end of it you have been given an extremely complete picture of the traditional musical life of East Anglia in the mid- to late-20th century. This makes it a far more useful guide to playing southern English traditional music well, or properly, than a more conventional book of tunes of the sort we have become used to can ever do … I have never seen this material better covered … This outstanding book is … your best purchase of 2008, so far.”
Rod Stradling, Musical Traditions magazine
“Congratulations to all
concerned, especially for the superb (and easy to read, if not necessarily to
play) transcriptions ... it reinforces that a tradition isn't static, but
develops and changes over time and space to meet the musical needs of the time
...I really could have done with this book being around in 1983 - it would have
made starting playing English music much easier. Seeing the tunes written down
so accurately really
emphasises how subtle and complicated many "rough" English musicians were (and
are).”
“Just wanted to say thanks for producing such a great tunebook - this is how they all should be, with background and information about the musicians, different versions of the tunes, and a discography. Thank you! It's been a joy to browse through, pulling together various threads from years of playing - I hadn't realised how much of the repertoire I thought came from the west country, actually comes from East Anglia. Thank you!”
Pippa Sandford
“There are quite a few reasons for the excitement surrounding this book … perhaps the most important reason this book is causing a stir is that it is very different from other tune books … few people have attempted to compile and publish this sort of book, not least because of the huge amount of detail involved. Before the Night was Out is an important, groundbreaking publication.”
Gavin Atkin, English Dance and Song, Spring 2008.
We are currently running two series of evening classes for 'improving' melodeon players started in Stowmarket, taught by Maggie Moore.
Autumn 2008 will see a new series of classes for beginners - let us know if you might be interested. You need a two-row melodeon in the keys of D/G to join these classes.
Online shop for East Anglian Traditional Music
There’s now a place to find a huge range of recordings of traditional singers and musicians from East Anglia all in one place: here! There are also books and other resources and full track listings for all the CDs. The site offers a secure online payment system. Click here to see what's on offer:
Research Information about traditional songs, singers, music, musicians, instruments, dance and dancers ...
A new page on this website links all the research content of the site - if you're after information about material, instruments, tunes, songs, dance and traditional performers, start here! This aspect of the website will be regularly updated with new information. New pages on Stepdancing and Jig Dolls have been added, and later in the year new information about the folks song heritage of King's Lynn will also be added.
We are now able to offer traditional cane beaters for sale at £10 per pair (plus £1 p&p). We also plan to extend the range of accessories available to dulcimer players to includes strings, tuning keys etc. For the time being, please email us at info@eatmt.fsnet.co.uk or ring 01449 771090 for further details. Long-term plans include an East Anglian dulcimer website showing details of some of these wonderful instruments.
In the meantime, click on this link to read an excellent article from the Eastern Daily Press together with music clips of Billy Bennington and Billy Cooper! There is also some research information on David Kettlewell's website which opens with a music clip including stepdancing!
During the early summer of 2007, we started working on some of the old instruments we have for renovation. On stripping off the backing paper on one instrument we discovered a maker's name, and with a little research were able to identify him as James Caston, carpenter, of Forncett St. Peter, near Wymondham in Norfolk, who died in 1854. We now know that this particular instrument dates from the first half of the nineteenth century, which makes it one of the earlier models in the distinctive East Anglian style.
Thanks to the team of volunteers who helped out... we still have a way to go before the instruments are playable again, but we've made a start!
If you have a dancing doll,
please let us know, and send us a photograph (there are some on the
Big Jig page). After the Big Jig exhibition at the Traditional Music Day
in 2004, we are collating information on dancing dolls,
and are collaborating with Pat Pickles on a new book in the future.
Jig dolls have been made for centuries, usually in garden sheds and on
back-doorsteps, and used for entertainment at home, in pubs, on board ships and
on the street. They are wooden dolls with jointed arms
and legs, and a stick protruding from the back which is held and the doll
'jigged' up and down on a narrow board of flexible wood. Each doll is decorated differently, sometimes just painted, sometimes with
fabric and additions such as 'segs' to the shoes, which create a dramatic
clattering sound. They are a great visual attraction, and in
skilled hands they also provide percussive rhythmic accompaniment.
If you've got one, or know of someone who has, please do get in touch.
We’re
always keen to find new events to take our collection of jig dolls and melodeons
to. We can run drop-in sessions for people to have a go using a jig
doll, with live music, and can also provide a chance for people to have a go at
playing a melodeon for the first time. Please give us a ring if you know of a
fete or festival or other community event where you think this sort of thing
would go down well.
Our
melodeons are available for hire by the month (within Suffolk, Norfolk,
Cambridgeshire and Essex), and many people who do this also attend evening
classes run by EATMT. Please get in touch if you are interested.
If you’re interested in hiring a melodeon by the month, please give us a ring and see when there is one available.
We’re always pleased to welcome new people to the friendly and hard-working team of volunteers who help us out with mailouts and other office-based tasks, and with stewarding and helping at events.
Please give us a ring on 01449 771090 if you would like to help out in any way.
Older news items are now archived on a separate webpage - click here.
Page last updated 03 July 2008
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