Listen to the experts and gem up on your folk history

Venues: Stowmarket Scout Centre, from 10.30am/St Peter’s & St Mary’s Church 12-2 and Fox Yard Studio from 11am. All events are SPACE PERMITTING.

Talks

Talks at the Scout Centre

All events in the Scout Centre are ticketed events.

‘You’re Never Alone’: The Community of the Music Box Archive – Megan Wisdom 11.15am-12 noon

Megan gives a talk on the Music Box Archive of contemporary East Anglian field recordings. This presentation provides insight into the collection’s singers, their songs, and the living traditions of the East Anglian folk community.

My Life with Harry Cox – Christopher Heppa – 12.30pm-1.30pm

Christopher will talk about Harry’s relative importance to English traditional music, his relationship with his local fellow singers and how he has been perceived by the public since he was discovered, and now.

Songs I Collected from Harry Cox 1966-1967 with Sheila Park – In conversation with Alan Helsdon & Peter Coleman – 2.00pm-2.45pm

Visits to his home, work life, family and songs. 

All Aboard The Charabanc with Katie Howson – 4.30pm-5.30pm

A virtual pub tour on coach, with music on the journey and songs in the pubs. Climb on board for this whistlestop tour of Suffolk traditional music.

Illustrated talk at The Church 12 noon-2pm

THIS TALK IS A FREE EVENT

Folk Songs collected in Essex by Ralph Vaughan Williams – Sue Cubbin

Sue Cubbin will be introducing us to the Essex Folk Songs collected by Ralph Vaughan Williams – the first county where he began his collecting -as part of the launch of EATMT’s National Lottery Heritage funded project. There will be music by Potiphar’s Apprentices to add to the illustrated talk. For more details about the launch of this exciting new project see HERE.

Exhibitions – FREE

The History of the Blaxhall Ship exhibition will be available to view from 11am-4pm

Come and browse a collection of Blaxhall Ship memorabilia curated by Simon Saunders and John Marshall Potter.

BACKGROUND

One Saturday evening in 1953, Alan Lomax and Peter Kennedy, with tape-machine in tow, visited The Ship Inn, a pastoral public house situated in the village of Blaxhall, Suffolk, East Anglia. The Ship was by that time already well-known for its vigorous afternoon sessions of folk-singing and step-dancing, which had been going strong since at least the early days of the century.

Intrigued by the folk history of the Ship Inn and the purchase of an old melodeon at the local car boot fair started JMP a director of FolkEast on a quest to find out more.

The path led to a meeting with Simon Saunders, son of Jack and Midge Saunders, the last of the family line that had been custodians of the pub since 1884.

Together they are hoping to put together a digital free on line archive that anyone can upload pictures and stories to.

Simon has connections with many of the American service men and women that used to frequent the Ship in the 70’s and 80’s and the hope is to reconnect with some of their memories and stories as well.

John and Simon will be hosting a come and chat session and exhibition during the day in The Scout Centre’s Meeting Room.

quARTet

We will be bringing you more details about our art exhibition quARTet that is being hosted by the Fox Yard Studio. The exhibition runs from 1st September until 15th September and features four of our very talented performers involved in Traditional Music Day.

Tony Hall, Gemma Khawaja, Michael Sheehy and Fiona Davies are all wonderful artists – we know you know they are wonderful musicians too but thought we’d showcase what they do for their day jobs! More details to follow.