Institute of Continuing Education (ICE)
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The rich history of British folk song, and its pervasive and continuing impact on culture, are the subject of two linked one-day courses. You can choose to attend both days or one day only. The first day will focus on an analysis of the folk song form of the British Isles. We will chart interactions and implications of methods of oral tradition dissemination, the effects of the transcriptions of songs over the ages, and the impact of field recordings performed by sound engineers such as Peter Kennedy and Alan Lomax, exploring the implicit tensions between recorded music and live performance. A related musical event, led by the tutor, will take place on the evening of day one, free of charge to those enrolled on the course.
This course is offered in conjunction with, Invisible music: traditional folk song and its influences on British literature II, taking place on Tuesday 7 August 2018.
Polly Paulusma is an external supervisor for the Cambridge English Faculty and currently teaches Practical Criticism and supervisors students with special research interests in literature and song. She has been a signed recording artist since 2003, releasing albums on Bjork's label One Little Indian and then founding her own folk label Wild Sound which has supported the work of nine other independent folk and acoustic artists. Her albums have achieved international critical acclaim and her songs have been published by Sony/ATV in Los Angeles. She has toured the USA, the UK and Europe, supporting Bob Dylan, Jamie Cullum, Coldplay and Marianne Faithfull in her travels. She brings all her music-making experience to her interdisciplinary research and teaching practice. She is playing at this year's Cambridge Folk Festival and further details can be found on her website.
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