1 January 2022
As we look back at another year, we have to say that we had hoped for something a bit different, but can look back with some satisfaction on what we did achieve. We have not been able to hold our lovely singing session at the Twelve Bells in Cirencester, though we hope that we will be able to get it going again before too long. We haven’t been to any of our usual folk events, though we did slip into the rather damp, but very enjoyable Tenterden Folk Festival in the Autumn, where we caught up with several old friends. We are hoping that we will get to a few more events in 2022.
Some of the singing we have managed to do in 2021 was as part of the talks that Martin gave during the year. When we presented the talk, ‘Cotswolds Arts and Crafts and Folk Music’ for the Gloucestershire Guild of Craftsmen at Rodmarton Manor in the summer we were asked to put together a separate concert of songs associated with Arts and Crafts people, which was great fun and one of only two live performances we gave during the year.
Several other talks were given on Zoom including ‘The Enigma of Folk Song’ and ‘As I Walked Out, Sabine Baring-Gould and the Search for the Folk Songs of Devon and Cornwall’. In November, Martin was one of the panellists and presenters for the seminar ‘Traditional Song in the Archives’ organised by the University of Limerick. Martin also delivered three shorter talks as part of the Traditional Song Forum’s ‘TSF Online’ series of fortnightly Zoom Seminars.
And then there is the book, The Forgotten Songs of the Upper Thames, published in September as well as the chapter on Eve Maxwell-Lyte that Martin contributed to The Routledge Companion to English Folk Performance.
So, not that quiet a year, then!
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