Collecting ‘folk’ music in the 1900s - Harrison and Cecil Sharp

By Bridget Cousins

At the same time as the Ituri ‘Folk music’ was being recorded for Harrison there was a surge of interest in indigenous music in this country, spearheaded by Cecil Sharp, Lucy Broadwood, Ralph Vaughan Williams and others. Since the 1850s songs sung by ordinary working people had begun to attract academic and musical interest and collectors such as the Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould had written down many of the tunes sung, although they often substituted their own lyrics as the originals were considered too ‘debased’ or bawdy for Victorian sensitivities. Building on the work of his predecessors, Sharp took this work to a new level, seeking to promote the narrative of a body of ‘National Song’ and to save the songs and dance tunes for posterity. His work culminated in the foundation of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, still one of the most influential organisations in English Folk music today.

Sharp seems to have seen himself as a ‘hunter’ and ‘explorer’ of the musical hinterland much as Harrison was in Africa, venturing among the ‘indigenous people’ - in this case the working-class people living in the area - and tracking down their picturesque songs and tunes. Here is Sharp talking about his Appalachian collecting in his diaries –

 ‘I am now trying to run to earth a famous singer in this area, William Riley Shelton, usually known as Frizzy Bill or Singing Will. So far he has evaded me, but Mr Campbell is with us to help me track him down. Directly I have caught him and emptied him, I am going across the border into Tennessee’

Later in the same trip he writes “I came here partly to test Virginia as a hunting ground…’ [1]

Despite a trend towards greater social equality throughout the 19th Century, in Sharp and Harrison’s time working class country people were still often regarded as objects of humorous interest; picturesque and slightly child-like, with a somewhat backward culture and outlook; folk to be led by ‘their betters’. The folk song collectors may perhaps be regarded as mediators presenting this ‘primitive’ music to their peers as a curiosity, exactly as Harrison did with his ‘little friends’. Here is a quote from an account of one of Sharp’s lectures which demonstrates how the (presumably middle class) listener perceived Folk song as something quaint and different -

‘Folk Music - the communal product of an entire people, rather than of an individual possesses a peculiar vitality and charm which Mr Sharp succeeded admirably in communicating to his audience ...  He laid especial stress last night upon their careful diction and upon the impersonal simplicity of their performance, pointing out that (as we have ample opportunity to observe for ourselves) if the performer attempts to intrude his own personality or to add the graces of execution appropriate to more cultivated songs, the wild flavour evaporates. ‘ [2]

In contemporary terms, we might recognise Sharp’s actions in collecting, tidying up and presenting the songs of working people as ‘cultural appropriation’. Nell Leyshon’s play, ‘Folk’ addresses this and the effect it may have had upon the singers themselves. Below is an extract from a Guardian article she wrote about her script, which focusses on two Somerset sisters who shared songs with Sharp and were themselves daughters of a renowned traditional female singer -

‘Folk-song collecting was a growing movement in the early years of the 20th century, driven by a desire to rescue these songs before they were lost to the tail end of the Industrial Revolution, when machines would work the land and the sewing would be moved into factories. Sharp published many of them, arranging them for piano and editing the lyrics so that they were suitable for a middle-class audience. He tidied rhymes and rhythms and then placed his name on them, copyrighting them. At the time this wasn’t seen as an egregious act. Louie Hooper and Lucy White, two Somerset sisters, gave Sharp over 100 songs, yet their names were nowhere, their stories untold.’ [3]

Harrison also failed to credit the singers he recorded, and seems to have presented their culture as something for the amusement of others, rather than an exchange between equals. Only one of the singers recorded in 1905 is named in the recordings (‘Chief Bukani’) and the songs are simply described as ‘folk songs’ without context, translation or explanation.  Yet there is an intriguing link between these folk songs and those collected by Sharp, and maybe it connects all music of indigenous people living close to their land. Leyshon briefly refers to an interview with Louie Hooper from 1983 in which Louie recounts ‘her love for music, how she listened to birds and rain, found musical patterns in their sounds, and how she sat by the older people in the village and “caught” their songs.’[4]

Sam Lee, a contemporary English folk singer who learns many of his songs from older Travellers and sings outdoors with nightingales, does a similar thing now. And this is exactly what the indigenous singers of the Central African rain forests still do today. Indeed, the singing of the modern-day Ituri people is instantly recognisable as a continuing tradition from the Ituri songs recorded in 1905.

Links to further reading and listening

Louie Hooper interview

 Sam Lee

About the author

Bridget Cousins - lives in Scarborough and is a musician playing Celtic harp as one half of Folk acoustic duo The Blow-ins . She’s also a choir leader specialising in Singing for Health and teaches songs from around the world to a range of choral groups. She was once an archaeologist and has an enduring interest in local history.

References

1. Yates, M. (1999) Cecil Sharp in America - collecting in the Appalachians

2. Pittsburgh Gazette Times (5/3/1915) cited in Yates’ article

3. Leyshon, N. (2022)  “Folks Unsung Heroines” in The Guardian, January 5th 2022

4. Ibid