Current Projects
Sunday, 01 March 2009
Singing Histories
A new project is taking an interesting approach to encouraging people to sing. Oxford Inspires, Oxfordshire County Council's Oxford Folk Festival, Oxfordshire Studies unit and County Music Service have banded together with the national Sing the Nation project to produce a very special new songbook – it will contain songs written in and about Oxfordshire.
Musicologist and folk expert Tim Healey has been all over the county researching and collecting Oxfordshire related songs for the book whist archivist, Dr Malcolm Graham has been sourcing images to go with the songs.
The songbook includes folk songs, carols, rounds and even some more recent songs. The oldest, The Boar’s Head Carol, was written in 1521, and there are songs from across the centuries since, from all over the county. Near Woodstock Town tells the tragic story of a girl with a broken heart while Dr Darwin is a Victorian Ballad which pokes fun at the famous naturalist; both songs are found in Oxford’s Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads Catalogue.
The songbook will be available through libraries and online from the beginning of April with two official launches of the book. The first one was at the Holywell Music Room on 21 March as part of the 2009 Oxford Folk Festival which runs from 20 to 22 March 2009. The second was at the Centre for Oxfordshire Studies at the Westgate Library on 23 March.
At both launches, local choirs taught the audience some of the songs so that nobody could leave without humming an Oxfordshire song to pass on to family and friends. The songbook will be a fascinating resource for people who use the Centre for research into local history as well as giving Oxfordshire folk songs back to the people who originally wrote them.
To download the Singing Histories songbook, visit the resources section of our website.
