Category: FolkLife West

Singing Grannies

Having an article in the next ‘Folklife Traditions Journal‘ (out in March) and sporadically working on a(nother) folk-ish album which may have to be mostly unaccompanied, I’m starting to worry that people will start accusing me of being a folkie again. Though I picked up a guitar just now and my left hand appeared to be almost back to normal, so there may yet be quite a lot of guitar after all.

The article is based on a longer article on this blog, by the way. There is an article in the next issue Folk In Cornwall which is also based on that article.

Now I’ve looked more closely, I see that Rosie Upton and I both wrote about songs sung by our grandmothers. Editor Sam Simmons gets at least two bonus points for tagging the articles The Granny Awards.

David Harley

FolkLife magazine

Just to say that I’m no longer the (acting) Kernow correspondent for the FolkLife magazine. The column I took over briefly to allow Nigel Morson to get some of his life back has now been taken over by Lamorna Spry (thanks, Lamorna!), who already contributes some material to FolkLife. I haven’t, of course, cut my ties with the magazine, for which I do a little editing, and I’ll be happy to pass on any interesting snippets that come my way.

Lamorna has quite a reputation in Cornish historical and cultural circles, and you might well enjoy the Cornish Story site to which she is a contributor.

[In the meantime, I’ve resumed work on my ‘Tears of Morning’ book project. (Which has much more to do with Shropshire than it does with Cornwall, but I’ll hopefully catch up with my adopted home county eventually…)]

David Harley

FolkLife West Cornwall column

You may have noticed that from time to time I post something here about the excellent print magazine FolkLife West, its sibling Folklife Traditions Journal, and its newsletter updates.

For the January-April edition, I’m standing in for Nigel Morson, who has done an excellent job keeping the Kernow/Cornwall column going since the death of the much-missed Mike Walford. It was rather a last-minute substitution, so the deadline for that edition has already passed, I’m afraid. (Hit the post, as it were…)

It’s not certain yet that I’ll be doing the column for the next edition (May-August) – after all, I’ve already retired from FolkLife once (I was the Shropshire correspondent), and I’m already doing some editing for the magazine. But if you care to send me any information on events in Cornwall for the May edition (via the Contact Form linked above), I’ll do my best to ensure that it reaches the editor if I’m not already drafting the column. (Actually, I’ll be drafting the column over the whole four months before the deadline, which is 20th March.

Do check out the links above, though: through me is not the only way (let alone the most efficient) to get news to the magazine!

David Harley