MA in Music: Pathway in Folk and Traditional Music
Newcastle University is a leading centre for the study of the Folk and Traditional Music of Britain, Ireland and North America in the United Kingdom primarily because Newcastle is home to the 4-year undergraduate BMus in Folk and Traditional Music. In addition, staff members have expertise in the traditional musics of other parts of the world including Brittany, the Mediterranean and Caribbean. There is obviously a relationship and overlap in this area between this specialism and Ethnomusicology and Popular Music Studies. However, the study of Folk and Traditional Music is distinguished by being part of different intellectual tradition from either Ethnomusicology or Popular Music Studies. This tradition is centred on and deals mainly with musical traditions of the English-speaking world. It has its roots in eighteenth-century ballad studies (for example in the work of Ritson and Scott) and developed in the nineteenth century in areas such as the study of historical popular music (Chappell), ballad collection and the study of ballad texts (Child). In the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries it flowered in the work of a number of folk music collectors and writers including Kidson, Sharp, Lomax and Lloyd. This tradition has developed strong links with the discipline of social history and is concerned with the recontextualised performance of folk and traditional music in contemporary society as well as historical aspects of the subject.
Members of staff at ICMuS have a lengthy track record of publication, composition, performance and recording and have received invitations to speak at major international conferences (Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Croatia, Cuba, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, USA), research seminars (UK, USA) and guest lectures (Chile, UK, Puerto Rico, Sweden, USA). Cross-school collaborations have resulted in major international events such as the first Popular Musics of the Hispanic and Lusophone Worlds conference, held in Newcastle in 2006 and the ¡VAMOS! festivals (ongoing). ICMuS has also hosted the 2002 IASPM (International Association for the Study of Popular Music) UK & Ireland conference, a seminar series in collaboration with Centre for Gender and Women's Studies/Instituto Camões in 2001-2002, and the 2007 BFE (British Forum For Ethnomusicology) conference entitled ‘Between Folk and Popular’. The Traditional Song Forum meets periodically in Newcastle University and the department has co-operative links with the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library and the English Folk Dance and Song Society.
In this pathway, you take the usual research training and dissertation (see below) and you also choose modules that deal specifically with the history and development of folk music studies as well as choosing modules dealing with recent methodological developments in the field of popular music studies and ethnomusicology.
Modules on this pathway
The core module for this pathway is Folk Music and Ballad Studies in the English Speaking World. In this module we survey interest in traditional music and song from the early modern period to the present day. We pay particular attention to the ideas, attitudes and values of people who have been involved in collection and scholarship in the field and to critical debates that have taken place as well as looking at crucial ways in which the material of traditional music has been dealt with, conceptualised and analysed.
- Elective modules on this pathway include Popular Music and the Politics of Authenticity, Music and Globalisation, Debates in the Philosophy and Theory of Music and Advanced Studies in Ethnomusicology
- You can also choose from final-year advanced undergraduate modules (recent modules have included Music and Identity in the Caribbean, Music Gender and Sexuality, Noise, Funk and Freedom, The Roots of Hip Hop, Music of the Southern States of the USA and Traditional Music and Celticism)
- Your dissertation will be on a topic related to significant debates in folk and traditional music studies, approach one or more aspects of traditional music, or engage in an extended study of a particular repertoire, style, genre, artist or concept.
Some facts about the teaching of folk and traditional music at ICMuS
- We run a highly successful and unique BMus degree in Folk and Traditional Music (see here for more details)
- There is a thriving folk and traditional music community at Newcastle which forms the basis for informed discussion and a lively scene involving concert and club performances, music sessions and related activities.
- There is an exciting research culture at Newcastle (including a weekly Research Forum series in semester time) and a very healthy interchange of ideas and approaches between people studying different genres of music making.
- Folk and traditional music is a vital part of ICMUS’s claim for inclusivity, a valuing of different and contrasting approaches to musical study and music making. This is recognised in the Centre’s leadership of Centre of Excellence for Teaching and Learning (CETL) for Music and Inclusivity
- Our research profile is committed to engaging with all aspects of popular music and popular musicology (click here for more on this)
- As part of its ongoing commitment to the ‘democratisation of the possible’, ICMuS hosts the online journal Radical Musicology
Staff teaching and researching in this area:
- Alistair Anderson (performance; composition and history of folk and folk-related musics) click here for more
- Nanette De Jong (ethnomusicology; the African diaspora; Salsa; memory; performance) click here for more
- Vic Gammon (British and North American vernacular musics, history and performance) click here for more
- Stewart Hardy (folk music performance) click here for more
- Sandra Kerr (performance, composition and history of folk and folk-related musics, especially song) click here for more
- Catriona Macdonald (performance, composition and history of folk and folk-related musics) click here for more
- Goffredo Plastino (ethnomusicology; world music/world beat; traditional & popular musics, especially of the Mediterranean) click here for more
- Kathryn Tickell (performance, composition and history of folk and folk-related musics) click here for more
- Desi Wilkinson (Irish and Breton traditional music; performance) click here for more