Dr Vic Gammon
Senior Lecturer in Folk & Traditional Music
- Email: vic.gammon@ncl.ac.uk
- Telephone: 0191 222 5609
- Address: School of Arts and Cultures
Armstrong Building
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 7RU
Upcoming Public Events
Friday 26th February - Grove Folk Club, Leeds, 8.00, performance by Dearman, Gammon & Harrison. See www.grovefolkclub.org.uk/diary.html
Monday 1st March - Sheffield University Music Department - Monday Research Seminars, 'The Professional Street Ballad Singer in Pre- and Early Industrial Society'. 4.10-5.30pm in Ensemble Room 1 (G.03), Department of Music, Jessop Building, 34 Leavygreave Road, Sheffield, S3 7RD.
Thursday 11th March, 6.00pm Lit & Phil, Newcastle. Public Lecture
'"The First Music-Seller in The Land": The Professional Street Ballad Singer in Pre- and Early-Industrial Society'. See www.litandphil.org.uk/html_pages/LP_news.html
Research Interests
British (particularly English) traditional song and instrumental music; North American traditional song and instrumental music; English venacular religious music; music social history; political song.
Other Expertise
Performer of English traditional song and instrumental music. My main instruments are, anglo-concertina, melodeon, G plectrum banjo and voice.
Current Work
Recent publications:
- 'Desire, Drink and Death in English Folk and Vernacular Song, 1600-1900'. This book of essays was published by Ashgate in February 2008. Here is the publisher's publicity:
'This much-needed book provides valuable insights into themes and genres in popular song in the period c. 1600-1900. In particular it is a study of popular ballads as they appeared on printed sheets and as they were recorded by folk song collectors. Vic Gammon displays his interest in the way song articulates aspects of popular mentality and he relates the discourse of the songs to social history. Gammon discusses the themes and narratives that run through genres of song material and how these are repeated and reworked through time. He argues that in spite of important social and economic changes, the period 1600-1850 had a significant cultural consistency and characteristic forms of popular musical and cultural expression. These only changed radically under the impact of industrialization and urbanization in the nineteenth century. The book will appeal to those interested in folk song, historical popular music, ballad literature, popular literature, popular culture, social history, anthropology and sociology'.
The book has had some enthusiastic reviews, a couple of which on the Internet: www.mustrad.org.uk/reviews/dddefvs.htm and findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_6764/is_4_9/ai_n31187044/ .
- '"Many Useful Lessons", Cecil Sharp, Education and the Folk Dance Revival, 1899-1924' was published in Cultural and Social History, Volume 5, Issue 1, March 2008, pp. 75-98. (This is related to my AHRB funded project).
Work in hand:
- 'Farmyard Cacophonies - Three Centuries of a Popular Song'. ‘Old Macdonald Had a Farm’ is an immensely successful popular song. In this essay I explore the life of this song from its earliest known version as performed on the English stage in the early eighteenth century; its development as a vaudeville and blackface minstrel song in the nineteenth century; its place in oral tradition; commercial recordings of the song in the 1920s and later; its status today a modern ‘children’s favourite’ in a variety of forms. I consider the song in the context of other pieces that list animals, animal parts and sometimes animal sounds. I look at the way innuendo and satire can be read in versions of the song and the way the song relates to the relationships of humans to animals. I explore examples of the parodies, transformations and translations the song has spawned and hypothesise on the reasons for its enormous success. I emphasise that any sound history must look for continuity as well as change but also be aware of the ways in which texts can take on different meanings in different historical situations. This essay (with musical examples) will be published by Folk Music Journal in November 2010.
- 'The street ballad-singer in pre- and early industrial society'. This work is based on a wide variety of sources, this work explores the figure of the ballad-singer, the life and work of these people and the way different elements of contemporary society understood and used this ubiquitous figure. I hope to finish this work, which will be a book, during 2010.
- 'Five-four and other irregular rhythms in English traditional song'. I have received a small but very helpful research support grant for this project from the School of Arts and Cultures and have therefore been able to obtain some research assistance support from Emily Portman. I therefore hope to complete this musically illustrated article by early 2010.
- A L Lloyd's ballad recordings. CD essay and notes. Fellside Records. To be completed by Spring 2010.
- 'Musics, Musicianers and Songsters: Vernacular and Traditional Music Making in the South of England, 1800-1914'. (This is a proposed book bringing together and extending my work on this subject undertaken over the past three decades). Estimated date of completion 2011.
Future Research
As I am due to retire in 2011, I anticipate that my research in hand will take me through to that time.
I do, however, have some partly completed projects (mostly given as conference or seminar presentations) which I intend to complete at some stage. These include
- 'Modern interpretations of the music of William Billings'.
- 'The past is not my home: reflections on social history, ethnomusicology and postmodernism'.
- 'Cecil Sharp and Education' - a third and perhaps final essay on Sharp, concentrating on his role as an educator. The essay will be based on primary research and incorporate a response to other academics who have written on this aspect of Sharp's work. (Related to my AHRB funded project).
Postgraduate Supervision
Masters and doctoral supervision of research students in traditional music and music education related areas. Topics areas supervised include music in the nineteenth and early twentieth society, popular church music, the history of the tonic sol-fa movement, traditional song collecting and editing, traditional fiddle pedagogy, ballad studies, primary and secondary music pedagogy, bass guitar pedagogy, practical music assessment and creative work.
Esteem Indicators
- I am frequently asked to referee for research grants.
- I have been external examiner for various universities including Sheffield (master's courses) The Institute of Education (master's courses) and Goldsmiths College, University of London.
- I have examined PhDs for Edinburgh, Durham, Northumbria, Sheffield, Liverpool and Leeds universities and will add Aberdeen to this list this year.
- I have been an external research superviser for Leeds Metropolitan University and Goldsmiths College.
- I am asked to broadcast on national radio or television on average two or three times a year. I recently made substantial contributions to 'The Choir' (Radio 3) and 'The Singer Not The Song' (Radio 4). I have recently worked on a BBC4 TV social history series to be broadcast in 2010.
- I have acted in an advisory capacity for a number of organisations and projects, including the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library and the AHRB-funded Carpenter project.
- I have contributed to the DNB, the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music and the Oxford Reader's Companion to Dickens.
- Publications list
Book: Desire, Drink and Death in English Folk and Vernacular Song, 1600-1900. 2008
Article: 'Many useful lessons': Cecil Sharp, education and the folk dance revival, 1899-1924 2008 Cultural and Social History (available at eprint.ncl.ac.uk/author_pubs.aspx?author_id=60278 ).
Book chapter: An Introduction to Folk, 2007, The Folk Handbook: Working with Songs from the English Tradition
Online publication: ‘Problems in the Performance and Historiography of English Popular Church Music’ 2006 Radical Musicology
CD, Dearman Gammon and Harrison: Black Crow / White Crow 2005
Book chapter: One hundred years of the Folk-Song Society, 2004 Folk Song: Tradition, Revival, and Re-creation
Book chapter: Cecil Sharp and English folk music, 2003 Still Growing: Traditional Songs and Singers from the Cecil Sharp Collection
Book chapter: Music, Charm, and Seduction in British Traditional Songs and Ballads, 2003, The Flowering Thorn: International Ballad Studies
Article: 'The Subject Knowledge of Secondary Music PGCE Applicants' 2003 British Journal of Music Education
Article: 'A Lantern on the Stern' A review essay on Stephanie Pitts, A Century of Change in Music Education 2001 Music Education Research
Chapters in CD documentation: 'Commentary' and 'The Music of the Coppers' Songs' 2001 Come Write Me Down: Early Recordings of the Copper Family of Rottingdean.
Book chapter: 'Child Death in British and North American Ballads from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century' 2000, Representations of Childhood Death
Book chapter: 'The Musical Revolution of the Mid Nineteenth Century' 2000 British Brass Bands: A Musical and Social History
Article: 'Cultural Politics of the Music National Curriculum' 1999 Journal of Educational Administration and History
Book chapter: ‘England’ 1999 Garland Encyclopaedia of World Music, Volume 8: Europe
Article: 'National Curricula and the Ethnic in Music’ 1999 Critical Musicology: A Transdisciplinary Online Journal
Book chapter: 'The Performance Style of West Gallery Music' 1996 The Gallery Tradition: Aspects of Georgian Psalmody
Article: 'What is Wrong with School Music? - A Response to Malcolm Ross' 1996 British Journal of Music Education
Article: 'Diversity or Dominance? David Pascall, The National Curriculum Council and Culture' 1993 Arts Education
Book chapter: 'From "Repeat and Twiddle" to "Precision and Snap": The Musical Revolution of the Mid-Nineteenth Century' 1991 Bands: The Brass Band Movement in the 19th and 20th Centuries (jointly written with Sheila Gammon)
Article: 'The Grand Conversation; Images of Napoleon in British Popular Balladry' 1989 Journal of the Royal Society of Arts
Article: 'Singing and Popular Funeral Practices in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries’ 1988 Folk Music Journal
Article: '"Two for the Show"; David Harker, Politics and Popular Song' 1986 History Workshop Journal
Book chapter: 'A L Lloyd and History' 1986 Singer, Song and Scholar
Article: 'Manuscript Sources of Traditional Dance Music in Southern England' 1986 Traditional Dance
Article: 'Structure and Ideology in the Ballad: An Analysis of Long Lankin' 1983 Criticism (Jointly written with Peter Stallybrass)
Edited book: A Small Account of my Travels Through the Wilderness by James Nye 1982
Edited book: A Sussex Tune Book (edited with Anne Loughran) 1982
Book chapter: 'Problems of Method in the Historical Study of Popular Music' 1982 Popular Music Perspectives
Article: 'Song, Sex and Society in England, 1600-1850' 1982 Folk Music Journal
Book chapter: '"Babylonian Performances", The Rise and Suppression of Popular Church Music in England, 1660-1870' 1981 Popular Culture and Class Conflict
Article: '"Not Appreciated in Worthing?" Class Expression and Popular Song Texts in Mid-Nineteenth Century Britain' 1981 Popular Music
Article: 'Folk Song Collecting in Sussex and Surrey, 1843-1914' 1980 History Workshop Journal
Funding
AHRB small grant, 2004-2005,‘Education, culture and the folk music revival, c.1890-1925’, value £4,260
Background
I joined the International Centre for Music Studies at the University of Newcastle in September 2004 as Senior Lecturer in Folk and Traditional Music. I was previously Senior Lecturer at the University of Leeds where I managed the BA in Popular and World Musics. My interests in the vernacular musics of Britain and North America, in music education and my continuing activity as a performer are the basis of my teaching and research.
Roles and Responsibilities
- Degree Programme Director, BMus in Folk and Traditional Music (2005-2009)
- Organiser, Research Forum, International Centre for Music Studies (2006-2009)
- Member, Editorial Board, Folk Music Journal
Qualifications
BA, MA, D Phil, PGCE (all University of Sussex)
Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (formerly ILTm)
Memberships
- Oral History Society
- Social History Society
- British Forum for Ethnomusicology
- English Folk Dance and Song Society
- Traditional Song Forum