Dr Vic Gammon
Guest Member of Staff

  • Email: vic.gammon@ncl.ac.uk
  • Address: School of Arts and Cultures
    Armstrong Building
    Newcastle upon Tyne
    NE1 7RU

Introduction

I retired from my post at Newcastle University 31st July 2010 but remain a Guest Member of Staff. I will be continuing my research projects and having some involvement in extra-curricular music activities.

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 form the basis of my teaching and research.

News

I was awarded the Gold Badge of the English Folk Dance and Song Society at a specially arranged concert at St Mary’s Visitor’s Centre, Gateshead Quays on Sunday 30th October 2011. I would like to thank all who performed in and supported the event most sincerely, it was a memorable evening. ‘The Gold Badge of the English Folk Dance and Song Society is awarded for unique or outstanding contributions to folk music, dance or song’. It is the highest honour that the Society bestows. The citation was given by Malcolm Taylor the Director of the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library in London.

I am very pleased to have been given this award and have my name join a permanent list that includes Cecil Sharp, William Kimber, Anne Gilchrist, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Lady Mary Trevelyan, Harry Cox, A L Lloyd, Bob Copper, Bob Cann, Reg Hall, Roy Judge, The Watersons, Louisa Killen, Ray Fisher and my good friend and colleague Alistair Anderson.

I recently participated as a tutor and performer in the Soundpost Singing Weekend at Dungworth near Sheffield organised by Folk Degree graduate and now PhD graduate, Fay Heild. The event was a wonderful experience and a great success.

I did some performances with my pre-1992 musical colleagues Will Duke and Alun Howkins late October, early November. It was amazing, almost twenty years on from playing regularly together,  how we slotted back together.

I am off to Hungary 14th to 18th November, to Pecs University where I will be lecturing and performing.

I will be at the Traditional Song Forum weekend in Aberdeen University 25th to 27th November. It has been and is a busy autumn!

 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 (1984 - present)

Qualifications

  • BA, MA, D Phil, PGCE (all University of Sussex)
  • Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (formerly ILTm)

Memberships

  • Social History Society
  • British Forum for Ethnomusicology
  • English Folk Dance and Song Society
  • Traditional Song Forum
  • University and College Union

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

  • A L Lloyd:Traditional English Ballads (Fellside Recordings, Workington, 2011)

Abstract: This is a 28k words booklet that accompanies the double CD of 1950s recordings Bramble Briars and Beams of the Sun: Traditional English Ballads sung by A L Lloyd. In the work I discuss A L Lloyd's relationship to the traditional ballad, his characteristics and qualities as a singer, the significance and importance of F J Child's The English and Scottish Popular Ballads and its relationship to Lloyd's work. There are then short essays on each of the 33 ballads in the collection. These pieces give a general introduction to the ballad, say something of the scholarship that relates to the ballad, give an indication of the distribution of the collected versions of the ballad, say something of the sources that Lloyd used and comment on the nature of Lloyd’s performance of the song.

  • 'Farmyard Cacophonies - Three Centuries of a Popular Song'. Folk Music Journal, Volume 10, Number 1, 2011, pp.42-73

Abstract: ‘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.

  • '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).
Abstract: Cecil Sharp became the dominant figure in the movement to revive English folk dance in the early years of the twentieth century. This paper explores some of Sharp's ideas and motivations using three distinct types of source material, published writing, film and inspection notebooks. These different types of evidence are investigated to give a rounded view of Sharp‟s project within the cultural climate of his day, particularly his idea of providing a „healthier‟, educationally positive and racially rooted alternative to commercial popular music and its associated dance forms. 

This essay is available on-line at http://eprint.ncl.ac.uk/file_store/production/56564/2E631099-5E83-4437-8239-43D852F1D334.pdf 

Future Research

  • 'The street ballad singer in pre- and early industrial society'. This work is based on a wide variety of sources, and explores the lives, work, musicality and significance of street ballad singers and the ways in which they were represented and understood by contemporaries. I hope to finish this book over the next two years.
  • '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. We will complete this musically illustrated article during 2011.
  • '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).

Postgraduate Supervision

I have supervised masters and doctoral 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, Tyneside song, primary and secondary music pedagogy, bass guitar pedagogy, practical music assessment and creative work.

Esteem Indicators

  • I was awarded the Gold Badge of the English Folk Dance and Song Society in 2011. The Gold Badge is 'awarded for unique or outstanding contributions to folk music' and is the highest honour that the Society bestows.
  • 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 Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Durham, Huddersfield, Northumbria, Sheffield, Liverpool and Leeds universities.
  • 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 recently worked on a BBC4 TV social history series 'Rude Brittania'.
  •  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