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ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 54| December 2001


Australia's Folk Heritage:
Some Recent Achievements and Future Directions

Eileen McCoy

Eileen McCoy of Bega performing at the Jamberoo Folk Festival. Eileen who travelled Australia with her husband Athol playing at dances, specialises in old time dance repertoire. The National Library holds a number of recordings of her music in the Oral History Collection
Photographer Jeff Carter

The National Library’s Folklore Collection has long been recognised as the leading collection of its type in Australia. Since 1960, the Library has acquired thousands of original field recordings, consisting mainly of songs and traditional dance music, from pioneering collectors such as the late John Meredith, Russel Ward, Norm and Pat O’Connor, the late Alan Scott, Wendy Lowenstein, Warren Fahey, Rob and Olya Willis, Dave de Hugard, Chris Sullivan, Mark Rummery, Peter Parkhill and numerous others.

This year, the Library has undertaken a range of new initiatives and activities. The first of these occurred in March at the National Folk Festival (Canberra) when Curator of Music, Robyn Holmes, launched Sharing The Harvest, a double CD commemorating the life and work of John Meredith, Australia’s pre-eminent collector of traditional music. Featuring items from the Meredith Collection, with notes by folklore consultant Edgar Waters, this release was warmly welcomed by musicians, record collectors and historians alike.

In September, a fascinating event occurred at Jamberoo Folk Festival, the foremost regional festival in New South Wales. In that beautiful rural setting, Rob Willis presented a series of concerts featuring the best of the entertainers he has recorded ‘in-the-field’ for the Library’s Folklore Collection. Ranging in age from mid-fifties to mid-eighties, the performers travelled to Jamberoo from all over Australia. They included dance band leader Bill Case, reciter/singer/gum leaf player Barney Flood, Indigenous singer and guitarist Auriel Andrews, unaccompanied singer Carrie Milliner, fiddle player and singer Eileen McCoy, the Gay Charmers dance band, concertina/accordion/fiddle player Colin Charlton, harmonica/button accordion/guitar player and singer Frank Drinkwater, concertina player Bob Payne and harmonica player Cornelius Brandenburg. In four concerts, over three days, this remarkable group provided festival audiences with memorable displays of Australian folk music and song.

Within the Library itself, work is being undertaken on improved collection management. Additional resources have been provided to audit, document and catalogue materials deposited in past years by State folk federations and similar organisations. Substantial progress has been made on a valuable collection of recordings deposited by the Queensland Folk Federation in the 1980s; and work on other collections will soon follow. A second key initiative was funding for a Music Fellowship, enabling a comparative analysis of the musical ‘links’ between field recordings held in the Folklore Collection and printed works held in the Sheet Music Collection. This fellowship was awarded to folk music collector-performer Dave de Hugard. After 14 weeks of intensive research he provided the Library with an illuminating report, identifying many and various connections between these two distinctive forms of source materials. Dave de Hugard’ s research will be used to link recorded and printed music as part of the Library’s plans to deliver access to digitised collection materials in the coming year or two.

The Library is currently working closely with the National Folk Festival on two priority projects relating to next year’s Festival to be held in Canberra at Easter. The first project, in partnership with ScreenSound Australia, is to compile and release a double CD containing performances from concerts presented during the Festival’s first 35 years, from 1976–2001. The second project is to present a main-stage concert entitled Carrying On The Tradition. The concert will feature a mix of live performers, including veterans already recorded for the Library’s Folklore Collection, and younger players performing items selected by them from the Collection. It will be the first in an exciting annual series of National Library—National Folk Festival ventures, designed to promote the Library’s holdings to broad audiences in a stimulating way.
—Mark Cranfield

Sharing the Harvest. Field Recordings From The Meredith Collection in the National Library of Australia,
CD1, Canberraq, 2001

Copies available from the National Library of Australia, $15.95

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Please address any comments and enquiries to The Editor, Gateways: dthomas@nla.gov.au

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