Gwenda Beed Davey discusses the Library’s involvement in the National Folk Festival as part of its commitment to Australia’s folk heritage
The month of April 2003 will see the thirty-seventh National Folk Festival held in Australia. It will also be the eleventh festival to be held in Canberra since 1993. The National Folk Festival is a major event in Australian cultural life, attracting performers, volunteer helpers and attendees from all round Australia and overseas. In 2002, more than 13 000 attended the five-day program, which aims to present the best in Australian folk arts, both traditional and contemporary. The festival’s mission statement says that:
This year the festival has taken as its major themes ‘Traditional Voice’ and ‘Maritime Heritage’, and has a special focus on South Australia. It will feature performances, instruction and participation in music, dance, circus skills, spoken word and poetry. It has an Indigenous program (Winyu), and a special program for children. For several days before the festival begins on Easter Thursday, there will be a program of Master Classes in singing and instruments such as fiddle, didgeridoo, accordion, concertina, flute, whistle and bouzouki.
After more than 25 years of rotating the National Folk Festival from state to state, organised each time by the state folk federations, the growing size and popularity of ‘the National’ made it necessary to fix its location in one place, and the Australian Folk Trust took on the task. Now the festival is an independent, incorporated organisation, which has major sponsorship from the ACT Government and numerous other bodies, and is going from strength to strength. Within a short time of the festival’s settling in Canberra, the National Library of Australia took action to support it in a number of ways, before, during and after the event itself. From 2001, the National Library shared the organisation of an information tent with ScreenSound (formerly the National Film and Sound Archive). The concept had been established in 2000 by ScreenSound and, as well as displaying products and publications from the two institutions, the tent housed a number of computer terminals, showing visitors how to access their catalogues and, in particular, their folklife collections. Festival organisers—and the National Library—were delighted with the number of ‘hits’ on the catalogues.
The National Library is keen to encourage greater use of its considerable collections in Australian folklore, which it has been developing for many years. From the emergence of the National Library in 1960 as a separate entity from the old Commonwealth Parliamentary Library, the National Library has had an interest in, and commitment to, Australia’s folk heritage. The Oral History Branch (now known as Oral History and Folklore Branch) traces its beginnings from that time. Among its first acquisitions were the field recordings of Australian folklore made by John Meredith in the 1950s, mostly in New South Wales. John Meredith continued his field recording in the 1980s and 1990s, and the Meredith Collection is now one of the prizes among the National Library’s holdings of sound recordings. For several years, the Library has supported lunchtime performances in its foyer during the lead up to the National Folk Festival, among them Rob Willis’s concerts of ‘Pioneer Performers’. The Library has assisted the travel of these musical tradition bearers to Canberra, and has recorded many of them in the Library’s sound studios. This assistance has also enabled all these people to perform at the National Folk Festival. Rob Willis has organised concerts for some years at ‘the National’ using material based on National Library sound recordings, including Folklore of Vietnam (songs by veterans and opponents of the war), Australian Hillbilly Traditions, Wet Dreams (music and dance of surf culture in Australia in the 1960s), My Dog Has Fleas (history of the ukelele in Australia), and this year’s concert Roll Up, Roll Up (travelling tent shows). As well as its support for activities before and during the Folk Festival, the National Library is hosting the Annual Meeting of the Australian Folk Network on 22 April and, later in the day, the launch of Gwenda Davey and Graham Seal’s new book, A Guide to Australian Folklore: From Ned Kelly to Aeroplane Jelly.
In addition, this year the Library has supported the joint production of an important double CD set documenting in sound the history of the National Folk Festival. The CDs draw on material from the National Library, ScreenSound Australia and Canberra Radio ArtSound FM. ScreenSound has also contributed CD mastering for the project. The National: 35 Years of The Australian National Folk Festival CDs will have a double launch: the first was by the ACT Minister for the Arts, Bill Wood, in the National Library foyer during the first week in March and a second launch will be at the festival at Easter. The Library is also supporting a second new release, a double CD with a book entitled Verandah Music, which will feature many of the folk artists who have been recorded by field workers for the National Library’s Oral History Collection. There will be a Verandah Music concert held during the National Folk Festival, with performances by a number of those musicians appearing on the CDs. The extraordinarily rich content of the Verandah Music project includes Kelly ballads, the Mezon Grand Organ Accordion, Gumleaf virtuosi, the de Bortoli (Country and Italian music group), songs for children in English and Spanish, saltwater songs of the Torres Strait, and traditional singers such as Ma Seal and Simon McDonald. Both the National Library and the National Folk Festival believe that ‘Australian folk culture’ encompasses all the many and varied ethnic and other groups permanently living in Australia. This year’s festival program features stars such as Eric Bogle, Andy White, Frankie Armstrong and Margret RoadKnight. As well as Celtic, Anglo and Indigenous performers, the festival program includes such individuals as Ajak Kwai (Sudan), King Marong (Senegambia), George ‘Toofie’ Christian (Norfolk Island), and groups such as the Alma Latino South American choir, the Macedonian dance ensemble Ilinden, the Tango Malonglo dance group and Virmalised—Northern Lights—Estonian folk dancers. The Library’s Digital and Audio Preservation Unit houses some of the earliest field recordings made in Australia among communities speaking languages other than English, notably those recorded by Peter Parkhill with Cretan, Greek and Macedonian musicians in the 1970s. Since then, numerous oral history and folklife projects have been sponsored by the Library among diverse ethnic and language groups. The projects include the ‘Cultural Context of Unemployment’ (Aboriginal, South-East Asian refugees) the ‘Greek-Australian Oral History and Folklife Project’, Diana Giese’s interviews with Chinese–Australians, Khmer and Polish oral history projects, and Barry York’s recordings of Maltese–Australian folklife and social history. In 2002, the National Folk Festival featured a special concert, sponsored by the National Library, that included these Maltese performers presenting the traditional style of ghana or improvised songs on contemporary topics.
The National Folk Festival has become increasingly interested in presenting performers who represent continuous family or community folk traditions, such as is the focus of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, held every year in Washington DC, to honour the tradition bearers of the nation. The National Library is also anxious to broaden its folklife collections to include non-musical traditions, such as storytelling, handcraft and traditional occupations. The cooperation between the two ‘Nationals’ has a bright future. GWENDA BEED DAVEY was a Harold White Fellow at the National Library in 1989. More information about the National Folk Festival can be found on its web site, www.folkfestival.asn.au, or by email on info@folkfestival.asn.au |
||||||||||||||
| Back to NLA News Index | Back to April Issue | Back to NLA Home Page |
To order a particular issue of
the NLA News e-mail nlasales@nla.gov.au
or join the Friends of the National
Library of Australia and receive a copy each month by mail.