Participation Type
Workshop
Session Title
Session 3.14 Folklore and folkways
Presentation #1 Title
Ballad Gems from Northwestern West Virginia
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
Sing, play and/or listen to songs that Penn State folklorist Samuel P. Bayard collected in counties on the West Virginia borders with Pennsylvania and Ohio. Bayard worked in West Virginia mostly in the 1930s. We will learn to sing/play several of these ballads. Together we’ll explore why they remain meaningful. There will be a brief presentation about Bayard's stellar but largely unpublished work in compiling northern Appalachian ballads, with background information about the source singers and their communities, as well as a few notes on how these songs are living links in the chain of North American, British-American and Irish-American ballad traditions. And we'll very briefly discuss the Bayard Project, by Beth Folkemer and Dearest Home, which is bringing these songs to life in the 21st Century context. If you’d like to play along, please bring musical instruments with you. Members of Dearest Home will assist in singing and playing the songs, and a few extra instruments will be available.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
The Rev. Beth Bergeron Folkemer is an independent researcher and musician who studies and presents traditional ballads from North America, the British Isles and Ireland. With the band "Dearest Home" she is recording songs and ballads from the unpublished Samuel P. Bayard Folk Song Collection, and she is preparing a book of arrangements.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #2
Dr. Stephen P. Folkemer, Professor of Church Music and Cantor at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, has published many choral and organ works. With his wife, Beth Bergeron Folkemer, he has published Of the Land and Seasons: A Folk Song Paraphrase Setting of Holy Communion, a service that lifts up rural life and the care of earth, and he is a member of Dearest Home.
Ballad Gems from Northwestern West Virginia
Harris Hall 139
Sing, play and/or listen to songs that Penn State folklorist Samuel P. Bayard collected in counties on the West Virginia borders with Pennsylvania and Ohio. Bayard worked in West Virginia mostly in the 1930s. We will learn to sing/play several of these ballads. Together we’ll explore why they remain meaningful. There will be a brief presentation about Bayard's stellar but largely unpublished work in compiling northern Appalachian ballads, with background information about the source singers and their communities, as well as a few notes on how these songs are living links in the chain of North American, British-American and Irish-American ballad traditions. And we'll very briefly discuss the Bayard Project, by Beth Folkemer and Dearest Home, which is bringing these songs to life in the 21st Century context. If you’d like to play along, please bring musical instruments with you. Members of Dearest Home will assist in singing and playing the songs, and a few extra instruments will be available.
