The Changing Face of Collection in Folk Music: A Short Lecture in Ethnomusicology

Elise Gayraud explores the evolution of collections of folk heritage. Personal collections held by folk musicians themselves were not intended to be published, nor were they always classical transcriptions of tunes. They consisted of basic reminders for musicians who already knew the tunes or for callers who regularly called dances. Personal compositions frequently are included in the collections, most of them composed “in a traditional style.” A modern way of making these collections available to a wider audience is sharing them on the internet. The potential of this new medium as a sharing device has been widely studied and has been used in the case of folk resources. [MP3 version]