The Full English launched in 2013 and is an ongoing

English Folk Dance and Song Society The English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS, or pronounced 'EFF-diss') is an organisation that promotes English folk music and folk dance. EFDSS was formed in 1932 when two organisations merged: the Folk-Song Society and the English Folk Dan ...

(EFDSS) project to create a searchable digital archive of English folk song collections from the early 20th century, thereby preserving and improving the accessibility of these resources. The project is supported by the

Heritage Lottery Fund The National Lottery Heritage Fund, formerly the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), distributes a share of National Lottery funding, supporting a wide range of heritage projects across the United Kingdom. History The fund's predecessor bodies were ...

The Folklore Society The Folklore Society (FLS) is a national association in the United Kingdom for the study of folklore. It was founded in London in 1878 to study traditional vernacular culture, including traditional music, song, dance and drama, narrative, arts an ...

, the National Folk Music Fund and the English Miscellany Folk Dance Group. An offshoot of the archive, also in 2013, was an album and concert tour under The Full English name by a collective of UK folk singers.

Archive

Launched in June 2013, The Full English is a folk archive of 44,000 records and over 58,000 digitised images; it is the world's biggest digital archive of traditional music and dance tunes. The archive brings together 19 collections from noted archivists, including

Lucy Broadwood Lucy Etheldred Broadwood (9 August 1858 – 22 August 1929) was an English folksong collector and researcher, and great-granddaughter of John Broadwood, founder of the piano manufacturers Broadwood and Sons. As one of the founder members of the Fo ...

Percy Grainger Percy Aldridge Grainger (born George Percy Grainger; 8 July 188220 February 1961) was an Australian-born composer, arranger and pianist who lived in the United States from 1914 and became an American citizen in 1918. In the course of a long an ...

Cecil Sharp Cecil James Sharp (22 November 1859 – 23 June 1924) was an English-born collector of folk songs, folk dances and instrumental music, as well as a lecturer, teacher, composer and musician. He was the pre-eminent activist in the development of t ...

and Ralph Vaughan Williams. The project has been divided into two parts. The first part of the project involved making manuscript collections available to the public in a searchable online database. The second part, still ongoing, is to improve accessibility by supplying transcripts of musical notation and texts, as well as audio recordings of the tunes. The archive can be searched by various criteria including title, collector, subject, original singer or location they were collected from. It is estimated the project overall will involve around 15,000 people by the time it is completed, including children learning traditional folk songs and dances and audiences at live gigs.

Musical collaboration

Folk singer and scholar Fay Hield was commissioned by the EFDSS to create new musical arrangements, drawing on the archive material, to accompany the project. She assembled a collective of musicians to perform at the launch party in June 2013, but after creating a set the musicians decided to extend the collaboration by producing an album and touring under The Full English name in order to promote the archive. The tour visited 11 English towns and cities in autumn 2013. Alongside Hield, other musicians involved included

Seth Lakeman Seth,; el, Σήθ ''Sḗth''; ; "placed", "appointed") in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Mandaeism, and Sethianism, was the third son of Adam and Eve and brother of Cain and Abel, their only other child mentioned by name in the Hebrew Bible. Ac ...

Martin Simpson Martin Stewart Simpson (born 5 May 1953) is an English folk singer, guitarist and songwriter. His music reflects a wide variety of influences and styles, rooted in Britain, Ireland, America and beyond. He builds a purposeful, often upbeat voi ...

Nancy Kerr Nancy Kerr (born 1975) is an English folk musician and songwriter, specialising in the fiddle and singing. She is a Principal Lecturer in Folk Music at Leeds Conservatoire and Newcastle University. She was the 2015 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards "Folk ...

Sam Sweeney Sam Sweeney (born 27 February 1989 in Nottingham) is a multi-instrumental English folk musician. Career Sweeney was introduced to folk music as a child via his parents' record collection and taught himself to play traditional pieces by ear. ...

, Rob Harbron and Ben Nicholls. On the tour, The Full English group performed folk songs from the archive and other traditional sources. They subsequently won two awards at the 2014

BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards The BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards celebrate outstanding achievement during the previous year within the field of folk music, with the aim of raising the profile of folk and acoustic music. The awards have been given annually since 2000 by British ra ...

for best group and best album.

References

External links

English Folk Dance and Song Society
website * The Full English o
The Vaughan Williams Memorial Library
website * {{DEFAULTSORT:Full English Folk music mass media English folk music Music archives in the United Kingdom Music libraries Sound archives in the United Kingdom 2013 establishments in the United Kingdom English folk musical groups Folk albums by English artists Music organisations based in the United Kingdom