From the Archives - Collection Development Policy Statement for the Proposed Bush Music Club Library (1986)

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Special Project for B.A. (Lib. Sci.) Kuringai College of Advanced Education, Marian Kingham, 1986. 

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From the Library - New City Songster - 6 issues from the 70s - Songsters in BMC Library - part 2

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Second article on Songsters in the Bush Music Club Reference Library 

Songsters in the Bush Music Club Library - Part 1 

Contents list from Songsters in our Library - Part 3 - Australian Boy Scouts Songsters  The Contents lists of these books were OCR scanned & posted on the Mudcat Cafe site  - Scout Songbooks Index Perma Thread  - see post by Joe Offer Date: 25 Nov 19 - 05:16 PM

      

 our holdings - Volumes 1, 2, 4&5, 7, 8 & 10

New City Songster - About  NEW CITY SONGSTER represents a huge input of work, spread over 17 years. This was-almost half the period that the magazine’s compiler, Peggy Seeger was with her co-singer/songwriter and then partner, Ewan MacColl. Both contributed some of their finest song compositions to the magazine. Their mobility around UK, USA, as well as their two Australia tours, placed them in venues where they would hear and collect new songs. Contributors to New City Songster included established songwriters, members of The Critics Group, and up and coming folk singers such as Eric Bogle, who went on to be internationally known for his song compositions.

Peggy Seeger is ideally qualified for the roles of contemporary song collector and compiler. Approachable at folk venues, she was also able and willing to transcribe and notate compositions submitted on audio-cassette. Compiling songbooks was a discipline which she had learned through involvement in her mother’s projects. Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901-1953) was a classical composer and concert pianist. By the 1930s, she was also a folk specialist. She compiled several songbooks including Nineteen American Folk Songs for Piano (1936-1938), American Folk Songs for Children (1948), Animal Folk Songs for Children (1950) and American Folk Songs for Christmas (1953).

What makes NEW CITY SONGSTER unique? Peggy Seeger’s collection of contemporary folk songs differs from Ruth Crawford Seeger’s song compilations in that most of the content is overtly political. Collected between 1968 to 1985, NEW CITY SONGSTER is born out of three closely related folk revivals which extended their coverage to non-traditional contemporary music: i.e. the issues of the day. 

A leading figure in both the post 1940 American folk music revival and the British folk revival, which followed in the 1950s, was folklorist and field collector Alan Lomax. Lomax moved from America to Britain in 1950 during Senator Joseph McCarthy purge of researchers, artists, educators and union activists associated with the political left. It was through the pioneering interests of Alan Lomax that Ewan MacColl was introduced to A.L.Lloyd in 1950 and to Peggy Seeger in 1956. From 1950, MacColl and Lloyd became heavily involved in Topic Records, which started in 1939 as an offshoot of the Workers’ Musical Association . From 1956, MacColl and Seeger were to embark on a partnership which would promote both traditional folk compositions and contemporary songs of love, politics or a blend of the two.

An Australian folk revival was also underway from about 1960 when trade unions, aware of their US and UK counterparts’ contribution to culture through sponsorship of the creative arts, encouraged new compositions through song competitions. Invited by Warren Fahey (founder of Folkways Music and Larrikin Records) and sponsored by the Amalgamated Metal Workers’ Union (AMWU), Ewan and Peggy toured Australia in 1976 and 1979.  (Our library also holds a Double Cassette of an undated concert at the Thomas Mann Theatre 

Mapping world concerns and social change from 1968 to 1985, NEW CITY SONGSTER provides rich pickings for those interested in political and social history and cries out for a SUBJECT INDEX. The subjects of the songs reveal the very essence of the US, UK and Australian folk song revivals, in which political motivation is integral. The 399 contemporary folk songs are ‘a touch on the times’ for people who were there (many now pensioners!) as well as those who were absent or too young. NEW CITY SONGSTER offers timeless themes and templates for modern day satirists and new songwriters

1. Cover of Volume 1, originally published in 1968, reprinted 1974

2. Editorial, Volume 1 & Ewan MacColl's Ballad of the Big Cigars

3. cover, Volume 2

4. Introduction to Volume 2 

5. Cover & contents of Vol 4 & 5

6. Cover no. 7, January 1972

7. Editorial Volume 7

8. Cover vol. 8, Sept 72

9. Editorial Vol. 8

10.  Front & back covers Vol. 10, Sept 74 - The Singers Club

11. Editorial vol. 10

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Duplicate publications needing good homes!

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Available for a donation - they can be viewed at our Regular Monthly & Weekly activities at Tritton Hall 

They can also be posted out, but would need to be weighed & have postage added.

enquiries - Sandra 

  

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From the Archives - A 1990 Library selection - Mulga Wire no. 78, April 1990.

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Club Library - Selected Publications available for loan to members, 1990

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From the Archives - Bush Music Club Archives mentioned in Mulga Wire.

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AGM Committee reports were introduced at the 1983 AGM, but the Archives report wasn't included until 1985. 

Not all items produced by, bought by or given to BMC have survived.  Not every item donated was stamped, and as they were stored or used by different members, many were lost track of.

We occasionally come across tantalising reports of interesting items - see the report on the Robert (Bob) Michell bequest below (Mulga Wire no. 43,  June 1984), only a few marked books in our library exist from that bequest, the other items cannot be traced.  The 1995 Rod & Fran Shaw Bequest similarly lacks many items. 

Mulga Wire, no. 48, April 1985 for calendar year 1984

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There was no Archives report in the published reports of the 1986 AGM.

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Mulga Wire no. 60, April 1987, report to 1987 AGM

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Mulga Wire no. 66, April 1988, report to 1988 AGM
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Mulga Wire no. 72, April 1989,  report to 1989 AGM

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Mulga Wire, no. 78, April 1990, report to 1990 AGM
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Mulga Wire, no. 84, April 1991, report to 1991 AGM
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Mulga Wire, no. 90, April 1992, report to 1992 AGM
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Mulga Wire, no. 96, April 1993, report to 1993 AGM

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Mulga Wire, no. 102, April 1994, report to 1994 AGM
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Mulga Wire, no. 108, April 1995, report to 1995 AGM
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Later AGM reports will be added as located

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Articles about the Archives 

Mulga Wire 23, Feb 1981, p.6 - ... amassing of a great many sound recordings, photographs, publications, etc ... in addition to the normal consequences of Club activities ...
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1. Mulga Wire no. 43,  June 1984, cover  - 

caption of cover photo - Photograph of Brian Loughlin taken from a television screen , found in Alan Scott's albums

2.  .Perhaps it's the onset of our thirteenth anniversary ... over the last last year or so we have received large amounts of early club papers from ... Dale & John Dengate ... Gay and Alan Scott ...Ronda & Jamie Carlin ... There are always interesting questions raised by looking at old photographs and many were raised  ... when Alan Scott gave me a package of old shots of the Bushwhackers and the Bush Music Club Concert Party ... 

3. Alan Scott collection -Concert Party in Lithgow, on the weekend they met Sally Sloane, photo taken by John Meredith

4. Alan Scott collection   - Concert Party at the Banjo Paterson Festival, 1960  

5.  THE ROBERT MICHELL COLLECTION p.6
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6. Mulga Wire no.93, Oct 1992, p.S1.  Photographic Memories, more wanderings in the Archives. 

... Bushwhackers at Dame Mary Gilmore's 90th birthday party - 16th August 1955. - Dame Mary, Chris Kempster, Alan Scott (obscured), John Meredith ...  Concert Prty at 

7. Bushwhackers at Dame Mary Gilmore's 90th birthday party - 16th August 1955. - Dame Mary, Chris Kempster, Alan Scott (obscured), John Meredith 

8. Top - Concert Party, Mayne St Gulgong, Jan 1959, L-R - Standing - Gay Scott, Jack Barrie, Lorna Lovell, Duke, Seated Peter Francis, John Meredith, Alan Scott, Jamie Carlin. Ernie 'Son' James (1892-1974) in hat & braces.

Bottom - Page S3 - Bush Music Festival, 1975, Australiana Village, Wilberforce. Band L to R, Tony McLauglin (banjo), Jamie Carlin (concertina), John Dengate (guitar), Frank Maher (bones), and Alex Bowker (button accordion) ... This picture shows a bit of interaction going on at Wilberforce, with Tony, Jamie and Frank from the resident band (Reedy River Bushmen), plus John and Alex from the club's Concert party playing for a mixed group of BMC and passing public.  The dance is the Circassioan Circle ... John Kyvett (waistcoat) ... Jenny Fraser (daughter of Brian Loughlin ...) behind to his right. The girl  with the long dark hair, in the foreground is Bridget Bannear ...

9. ... cautionary tale ... In Folk Songs of Australia Volume 2, John Meredith has four tunes from the repertoire of Ernie 'Son' James, passed on from the collection of Bruce and Reg Kurtz of Stoney Creek, near Mudgee.... Unfortunately I never met Walter Allen, nor his nephew, 'Son' James, but by the greatest of good fortune, Bruce and Reg recorded James ... in 1974. Ernie James 1 ...  Since then John has been supplied with prints of several BMC archival photographs, including this one, and Mudgee locals have identified the man second from the left in the crowd (hands in pockets and wearing hat) as Ernie 'Son' James ...

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