Here's to the Women Who Saved the Songs
Female Folksong Collectors Influencing Traditional Song in New England
Intended for the New England Folk Festival 2020
Saturday April 25, 7:00pm to 7:50pm, Room 224E, Acton-Boxborough High School by Chris Setari, Lynn Noel, and Lynn Feingold
Join us in recognizing the efforts and contributions of some of the most notable women who spent years collecting folk songs and preserving them for the rest of us. They left behind an impressive body of work that is still relevant today. Do You Know Who Saved and Shared the Songs We Sing?
Laura Alexandrine (L.A.) Smith published Blow the Man Down in The Music of the Waters in 1888. Roll and Go from Maine took their name from Joanna Colcord's first book of chanteys from 1924. Helen Hartness Flanders published four volumes of Ancient Ballads Traditionally Sung in New England in 1965. Margaret MacArthur recorded much of the Flanders collection before publishing The Vermont Heritage Songbook in 1994.
The era between women's suffrage and the radio was a Golden Age for women musicologists. This timeline highlights over twenty female collectors and their work of more than a century.
At the 76th New England Folk Festival in 2020, Chris and the two Lynns had planned to perform a selection of these songs from their own experience in the New England living tradition. Instead, this site documents their ongoing collaboration for research and performance with an interactive timeline and links to primary source references.
Chris Setari
Chris Setari from New York specializes in ballads, shanties and sea music as a member of Greybeard's Fancy Kennedy, Setari & McCandless, and Shantymen All.
Chris is currently working to expand the collection of maritime music at the Blunt Library at Mystic Seaport.
Lynn Noel
Lynn Noel from Massachusetts grew up with the songs of Eloise Hubbard Linscott and was designated a CDSS Local Hero in 2018. She did her graduate work on natural and cultural heritage in Newfoundland, including collecting and recording an album that received an award of environmental excellence from the IUCN.
As a Vermont Humanities Council touring artist, Lynn has shared the stage with Margaret MacArthur and received a gift copy of the Flanders collection from her nephew Nick Flanders, a colleague at the Dartmouth Institute on Canada and the US.
Lynn founded and leads the Boston Area Chantey and Maritime Sing and the Northeast ChanteySings network. She tours solo as Crosscurrents Music, with Ken Mattsson as Power Harmonies, and with the Gloucester Hornpipe & Clog Society and the Old Howard Troupe.
Lynn Feingold
Lynn Feingold from Massachusetts is a singer of traditional songs and English Music Hall songs as President of The Folk Song Society of Greater Boston and Producer of The Old Howard Troupe.
With her sister Karen Haffner, another CDSS Local Hero, she founded and organizes a Traditional Ballad Contest to encourage young singers in the tradition. The truest Local Heroes are the ones who nominate others.
She has a longtime career as a tavern wench at Blanchard's Tavern in Randolph, and has worked knee to knee with Anita Best in Newfoundland. Her late night ballad sings are legendary for their scope and quality.