As a collector of folk song and music in the 1950s, Peter Kennedy, who has died of cancer aged 83, helped to define the direction of the English folk revival. He was England's equivalent to the American musical folklorist Alan Lomax, although he never achieved Lomax's fame in the academic and wider arts communities.
Peter's father, Douglas Kennedy, succeeded Cecil Sharp as director of the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS); his mother, Helen, had been founding secretary of the English Folk Dance Society in 1911; and his aunt, Maud Karpeles, was Cecil Sharp's biographer. His great-aunt was Marjorie Kennedy-Fraser, song collector and author of The Songs of the Hebrides. His great-grandfather, David Kennedy, was a famous Scottish singer, who toured the British empire, reminding Scottish emigrants of home. So there were only two alternatives for Peter: he would either be immersed in folk music and dance or he would rebel against it. He ended up ploughing a middle ground - as a rebel who pushed at the boundaries.
Born and brought up in London, he was educated at Leighton Park, a Quaker school in Reading. He had an early taste for documenting folk music while helping to film the world's first international folk dance festival in London in 1935. At this time, however, he was put off by the genteel, classroom approach to folk dancing. Instead, he was intrigued by the technical aspects of the theatre but, as there were no suitable courses, he was advised by Alexander Korda to study three-dimensional design at the Architectural Association. This training was utilised when he became a model maker for the North African landings in the second world war.
Peter returned to peacetime England and a folk dance movement that his father was radically changing. Out went the classroom approach and the 17th-century dance repertoire. Instead, he encouraged easy access to traditional dances, lively music played by dance bands and the dance caller, borrowed from America. This was more to Peter's liking and, in 1948, he joined the EFDSS staff. His first posting was in the north-east, where he discovered a radical tradition of music and dance. He was taken to the village of Cambo, where the local fiddle player, Ned Pearson, played for folk dances such as Morpeth Rant, as well as for party games, the lancers and the foxtrot. He also encouraged the local clogdancing tradition.
When Peter moved to the west country in 1950, he used a north-eastern model to present a mixture of dances, songs and stories using, wherever possible, local village performers and dances. This was a revolutionary approach. A series of successful radio programmes usually featured Peter's own band, and he even tried to teach Princess Margaret to play the melodeon.
Peter helped the growing popularity of English folk dance with recordings and books. His publication, The Fiddlers Tune Book, provided the essential repertoire for the growing number of folk dance musicians, and is still in print. Work for the BBC brought him into contact with the Bristol sailor and shanty man, Stanley Slade, whose premature death just days before he was due to be recorded by HMV convinced Peter of the urgent need to document traditional singers and musicians.
This was in the early days of tape recorders, and Peter used a prototype portable machine developed by Scophony-Baird in nearby Wells. He worked alongside the emerging BBC natural history unit in Bristol, and was once involved in playing recordings of African elephants to Indian elephants and recording the response. He kept the blank tape in his archive for the rest of his life!
By this time, 1950, Lomax was based in London, and he enlisted Peter's help in recording the English volume for Columbia's World Library of Folk and Primitive Music. Kennedy and Lomax lobbied the BBC for a more systematic approach to collecting folk music and, in 1952, the BBC Folk Music and Dialect Recording Scheme was established; Peter was appointed one of the two principal fieldworkers. The important Sunday morning radio series, As I Roved Out, which ran from 1953 to 1958, was devised by Peter and often featured stories of singers he had recorded, such as Bill Westaway from Dartmoor, whose father was the original source for Widecombe Fair.
Peter also assisted Lomax with recordings in Europe; he recorded Serbian bagpipers, the McPeake family from Belfast, and some years later helped Brian Epstein obtain a set of Irish uillean pipes for John Lennon. He also used his expertise to record many of the emerging revival folk singers, including Ewan MacColl and AL Lloyd.
In 1975, he published his mammoth collection, Folksongs of Britain and Ireland. This collection was accompanied by a series of tapes, later CDs. Eventually, he established a catalogue of more than 450 CDs and DVDs. He received a lifetime achievement award at the Celtic festival in Ontario in 2003 and, belatedly, the EFDSS Gold Badge in 2005. He is survived by his second wife, Beryl, the three children of his first marriage (to Eirlys), and a stepson.
· Peter Douglas Kennedy, folklorist, born November 18 1922; died June 10 2006
Peter's father, Douglas Kennedy, succeeded Cecil Sharp as director of the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS); his mother, Helen, had been founding secretary of the English Folk Dance Society in 1911; and his aunt, Maud Karpeles, was Cecil Sharp's biographer. His great-aunt was Marjorie Kennedy-Fraser, song collector and author of The Songs of the Hebrides. His great-grandfather, David Kennedy, was a famous Scottish singer, who toured the British empire, reminding Scottish emigrants of home. So there were only two alternatives for Peter: he would either be immersed in folk music and dance or he would rebel against it. He ended up ploughing a middle ground - as a rebel who pushed at the boundaries.
Born and brought up in London, he was educated at Leighton Park, a Quaker school in Reading. He had an early taste for documenting folk music while helping to film the world's first international folk dance festival in London in 1935. At this time, however, he was put off by the genteel, classroom approach to folk dancing. Instead, he was intrigued by the technical aspects of the theatre but, as there were no suitable courses, he was advised by Alexander Korda to study three-dimensional design at the Architectural Association. This training was utilised when he became a model maker for the North African landings in the second world war.
Peter returned to peacetime England and a folk dance movement that his father was radically changing. Out went the classroom approach and the 17th-century dance repertoire. Instead, he encouraged easy access to traditional dances, lively music played by dance bands and the dance caller, borrowed from America. This was more to Peter's liking and, in 1948, he joined the EFDSS staff. His first posting was in the north-east, where he discovered a radical tradition of music and dance. He was taken to the village of Cambo, where the local fiddle player, Ned Pearson, played for folk dances such as Morpeth Rant, as well as for party games, the lancers and the foxtrot. He also encouraged the local clogdancing tradition.
When Peter moved to the west country in 1950, he used a north-eastern model to present a mixture of dances, songs and stories using, wherever possible, local village performers and dances. This was a revolutionary approach. A series of successful radio programmes usually featured Peter's own band, and he even tried to teach Princess Margaret to play the melodeon.
Peter helped the growing popularity of English folk dance with recordings and books. His publication, The Fiddlers Tune Book, provided the essential repertoire for the growing number of folk dance musicians, and is still in print. Work for the BBC brought him into contact with the Bristol sailor and shanty man, Stanley Slade, whose premature death just days before he was due to be recorded by HMV convinced Peter of the urgent need to document traditional singers and musicians.
This was in the early days of tape recorders, and Peter used a prototype portable machine developed by Scophony-Baird in nearby Wells. He worked alongside the emerging BBC natural history unit in Bristol, and was once involved in playing recordings of African elephants to Indian elephants and recording the response. He kept the blank tape in his archive for the rest of his life!
By this time, 1950, Lomax was based in London, and he enlisted Peter's help in recording the English volume for Columbia's World Library of Folk and Primitive Music. Kennedy and Lomax lobbied the BBC for a more systematic approach to collecting folk music and, in 1952, the BBC Folk Music and Dialect Recording Scheme was established; Peter was appointed one of the two principal fieldworkers. The important Sunday morning radio series, As I Roved Out, which ran from 1953 to 1958, was devised by Peter and often featured stories of singers he had recorded, such as Bill Westaway from Dartmoor, whose father was the original source for Widecombe Fair.
Peter also assisted Lomax with recordings in Europe; he recorded Serbian bagpipers, the McPeake family from Belfast, and some years later helped Brian Epstein obtain a set of Irish uillean pipes for John Lennon. He also used his expertise to record many of the emerging revival folk singers, including Ewan MacColl and AL Lloyd.
In 1975, he published his mammoth collection, Folksongs of Britain and Ireland. This collection was accompanied by a series of tapes, later CDs. Eventually, he established a catalogue of more than 450 CDs and DVDs. He received a lifetime achievement award at the Celtic festival in Ontario in 2003 and, belatedly, the EFDSS Gold Badge in 2005. He is survived by his second wife, Beryl, the three children of his first marriage (to Eirlys), and a stepson.
· Peter Douglas Kennedy, folklorist, born November 18 1922; died June 10 2006
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