Jordan is rich in folksongs, and, so far as I knows no one has already made a systematic study of this subject, though some writers have written articles on one type of song or another. In. this thesis I have aimed at carrying out a general study of folksongs. I have done my best to produce an Arabic text which represents the most important if not every type of folksong. This study required a prolonged research work, a deep thought and a frequent sifting operation that lasted for a period of four years. The result has been rewarding : an Arabic text of 344 quarto pages a full glossary and an English systematic study in which I have tried to cover the linguistic artistic and social aspects of these songs. On the linguistic and artistic sides, I have tried to find the metres in the various songs and to assess how far they imitate the classical example. My conclusions have been that almost all the classical metres are employed either in full, majzu' or mashtur fotm in addition to other metres not known to classical Arabic. The chapter dealing with rhyme, rhetoric and themes, has further demonstrated how strong a relation there is between these folksongs and classical poetry. In the chapter on the social value of these songs, I have tried to trace the more important customs, activities and practices that characterise the life of the Jordanian people in general and country dwellers in particular. This is a wide subject which is worthy of a more extensive and specialised study, I thought it necessary to end the English part of the thesis with a word on Nimr al-Udwan and Hilaiwuh al-Kufr-Ini. Of Nimr's poems ,I have collected only 54 but I believe that others are still extant and that their composer is worthy of a whole thesis devoted to him and to his verses.

Alfred Williams Upper Thames Folk Song: an obscure variant on a byway of knowledge which appears self-articulating. From an unexpected dawning in 1914, these elements conjoin as subject and object with, after their fashion, apocalyptic effect, creating a before of rustic toilers (who chanced to sing) and a truculent, questing autodidact who partly shared their decaying world, and an after of meaning and value occluded as much as clarified in the shibboleth 'folk'. The condition of the singers-their occupation, literacy, mobility-is explored from official record, and correlated to 'folk' song through a pondering of transmission. The consciousness of the self-anointed chronicler, variously apprenticed but musically unformed, is examined in private document and printed pronouncement. Knowledge extends through biographical particularity, specifics of the variety of the song (sung) corpus, a drawing together of the Alfredian documentary Nachlass. In that his predilections are parochial, his equipping pre-eminently literary and moral, Williams is at once aligned with 'his' district and its denizens, and egregiously removed from the melodico-verbal artefact which would, in the course of peregrine pedallings, become undesignedly the object of his attentions. The construction is heroically achieved, but results from an amalgam of postulate militating again§\:any cogent reconciling of components, such that the cardinal constituent remains, finally, prosthetic. Unaccustomed as he was to faltering in his prodigious stride,'folk' song rather finds him out (as it must find us all out): in this sense he serves as the baroque emblem of allegories of disaffection. A neglected figure of the early folk song movement steps from the shadows. Far from self-articulating, his negotiations offer the spectacle of heterogeneous musical materials only problematically peculiar to an in specific locale, mediated in the affiliations and alienations of a fractured self.

Ballads, Songs and Snatches demonstrates how allusion to folk song and some aspects of popular musical culture were absorbed into the polyphony of discourses in the realist prose of the nineteenth century, and explores the implications of the various transformations that occurred during this process, with an emphasis on the representation of the labouring classes. Wide and deep acquaintance with folk tradition is shown to account for richly dense literary textuaJity, especially in Scott and Hardy, even where they mediate their knowledge tactically. Lack of that knowledge is consonant with weakness in such representation. The sources used by each writer are identified as accurately as possible. The book is necessarily interdisciplinary, bringing together literary and folk song study and scholarship. It defines a new category for discourse analysis, the 'false intertext', i.e. supposed allusions to folk song or other texts actually composed by the prose writers themselves. It investigates the effects within the literary texts both of these false intertexts and of the inclusion of material so heavily mediated as substantially to misrepresent the original compositions. In the course of this discussion it outlines ways in which authors appealed to audiences often stratified along class and gender lines. The chapter and article extend the concerns of the book, especially Chapter 6, with the discourse of popular songs of the early nineteenth-century song-and-supper rooms. Both continue to address questions of readership, both contemporary and more recent. 'The Cheek of the Young Person: Sexualized Popular Discourse as Subtext in Dickens' overturns assumptions about the canonical respectability of Dickens's earlier work. "'With Mike Hunt I Have Travelled Over the Town": the Norms of "Deviance" in Sub-respectable Nineteenth-century Song' uses popular but critically outlawed material to problematize the position of the literary critic and to offer an alternative to Raymond Williams' model of ideological development.

Critics concerned with the ballad have seldom in the past ventured any sustained analyses of texts and only incidentally have they raised one of the most fundamental questions of all - "what makes a good ballad?" This thesis attempts to answer that question, by close reference to a seemingly homogeneous group of texts, popularly known as "The Border Ballads". Since, however, the term "Border Ballad" has often been misconstrued, a new definition is here advanced, namely that a Border Ballad may be so called if it can be proved to have had an oral genesis and transmission among the singing folk of the English-Scottish Border region, or if its thematic content and referends render it unlikely to have been composed elsewhere. From a study of these themes emerges the Border Ballad's identity as an artistically shaped yet socially motivated narrative type, since besides providing entertainment for the folk, it can also be seen to constitute a testing-ground for their shared ideology. This is at the basis of the Border Ballad's greatness, for its poetic values and dramatic tensions are born of a distinctly regional dilemma - the attempts of an aware minority to come to terms with the Border Problem, a long period of political and economic malaise lasting from the Scottish Wars of Independence until the union of the two kingdoms in 1603. The Border Ballads were in their heyday during this period, and so an attempt has been made to present them chronologically, with careful attention to the difficult problem of dating. Finally, they are shown to be most successful as ballads_ to the extent that they embody the "genius loci", and express through their words and music the life-style of a particular folk community at a crucial moment of its history.

This thesis is a sociological and textual study of the folk songs accompanying the Coobi dances performed on festive occasions in the Arab-inhabited areas along the upper parts of the twin rivers of the Tigris and the T1iphrates, within the Iraqi borders. The texts studied are mainly collected from the Euphrates region between Hiit and `Anna and, more precisely, from Hadiita town and its suburbs. The study falls into three parts and a conclusion: the first part is an introduction, which gives a brief account of the geographical/ historical, economic and cultural background. In the second part, the core of the thesis, the songs are studied as individual units. The Moolayya is the longest song form. Thirty stanzas of this type are studied. Ten stanzas of each of another four forms are examined, and this part ends with consideration of five stanzas from each of a further five song forms . The treatment of the songs' units progresses from the smaller to the larger: title, first line of refrain, second line of refrain, and the stanzas. Extra texts are included in the appendix. The third part deals with the factors unifying the Coobi songs and discusses their form and content as a whole. In this section the Coobi dance is described and a stepping diagram is dram for the first time. However the musical technicalities of the songs are not examined, as they stand outside the scope of our study. This thesis is a record of original material which nobody has treated elsewhere. It offers not only a literary treatment, but also a folkloric one, which makes it useful for students of the anthropology of folk poetry and folk song. It is also a record of a particular way of social life before it is destroyed by the progress of modern times.

Western classical composers have a history of engagement with folk song, and this is something that has been particularly true of English composers and English folk song over approximately the last one hundred and twenty years since the so-called English folk song revival. This research project is primarily an investigation into the range of ways that English composers throughout this period have engaged with English folk song in their writing, with the accompanying aim of using this knowledge to write music within this particular tradition of repertoire myself. Western classical composers have a history of engagement with folk song, and this is something that has been particularly true of English composers and English folk song over approximately the last one hundred and twenty years since the so-called English folk song revival. This research project is primarily an investigation into the range of ways that English composers throughout this period have engaged with English folk song in their writing, with the accompanying aim of using this knowledge to write music within this particular tradition of repertoire myself. Three main areas of enquiry have been undertaken. Firstly, researching original English folk song sources and thereby gaining a detailed understanding of their musical structure and character so as to effectively utilize them for the composition purposes. Secondly, exploring compositional methodologies and strategies for interacting with extant musical materials generally and folk song sources specifically. Thirdly, studying a wide range of related compositional precedents in the works of other composers, including those from other countries in order to provide the broadest possible perspective. Out of these investigations a portfolio of new compositions has been written, including an extended six movement piano cycle which surveys in a contemporary idiom the subject of compositional engagement with English folk song from a range of different perspectives, aesthetics and critical interactions.

The study is the result of extensive fieldwork undertaken in the suburban and village communities of the Pennine foothills on the western outskirts of the city of Sheffield. The approach is empirical su.ch that consideration is given to the complete recorded repertoires of all the singers encountered rather than particular genres of song based on criteria imposed by the researcher. Moreover the study does not discuss these repertoires in isolation, but relates them to their setting. An understanding of the bond that exists between a singer and his songs is shown to be of great importance, and to this end eight of the major singers are discussed in depth. The importance of context is stressed and particular reference is made to the tradition of singing in local public houses. The final section details some of the most important aspects of the local tradition including an historical perspective, recognisable elements for stability and change, the interaction between participants, their style of singing, and above all their major concerns as shown in the type of songs they favour. The transcriptions occupy the second and third volumes of the study and are classified in alphabetical order according to the performer. They are accompanied by a summary of the essential melodic features, including pitch, tempo, range, scale and melodic form. The transcriptions attempt to accurately represent a singer's performance, as far as this is possible within conventional staff notation. It is therefore suggested that they be examined in conjunction with the original tape recordings from which they were made.

Ba e an priornhchuram a bhi orm agus me i mbun an tsaothair seo mi cnuasach de na hamhnlin seo a chur ar fail agus· an comhtheacs a bhaineann leo a leiriu. Da bhri sin sa chead chuid den chnuasach seo, rinne me teacsanna (1- 47) a chur ar fail 0 na foinsi ata luaite agam, agus ansin, teacsanna a bhfuil amhrain den teama cheanna agus ar an abhar ata gaolmhar leis sin ata ar fail sna foinsi ceanna a sholathar san thorlionadh (AI - A162). Chinn me ar amhrain na coitinne a roghnu mar bhunus an chnuasaigh seo, chomh maith Ie corr-amhrain de chuid na bhfili mora, mar gheall ar an neamhaird ata deanta orthusan, go hairithe i dtaca Ie sceal agus Ie habhar an amhrain mar a thainig se anuas sa traidisiun beil.Ta me mar sin ag pIe go hiomlan Ie foinsi beil agus chuir me rornham sceal agus stairsheanchas na n-amhran mar a bailiodh agus mar a bhailigh me fein sa I traidisiun beil sin a thabhairt leis na teacsanna (1 - 47) go mormhor, agus dar ndoigh, bhain me leas as an chaighdean oifigiuil agus me ag cur teacsanna inleite ar fail do Ieitheoir an lae inniu.

No description available.

This practice-based research questions the potential defining characteristics and status of contemporary alt-folksong and its role(s) in the articulation of place through a collection of twelve original songs with accompanying written research. The thesis relates the term ‘place’ to the notion of subjectivity, autobiography and the performance of identity as they relate to geographic experience (Tuan 1997; Agnew 2005). Place is addressed from the perspective of a subject both re- and dis-located, and as such, diasporic neurosis concerning home and authenticity leads to a focus on aspects of place related to my past (Shetland), heritage (Ireland), present (Cornwall), and ‘in between’ (Augé 1995). Methodologically, songs respond to, and inform, written/ read/ listened research, with a ‘diarist’ mode of writing linking audio and text. Songs are generated through engagement with these research methods, and through field trips and recordings, influencing the directions of page-based enquiry. Early chapters draw on theories of Popular Music (Moore 1993; Eisenberg 2005) and Postmodernism (Jameson 1998), but also look to ethnomusicology of Folksong (Gammon 2008; Boyes 1993), and interviews with practitioners (Hayman 2011; Collyer 2010), characterising the relationship between traditional music and contemporary Alt-folk. Chapter 2 introduces psychoanalytic theory (Lacan 1977; Minsky 1998) in locating the three places within development of the subject. Each place is subsequently addressed respectively through appropriation of Lacan’s Imaginary, Symbolic and Real as a means of investigating the subject’s relationship to each. Chapter 3 discusses autobiographic theory (Marcus 1994; Anderson 2001), assessing the value of such a songwriting method, and aspects of musical ‘meaning’ (Small 1998; Moore 1993). Chapter 4 investigates the use of production/recording technologies as themselves sources of meaning (Doyle 2005; Barthes 2000). Conclusions, in songs and text, work towards articulation of the ‘outside’ nature of the itinerant in these aspects of (non)place, and the capacity of Alt-folksong to voice this state.