fR312 PAGE 4 4/5/09 14:13 Page 1
f4
T
here comes a time to
stop banging your
head against a brick
wall and one of those
involved me and the English Photo: Judith Burrows
Folk Dance & Song Society at
the tail end of 1986. For as
long as I could remember, the
society had seemed a quaint
irrelevance to the larger UK
folk world other than in its cru-
cial role housing the collections
in the Vaughan Williams
Memorial Library. The acronym DEAFASS that Lawrence
Heath had dreamed up for our Borfolk cartoon (the Dance
Earnestly And Forget About Song Society) had been much
too close to the mark.
I’d first of all tried helping to change things from within,
spending time on the National Executive in the early ‘80s,
but eventually decided to jette l’éponge when meetings
always got terminally bogged down in trivial admin matters.
The only thing I achieved (along with Mel McLeod who was
the only other ‘song’ person on the NEC) was to secure an
EFDSS Gold Badge Award for Walter Pardon. I don’t think
anybody else on the committee had heard of him, but it was
deemed time for a ‘song’ recipient so it went through on
the nod as they assumed we knew what we were talking
about. We could equally have proposed Joe Strummer…
Anyway, in 1986 there was a legendary and fractious
AGM that I wrote up in fR43 under the heading Doom Day
At DEAFASS: Fear And Loathing At Cecil Sharp House. The
dead weight of the 1950s folk dance hordes had trounced
the EFDSS Militant Faction. After it was published – I’m still
rather proud of it actually – I got lovely responses from Soci-
ety elders Ursula Vaughan Williams and the Rev Kenneth
Loveless, congratulating me on its savageness: they
described the victors in terms like ‘grey haired old dodder-
ers’ even though they themselves were some decades their
senior! Shortly after that I let my society membership lapse,
and apart from supporting the activities of the Library under
Malcolm Taylor from time to time (and briefly becoming a
‘Ceilidh dad’ delivering my daughter to Friday night Knees
Ups) I have rarely had much contact since. Life’s too short.
0 0 0 0
Well, this year I finally renewed my membership and
should probably have done so earlier. The Library has gone
from strength to strength, the Society has been putting out
a number of really good new publications and CDs, their
English Dance & Song magazine finally entered the 21st cen-
tury under Derek Schofield’s editorship, Chief Executive Katy
Spicer seems to have really got the bit between her teeth
and with people like Sam Lee involved in running events
and Shirley Collins and Eliza Carthy as new President and
Vice-President, the place is humming. Recent exhibitions like
those by David Owen and Doc Rowe have given a new
vibrancy to the building and two of the best gigs I’ve been
to this year have been in the main hall (I never thought I’d
say that!) – Jim Moray’s in February and then Sam’s mighty
St. George’s event with Ian King, Nancy Wallace, Olivia
Chaney and Mary Epworth pictured from page 42, which
may well go down in history as a landmark. Good news!
Ian Anderson
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