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Choir that he’d started. Folk choirs were not something I’d done or even thought I wanted to be involved with, but I got the bug!” After six years with Caedmon, Sandra co-founded Werca’s Folk, her all- women’s folk choir, over twenty years ago. “I’d done voice work- shops in London in the women’s movement, where women wanted to rediscover their voices and express what was happening in their lives through songwriting, and then Folkworks and the choir gave opportunities to use the techniques in different contexts and differ- ent ways. I don’t believe in auditioning people, but I knew that with nurturing, support and training, people who have minimal formal music training can develop into confident, expressive singers. It’s wonderful! I love to see that!”
For 21 years, Sandra has led the folk choir workshops at the Sid- mouth festival. With well over 100 people every year, it’s a highlight for many. Chatting to choir members after their showcase perfor- mance last year, the superlatives about Sandra’s leadership came thick and fast: “brilliant… gets better every year… makes us feel we can all sing… great sense of humour… superb.”
R
ight from those early days with MacColl and Seeger, Sandra has written songs. “The attitude with The Crit- ics Group was that traditional songs were all new at one point, and we need songs for today. Songs that were very topical only lasted five minutes, but we
learned our craft. Writing songs that are funny, informative, mov- ing was a really useful skill. We used the tradition as a source for ideas and themes – love, loss, grief, celebration.”
Sandra has written a great many children’s songs, but also songs with a feminist perspective, including Emily Davison and Emily Inspires Us Yet, about the suffragette from a Northumberland family who died at the 1913 Derby. These, as well as songs such as No Going Back, We Were There, The Maintenance Engineer and the first song she wrote, What’ll The Neighbours Say have been sung by Sisters Unlimited or with Werca’s Choir or by Sandra herself on her last solo CD, Yellow, Red And Gold, released back in 2000. Now working part- time, and with retirement from the university looming, Sandra hopes to spend more time writing and performing.
Out of Folkworks grew the Newcastle folk degree. Alistair Anderson, who instigated the course, asked each of the initial tutors, “What should they learn? What are we going to teach them?” San- dra was clear that it was not about listening to the current stars of the folk scene, and for many years led the course that all first year students take: Traditions Of These Islands. “I used recordings from as far back as I could – Joseph Taylor, field recordings like those on Topic’s The Voice Of The People. What they do with them, we can’t determine but they all hear it. They need to understand the music, where it comes from, who carried it on, what its disciplines are, and what the demands are. We make them aware that they have a responsibility to the music, because countless numbers of people have carried it on. Nobody knows about them, they were never paid for it, they need to have respect. I’m not bothered if the students become folk stars, or headline festivals; it’s not what the course is about. But I do care about our students going out with confidence in, and respect for, the material they’ve come across.”
sandrakerr.net Leading her choir at Sidmouth F
Photo: Derek Schofield
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