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A week of Ethno music in York

October 22, 2019 by tom Leave a Comment

Last week, students at York St John University really felt the benefit of the Ethno Research project being based at their institution, when they were invited to take part in workshops and two performances across the week, led by talented folk musicians from around the world.

On Tuesday 15th October, third year Music: Education and Community BA students were introduced to the Ethno concept by Lauren Spiceley and Maya McCourt from Oxford-based Tandem Collective, both organisers of Ethno England and with experience of many Ethno music camps around the world, either as participants or Artistic Leaders.

Lauren Spiceley and Maya McCourt (Tandem Collective) workshop

Their full-day workshop encouraged students to reflect on the pedagogy of the Ethno model through practical experience of the teaching and learning that often takes place on a camp, with particular attention paid to the peer-to-peer learning approach. After a morning of reflective discussion and learning songs that Lauren and Maya themselves had picked up at Ethno camps, the pair invited students to take the lead and teach a traditional piece to the group, following the Ethno process.

Catherine Birch, Lecturer in Community Music, said: “The students responded really positively to the Ethno-style facilitation methods and found it a great opportunity to develop new skills, especially for those less familiar with learning by ear and improvisation techniques.” 

Later that evening, Lauren and Maya presented a short concert on campus with tunes and songs from Ethno camps across the world, and were joined by the Music: Education and Community students to perform one of the songs they had learned and arranged that day.

Varldens band perform at York St John University
Världens Band lead a workshop

On Friday 18th October, the university was lucky enough to receive a visit from Världens Band, an ensemble of 13 musicians from 7 countries and 3 continents who first met on an Ethno camp back in 2010. Since then, they have toured as a band, performing a mix of folk and roots music from all members’ native countries in a style self-branded as ‘Transglobal Roots Fusion’.

20 students participated in an open workshop led by the ensemble, enabling them to play and sing as part of the band and, taking direction from the various sections of the ensemble, to create a new arrangement of a Senegalese song in Världens Band’s repertoire. The band rounded off their visit by performing an exceptional one-hour concert in the Chapel that evening, showing off the uniqueness of the band’s sound characterised by a “collision of cultures”. Joining them in their finale were the workshop participants from earlier in the day, for a performance of the piece they had prepared in the session, undeniably a fantastic opportunity for those students.

York St John students perform alongside Världens Band

Lee Higgins, Director of the ICCM, said “it’s great to see the Ethno Research project play a part in enriching the learning of the undergraduate music students”

Sarah-Jane Gibson, Post-Doctoral Researcher at the ICCM, said “The concert was absolutely outstanding, and opened the students’ eyes with regard to what is possible to achieve musically as a large ensemble. Whilst we are mainly here for the Ethno research, this concert was a way to reach out to the students at the university and give them a chance to engage with top class musicians.”

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Världens Band to visit York St John University!

October 11, 2019 by tom Leave a Comment

Världens Band, an ensemble of 13 musicians from 3 continents who first met on an Ethno camp, will visit the International Centre for Community Music at York St John University, on Friday 18th October 2019. The band will perform a free concert at 6.30pm in the Chapel, all welcome, while students will have the chance to take part in a workshop in the afternoon.

Poster for Varldens Band concert at York St John University.

Världens Band performs a mix of folk and roots music from its members’ native countries in a collision of cultures and a style self-branded as ‘Transglobal Roots Fusion’. Swedish melodies meet Scottish reels, English guitar accompanies Indian classical song, Galician pipes play Balkan melodies and the Senegalese kora dances over Mediterranean rhythms. The result is a unique and exciting blend of culture, personality and style.

The concert is free and open to all – just come along! If you’re a student at York St John University and are interested in taking part in the workshop, please e-mail s.gibson1@yorksj.ac.uk to find out more and sign up.

For more information about the band, visit their website at http://varldensband.com/

These events are part of the Ethno Research project, and are possible thanks to a grant from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies.

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A busy summer for our researchers

September 6, 2019 by tom Leave a Comment

We’ve come a long way since the start of Ethno Research only six months ago. The focus of our research is now much more clear (see About Ethno Research), an international research team has been assembled, and a series of case study and research visits have already been conducted this summer. The research team now consists of 9 researchers and a project coordinator, from 6 different countries. The International Centre for Community Music (ICCM) has also built a relationship with the University of Toronto, and is collaborating on a conceptual framework for the research.

The summer months saw the team visit Ethno camps in England, Sweden, Catalonia, Portugal, Estonia, Denmark and Flanders. These visits included seven pilot case studies, with experienced and emerging researchers taking the role of participant observers at an Ethno camp. The pilot studies will be published as individual case studies in December 2019, and will be downloadable from this website.

The research team have made brilliant headway so far, with more than 100 interviews already conducted with participants, artistic leaders and organisers – and many more follow-up interviews are planned for the coming months. A participant questionnaire has also been released and circulated, closing on 29 September. The questionnaire has already received a huge response, and we’re delighted that the majority of respondents were willing to share their Ethno experiences in more detail with the research team. If you’re a past participant of Ethno, we’d be really grateful if you’d complete the 10-minute questionnaire here, before 29 September 2019.

We look forward to sharing more once the research data has been analysed later this year!

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The Ethno Research journey begins

June 4, 2019 by tom Leave a Comment

On 22 and 23 May 2019, the Ethno Research team welcomed to York St John University a diverse group of researchers, organisers, participants and other stakeholders in the Ethno programme. The 15 delegates travelled from Belgium, Croatia, Estonia, Sweden, Canada, Northern Ireland, and across England to contribute to the first planning meeting for the 3-year research project.

The two days comprised a series of exercises and discussions designed to pull out key themes, which would eventually inform the main questions for the investigation. These sessions were facilitated by the core researchers on the project – Professor Lee Higgins and Dr Sarah-Jane Gibson (York St John University), Dr Jennie Henley (Royal Northern College of Music) and Dr Roger Mantie (University of Toronto).

On day one, after some time for introductions, the group were asked to consider who might be interested in this research, what in particular they might be interested to find out, and why. Unsurprisingly, the group identified a broad range of potential interested groups, and the scope for what would be of interest, and why, was even more wide-reaching. This set the foundations for the group to identify a collection of key words, and to agree their definitions, essential in an international forum, where word meaning can vary even under a common language. With ‘impact’ a recurring theme from the outset of the project, it was important to the research team that this term in particular was unpicked.

At the end of day one, the discussions continued into the evening at a local pub, and over dinner. By the morning, the core research team was able to present a version of the three main lines of enquiry this research project would go on to follow: 1, pedagogy and professional development; 2, experience; and 3, legacies or reverberations. Two further elements running through those lines of enquiry would be the history and the music of Ethno.

Day two followed with informal presentations from the three members of the group who had conducted their own research into Ethno. Linus Ellström, now a music teacher in Sweden, shared his master’s thesis which examined what takes place at an Ethno camp. He was able to show short video examples of Ethno workshops and performances he had observed, the first glimpse into Ethno practice for some people in the room. Lisandra Roosioja, from Estonia, focussed her master’s thesis on the experiences of Ethno participants. And Ana Čorić, from Croatia, who is studying for her PhD at University of Zagreb, researched Ethnofonik, the training program for artistic leaders of Ethno camps.

The remainder of the event was dedicated to continuing discussions around the lines of enquiry, and to exploring the idea of hypothetical interview questions. What three, four, or five questions would each person ask an Ethno participant interviewee? From “What were the music-making processes undertaken?” to “How has Ethno changed your life?”, dozens of questions were collected and will inform any future interviews conducted by the research team during the course of the next three years.

The ICCM team were hugely grateful to all the delegates for their generosity and openness in sharing their own experiences of Ethno, and for their invaluable contributions to the discussions at this event. Without them the research team would not be in the strong position they are in, as they embark on this important research journey.

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