Chris Rowbury's monthly music round-up (May 2025) issue #118

May 01, 2025

Welcome to the May edition of my monthly music round-up.

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The English Folk Dance and Song Society Folk Radio

Did you know that the English Folk Dance and Song Society hosts a weekly folk radio programme? Well, you do now!

"Former English Folk Dance and Song Society Chairman (2006–2011) and long-standing member Mike Norris hosts our weekly folk radio programme. Mike explores a wide range of folk and acoustic music from the UK and abroad – from rarely heard archive and field recordings to the very latest releases."

Listen here …

In the EFDSS Folk Player you can also watch videos from the archive, watch an expanding series of discussions with folk talking about folk, and catch up with Tradfolk’s The Old Songs podcast.

Building and sustaining inclusive choral spaces

“Unpacking the bias in ourselves and the choral spaces in which we lead is a difficult but necessary process in creating and fostering a community where all singers feel welcome and see themselves reflected and respected in our daily work.”

Maasai dancers and singers

“These are the Maasai people, a tribe residing in Kenya and northern Tanzania. Unlike many other tribes in Kenya, the Maasai are semi-nomadic and pastoral: they live by herding cattle and goats.

Maasai music traditionally consists of a chorus of vocalists singing harmonies while a song leader, or Olaranyani, sings the melody.”

7 tips to make your choir inclusive of gender diversity

“As the spectrum of gender identities expands, choral conductor-teachers will interact with an increasing number of transgender/genderqueer/gender non-conforming/etc. singers.” A blog post by Joshua Palkki, Assistant Professor of Vocal/Chorus Music Education at the Bob Cole Conservatory of Music at California State University

The story of the human voice

“John Colapinto is a staff writer for The New Yorker and an amateur rock vocalist, but a vocal cord injury left him with a gravelly voice.

His injury set him on a path to investigate the miracle of the human voice, to discover how it is that humans are able to push air up through our lungs and through the larynx to speak and communicate.

After interviewing surgeons and linguists, John discovered that when it comes to speech, what we say is a kind of song.”

This is an episode of Conversations from ABC Australia.

Listen now …

Maya Angelou explores African-American culture

In 1968, Maya Angelou wrote and produced a 10-part series for KQED called Blacks, Blues, Black! The series explored the influence of African-American culture on American society, and featured episodes on African history, art, Africanisms and "violence in the black American world."

Singing side by side toolkit

"The result of a two year long research and practitioner action research programme with a multidisciplinary team of researchers and group singing facilitators, this free toolkit compiles insights, practical ideas, spaces for reflections and resources to support more mental health inclusive singing groups!"

Download toolkit and watch launch event …

Fancy testing your rhythm skills?

Trimukhi Tala is one of the Talas (rhythms) in the Mukhi Tala Classification System created by Dr. M. Balamuralikrishna.

See if you can follow along!

A blog post you might have missed

Complex songs and learning by ear: musical maps

I teach songs to anyone who likes to sing. I believe that music should be accessible to all. I don’t use written music to teach since I can’t assume that everyone can read music. The kind of songs that I teach often come from cultures and traditions where songs are passed down from generation to generation through the oral/ aural tradition. Many such songs are quite short and fairly repetitive without many words, so they lend themselves to being taught by ear.

But what happens when I want to teach a song with a more complex structure? I have a colleague who has taught Handel’s Messiah by ear, so it is possible! In my own practice, I’ve found that using some kind of map can help singers keep track of the overall structure of a song, especially if there are lots of repeated phrases.

Song of the month

Lovely May is a children’s nursery rhyme that was first published in the book Songs the children love to sing: a collection of more than three hundred songs for mothers and for children of all ages, ed. Albert E. Wier, 1916.

Albert Ernest Wier (1879-1945) was a prolifically insightful music editor and clever inventor who devoted himself to bringing classical music into every American’s home and ensuring its comprehensibility.

You can find the complete Songs the children love to sing book on the internet archive.

The original lyrics to the nursery rhyme are:

Lovely May, lovely May
Makes the world all fresh and gay
Sunshine here, sunshine there
Flowers ev’rywhere
Flitting like the busy bee
Little children you will see
Lovely May, lovely May
Ever fresh and gay

The words have been adapted by Beth Thompson and put to a new tune by the Australian group The Olden Days Ensemble who have released at least 30 albums of traditional nursery songs:

Lovely May, lovely May
See the blossoms of the day
“Come you all, come you all,”
Hear the flowers call.
Sparkles now the sunny dale,
Fragrant is the flowery vale,
Song of bird, song of bird
In the grove is heard.

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Chris Rowbury's monthly music round-up