Folksongs and Folk Revival

In 1965, the classically trained musician and composer Kenneth Peacock published a three-volume work, Songs of the Newfoundland Outports, based on six years of collecting folksongs in that province on behalf of the National Museum of Canada. Folksongs and Folk Revivial provides a critical review of Peacock's Newfoundland fieldwork to better understand his motivations for creating Outports and his treatment of the materials he collected.

The study considers the cultural politics of the day, such as National Museum policies and directions, and, in particular, how the growth of the Canadian folk revival during the 1950s and 1960s influenced his work. It considers the dynamic relations between Peacock and other individuals who had a vested interest in documenting and presenting Newfoundland culture. New knowledge regarding Peacock's life and times facilitates our understanding of this man's immense contribution to both Newfoundland and Canadian folklore scholarship while at the same time allowing researchers to make greater use of the materials he so diligently collected.

Anna Kearney GuignÉ is an independent folklorist with a special interest in ethnomusicology. She received her Ph.D., with distinction, from Memorial University of Newfoundland in 2004. She has written extensively on Newfoundland folksong and folksong collectors and curated the exhibit Maud Karpeles (1885-1976): A Retrospective of Her Newfoundland Fieldwork, 1929 and 1930 for the International Council for Traditional Music World Conference. The Forgotten Songs of the Newfoundland Outports: As Taken from Kenneth Peacock’s Newfoundland Field Collection, 1951-1961 was published in 2016 by University of Ottawa Press and the Canadian Museum of History, with music transcripts re-edited by Evelyn Osborne. Kearney GuignÉ resides in Paradise, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.