Really Beautiful Company

A unique look at heritage singers based on research for a lottery-funded project to make traditional music available to the general public.

Do we all have singing ancestors? In the days before mass media, the only music that most people would have heard would have been that made by themselves, their friends or their family. What do we know of these singers and musicians? What songs have people sung in Gloucestershire to cheer themselves up on cold winter nights? When there was no television or radio or iPods what songs did farming folk enjoy at Harvest Homes and when they were out on the hills looking after Cotswold sheep? What amused people when they were relegated to the workhouse? What did the women sing?

Via the tireless efforts of song collectors such as Cecil Sharp and the musician, Percy Grainger, and her research done for the groundbreaking National Lottery funded project The Single Gloucester, Carol Davies pulls together the major themes of life in Gloucestershire and the people who have lived there. This book looks at the character of local singers in Gloucestershire ? who were they? What did they do? How did they live? What can we learn about the social conditions at the time various songs were sung?

This book will be of interest to anyone who wants to find out more about the social context of Gloucestershire rural singers, social history in Gloucestershire, or family history. There are even some songs to sing.