SHIRLEY COLLINS ‘A Most Sunshiny Day’
Town Hall @ 3pm - tickets £6 : buy tickets

with Readings by Pip Barnes and Sound & Pictures by Vic and Tina Smith

Shirley Collins, author and folk singer, talks about the lives and traditional music of the people of her native Sussex and illustrates this with recorded music and pictures. ‘A Most Sunshiny Day’ tells of folk music collected from the late 19th-century onwards and how the songs were passed on by rural farm labourers and gypsies, giving glimpses into their lives on the way. It shows the importance of the work of the early collectors of folk song in Sussex (such as Lucy Broadwood and Ralph Vaughan Williams) and introduces some of the singers they found with huge repertoires of songs such as, Henry Burstow (the Horsham shoe-maker). Shirley shows how essential songs and customs were, in every day life in Sussex in times past, and moves through how things changed after the Great War to the present day with revivalist singers, such as herself and Martin Carthy. The talk is informative and entertaining, moving and funny. The music is wonderful, and the pictures and photos are a delight – and there are one or two surprises along the way. For more information about Shirley’s show, see her website at www.shirleycollins.co.uk

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