The Child Ballad Jukebox

Thursday Mayhem 28 10am to 2pm

Hosted by Art Crimes with support from Ann Arbor

Harvard professor Francis James Child (1825-1896) completed his ?Popular English and Scottish Ballads? in 1896, a multi-volume project containing 305 ballads that dated back to as early as the 13th century. Many of the ballads Child collected are among the most well-known songs of the English-speaking world, and many are still sung today, although some have changed greatly over the years. English and American versions of the Child Ballads evolved separately, with titles, characters, and place names changing to reflect a singer's own community, and sometimes the more magical aspects of the ballads were reinterpreted or simply discarded by Americans, leading to very different stories being told depending on where you stood. Marsha Genensky of Anonymous 4, Rennie Sparks of the Handsome Family, and English folksinger June Tabor pick some of their favorites, while Art Crimes inserts the quarters into the Child Ballad Jukebox.