Tony Barrand, a traditional folk and sea chantey singer, folklorist, and Morris & clog dancer died on January 29, 2022. Barrand, 76, was half of the musical duo Roberts and Barrand, and also performed and recorded with Nowell Sing We Clear. Folk Music Notebook will honor his life and work today (January 30).
Born Anthony Grant Barrand in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, England on April 3, 1945 to parents who were part of a local brass band, he moved across the Atlantic after attending Keele University and lived in Brattleboro, Vermont. While pursing a Ph.D. in psychology at Cornell University in the late 1960s, he and John Roberts, a fellow graduate student who was also born and raised in England, discovered that they shared a mutual affinity for English traditional songs and formed a musical duo.
Roberts and Barrand performed a vast repertoire of traditional English folk songs and sea chanteys at festivals, colleges, folk clubs and coffeehouses throughout the U.S., Canada and the UK for more than 50 years. Although best known for their a cappella harmonies, Roberts and Barrand also played instruments. Roberts plays concertina, as well as banjo and guitar, while Barrand was a percussionist on drums, bones and spoons. In concert, they punctuated their songs with folktales, stories, dances, and tunes. The duo recorded a number of albums for various labels over the years and also recorded with Fred Breunig and Andy Davis and performed annual yuletide concerts as Nowell Sing We Clear. An unredacted 3 –CD set of Roberts and Barrand performing live at the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago, Illinois on January 21, 1978 — recorded by Rich Warren, the longtime former host of The Midnight Special at WFMT Radio – was release to mark the duo’s 50th anniversary concert in September 2019.
Barrand was also a gifted Morris and clog dancer, whose book Six Fools and a Dancer has been cited as a definitive work on Morris dance in the U.S. Besides teaching and writing books about Morris dance, as well as editing the journal Country Dance and Song, Barrand created the Marlboro Morris Ale — a national gathering of Morris dancers that takes place annually in Vermont. The Anthony Grant Barrand Collection of Morris, Sword, and Clog Dancing – featuring a number of films and videos – can be found at the Library of Congress’ American Folklife Center and has also been digitized for online viewing via Boston University. The Country Dance and Song Society honored him with its Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008 in recognition of his efforts in teaching, researching and recording Morris dance, as well as for his work as a traditional singer and musician.
A professor emeritus of anthropology (including folklore and esthetics) at Boston University, Barrand taught such courses as English Ritual Dance and Drama, Folk Songs as Social History, and The Psychology and Folklore of Extra-Sensory Perception and Psychic Phenomena.
Folk Music Notebook, a 24-hour online folk music channel launched by veteran folk DJ Ron Olesko in 2019, pays tribute to the life and work of Tony Barrand today (January 30) with two recorded concerts by Roberts and Barrand from 2001 and 2005, as well as a more recent interview with Barrand, beginning at 6 p.m. ET/3 p.m. PT.
Like/Follow Us!