UPEI to launch 'Bowing Down Home' website at several events
UPEI's Robertson Library and the Canadian Museum of History are proud to announce that the launch of a new website, bowingdownhome.ca, will take place at a series of events across the province in early April. The website is devoted to Prince Edward Island fiddling traditions.
The launch parties, fittingly being held at community halls, will include presentations about the website, refreshments, and ceilidhs, featuring fiddlers whose music appears on the site. Events start at 7:30 pm with doors opening at 7:00 pm:
• April 7: Murray Harbour Community Centre
• April 8: Vanier Centre, Wellington
• April 9: BIS Hall, Charlottetown
• April 10: Little Pond Community Centre
Bowing Down Home, made possible by a generous donation by the late Bishop Faber MacDonald, a fiddler himself, aims to represent the rich traditional fiddle playing of Prince Edward Island, as it was heard throughout the Island at all sorts of events, from weddings to house dances and community socials. These traditions have not been well represented before in either commercial or field recordings.
About 120 Island fiddlers are featured-young and old, Anglophone and Francophone-representing all of the Island's diverse regional playing styles, along with literally hundreds of different tunes. Bowing Down Home is based primarily on recordings collected by Ken Perlman, a musician and folk-music researcher from Boston. He is probably best known on PEI for his tune collection, The Fiddle Music of Prince Edward Island: Celtic & Acadian Tunes in Living Tradition.
The website project was originally commissioned in 2008 by the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Québec. In 2011, UPEI's University Librarian Mark Leggott struck an agreement with the Museum to allow the Library to host and display this digital collection. The Robertson Library already hosts numerous digital collections using the locally-developed, open-source software, Islandora.
The Robertson Library has reached out to the Island fiddling and scholarly community to help vet the accuracy of its information, and looks forward to continued input from the families and friends of those whose music and oral histories are highlighted on the site.
Mr. Perlman's new book on Island fiddling just published by University of Tennessee Press, Couldn't Have a Wedding Without the Fiddler: the Story of Traditional Fiddling on Prince Edward Island will also be released at the BIS Hall launch party on April 9.
