The (Grand) Maternal Queenly Canon

Gardner, Abigail S ORCID: 0000-0003-2994-741X (2018) The (Grand) Maternal Queenly Canon. In: Cross Town Traffic IASPM Biannual Conference, 3 - 5 September 2018, University of Huddersfield. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

The (Grand) Maternal Queenly Canon Queens, both of them. Queen of Calypso and ‘Queene’ of English Folk, Calypso Rose and Shirley Collins are lauded musicians, recording and performing in their eighties. They are two female performers in ‘older age’ who make up a (grand)maternal canon within popular music. This canon goes across genre and includes women who are valued for both their ongoing contribution to music and for their participation in the formative histories of those musics. Performing well past the ‘menopausal gap’ they act as familial beacons in their respective genres, markers of a longevity imbricated and wrapped up with discourses of authenticity that in turn, speak to national and diasporic heritages (Bascombe, 2015). Their contributions to music are recognised in film (The Ballad of Shirley Collins, 2017), cemented by memoir (All in The Downs: Life, landscape and Song, (2018), documented through official websites that measure musical outputs and significance against broader cultural markers (www.calypsorose) and presented in music video. Using an interdisciplinary methodology the paper focuses on these metatexts of Collins and Calypso Rose who are both in ‘old’ age and producing music anew and, in part, through alliance with younger musicians and producers. As one chapter in a book on ‘Ageing and Contemporary Female Musicians’, its motive is to spotlight age as a pertinent theme of enquiry within popular music studies and to note how the production and performances of these women in their 80s signifies a veneration of a ‘grand-maternal canon’ which is both a manifestation and a rebuttal of appropriate ageing.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Subjects:	M Music and Books on Music > ML Literature of music
Divisions:	Schools and Research Institutes > School of Creative Arts
Research Priority Areas:	Culture, Continuity, and Transformation Creative Practice and Theory
Depositing User:	Abigail Gardner
Date Deposited:	07 Nov 2018 15:29
Last Modified:	04 Feb 2022 13:31
URI:	https://eprints.glos.ac.uk/id/eprint/6169

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