Last Tuesday, I attended a special performance of 18th century Scottish, English and American ballads, hosted by my English class, "The Tale," with Prof. Mary Baine Campbell (ENG), a course which investigates the question, "What has happened to the oral tradition?" At this point in the semester, we are studying the form of the ballad, which is a "story in a song," as Prof. Ruth Perry puts it, so Campbell invited her to sing for us in order for us to gain a richer appreciation of the art form. Professor Perry is a scholar of balladry and 18th-century fiction, founder of the Women's Studies program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and, most interestingly, a folk singer. She became involved with folk music when she was just a child. She would listen to the folk singers in Washington Square Park and write down what they sang. She attended many concerts and took in the music around her but didn't start actively performing until college. As a student at Cornell University, she joined the musicians' union and became president of the Folk Singing Club, a group that started out small but became hugely popular once the Kingston Trio made it big and folk music came back into style. She is now a member of the Folk Song Society of Greater Boston and a scholar of folk tradition.

She has written eight books in the field of the 18th century and is in the midst of writing two more: one about Anna Gordon Brown, a folk singer, and the other on Jane Austen. Perry tried to impress upon the audience the importance of the ballads' historical context, as she believes that this greatly shapes songs' meanings. Perry shared information about Brown's life and contribution to the folk tradition, such as the fact that Brown's 14-year-old nephew transcribed his aunt's songs and annotated the music to accompany them in order to give the ballads to a friend of Brown's father, who was a scholar. This marked the first instance of a live transcription of a folk ballad, and Brown's versions of these ballads are still around today.

Perry sang four ballads: "Child Waters," "Hind Horn," "Dowie Dens of Yarrow" and "Sir Patrick Spens." The songs were mostly Brown's versions, each telling a melancholy, morose story. After explaining a short glossary of key words, she launched into tune, producing beautiful sounds, opening her mouth only slightly as she sang. She stood very still, closing her eyes at times and gesturing almost subconsciously at a few phrases, adopting a Scottish accent and allowing herself to "be the vehicle" for the song. I felt completely swept away by the tune, my mind set adrift, which made it strikingly difficult to focus on the actual lyrics of the ballad, rather than losing myself in the melody.

Ballads are unique because of their ability to tell a story within a song, both "leaping and lingering." They leap over great stretches of time, and then linger on specific scenes. Campbell aptly compared the structure of a ballad to that of a movie, since movies often start out with longshots, cutting away and later on, zooming in on certain scenes.

Perry's ability to allow the songs to speak for themselves, combined with the historical context and background she provided for the art of balladry in general, made the music a pleasure to listen to and the stories really come alive. Although I do not consider myself a big fan of folk music, its ability to narrate a story through a song is really amazing, and it left such an impact on me that I found myself listening to clips of ballads on YouTube later that night. However, the Internet clips did not compare to the live performance I experienced, so if any of you have the opportunity to listen to live folk music anytime soon, I certainly would recommend it.