Olive Dame Campbell

Olive Dame Campbell

Olive Dame Campbell (1882–1954) was an American folklorist.

Born Olive Arnold Dame in West Medford, Massachusetts, she married John C. Campbell, American educator, in 1907. After his death, she co-founded and directed the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, North Carolina in 1925. Further, she helped in the formation of the Southern Highland Craft Guild.

After a 1909 grant, she compiled Tennessee and Kentucky folk song lyrics with her husband. These were published in the seminal work, English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians by Cecil Sharp and Olive Campbell (1917, New York). This loosely served as the basis for the film Songcatcher.

In 2008, Revels Repertory Company created a tribute to her and the music she collected, entitled Voices of the Mountain, which has been and will be performed throughout eastern Massachusetts during the 2008/2009 and 2009/2010 seasons.[1][2]

Contents

Biography

Olive Dame Campbell (1882–1954) was born Olive Dame and was raised in Medford, Massachusetts. From a young age, education played an important role in her life, as her father was the head of a private high school. She graduated from Tufts College in 1900 during a time when most women did not pursue higher education. Three years after graduating, she met her future husband John Charles Campbell, fifteen years her senior, who was a missionary school teacher.[3]

Olive was Campbell’s second wife, and together they traveled to Appalachia, where John had received a grant to study the area’s social and cultural conditions in hopes of improving their school systems. While there, Olive noted that ballads sung by the residents had strong ties to both English and Irish folk songs. The ballads that she collected would eventually be published as “English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians” by Cecil Sharp and Olive D. Campbell in 1917.[4] This collection would later influence several productions. One resulting production was the 2000 drama film Songcatcher, which was loosely based on the book. Another tribute to Olive Dame Campbell’s work with folk songs will take place from 2008 to 2010 by the group Revels Repertory Company, entitled Voices of the Mountain, which will explore the life and work of Olive Campbell.[5]

After being married only twelve years, Olive’s husband John died in 1919. After his death, Olive worked on collecting and organizing his notes from their work together so that a report of his survey could be published. Attempting to follow the writing style of her husband as much as possible, Olive Campbell successfully published “The Southern Highlander and His Homeland” in 1921, under John’s name.[6]

A year later, Olive Dame Campbell was back to work and ready to embark on a trip to Copenhagen via a fellowship provided by the American-Scandinavian Foundation in order to study the Dutch School style of education, in hopes of finding a way to revitalize the local Appalachian school system.[7] Accompanied by her sister Daisy Dame and colleague Marguerite Butler, the women spent eighteen months traveling between Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland, visiting local schools along the way.[8]

Upon her return, Olive set to work forming the John C. Campbell Folk School in 1925 in Brasstown, North Carolina. This folkehjskoler, or folk school, was dedicated to her late husband, and was based on the Dutch School style, where no grades were given and no one ever failed. Instead, students and teachers formed a community that worked together to help each other advance in various crafts such as blacksmithing, quilting and many others. This school functioned as an alternative to higher education for people from the surrounding Appalachian area.[9]

Olive Dame Campbell continued to work in collecting ballads and handicrafts up until her death in 1954. While she had no surviving children, the legacy of her work in collecting crafts and ballads, along with the founding of the John C. Campbell Folk School, lives on today.

Other publications

The following is a list of several other publications by Olive Dame Campbell (some publishers are unknown):

Campbell, Olive Dame. 1915. Songs and ballads of the Southern Mountains.

Campbell, Olive Dame. 1928. The Danish folk school: its influence in the life of Denmark and the North. University of Michigan. 359 pages.

Campbell, Olive Dame; Carpenter, James Madison; et al. 1937. George Lyman Kittredge additional papers on American songs and ballads.

References

  1. ^ Revels Repertory company.
  2. ^ http://www.wickedlocal.com/bolton/fun/entertainment/music/x362996579/Reveling-in-the-Revels-at-Winchester-concert
  3. ^ From “Mrs. John Campbell,” Southern Mountain Life and Work (April 1925):6
  4. ^ John Charles Campbell and Olive D. Campbell Papers, 1865-1962, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/inv/c/Campbell,John_Charles_and_Olive_D.html#d1e195
  5. ^ Revels, Voices from the Mountain. http://www.revels.org/Revels%20Repertory%20Co./Public%20Performance/Voices-from-the-Mountain
  6. ^ John Charles Campbell and Olive D. Campbell Papers, 1865-1962, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/inv/c/Campbell,John_Charles_and_Olive_D.html#d1e195
  7. ^ Henry Leach, 1922, The American-Scandinavian Review, Vol.10, No.1, American Scandinavian, NY, 437.
  8. ^ Marguerite Butler Bidstrip, “To Denmark,” Mountain Life and Work 4 (1954): 14.
  9. ^ A Unique History, The John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, North Carolina, https://www.folkschool.org/index.php?section=articles&article_cat_id=5&article_id=5

External links


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Поможем написать курсовую

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Olive (disambiguation) — Olive (name) can be a shorterned form of the names Olivia or Oliver. Olive can also refer to: Contents 1 Places 2 People 2.1 Fi …   Wikipedia

  • John C. Campbell — For other persons of the same name, see John Campbell. John C. Campbell (born 1867; died 1919) was an American educator and reformer noted for his survey of social conditions in the southern Appalachian region of the United States during the… …   Wikipedia

  • John C. Campbell Folk School — John C. Campbell Folk School, in Brasstown, NC, is a non profit educational organization with a mission to provide experiences in non competitive learning and community life that are joyful and enlivening. Founded in 1925, the Folk School’s motto …   Wikipedia

  • Southern Highland Craft Guild — is a guild craft organization that has partnered with the National Park Service for over fifty years. The Guild represents over 1000 craftspeople in 293 counties of 9 southeastern states. It operates five retail craft shops and two annual craft… …   Wikipedia

  • Cecil Sharp — Cecil James Sharp (22 November 1859 – 23 June 1924) was the founding father of the folklore revival in England in the early twentieth century, and many of England s traditional dances and music owe their continuing existence to his work in… …   Wikipedia

  • Liste de mandolinistes de old-time music — Le terme old time music est avant tout une étiquette commerciale qui fut créée, au milieu des années 1920, par les sociétés d édition de disques, pour désigner la musique rurale du sud est des États Unis. Les premiers enregistrements de celle ci… …   Wikipédia en Français

  • List of educators — This is a list of educators. See also: Education, List of education topics.: External link: [http://tools.wikimedia.de/ daniel/WikiSense/CategoryTree.php? wikilang=en wikifam=.wikipedia.org m=a art=on userlang=en cat=Educators Educators category… …   Wikipedia

  • Folk music — Folk song redirects here. For other uses, see Folk song (disambiguation). Folk music Béla Bartók recording Slovak peasant singers in 1908 Traditions List of folk music traditions …   Wikipedia

  • Traditional music — Infobox Music genre bgcolor=goldenrod color=white name=Traditional music stylistic origins=Itself cultural origins=Individual nations or regions instruments=See Folk instrument popularity=Highly popular until recently derivatives=Every other form …   Wikipedia

  • Doris Ulmann — Born May 29, 1882(1882 05 29) Died August 28, 1934(1934 08 28) (aged 52) Nationality American Occupation …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”