- Introduction -
Welcome to The Carrie Grover Project, an endeavor devoted to the preservation of Grover's ancestral music and the accompanying historical narrative.
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This is a free resource to over two hundred English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh folksongs and ballads sung and passed down through generations of Grover's own family. Immersed in traditional music and raised in a large musical family, Grover's collection delivers a broad range of songs Grover learned and sang in rural Nova Scotia in the late 1800s. The songs are available in downloadable pdf form, and the family stories, some dating back to the late 1700s, are presented in a podcast series that shines a light on the lives of very ordinary, hard working people and the music that entertained and sustained them.
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There is more music yet to be included on this site. Library of Congress recordings (songs and fiddle tunes), and podcasts will continue to be added in the coming weeks, so please come back to hear more.
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Julie Mainstone Savas
Special thanks to Steve Danielson of the University of Washington for editing all of the songs from "A Heritage of Songs" and "The Maine Manuscript".
- Podcasts -
The first four episodes in the Carrie Grover podcast series are available for listening. Through these podcasts I tell many of the family stories and pertinent historical information. Music is interwoven throughout, and the listener can hear actual Library of Congress recordings of Carrie singing her family songs, or more often, newer renditions by contemporary artists. A few of Grover's descendants chime in with readings and story telling as well. The podcasts were recorded at Cloud Studios in Seattle, Washington.
- Music -
Carrie Grover's extensive collection comes from several sources: Grover's songbook, A Heritage of Songs; her unpublished manuscript which I've named The Maine Manuscript; a handwritten ledger of notation and first verses belonging to Grover; and recordings of fiddle tunes and songs captured by song collectors Eloise Hubbard Linscott, Sidney Robertson Cowell, and Alan Lomax during the early 1940's. Currently the collections below are available for viewing and download.