Douglas Kennedy

b. 1893    d. 1988

A member of the same line as Marjorie Kennedy Fraser, Douglas Kennedy, took over as the Director of the English Folk Dance Society (EFDS, later to amalgamate with the Folk-Song Society to become the English Folk Dance and Song Society or EFDSS) after its founder Cecil Sharp’s death in 1924 and held the post until 1961. He had been one of Sharp’s first pupils and the author of one of the most important early guides on English folk-dancing. He married Helen Karpeles, who was Honorary Secretary of the EFDS from its inception until 1922. Her sister Maud accompanied Sharp when he went song-collecting in the Appalachians, later collaborated with A.H. Fox Strangways on the first major biography of Sharp (Cecil Sharp, 1933), and wrote her own biography of Sharp.

Kennedy did much to develop the repertory and style of English folk dance and worked to reintroduce a participatory social base into the activity. “This required an 'easier’ repertoire of traditional dances, with some imports of American square dances; the dance 'caller’ to explain the dance movements (another American import); and folk dance bands in the style of the London-based The Folk Dance Band, whose members were Nan and Brian Fleming-Williams, Helen and Douglas Kennedy.” He retired from the EFDSS in 1986.

His son was Peter Kennedy the influential folk music collector who, no doubt, was responsible for the recordings presented here which date from the early 1950s.

See:

http://sounds.bl.uk/View.aspx?item=021M-C0090X0079XX-0100V0.xml