Refreshing Guernsey's folk music

by GD Fri 26 Feb 2010, 5:29 pm

Lydia has a degree in music from LIPA and is studying for a masters

Lydia Pugh has been involved with music most of her life, from singing in musicals to playing her own songs.
In 2010 she set to work on a project to breathe new life into some Guernsey folk songs.
She said: "I do like to arrange folk songs... and I thought it would be really nice to arrange these."
The songs are the sort of thing often performed at the island's summer shows and Lydia hoped this may see them more widely performed.
As part of her work in music, in which she has a degree from the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts, she has arranged several folk pieces including the likes of Danny Boy and Sally Gardens.

Refreshing Guernsey's folk music _47379324_img_0806

Guernsey folk music is still performed and danced to at the summer shows

She said: "I love arranging these [folk songs] and I suddenly remembered the Guernsey folk songs."
Her first challenge in this though was to translate the songs: "The songs don't have English translations and I don't speak Guernsey French, much to my disappointment... it's really hard to write for a song if you don't know what it's about."
Lydia explained that the songs would remain in Guernsey French, but that with an English translation and phonetic pronunciation guide they would be a lot easier to sing and she hoped "anyone in the world could perform them".
Though she intends to arrange the songs for choirs she said: "I want to try and keep the tune as it is... the main thing I do is re-harmonisation, but I like it to sound nice." (from BBC)