Book Description

Beaver Island House Party examines the unique musical legacy of Beaver Island, the largest island in Lake Michigan, through discussions of past and present musical contexts, repertoires, collectors, and musicians; the accompanying CD includes eleven historic field recordings never before available except in archives and fourteen contemporary studio recordings. Settled by Irish immigrants in the nineteenth century, Beaver Island remains 35% Irish. The immigrant repertoire of Irish ballads, jigs, and reels has been supplanted over time by local songs, country western, and square and round dance tunes. The island's musical past has been preserved in field recordings by the late Ivan Walton, professor of English at the University of Michigan, and the prolific collector of American folk music, Alan Lomax, then with the Archive of Folk Song at the Library of Congress. The late Helen Collar, a summer visitor who studied the history of the Beaver Island Irish, also gathered extensive documentation. Few recordings of Michigan traditional music exist, and fewer still have book-length treatment of the musicians who created and played the tunes and the collectors who documented and preserved them. Beaver Island House Party provides a rare opportunity to examine the musical culture of a fascinating and distinctive island community.