Culture in Everyday Life
8 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 1 year ago -This series features lectures from the Elphinstone Institute Archives delivered by scholars working in the fields of Ethnology, Ethnomusicology, and Folklore. Rooted in the study of vernacular culture, they explore an incredible variety of topics from community building, legends, rituals, traditional music and dance, to language, memorialisation, digital culture, customs, and much more.
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Episodes
'A Blond Wig for Maid Marion': Aberdeen and Scotland's Folk Dramas by Donald Smith
April 20, 2023 08:12 - 56 minutes - 51.6 MBFrom Mystery Plays to the Robin Hood revels at May Day, Aberdeen played a full role in Scotland’s popular dramas. Donald Smith explores some older forms of live entertainment, and their present day revival. Should we still go ‘A-Maying’? What does Robin Hood have to do with the Granite City? And does climate change mean we should move theatre back outdoors? In 2019, Donald Smith, the then Director of Traditional Arts and Culture Scotland, gave a public talk as part of the Elphinst...
Singing Time and Singing Place
November 03, 2022 03:06 - 48 minutes - 44.5 MBThis presentation, which was recorded at the Elphinstone Institute’s 2017 symposium dedicated to memory of Bill Nicolaisen, by Elphinstone Institute Director, Dr Thomas A McKean, looks at performed and sung ballad texts in the light of Bill Nicolaisen’s ideas of time – performance, narrative, and historical – and place, beyond the beyond. Ballads and their performance express and encapsulate, ignore and elide time and place in dynamic, sometimes illogical ways, pulling and stretchin...
Building Community Self-Esteem: Advocating for Culture
September 30, 2022 15:29 - 42 minutes - 39.2 MBRecording of the 2019 David Buchan Lecture presented by Amy Skillman. Why is our heritage so important? How does culture support our communities? Join us on a folklorist’s journey from scholar to activist to facilitator of change, and back again. Through narratives of migration, motherhood, courage, and food, Skillman uses the transformative power of story to create agency and resilience among refugee and immigrant women in the USA. These stories and more illustrate our responsibili...
Words for Tunes: Robert Burns as a Lyric-Writer by Adam McNaughtan
January 20, 2022 11:02 - 1 hour - 94 MBA transcript for this podcast can be found online, here. Adam McNaughtan delivers an illustrated talk with Gordeanna McCulloch entitled ‘Words for Tunes: Robert Burns as a Lyric-Writer’ at the Cullerie Singing Weekend in 2009. It was recorded by Professor Ian Russell.
Music and the Memory Spectrum by Michael Pickering
December 07, 2021 14:42 - 1 hour - 85.2 MBA transcript for this episode can be found online, here. Music is a potent component of remembering. It works either as an unchosen catalyst, stirring up unbidden memories as a tune is fortuitously heard, or as a chosen vehicle serving as an intentional carrier of people’s remembered experience of significant moments or occasions in their lives, as for instance in the widespread ascription of ‘our song’ in intimate relationships. This talk will map out the major ways in which musi...
Leonard Primiano on Catholic Kitsch
October 07, 2021 09:05 - 45 minutes - 62.5 MBA transcript for this episode can be found on our website, here. The late Leonard Primiano discusses his research on Catholic kitsch in this guest lecture given at the Elphinstone Institute, University of Aberdeen.
Copyrighting Tradition in the Internet Age: Creativity, Authorship and Folklore
June 01, 2021 00:00 - 1 hour - 116 MBA transcript for this episode can be found online, here. Intro and outro music provided by Zazim. This recording of the 2016 David Buchan Lecture comes from the Elphinstone Institute Archives. It was delivered by Valdimar Hafstein, Professor in the Department of Ethnology, Folklore, and Museum Studies at the University of Iceland. Since completing his PhD at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2004, he has published a number of articles and edited volumes on folklore, inta...
Recycled Stories: Health Legends, Epidemics and the Politics of Risk
March 29, 2021 13:42 - 1 hour - 103 MBA transcript for this episode can be found online here. Elphinstone Institute’s Annual David Buchan Lecture The Elphinstone Institute is a centre for the study of Ethnology, Folklore, and Ethnomusicology with a research and public engagement remit covering the North-East and North of Scotland. Through interaction with researchers and practitioners, this podcast explores cultural phenomena in everyday life. Today's podcast comes from the Institute archives and features a lecture ...