Social music is sustained by the community that naturally builds around it. Regular events and shared local repertoire give a communal sense of place to all who participate. Just as modern additions and creations give life and momentum to our traditions, the historical music of any area helps to add unique character and meaning. We have found it greatly rewarding to hunt down and revive this “old music” of Rhode Island and put it back into circulation.  

Since 2016, we have been digging up broadside ballads, historical songs, lyrical poetry, and local ditties and tunes in songbooks, tune collections, old manuscripts, library databases, and any other musical reference we can get our hands on. Our mission is to uncover and revive this part of Rhode Island's musical heritage and hopefully bring old Ocean State songs and tunes back into public consciousness. Aside from the sleuthing and tracking down of these songs, this process also often requires reinterpretation of out-dated lyrics and unsure melodies from field recordings, fitting words to tunes, and elaborating on incomplete sources. A few particularly bountiful resources for us thus far have been the Helen Hartness Flanders Ballad Collection housed at Middlebury College, VT as well as the Harris Broadside Collection and Sidney S. Rider Broadside Collection at the John Hay Library of Brown University, Providence, RI. 

We have amassed an ever-growing collection from a wide array of sources, but if you have any songs or tunes with Rhode Island connections you'd like to share please send them our way (Please note that, yes, we DO already know of "RI is Famous For You"). We would be particularly interested in any "family songs" that you may have learned from your parents or grandparents growing up in Rhode Island or local ditties about people, places, or events in your home town.