Cecilia Costello

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Cecilia Costello
Born(1884-10-24)24 October 1884
Died20 April 1976(1976-04-20) (aged 91)
NationalityBritish
Occupationsinger
Known forfolk somgs

Cecilia Costello (née Kelly, 24 October 1884 – 20 April 1976) was an English

folk songs was recorded by folk music scholars in the 1950s and 1960s.[1]

Born near the

screws in Digbeth, and later as a brass polisher in the Birmingham Workhouse Infirmary in Winson Green in 1901.[2] She married Thomas Costello in 1904 and they had 8 children.[3]

Costello was visited twice – in 1951 and 1954 – by folk music researcher Marie Slocombe of the BBC Sound Archive, who recorded 13 songs of hers. Charles Parker visited her in 1967 and recorded a series of interviews. These were combined on a record released in 1975.[4]

The recorded songs of Cecilia Costello largely reflect urban life.[1] She is notable for performing songs from the Irish tradition in a musical and linguistic dialect that identifiably belongs in the English West Midlands, illustrating how immigrant cultures were quickly assimilated within the local musical tradition. A later commentator analysed her work: "To listen to that warm Brummie voice in the excerpts from Charles Parker's interviews ... you wouldn't dream that this old lady was only a generation away from rural Ireland."[4]

References

  1. ^
  2. ^ Costello, Patrick (2003), Cecilia Costello "The Cruel Mother", retrieved 6 October 2013
  3. ^ Costello, Patrick (2003), Married Life, retrieved 6 October 2013
  4. ^ a b "Cecilia Costello", Folk Mag, archived from the original on 29 May 2012, retrieved 6 October 2013

External links