Derek Piotr and Folklife

The Derek Piotr Fieldwork Archive (fieldwork-archive.com) was established by Derek Piotr in August 2022. The Archive contains over 1,500 audio recordings made from March 2020 onward and preserves diverse representations of folklife: ballads, hymns, tales, poems, children’s songs, and interviews among them. The focus of this collection is on the "non-singer": someone with no background in musical performance who can nevertheless relate a song or folkloric memory. In this lecture, Derek will walk you through the process of journeying everywhere from the United Kingdom to Appalachia to record these songs from non-musicians, as well as the organization and development of the Archive as a web-based repository.

Derek Piotr is a folklorist, researcher, and performer whose work focuses primarily on the human voice. His work covers practices including fieldwork, vocal performance, preservation and autoethnography; and is primarily concerned with tenderness, fragility, beauty and brutality. He has collaborated with artists including Scott Solter, Nathan Salsburg, and Thomas Brinkmann across various disciplines. His work has been supported by The Traditional Song Forum and The Danbury Cultural Commission and has featured on Death Is Not the End and the BBC.