Cecilia Costello (née Kelly, 24 October 1884 – 20 April 1976) was an English traditional singer whose repertoire of folk songs was recorded by folk music scholars in the 1950s and 1960s.[1]
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
^ abPalmer, Roy (1972), Songs of the Midlands, Wakefield: EP Publishing, p. v, ISBN978-0-7158-0377-6
Costello, Cecilia (1971), "The policeman and The window cleaner", Roy Palmer English Folk Music Collection, London: British Library, retrieved 6 October 2013
