And the narrative of each historic event has been illustrated by the voices of people, mostly long dead, who lived through it. It has developed only since the 1950s, dependent on portable recording equipment and an appetite for a new, democratic history pioneered by Charles Parker’s radio ballads. He, with the folk musicians and activists Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, recorded the working lives of fishermen and steelworkers, railmen and miners, and the women who worked alongside them. Oral history crosses the boundaries of both archive and voice to become something new again: a cultural instrument. In her hands, the spoken word, even written down, conveys the vividness of individual experience, for it has the power of witness.

Source: The Guardian August 10, 2017 18:33 UTC