I’m sure some of you will remember our 2022 feature on the folklorist, researcher and performer Derek Piotr, who, at the time, had just reached the milestone of having recorded 300 recordings for his Fieldwork Archive (fieldwork-archive.com). His Archive seems to have gone into overdrive since then, and he has nearly reached a staggering 1300 recordings. That’s an additional 1000 recordings in three years! Once you add the time spent researching, finding individuals, talking to and recording each one, travelling, before adding tracks to the archive, things begin to look a lot like a lifetime pursuit.
When we interviewed Derek, he told us: I began archiving folksong, poetry, memories, interviews and tales in 2020. The Derek Piotr Fieldwork Archive focuses on the “non-singer”; in other words, someone with no background in musical performance but who can still relate a song or folkloric memory. However, this collection features a wide variety of informants, including professional singers, descendants of musicians, laypeople, and ballad scholars. The vast majority of the recordings in this archive showcase unaccompanied vocal performances.
While Derek resides in the US, his fieldtrips have taken him to Canada, Iceland, UK, Norway, Germany and more, and he has recorded at farms, nursing homes, festivals, pubs, and kitchens. Now, in 2025, as he approaches 1,300 recordings, as part of a sponsorship behind the project this year, he is issuing a non-commercial CD titled Absolutely Not for Sale. The CD is available to order via Bandcamp and features 20 songs, a “greatest hits” of the Archive so far.
Listen to two tracks from the compilation below:
- Till the Clouds Rolled By – Performed by Alessandra Delia-Lôbo and Cameo Delia. Recorded December 18, 2022, in Middlebury, Vermont.
- Flowers of the Forest – Performed by Guy Wolff. Recorded November 22, 2023, in Bantam, Connecticut.
Derek writes:
Dear Listener,
The twenty songs you are about to hear were made between 2020 and 2025 for the Derek Piotr Fieldwork Archive. The Archive is a collection of over one thousand performances of traditional music, tale, and poetry recorded in the field as proof of oral tradition persisting in the twenty-first century.
I traveled to farms, nursing homes, festivals, pubs, and kitchens to document these songs. This took me everywhere from West Yorkshire to western North Carolina and introduced me to nuns, potters, conceptual artists, blacksmiths, historians and doulas, all of whom sang. There are two selections on this CD where the singer provides instrumental accompaniment (mountain dulcimer and acoustic guitar respectively), however the majority of these songs are a capella – performed alone and together with others. This reflects the overwhelming majority of the recordings available in the Archive — unaccompanied singing by an individual or group, sometimes that individual’s first time ever being recorded.
The human voice is the ultimate musical data delivery system – it transmits tenderness and conveys context in a way instruments can only yearn for. Though hearing a voice, one can immediately ascertain the age, health, mood and proficiency of the performer.
Many methods have been used for collecting songs for the Archive – among them, Zoom meetings, telephone calls, and, when in an impromptu situation with an informant, on-the-fly recordings made to Voice Memo on iPhone. With the exception of Frida Haltli’s performance, graciously collected for me by her mother (esteemed composer Maja S. K. Ratkje), all of the recordings present on this disc were made by myself in the room with my informants, using a Zoom H4n hand-held recorder. The recordings on this CD have been edited as to facilitate as seamless a listening experience as possible.
It is absolutely crucial that the content of the Archive is never monetized. This CD is a gift – a primer on the content freely available on fieldwork-archive.com – all Creative Commons music, generously and openly shared by the performers.
Derek’s work is undeniably vital, and his tireless commitment deserves as much support as possible.
Order the Compilation here and spread the word: https://derekpiotr.bandcamp.com/album/absolutely-not-for-sale
Visit The Derek Piotr’s Fieldwork Archive here: https://fieldwork-archive.com/