The 2008 CDSS Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Dr. Anthony G. (Tony) Barrand at an event held Saturday, March 28, 2009 in Brattleboro, VT at the Oak Grove School.

Tony is an active teacher, Morris and clog dancer, singer, and scholar based in Brattleboro, Vermont, USA. Currently on the faculty at Boston University, he is part of The University Professors, an unusual and inventive teaching program. His courses include “Stalking the Wild Mind: The Psychology and Folklore of Extra-Sensory Perception and Psychic Phenomena,” “English Ritual Dance and Drama” and “Folk Songs as Social History.”

Tony is probably best known, in folk music circles, as part of the singing team John Roberts and Tony Barrand who have championed traditional song for almost three decades with their “a capella” duets of English folk bawdry and balladry, morris and clog dancing, monologs and storytelling. Their most recent releases are Heartoutbursts: Lincolnshire Folksongs Collected by Percy Grainger and Naulakha Redux: Songs of Rudyard Kipling. Hail Smiling Morn is the 5th recording in a series over 25 years with the Christmas pageant, Nowell Sing We Clear, with Andy Davis and Fred Breunig. Their numerous recordings are available from Golden Hind Records.

Much of Tony’s research and teaching has focused on various forms of the seasonal display dances now known generically as Morris dancing. His most recent work is an edited collection of Longsword Dances from Traditional and Manuscript Sources: As Collated and Notated by Ivor Allsop. (Northern Harmony Publishing Company, 1996)

Our heartfelt congratulations!