David Oliver is an eminent musician in Hexham. He is a champion of community-based music, having established the Hexham Village Ceilidh Band (https://www.facebook.com/groups/hexhamvillageband) and the Hedgehog Skin’s Ceilidh Band (http://hedgehogsskin.co.uk/).
David’s enthusiasm for traditional music began in earnest when, on his first night at university in Leeds, he and fellow novices were welcomed to their college with a lively rapper sword dance. Working as a secondary school teacher, he went on to play and promote traditional dance music In 1993 he was appointed Education Director of Folkworks, based in Gateshead (subsequently moving to the Sage Gateshead).
In these episodes, David talks about his career, the importance of social music to wellbeing and how he came to establish the Hexham Village Ceilidh Band. The music was recorded during one of the band’s regular ceilidhs in Hexham.
If you’d like to know more about the positive effects of social dancing, the research David referred to was first published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2003 (https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa022252). There’s an easy-to-read summary of it on a website called Stanford Dance, which is full of interesting information about the benefits of dancing (https://socialdance.stanford.edu/syllabi/smarter.htm).
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