Sandra Kerr: 1942-2026. Personal reflections on Sandra’s impact in the North East
Like many of the thousands of her friends, fellow musicians and students - and audience members - I was shocked to hear of Sandra Kerr’s death from leukaemia on October 29.
We knew Sandra was ill but when my husband, Graeme Rigby, and I visited in August and we sat with her and her partner David Malone in their garden in Warkworth, she made little of her illness.
We shared memories and (as ever) a lot of laughs, and we hoped it would still be some time before the end came.
Sandra and her daughter, Nancy Kerr, moved from London to the North East in August 1988, as her then husband, Ron Elliott, a Northumbrian piper, came from the region.
She was already well known on the folk scene nationally as the composer of the music for the BBC TV series Bagpuss (and as the voice of Madeleine, the rag doll), as the founder of the group Sisters Unlimited (with Janet Russell, Peta Webb and Rosie Davis) and as a close friend and colleague of Ewan McColl and Peggy Seeger.
Peggy remained a great friend and she and Sandra appeared together only two years ago at Hartlepool Folk Festival.
The timing of Sandra’s and Nancy’s arrival in the North East couldn’t have been timelier for Alistair Anderson (renowned concertina and Northumbrian pipes player) and I since we were to launch the folk development organisation, Folkworks, in November that year.
Sandra was a tutor at the first ever Folkworks Youth Summer School in Newcastle in 1989, and also at the One Day Workout held at Newcastle College earlier that year.
She went on to be closely involved with a whole range of Folkworks projects including many more summer schools and workouts.
She was an integral part of several True North concerts at Newcastle Theatre Royal, the Vocal Chords festivals of 1996 and 2000, the nationwide Songmakers project in 1996, the Full House teacher training project and more.
Folkworks also mounted a national tour celebrating the Music of Bagpuss in 2002 where she performed with her original musical collaborator, John Faulkner, and also with Nancy and Nancy’s partner (now husband), James Fagan.
Nancy, now a multiple award-winning folk singer, instrumentalist and composer in her own right, moved seamlessly from being a regular student at Folkworks events in the early 1990s to being tutor and participant on various Folkworks tours, some overseas.
As principal lecturer in folk music at Newcastle University, Nancy continues to fly the flag for folk music within the institution.
Sandra was also centrally involved in major international projects, including the formation of the trio Voice Union with French traditional singer Evelyne Girardon and Italian vocalist Liliana Bertolo.
She was one of the team of musicians and educators in the hugely ambitious Making Music on the Line, a Folkworks project for the millennium which brought traditional music, song and dance from areas on or near the 0° Meridian - Shetland, Northumbria, Barcelona, Gascony and Burkina Faso - to hundreds of teachers and children from these areas.
Despite not enjoying flying, Sandra visited these countries, passing on her love of the musical culture of the North East.
Sandra published many song and tune books, independently and via Folkworks, including The Song Sampler featuring folk songs from around the world.
More widely in the region, Sandra was a well-known choir leader.
She followed singer Eddie Upton as the leader of the Caedmon Choir (formed in 1987 by Gateshead Libraries and Arts) and, notably, founded Werca’s Folk, the Northumberland women’s choir which is now in its 29th year, and a parallel choir for men, VoiceMale.
Sandra’s commitment to a range of progressive causes inspired her songwriting and many of her compositions are sung regularly by community choirs nationwide.
She was also central to the development of the folk and traditional music degree at Newcastle University, launched in 2002, alongside Alistair Anderson, Kathryn Tickell, Karen Tweed and Catriona Macdonald.
Leading on the song and choir dimension of the course, her wider insights into traditional music played a significant role in the development of the Traditions of these Islands strand.
Alistair also remembers her contribution to the less formal but hugely important elements of the course, including the gathering of students to dance and sing on Newcastle’s Town Moor at dawn on May day, a tradition that carried on for many years.
Sandra strongly believed that everyone should be involved in singing, and several former students who enrolled as instrumentalists have recalled how she encouraged them to develop their voices as well.
On her retirement, Newcastle University renamed one of their education spaces as a tribute to her outstanding contribution,
But as well as all these achievements, Sandra was incredibly funny and amazing company. Who could write a song like Big Knicker Blues without a sense of humour?
She was also a very good friend to our family.
Our daughter, Annie Rigby, remembers that when her brother, Sam, broke his leg, Sandra baked him a cake in the shape of a plaster cast.
Annie was so jealous that she plotted, when on a visit to Housesteads, to fall off a high wall so she might get a cake from Sandra as well.
Happily, her plan was thwarted.
Annie refers to Sandra as being in the ‘Premier League’ among her parents’ friends.
To very many people of all generations, not just here in the North East but across the nation and around the world, she will be hugely missed.