A Life in Sound: The Sounds and Stories of Paul Graney

You are warmly invited to ‘A Life in Sound: The Sounds and Stories of Paul Graney’ on Tuesday 7 June 2016, 6pm at Manchester Central Library, as part of the Manchester Histories Festival 2016. This is a free event – you can book tickets here.

Paul Graney (1908-1982) travelled around the North West, and with his portable reel-to-reel recorder, documented the sounds and stories of working-class people from across the region and beyond. From the memories of Rochdale mill girls, Baguley poachers and Salford canal men, the Burnley weavers, Whitby fishermen, and Leeds factory girls, he recorded them all. He interviewed Manchester’s homeless and prostitutes. He recorded the live music of Ewan MacColl, Mike Harding, Dorothy and Ivan Fryman and Peggy Seeger. Graney recorded his ‘oral autobiography’ too, reflecting on his childhood and working life, his time tramping for work, his European travels and his participation in the General Strike, Hunger Marches, and the Kinder Scout Mass Trespass of the interwar years.

Come along on Tuesday 7 June 2016, 6pm at Manchester Central Library for an extraordinary journey into the sounds of the Paul Graney collection.

The Paul Graney Archive contains more than 2,000 recordings consisting of live music, radio programmes, tape letters, memory tapes and oral history interviews, of which over 1,500 have been digitised with Heritage Lottery Fund support and are accessible to the public at Manchester Central Library.