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Show French Folksinger Gives Cultural Fest Students and friends of the University were offered a special treat Friday night in a concert of French folk songs by Polly Stewart in connection connec-tion with the "Spotlight on France." Miss Stewart, a student at the University and "part-time folk singer", as she described herself, gave a varied and lively program which included French songs from the new will to the intimate quality of the French songs. When asked why she likes to sing songs, Miss Stewart explained ex-plained that they are a mode of personal as well as musical expression. "I believe folk music mus-ic offers the individual a statement state-ment of universal as well as personal meaning. The folk singer's experience is a sharing, shar-ing, giving experience," she continued. world as well as the old. The concert was informative as well as entertaining, because of the musical and cultural background back-ground information which Miss Stewart gave on each of the songs. Among the selections offered offer-ed were a song of thanksgiving thanksgiv-ing for a good harvest, sung in Haitian French; a children's song with an accompanying ex-of ex-of a traditional ballad which planation of Acadian, of Cajun, history and culture; an unaccompanied unac-companied Canadian variant of a traditional ballad which Miss Stewart explained had its roots in medeival Scandinavia and is now found in many parts of Europe; and a number of native na-tive French children's songs, carols, nonsense songs and ballads. bal-lads. The highlight of the evening even-ing was her rendition of the beautiful "Plaisir d'amour". In an interview after the concert, Miss Stewart said that she spent some time in Brittany, Brit-tany, a province of France, as an American Field Service student. stu-dent. Her interest in folk singing sing-ing began several years ago and she has been broadening her knowledge of folk music and folklore since that time. She is currently singing in a group called "Polly and the ' Valley Boys" whose specialty is old-time music. Miss Stewart sings in a relaxed re-laxed style and uses fairly simple guitar accompaniments. She has a pleasant, somewhat breathy voice which lent itself |