(b Nottingham, 19 Sept 1944). English folk-rock and neo-traditional singer, fiddle player, songwriter and ethnomusicologist. In the early 1960s she was a resident singer at the Nottingham folk club. From 1964 to 1969, she and her husband Bob Pegg ran the traditional club the Sovereign in Leeds, and performed together on the national folk circuit. She introduced to the folk scene the English fiddle style (comprising short choppy bow strokes, double-stopping, drones and no vibrato), learnt from traditional fiddlers, including Jinky Wells, Peter Beresford and Harry Cox.
The Peggs recorded their interpretations of Sydney Carter's songs on And Now it is So Early (Galliard), and their own songs on He Came from the Mountains (Transatlantic, 1971), by which time they had launched the experimental and controversial folk-rock band Mr Fox. Carole Pegg's singer-songwriter album Carolanne (1973) mixed traditional English influences with rock and country music, and featured the guitarist Albert Lee. She went on to form Magus with Graham Bond while continuing to perform solo.
From the mid-1970s Pegg studied anthropology at the University of Cambridge. After completing a PhD on music and society in Suffolk, she has continued to lecture on the anthropology of music and performance in the University's Department of Social Anthropology. During the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, she undertook field research in Mongolia and Inner Mongolia. She was chairperson to the UK chapter of the International Council for Traditional Music (198994) (now the British Forum for Ethnomusicology), a founding co-editor of the British Journal of Ethnomusicology and is currently its reviews editor.
Music and Society in East Sussex (diss., U. of Cambridge, 1986)
Tradition, Change and Symbolism of Mongol Music in Ordos and Xilingol, Inner Mongolia, Journal of the Anglo-Mongolian Society, xii (1989), 6772
Mongolian Conceptualisations of Overtone Singing (xφφmii), BJE, i (1992), 3154
Ritual, Religion and Magic in West Mongolian (Oirad) Heroic Epic Performance, BJE, iv (1995), 7798
Mongolian Music, Dance and Oral Narrative: Performing Diverse Identities (Washington DC, 2000)
F. Woods: A Sapphire for Carole Pegg, Folk Review, ii/2 (1972), 89
K. Dallas: Rockin Pegg, Let it Rock: the New Music Review (1973)
J. Fairley: Folk Roots [forthcoming]
ROBIN DENSELOW