It's Our Little Club (comment)

Subject: RE: It's Our Little Club (comment)
From: GUEST,Sparticus
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 08:32 AM

I don't know about "the thousands of paths they get led down" but I know one in particular from what I've read.

It's called, "The Garden Path".

Subject: RE: It's Our Little Club (comment)
From: Lizzie Cornish
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 08:31 AM

Quick! Someone send for....

The New Scorpion Band.....FAST! :0)

Subject: RE: It's Our Little Club (comment)
From: Lizzie Cornish
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 08:29 AM

>>>It's spelt Sharp.<<<

No..it isn't.....


SHARP

;0)

Subject: RE: It's Our Little Club (comment)
From: Lizzie Cornish
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 08:27 AM

Ooh...haven't you read about Maud Karpeles, Ruth/Joan...I reckon Cecil had a twinkle in his eye you know!


Read what you want, take away what you want....criticise what you want.

I love Sam's sites. Love them.

BUT I told him that by standing by me, he'd bring down the hatred and the furore of the Folk Police upon his head.....and er...unless I'm very much mistaken, that's exactly what is now happening. "Use him to get at her" sort of thing....

Thankfully, his world is a million miles away from yours. It's a world that is there for no other reason than to support and include....and for folk who want to enjoy it all to enjoy. That's all.

If you don't like his pages, then don't read them. Loads of people do read them though, and enjoy the thousands of paths they get led down, by all the links to other sites he's put in everywhere...I've never seen pages with so many links in....

I get lost in the maze of them all, but I also get lost in a world of beauty and interest and education...A world of so many thoughts and pictures and memories. That's what I love about them, they're magical. You start off on one page and never know where you'll end up, because you find so many different paths...or at least, you do if your mind is open to them all.

Heck, I was off reading about Scott Of The Antarctic last night...and I read his final letter to his wife....So sad! I never would have read that, if I hadn't just 'found' it on Sam's pages...

I Love his sites dearly.

But...each to their own, just as with music. :0)

Folk This is good too.... :0)

Subject: RE: It's Our Little Club (comment)
From: Folkiedave
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 08:19 AM

It's spelt Sharp.

Now dear old Cecil got on his bike. Since you and he have so much in common, why don't you copy him?

Subject: RE: It's Our Little Club (comment)
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 08:03 AM

But lizzie, Sam also cuts and pastes whole swathes of content from other sites. Like the Cecil Sharp stuff, and like all the content on the Thomas Hardy page...and a lot of the information about towns and villages.

Sam may have created them "for folk to take away things they may want to", but that doesn't mean that the people who originally wrote all the content felt the same way...Sam does not credit them for their work, which means he's implicitly taking credit for it. And that's stealing. If you're going to use someone else's work, you MUST credit them, and ask permission, too.

Not sure how plagiarism is 'my club', but I was married to a journalist for 15 years as well as having a fair bit of my own work published, and learned to be a bit touchy about people taking credit for all the time and research you invest in your work just because they know how to use "copy" and "paste".

Cecil was a lad in all sorts of ways? Not sure what you mean, but as I suspect your knowledge of him is based exclusively on those two paragraphs in the link you provided, I don't suppose you do either...

Subject: RE: It's Our Little Club (comment)
From: Lizzie Cornish
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 08:01 AM

I think I was busy riding out one morning with Sharpe..... :0)

Oh...isn't folk music FUN! I LOVE it! :0)

Subject: RE: It's Our Little Club (comment)
From: Lizzie Cornish
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 08:00 AM

>>>That's why it's called 'As I Rode Out One Morning' <<<


Woops! Nope....It's er actually called....

'As I CYCLED Out On A May Morning'....



Falls over sideways laughing at daft brain....Won't be able to live that one down for a while! Heehee! ;0)

Subject: RE: It's Our Little Club (comment)
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 07:55 AM

Well said, jacqui.

Subject: RE: It's Our Little Club (comment)
From: Lizzie Cornish
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 07:54 AM

>>>Admittedly there's no attribution on the Albion Heart page, so I can understand why you might have been under the misapprehension that Sam wrote it. <<<

Ooh..I've come over all dreamy now...all this talk of Sharpe and suddenly I'm away with the Chosen Men and John Tams...

I think Cecil was quite a lad to be honest Joan, in all sorts of ways...

Actually, that page isn't from Albion Heart, that's an entirely separate site for Cecil and Ashley. That's why it's called 'As I Rode Out One Morning'

Unlike you though I know how Sam does the pages. They're merely there for folk to take away things they may want to...filled with thousands of links, on and about folk music, dance, history, films...all sorts.

The great thing is that some of his sites are now being used by folk clubs. The Rainbow Chaseers one in particular.

I know how hard he works making them all, and the dedication he puts into them all too.

Sam's not in 'your club' either though. Thank heavens! ;0)

THIS is Albion Heart Joan...Ruth whoever you are:

Albion Heart

And this is Albion Heart's Myspace page:

Albion Heart Myspace

Glad to be of service... :0)

And now...I'm back to Sharpe and Over The Hills and Far Away....

Subject: RE: It's Our Little Club (comment)
From: jacqui.c
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 07:47 AM

I've been reading most of this thread with interest.

I came into folk music late - only about seven years ago, when I was in my fifties. The first group that I belonged to tended to be rather insular and the same stuff was played and sung week after week, after week. It was the Mudcat that made me realise that there was a much wider world of folk available.

Since then I have moved to another continent and started learning American songs as well as continuing to find more traditional English and modern folk. I have travelled, on trips to the UK, to quite a number of folk clubs where I have been made very welcome and have sung a mix of the songs I have learned. I quite often get people coming up afterwards, asking about the American stuff, and occasionally wanting words and music.

Nowhere have I, personally, found evidence of the Folk Police. I have been gratified to listen to a number of young (teens and twenties) performers who are carrying on the tradition and supplementing that tradition with their own work, totally different from the angst ridden tomes that I've heard at acoustic sessions.

I've recently managed to get to two sessions at Cecil Sharp House and, again, saw no evidence of any restriction on what was performed. Again, than modern American folk that I sung got favourable comments and I was given the chance to sing two songs in an evening.

I agree that, when we go to a new (for us) venue, we should do a lot more listening than talking and should, out of respect for those who have worked to make a club what it is, not try to impose our own attitudes and behaviours on the regular. All the clubs that I have attended are most welcoming to newcomers but I can see where that welcome would wear thin if they got the impression that they were being seen as dinosaurs by a visitor.

It all seems, IMHO, to come down to a matter of respect for those who have kept the tradition alive through some fairly dry years and to respect those who are coming up with a will and a passion to carry it through to new generations. From my experience Folk tends to attract a more intelligent group than does a lot of other music - it ain't just background to stop the silence. Maybe that is a bit elitist, but it tends to be true, look around at your own group. I've seen in on two continents and in many situations.

It is also a genre that tends to be less faddy that the mainstream popular music. Artistes who were popular in the past still have a following. Whilst there is not a lot of money in folk music good performers will survive for decades, being welcomed into clubs with open arms. I'm thinking right now of two, Harvey Andrews and Allan Taylor, still going strong after many years. Martin Carthy has changed the way that traditional folk music sounds, but it is still folk music and he and Norma are always well received.

We can all learn from each other and new additions can be a breath of fresh air to the scene. However that does not mean that those who do not find them to their taste should be decried anymore than those who find the more established performers a little outdated. Different strokes for different folks.

Subject: RE: It's Our Little Club (comment)
From: Rusty Dobro
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 07:47 AM

Yipee! I'm a real 'catter now! Words of praise from Scrump! Now where's that Martin Gibson?

Subject: RE: It's Our Little Club (comment)
From: GUEST,Dan
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 07:45 AM

I may have come a little late to this thread, but I utterly disagree with the sentence above -

"If a young person is trying to find their way in to folk and they hear Seth/Kate/Bellowhead/Julie Fowlis then it opens a door which may start them off on a journey; give them a June Tabor album and they'll run away and never listen folk again. There's room for everybody, even on Mudcat!"

Don't patronise young people - a June Tabor album will open far more doors that anything Kate Rusby has recorded. For teenagers, un-easy listening is good and they are far more likely than older types to persevere with the stuff that takes work to appreciate (be it death metal, goth, gangsta rap, modern classical music or folk). Frankly you're doing us a disservice by suggesting that the young can only swallow frothy inconsequential music (i.e. Seth Lakeman, Kate Rusby) or gimmick-laden bilge (Bellowhead) and not the harder stuff.

THAT is what is wrong with folk music right now - not crediting the audience with any intelligence.

Subject: RE: It's Our Little Club (comment)
From: Scrump
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 07:39 AM

Good one, Rusty Dobro :-)

(The song I meant, not the affair - although I wouldn't mind some of that... :-))

Subject: RE: It's Our Little Club (comment)
From: Folkiedave
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 07:33 AM

I thought you were going to say Kate Rusby there....

Subject: RE: It's Our Little Club (comment)
From: Rusty Dobro
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 07:31 AM

Thanks for that thought, Sparticus. As a rule, the talent with which the Lord has seen fit to bless me has had an automatic audience-limiting effect, but perhaps it's time for 'onwards and upwards.' Next stop controversy at the Folk Awards, a long descent into the living hell which is real ale addiction, and an affair with Kate Moss.

I'm off to practise another song.

Subject: RE: It's Our Little Club (comment)
From: GUEST,Sparticus
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 07:17 AM

Great stuff Rusty Dobro. Copywrite it.

Subject: RE: It's Our Little Club (comment)
From: Rusty Dobro
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 07:11 AM

AS I WAS A-PRACTICING…                  Tune: 'Streets of Laredo'

As I was a-practicing 'Stairway to Heaven',
As I was a-practicing Zeppelin one day,
I turned up the volume to way past eleven,
Plugged in my old Fender and started to play.

Then forty bars in, I came to my senses,
Playing this stuff is a bit of a joke,
I ought to be out in a pub in the country,
I know I'll be happier playing some folk.

So I sold my electric and bought an acoustic,
Learned some new chords, C, G7, A,
I listened to records by Carthy and Swarbrick,
And found an old folk song I wanted to play.

So I learnt all the words of this famous old folk song,
All about fishermen out on the sea,
Then proudly I carried my nice new acoustic,
To a pub where the music was legendary.

I sat down by the fire with the rest of the players,
Suddenly everyone's glaring at me,
'You can't have that chair, it's reserved for old Charley,
He's sat there each night since 1903.'

So I sat down again at the end of the bar-room,
Waited my time to join in and play,
It got to my turn so I got up and started
My song about fishermen out in the bay.

I finished my song and I sat down to silence,
Somebody said, 'Can't you play it in A?
In the seventeenth verse you sang 'nets', we sing 'rigging',
And we play it slower 'cos we like it that way.'

And the chorus we play is a little bit different,
But ours is the right one, and yours is just wrong,
You can't come in here with your brand new acoustic,
And make such a mess of our favourite song.

Well I never went back to that pub in the country,
The pub where the music is precious and rare,
I found me a pub where there's squit on a Thursday,   
Where I can play rubbish, and I just don't care.


(In Suffolk, 'squit' = 'rubbish')

Subject: RE: It's Our Little Club (comment)
From: GUEST,Bystander
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 07:06 AM

Forgot to say thanks to Shimrod - your words are much appreciated!

Subject: RE: It's Our Little Club (comment)
From: Bee
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 07:02 AM

I didn't mean to downplay Father Rankin's work, btw, just wanted to correct any impression that the culture was artificially recreated. I'm trying to remember if this was the same priest who wrote a highly interesting history of my area, including a lot of genealogy. I don't know how accurate he was otherwise, but he managed to attribute my brother's children to my uncle, and leave out my father entirely.

Subject: RE: It's Our Little Club (comment)
From: GUEST,Bystander
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 07:02 AM

Hey - that link looks familiar Ruth! I haven't checked it out, but I'd be guessing that that was the blurb for the Cecil Sharp conference in Ilminster a few years ago. Interesting conference - I woz there!!!

Subject: RE: It's Our Little Club (comment)
From: Folkiedave
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 07:01 AM

When in 1903 Sharp 'discovered' so much new folksong material in Somerset........ In a way he was a 'johnny-come-lately'.......

From David Sutcliffe's page on Sharp here

My! Oh! my! I never realised Sharp and Mrs. Route had so much in common.

Subject: RE: It's Our Little Club (comment)
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 06:59 AM

Sorry - I forgot to add the main point! Which is that a couple of paragraphs originally put together for a one-off event are not going to give you the full biographical picture on someone as colourful and interesting as Sharp. So it might be a good idea to seek out some sources which delve a little deeper than the Albion Heart page if you want to really find out who Sharp was.

Subject: RE: It's Our Little Club (comment)
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 06:50 AM

So as with many revivals, Bee, it was a bit of survival and a bit of revival...that makes sense. Thank you.

Lizzie, I'm not surprised that your link from Albion Heart didn't really give you the full picture about Sharp's controversial reputation - the text would appear to have been lifted from this website:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/hazelmere/sharp/history.htm#Cecil%20Sharp

which seems to have been put together for this event:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/hazelmere/sharp/

Admittedly there's no attribution on the Albion Heart page, so I can understand why you might have been under the misapprehension that Sam wrote it.

Subject: RE: It's Our Little Club (comment)
From: Bee
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 06:40 AM

Jimlad and Ruth Archer: it's true there was quite an effort at revival, but there already was 'survival'. I was a child in the fifties and sixties. My grandmother attended 'The Mod' every year during that time, that I remember; she was a Gaelic speaker and loved the event. Sunday afternoons at our home were considered a bit unbearable by us kids, because 'The Galligackits' were on the radio for an hour, old fellas singing and speaking Gaelic, which my Dad loved to listen to, and then we had to go to church! And there were plenty fiddlers around before Fr. Rankin 'revived' 'em.

Up the road were a few families who didn't speak English, or not much of it. I was the same age as one boy who didn't start school until he was seven (1958), and he spoke no English at all. My Grandmother, who was a teacher, took him into her class and taught him until he could manage the English. Three of my grandparents were Gaelic speakers.

Glendale, when I was a visitor there around 1980 or 81, appeared to be inhabited by more American Celtic scholars (very pleasant ones, to be sure) than local people, but that impression was no doubt fueled by hanging about with musicians.

Subject: RE: It's Our Little Club (comment)
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 06:38 AM

Hooray for 'Bystander' - thoughtful, articulate and well-informed - unlike some people I could mention!

Subject: RE: It's Our Little Club (comment)
From: GUEST,Bystander
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 06:35 AM

Great minds think alike?

Subject: RE: It's Our Little Club (comment)
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 06:28 AM

Snap, Bystander!

Subject: RE: It's Our Little Club (comment)
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 06:28 AM

I hereby publicly reserve the term "The Folk Police" to use for my next group... we are gonna wear those little costume black British Bobby hats... and probably fake black moustaches too!

Subject: RE: It's Our Little Club (comment)
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 06:26 AM

">>One even wonders what the state of English folk culture would be today without "folk police" like Cecil Sharp and his ilk.<<


I don't think Cecil was in the folk police. He was just a collecter, albeit an avid one."

Lizzie, you need to brush up on your folk history. Sharp had very prescriptive ideas about folk music and dance. I don't know where you got this idea that he's have been "thrilled to bits" with the like of Fairport and SoH - his approach was all about preserving the tradition in an untainted form. If that ain't folk police, what is? Look at his fall-out with Mary Neal. She had a relaxed approiach to her Esperance girls developing the morris dances they'd learned, while Sharp's approach was all about tradition, discipline and uniformity. He thought that the dances should remain exactly as he collected them, without development.

So let's hear it for Cecil Sharp: the first chief of the folk police. On the other hand, of course, we wouldn't have many of the songs and the dances without him.

Subject: RE: It's Our Little Club (comment)
From: GUEST,Bystander
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 06:22 AM

"I don't think Cecil was in the folk police. He was just a collecter, albeit an avid one"
Hmmm ... methinks you know very little of the subject in that case Lizzie ... damned by your own words. Some would very definitely say that Cecil WAS the Commissioner of the first Folk Police. Do you know anything at all about the schisms and fights in the "folk" collecting world in the early 1900's at all? I somehow doubt it -

You keep pronouncing on the fact that... our music is dying out ... if the youngsters don't take it on board then....etc etc A very Victorian attitude! The early folk song collectors in the mid 19th century were all of the opinion that the music was dying out with the old people (a lot of them actually younger than the collectors themselves!!) who sang the songs. Strangely enough, here we are discussing the same thing over 125 years later ... and lo and behold the music's still here, undergoing the same sort of changes that it did then. It's far more resilient than you give it credit for. However, no matter what you may wish to do for it, you can't force people to like it. It is, and it always has been a minority interest, except for the odd peaking burst of interest which arises every so often... for instance, the Edwardian era saw folk song bursting forth on the concert stage in programmes interspersed with classical pieces (with piano arrangements of course) - for instance Dame Clara Butt included a version of "The Keys of Heaven" in her repertoire - good grief, maybe she was the Seth Lakeman of her day???

"Still...at least there'll be no more of that disgusting business over on the BBC. No more wiggling, or giggling or Girlies or Swooning over Morris Boysies…"
All of which demeans the music and the customs that those of us who were already here on these boards ,and discussing the music which we love, are strongly drawn to - the music and the dance are fun and so are the people that play/do it, but it doesn't have to be reduced to a puerile state of faddy teenie bop adulation - so hooray for that!

What you patently seem to ignore (despite being told more than once) is that those of us who are already here on these boards have already "found" the music which you keep gushing about … we don't need to be told how wonderful it is - we already know!

"All quite disgusting stuff and way to (sic) airy fairy for this small serious narrow minded section of the folk world."
Dearie me - so far I've found many of these fictitious folk police to be extremely great fun, friendly, and warm people…. could it be something you've done Lizzie???

The promised silence (yawn) would be lovely… I'll look forward to it when it arrives. Wake me up when that happens someone, would you?

Subject: RE: It's Our Little Club (comment)
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 05:52 AM

"You could have fooled me!"

Somebody has certainly been fooling someone!

Subject: RE: It's Our Little Club (comment)
From: GUEST,Sparticus
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 05:10 AM

"but now I have been silenced"

You could have fooled me!

Subject: RE: It's Our Little Club (comment)
From: Lizzie Cornish
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 05:03 AM

>>>"Wiggly Music" as a clubbing friend of my daughter's calls it works fine on the region between the thighs, but some of us like music that satisfies the region between the ears too. If the two coincide, lucky you. <<<


Good Lawdy Richard! My eyes have crossed!

Now you see, the thing is..and this is an interesting point...I discovered...in some folk music...a music that did EXACTLY that!
Yup...it reached 'the parts that other music cannot reach' because..not only does it enrich er...the wiggly parts...but it enriches the soul too!

And THAT is why I went on the BBC board for the first time ever, way, way back..Because I was so enraged that this music was being 'hidden'...and sadly, that's when I was first 'set upon' by the folk police and they've never gone away....

Still...at least there'll be no more of that disgusting business over on the BBC. No more wiggling, or giggling or Girlies or Swooning over Morris Boysies...All quite disgusting stuff and way to airy fairy for this small serious narrow minded section of the folk world.

But once upon a time...it touched my soul...and I wrote about it in just that way. It still does touch my soul...but now I have been silenced....

Never mind, at least I can come over here now and chatter to you all instead of you having to come over to the BBC and er 'chatter' to me.

Lizzie :0)

Subject: RE: It's Our Little Club (comment)
From: Lizzie Cornish
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 04:56 AM

>>>It must be something in the water in the south west of England!<<<

Yup! It's called....PASSION! ;0) And....it's enough to make your kilt stand on end MacKenzie..for all sorts of reasons! :0) However, unlike your part of the world, we don't need to have it added to our water, as we've got The Greatest Ever Devonians, Seth Lakeman and Jim Causley in our airspace and we can breathe them all in whenever we want. :0)




"If there is a Folk Police, they're doing a lousy job. Now, on the other hand, the Pop Police have succeeded beyond all expectations in eliminating traditional music from the radio, television and even from many folk festivals."

No Dear Shimmy, I didn't miss that comment. I just didn't agree with it. I used to write er quite a bit about folk music, but the folk police have done away with all of that...mainly because I apparently used to write about the 'wrong' type of folk music, slam the BBC for not playing it, and rant and rage that so much talent gets overlooked. whilst the BBC seem to be intent on playing Lionel Ritchie and Cliff Richard for eternity!

Ho hum...sometimes, a girl just can't win can she? ;0)

Now if I'd been one of Dick Gaughan's Girlies, I'd have been safe...or written about The English Acoustic Collective or Waterson Carthy, but I chose to write about others...and well...it just ain't done I'm afraid...so..'Off With Her Head' an' all. ;0)

It's called suppression and the folk police are experts at it, in my humble opinion of course. :0)

Subject: RE: It's Our Little Club (comment)
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 04:53 AM

Rochester Sweeps is not on Mayday this year, but takes place on the bank holiday weekend that does not include Mayday but follows it. So treat Simon's invitation above to visit with care.

I hope my daughter will be singing in some of the sings. She's been doing that since she was 8 and she's 23 now, so I also hope that's young enough. She comes back south most years for the purpose, and usually brings a guitarist or two with her.

Last year she brought a carefully researched unusual but still traditional version of "the Maid on the Shore" with a killer guitarist (ex guitar institute) that just knocked them dead.

So, no Lizzie, I don't think folk is dead, but I don't think it will appeal to the lowest common denominator today. It requires some ability to see beyond the immediate. "Wiggly Music" as a clubbing friend of my daughter's calls it works fine on the region between the thighs, but some of us like music that satisfies the region between the ears too. If the two coincide, lucky you.

Subject: RE: It's Our Little Club (comment)
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 04:36 AM

There isn't a vacancy on Mudcat for a starter of provocative threads, we are already over supplied in that department!

¦¬)

G

Subject: RE: It's Our Little Club (comment)
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 04:35 AM

Dear Lizzie Cornish,

While you were shouting at the top of your voice and ranting nonsense, I wonder if you caught the following post from Dick Greenhaus:

"If there is a Folk Police, they're doing a lousy job. Now, on the other hand, the Pop Police have succeeded beyond all expectations in eliminating traditional music from the radio, television and even from many folk festivals."

Probably not, wise Mr Greehaus was probably wasting his breath on you, but he does get to the REAL heart of the problem, in far fewer words than you seem to be able to manage.

Subject: RE: It's Our Little Club (comment)
From: GUEST,The Observer Returns
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 04:31 AM

It's a love/hate relationship I have with folkies. I enjoy their company, if I had to pick a group of people to be marooned on a desert island with, I would choose folkies. They are intelligent (usually), caring (mostly) interesting, good humoured and great fun to be with. Then I read some of these threads and they get so far up their own arses, it drives me mad.
I was feeling a bit bilious yesterday and so folkiedaves comment telling me to go back to bed made me laugh. Thank you. I'll try to dream up more provocative threads (it shouldn't be difficult).

The Observer

Subject: RE: It's Our Little Club (comment)
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 04:18 AM

It must be something in the water in the south west of England!
G

Subject: RE: It's Our Little Club (comment)
From: Lizzie Cornish
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 03:56 AM

>>One even wonders what the state of English folk culture would be today without "folk police" like Cecil Sharp and his ilk.<<


I don't think Cecil was in the folk police. He was just a collecter, albeit an avid one. However, I think that some of the people who then 'surrounded' his songs became, and are still, more than a little er...controlling. Perhaps?

In fact, I'm sure Cecil would be thrilled to bits with what Fairport Convention, Steeleye Span, Ashley Hutchings and Show of Hands have done for folk/roots music...unlike those who stood up and screamed at Fairport "This isn't folk music!" and who continue to do that today with other musicians/bands etc...despite the fact that they're bringing in thousands of people and ensuring the continuation of folk/roots music. :0)

Cecil and Ashley



Bee....Show of Hands, don't know if these will load up any easier, sorry you're having trouble.

The first site is from Sam, who also created The Albion Chronicles. and many, many other sites about England, her music and traditions.

Show of Hands

Show of Hands Myspace

SoH went to Edmonton and Calgary Festivals last year too, where they went down very well, so hopefully, they may well be back that way again.

Show of Hands interview from Calgary

AND...they recently won the new 'Greatest Ever Devonians' Award, for helping to give The West Country back it's roots. They even beat Sir Francis Drake into second place...although as Steve Knightley now jokes, this is probably only due to the fact that Drake has given up gigging.. ;0)

The Greatest Ever Devonians :0)

Hope some of those load up and that you enjoy them. Each to their own though.

Oh...and it's the first I ever knew that the Scots and Irish 'gave up' on their music.


Hmmmmmmmm........

Subject: RE: It's Our Little Club (comment)
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 12 Mar 07 - 03:09 AM

This is all interesting stuff: one of the things I didn't mention when I was talking about my own introduction to folk is that in the 80s, when i was in California, I lived with a family who had been responsible for starting the Irish Arts Centre in New York, and then the Celtic Arts Centre in Los Angeles. They owned a farm in Cape Breton, and used to go there each summer, taking along whoever wanted to come, to work, play music, and absorb the astonishing culture which survived there. It's one of my great regrets that I didn't go - what with working and all, it was a case of, "There'll always be next year..." And of course I never made it.

What I didn't realise was that this was, in itself, something of a revival culture. It was presented to me as an extraordinary case of survival. It's interesting to think about how many traditional cultures (not just in Britain but around the world) which appear to be spontaneously thriving, have, in their histories, some level of interventionism. One even wonders what the state of English folk culture would be today without "folk police" like Cecil Sharp and his ilk.

Subject: RE: It's Our Little Club (comment)
From: Jim Lad
Date: 11 Mar 07 - 11:43 PM

Craigmore. That's where the party was. And I drove somebody home in the morning.
Bee: I just found this article...

(((Central to the story of Glendale is the figure of Father John Angus Rankin, a priest with a love of Scottish music who served the community for thirty-five years. While in Glendale he organized step dance and square dance classes for children, taught Gaelic classes, and annually said mass in Gaelic at St. Margaret's Church atop the mountain at River Denys.

In 1972, Ron MacInnis of the CBC produced a movie called "The Vanishing Cape Breton Fiddle", conveying the message that this art was in a state of decline and could die out. Reaction was swift, and Cape Bretoners were shaken out of their complacency. As a staunch supporter of traditional fiddling, Father Rankin organized and directed a three day Fiddle Festival in 1973 that featured over one hundred and twenty Cape Breton fiddlers.

Many people say that he was the driving force behind the resurgence of traditional Scottish music in Cape Breton.)))


I played at that festival once and had a great time. They somehow manage to include as many locals as possible.

Now to those who may think I was going off topic, just for the sake of a yarn; here's where I'm going with this.
What Fr. Rankin did was to restore the music, songs and dancing which was once part of the fabric of Cape Breton life and to bring it back into their daily lives. What he salvaged is what I consider to be "Folk".
I don't particularly like what a lot of the younger ones are into but that's just me. I don't call it folk and truth be known, they probably don't either.
As far as "Folkies" being mostly forty and up? Probably true so next year we should have a few more recruits.
Don't most of us here share the same fatal attraction for lost causes?
Enjoy it. This is what we signed up for.

Subject: RE: It's Our Little Club (comment)
From: Jim Lad
Date: 11 Mar 07 - 11:12 PM

Thanks Joe: I'll do my best but I thought that "Brittish" thing was a bit low. I'm Scottish you know..

Subject: RE: It's Our Little Club (comment)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 11 Mar 07 - 11:07 PM

I've received complaints about this thread, but I see no reason to shut it down. Maybe that's because I don't understand what you Brits talk about half the time.
Whatever the case, please try to be civil. Talk about the subject, not about each other.
Thanks.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: It's Our Little Club (comment)
From: Jim Lad
Date: 11 Mar 07 - 10:59 PM

Interesting stuff. Now was it a priest in Glendale who caused the resurgence in Cape Breton or have I got the wrong town? I seem to remember driving Sandy McLean there after a party in Creignish, one morning.

Subject: RE: It's Our Little Club (comment)
From: Bee
Date: 11 Mar 07 - 10:18 PM

Jimlad, I'm no expert on the subject, but I was around Celtic style musicians a lot during the seventies and eighties. I've had some long conversations with both Scottish and American Celtic Studies scholars (U of Edin., Harvard U.). I worked six years for a Nova Scotia Scottish/Celtic magazine which highlighted music, bards, history and genealogy. I'm a Cape Bretoner, as well, never far from the Gaelic even if you can only speak a few words. There was a lot of crossing back and forth from Scotland for a time. Fiddling, piping, and stepdancing were all considered to have retained an older tradition in CB, besides evolving on their own. Scots Gaelic language itself took back words that only survived in CB. Cape Breton was viewed as a kind of anthropological Lost World of prehistoric Scottish culture.

All verra interestin', although I could not forget my gentle Dad's comment from many years before, upon seeing some Sydney upper crust greeting a visiting 'clan chief': "Look at them, fawning on that person, who never cared for them in the past and never will." He spoke with bitterness, and he was already three generations away from Benbecula.

Subject: RE: It's Our Little Club (comment)
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 11 Mar 07 - 10:12 PM

"The Irish LOVE their music. It's 'in their blood'....like the Scots..."


Boy! is somebody out of touch with the real world!!!!

what with me having Irish and Scotish ancestery and all....

"The Scots ignored their traditional music for decades."

So did the Irish - now they both use it as a money making thing.... to make money from the stupid Englsh! (Oh, and the Yanks!)

:-)

Subject: RE: It's Our Little Club (comment)
From: Jim Lad
Date: 11 Mar 07 - 09:53 PM

Bee:
    You said:-
"I seem to remember various Scots coming to Cape Breton in the sixties and seventies in order to reclaim certain lost aspects of their own folk culture..."
Tell me a little more about that, will you? I wasn't aware of it.

I'll agree with you on the "Stan" & "Lunenburg" festivals but not so much of a "Celtic Colours" fan.

Subject: RE: It's Our Little Club (comment)
From: Bee
Date: 11 Mar 07 - 09:15 PM

I seem to remember various Scots coming to Cape Breton in the sixties and seventies in order to reclaim certain lost aspects of their own folk culture...

One of the many reasons I read Mudcat is to make note of the names of performers who are favoured by 'catters, be they UK, NA, or AUS, because I usually find something to like myself. I often manage to hear these performers on CBC Folkroots, along with many great Canadian folk artists (as an aside, it's curious that as a Canadian, I seem to have heard far, far more UK folk music than UK folks have heard Canadian). I'm quite curious about Show of Hands, since they are much talked about, but alas, their website loads only their name after fourteen long dialup minutes, and they don't seem to have made it to Folkroots.

Y'all should just come attend the Stan Rogers Festival this summer, and the Lunenburg Folk Festival, and hit Celtic Colours in CB in October. Blow all the quarrelsomes outta yer brains...