Folklore: Is folk song really political?

Subject: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 06 Oct 07 - 06:52 AM

Let me say, right from the start, that I suspect that I am opening a REALLY, REALLY BIG can of worms here - and perhaps playing Devil's Advocate a bit. But is (Anglo/American) folk song really as political as we have been told it is for the last half century or so? Is it really (almost exclusively) about the lives of traditional/source singers and their communities? And is it really almost exclusively rooted in and almost exclusively about the occupations of those singers and communities?

In an on-going thread ("how important is the label traditional singer") we have reached a stage where various contributors are arguing about whether or not various 'recently' written songs have entered the repertoires of various mining and fishing communities (Why do we obsess so much about miners and fishermen? Just asking. I have nothing against either type of worker, by the way!) and whether or not such songs can be classified as 'traditional'. This argument has revealed an hypothesis which states that if a particular type of worker, living in a particular type of community, regards a particular song as being 'relevant' to his/her life (and occupation), and sings it, then that makes the song 'traditional'; is this true?

I've just been re-reading David Buchan's thought-provoking book, 'The Ballad and the Folk' (Pb. Ed., Tuckwell Press, 1997) and came across the following passage about ballads (p. 76):

"The ballads are distanced; they have settings which distance them from the everyday work of the plough and the byre [wish I could underline that sentence!]. Their ambience is aristocratic and their characters noble; the queens and ladies, kings, knights and squires enact their roles in castles, halls and bowers shadowily peopled by the maries and porters and page-boys of the noble household."

So, this passage suggests that a big chunk of the repertoire wasn't particularly relevant to the lives and occupations of the people who sang it. Although there is no doubt that the ballads were/are full of images and archetypes which were/are relevant to the lives of everybody, irrespective of social class or standing. Interesting to note that the greatest ballad singers of the Twentieth century tended to be Travellers - people who, for much of that century, were at the opposite end of the social scale from the Lords and Ladies they sang about.

My own view is that folk song is as much about escapism as it is about class politics. Surely, people who are in arduous and soul-destroying occupations need to escape from such occupations now and again - not to be constantly reminded of them!

My own motivation for singing folk songs is strongly escapist. No doubt some people will despise me for that, but remember, "the only people who have anything to fear from escapism are jailers" (now who said that?).

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 06 Oct 07 - 06:56 AM

Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't. Like most things in life.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 06 Oct 07 - 07:17 AM

Our current culture, in a general sense, seems to celebrate wealth and fame how ever it is gained. The tabloid press are good sources of what that means.

In this climate to celebrate or even simply to enjoy songs and music that have been kept alive by the rural working class seems like a political action, at least for some of us.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 06 Oct 07 - 07:36 AM

When I had a studio, the late Tufty Swift came in with Jim Eldon and John Gill one day and recorded an album for Topic called You'll Never Die for Love.

Tufty had found a collection of tunes that a local militia had played in the early 1800's and this formed the basis of the album.

We got to talking and soon we were wondering if this militia had been the one that sorted out The Pentridge Rioters. I said, well they were the forces of repression then...

Tufty said, you could say that about the British Grenadiers as well - doesn't mean to say its not folk.

Just cos great popularisers of folk music like MacColl and Pete Seeger were lefties, it doesn't mean every piece of folk music will be coming from that angle.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: BB
Date: 06 Oct 07 - 07:39 AM

Recently, we were looking for traditional songs about fishing - there appear to be very few, although plenty of more recently written ones.

As to what makes a song traditional, it seems to me that if it is 'traditionally sung' within a certain community on a regular basis over a long (but how long?) period of time, that fact has a lot going for it when defining it. (Do we really want to go here again though? :-))

Barbara

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: the button
Date: 06 Oct 07 - 08:09 AM

Depends what you think it means to be political, I reckon.

The number of folk songs that are overtly political (Rigs of the time, & that) is quite small. However, as Les said earlier, keeping a tradition alive is a political act in itself.

We live in an age of multi-million pound industries (advertising, telly & that) which are devoted to conditioning our responses, and trying to make us pin our hopes & desires on a certain set of products & aspirations. Now, I'm not going to pretend that folk music is somehow entirely outside that system of control (the pile of CDs next to my stereo look suspiciously like commodities to me).

However, to participate in the creation of an alternate world of meaning (which is what I think happens in a good folk gig or session) is in some sense saying, "You know what? There's more life that a new car." And I reckon that counts as political.

Of course, there are other subcultures (or taste cultures, if you like) that can do the same thing.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: GUEST,Brian Peters
Date: 06 Oct 07 - 08:20 AM

A very interesting question, and I'm right with Les and button in their responses. As a singer who cut his teeth in Manchester-area folk clubs, I'd grown up with the idea that industrial broadsides of the kind that my hero Harry Boardman used to perform were the very stuff of local folk culture, but over the years I've had to ask the question how many of them were ever sung popularly or "entered the tradition". I'm still hoping....

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: Rapparee
Date: 06 Oct 07 - 08:42 AM

"Yankee Doodle" started out as a song mocking the colonists. They adopted it as their own, making it a political statement. It certainly is part of the folk idiom in the US.

Children's rhymes, such as "Four and Twenty Blackbirds" and "Little Jack Horner" are also relevant here, as they can have political protest meanings (and these two do).

I suspect that ofttimes it depends upon the context. "Wait for the Wagon" is a perfectly good song from the 19th C. US -- but when changed to "...the dissolution wagon" it back a political song of the South during the US Civil War.

Burns' "Bonnie Dundee" was overtly political; during the US Civil War it became "Riding A Raid" and continued as such. It could be argued that in its incarnation as "Lords of the Cam" (Girton College, Cambridge, ca. 1870) it was again political, although not warmongering, as it was used to support the awarding the BA to women.

So...I suppose it depends. "Lillibulero" was just a song before 1689 and all that.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: The Sandman
Date: 06 Oct 07 - 09:30 AM

Shimrod,folksong is not political,when someone sings Im a little teapot,and asks poor old Shimrod to do the actions[dear o dear what are folk clubs coming to,it will be naked performers next].but when someone sings Go Down You Murderers, it is.
I agree with MCGRATH.Dick Miles

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 06 Oct 07 - 11:42 AM

Wow! To be quite honest I was bracing myself for a torrent of abuse. What I got was lots of deep thought. And I agree with almost everyone - except the Cap'n, of course (that goes without saying!).Sorry Cap'n! Only joking - couldn't resist a little riposte to your dig at me and my teapot.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 06 Oct 07 - 12:34 PM

Songs that people make up which describe their lives: work, a bystander at a historical event, a retelling of a tale heard from someone else or else their own story, whether sad and desperate or triumphant and self-fulfilling; these are all political because the personal is political, without a doubt.

However, songs made up to make money are just commodities; the singer rarely knows or cares what it's about. It's a commercial sound, not part of the soundtrack of their own life, This is not political.

If what you mean is trad or roots-based, just say so. The problem lies in the utter bankruptcy into which the word 'f*lk' has been allowed to tumble. It has become completely meaningless, way past its sell-by, confusing and devoid of any meaning.

Good grief (nicked from another site):

"There's this quasi-renaissance of British folk music going on in London right now, with singer-songwriters and folk collectives thriving artistically and commercially everywhere you look. Just as 2006 and early 2007 were dominated by electro, folk seems to be the genre du jour in the eyes of the majors and the scene is flourishing. At the forefront of the movement are singer-songwriters like Kid Harpoon, Lightspeed Champion and Kate Nash, but there are plenty more acts to get excited about in the new folk scene. However, there may be none more promising than Noah & The Whale and Laura Marling."

and later

"Nowhere is this more apparent than on debut single "Five Years Time", perhaps the most carefree, relentlessly breezy single of the year. With a jovial effervescence that can brighten even the darkest day, the track is all ukuleles, xylophones and whimsically nostalgic lyrics about fun, sun and love (these words come up A LOT), yet manages not to be overly-cute or cloying in spite of itself."

If anyone actually knows what this is about, do feel free to translate. Though I'm no sure that I need or even want to know.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: Ernest
Date: 06 Oct 07 - 12:55 PM

Diane,

your quote is about business. "Folk" has been so "out" for the musical industry`s customers that is weird enough to... well, name a newly fabricated trend.

The musical industry`s definition of folk: anything with an acoustic guitar.

Back to the original topic: I think a song is political if it is/was intended to be political by the writer/singer. So the songs labelled with the f-word ;0) can be poltical or not. Business hasn`t that much to do with it: even a political song has a commercial aspect if the writer/singer makes a living (even if part-time) with his music. The market for political songs is smaller than the market in general, but nevertheless...

Best
Ernest

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: Bill D
Date: 06 Oct 07 - 02:11 PM

well, it varies as to the topic and time, but certainly 'some' songs are quite political....for example Pete Seeger's "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy".

And some of Eric Bogle's moving, but intense portraits of war.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 06 Oct 07 - 02:22 PM

"songs made up to make money are not political."

Can't see why that should be true - it depends on the songs, and how applicable they are to a political issue.

How about:
"Buddy can you spare a dime"

Or:
We don't want to fight,
But by Jingo if we do,
We've got the ships,
We've got the men,
And got the money too.
We've fought the Bear before,
And while we're Britons true,
The Russians shall not have Constantinople.

And it'd be easy to come up with more contemporary examples. (And I don't think it's too relevant or useful to go back over "what is folk?" yet again.)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 06 Oct 07 - 02:26 PM

The musical industry`s definition of folk: anything with an acoustic guitar

Is it? I thought it was anyone who once lived next door to someone who had a second cousin who once played one.

Or a band that got a hurdy-gurdy, a nyckelharpa, a crwth, a kantele or a djembe off eBay cos they're oh so kewl.

Nothing to do with any involvement in the relevant tradition, obviously.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 06 Oct 07 - 02:57 PM

Buddy can you spare a dime?

Yip Harburg wrote this to make money?
Well, I hope he got some for Somewhere Over The Rainbow . . .

As Dick Gaughan later wrote:

I raise up my glass and drink deep of its flame
To those who have gone who were links in the chain
And I give my soul's promise I give my heart's pledge
To outlaws and dreamers and life at the edge.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: Rapparee
Date: 06 Oct 07 - 05:17 PM

Songs about war are, I think by definition, political -- even those lamenting "Johnny has gone for a soldier" have political overtones.

What becomes more intriguing are those songs that are NOT overtly political, but are or become so.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: Bill D
Date: 06 Oct 07 - 05:23 PM

Mrs. McGrath

"By God, I'll make them rue the time
That they stole the legs from a son of mine."

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: Stringsinger
Date: 06 Oct 07 - 05:54 PM

Folk music is by folk.    They vote for their faves. Leader folkers lead folkies.
What song or folker do you vote for? Who is your favorite folker leader?

Are kings and princes pols? Knights? Fair maidens? Coal miners? Cowboys? Who do you vote for?

What about the Tyranny of Folk? (Barry Manilow enslaved by trad rads)

Are political songs folk songs? (Jefferson and Liberty) (Lincoln and Liberty) Or " in
1814 we took a little trip." Is Driftwood a folksinger?

Can we elect a folksinger to public office?

Are folkies banned from making money and getting next to those who hire them?
Is that political?

Is folk a sub-versified plot to mind-alter poor susceptible victims?

Next topic: is folk music non-political?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 06 Oct 07 - 07:15 PM

????

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: Bill D
Date: 06 Oct 07 - 07:27 PM

"Can we elect a folksinger to public office?"

well, Oklahoma made one governor.....unfortunately.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: M.Ted
Date: 06 Oct 07 - 07:43 PM

We're going to have a thread explaining this all soon, because a lot of people have either forgotten it, or never knew it-- but bottom line is that folksongs and folksingers are in fact political, and leftist (not infrequently communist), progressive, civil rights, anti-war, pro-labor, environmental groups have used folksongs and singing to build a sense of community --

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: Rapparee
Date: 06 Oct 07 - 08:19 PM

What! Are you calling "The International" communist??

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: Peace
Date: 06 Oct 07 - 08:29 PM

Good one, M Ted.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: Effsee
Date: 06 Oct 07 - 09:47 PM

Would "We didn't start the fire" by Billy Joel qualify as Folk?
"Down by the river" by Albert Hammond" ?
"The grave" by Don Maclean?

Political in my book.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: Effsee
Date: 06 Oct 07 - 09:58 PM

And now that I think about it, was John Denver's repertoire not largely political folk, or was it too commecrcially successful to be accepted into the canon?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: GUEST,punkfokrocker
Date: 06 Oct 07 - 11:34 PM

yes.. sometimes.. perhaps not many, or very often, these days..

but yes.. 'folk' songs could still be 'political'.


btw.. 30 years ago.. long exhausting student/media debates

if punk songs were really political..!!???


arguements still raging today in student common rooms & Uni bars..??????????


ps.. my generation of agit pop funk punk folk 'subversives'

are now the middle aged farts

holding high office in local councils and higher education..



hah.. race you for the delete button old man clone..

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 07 Oct 07 - 12:20 AM

oh.. and ta very much for the reminder..

i just rediscovered this on a shelf at the dark end
of a room downstairs i dont go into much anymore..

"The Best of Broadside 1962-1988"

SFW CD 40130

5 discs.. 89 songs.. 5 hours 22 minutes 32 seconds..


http://www.amazon.com/Best-Broadside-1962-1988-Various-Artists/dp/B00004VWX0/ref=sr_1_3/002-8471012-3362450?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=

that musta bin one of my 42nd birthday pressies off one of my good old lefty mates
back when i still had the energy to give a monkeys..

smells a bit damp and musty..



that'll be a barrell of laughs then..

hmm.. maybe should dry it out in the airing cupboard

under the wifes frillies

and have a fresh listen..!!???

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: GUEST,Nerd
Date: 07 Oct 07 - 01:57 AM

This discussion might benefit from some of the debates about meaning that linguists, literary scholars, and (yes) folklorists have long engaged in.

To wit: to say that a song is only political if the writer intended it to be so is what in lit-crit is called "the intentional fallacy." The problem with the intentional fallacy is twofold--one, we cannot usually know what the writer intended. This is particularly true of folksong, when we don't even know who the writer is. Two, some of the most important impacts works of art have had in the world have been through interpretations the writers didn't intend. Therefore, it is almost universally accepted among today's scholarly community that a statement or work of art can have important meanings that were not intended by the speaker. Those meanings might be political, in which case the artwork would "be" political, if the verb "to be" can be used in this way.

The impact of this on the question is: all art is political, or can be read for political meaning. This is because part of the meaning comes from the hearer or interpreter, and that part of meaning is different for every hearer. I may think "This land is your land" is anti-capitalist in declaring that the land belongs to everyone, not just landowners. This was probably part of Woody's intention (especially taking into account the "private property" verse that he rarely recorded). But many think it merely rejoices in the natural beauty of the United States. Because of this, it is taught, quite uncontroversially, in many government-funded public schools where other communist songs would not be tolerated. Similarly, Amazing Grace has lyrics that are not political, but nevertheless it carries political meanings for many hearers.

Songs which may not have been intended politically nevertheless tell us a lot about the politics of the time and place when they were written. They document political realities of their times, can be read for political meanings, and in that sense are political.

Diane's statement that "songs intended to make money are not political" is itself a political judgment. It starts by drawing a distinction that rarely exists--most songwriters write songs hoping to express themselves AND ALSO to make money, though most are more successful in one direction than the other. It then uses that false distinction to suggest that capitalism on the one hand, and honest self-expression on the other, are antagonistic, which is a politically-charged, anti-capitalist idea. A believer in capitalism would say, "What is true self-expression but emotional communication with other people? And what better proves that a song is communicating its message than good sales? Writing to make money and writing to express yourself are therefore the same thing." I don't really buy either side of this argument, but I do think the introduction of the profit motive muddies the waters--whether a song is political is independent of whether it is intended to make money.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 07 Oct 07 - 05:26 AM

What I wrote was:

songs made up to make money are just commodities; the singer rarely knows or cares what it's about. It's a commercial sound, not part of the soundtrack of their own life. This is not political.

Which might be expressed as: Treating music (or any art) as a commodity renders it non-political because such an attitude is dehumanising and degrading.

While the manufacturing of music for profit might be construed as 'political' in that it is an act of aesthetic vandalism, the content (or lack thereof) is not thereby enhanced to a political level. Rather the opposite.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: alanabit
Date: 07 Oct 07 - 06:11 AM

"We Didn't Start The Fire" is about as genuine a folk song/political song as "Eve Of Destruction". In fact it is down there with the dregs of what Diane ís referring to as "commodities". I personally dislike it more than "Sugar Sugar" - which happens to give me toothache, because at least the Archies were not guilty of the fundamenal dishonesty of Barry McGuire and Billy Joel.
In fact folk song is exactly as McGrath says - sometimes political and sometimes not. That goes for any art form.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 07 Oct 07 - 06:12 AM

I'm not sure there any absolute truths here. i keep thinking of possible exceptions to these rules you are laying down.

You could argue that any song is political - even a love song borne of one's experiences of love and relationships in a certain period of time, in a specific political landscape.

Everything that has an objective reality can be interpreted as an expression of the climate of opinions and and current popular beliefs. Songs are no different.

I am currently trying to write a song about fruit machine addiction - which is a massive problem, which you probably won't know about - until it whacks you in the face and affects someone you love. But just google the words 'fruit machine addiction' and you will find pages of the most terrible stories of human degradation.

I think there is a difference between someone like me who uses songs occasionally as agitprop - and say Cole Porter who's love songs were cynical because he lived in an age where myths were exploding all round him. his songs were a reaction to the times.

Its a criticism that some people have levelled at Jane Austen - she lived through the Napoleonic Wars, and yet its not a theme in her novels in the same way that the rise of Nazism is in Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin. And yet Pride and Predjudice has less than gallant soldiery as a theme.

Even if you set out not to be political - you probably will be.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 07 Oct 07 - 06:24 AM

WLD said:

even a love song borne of one's experiences of love and relationships . . .

Even?

Oh dear.

I see have to rewind and repeat the first paragraph of my initial post:

Songs that people make up which describe their lives: work, a bystander at a historical event, a retelling of a tale heard from someone else or else their own story, whether sad and desperate or triumphant and self-fulfilling; these are all political because the personal is political, without a doubt.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 07 Oct 07 - 06:48 AM

You seem to be saying that just the act of 'being' is political.

I can't argue with this. If you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in Your Hair - seemed very soppy and hippy-ish to us in England. But to a crew cut, aggressively heterosexual, believer in USA policy in Vietnam in the 1960's - it must have seemed loaded with political significance and very confrontational.

Surely the correlate of your position is that as we are embroiled in the political reality ourselves - its very hard for us to judge accurately what is being achieved.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: greg stephens
Date: 07 Oct 07 - 06:48 AM

Most contributors seem to equate "political" with "vaguely left wing".Son't forget the warmongering racism that fuels loads of folksong in many(most?) cultures.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 07 Oct 07 - 09:08 AM

"Would "We didn't start the fire" by Billy Joel qualify as Folk?
"Down by the river" by Albert Hammond" ?
"The grave" by Don Maclean?"

No, no and no.

This is because these songs have not been through the PROCESS involving (i) continuity which links the present with the past; (ii) variation which springs from the creative impulse of the individual or the group; and (iii) selection by the community, which determines the form or forms in which [they have] survive[d].

This does not mean (deep sigh!) that these are 'good' or 'bad' songs - it just means that they are not folk songs, that's all, and, hence, not relevant to this discussion.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: GUEST
Date: 07 Oct 07 - 10:11 AM

Are folk songs political? – depends what you mean by 'political' surely.
In Ireland, the third most popular subject for song-making over the last two centuries, (love and emigration being the first two) has been the fight for national independence. Not only have you the national repertoire of political songs, (1798, 1867, 1916 etc) but many town and villages have their locally created ones, dealing with happening in the immediate areas. We have found at least 2 dozen from Miltown Malbay and the surrounding areas. Literally hundreds upon hundreds of political songs form the national repertoire here.
In Scotland, the Jacobite wars, and later the clearances were the subjects of many songs.
It seems to me that the term 'political' when applied to folk song has a number of levels.
You have the overtly political repertoire as above, certainly present in the English and Scots repertoire, less in England, but not entirely absent.
Then you have those which indirectly deal with the political/social situation. Typical of these were the poaching songs.
A few years ago I gave a talk to our local history society on song and history and came up with this (at the risk of making this another epic posting):

'The songs I have mentioned so far deal with specific events in history. An example of how songs and poetry generally comment on the prevailing situation rather than identifiable events is to be found in a rhyme which was popular in England at the time of the Peasant's Revolt of 1381. This uprising came about as a protest to the imposition of a Poll Tax, a tax levied on every individual, regardless of income or property. It started in Kent and was led by a priest named John Ball together with Jack Straw and Wat Tyler. John Ball preached an early form of Communism and his egalitarian philosophy is summed up in the little rhyme traditionally said to have been taken by him as the text of his revolutionary sermon on the outbreak of the revolt. It is claimed that he was the author:
"When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?"
Land ownership in England was one of the great causes of contention and has influenced the making of many songs and rhymes.
The seizure of what was originally common land began in England in the 14th century and became widespread in the 15th and 16th centuries. Wealthy and powerful landowners annexed huge tracts of commonage as part of their own estates, planted hedgerows and built fences around them to prevent access by members of the public.
Common land was used by working people as an essential source of food to sustain their families. It was the practice, for instance, of factory workers, landless labourers or tradesmen and artisans involved in cottage industries to use common land to graze a cow or a sheep or raise poultry, even to have a small market garden. Commons were also places where a rabbit, a pheasant or even a small deer could be got to supplement the family diet. With the closing off of the land this vital source of sustenance disappeared overnight. The effect on rural life was devastating: it caused poverty, homelessness, and rural depopulation, and resulted in revolts in 1536, 1569, and 1607. A further wave of enclosures occurred between about 1760 and 1820.   Numerous government measures to prevent depopulation were introduced between 1489 and 1640, including the first Enclosure Act (1603), but these were sabotaged by local magistrates who were usually influential landowners.
A new wave of enclosures by Acts of Parliament from 1760 to 1820 reduced the small landowning farmers to the status agricultural labourers, or forced them to leave the land altogether. The Enclosure Acts applied to 4.5 million acres or a quarter of England. Some 17 million acres were enclosed without any parliamentary act.
It was probably the last bout of enclosures in the first half of the 19th century that inspired, not a song, but this anonymous rhyme which begins:
"The law locks up the man or woman, Who steals the goose from off the common, But leaves the greater villain loose Who steals the common from off the goose" - and ends: "If the law locks up the man and woman, Who steals the goose from off the common, The goose will still a common lack, Until we go and steal it back".
Apart from the songs produced directly by the enclosures in England, a side effect of the appropriation of common land provided one of the largest and most poignant bodies of songs in the British and Irish repertoires, the poaching songs.
Deprived of the right to legally catch game on the old commons, the poor resorted to taking it illegally. Many of them continued, as they had always done, to go out at night setting traps to snare rabbits and pheasants. The landowners retaliated by employing keepers to protect what they considered their inalienable right to their newly-acquired property. They also resorted to setting mantraps, large, viciously toothed, spring-loaded devices capable of breaking a man's leg and tearing off chunks of flesh. The response of the poachers was to go out armed and in larger numbers. This escalation led to a period of English rural history known as "The Poaching Wars".   It worked like this. Men who had previously gone out poaching singly resorted to teaming up with others to offer resistance to the gamekeepers employed by the landowner. The landowner would, in his turn, employ more keepers and so ad infinitum. One song from the eastern county of Lincolnshire, entitled "The Rufford Park Poachers" tells of a pitched battle between forty poachers and a similar number of keepers.
On being apprehended the poachers would be tried by magistrates, who were themselves local landowners, who would, as was to be expected, show little mercy. First offenders would usually be heavily fined, but the most common punishment for a repeating offender was transportation to the penal settlements in Australia, usually for long periods.
The songs created on this subject cover the whole gamut of attitudes and emotions: despair, anger, defiance, repentance even a boisterous humour.
Poaching songs were to be found in abundance throughout Britain and Ireland, but to my mind the best of them is the one popularly found in the Eastern part of England in East Anglia.   Entitled simply 'Van Dieman's Land', it deals with an event said to have taken place in Warwickshire on Squire Dunhill's (sometimes Donniell's or Daniel's) Estate. In my opinion it is a perfect example of a narrative English traditional song, and what makes it so good is its matter-of-fact presentation of the events. It tells how one of four young men who go poaching together, is taken by the keepers, tried at Warwick Assizes, and sentenced to be transported for fourteen years. He is placed on board ship, endures a three month voyage, lands in Australia, is taken ashore yoked together with other convicts, auctioned to the highest bidder like livestock, and finally settles down to his fate.
Whether the events described can be pinned down to one particular occurrence is debatable, but they are so typical of what was happening all over rural England that the song passed into numerous versions with different names and locations. This version was sung to us by the late Walter Pardon, a carpenter who came from a farming background in a small village in North Norfolk. He described it as "a long old song, but then", as he said, "it was a long old journey", which, for me, is an example of a singers relating perfectly to his song. I won't play all the song as it is over six minutes long, having nine verses and refrains, but to give you a flavour here are a couple of verses......."

The third 'political' implication of folk song is the very existence of large body of song, more or less anonymous, to be found in the possession of, and almost certainly created largely by a rural working class.
If I wanted to discover when, say, the Battle of Trafalgar was fought, what ships were involved, who were the officers, how many men, etc., I would go to the history books. If I wanted to know what it felt like for a weaver, or farm worker, or a miner to be pressed into service and thrown into the horrors of a sea battle, I would have to go to the folk-songs.
Our traditional songs not only entertained and diverted, but also recorded the history and the aspirations of generations of ordinary (whatever that means) people; is that political or what?
I believe Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun had it right in 1704 when he wrote "If a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws of a nation".
Sorry this has been so long – again.
Jim Carroll
PS Shimrod referred to David Buchan's comments on the ballads; he was dealing with 305 'Classic Ballads' which are distinct from the general repertoire, but equally relevant in their way.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 07 Oct 07 - 11:00 AM

the thing is though - peoples perceptions change

take that Sheep Crook and Black Dog song.

My sympathies are with the woman every time. She doesn't want to live in a hut on the moors; freezing cold, starving to death, never meeting anyone from one week to the next....

Conditions in service were shitty by all accounts, but they must have seemed like a career opportunity compared to life in the hut.

Yet I always think the songwriter expects us to say, the heartless bitch! why didn't she stick by this fine fellow. He's got a long walking stick and dog, what more could a woman want.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 07 Oct 07 - 11:18 AM

I'd be considerably more impressed if Flora had said:

One day to our wedding is one day too soon
I'll use your bag and your budget to organise the National Union of Shepherds
And then we can afford more than one room.

Or something else that rhymes and scans better.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: GUEST,Mikefule
Date: 07 Oct 07 - 11:26 AM

From the first post in this thread:

<< the greatest ballad singers of the Twentieth century tended to be Travellers - people who, for much of that century, were at the opposite end of the social scale from the Lords and Ladies they sang about.>>

Not at all. My work brings me into contact with travellers from the traditional travelling community. They do not consider themselves to be at the botom of the scale, any more than they assume lords and ladies are at the top. Like every community, they have their own social scale. If members of the travelling community ever think about it at all, I imagine they think of themselves as operating completely outside the mainstream, in a parallel society of their own. In some ways, they look down on "us".

Be that as it may, is folk song really political? If you want it to be.

Folk song just exists. People who want to find politics in it can; people who want to find social comment in it can; people who want to find separate strands or categories in it can. But folk song just is.

We are folk too, you know.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: SouthernCelt
Date: 07 Oct 07 - 11:29 AM

I agree with GUEST, Shimrod. A song has to go through a certain process in society, aging, changing, and otherwise maturing until it has reached a point that it's subject is historical not current. Many songs mentioned here up through the WWI era I think could now be considered folk songs IF they came into being in the era they describe. Recently penned lyrics about old events, historical or otherwise, are not folk though they may be folk-style songs (acoustic instrumentation generally). Songs after about WWI, whether written for $ or not, whether overtly political or not, in my view aren't really folk songs yet. And certainly the protest songs of the 60s forward, whether protesting militarism, political events, or social trends, have not yet become "folk".

SC

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: IanC
Date: 07 Oct 07 - 12:43 PM

Walnut Concertina (B)

Walnut Concertina (E)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: IanC
Date: 07 Oct 07 - 12:44 PM

Er ... sorry ... my mistake!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: GUEST
Date: 07 Oct 07 - 03:11 PM

"But folk song just is."
Sort of like Topsy you mean; it just growed?
Folk songs were made to entertain, to reminisce, to record events, remember people and events, to revenge, to be remembered, to assist political campaigns, to protest, to right wrongs or to own up to them, to ridicule and debunk, to poke fun at, to change the world or to keep it the same.......
Travellers.... "In some ways, they look down on "us"."
Not the ones we met over the last thirty years
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: GUEST,Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Oct 07 - 03:12 PM

Whoops sorry Charlie.

"But folk song just is."
Sort of like Topsy you mean; it just growed?
Folk songs were made to entertain, to reminisce, to record events, remember people and events, to revenge, to be remembered, to assist political campaigns, to protest, to right wrongs or to own up to them, to ridicule and debunk, to poke fun at, to change the world or to keep it the same.......
Travellers.... "In some ways, they look down on "us"."
Not the ones we met over the last thirty years
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 07 Oct 07 - 04:03 PM

two rooms....he'd probably keep his sheep in the other one. She's well out of it.

No, its a job with prospects. She could work her way to become the heroine of a Catherine Cookson novel. And thus in a few years; she becomes Cotton Lil, the feisty rough tongued lady (but really with a heart of gold) who runs an empire of Gin Palaces, married to Obadiah Hardknacker (a very hard man! who owns all the land in these parts), And all the time she was in love with Viscount Edwin Flossie who stole her maidenhead when she was below stairs....but theirs was a hopeless love.

Either way, Black Bob and Rin Tin Tin can bugger off.

but I'm telling you the plot....!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: M.Ted
Date: 07 Oct 07 - 05:21 PM

I've got something to say, and I'm going to say it now-

The folk music revival caught fire first in the US, and, like it or not, it was highly political. I will say this again, and again, if necessary. From Joe Hill to Woody and Pete, from Zilphia Horton to Joan Baez, a fading musical legacy was brought back to life in the service of the movement for radical political and economic change.

Most of us, at least the Americans, are here because of Pete and Woody--whether it was initially in the labor movement, or the civil rights movement, or the anti-war movement. And consider this--the bible of modern folkie-ism, is called, "Rise Up Singing" and is published by an anarchist collective.

Even Diane Easby's rather pointed thoughts about songs written for profit reflect Communist ideas concerning the culture of the working class.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 07 Oct 07 - 05:50 PM

What a load of bollocks!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 07 Oct 07 - 06:12 PM

I tend to agree with you about 'Black Dog and Sheepcrook', WLD. A young woman who went into service got a glimpse of a lifestyle that a poor farmworker could never provide. I suspect that the tensions, that such contrasts caused, may have been quite common.
My greatgranparents (on my mother's side) may have experienced such a conflict (although I can never prove it).

Mikefule,

I sincerely hope that Travellers take great pride in their culture - but it is quite obvious that some sections of society despise them and treat them accordingly. There is also no doubt that they have experienced severe discrimination through much of the Twentieth century. In Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger's book about the Scots Traveller family the Stewarts of Blairgowrie ('Till doomsday in the afternoon', pub. 1986) Alec Stewart is quoted as saying: "I was born and bred in Blairgowrie and I'm still not welcome in the town. In fact, not long ago two or three of the council said, "we want the town rid o' these people. We want them out!"" I bet Blairgowrie councillors didn't say that about any members of the aristocracy who happened to be living locally!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: M.Ted
Date: 07 Oct 07 - 06:35 PM

Deal with it, Bonzo--it's out there.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 07 Oct 07 - 06:47 PM

As greg pointed out, we shouldn't fall into the illusion that "politics" just means left or liberal politics.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 07 Oct 07 - 06:53 PM

Even my pointed thoughts?

What I said about profit reflected anti-capitalist views on the state of the music industry, actually.

I'm not here because of Pete and Woody. I consider them to be significant songwriters from an entirely different tradition in which I have some interest in certain aspects, especially in Appalachian, Shaker and Sacred Harp singing, playing and dance. My influences , however, stem from my own tradition which had its first revival at the end of the 19th century, and from Northern Europe where it didn't need reviving all that much.

Thirty odd years ago in Britain, many on the so-called 'folk scene' (i.e. products of the second revival) involved themselves in benefits for striking shipyard workers, builders fighting the lump, miners and steelworkers whose jobs were threatened, refugees from vile regimes in Latin America and Southern Africa, and police repression of ethnic minorities on our streets, and many a song was written.

There's very little of that now. Life's harder without a lot of scope for idealism. Today the struggles are for the right to play anywhere at all and to survive as a musician in the face of globalised homogenisation of culture and a grasping, non-caring, money-grabbing musbiz.

Whatever is the place of a publication such as Rise Up Singing? All it seems to me to do is fossilise a long-gone era, a historical archive. America does have living traditions, localised, vibrant and out there, rooted in its communities but I don't think I've ever read a word about them in this forum.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: M.Ted
Date: 07 Oct 07 - 08:17 PM

You obviously have never seen a copy of Rise Up Singing, which includes a lot of contemporary and popular songs--you can read about it hereAbout Annie Patterson, Peter Blood, and Rise Up Singing.

As to what you have read or not read here, I can't say--we have discussed a lot of living American Musical traditions on ocassion--and will continue to do so--

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: GUEST,Nerd
Date: 08 Oct 07 - 02:08 AM

M. Ted is quite right that Diane Easby's views reflect certain communist ideologies--which is not the same thing as calling her a communist. They also, and more interestingly, reflect the perspective of Romantic Nationalism out of whch the concept of "the folk" emerged in the 19th Century.

This is almost inevitable for anyone talking about folklore, by the way...the whole idea of "folklore" and "folksong" and "folk" is political, so there is no way to avoid folk songs having a political dimension--simply to decide whether it is a "folk song" or not is an interpretive move that requires political interpretation. Without a certain political perspective, "folk song" wouldn't mean anything, and we'd have nothing to argue about in this thread!

It strikes me again that there is a political dimension to the answers on this thread that is in many ways more interesting than the original question. The question was pretty well answered by several people. But now, we're talking about "my own tradition" and "an entirely different tradition," surely the "self/other" "in-group/out-group" "us/them" dichotomy that is at the root of all politics.

To respond to Diane, one could argue historically, that if it hadn't been for Pete and Woody, and Leadbelly, and others, there would have been no skiffle, and hence no real "second revival" in Britain...so indeed, the British folk scene is there because of Pete and Woody, among others. (The First revival primarily resulted in a revival of dance and the introduction of folksongs into books, classical arrangements, and schools. It did not create much of a singing scene as such.)

It's equally true that Pete and Woody were there because of earlier developments in Britain, of course; Woody, for example, sang a version of "The Gypsy Laddie" that he learned from his mother, and other traditional British songs, and therefore can't really be considered a "songwriter from an entirely different tradition" from the British tradition.

I'm not saying this to claim that either American or British traditions are more important than the other, just to point out that both the English and Anglo-American traditions and their respective revivals were intertwined to such an extent that separating them can only be arbitrary. Is this a political statement? Of course!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 08 Oct 07 - 02:12 AM

absolutely fascinating! Thankyou M.Ted.

I often wondered if there were any inheritors of that Sydney Carter vibe. I was brought up a Quaker, but I was hopeless at it!

That sort of goodness of intention is a real talent. I think its the one I buried in the garden - as the parable goes......

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 08 Oct 07 - 02:15 AM

Rise Up Singing? Yeah, looked at it once. It's ever so self-worthy, christian and white. WASPish, in fact.

What I'm concerned with is the vast range of peoples and their cultures who live out there in the real America: Cajun and Creole in Louisiana, hip-hop, rap, house, grunge and gospel in New York, the blues of New Orleans and Chicago, theTejano blend of Mexican and European in Texas, the music of immigrant communities such as Italians, Ukrainians, Poles and Swedes in the major cities, Armenians in California, Conjunto and the local and regional musics of indigenous communities. This is all highly political and real yet scarcely ever gets a mention on Mudcat.

But the forum is awash with ethnically-cleansed, ironed-out, dumbed-down mainstream from US-corporate-sponsored mainstream festivals, summer camps and coffee shops produced by identikit backwards-facing baseball hats chewing on McRubbish. I skim over it because I'm NOT INTERESTED. It's cultural colonialism and thus anti-political.


Oh, and Steve, I don't give a toss whether you call me a communist or not. I spent seven years writing for a communist newspaper, so it's fairly moot. I'll leave others to refute your mangled potted 'history' of the English revival. Sounds a lot like 'Pete & Woody are bigger and better than Ewan & Bert' to me.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 08 Oct 07 - 04:49 AM

Not really fair Dianne. You talk to most Yank strummers and they're as screwed by the Big Money system as we are. Most of them earning as much in a year as would keep a big time rap artist in drugs for an afternoon.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 08 Oct 07 - 04:52 AM

However (as O'Reilly the builder said in Fawlty Towers) - I love a woman with spirit!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 08 Oct 07 - 05:01 AM

Spirit?

The sun must be over the yardarm somewhere and it's becoming remarkably urgent to pour some.

Nowhere did I mention big-time rap stars, but musicians playing their music (whatever it is) in their own communities, rooted in their own traditions.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 08 Oct 07 - 06:43 AM

Oh diane lets run off together to a Mudgather.......sounds like dirty fun to me!

Its been a largely uneventful life, and a bit of conjuntos at my of life would do me the world of good.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: GUEST,Georgina Boyes
Date: 08 Oct 07 - 06:56 AM

Nerd's proposal that - without American involvement - there wouldn't have been a Revival in England after World War II isn't justified - though it IS widely believed.

During and after the War, BBC Radio programmes like 'Countryside Magazine' featured traditional singers and versions of recently collected songs sung by professional singers, whilst newsreels and radio feature programmes recorded customs. The Opie's work on children's folklore began just after the War and owed nothing to American influence.

The arrival of American singers and a greater availability of American music - via American forces radio and recordings - was important, but it changed rather than created an interest in folksong, dance and tradition.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 08 Oct 07 - 07:30 AM

Oh for clapton's sake, does it really matter - although it keeps the trendy lefties happy especially the ones who hold their knives "that way"!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 08 Oct 07 - 07:43 AM

I was trying to ignore Steve's piffle about skiffle but since Georgina has mentioned the limited and specific influence of American imports (and remember that Lonnie Donegan came up through the Chris Barber Jazz Band, not the burgeoing folk revival), I'll have another go at putting a tin lid on this bollocks.

I really do despair of the 'folklorist' who declares a day, time and year when some English tradition 'died out'. Like hammer dulcimer playing. Bob Davenport has this story of how X (I won't say it was Kenny Goldstein cos it might not have been and I can't be arsed to check) made this very assertion and Bob remarked that he must have been hallucinating when he saw one being playing down at Hoxton Market that very afternoon. No-one had told the musician he had to stop because the text book said he didn't exist, and only start again when someone with a tape machine came along (which happened).

My grandfather used to play accordian for Morris and longsword until the outbreak of WWI. He got back from France but the rest of the side didn't. End of trad dancing in North Yorkshire in many but not all areas and his tradition had indeed been revived recently. But no-one told him either to stop playing and once he got a wireless and had the electricity put in, he played along to brass bands. He died just as the second revival was kicking in but didn't consider himself part of it. Nor do many hundreds of trad musicians who play up and down the English countryside, regardless of fashion. The English tradition was, and still is, largely hidden from public view, while any 'revival' is in parallel and largely unconnected. As such this music is an important historical chronicle and a reflection of the effects of socio-political changes on people's lives. Hitherto 'unknown' traditions are still being 'rediscovered' today (like customs, ceremonies, playground games). New traditions are being developed on our streets and wherever people from different cultures in today's Britain gather and share their heritages. How can anyone say that's not political?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 08 Oct 07 - 08:55 AM

Bloody hell Diana, I agree with you. But when my Grandpa came back from WWI....he put on his flat cap and went t' Gas Board, and kept it on even on the beach at Margate.

I stood and watched children in the playground of an infants' school one lunchtime recently, regrettably known as "dinnertime" in schools, and they all seemed to be playing games, each group doing something different. I suspect this has always been going on.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: GUEST,Nerd
Date: 08 Oct 07 - 11:01 AM

None of what Georgina or Diane has said contradicts what I said. I said "no real second revival." A couple of radio shows and the Opie's books are not a real second revival. In fact, the Opie's books have had very little influence on the folk music scene, and it's puzzling to bring them up in this context.

"During and after the War, BBC Radio programmes like 'Countryside Magazine' featured traditional singers and versions of recently collected songs sung by professional singers, whilst newsreels and radio feature programmes recorded customs." This is not the same as creating a revival singing scene. What Georgina describes is really more a continuation of the first revival than anything very new. Almost all of the singers we associate with the second revival were in fact influenced by Americans, as well as Diane's "Ewan and Bert." Was this influence "limited and specific?" Of course, all influences are. Huge, but limited. Widespread, but specific.

The heart of the second folk revival was the thriving club scene, with Louis Killen and Martin Carthy and Nic Jones and Anne Briggs and Bob Fox and the High Level Ranters, and Ewan MacColl with his American partner (what was her name? Seeger or something)? Would this have happened with no American influences? No one can say, but it seems unlikely.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: GUEST,Cats at Work
Date: 08 Oct 07 - 11:30 AM

I think that whenever you choose to sing something you are in empathy with it [unless you are just trying to make a nice noise and couldn't care less about the content], so, in effect, every time you sing you a taking a 'political' stand. On that level, the songs you are singing are 'political'. Then there are the 'Political' songs which carry a determined message, be it about work, conditions of service, war, strikes etc. You don't have to agree with the stand these songs are taking but they would have been written with a 'Political' intent to get a message over. So, if you are singing, e.g. The Ox Plough Song, you are empathising with the life and conditions of the various workers in it just as much as you are empathisisng or even supporting the miners in 'Old Soldiers' which was written about the 1984 - 1985 miners strike or 'The Last Fisherman' about the decimation of the Cornish, and now national, fishing fleet.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 08 Oct 07 - 12:49 PM

Just finding that hat I don't put on much, that labelled 'Defender Of The BBC And Cultural Programming'.

Georgina described only the very beginning of this post-WW2 broadcasting. It continued with Peter Kennedy's highly acclaimed and popular As I Roved Out source recordings on a Sunday morning which everyone at my kindergarten listened to and regurgitated on Monday. Later, all children took part in the schools radio programmes Singing Together, Time & Tune and Music & Movement, which was for many their first and only introduction to both formal music teaching as well as their cultural heritage. Songs were culled largely from The National Song Book, every bit as awful as Rise Up Singing, but nevertheless, a starting point.

While I was bunking off school prep and sneaking, very much under age, into High Level Ranters sessions, the BBC were running a programme known unaffectionately as Country Swamps Folk which morphed eventually into the blessed Jim Lloyd's Folk On Friday. It's 1969, I'm working at C# House where Jim (who later became EFDSS Artistic Director) and the once blessed (before she was elevated to R2 supremo status) Frances Line were more or less in residence. This was the heart of the English revival. All the performers Steve names practically lived there too, with the addition of Ashley Hutchings and all the rest of Fairport who researched Liege & Lief, followed ever so rapidly by the embryo Steeleye Span who I think kept sleeping bags in the sound library. The other ventricle of the heart was Leader/Trailer records around the corner, which subsequently moved into the C# studio for a while before relocating to Halifax.

It was at this time that Louis Killen decided to emigrate to the US and clean up the Hudson River. Ever so worthy, I'm sure but now he's back in Gateshead he's taken to doing gigs based on his alternative Hank Williams/Willie Nelson stylee repertoire and needs Mike Waterson to keep him in order. However, I digress.

The 'second folk revival' in the UK was massive. One of my jobs was to produce the Folk Directory which entailed trekking for two years throughout the land to just about every venue. And it was at Ewan & Peggy's Singers' Club venue that more encouragement was meted out than at any other that I saw to English revival hopefuls to explore their own traditions. And that came from Peggy, an American. One of the jewels of our revival (which Steve imagines barely happened) was the first series of Radio Ballads produced for the BBC by Peggy, Ewan and Charles Parker. Charles ended up fired because they were considered too political. Not so the recent second series, but again, I digress.

The BBC has continued (after a fashion) to devote one hour a week to what it (sometimes surprisingly) calls 'English language f*lk'. While this is predominantly mainstream crap, there is nevertheless much on channels other than R2 which presents English trad in a more normalised setting (R3 Late Junction etc and R4 Factual Programmes in particular). All this is available on the replayer (when it's working). What is there, comparably, on US PSB radio?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: Cllr
Date: 08 Oct 07 - 01:32 PM

labeling, you have to love it

punk rock can be considered to be political (anti-establishment)
classic example God save the Queen by the sex pistols , however while Sids version of "my way may" not be inherently political it is still part of the punk genre. depending on your choice of view on whether or not by belonging to the genre makes it political informs where you stand in relation to folk.

Chumabawamba may be classed as folk and or punk or both, I saw them once do a support for Steeleye span and Robb johnson do a support for them!

I suppose i would say that some folk songs are political some are
not, if you look at some of Robb Johnson finest love songs like "you dont have to say goodbye" in itself it's not political despite being penned by an ardent leftwing political activist


Unless you believe the genre itself has a political status which then imbues whatever is produced under its banner with some sort additional quality then the answer is some of it is and some of it isn't.

However if you are going to argue that anything that involves people has an impact or "effects of socio-political changes" you can make the argument everything is political.i will leave it there because we then get dangerously close to asking the question of what is folk.

I dont think there is a correct answer to this because in the final analysis the question becomes a philosophical debate and is reliant on your own standpoint.
Cllr

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: Peace
Date: 08 Oct 07 - 01:37 PM

"Is folk song really political?"

Is sculpting/painting/dancing/ really political?

Maybe.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: Cllr
Date: 08 Oct 07 - 01:47 PM

Peace, exactly

only you managed to say it in much fewer words than i did cllr

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: Peace
Date: 08 Oct 07 - 01:55 PM

It was because of your post I arrived at that conclusion, Cllr. Thank you.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 08 Oct 07 - 02:03 PM

is morris dancing reactioary, or radical in intention?

are there conservative elements in the childe ballads?

which foot does Martin Carthy kick with?

Read on........

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: GUEST,Nerd
Date: 08 Oct 07 - 08:40 PM

I have no idea what Diane's talking about. I never said the UK second folk revival barely happened. I said it wouldn't have happened to anything near the extent that it did, and wouldn't have developed a club singing scene, without American influences. She seems to be supporting me by pointing out how central Peggy Seeger was in this. Thanks, Diane!

Her question about PSB (sic) radio is irrelevant, and also ignorant. Irrelevant because I wasn't saying that the US is more supportive of folk music than the UK, as her attempt to compare the radio shows in our two countries suggests. I don't know if one is more supportive than the other, and don't much care, really. I hope both countries get MORE supportive!

As for radio, in the US we don't have a national radio service comparable to the BBC. For folk music, as for other genres, you can go to many local stations in many places all over the US. Nationally, we have producers like American Public Media, which does things like "A Prairie Home Companion," NPR, which carries "World Cafe," "Thistle and Shamrock," etc. while these are mixed bag shows, they often have folk or roots music in excess of an hour a week. On Satellite Radio, we have American Routes, as well as whole station of folk music, XM 15 the Village, hosted by my friend Mary Sue Twohy, which is carrying a special by me this month, by the way! (In many US cities, there is also an array of both African and Latin roots music programming, if you know where to look.) The amount of folk music on radio is dwindling here, as thoughtful radio becomes more about talk and popular radio becomes more and more aural wallpaper for people to leave on while doing other things. The same is true of many other genres, alas! I expect the same is happening in Britain.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 09 Oct 07 - 01:03 AM

You said: A couple of radio shows and the Opie's books are not a real second revival.

I was saying this is total crap, there were considerably more than 'a couple' of BBC radio programmes and that the Opie's books (and others) were very influential and popular. The 'American influence' (such as it was) consisted mainly in an interest in blues which was regarded not as part of the revival but as, what was then, an alien, exciting, secret culture from a land before it became a cesspit of cultural ethnic cleansing and corporate globalisation we knew little about. Peggy Seeger's stance at the Singers was to tell people to stop pretending to be sharecroppers and cowboys and examine their own cultures, for which many (notably Martin Carthy) thanked her.

My experience of US radio (PSB or not) is minimal (though vastly in excess, apparently, of what Steve knows of UK broadcasting). What I do know about the US airwaves, having listened some of the shows he mentions, is that output comprises mainstream, MOR, celticky, countrified shit. No better than R2 in fact.

The Americans gave us the club singing scene, did they? Odd, I've never encountered anything remotely like it in the US, not that I'd advocate its adoption there, given the state it's in. The folk club movement demolished itself over two decades ago when it became overrun by comedians and wannabe popstar snigger-snoggers. English music carried on regardless in sessions, ceilidhs and certain festivals. In any case, fashions for how music is presented commercially change, but what doesn't is how it survives, thrives and develops in communities who share and adapt it. This continues, regardless of which (if any) 'revival' folklorists imagine they're living under. It mirrors people's lives, their experiences, successes, failures and tribulations. It might grab some bits from the Brill Building/Tin Pan Alley but it's not manufactured within them. People determine it, not musbiz whims and that's what makes it political.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: GUEST,Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Oct 07 - 02:46 AM

WMD
"Child" ballads - "Childe" had "Harold" after his name!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 09 Oct 07 - 03:03 AM

'The folk club movement demolished itself over two decades ago when it became overrun by comedians and wannabe popstar snigger-snoggers.'


all I will say is that you had to turn up early to get a chance of seeing Jasper Carrot - it was never standing room only in the traddy clubs - apart from on Carthy nights, he could always put bums on seats.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: GUEST,Nerd
Date: 09 Oct 07 - 03:29 AM

Diane seems determined to misunderstand and mischaracterize what I say. Too bad.

I never said America had the same kind of club scene as Britain. I said there wouldn't have been such a scene in Britain without American influence. This is because the Carthys, Killens, etc., who sang at the clubs wouldn't have been singing folk songs. These musicians were inspired by American music, or by Brits singing American songs (like Lonnie Donegan) and then turned to their own tradition.   This is confirmed by my own conversations with Carthy, Killen (and also Ashley Hutchings, Maddy Prior, Alan Reid, Andy Irvine, and many others I've spoken to over the years).

It's also well documented elsewhere, and non-controversial, and was noted by such early revival historians as Fred Woods in 1979. Woods, in Folk Revival, p. 54, writes of the folk clubs, "the repertoire was initially transatlantic, and derived from songwriters such as Leadbelly, Big Bill Broonzy, Uncle Dave Macon, and Woody Guthrie, and American folksongs." He also describes folk groups like the Kingston Trio and Peter Paul and Mary as "the main inspiration to the up-and-coming revivalist singers."

In Ailie Munro's admirable book about the folksong revival in Scotland, she calls the second chapter "The Story of the Revival: Beginnings in the USA." She begins with two quotes, from Andy Hunter and Robin Munro, both of whom say that the main material sung in Scottish folk clubs in the early 60s was American. Hunter says Jeannie Robertson complained about this.

Munro also points out that the precursor to the wartime and post-war radio shows that both Georgina and Diane cite was Alistair Cooke's brilliant radio series from 1938, I Hear America Singing, in which he presented American field recordings from the Library of Congress--in many cases, the first time they had been heard anywhere outside the Library. Munro quotes Hamish Henderson to the effect that they were the first field recordings most British audiences had ever heard. (She could have added to this Cooke's 1936 series, New York City to the Golden Gate, which he created for the BBC after his time in the US on scholarship, but before he emigrated in 1937.) Both of Cooke's shows were on the BBC, presented to British audiences, long before As I Roved Out or even Country Magazine.

It seems pointless for me to continue to justify what most historians of the second revival have been pointing out since the second revival itself. Diane will continue to argue that American influence was unimportant. The lady doth protest too much, methinks. A nerve has apparently been struck.

I do note one more time how political (indeed, romantic and nationalist) Diane's fierce defense of native British revivalism is, and point out once again that the whole idea of folk music is inextricably entwined with politics.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 09 Oct 07 - 05:01 AM

it was never standing room only in the traddy clubs - apart from on Carthy nights

It was for the Dransfields, Nic Jones, Tony Rose, The Watersons, the Coes and Peggs, the Young Tradition and others of that ilk, all of whom started off doing some US material at a time when the US was a 'secret culture', until they discovered a tradition of their own. Jasper Carrot came later. He sent me an image of the back of his head for inclusion in the Folk Directory. I didn't use it.

Revivalists played the clubs because that was the network that existed after trad jazz fled the ramshackle back and upstairs pub rooms for better premises such as cellar bars and community/arts centres which, surprise surprise, the more enterprising trad music organisers are making use of now. This means that people who'd rather stick pins in their eyes than go near a 'f*lk club' are getting exposed to their own cultural heritage and realising that they do like it and can identify with it.

Too right I'm pissed off at Steve's patronising assertions that Americans handed us the music just because a few wannabes did PPM covers. Next he'll be trotting out his usual chestnut that Mr Hutchings owes everything to the US because he once played in a jug band and started off Fairport as a Californian clone band, as he did in one of his earlier rants during which he admitted he and the Tyger had never even met. Don't suppose Steve ever met Jeannie Robertson either but just read somewhere that she'd complained how Edinburgh was a hotbed of bluegrass and banjo picking. It was and she did. It took one of these banjo pickers (Clive Palmer) and a self-taught bluegrass fiddler who played with Tom Paley (Robin Williamson) to help turn first the Scottish revival then the world towards the old songs and tunes that the travellers had never stopped playing.

Another Fred Woodism was that musicians have to start somewhere and that is not always, or even usually, the right place. But the vital point is that musical influences travel in both directions and musicians pick up and absorb them from everywhere and incorporate what's fits with their own roots. He and Karl Dallas and Eric Winter and I, from our differing political perspectives, used to discuss these themes all night long and Bert Lloyd would give me marks on my pieces. Funnily enough though we never mentioned that old git Alistair Cooke because what we were talking about was what was happening right then in 1970s England, not America in the 1930s. Now, had Steve been there he might have had a slight chance of trying to prove that English country musicians owed all to US blues merchants. Why, we could have shown him Bob Copper playing the blues down on the Sussex coast (which he did). That would have clinched it.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: GUEST,redmax
Date: 09 Oct 07 - 05:32 AM

My knowledge is mainly limited to traditional English song, and it's always seemed to me that 'the folk' mainly liked songs of love and songs of adventure; or ideally, both in the same song. Songs of protest seem to have been in the minority, but doubtless that's a reflection of England's overall stability and prosperity compared to, say, Ireland's.

Someone mentioned earlier that songs about war could be seen as inherently political, but I wonder if that's true. It strikes me that in songs like High Germany or The White Cockade the lament is on a more personal level, the woes being for a soldier boy and the grievance against the recruiting sergeant. The inevitability of war rarely seems to be challenged like it would be in the protest songs of the 20th century.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 09 Oct 07 - 05:52 AM

Erm, you mean what Arthur McBride said to the recruiting sergeant wasn't political?

Says Arthur, I wouldn't be proud of your clothes
You've only the lend of them as I suppose
And you dare not change them one night or you know
If you do you'll be flogged in the morning.

Or what the woman being left behind said when the captain called all hands:

What makes you go abroad, fighting for strangers?

was purely self-seeking?

Sounds like quite vociferous political protest to me.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 09 Oct 07 - 07:13 AM

well all I can say is you have a very selective memory - I can remember some very thin nights with some of the people you mention.

They had a powerhouse of publicity in the enthusiastic way that Karl Dallas built them up in Melody Maker and it brought people in - really expecting something sensational - which many of them couldn't deliver.

It was around this time that the saying about acts that could empty a room faster than trapeze artist with diarrhoea became current.

Jasper talked about the city we lived in and loved. he was folk - he didn't have to invoke traditions. he could take of himself though - pity about some of the others that these narrow predjudices sent to the wall.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: Dave Sutherland
Date: 09 Oct 07 - 08:16 AM

I agree with the artists that Diane mentions who could fill the traddie clubs and I'd add Archie Fisher, Dick Gaughan, Sean MaGuire, John Kirkpatrick and Martyn Wyndham-Read to that list, but not about the venues. At least not in the East Midlands as with regard to the few Arts Centres/mini conceret venues which have been presenting folk music the one in Nottinghamshire has closed (for the second time)while the one in Derby exists on 90% tribute bands with Nick Harper being the nearest to folk that they are presenting this year.Meanwhile in the freezing, upstairs shithole in which we run our traddie club Keith Kendrick and Sylvia Needham pulled in 50 odd for a singaround on Sunday night.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: Folkiedave
Date: 09 Oct 07 - 08:33 AM

it was never standing room only in the traddy clubs - apart from on Carthy nights, he could always put bums on seats.

Errr...I helped run a traditional music-based folk club in the 60's and my experience is in direct contrast to that.

We could fill the club most Sundays. The only difference between some artists and others was the size of the queue before the pub opened.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 09 Oct 07 - 08:33 AM

Well, hurrah for Keith & Sylvia but was it political?
(I suppose in the map-drawing sense of extending the boundaries of Derbyshire to the sea it was).

I was in a venue not long ago when the racket Dick G + noisy cohorts kicked up with No Gods & Precious Few Heroes produced complaints from the karaoke downstairs. Couldn't take the politics.

Venues come and go. In the East Midlands Loughborough used to be dire but it's doing OK now with concerts, ceilidhs and a very fine new festival. Depends who's doing the organisation I suppose and yes, Steve, it's an American . . .

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Oct 07 - 08:45 AM

[Erm, you mean what Arthur McBride said to the recruiting sergeant wasn't political?

Says Arthur, I wouldn't be proud of your clothes
You've only the lend of them as I suppose
And you dare not change them one night or you know
If you do you'll be flogged in the morning.]

Fair point, but I did stress that I was only talking about the English tradition, that's an Irish song, isn't it?

[Or what the woman being left behind said when the captain called all hands:

What makes you go abroad, fighting for strangers?

was purely self-seeking?

Sounds like quite vociferous political protest to me.]

Self-seeking? Did I use that phrase? I just said that the songs often speak from a personal point of view. The girl is saying "What makes YOU go abroad...when you could be safe at home" which isn't the same as from "Why should ANYONE have to go", a sentiment which tends to be found in songs like And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda.

My point was that I felt there'd been a transition from personal laments about the awfulness of war to protests about its futility, a challenge of "why the hell should ANY sod have to die for politicians?". Did the latter grow more prevalent after the 1914-18 war, I wonder?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 09 Oct 07 - 08:46 AM

well I am not in the business of attacking other musicians particularly as some of the people I have in mind are no longer with us, and their memories are no doubt special to many.

however if there were this great groundswell of support - where has it evaporated?

i was a very enthusiastic supporter of the folk club movement throughout the 70's, attending folk clubs most nights, running clubs and helping out as best I could.

Its only when it was made plain to me through years of rejection of myself and the singers I loved, that the whole edifice was there to protect some weird fantasy of tradition dreamed by a gang of characters in sleeping bags in the ping pong and prance society library - rather than being a living artform for the british people. That was when I decided to sling my hook.

Giok was laughing at me on another thread, because I started the message with 'When I was a country and western singer; thirty years back, I had a residency in a gay bar in Barnsley.'

You want to know where your audience went, it was out there, but you weren't interested in them, just this 'tradition'.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 09 Oct 07 - 08:59 AM

Our Captain Calls All Hands is a highly political anti-war statement. It's ingenuous in the extreme to take it as merely a whingeing woman telling the bloke not to go to war.

Arthur McBride is similarly a profound condemnation British imperialism and colonialism in Ireland and thus an equally political anti-war statement.

Why don't people actually listen to lyrics?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: GUEST,redmax
Date: 09 Oct 07 - 09:02 AM

That's me told, then! :-)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: Folkiedave
Date: 09 Oct 07 - 09:05 AM

however if there were this great groundswell of support - where has it evaporated?

There is an assumption there that it has. Frankly it hasn't.

When there was this great groundswell of support there were about four festivals to go to nationwide. There are now about 300.

There were very few instrumental sessions. There were few ceilidhs and there were few record labels.

The posh Italian melodeon makers together probably import as many melodeons in a week now as they used to do in five years; concertinas were around £20.00 for an expensive one and few people played expensive guitars.

More people participate in, go to and play folk music than ever.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 09 Oct 07 - 09:23 AM

"however if there were this great groundswell of support - where has it evaporated?"

I think the biggest factor is the change in live performance generally, and people's expectations of that experience. As it has become the norm across most types of music to provide more professional event management, and more mainstream venues programme a diversity of musics including folk, the average punter has grown to expect the venue experience.

We're thinking about introducing an acoustic cafe on Sunday afternoons - comfy seating, nice food and drink on offer...it's the intimate performance exprience, but on a slightly different level to the folk club.

These are the rigs of the time.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: GUEST,redmax
Date: 09 Oct 07 - 09:26 AM

I really hope you're right, but I'm 37 and at most folk events I attend I'm the youngest person there. And while it's nice to be called a "young chap" at singarounds etc. I'd feel more secure about folk's future if I saw more people deserving of that description! There are young performers, but the audiences I've seen are mostly in their 50s and 60s. A couple of decades on, what will the scene be like?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: GUEST,redmax
Date: 09 Oct 07 - 09:27 AM

Sorry, the above is in response to Folkiedave's comments

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: Folkiedave
Date: 09 Oct 07 - 12:31 PM

Well Redmax, I agree that the folk scene audience is skewed towards us older people (I am one of them) but I do get to a lot of folk events and I see loads of young people and "folk" it is getting quite - well whatever the word is these days for "popular".

If I could predict the future to know what is going to happen to the folk scene in ten years time I would not be here!! One thing is for certain - whatever the prediction is - it will be wrong.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: GUEST,Nerd
Date: 10 Oct 07 - 05:33 PM

Diane's quick and rather dismissive statement about "Arthur McBride" is a prime example of what I was saying when I first joined this thread. The political meanings of a song are largely a matter of interpretation by the hearer. Diane says that "Arthur McBride is similarly a profound condemnation British imperialism and colonialism in Ireland," and assumes anyone who disagrees has not listened to the lyrics. In fact, because Arthur McBride is a folksong, there is no standard set of lyrics, which is one problem with approaching it as though it has a single, monolithic meaning. Someone can be listening to different lyrics and therefore hearing different meanings! However, even listening to the same lyrics one may come to different interpretations.

Diane's comment would be a more appropriate statement to make about the similar ditty "the recruiting sergeant," with its line "let Englishmen fight English wars, it's nearly time ye started, o." "Arthur McBride" is more ambiguous. Martin Carthy sang a fine version of "Arthur McBride" in the 60s despite the fact that he was unaware of Diane's interpretation, and believed the song to be from East Anglia.   According to Bert Lloyd, the earliest claim for a version of this song comes from Devon in the 1830s, and the earliest collected versions come from England as well (1892, Baring-Gould collection). The preponderance of versions come from Scotland, according to Roud's database, and the preponderance of broadsides from England, with some from both Ireland and Scotland. In the archive where I work we have a field recording from one of my favorite, little-known singers, Mrs. Carrie Grover, from Maine—her ancestors were from Glamorganshire, Wales and from Scotland, via Nova Scotia. According to a previous Mudcat thread, it was this American version (sorry, Diane!) that Paul Brady learned, while on a visit to my neighbor Lisa Null.

In short, Arthur McBride may have had nothing to do with Ireland in its origins. It may be English, or Scottish. The lyrics of most versions never mention Britain, Ireland, colonialism, or imperialism. The British military presence in Ireland is not mentioned. Although most versions mention a shillelagh, as Malcolm Douglas has pointed out on another thread, that's no guarantee of an Irish origin. Where protest is involved, it's protest about the liberties taken by the army against the civilian population.

Most versions of "Arthur McBride" are about two men who come across a recruiting party and do not want to sign up. The recruiters appear to be as Irish or as English as the civilians in most versions. Paul Brady has the sergeant saying things like "I'll have no such chat, for I neither will take it from Spailpin or brat." (As an aside, most broadsides do not have this wording, and I haven't listened to Mrs. Grover's version lately...I wonder if Paul B. changed this to make it sound more Irish....)

The civilians are not politically revolutionary. When the sergeant says "good morning," they do not say, "Piss off, you bloody tool of English imperialism." The exchange goes like this:

"Good morning ! Good morning!" the sergeant did cry
"And the same to you gentlemen! " we did reply,
Intending no harm but meant to pass by
For it being on Christmas morning.

There they are, "intending no harm," calling the soldiers "gentlemen," one might say politely accepting the military's presence. In many versions, too, the civilians and the military men know each other; the civilians identify the captain and corporal by name, although the latter two do not introduce themselves.

Even when the sergeant tries to recruit them, they do not tell the man off as a colonial oppressor, they politely point out that the enticements of a military life (decent food, decent clothes, and hence a good chance to woo "a charming young wife") are hollow when put next to the loss of freedom and the likelihood of being killed that go along with life in the army. (Other versions refer to the low pay in the army, and may have reflected protest of soldiers against their wages).

Everything to this point is cordial. Next, however, the sergeant takes offense, or at least pretends offense as a thin excuse for attempting to conscript Arthur and his cousin. In any case, it is only when the sergeant insults the civilians, and then threatens to hurt them, that the civilians are mobilized to action.

While it is possible to read Arthur's actions as a political response to oppression, it is equally possible to look at it as an angry response to rudeness. The fact that rudeness on the part of the sergeant is at least one of the issues is suggested in the ending of the song, where the victors, Arthur and his cousin, adopt a parody of politeness in addressing the now-unconscious recruiting party:

"And so to conclude and to finish disputes
We obligingly asked if they wanted recruits."

So, where there is protest in the song, it can be interpreted to be about the British presence in Ireland, but is more explicitly about the specific practice of conscription, and the arrogant behavior of recruiting parties, and sometimes the falseness of the recruiters' promises, in a context that may be Irish or British.

Which is all to say...one can listen to the lyrics, and still not agree with a particular interpretation about British colonialism in Ireland.

By the way, speaking of rudeness, while it's a bit rude that Diane persists in claiming I said things I never did say, about Ashley Hutchings "owing everything" to America, about Americans "handing" music to English people, etc., it is far more rude to refer to the late Alistair Cooke as an "old git." She's just lucky Arthur McBride's not here!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: Amos
Date: 10 Oct 07 - 05:35 PM

Say, what do you guys think. Is gray REALLY part white, as we have always been told? Or is there some other explanation? Is it really related to black?

Or just undecided?


A

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 10 Oct 07 - 06:11 PM

Steve's been shuffling through my cuttings again, quoting bits of my interviews with Mr Carthy when he speculated on Arthur McBride being set in an East Anglian turkey farm and with Mr Brady who told me in the Enterprise one night that he'd nicked his version from a book while in America (never mentioned Ms Null).

Of course I know the thing's been collected all over the place. I simplified the plot (which is military imperialism) for whoever it was that insisted it was an Irish not an English song and thus somehow inappropriate to the discussion. Point is, it doesn't matter where it's set. It's a political song about a ubiquitous and universal issue. Which is what we are supposed to be talking about. And Alistair Cooke was a really boring old git, Any fule kno that.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: GUEST,Nerd
Date: 10 Oct 07 - 07:19 PM

Diane, you flatter yourself. Martin wrote that the song was from East Anglia in his liner notes--remember liner notes?   Lisa Null's husband, Charlie Baum, posted the bit about Paul learning it from Mrs. Grover's version, to Mudcat. (Oddly, Lisa never told me herself, even though she has had me sing "Arthur McBride" for her. I plan to get out the reference copy of Mrs. Grover's version and give it a listen soon!)

I agree that "Arthur McBride" has political implications...and could fairly be called "a political song." My main point is ALL songs have political implications, and there's really no such thing as a song that can't be "a political song." "Happy Birthday" is, when sung by small children on state TV to Fidel Castro, or when sung outside a prison to commemorate the birthday of a political prisoner, etc. (Si Kahn points out that "She works hard for the money" and "My baby takes the Morning Train" are labor songs.)

Given that, the important question is not "is folksong political," which becomes fairly meaningless. It's "how is each song political," or "what are its political meanings?" Those change, not only for each context, but for each listener, and to simply say "it's about British colonialism in Ireland" or worse, "it's political," is simply too vague.

By the way, I would read your cuttings, Diane, if I could find them. I'll read any well-informed articles on folk music. (Okay, now I'm flattering you) What publications do you write for? I work in the largest library in the world, so chances are I could find some articles if you give me a hint on where to look.

Finally, Alistair Cooke was a remarkably interesting man, who was also always a supporter of both folk and jazz music. Like MacColl, he was from Salford, but moved away and changed his name!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 11 Oct 07 - 01:36 AM

the important question is not "is folksong political"

But it's the question being asked here and which I've been answering all along with concrete examples (to repeat):

Songs that people make up which describe their lives: work, a bystander at a historical event, a retelling of a tale heard from someone else or else their own story, whether sad and desperate or triumphant and self-fulfilling; these are all political because the personal is political, without a doubt.

Steve just talks about whatever's tumbled from his filing cabinet, whether relevant or not, and whinges that nothing Georgina Boyes or myself has said contradicts him. Now, I can cheerfully ignore such bollocks but he really should be careful about crossing Ms Boyes!

Like Martin C put a certain speculation about a song in his sleeve (cos that's what we call them here) notes. Yes I know. He's also told a million journos down the years, in my case it was in a Kings Cross pub when, if I recall, Mr Hutchings (that chap Steve's never met) was too, and probably Linda - then - Peters (now that should date it . . . ) was also propping up the bar.

Jesus. Alistair Cooke ain't alone in the boring old git 'I'm a f*lk luvvie' department. I wonder if the bodysnatchers will get Steve too when he's 95?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: GUEST,Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Oct 07 - 02:11 AM

Charles Parker once said that a well-sung traditional love song is a fist in the face of the establishment - a prole saying "listen to me - I'm me".
If you want to hear politics in singing you should try to get hold of the recording of Harry Cox singing Betsy The Serving Maid and spitting out at the end, "and that's what they think of us"; or his long, bitter monologue on land ownership and transportation after he had sung Van Deiman's Land to Alan Lomax.
"Now, I can cheerfully ignore such bollocks" - now there's a new thought to conjure with Princess!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: GUEST,Nerd
Date: 11 Oct 07 - 03:10 AM

Ah, Diane....one can always count on you for utter nonsense, empty slogans ("the personal is political") self-aggrandizing BS (I've been answering all along with concrete examples; I was drinking with Martin Carthy, Tyger Hutchings, and Linda Peters"), and gratuitous abuse.

Good on ya, you don't disappoint.

I'd still love to read some of those articles you've written, though. Just point me in the right direction.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 11 Oct 07 - 03:34 AM

OK, I was wrong. In your case, the personal isn't political nor even personal.
It's nothing but a bag of washing.

And no, I didn't say me and those musicians you mention were drinking together.
We were in the pub . . . 'working'.
You do have this knack of picking up the odd word you recognise and launching off tangentially into orbit, dontcha? As Trevor Carter wrote in The Tower of Babel:

Then the henchmen fetched their flipcharts, they were in no doubt
They could motivate the workforce through discussion frank and full.
But they found that when they tried to speak, these alien words came pouring out
Like something from the arse-end of a bull.

A very political song, all about local government (don't tell Georgina).



And you forgot to say #100.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: GUEST,theleveller
Date: 11 Oct 07 - 12:25 PM

I like 'personal is political'; that's right at the heart of folk music and a lot of other music as well.

As Oscar Wilde said to Whistler: 'I wish I'd said that'.

And, as Whistler replied: 'You will, Oscar, you will.'

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is folk song really political?
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 11 Oct 07 - 01:37 PM

why don't people listen to lyrics Dame asks..well, I don't especially...I listen to the tune...I enjoy reading the lyrics and I must say that verse of McBride is new to me...if someone had sung it it might have rolled right through my head and out the door...people have different modes of getting information...I am generally left with a vague impression of a shipwreck or someone is in love...but I do believe in the "nice sound" value of music the most..or why bother...just print up the lyrics and pass them out...but I guess that wouldn't work for people who get information auditorily ...they do better hearing something..that probably also explains why some people can listen to ugly tunes and not be bothered..they are probably listening for the information as opposed to the prettiness...who knows...mg