Steamfolk

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: glueman
Date: 04 Jul 11 - 12:58 PM

Steamfolk sounds compelling but it's worth remembering that the first tenet in the catechism of folk music is that it is part of an unbroken line. Dogmatists/purists do not complain, by and large, that you can't hear a good night's folk revival any more. Like opposing poles of a magnet, the closer one moves to its mysteries, the further the other magnet moves away. Folk does not want to be bridged to anything, which is tenet number two.

The steam analogy is interesting. I've often pondered on the reality that some steam locomotives have run three or four times longer in preservation than they ever did on the rail network and with infinitely larger passenger numbers on the train. It's only a short analogy away to suggest steam punk (or whatever one might call the tail that's wagged the dog for the last 40+ years) has become the thing itself.

Steam punk would have to encompass 'normal people' under its umbrella and not just the equivalent of engine drivers in their blue overalls, polka dotted neckachief and oiltop cap for it to be more than a folkmania branchline, but if it manage to Come All Ye I'd sign up for a season ticket.

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 04 Jul 11 - 12:35 PM

London is a long way away these days, but that makes me smile & I'll be sure to follow that link...

*

Following the inevitable Divorce neither of my parents gained full custody of me; too folky for Dad, too free for Mum, but at least Dad was more tolerant of Folk and was always happy to listen. In Mum's house there was a lot of hostility to other ways of doing things, much less improvising whilst singing a ballad. For example, Dad liked the Dick Gaughan / Ken Hyder duo album; Mum hated it. Naturally I loved it, but then I loved Talisker and Sun Ra and Don Cherry and Johnny Mbizo Dyani and The Art Ensemble of Chicago who were all about Folk Music anyway. Dad loved them; Mum hated them. Weirdly I loved both my parents equally, and happy they got together to have me. I suppose their marriage was the Third Ear Band...

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 04 Jul 11 - 12:22 PM

Did you go to this year's Freedom of the City festival? (programmed by Eddie Prevost, Evan Parker and Martin Davidson). It was held in Cecil Sharp House!

There are some commonalities between free improv and folk.

For instance, have you ever heard Sue Ferrar's album 'A Boy Leaves Home'? If not, beg, borrow or steal a copy. It's a beautiful album, and features, among other things, Lol Coxhill singing 'Shenandoah'.

http://www.jazzloft.com/p-44906-a-boy-leaves-home.aspx

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 04 Jul 11 - 11:50 AM

I'm not posulating a new musical movement here, or even a category, just seeing Folk in terms of it being a Cultural Construct and trying to put a positive spin on why that should be. I too have my preferences, but regardless of them I may extend the concept of Steamfolk to stuff I don't like as much as that which I do. Pentagle's Cruel Sister album is a Steamfolk Icon, but you won't find it in the Sedayne household, much less The John Renborn Band albums even at £3 a pop in Fopp (as they are in MCR right now) but that's personal taste. I don't say it's crap, I say I don't much care for it. Like Steeleye Span and Fairport; I don't like them personally, but I know what they mean in a general sense.

*

Hopefully by Chops I mean a lot more than mere Technique which doesn't do too much for me either, but I'm not knocking it. Culturally my Mother is Folk, but my Father is Free Improvisation; how they ever came to have an experimental bastard like me I'll never know but I love them both very dearly, just my Mother's always been overly precious & prissy, whilst Daddy's prone to too much politics and philosophy. In the old days I found it very exciting the LMC was on Gloucester Avenue just up the road from the Cecil Sharp House. In my heart it's still just a hop between the two!

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: Charley Noble
Date: 04 Jul 11 - 11:47 AM

Shovel in the coal and let 'er fly!

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 04 Jul 11 - 11:22 AM

"After all, all you need to play nu-metal is the chops; folk was never just chops and the same is true today."

see this is totally where I disagree with you about the 'reality' of folk.

I would say 99% of what I hear released on folk record labels is "just chops", particularly from younger musicians.

I'm probably more sympathetic to the Woven Wheat Whispers/CDR label type stuff, which tends to be a lot less "chopsy" and which does tend to fit your 'feral folk' or 'steamfolk' tags. (except when it's ninnyish goth like Current 93, or insufferably twee)

but I don't see the point in trying to fit that cap on heads that clearly don't suit it.

If something sounds like James Blunt and dresses like him too, what's the point in pretending that that is in any way as interesting or quirky a cultural by-product as steampunk (or psych-folk, or free improvisation, or Grime, or whatever)?

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 04 Jul 11 - 11:05 AM

"I've been to performances by Folk Degree students and just basked in the glory of it all, but it's total Steamfolk, whatever the underlying academic / cultural gloss might be"

yeah? you really think so? so are The Corrs steamfolk?

(because many of the musicians I'm thinking of sound like The Corrs. They don't sound anything like Peter Bellamy)

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 04 Jul 11 - 10:50 AM

And yet in the hands of a skilled player it all - works. A truly wondrous machine...

And talking about concertinas, remember this?

Folklore: Concertina Weasels

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: SteveMansfield
Date: 04 Jul 11 - 10:43 AM

I've no idea what most of this thread is talking about - but (as a concertina player) I've often been struck before by the idea that a concertina is a very steampunk instrument - all those levers and buttons and pads and arched springs and hinges and gawd-only-knows what else, like some musical difference engine ...

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 04 Jul 11 - 10:11 AM

I think the Folk Degree Course is one of the ultimate conceits of The Folk Revival, and is essential Steamfolk. How can it be otherwise? This doesn't mean the results aren't amazing - I've been to performances by Folk Degree students and just basked in the glory of it all, but it's total Steamfolk, whatever the underlying academic / cultural gloss might be. These days that become increasingly evident as Universities become even less of an option for people on the whole, let alone the population of Tyneside. After all, all you need to play nu-metal is the chops; folk was never just chops and the same is true today. Folk is a myth predicated on a Bourgeouis Fantasy of working class culture; most Folk music is still couched in these terms even unto today. I call it psuedo academic because it is a very closed unit, and their methods are far from falsifiable, much less their conclusions, which are more akin to Religion than Science.

I'm not complaing BTW - that's just the way it is - the Folk Reality - which has given us so much truly amazing music over the years & continues to do so, but then again so has Roman Catholicism, but one doesn't have to become a Roman Catholic Covert or agree with one word of the inane Theology of same to appreciate the mastery of the first Vivaldi Gloria (much better than the second), much less the transcedent beauty of the Allegri Miserere. In fact it probably helps if you don't, which is what Steamfolk is about - being able to see this stuff for what it is without throwing out the babies with the bathwater. In fact, it keeps the bathwater too (whiter than the whitewash on the wall!) as an essential component of a very modern cultural phenomenon which is still expressing itself in those terms - as it does in the new (very excellent!) CDs by Jim Causley and John Kirkpatrick, both of which are unashamedly Steamfolk in that sense.

As I suggested in my review of the former for Stirrings: ...there is a sense here that the new generation of Folkies (of whom Jim Causley is particularly bright star) are using the idiom in a way which post-modern irony serves as a more genuine sort of subversion, however so innocently innocuous this music might otherwise sound. Hey, maybe that's the nub of Steamfolk right there?

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 04 Jul 11 - 08:26 AM

" it's accepting the image, culture and artefacts of the Colonial Folk Revival of the last 60 years (the so-called second revival) is, by and large, a projected collective fantasy reaction to the horrors of modern life"

yes, this does more or less accurately sum-up the aesthetic of most of it.

But it also explains why Alasdair Roberts' songs are so great. Because, while he is undoubtedly a man who relishes anachronisms and antiquity, his own songs have little to do with fantasy, using clear-eyed folk idioms to address "the horrors of modern life" square on. (The fact that he's a writer comparable to Wallace Stevens or Basil Bunting certainly helps too.) He even has a knack for picking traditional songs that seem to end up sounding like comments on fundamentalism, or the alienating effects of technology on labour. There's nothing twee or 'transcendent' or even nostalgic there.

I also don't buy the idea that "all" folk is steamfolk. There are plenty of current acts that present folk as acoustic pop - Seth Lakeman, Jim Moray, Bella Hardy, a lot of the graduates of the Newcastle Uni folk degree - for example. (Note, I'm not dismissing their music, merely pointing out the face that that they present to the world.) In America, they have their counterparts in Sarah Jarosz and others.

It might not be your cup of tea, but it is folk, and it is is worlds away from any self-conscious wrangling with an imagined, idealised past.

If anything, they are just as programmatic as your 'steamfolkers' but in the opposite direction: presenting folk as one popular-genre-choice of the 21st Century among many, like any other. They play folk for the same circumstanctal reasons their friends play R&B or nu-metal. They even wear the same jeans and trainers as those friends.

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 04 Jul 11 - 07:25 AM

I'm just smarting because Ross lent me one of his precious vintage Lachenal Anglos and I can't make head nor tail of it at all. Most things I can make at least some sense of, but Melodeons, Anglos and Moothies are beyond me.

The beauty of the Guitar (another instrument I can't make sense of) is inherant in the Technical Tradition of Genre Trancendence. I know heavy-metal guitarists who drool over Martin Carthy and Nic Jones, and Folkies who worship at the the shrine of Frank Zappa and Steve Vai. I remember putting a link to a Derek Bailey YouTube up here once and one Folk Guitarist being intrigued by the technique of the man, if not the music, and every guitarist I've ever met acknowledges the Genius of Micky Jones. Say guitar - say - Scotty Moore, Sonny Sharrock, Steve Howe, Steve Hillage, Rory Gallagher, Tony (TS) McPhee, Alan Holdsworth, John McLaughlin* etc. and that's before you've touched Folk, Flamenco, Classical, Metal, etc. etc.

* Just discovered this on YouTube recently. I saw this lot on the same bill as Kevin Coyne at Newcastle City Hall circa 1976 and was suitably impressed. Those were the daze!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AzovMu-2LY

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: Will Fly
Date: 04 Jul 11 - 06:58 AM

Concertinas fetch sums way in excess of their actual value or musical usefulness.

Yummy - a whole can of musical and craft worms to chew on here! :-)

I've often pondered on the disparate attitudes that endow a musical instrument with a "value". If you're a concertina buff, there seems to be little middle way between a cheap Chinese instrument costing, say, around £80, and the next step up to an instrument costing, say £800. And, yes, the magic names 'Lachenal', 'Crabbe', 'Wheatstone' usually come with 4-figure sums attached to them. I can understand that the high number of, and high quality of the parts in a good quality concertina will represent excellent workmanship and hours of labour - hence the high price. In the end, however, the cost of all works of art and craft - including musical instruments - depends on the mysterious and ever-changing amalgam of factors such as "name", "desirability", "rarity", "collectors' word-of-mouth", "fashion", "investment", etc., etc.

All of which robs the word 'value' of any real meaning. When I compare guitars - about which I know far more than I do about concertinas - I care only for playability and sound. Nothing else matters - not the price, not the name, not the association. The Martin Carthy Limited Edition Martin with zero fret and 3 brass bridge pins ain't a patch on the second-hand instrument made by a local luthier which I bought just over a year ago. But that's just my own personal value-rating. Shall we talk about Designer Folk...

As for musical usefulness... a well-played duet concertina in the right hands is truly orchestral. In real terms, the guitar is by far the earlier instrument - hundreds of years earlier - but somehow doesn't fit into SteamFolk quite like the concertina does. Strange, eh?

More Black Sea fiddles, I say!

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 04 Jul 11 - 05:33 AM

Of course, real Steamfolk would be automatically played on invented, steam powered instruments

Moot point; I reckon most Folkies think it already is. In their fondness for the Authentic Folk Instrument vintage Contertinas fetch sums way in excess of their actual value or musical usefulness. Why? Because Vintage Lachenals and Wheatstones are articles of a very particular sort of faith that insists on the genuine artefact, provenance and all. I think this is cool - I'm the same with the random ethnography that clutters up this place; exotic cargo cultism.

However, I note with as much interest as despair that Folkies invariably assume my Black Sea Fiddle (AKA Karadeniz Kemence) is either a) an Appalachian Dulcimer or b) a Bowed Psaltery. They never ask me what it is, they always ask Is that a BP / AD? - and look very puzzled when I tell them no, it is not..., and even more puzzled (afraid) when I go on to tell them what it is thus introducing them to a whole other realm of possibility. In folk there are Normal Stringed Instruments (guitars, violins, mandolin & bouzouki derivatives) and Unusual Stringed Instruments (Bowed Psaltery, Hurdy Gurdy, Hammered and Appalachian Dulcimer). If it's not one of these, then you must be dealing in some truly weird ju-ju!

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 04 Jul 11 - 05:19 AM

No indeed, Bugsy, though if there is a group going by that name it shows the Steampunk idea is beginning to filter through into common consciousness - or maybe not. One fears the group Steamfolk to have missed the point entirely, certainly missed the inherent irony anyway, taking too literally the Folk Remit which compells us to mourn the past as a Real Country We Have (Somehow) Lost rather than a creation of our own. There is also (as a Google search will reveal) a SteamFolk site dealing in fantasy art of a Steampunkish Variety but with more Folkish elements. This is not what I'm talking about either, although it figures. Steamfolk is a way of accepting & celebrating the fact that Folk has been a fantasy construct from the off and continues to be so in perpetuation of its own carefully founded Myths, Orthodoxies, Assumptions, Attitudes and Aesthetics with respect of both The Tradition (that it first invents then claims to represent) or else the New Folk Idioms arising therefrom. These New Folk Idioms and artefacts are occuring all the time and are especially fashionable right now in any number of ways. We see Folk Tunics for sale in Women's Clothes Shops and Catalogues (try Marisota) and the very word Folk being used as noun, verb and adjective in common usage both by the intiated and uninitiated.

Steamfolk is about The Old as much as it is about The New. Indeed the very soul of Steamfolk would be those old Shirley and Dolly Collins albums they made for Harvest at a time when a (relatively) mainstream label would consider such a venture viable. Remember, they shared Harvest with 'pop' acts such as Pink Floyd, Third Ear Band, & The Edgar Broughton Band etc. In their original states Anthems in Eden and Love Death and the Lady have become definitive documents of an aesthetic which one might call Pure Steamfolk in terms of both its cultural viability and innate mythology & imagery - and that's not saying anything of the music! The CD reissues seem to miss the point rather (Staines Norris anyone?) although maybe only go so far as to confirm it after all*. Other re-issues of the Collins Canon, such as Adieu To Old England (which features a gawdy painting of the South Queensferry Burry Man - adieu to old England indeed!) and the erotic 'folk art' stylings of The Power of the True Love Knot (pert breasts but why the skirt?) seem to be the very essence of what I'm on about here. Then there's the very wonderful Snapshots CD of hitherto unreleased live material with its digipak vintage family photo album feel.

In any case, the status of Shirley and Dolly Collins to Folk Outsiders such as Current 93 and the old Woven Wheat Whispers 'community' (I ask you!) is something that, whilst not being fully understood by regular folkies, is par for the course to Steamfolk. And how nice to see the long overdue CD editions of Peter Bellamy's classic ARGO albums Oak Ash and Thorn and Merlin's Isle of Gramarye which confirms Rudyard Kipling to be the Godfather of Steamfolk, though at £15 a pop (in HMV MCR) I'll be making do with what's at hand in the unofficial stash a wee while longer yet. And yes, the Folk Police Oak, Ash, Thorn album is quintessential Steamfolk and very fine to boot. Anyway - I'll shut up about this soon, but not before preparing my Steamfolk t-shirt for this year's Fylde where our Bellamy: Kipling With the Tradition show will be Steamfolk par excellance, perhaps even more than the pevious years' Demdyke (who's grave has just been found so I hear... oo-er...). One of the things I miss most about the old Woven Wheat Whispers / Unbroken Circle / Harvest Home sites was the constant search on the part of the perpretator & self-styled Lord of Misrule for Convient Pidgeon Holes for the various aspects of Folk featured thereupon. No need now, Mr Coyle, for Steamfolk covers 'em all!

S O'P (in a waking dream...)

* I stumble upon seemingly inherent contradictions and dualities in the music all the time; I'll ponder this and come back to it later, or not, depending on how it goes, but in my experience Duality is A Very Good Thing.

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 04 Jul 11 - 04:19 AM

Of course, real Steamfolk would be automatically played on invented, steam powered instruments...

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: Bugsy
Date: 04 Jul 11 - 02:03 AM

Reading the title of this thread I thought it would be about "Steamfolk" the folk group from UK. But alas, no.


CHeers

Bugsy

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 03 Jul 11 - 06:51 PM

The Harrow and the Harvest.

What more can I say? I rest my case...

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 03 Jul 11 - 06:47 PM

PS - Seen the new hand pressed 100% cotton card jewel case inserts on the new Gillian Welch album? Here's Gillian & David telling how to coffee-stain the for Antique Effect.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZigVLW09YY

Pure Steamfolk!

Subject: Steamfolk
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 03 Jul 11 - 06:33 PM

I've been fighting with this for a while, but the Mudcatter Formerly Known as Crow Sister unwittingly seeded my answer in a reference to Steampunk a few weeks back which had instant and familiar appeal. Those unfamiliar with the term, look it up. Now - Steamfolk - which I hatched whilst browsing the Steampunk Bible in Travelling Man in MCR yesterday.

It occurs to me that the only way of resolving the Innumerable Issues of Folk, is to view all Folk as being Steamfolk by default - i.e. a fantasy culture projected onto an era that never really existed via a select interpretation of so-called Folklore and certain aspects of so-called History - political, social or otherwise.

Either way it results in a perfect Folk Image - in FOP right now you can John Renbourn Band CDs for £3 a pop; Steamfolk classics; Shirley and Dolly likewise. So suddenly everything from Peter Bellamy's Kipling Albums, The Unthanks, Trembling Bells to the Damon Alburn Folk Opera on Dr Dee(on one songs he sings pushing an apple cart up Silbury Hill), The Transports, the John Barleycorn Reborn CDs make sense as Pure Steamfolk. Even the VOTP series, which masquarades as genuine scholarship, but is in reality Comfort Product for a whole bunch of Folk Myths. The important thing here is is - the music is great, and great fun besides.

Like Steampunks who dress the part & even evolve alternative personas, realities, technologies, folklore and traditions, the Folk Revival has been doing exactly that for over 60 years - and are still doing it now. Steamfolk sees all the cliches as Jolly Good Things to be Well and Truly Owned and Celebrated. On another thread I mentioned coming up with the name Wattle 'n' Daub as an alternative folk identity; some wag suggested The Macrame Owl Project which is pure Steamfolk, but the Owl Service do it for real! Shame we haven't got Woven Wheat Whispers anymore - apart from being the perfect name for a Breakfast Cereal, it was 100% pure Steamfolk - indeed Mark Coyle's steavenotes for the first John Barleycorn Reborn CD could be the Steamfolk Manifesto.

So - Steamfolk isn't a new thing, rather its a new way of looking at an old thing - it's accepting the image, culture and artefacts of the Colonial Folk Revival of the last 60 years (the so-called second revival) is, by and large, a projected collective fantasy reaction to the horrors of modern life. It's accepting this is a Very Good Thing, but in no way Real. Steamfolk accepts that the reality of Folk isn't in the slightest bit real, but has very real rewards for those who feel that warm homely glow as they peruse the various images and associations on the cover of (say) Liege and Lief or embedded in The Wicker Man or, or, or, or....

S O'P (tongue in cheek? partly!)