Steamfolk

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: GUEST,Howard Jones
Date: 07 Jul 11 - 08:24 AM

"Knock on any door, any where, and you'll be able to talk to someone - anyone - who'll be able to give the same sort of impassioned & moving testimony about the music of their life and times."

Really? I'm not denying the importance of music in people's lives now, but for the majority of people I know outside folk circles it's music they listen to rather than perform themselves. These days people are permanently plugged into their mp3 players, but I don't know many who could sing a song all the way through.

I'm sure there are still families or other groups for whom a good old sing-song is still an important part of their lives, but I believe they're now a minority.

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: theleveller
Date: 07 Jul 11 - 05:24 AM

"Still - no harm in looking is there?"

That's all I ever do at Salt's Mill - Hockneys, hand-made suits and celtic harps (no matter how desirable) are out of my price range. Anyway, I'm saving up for a frock coat.

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 07 Jul 11 - 04:53 AM

I am in the market for a working gramophone with horn.

I'm sure I'm not the first to do it, but I recently wrote a passage in which one Bright Young Thing is using Two Gramophones to keep the music going continuously and scratching between the two with free-styled vocal accompaniment to accompany the debauched drug-fuelled antics of his upper-crust young chums in a remote Northumbrian Country House circa 1929... That's almost steampunk I guess!

It was CS that first mentioned it (who else?) and it chimed in my fondness for creaky Victorian technology (Santos Dumont was a childhood hero), HG Wells and Studio Ghibli cartoons (Howl's Moving Castle being a case in point).

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: SteveMansfield
Date: 07 Jul 11 - 04:53 AM

a Nykelharpa without a keyboard is what exactly?

A psaltery?
A longship?

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 07 Jul 11 - 04:45 AM

Haven't been to the EMS in years - not since one very snowy day in early 2005 when I needed some odds ands for my newly acquired citera. It was still in Bradford back then. Still, my darling mother-in-law is forever pushing for a family jaunt to Saltaire so maybe soon, eh? Thing is, I've reached a stage in life (get this) where I'm actually happy with my instruments and am actually looking to simplifying things on account of having too many! What's happened, in fact, is that since getting into playing Normal Violin (in a Normal Tuning, though occasisionall I'll use a cross-A) (very cross) I seldom bother with anything else right now other than the Kemence (Black Sea Fiddle) and my sqare crwth. Indeed, on one of my recent recordings someone pointed out that my violin playing is more crwth-like than my crwth, and vice versa! I still hanker for an electric 5-string, just so I can record Weird Stuff without hacking off the neighbours, but I doubt the EMS can help me there. Still - no harm in looking is there?

As for the Worcester Crwth, I reckon that position looks okay; all depends on the ergomonics of the beast itself really, and it's not a million miles away both from modern revival styles of playing and the ways you see these things depicted in medieval iconography. Another piece of Steamfolk Trivia (but not as good as the John Cale one) is that the CRWTH or CROWD (in which one might so easily lose oneself) is the first instrument we see in Medieval Iconography being played with a BOW. In fact, one theory is that the bow developed from increasingly long Lyre Plectra which (as with the Korean Kayagum which is occaisionaly played with a resined stick akin to con sordino* techniques of the modern violin) could be used to rub the strings, or bow them. Just a theory, but when you look at the length of plectra anciently depicted on the Semitic Lyre from the tomb of Khnumhotep III (which is very square & crwth-like!) it doesn't seem too far fetched.

One question remains though - a Nykelharpa without a keyboard is what exactly?

* Con Sordino these days seems to mean simply to play with the mute; maybe I've got the wrong term, but I recall chatting with a very dazzling posh young girl from Central High on the train once when I was 15 (and she was 14) who old me Con Sordino meant to play the strings with the wood of the bow which gives a weird muted sound but quite different to a mute. A google search proves fruitless. Anyone know? As for the girl, I met her again five years or so later when she was fairly embarked on her Physics degree having kicked the fiddle altogether. I remember having lots of fun with her beside a huge convex mirror in the physics building of Newcastle University and roaming around the old Museum of Antiquities but we never saw each other again. In fact, when I told her I was married she slapped my face and that was that, even though there wasn't a hint of romance in any of it. Sad really, but whever I play with the back of my bow I think of dear Melissa - or was it Clarissa?

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 07 Jul 11 - 04:30 AM

Oh wow. Just discovered the thread and can't properly read on galaxy tab and at work. As an infant steampunker and toddling folker I love the idea of blending my 2 most keen intersts.

Google Thomas Truax for look at some weird steam musical instrument inventions. Listen to Professor Elemental, Abney Park, Ghost in the Static and others for some other ideas of the different ideas that steampunk music takes.

I am in the market for a working gramophone with horn.

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: theleveller
Date: 07 Jul 11 - 03:26 AM

D'ya' know I've got a sudden urge to pop up the road to the Early Music Shop at Salt's Mill for a bit of a plunk around if I get the time at lunchtime - has to be a temple of Steamfolk (and it's a nice walk along the canal side)..

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: ripov
Date: 06 Jul 11 - 05:33 PM

Lovely carving, but it must be very hard to play with his hand that way round; or else with the crwth held that way, sitting on the lap. Maybe artistic licence?
Do you play it like a viola da braccia, or like a key-less nyckelharpa? (pics at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyckelharpa)

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 06 Jul 11 - 01:06 PM

Here's a corker of a crwth I stumbled on whilst scrambling through the misericords of Worcester Cathedral a couple of weeks back:

Worcester Crwth

Look at that whilst listening to Venus in Furs...

Yeah, I like the Crwth Purists too. I've had them question my authenticity because both of my crwths have ever-so-slightly curved bridges to faciliate a more subtle style of playing (!?) than the all-strings-at-once approach that sounds like a bad hurdy-gurdy to my ears, but there you go (not that I've any objection to bad hurdy-gurdies in the wild). My interest is in playing music rather than historical musical pedantry, though I think some of the new Talharp & Jouhikko stuff (Pekko Kappi especially) is pretty amazing. Those horse-hair strings, man! I made a Jouhikko myself once back in 82 which doesn't sound too bad actually, considering, horse-hair strings and all, but Pekko's something else... One of the crwth highlights of my life was an impromtu duet with Susan George back in 1999 at the Aust Festival - just a wee sesh in the graveyard but it felt real enough.

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: SteveMansfield
Date: 06 Jul 11 - 12:46 PM

Oh yes, I don't know if there's such a thing as SteamFolk, but SteamPunk looks like a right good old laugh, what with all those computer keyboards made of redundant typewriter keys, funny old stovepipe hats and swirly Victorian graphics. If you want a pure unadulterated SteamPunk novel and possibly the first of the genre (although not bearing that appellation) I recommend Keith Roberts' 'Pavane'.

I think Steamfolk is whatever the heck you want it to be, as AFAICGIS it doesn't exist outside of this thread and there's only about 3 people arguing about it here.

Swerving the thread towards 'Which was the first steampunk novel' would, from what I've seen elsewhere, take it into hitherto unimagined realms of bitterness and entrenched positions!

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: theleveller
Date: 06 Jul 11 - 12:19 PM

LOL!

Didn't know that about Cale's viola, though I have remarked before somewhere that it does sound very "folkie". I'm still planning to build a crwth myself when I get round to it (probably when we've finished making the gothic garden) and pop into Beverley Minster from time to time to have a look at the carving.

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: GUEST,Jon Dudley
Date: 06 Jul 11 - 11:54 AM

Brian Peters wrote:

"There is a grain of truth in what you say about 'reaction to the horrors of modern life': I remember finding Bob Copper's memoir of life in rural Sussex on A Song for Every Season heartwarming precisely for its contrast with the turmoil of my own late teenage years. It's just too bad Bob isn't here now so that you could tell him that his reminscences were nothing more than some kind of mythic comfort blanket."

How true! I remember an earnest young fellow, whom, after hearing Bob speak somewhere describing the (only occasionally) idyllic life in Rottingdean and saying that his father and contemporaries were 'happy', said that "they only only thought they were happy, and were in fact victims of, etc.etc" - to which Bob replied, "you know what? I'll settle for thinking I'm happy, it seemed to work for them".

Oh yes, I don't know if there's such a thing as SteamFolk, but SteamPunk looks like a right good old laugh, what with all those computer keyboards made of redundant typewriter keys, funny old stovepipe hats and swirly Victorian graphics. If you want a pure unadulterated SteamPunk novel and possibly the first of the genre (although not bearing that appellation) I recommend Keith Roberts' 'Pavane'

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: Brian Peters
Date: 06 Jul 11 - 11:47 AM

Damn, caught out again... I thought I liked John Cale because he was a drug-crazed lunatic who made great rock music whilst banging the piano lid on his head, or rubbing the vocal mike across the grill of the fencing mask he wore over the welder's goggles and black stocking that constituted the remainder of his headgear. And now you're telling me he was a folkie all along. Woe!

I'm reassured to hear that there are Crwth Purists around, though. Thank God!

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 06 Jul 11 - 11:24 AM

Don't be put off, theleveller - it's all in good humoured passion for much the same thing on various levels of Devil's Advocacy which was ever the Platonic way (or something) - or was it Zen? Either way, whatever differences any of us have here, they are outweighed by the similarities - or am I being overly optimistic?

As for Venus in Furs, did you know John Cale flattened the bridge of his viola so it would sound like he imagined the old crwths would have sounded? These days we have the modern Crwth Revival to show us that he was more or less right of course, but even so I've had Crwth Purists telling me my Welsh Pattern crwth isn't a crwth at all, even though it was made for me by Tim Hobrough in 1987 thus predating the Modern Crwth revival by several years - and my Medieval Round Crwth was made for me (again by Tim) in 1983! Ho hum. Revivalist Fantasy? Makes you think, eh? But what dies as one thing, is reborn as something else entirely. In fact, it might be said, it might not be reborn at all because the main thing that defined it in the first place is irretrievably lost to us, so all that remains is the ghosts. That's okay by me, BTW, nothing like a good old seance, is there?

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: theleveller
Date: 06 Jul 11 - 09:44 AM

For one brief but beautiful period there, I was having a great time in Steamfolk Fantasy Land. Now I've been brought back down to earth by the inevitable realities of hard-nosed debate. I'm off somewhere else for some alternative musical flagellation.....(puts on headphones and cues up Venus In Furs).

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 06 Jul 11 - 09:22 AM

What I don't think you or I could do is to knock on any door and find anything resembling the ubiquitous culture of participatory music-making that Mrs. Grover describes.

Then it's hardly ubiquitous is it? But I would argue that it is, just that Folk has selected not to acknowledge the commonality - indeed the very ubiquity - of that experience. Instead, it selects the exceptions and creates a conditional agenda whereby it can only be the experience of a select few whose life experience is somehow more authentic than others.

It still remains a fantasy, though more widespread now of course. We're working hard on our new Kipling Bellamy show for the Fylde this year - it's a repertoir which I love dearly, but which is quinessential Steamfolk on all counts. As I said in my wee note for last night's rendering of A Tree Song on Soundcloud, I've often heard the song sung as a Traditional Song by very earnest pagans. If that isn't fantasy, then what is? But that isn't to devalue its meaning, subjective or otherwise, just appreciate that, like everything from The Wicker Man to Freeborn Man of the Travelling People (which may be questioned on any amount of counts) it still carries and signifies very real potency. God, I recall when we saw Robin Williamson singing Free Born Man at Glastonbury after the Battle of the Beanfield and people were sobbing; I know I was...

One time in one of Joe & Maureen's Fylde singarounds someone sang an impassioned rendering of Shoals of Herring that actually made me feel sea-sick; and recently in Newcastle I listened as a passerby of a certain age asked a young guitarist to accompany him on All Right Now and then proceeded to sing what might well have been the definitive version. The weight of meaning and human experience hung heavy in every word irrespective of the song; it was common lore, and the crowd that gathered to watch went mental when he'd finished. Such expieriences aren't uncommon, nor yet are they Folk Music, but they are unbiquitous. If they weren't, I doubt I'd bother to be honest.

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 06 Jul 11 - 08:42 AM

...unlike trash fiction, though one may always skim.

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: Brian Peters
Date: 06 Jul 11 - 08:42 AM

Knock on any door, any where, and you'll be able to talk to someone - anyone - who'll be able to give the same sort of impassioned & moving testimony about the music of their life and times.

I could turn on Desert Island Discs every week and get that, too. What I don't think you or I could do is to knock on any door and find anything resembling the ubiquitous culture of participatory music-making that Mrs. Grover describes.

to use it as some sort of Exhibit A (as you have done here) turns it into a fantasy. Both mawkish and voyeuristic, it becomes a myth.

If you're suggesting that quoting those words in the present context somehow devalues their content, then you've lost me, I'm afraid. Bringing words like "mawkish and voyeuristic" into a discussion of one woman's account of real life in a relatively impoverished society smacks of the very patronization that you accuse Sharp et al of, even though I suspect you aimed them my way. They're her words - she wanted others to read them and to understand the role of songs in the "hard-working lives" of the people around her. And it was her own parents, not some prissy middle-class collector, who lamented the passing of their songs from that culture.

After all, how can these grubby so-and-sos possibly understand the significance of their own songs, much less their modal structures, analogues, origins, processes or even the purity (or otherwise) of their traditions?

That was a quote from which cultural colonialist exactly...? Even Sharp doesn't come over like that when you read his diaries (opinionated though they often are).

Liked what you said about England, though. And what matt milton said about the actual content of the songs.

PS - This is still a Fun Thread BTW...

Not sure if that means that you find the present argument fun, or that this was supposed to be a Fun Thread until the 'Bourgeois Fantasy' argument spoilt it. I'll leave you to the fun bit for now. Though I can't help wondering what that other arch contrarian Mr Bellamy might have added to the discussion...

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 06 Jul 11 - 08:33 AM

Nice one, Matt. I agree, broadly, with what you're saying here although remain wary of the class-consciousness of of Lloyd, MacColl et al, as much as I would of (say) Henry Cow claiming to be a Peoples' Band. But hey, that's just me... I do have the book you speak of, but as with Fakesong and a dozen others, it awaits my attentions - largely on account of a recent obsession with Graves's Claudius books, though once I'm done with Claudius the God I'll be going back to The Broons for a while to clear my head.

I wonder, would any folklorist or Ballad Fan see the parallels between the old songs and the celebrity worship of today, or even see that as being in any way folkloric, much less significant or directly analagous on more than the one level? It also exists at the trashier end of fiction, as do the Ballads themselves in a way, though their evident appeal was evidently widespread and fluid with respect of things which later became extraneous thus reducing them to their consummate essence.

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: matt milton
Date: 06 Jul 11 - 08:01 AM

""Folk is a myth predicated on a Bourgeouis Fantasy of working class culture"

There's another point to be raised with regard to this assertion: a lot of folk songs voice working-class fantasies about bourgeois culture. Especially in their details: all those down-soft pillows, milk-white skins, pure-breed horses, fine silk clothes etc etc.

A.L. Lloyd's writing is great on this in 'Folk Song in England'. In fact, really, Suibhne - if you haven't read this book then you should - as it's a very class-conscious analysis.

It strikes me that there's a risk here of losing sight of the actual CONTENT of folk songs: the words and the tunes. The way folk was presented and disseminated and collected (and the people that did that collecting) is by no means the same thing as the songs themselves.

So much of the content of so many folk songs rings very true to me precisely because it actually seems very contemporary, not of the past. That's why I mentioned Alasdair Roberts. The aforementioned working-class fantasies about luxury goods and romantic lives of the super-rich have a direct counterpart in today's Hello-magazine style culture of gawping. That is but one aspect of folk-song content which doesn't seem remotely compromised by any prissy mediation by any middle-class folksong collectors.

The Bothy ballads would be another excellent example: the sarcasm, wit and boss-hatred in them exists in an entirely different atmosphere to the William Morris-JRR Tolkien-waistcoat'n'ale breed of psych-folker. I hear 'The Day We Went to Rothesay' and Arab Strap's "First Big Weekend' as near-identical twins.

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 06 Jul 11 - 07:53 AM

That's what folksong is - or was. Come down from the ivory tower and listen to the people who were there.

Thing is, music still has exactly that role in people's lives today but I don't see many Folkies taking much of an interest in it by dint of its context alone, much less its content or else the purity of the folk experience. Knock on any door, any where, and you'll be able to talk to someone - anyone - who'll be able to give the same sort of impassioned & moving testimony about the music of their life and times. Now, whilst that sort of experience is not uncommon, it is far from objective, but to use it as some sort of Exhibit A (as you have done here) turns it into a fantasy. Both mawkish and voyeuristic, it becomes a myth.

See my earlier post regarding my feelings about The Bob Copper book.

If not, what is your point?

That the evidence is incomplete, selective, agenda driven and motivated by means of cultural condescension, as indeed most so-called folkloric studies were back then. It's a legacy that endures today - one of the pure-blood Passive Carrier, or Tradition Bearer. After all, how can these grubby so-and-sos possibly understand the significance of their own songs, much less their modal structures, analogues, origins, processes or even the purity (or otherwise) of their traditions? It's a pure Paternalistic Colonialism visited upon the grubbier members of one's own society who have failed to appreciate their own culture by letting it go to wreck and ruin. The very necessity of the revival is evidence enough of that, much less the Moral Visions of Sharp et al that underwrote the whole thing, and continue to do so despite the very obvious fact that Popular Culture still has real and vivid meaning to The Folk and always has, and always will.

but to acknowledge that is not to disavow the entirety of folksong research,

I'm not disavowing anything, just seeing it for what it is / was. The songs are real*, the testimonies likewise, the dances, rites, riots, etc. etc. But once they are collected and revived they become something else entirely, and it's that something else which gives rise to the various idioms, conventions and orthodoxies we're dealing with in the revival to this day. Kipling was aware of this; in his more obvious Folk poetry he demonstrates a yearning for the clack of the common tongue (however so contrived) or else the structures of the old songs themselves (False Night = Danny Deever etc.); even his mawkish celebrations of conservative colonialism, such as his Ralph & Ted fantasy of The Land which only seeks to confirm the golden rule of The Rich Man in his castle and the Poor Man at his gate. That later generations (but not PB!) choose to see The Land as some sort of Socialist Pamphlet is one of the supreme ironies of the innate reactionary conservatism of Folk; that Kipling could write the supreme Humanist Hymn (A Pilgrim's Way) is not.

This might sound harsh, but I personally find it deeply appealing and worthy of my attention and passion for what it tells me about the race of which I am but one miniscule fragment, and yet we, each & every one of us, contain the entire world within us as a subjective cherished treasure.

And of course you'll be aware that Harker's academic rigour in analysing Sharp's account of his collecting in Somerset has been, shall we say, questioned.

One would hope so; it's in the nature of academia to be under constant peer-review and questioning, which is no doubt why the 1954 Definition is still quoted chapter and verse.

*

Leave then...

England is my home; much as Folk is my home. Indeed, it is my country; and in embracing it, we must not only own both the good and the bad, but also accept that one man's bad is at least going to be good to someone. My Atheism is all-consuming, and the dragon will always have more than the one tongue, and dialogue (and above all Freedom of Speech) is an inherent birthright with respect of ones own country and the culture thereof which is never to exclude the experiences of others. I despair of England as much as I love it; I despair of its governments, its councils, its developers, its art councils, its middle-class media dominance, its elites and its housing schemes. I love its multi-cultural and multi-ethnic diversity; I love the vibrancy of cities as much as I hate the blandness of what has come to pass as Countryside. I also love Kipling, but I'm aware of his racism; and the reasons for that racism (which is never to excuse it); I love the old songs and the new; the vibrancy of UK hip-hop and... and...

S O'P

PS - This is still a Fun Thread BTW...

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: SomersetLee
Date: 06 Jul 11 - 07:32 AM

So is a new song played by a folk muscian about the modern era steamfolk? Say someone like Chris Wood?

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: Brian Peters
Date: 06 Jul 11 - 05:56 AM

I'm still waiting to hear which bit of Carrie Grover's testimony (or, for that matter, Bob Copper's, Walter Pardon's or many of the other singers whom collectors took the trouble to ask) you think is "Bourgeois Fantasy". Here is a first-hand account of the vital role of active singing in every aspect of life, private and social, work and play. That's what folksong is - or was. Come down from the ivory tower and listen to the people who were there.

If you want to make blithe statements like "Folk has been a fantasy construct from the off" (in a tone suggesting that this is established fact which only those with very little brains have failed so far to grasp), you're presumably going to be telling us that Broadwood, Sharp, Greig, Frank & Anne Warner, Mike Yates and all the others made up the songs they claimed to have collected? Or that Carrie Grover and Bob Copper were lying through their teeth? That those recordings on Voice of the People you so despise have been cleverly faked in a state-of-the-art studio? If not, what is your point?

"having recently read Georgina Boyes' The Imagine Village then the case seems to be pretty conclusive"

What case is conclusive? The Imagined Village has plenty of interesting stuff to say about Sharp's attempts to exert hegemony over the Folk Revival, but what it does not do is to demonstrate that the concept of folksong is a myth. Sharp's findings and theories were doubtless interesting to those seeking to create their own myth of Englishness, but to acknowledge that is not to disavow the entirety of folksong research, which of course goes far wider than Sharp.

And of course you'll be aware that Harker's academic rigour in analysing Sharp's account of his collecting in Somerset has been, shall we say, questioned.

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 05 Jul 11 - 01:41 PM

Celebrating? "Folk is a myth predicated on a Bourgeouis Fantasy of working class culture" doesn't sound very celebratory to me.

It's the truth though, and as such it needs facing up to, accepting and celebrating. I'm still hovering over my (borrowed) copy of Fakesong (even though so far it seems entirely reasonable and not at all as I was expecting) but having recently read Georgina Boyes' The Imagine Village then the case seems to be pretty conclusive. Now, that's the facts of the case which gives us what we know and love today, even in this class-ridden shit-hole of a country of ours, but as one who was most definately born on the wrong side of the tracks, one of the points of this thread is by way of acknowledging that with good grace rather than hurling Molotov Cocktails through the windows of The Cecil Sharp House.

Just off out now, but I'll come back tomorrow and answer the rest of what you say here with respect of the Bourgeois Fantasy. Meanwhile:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuqhEix8lGY

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: Brian Peters
Date: 05 Jul 11 - 12:41 PM

It's about owning myths and celebrating them

Celebrating? "Folk is a myth predicated on a Bourgeouis Fantasy of working class culture" doesn't sound very celebratory to me.

I accept happily that the folk revival is an artificial construct, and that doesn't affect my enjoyment of it any more than it does yours. However, when you get to:
"Folk has been a fantasy construct from the off... with respect of The Tradition (that it first invents then claims to represent)..." then we part company. Just because one academic with an agenda a mile wide chose to call his book Fakesong doesn't actually make it all a fake. Too much evidence there for that.

I recently came across Carrie Grover's collection of songs from a family of mixed British and Irish ancestry in Nova Scotia, written down when she lived in Maine in the 1950s. It's the book where Paul Brady found Arthur McBride, incidentally. Mrs Grover provided a vivid and moving introduction about the role of singing in that small rural community. She did this without any prompting from, or indeed knowledge of, Cecil Sharp, Bert Lloyd or any of the usual suspects. Just an ordinary woman in an ordinary place. When you've read these extracts, perhaps you can tell me which bits are 'Bourgeois Fantasy'...

'The singing of songs played a large part in the daily lives of my family as no doubt it did in the lives of other families of that time. My grand-mother sang at her spinning wheel and at her loom, for she spun and wove both wool and flax. My father's older sister used to spin for my grandmother Long and I have heard my oldest brother say that she would spin and sing all day and never sing the same song twice. He said she knew more songs than anyone he ever knew.

In my home the singing of songs and ballads seemed a part of our daily lives. Mother always sang at her work, melancholy songs or gay songs according to her mood, or just a humming of the tune without any words. Often in the evening before the lamp was lighted, as father sat with his elbows on his knees, his pipe held between his hands after his evening smoke, he would start singing and mother would join him, the steady click of her knitting needles sounding like a sort of accompaniment...

We lived at the foot of a pond called Sunken Lake, which was nearly a mile long. The road seemed to wind around this pond, never far from the shore. A voice would carry a long way across the water and when father would be on his way home after delivering a load of wood or lumber, he would begin to sing when within a mile of home and mother, who would go out and listen when she thought it was about time for him to be coming, would hear him and have his supper ready when he got there.

Almost everyone sang or tried to sing these old songs and ballads. Neighbors were few and far between, books and magazines were scarce and we had to make the best of what we had. In all our little neighborhood gatherings the singing of a few songs was a part of every evening's entertainment. If a stranger came to the house or to one of our neighborhood gatherings, it was considered a breach of good manners not to ask him to sing.

Sometimes when two good singers got together they would have a friendly contest and first one would sing a song and then the other, till one or the other had run out of songs or they had both sung till they could sing no more. I have heard of these singing matches lasting until two o'clock in the morning.

It was a real grief to my parents to realize that the time was fast coming when these old songs would no longer be sung, and with the passing of their generation the songs that been kept alive through so many generations of singers would pass away with the people who sang them. I once overheard my father say to mother, "Liza, when we die our old songs will die with us. There will be no one left to sing them."

As I began to grow old myself, I came to a better realization of what these old songs meant to my parents, and began working on my collection in real earnest... I hoped that this collection of songs and ballads with the notes that accompany them rnight give my children and grand-children an insight into the lives of their ancestors, who lived at a time when the singing of these old songs was almost their only recreation and helped, I believe, more than anyone thing to lighten the burden of their hard working lives.'

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: GUEST,Big Ballad Singer
Date: 05 Jul 11 - 12:35 PM

I've always enjoyed folk music, at least what I consider to be more trad-leaning folk music, not only for the 'noise' it makes, but also for the statements the songs make about our modern society, whether for good or for ill.

I do admit a certain penchant for dressing the part when I perform (at least some of the time). When I was WAY into Woody Guthrie, and then, by association, the Carter Family, et al, it was the canvas work pants and a flannel shirt and old boots and tousled hair and a beaten-up guitar. All specifically BECAUSE I was playing at open mic nights at very college-town, trendy bars where I would never have been hip enough for the room anyway. I walked in and looked and sang like someone who had stepped out of a History Channel documentary about migrant farm workers, and more often than not, the whole vibe just mesmerized people.

I think even the choice to SING folk music in the first place is already itself a commentary on the so-called 'modern' world around us, so I definitely see the value in presenting what others would see as 'anachronistic' as anything BUT... in other words, as I and others have said in other threads, why not just OWN what you sing and where it comes from and its whole vibe and aesthetic and everything and just allow yourself and others to step out of time and place and experience somewhat of a different world?

That's always been the value of folk music to me... 'steamfolk' just seems to be a wonderful and most logical extension of same.

Did I make a bit of sense? I sure hope so.

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 05 Jul 11 - 12:22 PM

Well I'm enjoying it anyway.

That is all that matters - the love of IT in all its gloriously wonky totality.

I'll think about the bits of Van Helsing and Ewan MacColl without wishing to be too obvious about it...

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 05 Jul 11 - 12:20 PM

"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."

"I've always felt that he draws heavily on The White Goddess and The Golden Bough - with a liberal smattering of Jungian archetypes. Quite often the result sounds like something W B Yeats might have created. Whatever, there's a hypnotic quality that means The Amber Gatherers and Spoils are seldom off my CD player for long"

Yes, I agree on the Jung. Never read 'the white goddess' or 'the golden bough' and never wanted to, so can't say.

it might sound like hyperbole, but I think Alasdair Roberts is a much better versifier than Yeats. He's more of a modernist. He might *use* mystical elements, but the end result isn't mystical.

As you can probably tell, I rate him highly - I think Spoils is one of the best albums ever made, in any genre.

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 05 Jul 11 - 12:14 PM

My copy of ASFES sits alongside my cherished George Ewart Evans books - old Faber paperbacks, beautiful, durable, and essential. One of my old bibles was The Leaping Hare (Ewart Evans and David Thompson, who wrote The People of the Sea)- I still love it as much as I do The White Goddess, but, like The Bible itself, although very beautiful in places, but not to be taken too literally these days. That said I was riding on a considerable high when a hardback copy turned up in one of my favourite antiquarian booksellers in Southport earlier this year.

So, owning myths, accepting them, delighting in them; you should see my collection of book on the Green Man, maybe everything ever published on the subject after Basford's seminal study of 1978, and only three of them I actually agree with. All highly cherished though.

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: theleveller
Date: 05 Jul 11 - 11:54 AM

"I remember finding Bob Copper's memoir of life in rural Sussex on A Song for Every Season heartwarming precisely for its contrast with the turmoil of my own late teenage years."

I'm finding a similar thing with H V Morton's In Search of England which I'm reading again after many years. Astonishing how quickly things have changed.

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: glueman
Date: 05 Jul 11 - 11:36 AM

Any folk without introductions is alright by me.

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 05 Jul 11 - 11:36 AM

Might NOT have been intended that is!

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 05 Jul 11 - 11:35 AM

It's all very well setting out to debunk myths,

Who said that? It's about owning myths and celebrating them. As for concertinas, as I think I said above I'm smarting because Ross lent me of of his vintage Anglos (Lachenal) and it makes no sense to me at all - thus far!

A Song for Every Season

Well, it might have been inteded as a mythic comfort blanket, but it's certainly become one - one of mine certainly, along with any number of others. After years of nursing an old autumnal (to say the least) Paladin paperback edition I found an old copy of the Country Book Club edition in tha second-hand bookshop in back of the Arndale in MCR last year and my life was complete. See HERE for the very happy bunny in Subway pic.

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: Brian Peters
Date: 05 Jul 11 - 10:32 AM

Does anyone like folk purely for the noise it makes? I know I don't; it's always more than that, by way seance, communion, reverence, same as I get when faced with anything hoary I suppose.

Many people attracted by the noise it made chose to take their interest further into all kinds of different realms, be they musicological, historical, mystical, or simply the crap dress sense. I confess to a certain sense of awe in the presence of a 600 year old Devil ballad, but 'seance and reverence'? No thanks.

There is a grain of truth in what you say about 'reaction to the horrors of modern life': I remember finding Bob Copper's memoir of life in rural Sussex on A Song for Every Season heartwarming precisely for its contrast with the turmoil of my own late teenage years. It's just too bad Bob isn't here now so that you could tell him that his reminscences were nothing more than some kind of mythic comfort blanket.

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: Brian Peters
Date: 05 Jul 11 - 10:11 AM

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.

The prices of vintage concertinas have certainly gone bonkers, but that's because the best old ones play faster and sound nicer, and there are a lot of musicians in Ireland and the USA Irish diaspora who want to own one. Market Forces, old chap. Colin Dipper's concertinas have no provenance as traditional artefacts, but they cost a fortune too, because they're bloody good. And a significant number of players are now turning to newly-made mid-priced instruments with accordion reeds (frowned upon by concertina purists, of course), which don't sound quite so sweet but go like the clappers.

It's all very well setting out to debunk myths, but this thread seems to be creating new and ever more far-fetched ones with every posting by the OP.

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: theleveller
Date: 05 Jul 11 - 10:09 AM

"Steamfolk is a personal solution to an ongoing personal crisis"

Isn't that something like what Frankenstein said? You've created a monster out of bits of Van Helsing and Ewan MacColl - how are you going to stop it running amock now?

Well I'm enjoying it anyway.

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 05 Jul 11 - 09:58 AM

It's not the songs, but the product itself, and the manipulation of the songs by way of creating a new context for the recycling of old recordings, rather than an open archive accessible to all. Not to mention the edits (well, one that I find particularly irksome where they lose the spoken intro to Felix Doran's Fox Hunt which really sets the scene).

Does anyone like folk purely for the noise it makes? I know I don't; it's always more than that, by way seance, communion, reverence, same as I get when faced with anything hoary I suppose. Still, as I said at the outset of this thread, Steamfolk is a personal solution to an ongoing personal crisis! A veritable epiphany indeed...

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: theleveller
Date: 05 Jul 11 - 09:50 AM

"The White Goddess and The Golden Bough rest at the heart of Steamfolk"

I'd agree about The Golden Bough but The White Goddess is an exploration of the origins of the poetic muse - it's also an excellent treatise on comparative mythology.


"Quite often the result sounds like something W B Yeats might have created."

Swear by what the sages spoke
Round the Mareotic Lake
That the Witch of Atlas knew,
Spoke and set the cocks a-crow.

Swear by those horsemen, by those women
Complexion and form prove superhuman,
That pale, long-visaged company
That air in immortality
Completeness of their passions won;
Now they ride the wintry dawn
Where Ben Bulben sets the scene.

See what I mean?


Tell you what, this is getting pretty scary - I've just realised that I'm sat here dressed like a bloody Steampunk (except for the goggles); now that is very scary!

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: Brian Peters
Date: 05 Jul 11 - 09:33 AM

"a projected collective fantasy reaction to the horrors of modern life"

Dammit, and there was me thinking I liked it because of the noise it made...

"the VOTP series, which masquarades as genuine scholarship, but is in reality Comfort Product for a whole bunch of Folk Myths"

Got me again. I'd been labouring under the impression that VOTP was a bunch of recordings of people singing songs that were important to them, and which sound great.

Just because we don't buy the myth of an idyllic rural England, doesn't mean that those songs didn't get sung.

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 05 Jul 11 - 09:16 AM

The White Goddess and The Golden Bough rest at the heart of Steamfolk; both are cherished source for material which is founded a notion which is thankfully long since discredited, The Golden Bough especially, but the Folklore Myth still persists, much as does The Pagan Green Man, in many ways the face of Steamfolk - embraced as an Ancient Archetype, but an entirely Modern Invention (likewise Jung's fanciful notions of Archetypes become the bedrock of the so-called New Age). Put simply, Folk is default Steamfolk on account of such rabidly reactionary anti-Modernism, but the world it creates and celebrates is a modern fantasy (or construct at best) none of the elements of which bare up to anything like close scrutiny, and yet the credos of which are couched in such absolutist and simplistic terms regarding the significances of things and their hidden / symbolic / occult meaning.

The Wicker Man is an expression of this and a warning of its dangers, yet remains a cracking film with a splendid musical score. To some however, it remains a Pagan Film. All these things - these fantasies, these yearnings, these myths, these absolutes - are integral to what Folk is, and yet, as I say, look for any of it in the real world and you'll be looking for a very long time!

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: theleveller
Date: 05 Jul 11 - 08:39 AM

"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."

I've always felt that he draws heavily on The White Goddess and The Golden Bough - with a liberal smattering of Jungian archetypes. Quite often the result sounds like something W B Yeats might have created. Whatever, there's a hypnotic quality that means The Amber Gatherers and Spoils are seldom off my CD player for long.

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 05 Jul 11 - 08:12 AM

Actually, Charley, it's worth checking out some of the Steampunk modifications to instruments on line; my wife was thinking the other day of ways of Steampunking her 5-string Deering. Like here, where they put Skeleton keys on a guitar for tuners:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfS-lOf94OM

There's some amazing stuff being done by way of Steampunk, but I think Steamfolk already has the look!

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: Charley Noble
Date: 05 Jul 11 - 07:19 AM

SA-

Will I have to do an upgrade to my 5-string banjo so that it is steam-powered? It's currently not functioning well on it's solar-powered batteries, especially during late-night sets.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 05 Jul 11 - 05:41 AM

Awesome.

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 05 Jul 11 - 05:32 AM

Renewable energy has its mighty power stations too, complete with evocative names and inspirational mechanisms.

Dinorwig, also known by the nickname of 'Electric Mountain' (now there's a name for a 70s metal band), is a beauty. The only low-carbon power station in the UK capable of a "black start" - a re-firing of the National Grid in the event of a total blackout.

It uses nothing but discrepancies in height (helpfully provided by that old Welsh standby: a mountain) and kinetic energy (helpfully provided by that old Welsh standby: water) to do so. Earth magic indeed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DinorwigPowerStation01.jpg

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 05 Jul 11 - 05:18 AM

I love those mighty power stations; you used to get a good look at Ferrybridge from the A1 before they re-routed it around the back which is still impressive, but not as impressive, much less traditional... Drax sounds (and looks) like a God.

That must have been one hell of a job!

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: theleveller
Date: 05 Jul 11 - 05:09 AM

Ah, happy days! We live just down the road from Drax. In winter everyone in the local villages is given a supply of beans, then we have to queue up at the boiler room in alphabetical order on set days so that they can light our farts to boost production (it's Drax's concession to gas-power).

My elder son used to have a job cleaning the insides of the cooling towers at Ferrybridge, Eggborough and Drax. Crap job but well-paid.

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 05 Jul 11 - 04:40 AM

Horsefolk might be a better term for it actually, but (get this) Horsefolk is one of the essences of Steamfolk, which has nothing to do with Steam per se, much less Horses, although it's mostly a matter of Cultural Evaporation resulting in the sort of twisted fundamentalism we know (and love) to be an integral aspect of The Colonial Folk Revival.

When I was a lad, we got all our genuine coal-steam powered electricity from Blyth Power Station which looked like either heaven or hell, or both simultaneously, depending where your head was at. Long demolished, it remains iconic in my dreams but has no place in Steamfolk, despite childhood memories of queueing in the rain on dark rainy mornings with our buckets to get our weekly electricty allowance. Grandma would make a tasty ice-cream-style dish from the used electricity as an end of the week treat. Hard times, but we were happy. Nuclear-steam electricity just doesn't taste the same somehow. I'm off to write a song about it.

Note: Actually, come to think of it, Ewan McColl did write a song about the building of Blyth Power Station, or at least the Irish workers who did the graft. It features here at around 1.30:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5xwK6dNhtw

And I climb the narrow ladder where the stack looks out the sea,
I'm building power stations now for electricity...

So Steamfolk in the literal sense...

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: theleveller
Date: 05 Jul 11 - 04:10 AM

...actually, Horseshit might be a better term - even the website's donkey-powered and was built by the local blacksmith.

Subject: RE: Steamfolk
From: theleveller
Date: 05 Jul 11 - 04:01 AM

Oooh, don't hold with this new-fangled Steamfolk stuff. What we do is good old-fashioned Horsefolk (although we call it Ruffian Music).

http://www.whipstaff.co.uk/www.whipstaff.co.uk.htm