COPY OF JOHN LEONARD'S POST (19-02-07)TO BBC FOLK MESSAGE BOARD ON THE SUBJECT OF THE FOLK AWARDS :


Hello everyone,

Firstly, let me apologise for breaking any house rules with the length of this post!

Secondly, I should introduce myself as the producer of the Radio 2 Folk Awards. I've been interested to read some of the comments on the message board about the Folk Awards voting system and the interview I did for Feedback on Radio 4, about the controversy surrounding the nomination of Seth Lakeman's 'The White Hare' as Best Traditional Track.

I believe there was some confusion over what I actually promised on Feedback. What I am happy to publish - in an attempt to clear up some speculation about the voting process for the Best Traditional Track category - are the numbers of votes that each nominee received in the nominations round. Here they are:

Barleycorn – Tim van Eyken (23)
Green Grows The Laurel – Kris Drever (10)
The White Hare – Seth Lakeman (9)
Grey Gallito – Salsa Celtica with Eliza Carthy (8)

Seth Lakeman's original song 'King & Country' did also receive nominations in the Traditional Track category, as Colin Irwin wrote in his Guardian piece on Friday ( music.guardian.co.uk... ), but it was not near the top of the list as suggested.

Just to clarify, these are the vote counts from the nominations round. Obviously the vote counts were different in the second round, when the panel chose a winner (Barleycorn) from the 4 nominated tracks.

When we started the Folk Awards back in 2000 we didn't have any nominations, just a winner in each category. The idea was for the Awards to be a celebration and a way of attracting new people to the music by doing a bit of flag waving. We didn't want the event to become a kind of competition. I understand that this was probably a bit naïve, because once you go down the awards route, it's a competition by default.

I was persuaded after a couple of years that nominations were a good idea as they would highlight the work of more people, and so it was decided to add a nominations round. I really think the resulting publicity given to folk music has made it a worthwhile process.


There seem to be a number of ways to pick award winners:
1. A small panel of experts who pick the winner, e.g. The Mercury Award;
2. A series of small panels of experts judging each category, e.g. The Sony Radio Awards;
3. A public vote, e.g. The Scots Trad Music Awards and parts of the Brit Awards;
4. A larger panel of people with knowledge of the music, e.g. The Country Music Association Awards.

I felt that a small panel was too narrow a range of opinions and a public vote gave an advantage to established artists with large mailing lists. So we went for our method of a panel of over 100 voters from a diverse range of activities across folk music and music in general.

There are currently 171 people on the voting panel. In the first round of voting, the panel are asked to nominate 3 different tracks. These tracks can be anything, as long as they were released during the previous 12 months.

Not everyone votes in each category and for some reason the Best Traditional Track and the Best Original Song attract the smallest number of votes, but the widest range of nominations.

In all, 67 people voted for Best Traditional Track, but they nominated 101 different songs and tunes. The vast majority of tracks only got one vote, and so the general knock on effect is that to get a nomination you don't need a lot of votes.

I understand that our system is by no means perfect, for example some years ago a number of people from the Scottish folk scene claimed that the panel was biased towards English music and Scotland was not sufficiently represented. Having looked at their complaints we agreed, and added new names to the panel that were considered to have a knowledge of Scottish music in an attempt to redress the balance.

It is not an infallible system, but given the aims of the Awards it seems to work pretty well.

Let me try and answer a few other questions that seem to keep cropping up. Some members on the board have asked whether there are vested interests in the voting panel.

Inevitably yes, there are, but only about 10% of the panel. Actually the folk scene tend to be a pretty honest and honourable bunch - I'm always surprised and pleased to see people voting for whichever artists they believe have done good work, regardless of their affiliations. If there was a draw for 4 nominations, we would look carefully at who had voted for an artist, and if it was just interested parties then we would ignore those votes. The majority of the panel do not have vested interests, contrary to a suggestion elsewhere on this board.

It has been suggested elsewhere on the message board that the panel should include people involved in the study of folk music. It does – there are, for example, representatives from such organisations as Folkworks and the degree courses in Newcastle and Scotland.

I realise these points will raise further questions, and I'll be happy to try and answer them over the next couple of days.