The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #101256 Message #2061199
Posted By: GUEST
26-May-07 - 02:57 AM
Thread Name: Collapse of the Folk Clubs
Subject: RE: Collapse of the Folk Clubs
I am no longer part of the folk revival; I took a conscious decision to leave when I witnessed the singing deteriorate below a level I found acceptable and when the songs I heard ceased to be what I had come to believe as folk songs. I wasn't alone in leaving; thousands of us went around the same time and for the same reasons.
Since then, my contact with the clubs has been sparse, but folk song has been part of my life for so long, I have maintained an interest in what is happening with very occasional visits to clubs, through discussions with people who are far more in touch with what is happening, and through what information is available to me through albums, magazines and (god help me) threads such as this one.
Here I have read that "folk song is boring", "people are frightened off by long ballads", "folk clubs should disassociate themselves from folk songs and should all be presenting mid-Victorian, middle class glees and catches" , "singing in tune and remembering words is "exacting" and not worth bothering with", "thinking about the songs spoils you for having "fun"", "anybody who takes folk song seriously is a "fundamentalist"" (now where did I put that car bomb!!!), and a whole host of garbage which makes Kim Howell look like the folk revival's greatest champion.
Is the Lewes club for which The Snail presented that depressing Q&A, the same one that holds ballad weekends? If so, it doesn't make sense.
The last time I heard a ballad sung reasonably well at a club I felt I should erect a hide and 'observe' it; they have become so rare!
The greatest impression I have gained from many of these discussions, with a few notable exceptions, is one of contempt: for the old songs and ballads, for the singers who passed them on to us and for the intelligences of those who make the effort to drag themselves out on a cold, wet night to visit their local club.
The last time we visited a club in the UK (last year) we were left with the feeling that we had blundered into a funeral and we should be paying respect to the deceased.
At one time the revival was the jewel in the crown of English folk song; Loyd, MacColl, Killen, Roy Harris, Cyril Tawney, Terry Whelan, Harry Boardman, Terry Yarnell and many, many other well and lesser known singers who brought skill, enthusiasm and, most of all, love and respect to the old songs.
Nowadays, it appears to me, most of the clubs hang like so many albatrosses around the necks of those wishing to see folk song passed on to the next generation. We have spent a great deal of time and effort trying to make available some of the songs we and others have collected from the older singers, mainly through archives and a handful of albums we have put out. Discussions such as this one leave me with the feeling that we would do better locking our recordings away from people who appear, at best, to have no interest whatever in the source singers and what they had to offer.
We spent twenty years in the company of Walter Pardon, talking, listening to and recording him, and the overwhelming impression I am left with is that we should archive those recordings and hope that the next generation will show more interest and respect than this one has.
Who am I to "to judge what is right and what is wrong in Folk Clubs in the modern day?" Maybe I have no right whatever; I have spent most of my life involved in folk song, mainly in the clubs, and I have got a great deal of pleasure, and some knowledge out of that time, but I believe that, along with that pleasure comes a responsibility to play fair by the Walter Pardons, Tom Lenihans, Harry Coxs, Sam Larners and the many others who gave us what we have.
Jim Carroll