The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #110656 Message #2333959
Posted By: Ruth Archer
06-May-08 - 07:56 AM
Thread Name: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
Music Hall songs were the popular music of their day. many cvollectors thought they "polluted" the tradition, yet many dource singers sang them. The false construct, WAV, is the assumption that there has ever been any kind of purism or parameters around English music.
Henry VIII brought in court musicians from Italy. Was the music played at his and subsequent courts less English for that? The throne of England has been littered with rulers from all over Europe, and each brought their own cultural influences to bear on "English" culture. Then, as someone mentioned earlier, there were the Huguenots,and the Dutch in the 17th century, and various other waves of immigration throughout history, which have all added their own influences to "English" culture. Right up to the present day.
People like you who believe in a monoculture are deluding themselves. This country has ALWAYS been a nation of immigrants.
The monocultural, village-green England you pine for was invented by the Victorians. It never existed. I say this as someone who lives not 50 yards from a picture-perfect English village green, flanked by a picture-perfect English pub. But I also know that my village is not (and has never been) the typical English experience, and I'm sensible enough to know how little relevance it bears to the majority of people who live in England today. And to insist that my experience is the "right" or "true" one, and that all the other people living in cities, or in suburbs, or on council estates somehow have a "less English" way of life as a result, is a complete absurdity.