Nowt so cool as folk... and that's no pipe dream
Young and trendy folkies are breathing new life into traditional music. Yes, really...

By Paul Bignell
Sunday, 29 November 2009S




There isn't an Aran sweater or a leather sandal in sight: a new generation of smart and chic British folk musicians is taking the music industry by storm. A music form long associated with pokey pub back rooms is moving centre stage at some of the nation's premier venues and festivals. Music experts agree that 2010 will be the year of the new folkies. Here is our guide to the ones to watch.

While bands such as Bellowhead are not yet household names, they can claim fans as diverse as the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Glen Campbell and Frank Skinner, and are artists in residence this year at London's Southbank – a venue more normally associated with the London Philharmonic.

Guitarist Newton Faulkner, with his blond dreadlocks and edgy clothing, looks fit for the fashion catwalk rather than a folk festival stage. West London folkies Noah and the Whale have become NME darlings, their international profile boosted massively by the use of one of their songs in a car commercial in the US.

Though folk was marginalised by pop and rock in the 1970s, a glut of computerised music and a fragmenting recording industry have inspired moves in the opposite direction: players now want to return to traditional instruments and live performance.

"Because you can't get big record company advances any more, it's resulted in a nurturing of a folk-based music culture," said music critic Nick Coleman. "Groups like Bellowhead are so relatively successful because they are coming out of the folk tradition but not being bound by it. In the same way as the last folk-rock revival in the 1970s, bands were coming out of the tradition recognising its fundamental beauty, but knowing that you don't have to sound 100 per cent traditional."

This movement has been recognised by the Government, which recently gave the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS) an annual grant of £400,000 to aid folk musicians in performing and recording.

Cecil Sharp House, the home of the EFDSS, houses recordings of folk music going back hundreds of years. Many modern artists visit the library to gain inspiration, including Blur's guitarist Graham Coxon who was at a gig at the house yesterday in memory of the folk guitarist Davy Graham who died last year....(Independent)