Oral culture is extremely powerful, cohesive, has nothing to do with idylls or romanticism

At the very heart of folk rests the disparity between the condition of The Tradition (oral / working class / non-academic / fluid / vernacular / filthy / real) and The Revival (literary / upper & middle-class / academic / set in stone / received / romantic / idyllic). I'd say that's a truism - like saying Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull ripped off Rahsaan Roland Kirk for his flute technique. This isn't to fly off the handle and reject Jethro Tull, nor yet is it to fly off the handle and trash The Revival - though in reading such books as Fakesong and The Imagined Village one can't help but feel a wee tinge of ire in the face of the less celebratory consequences of the good old British Class System.

As ever The Devil lurks in the details, especially in the vague prescriptions of the entirely useless 1954 Definition which is still used as a Credo for the Orthodox who view Folk Song as an essentially anonymous / collective / unwitting phenomenon, the individual creative processes of which are quite unlike those of any other musical tradition or genre. There persists the notion of the Noble Pure Native Folk Singer whose authenticity is largely determined by their innocence of the taxonomical / musicological significances of the song they sing (and thus play a significant part of the shaping & survival of). Furthermore, the belief persists that such feral creative folk processes are essentially occult - like the innocent peasant girl who enjoys a frolic with her lover is ignorant of the process of conception that is taking place in her womb even as he mounts his horse and makes off into the sunset.

To all this, and more - the Idyllic and Romantic notions on which the Revival is pedicated (indeed, the entire notion of Frazerian Folklore) - I say a big HMMMMMMM. I've been singing, researching & exploring Traditional English Speaking Folksong & Ballad now for nigh on 40 years. Musically it is my first love & my every perfect joy, but I remain a working-class non-academic who believes, somewhat heretically it would seem, that the individual creativity of Folk Song is no different from that of any other musical idiom / genre or tradition, and that many of the assumptions of The Revival are born of class condescension and imperial patronage. Whilst this state of affairs is writ large enough in The Imagined Village, and given harsh critique (albeit in overlaboured Marxist terms which could be said to be something of a fly in the ointment) in Fakesong, it doesn't appear to be much of a concern in the Folk World as a whole. Here the Old Singers are seen simply as jolly old souls eagerly complicit in imparting their culture to their social betters and grateful for the attention and, in many cases, exposure which they wouldn't have enjoyed otherwise (one hears tales of Davie Stewart busking up his audience at The Cecil Sharp House who are unaware that this common raggy beggar is the man they'll be hailing as The Real McCoy once he takes the stage within). The songs are then cleaned up and subjected to all the other diverse indignities of the various Revival Stages (be it the parlour piano arragements of the early 1900s or the Macrame Beat Folk Rock of the 1970s, or indeed the Weirdlore of the early 21st Century) whilst the pure heart of the thing recedes.

Compare, say, Archie Fisher's Kielder Hunt with that of Willie Scott; compare June Tabor's Gamekeepers with that of Bob Roberts. There is a huge disparity between the two; an aesthetical gulf as vast as the cultural yearnings that underpin the very nature of The Revival born of pure romance. Even the most ill-educated of us refer to our songs by their Roud & Child numbers if only to give credence to how seriously we take this music, and in doing we drift yet further from its once feral soul as a once thriving popular music into the realms of Idyll and Romanticism born of the very disparity which kicked the whole thing off to begin with.

In saying such things I'm not being Anti-Revival, just aware of the Credos and the Religiosity of those who chose to accept the orthodox dogmas without once questioning the reality of Folk / Folklore as a construct of bourgeois patronage (at worse) and (at best) idyllic romanticism which determines the aesthetic of the revival. This, I feel, is writ large enough in the handsome edition that is New Penguin Book of English Folk Song, which, having briefly perused at copy in Waterstone's yesterday, I bought on Amazon last night, and will no doubt enjoy perusing at leisure when it arrives in the morning.

Jack Blandiver
(i.e. The Mudcatter Still Known as Suibhne O'Piobaireachd / GUEST Suibhne Astray until such time my request for an official name-change is honoured...)