Folklore: The Imagined Village

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Imagined Village
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 12 Oct 10 - 02:54 AM

"The Imagined Country" Culture, Ideology and the Second English Folk Revival.

Being the story of the revival of the 1950s onwards - is this waiting to be written?

L in C#

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Imagined Village
From: GUEST,Georgina Boyes
Date: 11 Oct 10 - 03:59 PM

Very glad to hear that the book's been of interest - I wrote it for people who were involved in the Folk Revival - including me - so that the way it had developed over time was more fully on record. I kept finding things that surprised me and just wanted to sort out what they meant.

I wish greater notice had been taken of Jacobs' comments. He was Australian and was regarded as rather a pushy colonial. I think he got fed up of trying to get his ideas taken seriously, so went to America where he became very influential. And though I don't agree with Maud Karpeles (or Sharp's) definitions, I think Karpeles has been greatly misrepresented and underestimated. She did some amazing work.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Imagined Village
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 11 Oct 10 - 03:09 PM

Just finished chapter one - a triumph. Forgive the slow progress, but I'm full of cold just now so things are a bit slow. I had tears in my eyes when I read what Joseph Jacobs had to say on the subject.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Imagined Village
From: Will Fly
Date: 08 Oct 10 - 03:48 PM

I read the whole book - bought from NoMasters - while in Alnwick last week. Absolutely fascinating and excellently researched.

I finished it with a disquieting sense of distaste for Sharp, Karpeles, Gardiner, et al. Their work and contributions can't be denied - of course not - but their attitudes and agendas, admittedly of their time, irritated and annoyed me.

My compliments to Georgina.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Imagined Village
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 08 Oct 10 - 11:27 AM

Brilliant book, thanks a lot

L in C#

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Imagined Village
From: GUEST,Georgina Boyes
Date: 08 Oct 10 - 08:36 AM

Very glad to hear that copies are getting through from Amazon again. There's also plenty of stock (and very good service) from No Masters website too.

Georgina

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Imagined Village
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 08 Oct 10 - 04:52 AM

My copy was waiting when we got back from Chester last night - as ordered from Amazon back in August; quite forgotton about it to be honest. I was so knackered last night it took me all my time to wade through the preface, but I always look forward to something nice & substantial for my autumn read. Last year it was Stations of the Sun though I was defeated by the miniscule typeface...

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Imagined Village
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 19 Aug 10 - 03:43 PM

2nd reading, >p102

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Imagined Village
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 19 Aug 10 - 09:40 AM

Thanks Ms/Mr sfmans,

I guess I should have looked there before I opened my big gob. I have read it and need time to read it again and have a think

Cheers

L in C#

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Imagined Village
From: SteveMansfield
Date: 19 Aug 10 - 09:26 AM

L in C#: I don't understand how the book 'The Imagined Village' relates to the 'band' of the same name. Is the 'band' a post-revival, ironic comment on what the Sharp/EFDSS think folk song might be?

The front page of the band's website at http://imaginedvillage.com carries a summary of the aims of the project and what they themselves see as the thread between the band and the book.

I'm just pleased that the renewed profile given to the Imagined Village name has perhaps in some way (a solid or tenuous connection, I know not) led to the reprinting of the book: my copy of which was duly received from No Masters in double-quick time and is currently getting an appreciative and fascinated re-reading.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Imagined Village
From: TheSnail
Date: 19 Aug 10 - 08:28 AM

I'll have you know that joke is copyright Bob Copper (ho! ho!)

Copper family jokes are handed down in the family and probably go back as far as their songs. I have heard the -

She put her left breast in the stirrup
And mounted her horse like a man

   story told by Bob of Jim and by John of Bob. I anticipate hearing Ben telling it of John.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Imagined Village
From: mattkeen
Date: 19 Aug 10 - 08:11 AM

Started reading Imagined Village last night

Really enjoying it so far and genuinly thought provoking.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Imagined Village
From: GUEST,folkiedave
Date: 19 Aug 10 - 04:27 AM

@ Guest Jon Dudley.

Delighted to acknowledge copywrite and so sorry!

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Imagined Village
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 18 Aug 10 - 06:34 PM

Paul - can I just say that has to be the finest post I've ever read on Mudcat. I'm grinning like an idiot with a warm glow in my heart.

And guess what? Ross has a copy of Fakesong he's going to lend me; even after I turned down his generous donation of a melodeon earlier this evening - there are limits!

Now if anyone can tie in Mycology and Ornithology, that would make life complete!

Derek Gifford does a fine line Folk Song Orthithology; examples are found flocking, or dissimulating, with exaltations, murders, sieges, peeps, clatterings, parliaments, tidings etc. etc. of many species in evidence. There's sure to a thread around here somewhere - & I'm on with An Bunnan Bui / Yellow Bittern right now myself. Mushroom Folk is, I fear, another area altogether...

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Imagined Village
From: Hesk
Date: 18 Aug 10 - 05:56 PM

Being interested in folk, old books, and old toy trains, I always assumed that they had no connection. I see from some of above that this was wrong.
Now if anyone can tie in Mycology and Ornithology, that would make life complete!
It is possible that an over large anorak would do the job?

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Imagined Village
From: Paul Burke
Date: 18 Aug 10 - 02:55 PM

I'm sure you don't really need to know, but the difference between EM and P4 is as follies:


All these standards apply to 4mm to the foot, or 1/76.4.

EM gauge is to 18mm gauge (scale 4'6" as against actual 4'8.5")) with BRMSB finescale wheel standards. These have thicker, deeper flanges and wider treads than true scale, but rather closer to scale than OO standards, and certainly very much closer than OO scale was in 1950 or so when the British Railway Model Standards Bureau (a trade association) set the standard.

P4 is very close to exact scale reproduction of track and wheel dimensions, with only very minor deviations to accommodate the limits of economic manufacturing tolerances and the much sharper than scale curves generally found on models. Gauge is 18.83mm, scale 4'8.64", or scale 140 thou overgauge.

OO runs to a scale gauge of 4'1.5"!

The difference is best seen in of the track:

OO
EM
P4

How can it apply to music? Well, the P4 man is very concerned with certain aspects of authenticity, especially as regards dimensions. As there is very little available off- the- shelf, he spends a lot of time ensuring things are right. The trains run slowly at scale speeds, usually with fully authentic signalling and procedures. The scene is often quite sparse, because there is little room for scale curves in most people's houses.

The OO man is more concerned with easily getting things going and enjoying his models. The trains often run round much sharper curves so as to cram more uintricate track in, and it often runs faster.

The EM man is somewhere inbetween, and these days usually represents a purist of an earlier period.

I enjoy all types, and here endeth the parable.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Imagined Village
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 18 Aug 10 - 09:24 AM

I much enjoy the Imagined Village 'band' and they are clearly taking the old songs and using instruments and genre that can be found in England today to explore themes that are present in old songs.

I don't understand how the book 'The Imagined Village' relates to the 'band' of the same name. Is the 'band' a post-revival, ironic comment on what the Sharp/EFDSS think folk song might be?

L in C#

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Imagined Village
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 18 Aug 10 - 08:05 AM

Xcratch built of course, but P4.

So what's difference between EM & P4? And how might we apply such exacting rigours to The Revival? Or have we already had that on the other thread? Maybe The Imagine Village will provide us with the answers, although I didn't get on too well with the musical project of the same name which runs contrary to what Les wrote a wee while ago (HERE) and I've never liked Chumbawumba anyway.   Otherwise, getting on just fine with re-reading A Song for Every Season which is so beautifully written it makes me ponder again the extent to which the glories of The Copper Tradition is a creative one, which may, or may not chime in which what Will said earlier.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Imagined Village
From: GUEST,Jon Dudley
Date: 18 Aug 10 - 06:23 AM

'Your copy of the "Song for Every Season". The unsigned ones are the rare ones!!'
I'll have you know that joke is copyright Bob Copper (ho! ho!)

'They are as they were for the Copper family. Or am I being naive... :-)'
No Will, definitely not naive - as per Brasser and later, Jim Copper. Although Brasser and Tom were 'collected' by Mrs Kate Lee in the late 1890s there's no evidence that her collecting influenced their subsequent renditions. I can't say if her notations of tunes and lyrics as per the first journal of The Folk Song Society are exactly what they sung, but we can be certain that Brasser's labour of love songbook of the 1920s was what HE sung...likewise Jim's several copies of his songbook are invariable (is that a word?) in the sameness of their lyrics. The tunes are as per Jim and Bob with inevitable very slight changes over the years.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Imagined Village
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 17 Aug 10 - 03:09 PM

Thanks Matthew I'll check that out

L in C#
Songs tomorrow but jam today

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Imagined Village
From: Matthew Edwards
Date: 17 Aug 10 - 02:37 PM

I didn't find any problems with ordering this from the No Masters online shop, and the book arrived very promptly indeed.

Anyway the interview with Georgina Boyes on Folkwaves is still available for the next 6 days via the BBC Derby website. Or you can go directly to the broadcast on the BBC iPlayer here Folkwaves:16.08.2010. The interview is in two segments from 0:28.35 - 0:35.45, and 0:38.13 - 0:41.19.

Matthew

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Imagined Village
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 17 Aug 10 - 07:38 AM

I'm waiting for it to come on Amazon in September - £9, free postage; too many hoops to jump through on the 'No Masters' site! So, for my birthday - well, I'll see what I might pick up on our Tynemouth / North Shields jaunt this Saturday. Who knows, eh? Might find a copy of Fakesong in some random pile or other...

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Imagined Village
From: stallion
Date: 17 Aug 10 - 07:19 AM

Imagined Village was on one of my reading lists at Uni, can't remember why or what it was about and the only thing i can remember me thinking was that i thought it was about a sense of belonging, or our desire to belong, a bit like when two people meet they tend to try and find some common ground and when all friends, aquaintances, towns and cities have been eliminated then it's culture.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Imagined Village
From: mattkeen
Date: 17 Aug 10 - 06:57 AM

Just ordered my copy

Hoorah

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Imagined Village
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 17 Aug 10 - 03:47 AM

I guess it can be heard on Listen again?

L in C
Great book

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Imagined Village
From: GUEST,Georgina Boyes
Date: 16 Aug 10 - 05:10 AM

Have got an interview about the new edition with Mick Peat on Folkwaves tonight.

Georgina

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Imagined Village
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Aug 10 - 07:55 AM

Your copy of the "Song for Every Season". The unsigned ones are the rare ones!!

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Imagined Village
From: Will Fly
Date: 15 Aug 10 - 07:14 AM

Oddly enough, Sean, I've just finished re-reading "A Song For Every Season", which I also have in hardback, with original paper cover! The thing that gets me about it, every time, is the fact that the songs here - whether they were subsequently "collected" by other people or not, were written down by Bob's father, Jim, as he remembered them. We can at least say, with the songs in the back of the book - "Jim Copper's Song Book" - that they weren't buggered about by any collector with an agenda of one sort or another. They are as they were for the Copper family. Or am I being naive... :-)

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Imagined Village
From: SteveMansfield
Date: 15 Aug 10 - 06:45 AM

Ordered my copy of the Imagined Village reprint yesterday and it's been sent out already, hoorah for the efficiency of No Masters. I read the book when it first came out & look forward to re-reading it ...

I remember finding the actual prose style of 'Fakelore' completely impenetrable, so can't remember any of the arguments and points made because it was (IMNSHO) so badly written!

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Imagined Village
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 14 Aug 10 - 07:46 PM

Steve's got it right there, Folkiedave - I'm sure both are great festivals but they'd both be too much for me! My friend Nicky had her first Sidmouth this year and reported she loved every minute.

Anyway - since this thread is vaguely book related, I was in Manchester today with folk books on my mind & found THIS for £4.50! I've had it in paperback for years but it's falling to bits; this a nice hardback Country Book Club edition from 1972 which looks, feels & smells just perfect.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Imagined Village
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Aug 10 - 07:29 PM

If I have misread then I am happy to apologise.

(But actually festivals are reality - it is the other stuff that isn't!!)

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Imagined Village
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 14 Aug 10 - 05:14 PM

Dave,
I think you've misread this. I think Suibhne was saying there's so much folk going on at Sidmouth and Whitby you can quickly get all folked out. I don't think he was saying he didn't like them, rather the opposite. I can empathise with that. Some people drift around from festival to festival and can lose touch with reality.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Imagined Village
From: GUEST,Folkiedave
Date: 14 Aug 10 - 06:19 AM

One of the reasons I don't do Sidmouth or Whitby is that after week I'd be hurling myself of the nearest cliff

LOL! You and me both...

Or to put it another way - "I have never been but I know I wouldn't like it."

I have been to both in the past year. This year's Sidmouth was full of good weather, top-class singing, excellent music and some decent - if pricey to a Sheffielder - beer. I am reliably informed the cider was good. I lstened to the mighty Bellowhead and unaccompanied travellers in the same day. If we regard those as opposite ends of a spectrum there was most things in-between.

It is a bit typical of some writing on Mudcat, those who weren't there thought it was awful, those who were there thought it was great.

But go on, even though you weren't there, tell us what you wouldn't or didn't like about it?

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Imagined Village
From: Paul Burke
Date: 13 Aug 10 - 07:42 PM

Scratch built, EM guage too no doubt. >/i>
Xcratch built of course, but P4.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Imagined Village
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 13 Aug 10 - 06:40 PM

From what I glean from the above, Suibhne, you're yonside of the hill from me, but Gregg Butler in Preston I'm absolutely certain will have a copy and would I'm sure lend it out if you ply him with enough pints.

I like the pleasures of both worlds, the authenticity and the pleasure in the song itself, authentic or not. And no, I'm not schizophrenic! Yes I am. No I'm not.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Imagined Village
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 13 Aug 10 - 03:55 PM

I've known guys who ballast their tracks with stone taken from the exact quarry that the LMS used in "his" area in 1935 (Ashover if you must know)

Scratch built, EM guage too no doubt. Love it - seriously. I have at the back of my mind a layout based around the Backworth Colliery of my childhood - my very own Imagined Village which might never get out of my imagination, not for another 20 years or so anyway...

Sure 'Fakelore' had its faults, mostly in the overstretched political dogma,

The more I hear about it the more I want to read it, overstretched political dogma and all.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Imagined Village
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 13 Aug 10 - 03:09 PM

Sure 'Fakelore' had its faults, mostly in the overstretched political dogma, but a lot of what is in there is well researched and accurate and needed saying. There are still hundreds of people out there who still believe all folksongs came from rural peasants, and deny the massive influence of broadsides and theatrical music. And many professors who bury their heads in the sand when it comes to the obvious doctoring of the old ballads by the early collectors and antiquarians.

Do we care? I certainly do.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Imagined Village
From: Paul Burke
Date: 13 Aug 10 - 01:07 PM

I am on record as saying authenticity is the reserve of Model Railway Enthusiasts in the hope they would at least recognise a real train shoukld they ever see one. In certain respects, carefully culivating one's repertoir of E. Trads & Ballads is like maintaining your 00-scale model of Battersby Junction circa 1935; you know what fits and what doesn't, what belongs & what might be considered extraneous

More misunderstandings Sweeney, I'm afraid. Railway modellers come in all guises- some try to recreate accurate historical scenes, some try to create a scene that could have existed but didn't, some try for an impressionistic view of their subject, some don't really care whether it's authentic as long as (to them and their mates) it's exciting. Now what other minority interest community does that remind you of?

I've known guys who ballast their tracks with stone taken from the exact quarry that the LMS used in "his" area in 1935 (Ashover if you must know); and I've seen the Far Twittering and Oysterperch. And glad of both.

And Tradition (which tradition?) vs Revival (which revival, with knobs on) is rather like that.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Imagined Village
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 13 Aug 10 - 01:01 PM

I got Rare Bog, Rattling Bog from the singing of Seamus Ennis, who is a sort of prophet around these parts. I sing it without giving too much thought to its provenance. It's in DigiTrad anyway, and there's even a thread about it here, which touches upon the Wicker Man version. Fill your boots!

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Imagined Village
From: Old Vermin
Date: 13 Aug 10 - 12:53 PM

And in praise of the relatively recent, I seem to remember the works of Rambling Sid Rumpo being sung by fellow school-boys.

Also in that 1960s schoolboy oral tradition was the Tree in a Bog down in the Valley-oh. Was this trad or pastiche? A rare bog, a rattling bog? Trad or fake? Something like it in The Wicker Man tree - nest - bird - feather - bed - maid - man or thereabouts.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Imagined Village
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 13 Aug 10 - 08:48 AM

One of the reasons I don't do Sidmouth or Whitby is that after week I'd be hurling myself of the nearest cliff

LOL! You and me both...

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Imagined Village
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 13 Aug 10 - 08:28 AM

Do you honestly believe that there's such a thing as authenticity?

Yeah - er - sort of, though I am on record as saying authenticity is the reserve of Model Railway Enthusiasts in the hope they would at least recognise a real train shoukld they ever see one. In certain respects, carefully culivating one's repertoir of E. Trads & Ballads is like maintaining your 00-scale model of Battersby Junction circa 1935; you know what fits and what doesn't, what belongs & what might be considered extraneous - in terms of Tradition that is, rather than Revival, which we've been talking about over there. My first delight in Folk Music is listening to field-recordings of Traditional Singers - my second delight is gathering with likeminded & disparate curmudgeonly souls in filthy back rooms and have a good old blow by way of a singaround. Into this I might drop a ballad or two, but really I prefer to listen to others really - to join in the choruses - especially from those more erudite, experienced, and (to be honest) more dedicated than I. Through careful research there emerges a whiff of the authentic - in a good singaround, if I've drunk enough, the experience is a transcendant catharsis which gratifies that part of me that wishes he lived 150 years ago in the sort of bucolic idyll they keep telling us never existed (the Imagined Village perhaps?) but which lingers yet in the wild places and comes alive in the presence of, say, John J, when he sings Thousands or More. I might add that on the way home from such a gathering we'll be listening to hip-hop very loudly on the car stereo as I can very quickly get Folked Out on account of my love of general reality. One of the reasons I don't do Sidmouth or Whitby is that after week I'd be hurling myself of the nearest cliff - and even the festivals we do do (and perform at with no little dedication to our craft) there must always be escape - a panic button if you like, to get me back to reality, if only for an hour or so, that I might refresh. I love the old songs in the same way I love medieval misericords - so authenticity does matter. That said I agree more recent songs might carry the same vibe - Sing John Ball, or Bring Us A Barrel, or Scowie's When All Men Sing and many of Bellamy's settings (not least of Bob Copper's The Old Songs) etc. etc. which at least are a celebration of the authentic, if not authentic in themselves.

Maybe that's enough...

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Imagined Village
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 13 Aug 10 - 07:43 AM

Suibhne,

Do you honestly believe that there's such a thing as authenticity?

Everything is a mishmash, a mingle, a hotch-potch...

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Imagined Village
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 13 Aug 10 - 07:12 AM

When it comes to folk, I get genuine pleasure out of authenticity.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Imagined Village
From: Old Vermin
Date: 13 Aug 10 - 07:06 AM

Just a thought, but which matters more: authenticity or genuine pleasure in song?

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Imagined Village
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 13 Aug 10 - 06:26 AM

A nice deal for Shimrod too if hadn't pissed on his copy! That said, I could never imagine him doing such a thing...

The following (extracted from the WIKI entry on C#) gives a flavour of it:

In the later twentieth century, a revisionist scholar, Dave Harker, charged Sharp with having "invented" a tradition, accusing Sharp of having been dishonest in altering some of the songs and in his collection methods. These criticisms were taken up by others who were doubtless in part motivated by an understandable reaction to the previous hagiographical treatment of Sharp.

Dave Harker's harsh criticisms of Sharp, however, reflect an idiosyncratic Trotskyist Marxist framework that views any and all folk song collecting, scholarship, and attempts at revival as forms of appropriation and exploitation by the bourgeoisie of the working class, whose tastes Harker considers intrinsically at odds with what he terms the "official culture" of the schools.[6] Harker, an expert on printed broadsides, argues against the very existence of an oral tradition. He believes that all of what is termed "folk song" in fact originated from broadsides. He further maintains that it was absurd to claim that late-nineteenth century England possessed a rural culture. In his view the small hamlets of less than 300 people from which Sharp collected were actually centers of the "urban proletariat", whom Sharp had misrepresented as (agrarian) "folk".

In 1972, when the editors of Folk Music Journal first accepted an article by Harker criticising Sharp and his methods, one member of the journal's board, Pat Shaw, expressed scepticism of Harker's statistics and only agreed to publish it on condition that someone would write an accompanying rebuttal. Unfortunately, however, the rebuttal never appeared, and Pat Shaw himself died in 1977, so that Harker's allegations went unchallenged for fifteen years.[7] Harker described Sharp's activities this way:

    "folk song" as mediated by Cecil Sharp, [is] to be used as "raw material" or "instrument", being extracted from a tiny fraction of the rural proletariat and . . . imposed upon town and country alike for the people's own good, not in its original form, but, suitably integrated into the Conservatoire curriculum, made the basis of nationalistic sentiments and bourgeois values. The working people of England rejected, and still have to reject, as children, "folk song" as official culture. In fact, of course, they'd rejected it in its original state before Sharp was born, by creating the first generation of music halls, but that story belongs to history, and not to the analysis of myth.[8]

Harker's allegations got considerable traction, and he expanded them in a book, Fakesong (1984).[9] The writings of Harker, however, and by extension of Harker's followers in the U.S. (such as David E. Whisnant, Benjamin Filene, and Robert Christgau, who have backgrounds in political science, American Studies, and journalism, not ethnography) have now themselves in turn come under scrutiny as overly harsh, exaggerated, distorted, and unjust.

In the meantime, Mike Yates, the Folk Music Journal editor who had originally accepted Harker's article for publication in 1972, began to investigate the ethnography of Cecil Sharp for himself, traveling to America in his footsteps to do so.

    I realised that, for the sake of accuracy, I had to do more research into Sharp's Appalachian trips, if I was to fully understand just who Sharp was and exactly what it was that he had done in the mountains. In the end I wrote an article, "Cecil Sharp in America", which remained unpublished for some fifteen years, until it appeared in Musical Traditions in 1999. By the time I had written the article I had come to see Cecil Sharp as something of a giant - a man who, with unbelievable dedication, had almost single-handedly preserved a whole tradition that would otherwise have vanished under the indifference of a rapidly changing world. And yet, strange as it may now seem, I still held to some of Dave Harker's views concerning Sharp's English collecting and prose writing. One man, however, was not so trusting and, unlike Pat Shaw, he was prepared to put his thoughts and findings onto paper.[10]

This man was C. J. Bearman, who in 2001 completed his Ph.D. thesis, "The English Folk Music Movement 1898-1914". Bearman's two papers, "Who Were the Folk? The Demography of Cecil Sharp's Somerset Folk Singers" in Historical Journal: 43 (2000):3: 751-75, and "Cecil Sharp in Somerset: Some Reflections on the Work of David Harker" in Folklore 113 (2002): 11 -34), were a devastating deconstruction of Dave Harker's "orthodoxy", charging Harker with having misrepresenting the data and distorted statistics for ideological reasons.

Yates writes:

    True, Sharp was lax in asking singers where they learned their songs, but we do know that out of the 311 singers that he met during the period 1904-1909, sixty singers provided provenance for 77 of their songs. Only one of these songs was learned directly from a broadside, while 73 songs came directly from an oral source - parents, grandparents, friends, etc. It could, I suppose, be argued that very few English broadsides were being printed in the first decade of the twentieth century, but most of these singers would have been around at the end of the nineteenth century when broadsides were still being printed.

    Does all this nit-picking really matter? Well, yes it does. Because if our foundations are based on false assumptions, then the whole subsequent body of folk song and folklore studies is liable to come tumbling down around us. In the last thirty-odd years writers such as Raymond Williams (who wrote The Country and the City, 1973), Eric Hobsbawn (the editor of The Invention of Tradition, 1983), Ronald Hutton (author of The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain, 1996) and Georgina Boyes (The Imagined Village . . .) have all attacked Sharp, taking Dave Harker as their starting point. And much of what they say is wrong. My own beliefs have always been to the left, and it gives me no great pleasure to see respected left-wing writers coming in for such criticism. But, this criticism does appear to be justified and cannot be pushed under the carpet. There are already others seeking to question Harker and his followers. In a recent review in the Folk Music Journal, Mike Heaney has criticised Georgina Boyes for a recent work (Step Change: New Views on Traditional Dance, 2001), where he says that "Factual errors and misrepresentations abound" (Folk Music Journal 2003 page 369).

    C. J. Bearman has made a number of extremely serious allegations against Dave Harker's methodology. "Factual errors and misrepresentations (also) abound" in Dave Harker's published works, is what he is clearly saying. Perhaps it is time to follow up Dave Harker's own comment, given above, about Sharp, but now seemingly more applicable to himself -- it's the one made in 1972 about the story belonging to history, "and not to the analysis of myth". According to Bearman, it was, after all, Harker, and not Sharp, who was creating the myth, and, in the process, jumping to the wrong conclusions.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Imagined Village
From: Matthew Edwards
Date: 13 Aug 10 - 05:59 AM

I think the £31 price Sean found for Fakesong on BookButler is rather chimerical. Based on the original cover price it seems to be what they would sell it for if they actually had a new copy in stock (which they haven't). Otherwise it usually sells second-hand for £100 or more, which would be a very nice deal for the author if he could earn anything from such reselling.

Matthew

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Imagined Village
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 13 Aug 10 - 05:00 AM

Thanks Sean, I have Bob Pegg's from way back and have enjoyed it.

Maybe people have stopped looking for some over-arching 'theory' and just make and re-make good music from what was gathered around 100 years ago and is often dragged out of broadside collections and so on. I guess lots of songs still lie waiting in broadside collections?

An amazing number of dance tunes have been re-discovered through things like Johnny Adam's Village Music Project and I think some more through Newcastle University's Traditional Music courses.

Cheers

L in C#

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Imagined Village
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 13 Aug 10 - 03:48 AM

I've seen the odd copy of Fakesong online but it doesn't come cheap - £31-£244 accorduing to Boot Butler. Bob Pegg's Folk is worth a look, if you can a hold of it; as is his Rites & Riots which is one of the more sensible overviews of folk customs. Bob Trubshaw's Explore Folklore makes perfect sense until his chapter on folk music when this thesis goes of the rails somewhat.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Imagined Village
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 13 Aug 10 - 03:33 AM

Is Fakesong still available anywhere?

Is there a place for another book that follows the Revival from the 1970s up until around now?

L in C#