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The Imagined Village - update.
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Subject: RE: The Imagined Village - update. From: GUEST Date: 05 Jul 07 - 08:30 AM Warwick Arts Centre has more than one hall. The 'Theatre' has something on, but I presume Imagined Village will be in the Auditorium. That said, all the places on the tour are quite big and its a lot of tickets to sell - "all star cast" or none.
Thanks. -Joe Offer- |
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Subject: RE: The Imagined Village - update. From: GUEST Date: 05 Jul 07 - 07:26 AM I've looked on Warwick Arts Centre's site - they've got something else that day. Curiouser and curiouser.
Thanks. -Joe Offer- |
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Subject: RE: The Imagined Village - update. From: GUEST,Chris Murray Date: 05 Jul 07 - 07:04 AM Thanks. |
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Subject: RE: The Imagined Village - update. From: GUEST,The Village People Date: 05 Jul 07 - 04:26 AM Imagined Village Tour dates 11-Nov Warwick Arts Centre - Warwick 12-Nov de Montfort Hall - Leicester 13-Nov Bridgewater Hall - Manchester 14-Nov Lighthouse - Poole 16-Nov Colston Hall - Bristol 17-Nov Dome - Brighton 19-Nov The Sage Gateshead 20-Nov Philharmonic Hall Liverpool 21-Nov The Anvil Basingstoke 22-Nov Royal & Derngate - Northampton 27-Nov Royal Festival Hall - Laaarndon. |
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Subject: RE: The Imagined Village - update. From: Effsee Date: 04 Jul 07 - 08:35 PM Chris Murray, et al,..."The Imagined Village Limited Edition EP will be released July 2007. The Imagined Village album will be released 10 September 2007. UK Tour - November 2007."...from the linked site. |
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Subject: RE: The Imagined Village - update. From: GUEST,Chris Murray Date: 04 Jul 07 - 06:44 PM There must be a list of dates where we can see the show - how did Ruth/Joanie know that it's playing Leicester and Northampton? The only date announced that I can find is the one in Liverpool - and that's on a Tuesday and I've got work the next day. |
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Subject: RE: The Imagined Village - update. From: BB Date: 04 Jul 07 - 02:52 PM Desdemona, if you go to this link, and put in the title, you should be able to find a copy. Barbara |
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Subject: RE: The Imagined Village - update. From: Folkiedave Date: 04 Jul 07 - 11:23 AM I seem to remember that Georgina Boyes said recently it was being republished. You may be able to get in touch with her via No Masters. |
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Subject: RE: The Imagined Village - update. From: GUEST,Ian cookieless Date: 04 Jul 07 - 10:47 AM Since I haven't spotted these links earlier in the thread, this is a link to the soon-to-be-functioning Imagined Village website, and this is a link to the Real World website with a tiny bit of info halfway down the page. |
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Subject: RE: The Imagined Village - update. From: GUEST,Ian cookieless Date: 04 Jul 07 - 10:36 AM Desdemona, in the UK any book published can be obtained to borrow through inter-library loans or on loan from the British Library for a small fee. |
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Subject: RE: The Imagined Village - update. From: Desdemona Date: 04 Jul 07 - 10:29 AM That sounds absolutely fascinating, I'll check it out ASAP. On a related note, I'm dying to get my hands on that Georgina Boyes book, which is apparently out of print; I've trolled through all of my Harvard resources and the usual remaindered book sites without luck. Any suggestions/recommendations? ~D |
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Subject: RE: The Imagined Village - update. From: Les in Chorlton Date: 04 Jul 07 - 07:03 AM Any further gig dates? |
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Subject: RE: The Imagined Village - update. From: GUEST,Chris Murray Date: 02 Jul 07 - 01:00 PM I know it's playing at Liverpool, and Ruth mentioned Leicester and Northampton - but does anyone have a list of dates. I really want to see this. |
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Subject: RE: The Imagined Village - update. From: GUEST,Shimrod Date: 27 Jun 07 - 08:15 AM "What really pisses me off is that someone can make a ludicrous statement to the effect that C# ignored the plethora of songs about 'fornication with faeries', and that I am the only poster to take issue with it." Yes, 'Sharp eye ..." you're absolutely right - it is a ludicrous statement (sorry, I'm rather late to this thread). I think that you make a lot of very reasonable and valid points - but you have, as usual, upset all the rockers and punkifiers out there who want folk song to be something (or some things) its not so that they can claim it for their own. What pisses me off is that, in the "Imagined Village" project quoted above, we are expected to kow-tow to yet another attempt to make trad. song more 'relevant' to today - how many times have we heard that in the last 40 years? Actually, I like folk song precisely because it's not 'exactly' relevent to today and doesn't contain references to tiresome contemporary things like punks, clubs, drugs etc. I hate those things and they are definitely NOT relevant to me! If you really must make folk song 'relevant', why not really listen to it for a change (rather than rushing in and making up bullshit) and appreciate how it gives a different perspective on the 'human condition'. |
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Subject: RE: The Imagined Village - update. From: Les in Chorlton Date: 27 Jun 07 - 03:15 AM Sharp eye, the original post was a post, although rather long (1000+ words) not am academic disertation. As far as I can tell it was concerned with a "project" - The Imagined Village. The general feeling, supported by visits to its website, is an exciting collection of more or less traditional material sung and played by quite good people who play well. It claims all sorts of things but I guess a reinterpretation is to be expected. It looks to me like most of us wanted to find out more about The Imagined Village. What your post has done is to take one sentance or two and make a point that most people who have studied song collection in any depth accept, but entirely misses the point of the original post. Which inspite of 1000= words is "look out here is some great music". But I am sure you are aware that you are in great comapny, lots of us join in and make extremely valuable and astute points and some of us get off on irrelevant points and alot of the time ew cannot tell who is who. |
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Subject: RE: The Imagined Village - update. From: countrylife Date: 26 Jun 07 - 11:12 AM no...I think I'll stick to enjoying the music rather than the politics surrounding it...oops sorry I mean the history and "sociology" LOL |
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Subject: RE: The Imagined Village - update. From: GUEST,Sharp eye Date: 25 Jun 07 - 02:38 PM At last, you've got it! |
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Subject: RE: The Imagined Village - update. From: GUEST,countrylife Date: 25 Jun 07 - 01:40 PM whatever you say, prof... |
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Subject: RE: The Imagined Village - update. From: GUEST,Sharp eye Date: 25 Jun 07 - 01:28 PM "Thanks but I'd rather listen to the music....much more fun (f-u-n)" Duh! But you *can* listen to the music, *and* have fun (ah, so that's how you spell it), and still manage to find the history and sociology behind it fascinating. That's one of the reasons traditional music offers so much. And if you only wish to listen and have f-u-n, why bother with Mudcat? |
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Subject: RE: The Imagined Village - update. From: GUEST,countrylife Date: 25 Jun 07 - 12:58 PM "previous contributors to this thread please read!" Thanks but I'd rather listen to the music....much more fun (f-u-n) |
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Subject: RE: The Imagined Village - update. From: GUEST,Sharp eye Date: 25 Jun 07 - 09:16 AM Thank you for those, Folkiedave. The Bearman paper in particular provides some very useful hard data on what C# did actually collect and what he did with it - previous contributors to this thread please read! In an appraisal of C. J. Bearman's work here Mike Yates makes rather well the point I've been trying to get at: "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 folksong and folklore studies is liable to come tumbling down around us." |
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Subject: RE: The Imagined Village - update. From: Folkiedave Date: 25 Jun 07 - 07:08 AM For another look at Sharp and Harker see: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2386/is_1_113/ai_86063326 For A.l.Loyd and Reynardine see: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2386/is_3_115/ai_n8694034 For collecting and fieldwork: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2386/is_1_117/ai_n16346138 |
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Subject: RE: The Imagined Village - update. From: The Borchester Echo Date: 25 Jun 07 - 06:29 AM I too have lost count of the times I've referred to the origins of The Recruited Collier (and I imagine Malcolm Douglas is even more pissed off). It's useless to explain to some the existence of Jenny's Complaint, a C18 poem about a ploughboy or to R. Anderson's Ballads in the Cumberland Dialect (1808). It used to be 'common knowledge' that Anne Briggs wrote the song. Recently. I've been berated in a very nasty way by a kRusby fan who just refuses to believe that she didn't write it herself. I find it very strange that these people are incapable of hitting just a few keys and engaging in very basic research. Yeah, anything's 'good enough for f*lk'. Actually, no it isn't. |
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Subject: RE: The Imagined Village - update. From: GUEST,Sharp eye Date: 25 Jun 07 - 06:05 AM Yes, doc.tom, I know about all of the above. I'm not sure that vast swathes of 'folk music' afficonados do, though, which is why I raised it here. There are still plenty of people around who believe, for example, that the English tradition contains songs about werewolves (see Mudcat discussion of 'Reynardine'). What bothers me is not the rewriting of songs, but the rewriting of history. The particular point about Lloyd - who in general I admire a lot - is that he was able to feed the material he'd found and sometimes 'improved' to a whole generation of young singers, who went on to establish that material as a new canon, which in turn became a template for many who followed on. I've lost count of the number of times I've heard Lloyd's amended (or perhaps 'invented') version of 'Recruited Collier' presented as 'a traditional song' over the years. But no-one else seems to be bothered, so I'll stop banging on about it for now. |
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Subject: RE: The Imagined Village - update. From: GUEST,doc.tom Date: 24 Jun 07 - 11:11 AM Errr!!! Yes!!!! So what??? Everybody re-interprets according to their own lights. Lloyd? - yes - the classic examample of Lloyd re-write is probably The Collier Laddie - try looking at the original from which Lloyd worked (not a collier in sight - we must re-write the ploughboy as an industrial folk-song: it's all the rage in this new revival, you know). A good starting point for what was going on in revival re-writes is 'Singer, Song & Scholar' (Russell (ed.) Sheffield Academic Press 1986) then follow it up with various articles in Folklore. The post-Lloyd amermath is gathering speed. But don't be downhearted, a quick read of Harker (Fakesong, OUP 1985)will help show that it's been going on for collector after collector (even if Harper's text is something of a polemic - Babies & Bathwater come to mind again). Slight problem in that some singers regarded as 'trad', or 'source' or 'the real thing' have, from time to time, adopted the re-writes. Oh! dear, you can't even rely on the real thing any more! Yes! Eye for Bullshit is quite right - for God sake try to know what you're talking about before you open your mouths - but remember that applies TO US ALL!!! But I'll still stand by The Farmer's Boy. OK - enough - fade away (I must remember to avoid irony!) Tom Brown |
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Subject: RE: The Imagined Village - update. From: GUEST,countrylife Date: 23 Jun 07 - 01:34 PM for other references to "The Imagined Village" see the Ashley Hutchings album, Street Cries and track 6 on The Albion Band's Demi-Paradise album, Young Man Cut Down In His Prime |
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Subject: RE: The Imagined Village - update. From: GUEST,Sharp eye.... again Date: 23 Jun 07 - 09:32 AM Since no-one else has dived in yet (c'mon, where are you?), I can rectify one omission in my last post: of course many traditional singers, like Walter Pardon and Cyril Poacher, had a repertoire of music hall and other popular songs, which were the kind of things Edwardian collectors preferred not to bother themselves with. Oh, and I know about Walter P's union songs as well. Doesn't alter the argument, though. |
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Subject: RE: The Imagined Village - update. From: GUEST,Sharp eye for bullshit Date: 23 Jun 07 - 08:41 AM Malcolm Douglas: At last the cavalry has appeared on the brow of the hill. Thanks. Sorry about the nom-de-plume, but having been compared with the 'secret police' for making a few points about traditional song, I'm rather glad I kept my real name out of this. Wish I'd chosen a nom-de-plume with fewer bloody characters, though. Mr. Red: "Unless we lived and endured in the cultral environment of which we speak we cannot imagine the strictions and mores that straight-jacketed that society." I'm sure you're right, and I wasn't trying to. Just looking at the actual songs. Les in Chorlton: "And please stop shouting in that self-rightous way." Er..... You wanted to know more about me, so I told you. Whoops, I'm not the right-wing idealogue you seemed to be suggesting! For this you now call me "self-righteous". Sometimes you just can't win. I *thought* we were actually having a reasonable debate here, with interesting counter-arguments - that I've been happy to acknowledge - and none of the "personal abuse" you predicted in post 12. That, and your two subsequent (entirely personal) posts, however, lead me to suspect you're trying to fulfil your own prophecy. OK, I'll have one more attempt to explain why I think this is important, and why it's relevant to the concept behind the thread title. Then you, or anyone else, can tell me which bits are wrong. My understanding of the repertoire of English traditional song, as represented not only by Sharp and his contemporaries, but also by more recent collectors and traditional singers I've heard in person and on record, is as follows: Lots of songs about love and/or sex (more than two thirds of the 'Still Growing' book, for instance). Plenty of crime and punishment; songs about war, from the jingoistic to 'lost lover' laments; songs of work (often expressing a pride in a particular trade but sometimes the hardships too); drinking songs; hunting songs. Some old ballads, yes, but ones about 'faeries' either long gone (Tam Lin) or boiled down to exclude entirely any elfin antecedents (Outlandish Knight). A few songs describing poverty (and I will cheerfully add to the list Here's To My Tin and Riches to Poverty, also from 'Still Growing' - although the latter might be an example of schadenfreude) but these often come with unlikely happy endings (Thresherman) and seldom make a political point. That doesn't mean that people were neither poor nor suffering, simply that there is little evidence that they wanted to sing about it. Then along comes the 'folk revival' of the 1960s and beyond. Its chief protagonists were performing for largely urban, often well-educated audiences, and had social and political ideas of their own. They imagined their own version of 'The Village', something edgier and more challenging. Out went the soppy love songs, the jingoism, the forelock-tugging. In came a greater focus on songs which did contain social comment (poaching songs, for instance, providing a reminder that the legal dice are forever loaded against the poor), and down from the shelves came the copies of F. J. Child and an exploration of Tam Lin and all those other wonderful tales. Sometimes the traditional song as collected didn't quite tell the desired story, so some tweaking of words or melody could be employed. Old broadsides or poems were dug out and set to music as a way of establishing an 'industrial song tradition' and of course new songs were written. Nothing wrong with any of that in itself. It's probably what I would have done in that situation. The problem arises when people try to extrapolate backwards from the late 20th century version of 'The Tradition' to make some kind of sociological or historical comment on the past. For example, the song familiar to many of us as 'The Handweaver and the Factory Maid' is actually A. L. Lloyd's collation of several different collected versions, telling a rather different story to any of them (the factory maid is depicted in one of those originals as the social superior of the handweaver). As a song, Lloyd's piece is excellent, but it would be unwise to draw any conclusions from it regarding social mores in the 19th century. By the same token, when the press release for a new CD paints a picture of the English tradition as a bizarre combination of Engels and Tolkein, as filmed by Hammer, and suggests that Cecil Sharp ignored all the real meat because he was an Edwardian snob obsessed with jolly shepherds, then I feel the need to stand up and say: "It ain't true". If most of you on this specialist music forum don't think it matters, then God help you. |
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Subject: RE: The Imagined Village - update. From: Malcolm Douglas Date: 23 Jun 07 - 06:50 AM GUEST, 22 Jun 07 - 01:51 PM (and perhaps later posts): Sharp edited texts for publication; this was so that they could be published. His early collaborator, Rev Charles Marson, rewrote some quite extensively (and unnecessarily, even for the time), and this appears to be part of the reason why they fell out. There is no mystery here; no 'more than likely'. Sharp's original notebooks survive; the originals are at Clare College and copies are at the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library. Anybody who is sufficiently interested can check for themselves what was changed for print and what was not. There is no need to speculate, as so many people who merely repeat rumour and hearsay do. The truth, as the saying goes, is out there. 'GUEST,Sharp eye for bullshit' (how I wish that people would use their real names. It's bloody hard trying to have a conversation when you have to quote all these stupid 'handles' all the time) is of course perfectly correct to point out that the first paragraph quoted in the first (anonymous) post is utter rubbish. Later comments in the piece show a decent general knowledge, so perhaps that bit was just an ill-judged aberration. Hard to tell without knowing who wrote it. The piece doesn't seem to be on the 'real world' site at all. Was it an email press release? Who did write it? There, 'sharp eye'. Somebody has agreed with you after all. I'd have done it sooner if I'd had time. I look forward to hearing the record. 'Afro-Celt Sound System', despite its silly name, was really rather good; though by the time I saw them live the original concept had been diluted overmuch: too many 'transatlantic' accents and not enough Gaelic. The pre-release blurb is, like so many such, overblown; and contains some pretty ambitious claims. We'll see, eventually, if they are justified. |
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Subject: RE: The Imagined Village - update. From: Mr Red Date: 23 Jun 07 - 06:09 AM here we go again. C# bowdlerised a lot of what he collected. I am not altogether knowledgable on how he funded his collecting (he started as a teacher in his holidays) - probably subscriptions to his English Folk Song Society but I rather suspect he was a businessman and addressed a market. Smut was not saleable for many reasons. I have seen comments from him to the effect that the tune was not very fitting but I found a more "fitting" tune so put the two together. He may have had good folkloric reasons too, but..... Sabine Baring-Gould wrote in his book, re "Waley Waley" "this was such a pretty song with only two verses I felt it would benefit from a couple more verses". Having said that he actually archived his songs - rude words and subjects. He published less contentious lyrics - &/or Bowdlerised versions. An aquaintance found some old barn dance records (78's I assume) and bearing the name Cecil Sharp he grabbed them. They turned out - according to him very danceable. No surprise to dancers. Human pursuits have not evolved much on 100 years. The problem with having a sharp eye for bullshit is that bullshit in the eye comes very sharp. Unless we lived and endured in the cultral environment of which we speak we cannot imagine the strictions and mores that straight-jacketed that society. by analogy When on my work computer and any one of server/ 16 mile link to it or just plain internet access are down it is very difficult to do a great deal - and I am constantly criticised for having essential copies of documents stored locally. Colleagues can use the phone, I have to refer to vast amounts of data. You have to suffer the problems to appreciate the import. So take yerself back 100 years and then tell us what it was like. And tell me how you did it - I reckon there is a lucrative market for time travel. |
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Subject: RE: The Imagined Village - update. From: Les in Chorlton Date: 23 Jun 07 - 04:36 AM "Dear me, the plods are on the trail; can my ID remain secret for much longer?" You sound like the secret police - was that your intention? And please stop shouting in that self-rightous way Best wishes Les |
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Subject: RE: The Imagined Village - update. From: GUEST,Sharp eye for bullshit Date: 22 Jun 07 - 06:20 PM "Why not come out, say who you are and say what you really mean?" "Sharp eye for bullshit(whoever is hiding here)...." Dear me, the plods are on the trail; can my ID remain secret for much longer? Sorry, Les, if you can't understand what I'm "struggling to say". If it helps you, I could explain that I sang Hard Times of Old England countless times during the Thatcher era, combed 'A Touch on the Times' (see above) and loads of other traditional sources for songs of industrial and other protest that might be relevant to the 1980s / 90s, but ended up unconvinced that the English singing tradition was actually the hotbed of subversion that I'd hoped for and that Lloyd's 'Folksong in England' had led me to expect. Also, that I've long been transfixed by old ballads, but have nevertheless been forced to concede that the English singing tradition is perhaps not as thick with ancient and romantic tales of faeries, werewolves and elves as some of us were persuaded of. Doesn't mean they're bad songs, though. Tom: I stand by the claim that the Farmer's Boy is a shameless tearjerker - just sit down and read the lyrics. What the song might become in the mouth of someone (Fred Jordan, perhaps) able easily to identify with it is of course a different matter. But (with all due respect, genuinely) the fact that the old men cried into their beer might be evidence of what an effective tear-jerker the song is. Countrylife: my apologies for expressing opinion. I must be the first contributor ever to do that on Mudcat. What really pisses me off is that someone can make a ludicrous statement to the effect that C# ignored the plethora of songs about 'fornication with faeries', and that I am the only poster to take issue with it. Night night. |
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Subject: RE: The Imagined Village - update. From: GUEST,countrylife Date: 22 Jun 07 - 02:30 PM "could do better than advertise itself with an opening paragraph of absolute cobblers." I think this is the point it took Sharp eye for bullshit 5 posts to make...their opinion. |
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Subject: RE: The Imagined Village - update. From: GUEST Date: 22 Jun 07 - 02:26 PM "whether what they are performing is actually traditional or a second-hand retread" We'll never really know will we? Unless you were actual witness at the point of the collection of a particular song. Then again there is the number of different versions of a song...which was the original and which was "a re-tread"? Sharp collect several different versions of the same song, I believe I know I'll purchase The Imagined Village regardless of what the liner notes or adverts sayand I will purchase with the same excitment I had when I purchased my original copy(on vinyl, which I still have) of Liege & Lief. |
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Subject: RE: The Imagined Village - update. From: GUEST,doc.tom Date: 22 Jun 07 - 02:26 PM Sharp eye for bullshit(whoever is hiding here)said: "I'd say The Farmer's Boy is a shameless tear-jerker, in which the farmer - far from suffering during an agricultural depression - is sufficiently prosperous to take on an additional labourer and then bequeath the farm to him." Ah well - another assumption based on ignorance perhaps? When I first worked on the land, in the middle of a thriving, robust, living tradition in North Cornwall, I wondered why the old men cried in thier beer when the Farmer's Boy was sung. I found out - they'd lived through the agricultural depression of the 30s. The etic view sees a prosperous farmer: the emic view understands the eponymous 'hero'. Tom Brown |
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Subject: RE: The Imagined Village - update. From: Les in Chorlton Date: 22 Jun 07 - 02:23 PM Are you sure you want to hide your undoubted understanding of traditional music with such carefully phrased understated views? Why not come out, say who you are and say what you really mean? We are all fascinated by what you have to say and the way you struggle to say it. |
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Subject: RE: The Imagined Village - update. From: GUEST,Sharp eye for bullshit Date: 22 Jun 07 - 02:11 PM "Seems to be a generally known fact that Sharp more than likely "cleaned up" the songs he collected." 'Generally known' by whom, exactly? "So, does it really matter now...?" Yes, of course it does. Anyone who claims to be performing 'traditional song' needs to know whether what they are performing is actually traditional or a second-hand retread of something that The Rev. Baring-Gould, A. L. Lloyd, or whoever, decided was more interesting than the real thing. And you'd have hoped that a significant new, tradition-based project like 'Imagined Village' (CD not book), which boasts a stellar cast and many interesting collaborations, and claims to be part of the 'search for English identity', could do better than advertise itself with an opening paragraph of absolute cobblers. |
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Subject: RE: The Imagined Village - update. From: GUEST,countrylife Date: 22 Jun 07 - 02:10 PM Maybe The Jam should re-unite and record an album of Trad. Arr.Works for me... :-D |
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Subject: RE: The Imagined Village - update. From: The Borchester Echo Date: 22 Jun 07 - 02:07 PM The Seeds of Love . . . as fornication with fairies . . . I think it depends on whether you're looking at at Sharp-collected text (which seems to have more to do with flowers) or the Tears for Fears one which makes a point of shaking up the views of the common man and kicking out the Style and bringing back the Jam. |
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Subject: RE: The Imagined Village - update. From: GUEST Date: 22 Jun 07 - 01:51 PM Seems to be a generally known fact that Sharp more than likely "cleaned up" the songs he collected. So, does it really matter now...? Apparently only to some. That was then, this is now... you can't re-write what has gone before.Re-interpret... yes, which has been done by the likes of Fairport Convention, Anne Briggs etc. "The Imagined Village is arguably the most ambitious re-invention of the English folk tradition since Fairports' Liege and Lief" As for this claim...we'll wait and see. Meanwhile I'll continue to play Liege & Lief |
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Subject: RE: The Imagined Village - update. From: GUEST,Sharp eye for bullshit Date: 22 Jun 07 - 01:17 PM "... a song about poverty, hardship and agricultural depression" I'd say The Farmer's Boy is a shameless tear-jerker, in which the farmer - far from suffering during an agricultural depression - is sufficiently prosperous to take on an additional labourer and then bequeath the farm to him. Countrylife, when I saw The Seeds of Love cited in answer to my question about examples of 'fornication with faeries', I laughed so much I fell off my soapbox. I'm still waiting to hear how many of you think that the description of Sharp's approach that heads this thread is fair or accurate. |
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Subject: RE: The Imagined Village - update. From: GUEST,countrylife Date: 22 Jun 07 - 12:20 PM "Er.... exactly how many songs did Cecil Sharp collect about "fornication with faeries"? Or poverty, for that matter?" the recognised first song Sharp ever collected, The Seeds Of Love, was fairly risque I believe...and quite rightly...there many trad songs about poverty. so please, please get off your soap-box... |
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Subject: RE: The Imagined Village - update. From: Ruth Archer Date: 22 Jun 07 - 11:45 AM Good piece on Buttercup Joe in the most recent Folk Music Journal: "Volume 9 Number 2 (2007) contains the following pieces: Articles George Frampton, '... and they calls I Buttercup Joe': Albert Richardson, the Singing Sexton of Burwash, 1905—76 Statistically, the songs 'Buttercup Joe' and 'Farmer's Boy' are key to the repertoire of traditional singers collected in the second half of the twentieth century. Both were recorded on gramophone records by Albert Richardson of Burwash for the British Zonophone Company in 1928 and 1932, respectively — the first time that a traditional singer was recorded for commercial purposes. However, comparatively little is known about Richardson, apart from a précis published in Musical Traditions in 2001. This article aims to apportion Richardson's role in the tradition, exploring his roles locally and publicly, together with his singing repertoire." |
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Subject: RE: The Imagined Village - update. From: concertina ceol Date: 22 Jun 07 - 11:30 AM thought "butter cup joe" was a music hall "hit" and written by a star of the (urban) music hall - to mock (gently lapoon) country people. Can't remember the details off hand and not time to google at present |
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Subject: RE: The Imagined Village - update. From: GUEST,doc.tom Date: 22 Jun 07 - 11:06 AM Interesting how 'both Buttercup Joe and The Farmer's Boy' get lumped together! Both very popular with country singers post C# - one is a self-deprecating bit of flammery, the other a song about poverty, hardship and agricultural depression (the happy ending makes it more bearable)- one might even say the Farmer's Boy was actually relevant in the current situation where the government no longer wants farming in this country. |
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Subject: RE: The Imagined Village - update. From: GUEST,Sharp eye for bullshit Date: 22 Jun 07 - 08:05 AM Interesting examples, Ruth and Diane. If I were an argumentative type, I could point out that Rigs of the Times is a protest about 'Rip-Off Britain' rather than about poverty (it would sit quite well in The Sun), and that the accompanying notes on Cox's Topic CD set mention that "contrary to popular opinion, overt protest songs such as this are not common in the English tradition". Or that The Thresherman, whilst undoubtedly describing hardship, climaxes in an unlikely act of philanthropy on the part of the rich squire. But I'm not suggesting that there are *no* songs describing poverty, only that they don't occur as frequently in tradition as might be expected (and the publicity blurb above claims). "stereotypical, stagey-bumpkin ditties...." Personally, Diane, I heartily loathe both Buttercup Joe and The Farmer's Boy as songs. My point was that they were and are popular with country singers, whatever you or might think. "Roy Harper's A Touch on the Times contains songs of social change...." Roy Palmer's book contains mostly broadside material. I would like to believe that kind of thing was widely sung, but there's precious little evidence of that - and much of it is well nigh unsingable anyway. "Fornication with fairies and other imaginary, dead and mythical objects is omnipresent, not only among late Victorians and Edwardians but throughout musical/literary history." Maybe, but what about traditional singers? It's all to easy for people, from F. J. Child to the recent 'folk revival', to get carried away with romantic ideas about 'the tradition', but sometimes you have to remind yourself of (to coin your phrase) "what is actually there". 'Tam Lin', terrific tale though it is, has been a favourite of literature professors and folk revivalists, not of Sharp's informants or the likes of Harry Cox. Sharp is fair game for reappraisal, but if we are going to criticize his methods it makes no sense to be equally, or even more, fanciful in our notions about the English singing tradition. ". . . and just to drag it back onto topic" OK, OK, I'll leave you alone now. Only please tell me you don't regard the first paragraph quoted by Newsbearer in the first posting as accurate! |
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Subject: RE: The Imagined Village - update. From: The Borchester Echo Date: 22 Jun 07 - 07:03 AM . . . and just to drag it back onto topic, The Enchanted Village (CD not book) is intended, it says, as a reinvention of the past to the fancy of the present age. Of what I have heard so far (i.e. most of it), it goes further and translates circumstances current then into what is relevant to people today. It is, in other words, a music of the people. |
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Subject: RE: The Imagined Village - update. From: Ruth Archer Date: 22 Jun 07 - 07:01 AM Roy Harper's A Touch on the Times contains songs of social change, many of them complaining about poverty, collected from 1770. I'm not sure what the ratio of "urban" to "rural" songs is, as I haven't got it with me at work, but it would seem people did a lot of singing about how crap it was to be poor and overworked. |
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Subject: RE: The Imagined Village - update. From: The Borchester Echo Date: 22 Jun 07 - 06:49 AM Fornication with fairies and other imaginary, dead and mythical objects is omnipresent, not only among late Victorians and Edwardians but throughout musical/literary history. It depends on how you interpret it. Present day poet Hugh Lupton performs Tam Lin (and other ballads) in a form translated from and a direct descendant of that of travelling storytellers upon whose words villagers would hang as though enthralled by an episode of EastEnders and join in nonsensical chorus lines which everybody knew (like Ma Ba And The Lily Ba) which served to move on the tale and involve everybody. As for Sharp and poverty, he collected When Fishes Fly (No My Love Not I) from Lucy White in Hambridge in 1904. This gives a very unsentimenatal account of he fate awaiting any young woman who stepped outside of the socially accepted moral code of the day. This is in parallel of musical theatre songs of that era which treated the subject with levity, but dealt with it nonetheless. Rural poverty in song is expressed in first person narratives such as Thresherman (Coppers/Sussex) and On Christmas Day (RVW/Herefordshire) a dire warning of what will befall the poor farmworker who works when he can't afford not to). I won't bother to start on examples of urban poverty expressed in song. Failing even to scratch the surface and examine what is actually there and relying on stereotypical, stagey-bumpkin ditties leads to nonsensical conclusions. |
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Subject: RE: The Imagined Village - update. From: Ruth Archer Date: 22 Jun 07 - 06:22 AM "people seeking evidence that the rural working class sang protest songs about their condition" Rigs of the Time? Sung by Harry Cox? |
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