Does Folk Exist?

Subject: RE: Does Folk Exist?
From: GUEST,Guest
Date: 29 Sep 14 - 11:16 AM

"Also a closed group as shown by this list

http://www.alanbearmanmusic.co.uk/about.asp"

You've not come across the folk mafia before then? Bearman and Smooth Operations have the 'commercial' end of folk well and truly sewn up.

Subject: RE: Does Folk Exist?
From: GUEST
Date: 29 Sep 14 - 11:25 AM

Only just had the delight. What a shambles

Subject: RE: Does Folk Exist?
From: GUEST,Yorkshire lad
Date: 29 Sep 14 - 11:29 AM

This is also why only the same acts keep winning everything. If you belived the folk awards Lau are the new Led Zepplin and Chris wood is the new Bob Dylan. Were as we all know in reality they are...a bit shit

Subject: RE: Does Folk Exist?
From: Teribus
Date: 30 Sep 14 - 01:46 AM

Of course it does exist - it exists as a genre that singer/songwriters can attribute all their failed would-be "pop songs" to, and provides venues where they can perform.

Subject: RE: Does Folk Exist?
From: Musket
Date: 30 Sep 14 - 03:28 AM

Amos gave us a dictionary definition of folk I notice. (Five years later..)

Considering the population of The UK is multicultural to say the least, the tit trouser definition of 1954 falls at the first hurdle.

So.. When you search Amazon or iTunes by genre, you get a pretty good idea of what the Westerm world calls folk. I don't search on opera then get angry because I can't find Mumford & Son.

Non western traditional music seems to be in a genre called "world." Convenient catch all to cover everything from The Bhundu Boys to Greek plate smashing accompaniment. I'm sure Mr Pathyloppodus will enjoy losing his western status via Amazon. They have something in common you see, even if it is only questionable tax avoidance techniques.

Subject: RE: Does Folk Exist?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 30 Sep 14 - 04:47 AM

Considering the population of The UK is multicultural to say the least, the tit trouser definition of 1954 falls at the first hurdle.

Not in the mono-cultural Folk World though, where the only non-white faces you're likely to see are on the latter-day border-style morris dancers or the back-stage security guards looking on in mute disgust at such blatantly racist hokum.

Subject: RE: Does Folk Exist?
From: Musket
Date: 30 Sep 14 - 06:10 AM

I recall many years ago at The Stainsby Festival, Johnny Silvo suffered what the idiots shouting it thought was good fun banter about his colour. Luckily, Les Barker had left half a cucumber on stage (don't ask..) so he threw it at them and said "right shape, wrong colour."

Plenty of music out there celebrating cultural past and heritage. The last place you will find it though is in a pub with some idiot dictating what is folk to the poor buggers turning up to listen and be listened to... That's the thing about a multicultural society, folk in the traditional sense is far wider and has more colour and style than tit trousers could ever dream of.

It isn't "I like this, I don't like that." It's more of the absurdity of trying to think The UK all came from farms in The West Country, where they hated the squire and shagged the farmer's daughter.

Subject: RE: Does Folk Exist?
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 30 Sep 14 - 10:19 AM

bucolic rural west country... bollocks..

I be up from a west country council estate, hated the tories,
and shagged the nuclear power station manager's daughter.....

All while listening to The Clash, Gong, and Pentangle LPs.....

Dunno what Cecil Sharp's acolytes would have made of all that

Subject: RE: Does Folk Exist?
From: Musket
Date: 30 Sep 14 - 12:22 PM

Luckily I know I didn't come from The West Country, although a drummer in a band I was in evolved from a mixer in The British Rail concrete works in Taunton.

I'll refer to him as Fred because neither he nor I would want the world to know we were called Masturbating Malcolm and the Arsehole Lubricators. And Phil Horsham is so respectable these days.. Er.. I mean Fred.

(We supported The Damned at Retford Porter House once, and our finale was The Sweet's Ballroom Blitz. About a year later, I saw them in Sheffield and they had started singing it too. Rat Scabies "borrowed" our middle cymbal whilst I'm getting it off my chest..)

Cecil Sharpe may have liked our punk version of The Bonny Black Hare, or maybe not.