BS: Marek Kohn: Folk: Class/Race? (Guardian)

Subject: BS: Marek Kohn: Folk: Class/Race? (Guardian)
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 05 Mar 12 - 04:59 AM

I had to give serious thought first whether this was a music thread and second how best to initulate it.

A serious thought from the Guardian:

http://urlm.in/llad

Subject: RE: BS: Marek Kohn: Folk: Class/Race? (Guardian)
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 05 Mar 12 - 05:17 PM

Well, for a start, I don't want any part of the BNP or waffle about "roots" for that matter.

The Folk Revival of the 50s/60s/70s had a strong, left-wing political dimension - but I was never entirely comfortable with that.

At the time that I stumbled across British traditional folk song, in the late 60s, I was becoming increasingly sick of shallow, banal pop music. Traditional songs had a sort of glamour for me because of their, often strong, story lines and their beautiful tunes. I 'got' them, and related to them, immediately. It was a matter of preference - not politics.

Subject: RE: BS: Marek Kohn: Folk: Class/Race? (Guardian)
From: Jack Campin
Date: 05 Mar 12 - 06:20 PM

Looks like some hack picking a topic at random to fill his word quota for the week. Inoffensive but pretty close to content-free. Next week, platitudes about driving behaviour, imagery on cosmetic packaging or the mislabelling of organic food?

Subject: RE: BS: Marek Kohn: Folk: Class/Race? (Guardian)
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 06 Mar 12 - 04:48 AM

Since the article was written:

    Marek Kohn
    guardian.co.uk, Thursday 30 July 2009 10.30 BST
    Article history

the BNP have more or less self-distructed to be replaced on the streets by its ugly young brother the EDL. I guess Griffin embracing folk music was part of his attempt to make the BNP respectable - clearly an impossible task.

Billy Bragg, The Imagined Village and Folk Against Fascism etc. have done some good things both politically and musically.

As for Englishness dunno really

L in C#

Subject: RE: BS: Marek Kohn: Folk: Class/Race? (Guardian)
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 06 Mar 12 - 07:07 AM

Every so often the 'Dave Spart' tendency rises to the surface in the folk world, i.e. the trend started in the 1970s by Trotskyist, polytechnic academics (like Dave Harker-Spart)to condemn an interest in folk song as bourgeois or nationalist and folk song collectors as appropriators of the 'workers'' music and culture. The sub-text in any such debate seems to be that the only politically correct musical taste to have is that of contemporary 'workin' klarss yoof'. To which my instinctive response is BOLLOCKS!

This standpoint seems to ignore the fact that if it wasn't for the 'middle klarss' collectors we would know very little about the 'workers'' music and the fact that revivalists are keeping the songs and music alive.

I should also point out that the 'Spartists' are rarely 'workin' klarss' themselves - but rather grammar school boys and girls from places like Kingston-on-Thames or Wilmslow.

Subject: RE: BS: Marek Kohn: Folk: Class/Race? (Guardian)
From: Jack Campin
Date: 06 Mar 12 - 08:12 AM

Some of us have actually read Harker's work and know you're purveying a stupid caricature.

For the rest of you: check it out for yourselves and see whether you read it the way Shimrod does.