Folk music is cool again. The Guardian

Subject: Folk music is cool again. The Guardian
From: The Shambles
Date: 30 Jan 06 - 01:49 PM

According to this artcle in the Guardian - folk music is now cool again

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1697703,00.html

The writer does point out the following -

There's one problem though. When the government proposed new anti-binge licensing laws, it included a clause that would have made it difficult to make music in a pub without a music licence. Amendments were made, but the informal forum for songs and expression of ideas for centuries has been inhibited. So Gordon, in looking for British roots, may well find his party's new laws have cut off the branches.

Subject: RE: Folk music is cool again. The Guardian
From: Folkiedave
Date: 30 Jan 06 - 02:15 PM

I have written to the Editor supporting this and pointing out absurdities in the Act.

Dave

Subject: RE: Folk music is cool again. The Guardian
From: Allan C.
Date: 30 Jan 06 - 03:39 PM

Let's play, "What if?" for a moment. What if folk music were once again considered cool in the USA? What are the odds? And while considering that, I wonder if the US govenment would even consider the sort of legislation currently in effect in the UK? Personally, I rather doubt it. Which brings me back to the issue at hand. What the hell were those people thinking? Frankly, I can't imagine!

Subject: RE: Folk music is cool again. The Guardian
From: Mrs_Annie
Date: 31 Jan 06 - 10:40 AM

There's another one today:
here

Subject: RE: Folk music is cool again. The Guardian
From: breezy
Date: 31 Jan 06 - 11:01 AM

sh, dont tell everyone.

We dont want to be discovered

Dont mention the political songs you can hear in St Albans on every Sunday night.

Subject: RE: Folk music is cool again. The Guardian
From: wysiwyg
Date: 31 Jan 06 - 11:05 AM

Here's the article Shambles linked.

~S~

====================================================

Songs of experience

Folk music might be cool again - but what matters more is that it's the voice of the people
Mark Espiner
Monday January 30, 2006
The Guardian

Try everything once except incest and folk dancing. Arnold Bax articulated with wit the cultural embarrassment of morris dancing and folk music that many seem to share. But ridiculed though it may be, folk music is a strong force in defining and expressing what British culture is - and, as a political battleground between the left and the right, should not be overlooked.

In fact, folk - songs that tap into the traditional roots of the nation's music - is enjoying a renaissance at the moment, with Lou Rhodes of drum'n'bass outfit Lamb pioneering a genre dubbed "folktronica". But however fashionable it might become, the politics it evokes still run deep.

You're not convinced? Look at the storm stirred up by the threatened axing of a medley of folk tunes on Radio 4 - a cause Gordon Brown has taken up in his crusade to define our national identity. Give it a couple of days and the BNP will be joining his campaign. The fascist party reportedly ends its gatherings with "traditional culture" parties and there are essays on its website next to pictures of maypole dances and quaint villages about the importance of English folklore - including morris dancing.

It wasn't such ugly nationalism that spurred the folksong collectors at the turn of last century. They held that the nation should purify its culture to regain its soul. And its soul lay in unsullied folk songs of rural life.

But folk music isn't an articulation of purer past: it's the voice of the people. They aren't songs about "being English", they are unrestrained voices breaking out into cries of protest, dissent, love, betrayal, life. They are also an alternative social history. Songs about fishing in Grimsby; poaching from tyrannical landowners; army recruitment from the collieries; the Napoleonic wars. And doomed love is in there, too. A lot.

Leftwing revivalists of the folk tradition in the 40s and 50s, such as Ewan MacColl, seized on that sensibility and rather than trying to cling to a nostalgic idea of the past swung the movement to the left with a progressive attitude. They opened up the definition of what a folk song was. Industrial workers' songs, songs of protest, observations of contemporary issues - all could be folk songs and many had a political edge. MacColl wrote them too. His Radio Ballads, commissioned by the BBC, cut music together with people's experiences to tell in a "folk ballad style" the story of, among other things, how the M1 was built and the working lives of the miners. This was postwar Britain being rebuilt and sung in a folk style with the people's voice.

Now, the debate over traditional music, as the right would have it, extends beyond an idea of what "Britishness" is to who is allowed to be British.

This week, Sheila Chandra - the first British Asian to appear on Top of the Pops - is singing Scarborough Fair with guitarist Martin Carthy, the singer who rediscovered the song and who Paul Simon heard play it before he copied it and sold it to millions. Chandra has been exploring elements of British folk in her songs. Her music, Billy Bragg's ballads and "folktronica" could be described as the progressive edge of folk music that help show us who we are today.

There's one problem though. When the government proposed new anti-binge licensing laws, it included a clause that would have made it difficult to make music in a pub without a music licence. Amendments were made, but the informal forum for songs and expression of ideas for centuries has been inhibited. So Gordon, in looking for British roots, may well find his party's new laws have cut off the branches.

· Folk Britannia is at the Barbican Feb 2-4 accompanied by BBC4 series starting on February 3; Mark Espiner is a music critic and theatre director.

[e-mail]


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Subject: RE: Folk music is cool again. The Guardian
From: Paco Rabanne
Date: 01 Feb 06 - 04:57 AM

Refresh

Subject: RE: Folk music is cool again. The Guardian
From: Strollin' Johnny
Date: 01 Feb 06 - 05:38 AM

It's never been anything else as far as I, and many others, are concerned.
S:0)

Subject: RE: Folk music is cool again. The Guardian
From: GUEST,DB
Date: 01 Feb 06 - 06:02 AM

I dislike 'cool' things - not least because they tend to become 'uncool' very fast.

Subject: RE: Folk music is cool again. The Guardian
From: Strollin' Johnny
Date: 01 Feb 06 - 06:19 AM

Depends on the attention-span of those who adjudge a thing to be 'cool'. Mine, with regard to folk music, has lasted forty years and I expect it to continue until I get my wooden overcoat.
S:0)

Subject: RE: Folk music is cool again. The Guardian
From: George Papavgeris
Date: 01 Feb 06 - 08:04 AM

Betamax was cool. Pocket calculators were cool. Carphones that were the size of a breezeblock were cool. Flared trousers were cool. White-wall tyres and chrome fenders were cool. The Spice Girls were cool.

Were are they now?

Subject: RE: Folk music is cool again. The Guardian
From: treewind
Date: 01 Feb 06 - 09:07 AM

Yeah - isn't "cool" a symptom of "dead"?
Flared trousers came back, didn't they?

There's so much artifical "music industry product" being pushed around now that the idea of actual people playing real musical instruments is acquiring rarity and novelty value.

Anahata

Subject: RE: Folk music is cool again. The Guardian
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 01 Feb 06 - 09:08 AM

Thank God, Thank God! The media have blessed what I have been doing for 30 years.

Next, the Red Queen ("Be what you seem to be.") will weigh in on our side.

Subject: RE: Folk music is cool again. The Guardian
From: Strollin' Johnny
Date: 01 Feb 06 - 10:17 AM

Hey Leenia, I reckon 'cool' is nothing to do with what the media say or don't say, but rather it's a perception held by an individual or group of individuals. My introduction to folk music, back in 1960 or 61, was by a Scottish guy called Jack Whyte (later a poet and the writer of the 'Camulod' cycle of novels) who taught me a version of 'Twa Corbies', and his then American girlfriend (woooo-hoo!) who sang me 'All The Pretty Horses' and played the guitar. My perception was that this folk-stuff was 'cool' and, having a very long attention span (unlike the media!), that's still my perception.

Jack and his lady did me a great favour.
S:0)

Subject: RE: Folk music is cool again. The Guardian
From: mooman
Date: 01 Feb 06 - 10:19 AM

...and there was me thinking it was "hot!

Peace

moo

Subject: RE: Folk music is cool again. The Guardian
From: George Papavgeris
Date: 01 Feb 06 - 10:34 AM

What? Flares are back? If only I could fit into mine, I'd be hip, man! Sizzling hot. Cool as a cuke. Yeah, baby!

But I can't...

Bugger...

Subject: RE: Folk music is cool again. The Guardian
From: Ernest
Date: 01 Feb 06 - 10:53 AM

....and I always thought being uncoool is very cool indeed.... ;0)
Regards
Ernest

Subject: RE: Folk music is cool again. The Guardian
From: beetle cat
Date: 01 Feb 06 - 10:54 AM

Theres a happening underground folk-punk scene in Boston and other parts of New England. Very happening and young. check out The Larkin Brigade: http://www.thelarkinbrigade.com/ or Bread And Roses, and go to a show if your in the area. It's not just cool, it's freaking awesome.

mary.

Subject: RE: Folk music is cool again. The Guardian
From: Folkiedave
Date: 01 Feb 06 - 11:06 AM

There are three letters which are relevant to the folk/Licensing Debate too.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,,1699093,00.html

One is from a 'catter - though modesty forbids............

Dave

Subject: RE: Folk music is cool again. The Guardian
From: Bill D
Date: 01 Feb 06 - 11:46 AM

"cool" gets you The Limelighters and The Kingston Trio and "Puff, the Magic Dragon" and hundreds of young girls singing their diaries. I'd prefer to be part of a minority of cognoscenti exploring life and culture through traditional (and SLOW) development.


(and of course, with freedom to sing in pubs with no stupid restrictions like the UK has been trying to enact in the name of the 'public good')

Subject: RE: Folk music is cool again. The Guardian
From: Ernest
Date: 01 Feb 06 - 12:31 PM

Mee too, Bill D. - but then, everyone to his liking. And I even prefer the Kingston trio to much other things being played...

Subject: RE: Folk music is cool again. The Guardian
From: The Shambles
Date: 01 Feb 06 - 12:58 PM

The only people that words like 'cool' mean anything to or matter very much to - are music journalists and critics. They have to find things to write about music - rather than just listening to or making it.

Subject: RE: Folk music is cool again. The Guardian
From: George Papavgeris
Date: 01 Feb 06 - 02:14 PM

Agree Roger. So, let's get ahead of the game, and second-guess the next word they will use.

I opt for "windy" (as in "mind blowing").

Subject: RE: Folk music is cool again. The Guardian
From: Cluin
Date: 01 Feb 06 - 02:40 PM

When something becomes "cool", the legions rush to it in hopes of making a buck or joining the crowd. At which point, the signal-to-noise ratio tends to drop way down and the crap factor rises exponentially. Hopefully, when the "cool" spotlight moves on, something of value, possibly an interesting new development can be salvaged from the refuse.

Subject: RE: Folk music is cool again. The Guardian
From: BanjoRay
Date: 02 Feb 06 - 07:35 AM

There's an excellent letter from Mike Harding in today's guardian (2-feb)
Ray

Subject: RE: Folk music is cool again. The Guardian
From: treewind
Date: 02 Feb 06 - 07:44 AM

Mike Harding's letter

Nice one. Well done Mike.

Anahata

Subject: RE: Folk music is cool again. The Guardian
From: GUEST
Date: 02 Feb 06 - 08:24 AM

I think the problem is that people are working with different definitions of 'folk'. It seems like according to the Guardian et al, folk music is about having a rudimentary grasp of fingerstyle guitar, using bucolic/pastoral imagery and referencing 'The Wicker Man' (see Tunng, for example). I suspect that to most of the people here, it runs a little deeper than that.

Subject: RE: Folk music is cool again. The Guardian
From: Roger the Skiffler
Date: 02 Feb 06 - 09:32 AM

Damn, I don't think I've still got my Aran sweater...

RtS

Subject: RE: Folk music is cool again. The Guardian
From: mooman
Date: 02 Feb 06 - 09:48 AM

I have two Roger... would you like one?

Peace

moo

Subject: RE: Folk music is cool again. The Guardian
From: shepherdlass
Date: 02 Feb 06 - 01:37 PM

Yes, Mike Harding's letter hits the nail on the head. Any journalist still trotting out the tired old cliches about fingers in the ear and Aran sweaters really isn't that interested in anything other than promoting the "alternative" bands that claim to be too hip for the rest of us. What a shame. Seem to remember they did the same when Jazz Britannia was broadcast last year - loads of references to the Fast Show's Jazz Club, etc.   

Incidentally, have you listened to Tunng? They don't sound all that new or frightening. Maybe the journo's related to a band member?

Subject: RE: Folk music is cool again. The Guardian
From: BB
Date: 02 Feb 06 - 02:39 PM

Wow! That letter from Mike Harding couldn't be more true! it almost persuades me to listen to his programme again! I don't believe anyone could have put it better.

Barbara

Subject: RE: Folk music is cool again. The Guardian
From: Girl Friday
Date: 02 Feb 06 - 05:41 PM

Mike Harding told it like it is. Where I come from [Kent/London\ Surrey borders] folk encompasses anything that doesn't require electronic gadgetry to work it. Everything from acapella to zydeco,plainsong to blues and even "GLAM-FOLK" [TONE DEAF LEOPARD]

Have you noticed all the folk creeping into tv and radio? Even those BBC 2's are now a troop of morris dancers !!!!

Subject: RE: Folk music is cool again. The Guardian
From: Strollin' Johnny
Date: 03 Feb 06 - 10:50 AM

Yo de man Mike!