I was at festival in the last few months near Oxford, unfortunately a trad free affair for the most part. Late enough on the Sunday night, having being starved of tunes, I was fairly happy to hear what sounded like a few decent reels being belted out. We went down to the stage area and Spiers and Boden were playing. I'd never heard of them before, but really enjoyed the gig.
Anyways, a few of us (Irish) got talking about it afterwards and we all agreed the music and playing was great, but the songs got us talking about our problem with English folk music. Now I know there's probably a lot of tunes in the Irish tradition that are shared between both, but here's the thing.
Given the history between Ireland and England, a lot of Irish music, well particularly the songs, have an underdog aspect to them. You know the way people will belt out a song full of pints with a heap of patriotism thrown in, or play a slow air full of centuries of misery and starvation and loneliness (In the best possible way!). On the other hand, while I was standing there listening to Spiers and Boden, the tunes were great, but the songs! It was all about some Lord Such and Such riding off on his horse around his estate maiming and raping type of stuff (For modern day short-hand think 'Swing Low Sweet Chariot' vs 'The Fields of Athenry'). None had a real basis in the honest to God misery that makes ITM so powerful by comparison.
So, is that what's wrong with English Folk music in general. Did they not suffer enough to produce a good end result? Can you really get passionate about music that was a soundtrack to riding around on your horse collecting the rent? What do ye reckon?
T,
I believe it can be attributed to the Angela's Ashes syndrome. Simply, the English didn't have enough rain during the 16th-19th centuries. You need to be wet and continaully miserable to really suffer and create good literature and music.. See p.1, of Frank McCourt's novel.
There are some pretty good English folk ballads, i.e. Little Musgrave, which are about the craptastic-ness of being married to a tw*t and having an affair. There are assorted other ballads -- English and Scottish --about being forced to marry someone for social status when you are in love with someone else. Plenty of oppression to sing about in England, maybe not of the *entire* country but definitely of certain social groups within the country, such as women and lower classes.
Sorry, this is not relevant to this discussion, so if someone could reply, and then forget this was posted, that would be great. If you post a discussion, does it take a while for it to show up on the new discussions list? I couldn't find anything in the FAQ's. Thanks.
I checked out the link. That's some great box playing.
I'm sure the 'English' have had their fair share of misery down the centuries- think of those Norman invaders, the bold bad barons, raping and pillaging, before turning their hand to Ireland. They're just too polite to bother anyone about it in song.
I'm not so sure. Irish balladeers plundered the English canon during the folk revival and even the great Bess Cronin herself acknowledged that the bulk of her songs were English in origin. It is interesting to note that English writers like Ewan MacColl who 's attempts to reinvent folk songs and put them in the vernacular of the working class were the ones most popularised by, say, The Dubliners and The Clancy Brothers.
Sorry English friends (and pace June Tabor), but the main trouble with English music is...the music. It's almost invariably staid and boring. Where's the devilment?
I don't think you can really make such an enormous generalisation based on the experience of one gig. There is an absolutely huge repertoire of English songs addressing the grinding impoverishment endured by centuries of feudal and capitalist rule in England. Many, many great English songs are concerned with the activities of working-class political idealists who sought to rebel against the established ruling order in various ways, from poaching to machine-breaking to outright robbery and wanton violence. Likewise, there are a vast number of Irish songs in existence which laud the landed gentry of Ireland, their sporting pursuits (such as fox-hunting), their honour and generosity. Spiers & Boden are not representative of the English folk canon. Just as The Fields of Sthenry is not representaive of Irish folk music.
"Irish balladeers plundered the English canon during the folk revival and even the great Bess Cronin herself acknowledged that the bulk of her songs were English in origin"
That's why the English haven't got any good traditional songs - the Irish nicked em all.
I have long asserted that England is the only country in the world that doesn't have folk music. I don't mean songs that somebody has written in a 'folk' style; but genuine hand-me-down music. Most of the stuff I heard during my years going to folk clubs in the north was sea shanties, music hall, early recordings and gleanings from old sheet music. The trouble, I think, is that English music was stolen by the aristocracy, or at least the upper classes, in the same way that dancing was taken and turned into ballet. Where is the English national costume? What is the English national instrument? What is traditional dancing? And I don't mean Morris.
I am English, by the way. Although my father was scottish, I was born and raised here.
Could be that english songs that go travelling tend to lose there origin. Mention "Spencer the Rover" and most people think of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1XTOAcnWJY
rather than this : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFP8K-oP-ag
"Yorkshire near Rotherham" still gets a mention but does not have the same romance as a refuge for the rural poor (mines and factories of the industrial revolution maybe ?) as the green fields of Amerikay
"Did they not suffer enough to produce a good end result?"
"Well you can sing a happy song if your glad
You can sing a protest song if you're mad
Oh but if you want to sing the blues
Then boy you better learn how to lose"
Another couple of generalisations, but the words of English songs often seem sharper and more socially direct than Irish songs, where the meaning is often symbolic, hidden or implied for obvious reasons. Hence perhaps the numerous maudlin, generic Irish ballads which, taken collectively, I'm sad to say, make me cringe.
As for the ('traditional') music itself (without words), there are some lovely tunes in Playford etc., but there seems to be a certain lackadaisical element in English tunes. They just don't grab me the way jigs and reels (now embedded) in the Irish and Scottish traditions do. Could this be because they are intended, and tend, to be played at a slower pace? I don't know, but my gut reaction is 'I don't particularly want to dance or tap my feet to this stuff'.' I'm not claiming any expertise in the matter- as I say, just an instinctive gut reaction.
I was sitting (!) with Danny Kyle at a ceilidh on the Isle of Arran many years ago. Both bemoaning the fact the committee had committed a howler by booking an English ceilidh band. No-one was up dancing, yet an hour before the same 1000 people had been up and at it for Deanta, an Irish band.
The word he used was "regimented". No feeling for the music. Something inbred into the crowd said the same to them. I bowed to his superior knowledge then and still do.
Gam - why are you saying "I don't mean morris"? Morris dancing, music and costume, and its instruments, such as the D/G melodeon, both types of concertina and, of course, the fiddle, IS the main English musical tradition. And it's pretty old and hand-me-down, if you ask me.
I once heard an explanation from Jon Boden as to why English music is generally slower than Irish. It's about the difference between Irish step dancing and English morris. Step dancing is mainly about footwork, so the faster you can do it, the more impressive it is. Morris dancing, on the other hand, is about jumping and leaping about. Therefore, the slower it is, the more impressive, because it means you have to jump higher!
Oh, and if you think English music is boring and staid, or "rinky dinky dido", as you most eloquently put it, then you quite clearly have not heard good English music, simple as that!
And, of course, this is all assuming that we are not counting Northumbrian music, which is a whole rich and complex tradition in its own right, as English!
Or you could go further back and split your sides laughing at the 'harrowing of the north' by the Norman military caste under the direction of William I. ( http://everything2.com/title/Harrowing+of+the+North ).
Oh yes,and lets all judge an enire nation's musical tradition by the performance of one band.
This is as insightful as the message boards on BBC radio 3,and that's saying something,lol.
Anyway,I have big problem with clarinets so I'm off to start a thread all about that.
And bigdee - the reason the English band felt regimented, and had no feeling for the music, is not because they were English, but because they were crap.
" you quite clearly have not heard good English music, simple as that!" - You are so right Joe. Though I did like the Beetles and some other pop stuff while I still listened to it.
Well, I have heard good English music, and lots of it. So you're talking out of ignorance and probably also national bias if you make a general statement that English music is crap.
Folk music is the music of the common people and the common people in England got oppressed same as anywhere else. As a result they are just as underdog and there folk songs are just as good.
There are lots of good ones about hangings, for instance. "Sam Hall" is the best known. As well as being hanged, common English folk got evicted, poisened, bewitched, fired, wounded in wars not of their making, overworked, and generally subjected to good, miserable folk song material at every turn.
No, you're not understanding me. I said: "you're talking out of ignorance and probably also national bias if you make a general statement that English music is crap." You're allowed to like or dislike what you please. But if you make a general statement (I'm not saying you did) that English music - or any type of music, really - is crap, then you are talking out of ignorance.
Please properly read and try to understand what people say before making comebacks at what you assume to be an attack.
I don't think it has anything to do with oppression. Of course there are some good English songs but also an unfeasible amount of awful ones. The English traddies I know are at their best when playing Scottish or Irish tunes. Sorry, I know it may be to your taste but not to mine. (older)English tunes and folk songs don't seem to travel well. You don't seem to hear them anywhere but England, though some great tunes are being written by the younger generation. IMO
Joe, missed your post there. You are also making assumptions. You think that I can't have heard much English music if I'm not a fan of it in general. That's not actually the case.
Again, Bogman - I did not say that if you have heard good English music, you'll definitely be a fan. I said that if you haven't heard it, you can't say it's crap. And I was not assuming you haven't heard much English music, because my initial post was not actually directed at you! Now let's cease this bickering.
I've mulled some of this over myself, and my thoughts include these:
T pinpoints a disconnect between English singers (I'd say, the English in general) and the realities in the old-world ballads, etc., that they sing (e.g., the realities of life in a Mediaeval past in which the English were a subject people). I think he's got it spot on. Massive urbanisation / industrialisation, the diminution of "real"(!) countryfolk to a very low percentage of the population, and the c16 -17 establishment of Protestantism, have all been mighty barriers to instinctive or even effortful engagement with at any rate the Mediaeval / pre-Tudor past. It comes to us far more easily to send it up - as Monty Python and any number of singers and comedians have done.
I see the trad music as a whole, throughout These Islands but especially in England, as a marginal survivor from Med times. It was comprehensively replaced by Classical music and its by-forms in most of life, from Handel to Victorian hymns to brass band music to Tin Pan Alley. Trad's archaic modes, if nothing else, probably signified - just like a twelve-bar blues does, or used to - "This is music from the wrong side of the tracks..." Read, This is hick music; this is criminals' / seditionists' music; this is music that gets young people into trouble; but especially, in the eyes of progressives and aspirationals, This is the music of people who *are not going anywhere*.
This category probably included plenty of baddies. But it was also extended to include Gaelic populations in Ireland and Scotland, regardless of their nature as individuals, as well as people uprooted from the English countryside by enclosures: people simply seen generically as Enemies Of Progress.
This doesn't mean that the progressives (as they saw themselves) were all baddies either. Nor does it mean that the marginals among whom fairly surely the trad survived most (in England) were more "real" than the other English who became industrial workers or joined the middle classes, or indeed than the aristocracy. Nor does it mean that trad is more *real* English music than the huge amount of Classical and sub-Classical music that has predominated at all levels of society in the modern era, topped up by black input over the last century. It just happens to be the oldest English music in continuous use, bar a few Mediaeval carols and music surviving in manuscripts that is largely played and listened to by decided afficionados.
Not many people have mentioned 'class' as being a huge part of what this is all about. Industrialisation, the move to the city and the inevitable social fragmentation that resulted, shattered English trad music as a working-class activity. Nowadays it's a middle class thing - hence the occasionally horrid politeness heard in English music. A lot of the English tunes reek of 17th Century middle-classdom, A bit like some O'Carolan tunes. When I lived in Ireland class seemed to be a peripheral issue with regards to who was actually playing music, though this might have changed by now. In England if you are at a session it is almost guaranteed to be made up of almost 100% middle class people - whatever music they are playing.
People have often commented on English dance trad tunes being relentlessly major. At the same time, a great deal of the collected trad song is modal. I suspect this could be because the song (till the c1900 collectors) stayed obscure, while the tune stock stayed in use for dances through the c19 but had current major-scale numbers shuffled into it, so to speak, while older and / or modal ones were dropped, in accordance with the tastes of the time.
A lot of tunes played and recorded in the earlier English folk revival don't strike me as much more than padding. I wonder if they are Victorian / Edwardian band ephemera or something. But the books are opening. I mean, tunebooks keep turning up with markedly better tunes in them, filling out the picture of English trad quite dramatically. Some of it's a lot more tuneful and nimble than one might have been led to expect.
There is the throb of a bruise in Irish and a lot of Scottish music: yes, inasfar as I respond to it, I feel it is an expression of communal historical pain, among other things. (And of course, many a person from elsewhere can imagine that the music expresses his or her own pain, or gripes, or wishes.) This isn't really there in English trad - for me, anyway; I would say the mood of English trad is "pastoral": at best, an appreciative visitor's take on the past, the countryside and the rest that it came out of. Because, when it comes down to it, most of our nation are strolling tourists there.
As an observation of trad in England it seems to me that a lot of younger English players are writing and playing tunes more in the style of Scots and Irish trad. It seems likely to me that English tunes will have more in common with ours in the near future in the same way our own style of trad has borrowed heavily on others. Am I way of the mark or is that fair comment?
We published it in 2006 but it's free-to-view on his website.
The novelist Carlo Gébler then replied to it in the next issue, as below:
http://journalofmusic.com/article/434
Carlo Gébler, Enniskillen, writes:
Chris Wood’s piece was a mite too tentative, a mite too hedged with caveats (I’m just a musician, this is just my personal opinion, and so on) but I found little in it with which to disagree. Yep, he’s right. England was an agricultural country until the eighteenth century when (with the enclosures) the country was confiscated and the majority population were then obliged to go off and do something else (work in factories), and once that connection to the land was ruptured, the inspiration for folk was lost and the tradition atrophied.
The thing though, is that it didn’t happen overnight. D.H. Lawrence’s miners are saturated with a sense of the country and traditional culture in the widest sense: they may work down a pit but they have access to the landscape and the art that sprung from it. George Orwell, similarly, is alert to the possibilities of interaction between an urban proletariat and the country – and Orwell himself, of course, had a rural childhood and adolescence with lots of hiking, rabbit-shooting and so forth. Orwell had his little allotment later in life too. He was far from alienated from the land. On the contrary, he was intimate with it, and out of that relationship came his best book, Animal Farm.
In other words, the alienation of the English from the countryside has been gradual and, if we must pinpoint a time when the process really accelerated, then I would say the last fifty years rather than the eighteenth century (which I think just represented the start). The complete English alienation from the land (and the popular culture associated with the land, the music, the songs, et cetera) is really a post-war phenomenon. But what has made this happen isn’t simply that everyone’s been shoved into a high-rise and motorways have been built between the town and the countryside (though these have contributed to that alienation) but a whole connected network of horrible things.
Television has played a part because it has created a culture of anti-rural metropolitans whose power was recently signalled with the recent ban on fox-hunting. The death of the family has had a lot to do with it. So has the worship of the car. And so has the way space has been increasingly privatised (despite the opening of footpaths to walkers). The sheer exhausting monotony of urban existence has played a part. So too has the triumph of musical philistinism.
I’m sure there are other contributors to the malaise too: my list isn’t exhaustive. I do know, however, that together, all these factors have put a barrier between the population and the rich culture of traditional music (the culture created by that figure known as Anon., as Mr Wood terms it).
I also can’t see how the rupture can be repaired. If the English are going to find their rich heritage it won’t be enough to put Richard Thompson et al on telly and Chris Wood on Radio 3. If they’re going to reconnect they’re actually going to have to change the way life is lived.
I think, yes, definitely, a lot of younger players in England are playing / writing in Irish and Scottish styles. But also, there are tunes turning up in old English tune-books that are a long way towards those styles anyway - though I'd add a good few are in 3/2, a rhythm which while familiar in older Scottish music did not really take off in Ireland.
I don't know if the old stand-off still persists between "English music" and "Irish music" afficionados up and down the session scene of Middle England. I hope not. A generation of players is coming up that plays both sorts without batting an eyelid.
What makes me smile during many of these discussions is that much of the current canon of English folk songs (as distinct from tunes) came from America. Cecil Sharp collected them from the Appalachian mountains at the start of the 20th century. They were originally brough over by settlers from England, but the people isolated in that area were still singing them centuries after they'd lost popularity in their native home.
Having said that, how many times have you heard someone say "this is a great Irish song", then start up something English, or American, or Scottish..."Belfast Mill" (Aragon Mill), "Dirty Old Town" (written about Salford, near Manchester), and no doubt many more. The simple fact is, if a song or tune is good musicians will take it and make it their own. That's how the folk process works.
I think the lack of an oral tradition in England, ironically most likely due to a higher level of free public education than elsewhere, combined with the censorious nature of first the Puritans, then the Victorians, means that only the more 'middle class' songs were printed. There are plenty of great ones out there if you look hard enough.
And if you want gritty English Folk, chack out the Oysterband. "Sheepstealer" says it all for me.
In response to T (I apologise for everyone else . . there are too many posts to read for the late hour that it is in my current location)
The suffering of Irish music definitely gives it depth. I grew up around English folk music though. My parents are avid morris dancers. You are correct many of the tunes do cross over. More so with Scotland and England though, than England and Ireland. However brittish folk music has a beauty to it. Have you ever heard anything that they play for the christmas solstice? Some of those songs are hundres of years old and are haunting beuautiful. Alot of that, and I assume this could be the same for Irish too . . is to do with church modes and medieval type music that sounds melancholy to our modern ears. I am also a history buff. Dont let people fool you. Lower class english peasants suffered plenty. London in the summer during plague season? I wouldn't touch that with a ten foot pole. But . . .my rambling has not really drawn any conclusions. so here goes. I think for any music to be good it has to accurately capture a human emotion that we all can relate to. Sadness in some senses is a stronger deeper more squirly emotion than happiness. I play mostly minor tunes myself and find a lot of the major reels to be very boring. Either way I am thankful for both types of music. I grew up around English and I am english . .so I will always have a loyalty to that, but Irish music is enchanting in a way that is well . . Irish.
I read some posts . . I felt bad. I agree morris dancing requires slower music. I have played for both types of dancers and my bigges complaint from morris is that I play too fast . . Irish . .that I play too slow. smiles*
"So, is that what's wrong with English Folk music in general."
Well T, this is an Irish Music forum after all, so your on pretty safe ground here.
If you really want to know more about what makes English Folk Music tick, rather than just slag it off, then why not find an English Folk Music forum & ask your question over there, where you may well find musicians who are far more knowledgeable on the subject of English Folk Music, than I suspect most folks here are.
Not surprisingly, most folks here will be far more in tune with Irish Music & Song than English, so your going to get a whole series of pretty predictable ra ra answers.
In my opinion though, anyone who comes on here & says their precious Irish Music & Song is somehow better than English Music though, is more likely than not, just displaying their ignorance of English Music & Song.
Obviously the music that touches your soul is going to appeal to you far more, but that doesn't make that music somehow better than other forms of music, it's just different.
This notion that some folks keep harping on about here, that because Irish Music is usually faster & livelier, therefore it must somehow automatically be better music than slower forms is quite honestly, just plain daft!
Do me a favour, take a trip to Brittany, get involved in their culture, experience the wonderful Fest Noz dancing & soak up their so called, slower, more predictable forms of music & then come back here & say only fast music is good. Breton music may be slower but it is Magic!
The same goes for lots of French Folk Music & lots of Scandinavian Music too, aye & English Folk Music too.
Scandinavian music, to some blinkered ears here that have only been allowed to experience & enjoy Irish Music, may sound far too slow & even melancholy, but no sensible human being is going to stand up & say their music is better than another, without looking a complete prat.
So lets nail that once & for all, please, shall we?
As for Gam's question - " What is the English national instrument?"
I'd say it's the English Concertina ... invented by an Englishman after all!
So, not that it makes any difference but, the English actually have their very own Folk instrument, while Ireland simply adapted other instruments to suit.
Ptarmi, I don't think anyone has said Irish music is *better* than anything else- just that they may prefer it to English or indeed Breton music. That's why they come on an Irish music site as you rightly point out.
Thomas Hardy was a celebrated fiddle player from Dorset - his tunes are still played to this day - The Blacksmith (song) was first collected in Dorchester also. The 'Classical'-isation of the music was not just an English phenomonon. Bartok and Kodaly took Hungarian folk songs and presented them as classical arrangments in early 1900's.
P-K .. negative comments e.g. ... how about these:
"what's wrong with English Folk music"
"the main trouble with English music is...the music"
"England is the only country in the world that doesn't have folk music"
To be fair, Irish step dancing and English Morris come pretty much neck and neck in the hilarity and mirth stakes. Fortunately, both nations have a sense of humour...
Hi all,
there's lots of reasons given here as to why English music is in its current state relative to Irish or Scots or the other traditions and that's really what I wanted to get at. Thanks all!
There's lots of knowledgeable people on here obviously, that's why I put this up. I hadn't considered and wasn't even aware of half of the historical reasons that people have given as to why English music is the way it is. Following up all the posts has been a great distraction from trying to get any work done!
I was surprised when I was at the gig that I had never even heard of Spiers and Boden. I'd heard bits of Bellowhead over the years, but can't say that I would have had any interest at all. I've had to actually switch them off fairly quick to be honest. Now I know they probably represent English music in about the same way say Kila represent Irish trad, but there doesn't seem to be the same kind of gateway bands for want of a better term in English music. There's plenty of bands and players from Scotland and Ireland, Brittany, Scandanavia or Quebec, Asturias, Spain etc. that make traditional music accessible to people that mightn't otherwise hear music from that tradition, and in lots of ways they can provide a starting point for people delving into the music, even if they're not entirely representative of the tradition. I know recently I was checking out Genticorum and started rooting around and came across Pascal Gemme's site which couldn't be a better starting point for Quebecois fiddle stuff.
My point is that there's surely more to get out of English traditional music than Morris Dancing and the naff costume stuff, or has it died as tradition for all the reasons people have given already? To me, it doesn't seem too healthy, which is strange when England is surrounded by other countries with such relatively healthy traditions.
One has to remember, English trad music in the later c20 had a much lower base (of actual traditional players, that is) than Scottish or Irish music on which a revival could be built.
That meant that, whereas the Scottish and Irish traditions consistently educated numerous kids to play trad instruments in a competent and "correct" manner (but risking producing a cookie-cutter product), the English approach to their tradition was quite eclectic and piratical: traditional education in the music barely existed. People took it up on the basis of early violin lessons, or nothing at all. The strongest input in the earlier revival, to my mind, was that of several guitarists and singer-guitarists who had cut their teeth on the usual 50s - 60s influences but turned their hand to trad songs and music very well.
A result was themed music - one band after another culling trad material and treating it to suit its own image, and sometimes the image of England or Englishness it wanted to communicate. Fey, olde-world Englishness by Steeleye Span, for example; grungey, underbelly-of-society Englishness by The Oyster Band; both good bands. I think this sort of thing only gets bad when some group of people is determined to monopolise trad in their particular cause, as Ewan MacColl tried to annex it for Communism. He was by-passed. I hope this happens to the BNP if, and as, they try the same thing on. Meanwhile, I think that the plurality which (I think) characterises the English folk / trad scene generally has done nothing at all to hamper those who want to become as good as possible at playing the tunes - English, Irish or whatever.
And the Morris...don't knock it! Done really well, it can be magnificent. I think it enjoys genuine popularity in England now: it's one of those things like Shakespeare, village cricket or "Songs Of Praise" that people might think of as stuffy or quaint, but are glad to see still going on, all the same.
Fair points Joe and Nicholas,
its probably the themed music, especially the olde worlde stuff that I associate strongly with English music that's the biggest hurdle for me. Its probably due to the disconnect you mentioned earlier Nicholas that the music came to be interpreted that way.
I hadn't thought about the lack of traditional music education as exists in Scotland and Ireland which has to be a big missing cog in the English tradition.
Sorry though lads, I'll never be turned on Morris dancing (or "Songs of Praise"!). I did some time with Shakespeare, it wasn't all bad, and village cricket probably equals the GAA in loads of ways, though probably not as exciting.
You're welcome, T! It's just that you've opened the floodgates of ruminations that might be beyond the threshhold of boredom for most on this website.
Yes, England is infested with Olde-Worlde musical and other cultural(?) phenomena that are entirely grisly and not to be borne. But there are degrees to this. Steeleye Span and John Renbourn explored rather than exploited their way through this stuff - the latter, I think, with the more sensitivity. A band called Strawhead made a living doing English Civil War songs - crumhorns and whatever and all - but they were investigating and presenting the real material; and so on. The folk world and the archaeology world (which I was in) intersect quite a bit with the world of re-enactment societies. There is more to these than "Let's dress up and play about and get paid for it" - plenty of people get a long way into researching the Romans, Saxons or whoever, and finding out more about how they lived and made / used things, and maybe (for all I know) how they thought.
But the fact does remain, most of us are going into this stuff - and our historical past generally - as tourists. That means, we take it for granted it's not going to bite us on the bum, and that we'll come back safely to (usually) normal modern middle-class homes in the evening. In other words, we want history - and trad - on our own terms.
Trad song was made respectable in England when Cecil Sharp and others published it c1900. Why then? Because it was almost dead - finished, at any rate, as a counter-cultural force. It was no longer a threat to anyone. Formidable people, cultures, you name it, can rely on unabashed praise and much wistfulness to be expended upon them once they are safely dead with a stake through their heart - or seem to be totally dependent on a life-support machine run by controllers.
The English folk revival is in a very healthy state. I've attended the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards on occasion and its top heavy Anglo-centric with the odd Scots act winning from time to time and a rare Irish act awarded. Check out Mike Harding's BBC Radio 2 site http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006wrmz
You may well be pleasantly surprised.........
Interesting stuff all the way Nicholas. I've only really started to think about it all since coming to live in the UK from Ireland in the past year. The music and its place in the grand scheme of things was one of the of things I'd talked about with people but I hadn't done a lot of research on. Looking forward to brushing up on my English history with all of the above pointers in mind!
Looking forward to subsequent installments of the series: The Problem with Breton Music, The Problem with Bluegrass Music, The Problem with Finnish Music, The Problem with Rock Music, The Problem with Every Music That’s Not What I Like Best …
The problem with Finnish music is that it is inaccessible except to Finns. It resides inside instruments about the size of a student let whose zillions of notes are juxtaposed on an entirely random basis. I suppose one finds half a dozen of them one winter, half a dozen the next, and so on, until one is about sixty, and then one is able to play a tune or two.
The problem with Breton music is that it needs about a hundred blind-drunk performers looking like John Prescott in berets to really make it work. Hear an an-dro or something played on a whistle and mandolin in a session, and you think, "When is the tune actually going to *start*?" It never does. It just stops. But in the scenario I've mentioned, it very definitely starts, again and again. A few dozen striking fishermen blow stupendous peals on shawms, knocking you sideways like the walls of Jericho. They stop, for no apparent reason. Then another lot turn your brain to jelly with an almighty concentration of something like ongoing bat squeak. You pick yourself up. Then it's a pipe band, opening up just behind your right ear - not to mention piano-accordions, fiddles, drums and the rest. I've only seen this on YouTube mind, not for real - but it does seem rather splendid. However, you probably couldn't fish all this up for a mid-week session in Milton Keynes.
As for Bluegrass and American fiddle-and-banjo music generally, the problem with that is it sounds like lots of hound dogs and hysterical horror starlets having their teeth done with no anaesthetics and wind-powered drills. This, I concede is only a problem to a morbidly over-sensitive listener - unless it is discovered that some musicians' reputations as recording artists are actually based on subjecting sundry hound dogs and horror starlets to such felonies as I have described.
i’m tremendously fond of instrumental irish trad. music, which i’ve played on flute the past 7 years. it’s a rich tradition, full of sadness and exuberance simultaneously, music that knows no end. it has that timeless, ineffable quality that all great music has, and i have been very lucky to discover and play it.
however, when it comes to songs, i much prefer the english over the irish tradition. my experience is that irish songs tend to be more sentimental, more about idealized love and romance, less about class, and more chaste than their english counterparts. and thus, in my mind, less interesting. (irish singing has its rebel songs, revolutionary songs, etc., but for some reason, i’ve never made a real connection to that aspect of the tradition).
having said that, it’s of course true that songs in these traditions overlap, with english singers performing and recording irish songs and vice versa. and band members’ nationalities could overlap (for example, gay woods, one of the original members of steeleye span, was from dublin). and both fairport and steeleye recorded irish jigs and reels. now, obviously, nationality counts for a lot less, with globalization, recorded music available everywhere, etc. but in the period from the 1950s to the mid 70s (when the enclosed recordings were mostly made), nationality counted for a lot, and distinct national and regional styles were meaningful components of the music.
to me, it's hard to think of a richer folk SONG tradition than that inhabited by Sandy Denny, Maddy Prior, Ann Briggs, and Shirley Collins, not to mention Fairport Convention, Steeleye Span, and the various Martin Carthy bands. Some of my favorite english songs are below:
1. bruton town (sandy denny): this song always kills me. it’s one of class, the disapproval of the brothers in a noble family for the sister’s love of a servant. he’s killed by the brothers on a hunting ruse and thrown in the briars. the singing is unbelievably personal. very much like billy holiday, denny can take a song and utterly make it her own, it’s hard to listen to another’s version after hearing this. listen to maddy prior doing it on track # 5 on folk songs of olde england. very well done, more metronome like in ryhythm, but emotionally distant compared to sandy. jacqui mcshee of pentangle also recorded this song, but sandy’s is the best.
2. queen among the heather (june tabor): i love tabor’s voice, especially the lower register, where she’s most comfortable.
3. sheep crook and black dog (maddy prior w/steeleye span): shepherd song of lost love, great haunting melody, creative song structure.
4. blackwaterside (anne briggs): great song & great singing. briggs, along with shirley collins, were the forerunners of denny & prior.
5. copshawhomesfair (maddy prior): fantastic market song with wonderful evocative words and great 60s style arrangement. this is maddy prior before steeleye (track 21 of “folk songs of olde england, vols. 1 & 2). steeleye did a shortened, rockier version of this on their first album (track 6 of “lark …”), leaving out the great verses with the woman bartering for wages for a position in service. love these verses:
There's lads for the lasses, there's toys for the bairns,
There's jugglers and tumblers and folks with no arms,
There's a ballad-singer here and a fiddler there,
There are nut-men and spice-men at Copshawholme Fair.
There are peddlers and potters and gingerbread stands,
There are peepshows and puff and darts and the green caravans,
There's fruit from all nations exhibited there
With kale plants from Harwich at Copshawholme Fair.
6. burning of auchidoon (maddy prior & june tabor – ‘silly sisters’): the lyrics, which apparently relate to the burning of a scottish castle in the 16th century, mean little to me; i love this for the great, dissonant two-part singing.
7. bring us in good ale (maddy & tim hart): from their summer solstice record, wonderful thing from the 15th century, have to love these lines:
Bring us in no brown bread, for that is made of bran,
Nor bring us in no white bread, for therein is no grain,
Bring us in no eggs, for there are many shells,
But bring us in good ale, and bring us nothing else.
8. matty groves (sandy denny): another great song about class, with a sexual frankness i don’t find in my experience of irish song (“Come home with me, little Matty Groves, come home with me tonight. Come home with me, little Matty Groves, and sleep with me till light.” as to class, the last line says it all: “But bury my lady at the top for she was of noble kin.” great fairport backing, and nice instrumental ending that adds a kick.
9. willie o’winsbury (anne briggs): great trad. song that not enough people have covered, scottish in origin, great melody, and has again, a sexual frankness. doubt these lyrics would ever appear in an irish song:
Cast off, cast off your berry-brown gown,
You stand naked upon the stone,
That I may ken ye by your shape
Whether you be a maiden or none.”
And she's cast off her berry-brown gown,
She stood naked upon the stone.
Her apron was low and her haunches were round,
Her face was pale and wan.
and i love the wonderful closing lines:
He has made her the lady of as much land
As she'll ride in a long summer's day.
the melody for this song was used by richard thompson in his song farewell, farewell. (on fairports liege & lief), beautifully sung by denny.
10. fotheringay (sandy w/fairport): another castle song, this one being the one where mary queen of scots was imprisoned. amazing arrangement, has a magical quality i think. nice words by richard thompson.
11. murder of maria marten (shirley collins w/albion band): english murder ballad. just love the sound of this, quintessentially english to my mind. wiki has this to say about this song:
The Red Barn Murder was a notorious murder committed in Polstead, Suffolk, England, in 1827. A young woman, Maria Marten, was shot dead by her lover, William Corder, the son of the local squire. The two had arranged to meet at the Red Barn, a local landmark, before eloping to Ipswich. Maria was never heard from again. Corder fled the scene and although he sent Marten's family letters claiming she was in good health, her body was later discovered buried in the barn after her stepmother claimed she had dreamt about the murder.
Corder was tracked down in London, where he had married and started a new life. He was brought back to Suffolk, and, after a well-publicised trial, found guilty of murder. He was hanged in Bury St. Edmunds in 1828; a huge crowd witnessed Corder's execution. The story provoked numerous articles in the newspapers, and songs and plays. The village where the crime had taken place became a tourist attraction and the barn was stripped by souvenir hunters. The plays and ballads remained popular throughout the next century and continue to be performed today.
12. banks of the nile (sandy denny): extraordinary performance by denny. this one, like bruton town, grew on me by degrees, to the point where they are my favorite recordings of denny, along with #15 below. my favorite lines:
In the sultry suns of Egypt your rosy cheeks would spoil.
Where the cannons they do rattle, when the bullets they do fly,
And the silver trumpets sound so loud to hide the dismal cries.
13. quiet joys of brotherhood (sandy denny): stunning singing, great atmospheric electric guitar by thompson, words by richard farina. what else is there to say?
14. my johnny was a shoemaker (steeleye span): great two part singing of maddy and gay woods, the latter being with steeleye for the first album. not of maddy’s caliber, but i love them together, and this song is definitely catchy, makes you want to sing.
15. who knows where the time goes? (sandy denny): one of the great ones, penned by sandy. can’t really imagine anyone else singing this.
Sandy Denny was flawless. Her singing floated ethereally above her material and at the same time encapsulated it. To me she's the greatest of the British revival's female singers, but there were other different but excellent ones. Nic Jones was for me the finest male singer. He could communicate any song with an empathy that seemed entirely natural, in a field where so generally the material got camped up - whether exhilaratingly or gruellingly.
The earlier English revival drew a lot on Scottish ballads (they were singularly dark and spooky), and was probably inspired a lot by the Scottish folk revival of the early Sixties. From an English middle-class suburban environment - probably that of many kids who graduated to folk or folk-rock bands - the UK was then generally seen as one nation that happened to have different accents at each corner: class differences seemed much more significant than national ones like Scottish / Welsh / English. There was plenty of to-ing and fro-ing of English and Scottish artists and material.
Much as I enjoyed Mariajef's posting, his/her comments should only be regarded as relevant to Ireland's English language song tradition. They're certainly not true in terms of the Gaelic tradition.
I've just found this wonderful site and discussions, after surfing for the dots for Whinham (thanks).
I guess my levels of expectation had been lowered by too many visits to Birmingham City v Aston Vile discussions, but found this debate very enjoyable.
I live in south west France, where we have a session that many non participants reckon to be an Irish session. We play mazurkas, polkas, waltzes, scottisches , bourees as well as jigs and the occasional Irish reel. The guy who only plays his own Ariegeoise music fits in fine, picking it up and busking the bits he's less familiar with, as we all do.
My point is that when the edges are blurred in sessions made up of a diversity of players, it is different to a specifically Irish session when it is genuinely closely focused and grounded, but may not be seen as such by those listening. When the music is used as I prefer it, for dancing, you can see the differences more clearly, and many sessions don't worry about the music's relationship to dance.
Now I'm away to see if the level of ideas might have covered the great Scottish genius Michael Marra - pathetically ignored by other media; even his own website calls him only 'one of Scotlands best songwriters'.
Refer to his song 'If I Was an Englishman' from the wonderful Five EP, and dedicated to Martin Carthy. Apparently at an afterhours get together in the USA, Carthy remarked to MM about the way the Scots/Irish could celebrate their heritage together in a way we English cannot seem to.
(PS - wow, mariajef, where have you been for the past 30 odd years?)
The problem with English music..
The problem with English music..
I was at festival in the last few months near Oxford, unfortunately a trad free affair for the most part. Late enough on the Sunday night, having being starved of tunes, I was fairly happy to hear what sounded like a few decent reels being belted out. We went down to the stage area and Spiers and Boden were playing. I'd never heard of them before, but really enjoyed the gig.
Anyways, a few of us (Irish) got talking about it afterwards and we all agreed the music and playing was great, but the songs got us talking about our problem with English folk music. Now I know there's probably a lot of tunes in the Irish tradition that are shared between both, but here's the thing.
Given the history between Ireland and England, a lot of Irish music, well particularly the songs, have an underdog aspect to them. You know the way people will belt out a song full of pints with a heap of patriotism thrown in, or play a slow air full of centuries of misery and starvation and loneliness (In the best possible way!). On the other hand, while I was standing there listening to Spiers and Boden, the tunes were great, but the songs! It was all about some Lord Such and Such riding off on his horse around his estate maiming and raping type of stuff (For modern day short-hand think 'Swing Low Sweet Chariot' vs 'The Fields of Athenry'). None had a real basis in the honest to God misery that makes ITM so powerful by comparison.
So, is that what's wrong with English Folk music in general. Did they not suffer enough to produce a good end result? Can you really get passionate about music that was a soundtrack to riding around on your horse collecting the rent? What do ye reckon?
Oh yeah, here's a link to Spiers and Boden
http://www.myspace.com/spiersandboden
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by T
Re: The problem with English music..
T,
I believe it can be attributed to the Angela's Ashes syndrome. Simply, the English didn't have enough rain during the 16th-19th centuries. You need to be wet and continaully miserable to really suffer and create good literature and music.. See p.1, of Frank McCourt's novel.
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by skin&bow
Re: The problem with English music..
I blame the Germans!
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by neilowen
Re: The problem with English music..
There are some pretty good English folk ballads, i.e. Little Musgrave, which are about the craptastic-ness of being married to a tw*t and having an affair. There are assorted other ballads -- English and Scottish --about being forced to marry someone for social status when you are in love with someone else. Plenty of oppression to sing about in England, maybe not of the *entire* country but definitely of certain social groups within the country, such as women and lower classes.
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by DrSilverSpear
Re: The problem with English music..
Germans? Don't mention the war....
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by Henk Bos
Re: The problem with English music..
Sorry, this is not relevant to this discussion, so if someone could reply, and then forget this was posted, that would be great. If you post a discussion, does it take a while for it to show up on the new discussions list? I couldn't find anything in the FAQ's. Thanks.
I checked out the link. That's some great box playing.
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by buailteoir
Re: The problem with English music..
Buailteoir- a new discussion usually appears pretty much instantly, unless you've inadvertently offended the censor
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by Here Lyeth
Re: The problem with English music..
Ah, OK. Thanks. I think my computer goofed. Now, keep talking about happy English Songs.
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by buailteoir
Re: The problem with English music..
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by buailteoir
Re: The problem with English music..
I'm sure the 'English' have had their fair share of misery down the centuries- think of those Norman invaders, the bold bad barons, raping and pillaging, before turning their hand to Ireland. They're just too polite to bother anyone about it in song.
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by Here Lyeth
Re: The problem with English music..
I'm not so sure. Irish balladeers plundered the English canon during the folk revival and even the great Bess Cronin herself acknowledged that the bulk of her songs were English in origin. It is interesting to note that English writers like Ewan MacColl who 's attempts to reinvent folk songs and put them in the vernacular of the working class were the ones most popularised by, say, The Dubliners and The Clancy Brothers.
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by Patkiwi
Re: The problem with English music..
Possibly the strength of diddle is its simplicity while the weakness of rinky dinky dido is its taking simplicity to unbearable levels.
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by bogman
Re: The problem with English music..
Sorry English friends (and pace June Tabor), but the main trouble with English music is...the music. It's almost invariably staid and boring. Where's the devilment?
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by Here Lyeth
Re: The problem with English music..
Forget that- just stirring
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by Here Lyeth
Re: The problem with English music..
As to staid and boring, and the reference to Spiers and Boden, have you heard Bellowhead? Hard to think of them being called staid.
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by nfldbox
Re: The problem with English music..
Ah, but are they 'traditional'?
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by Here Lyeth
Re: The problem with English music..
I don't think you can really make such an enormous generalisation based on the experience of one gig. There is an absolutely huge repertoire of English songs addressing the grinding impoverishment endured by centuries of feudal and capitalist rule in England. Many, many great English songs are concerned with the activities of working-class political idealists who sought to rebel against the established ruling order in various ways, from poaching to machine-breaking to outright robbery and wanton violence. Likewise, there are a vast number of Irish songs in existence which laud the landed gentry of Ireland, their sporting pursuits (such as fox-hunting), their honour and generosity. Spiers & Boden are not representative of the English folk canon. Just as The Fields of Sthenry is not representaive of Irish folk music.
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by Dragut Reis
Re: The problem with English music..
Athenry...
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by Dragut Reis
Re: The problem with English music..
"Irish balladeers plundered the English canon during the folk revival and even the great Bess Cronin herself acknowledged that the bulk of her songs were English in origin"
That's why the English haven't got any good traditional songs - the Irish nicked em all.
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by CreadurMawnOrganig
Re: The problem with English music..
I have long asserted that England is the only country in the world that doesn't have folk music. I don't mean songs that somebody has written in a 'folk' style; but genuine hand-me-down music. Most of the stuff I heard during my years going to folk clubs in the north was sea shanties, music hall, early recordings and gleanings from old sheet music. The trouble, I think, is that English music was stolen by the aristocracy, or at least the upper classes, in the same way that dancing was taken and turned into ballet. Where is the English national costume? What is the English national instrument? What is traditional dancing? And I don't mean Morris.
I am English, by the way. Although my father was scottish, I was born and raised here.
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by gam
Re: The problem with English music..
Could be that english songs that go travelling tend to lose there origin. Mention "Spencer the Rover" and most people think of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1XTOAcnWJY
rather than this : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFP8K-oP-ag
"Yorkshire near Rotherham" still gets a mention but does not have the same romance as a refuge for the rural poor (mines and factories of the industrial revolution maybe ?) as the green fields of Amerikay
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by David50
Re: The problem with English music..
"Did they not suffer enough to produce a good end result?"
"Well you can sing a happy song if your glad
You can sing a protest song if you're mad
Oh but if you want to sing the blues
Then boy you better learn how to lose"
- Suffer To Sing The Blues (D.Bromberg)
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: The problem with English music..
>Possibly the strength of diddle is its simplicity while the >weakness of rinky dinky dido is its taking simplicity to >unbearable levels.
Lol Oh Bogman, you devil.
And Robert, i'll always think of that song as "Fields of Saint Henry" from now on
- chris
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by ramblingpitchfork
Re: The problem with English music..
Another couple of generalisations, but the words of English songs often seem sharper and more socially direct than Irish songs, where the meaning is often symbolic, hidden or implied for obvious reasons. Hence perhaps the numerous maudlin, generic Irish ballads which, taken collectively, I'm sad to say, make me cringe.
As for the ('traditional') music itself (without words), there are some lovely tunes in Playford etc., but there seems to be a certain lackadaisical element in English tunes. They just don't grab me the way jigs and reels (now embedded) in the Irish and Scottish traditions do. Could this be because they are intended, and tend, to be played at a slower pace? I don't know, but my gut reaction is 'I don't particularly want to dance or tap my feet to this stuff'.' I'm not claiming any expertise in the matter- as I say, just an instinctive gut reaction.
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by Here Lyeth
Re: The problem with English music..
I was sitting (!) with Danny Kyle at a ceilidh on the Isle of Arran many years ago. Both bemoaning the fact the committee had committed a howler by booking an English ceilidh band. No-one was up dancing, yet an hour before the same 1000 people had been up and at it for Deanta, an Irish band.
The word he used was "regimented". No feeling for the music. Something inbred into the crowd said the same to them. I bowed to his superior knowledge then and still do.
RIP Danny.
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by bigdee
Re: The problem with English music..
Well now bigdee, how could a crowd on Arran admit to enjoying an English band! A howler indeed.
(And the band may have been no good anyway.)
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by TomB-R
Re: The problem with English music..
One of the problems with English music is that on first impression it seems so simple, that some people think it is.
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by TomB-R
Re: The problem with English music..
Ever heard of the Enclosure movement? How about the Puritans? Or the Industrial Revolution?
All of these conspired to kill English traditional music in the years 1600-1800.
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by Seosamh Ui Sinan
Re: The problem with English music..
Someone mentioned the lack of the English National Costume; what is the Irish National Costume then?
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by Krick Stahlschwanz
Re: The problem with English music..
Gam - why are you saying "I don't mean morris"? Morris dancing, music and costume, and its instruments, such as the D/G melodeon, both types of concertina and, of course, the fiddle, IS the main English musical tradition. And it's pretty old and hand-me-down, if you ask me.
I once heard an explanation from Jon Boden as to why English music is generally slower than Irish. It's about the difference between Irish step dancing and English morris. Step dancing is mainly about footwork, so the faster you can do it, the more impressive it is. Morris dancing, on the other hand, is about jumping and leaping about. Therefore, the slower it is, the more impressive, because it means you have to jump higher!
Oh, and if you think English music is boring and staid, or "rinky dinky dido", as you most eloquently put it, then you quite clearly have not heard good English music, simple as that!
And, of course, this is all assuming that we are not counting Northumbrian music, which is a whole rich and complex tradition in its own right, as English!
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by Joe CSS
Re: The problem with English music..
Songs are the glory of English music and there's as many as you can shake a stick at.
You might like to read 'Land of Lost Content' (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Land-Lost-Content-Luddite-Rebellion/dp/0434629006 ) for a glimpse into how General Maitland put to good use the tools of imperialism learned in the colonies when dealing with the luddite revolts of 1812.
Or you could go further back and split your sides laughing at the 'harrowing of the north' by the Norman military caste under the direction of William I. ( http://everything2.com/title/Harrowing+of+the+North ).
Oh yes,and lets all judge an enire nation's musical tradition by the performance of one band.
This is as insightful as the message boards on BBC radio 3,and that's saying something,lol.
Anyway,I have big problem with clarinets so I'm off to start a thread all about that.
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by biggus dave
Re: The problem with English music..
And bigdee - the reason the English band felt regimented, and had no feeling for the music, is not because they were English, but because they were crap.
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by Joe CSS
Re: The problem with English music..
Nice one TomB-R
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by David50
Re: The problem with English music..
The Irish National folk costume? The Arran sweater- in sad decline since the advent of central heating- but its day will come again.
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by Here Lyeth
Re: The problem with English music..
" you quite clearly have not heard good English music, simple as that!" - You are so right Joe. Though I did like the Beetles and some other pop stuff while I still listened to it.
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by bogman
Re: The problem with English music..
Well, I have heard good English music, and lots of it. So you're talking out of ignorance and probably also national bias if you make a general statement that English music is crap.
Here is an example of our glorious national heritage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VP3fZp4UM2E
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by Joe CSS
Re: The problem with English music..
So you're saying I'm not allowed to dislike English folk music. Now that really is ignorance.
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by bogman
Re: The problem with English music..
Folk music is the music of the common people and the common people in England got oppressed same as anywhere else. As a result they are just as underdog and there folk songs are just as good.
There are lots of good ones about hangings, for instance. "Sam Hall" is the best known. As well as being hanged, common English folk got evicted, poisened, bewitched, fired, wounded in wars not of their making, overworked, and generally subjected to good, miserable folk song material at every turn.
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by LowProfile
Re: The problem with English music..
No, you're not understanding me. I said: "you're talking out of ignorance and probably also national bias if you make a general statement that English music is crap." You're allowed to like or dislike what you please. But if you make a general statement (I'm not saying you did) that English music - or any type of music, really - is crap, then you are talking out of ignorance.
Please properly read and try to understand what people say before making comebacks at what you assume to be an attack.
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by Joe CSS
Re: The problem with English music..
(cross-post)
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by Joe CSS
Re: The problem with English music..
all you say may be true, but english dance music can't hold a candle to Irish in my opinion. I've played both and now play as little english as I can.
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by millionyears_bc
Re: The problem with English music..
I don't think it has anything to do with oppression. Of course there are some good English songs but also an unfeasible amount of awful ones. The English traddies I know are at their best when playing Scottish or Irish tunes. Sorry, I know it may be to your taste but not to mine. (older)English tunes and folk songs don't seem to travel well. You don't seem to hear them anywhere but England, though some great tunes are being written by the younger generation. IMO
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by bogman
Re: The problem with English music..
Joe, missed your post there. You are also making assumptions. You think that I can't have heard much English music if I'm not a fan of it in general. That's not actually the case.
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by bogman
English national costume
English national costume, what about the smock?
http://www.rdg.ac.uk/Instits/im/the_collections/the_museum/smocks.html
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by cathycook
Re: The problem with English music..
I don't think some of you folks understand the hypnotic qualities of ritual dance music
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrS7mqPU9NQ
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by David50
Re: The problem with English music..
Again, Bogman - I did not say that if you have heard good English music, you'll definitely be a fan. I said that if you haven't heard it, you can't say it's crap. And I was not assuming you haven't heard much English music, because my initial post was not actually directed at you! Now let's cease this bickering.
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by Joe CSS
Re: The problem with English music..
The Irish national Costume:
A Celtic football jersey
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by Patkiwi
Re: The problem with English music..
I don't have any problems with English music. I just enjoy playing it every week, as I do Irish.
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by Trevor Jennings
Re: The problem with English music..
Where would English Folk music be without the late great 'Rambling Syd Rumpo'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xf05K4U-dQI
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by Free Reed
Re: The problem with English music..
Well some of it went here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WR1Q6iq4Fs
and,at the risk of repetition,here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32eSB0ZRPxQ
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by biggus dave
Re: The problem with English music..
I've mulled some of this over myself, and my thoughts include these:
T pinpoints a disconnect between English singers (I'd say, the English in general) and the realities in the old-world ballads, etc., that they sing (e.g., the realities of life in a Mediaeval past in which the English were a subject people). I think he's got it spot on. Massive urbanisation / industrialisation, the diminution of "real"(!) countryfolk to a very low percentage of the population, and the c16 -17 establishment of Protestantism, have all been mighty barriers to instinctive or even effortful engagement with at any rate the Mediaeval / pre-Tudor past. It comes to us far more easily to send it up - as Monty Python and any number of singers and comedians have done.
I see the trad music as a whole, throughout These Islands but especially in England, as a marginal survivor from Med times. It was comprehensively replaced by Classical music and its by-forms in most of life, from Handel to Victorian hymns to brass band music to Tin Pan Alley. Trad's archaic modes, if nothing else, probably signified - just like a twelve-bar blues does, or used to - "This is music from the wrong side of the tracks..." Read, This is hick music; this is criminals' / seditionists' music; this is music that gets young people into trouble; but especially, in the eyes of progressives and aspirationals, This is the music of people who *are not going anywhere*.
This category probably included plenty of baddies. But it was also extended to include Gaelic populations in Ireland and Scotland, regardless of their nature as individuals, as well as people uprooted from the English countryside by enclosures: people simply seen generically as Enemies Of Progress.
This doesn't mean that the progressives (as they saw themselves) were all baddies either. Nor does it mean that the marginals among whom fairly surely the trad survived most (in England) were more "real" than the other English who became industrial workers or joined the middle classes, or indeed than the aristocracy. Nor does it mean that trad is more *real* English music than the huge amount of Classical and sub-Classical music that has predominated at all levels of society in the modern era, topped up by black input over the last century. It just happens to be the oldest English music in continuous use, bar a few Mediaeval carols and music surviving in manuscripts that is largely played and listened to by decided afficionados.
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by nicholas
Re: The problem with English music..
Not many people have mentioned 'class' as being a huge part of what this is all about. Industrialisation, the move to the city and the inevitable social fragmentation that resulted, shattered English trad music as a working-class activity. Nowadays it's a middle class thing - hence the occasionally horrid politeness heard in English music. A lot of the English tunes reek of 17th Century middle-classdom, A bit like some O'Carolan tunes. When I lived in Ireland class seemed to be a peripheral issue with regards to who was actually playing music, though this might have changed by now. In England if you are at a session it is almost guaranteed to be made up of almost 100% middle class people - whatever music they are playing.
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by pavlf
Re: The problem with English music..
More musings:
People have often commented on English dance trad tunes being relentlessly major. At the same time, a great deal of the collected trad song is modal. I suspect this could be because the song (till the c1900 collectors) stayed obscure, while the tune stock stayed in use for dances through the c19 but had current major-scale numbers shuffled into it, so to speak, while older and / or modal ones were dropped, in accordance with the tastes of the time.
A lot of tunes played and recorded in the earlier English folk revival don't strike me as much more than padding. I wonder if they are Victorian / Edwardian band ephemera or something. But the books are opening. I mean, tunebooks keep turning up with markedly better tunes in them, filling out the picture of English trad quite dramatically. Some of it's a lot more tuneful and nimble than one might have been led to expect.
There is the throb of a bruise in Irish and a lot of Scottish music: yes, inasfar as I respond to it, I feel it is an expression of communal historical pain, among other things. (And of course, many a person from elsewhere can imagine that the music expresses his or her own pain, or gripes, or wishes.) This isn't really there in English trad - for me, anyway; I would say the mood of English trad is "pastoral": at best, an appreciative visitor's take on the past, the countryside and the rest that it came out of. Because, when it comes down to it, most of our nation are strolling tourists there.
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by nicholas
Re: The problem with English music..
As an observation of trad in England it seems to me that a lot of younger English players are writing and playing tunes more in the style of Scots and Irish trad. It seems likely to me that English tunes will have more in common with ours in the near future in the same way our own style of trad has borrowed heavily on others. Am I way of the mark or is that fair comment?
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by bogman
Re: The problem with English music..
I think English singer Chris Wood's article is very relevant to this discussion: http://www.englishacousticcollective.org.uk/JMI/index.html
We published it in 2006 but it's free-to-view on his website.
The novelist Carlo Gébler then replied to it in the next issue, as below:
http://journalofmusic.com/article/434
Carlo Gébler, Enniskillen, writes:
Chris Wood’s piece was a mite too tentative, a mite too hedged with caveats (I’m just a musician, this is just my personal opinion, and so on) but I found little in it with which to disagree. Yep, he’s right. England was an agricultural country until the eighteenth century when (with the enclosures) the country was confiscated and the majority population were then obliged to go off and do something else (work in factories), and once that connection to the land was ruptured, the inspiration for folk was lost and the tradition atrophied.
The thing though, is that it didn’t happen overnight. D.H. Lawrence’s miners are saturated with a sense of the country and traditional culture in the widest sense: they may work down a pit but they have access to the landscape and the art that sprung from it. George Orwell, similarly, is alert to the possibilities of interaction between an urban proletariat and the country – and Orwell himself, of course, had a rural childhood and adolescence with lots of hiking, rabbit-shooting and so forth. Orwell had his little allotment later in life too. He was far from alienated from the land. On the contrary, he was intimate with it, and out of that relationship came his best book, Animal Farm.
In other words, the alienation of the English from the countryside has been gradual and, if we must pinpoint a time when the process really accelerated, then I would say the last fifty years rather than the eighteenth century (which I think just represented the start). The complete English alienation from the land (and the popular culture associated with the land, the music, the songs, et cetera) is really a post-war phenomenon. But what has made this happen isn’t simply that everyone’s been shoved into a high-rise and motorways have been built between the town and the countryside (though these have contributed to that alienation) but a whole connected network of horrible things.
Television has played a part because it has created a culture of anti-rural metropolitans whose power was recently signalled with the recent ban on fox-hunting. The death of the family has had a lot to do with it. So has the worship of the car. And so has the way space has been increasingly privatised (despite the opening of footpaths to walkers). The sheer exhausting monotony of urban existence has played a part. So too has the triumph of musical philistinism.
I’m sure there are other contributors to the malaise too: my list isn’t exhaustive. I do know, however, that together, all these factors have put a barrier between the population and the rich culture of traditional music (the culture created by that figure known as Anon., as Mr Wood terms it).
I also can’t see how the rupture can be repaired. If the English are going to find their rich heritage it won’t be enough to put Richard Thompson et al on telly and Chris Wood on Radio 3. If they’re going to reconnect they’re actually going to have to change the way life is lived.
http://www.journalofmusic.com
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by journalofmusic
Re: The problem with English music..
@Bogman:
I think, yes, definitely, a lot of younger players in England are playing / writing in Irish and Scottish styles. But also, there are tunes turning up in old English tune-books that are a long way towards those styles anyway - though I'd add a good few are in 3/2, a rhythm which while familiar in older Scottish music did not really take off in Ireland.
I don't know if the old stand-off still persists between "English music" and "Irish music" afficionados up and down the session scene of Middle England. I hope not. A generation of players is coming up that plays both sorts without batting an eyelid.
# Posted on August 26th 2009 by nicholas
Re: The problem with English music..
What makes me smile during many of these discussions is that much of the current canon of English folk songs (as distinct from tunes) came from America. Cecil Sharp collected them from the Appalachian mountains at the start of the 20th century. They were originally brough over by settlers from England, but the people isolated in that area were still singing them centuries after they'd lost popularity in their native home.
Having said that, how many times have you heard someone say "this is a great Irish song", then start up something English, or American, or Scottish..."Belfast Mill" (Aragon Mill), "Dirty Old Town" (written about Salford, near Manchester), and no doubt many more. The simple fact is, if a song or tune is good musicians will take it and make it their own. That's how the folk process works.
I think the lack of an oral tradition in England, ironically most likely due to a higher level of free public education than elsewhere, combined with the censorious nature of first the Puritans, then the Victorians, means that only the more 'middle class' songs were printed. There are plenty of great ones out there if you look hard enough.
And if you want gritty English Folk, chack out the Oysterband. "Sheepstealer" says it all for me.
Eno
# Posted on August 27th 2009 by bc_box_player
Re: The problem with English music..
In response to T (I apologise for everyone else . . there are too many posts to read for the late hour that it is in my current location)
The suffering of Irish music definitely gives it depth. I grew up around English folk music though. My parents are avid morris dancers. You are correct many of the tunes do cross over. More so with Scotland and England though, than England and Ireland. However brittish folk music has a beauty to it. Have you ever heard anything that they play for the christmas solstice? Some of those songs are hundres of years old and are haunting beuautiful. Alot of that, and I assume this could be the same for Irish too . . is to do with church modes and medieval type music that sounds melancholy to our modern ears. I am also a history buff. Dont let people fool you. Lower class english peasants suffered plenty. London in the summer during plague season? I wouldn't touch that with a ten foot pole. But . . .my rambling has not really drawn any conclusions. so here goes. I think for any music to be good it has to accurately capture a human emotion that we all can relate to. Sadness in some senses is a stronger deeper more squirly emotion than happiness. I play mostly minor tunes myself and find a lot of the major reels to be very boring. Either way I am thankful for both types of music. I grew up around English and I am english . .so I will always have a loyalty to that, but Irish music is enchanting in a way that is well . . Irish.
# Posted on August 27th 2009 by banana512
Re: The problem with English music..
I read some posts . . I felt bad. I agree morris dancing requires slower music. I have played for both types of dancers and my bigges complaint from morris is that I play too fast . . Irish . .that I play too slow. smiles*
# Posted on August 27th 2009 by banana512
Re: The problem with English music..
"So, is that what's wrong with English Folk music in general."
Well T, this is an Irish Music forum after all, so your on pretty safe ground here.
If you really want to know more about what makes English Folk Music tick, rather than just slag it off, then why not find an English Folk Music forum & ask your question over there, where you may well find musicians who are far more knowledgeable on the subject of English Folk Music, than I suspect most folks here are.
Not surprisingly, most folks here will be far more in tune with Irish Music & Song than English, so your going to get a whole series of pretty predictable ra ra answers.
In my opinion though, anyone who comes on here & says their precious Irish Music & Song is somehow better than English Music though, is more likely than not, just displaying their ignorance of English Music & Song.
Obviously the music that touches your soul is going to appeal to you far more, but that doesn't make that music somehow better than other forms of music, it's just different.
This notion that some folks keep harping on about here, that because Irish Music is usually faster & livelier, therefore it must somehow automatically be better music than slower forms is quite honestly, just plain daft!
Do me a favour, take a trip to Brittany, get involved in their culture, experience the wonderful Fest Noz dancing & soak up their so called, slower, more predictable forms of music & then come back here & say only fast music is good. Breton music may be slower but it is Magic!
The same goes for lots of French Folk Music & lots of Scandinavian Music too, aye & English Folk Music too.
Scandinavian music, to some blinkered ears here that have only been allowed to experience & enjoy Irish Music, may sound far too slow & even melancholy, but no sensible human being is going to stand up & say their music is better than another, without looking a complete prat.
So lets nail that once & for all, please, shall we?
As for Gam's question - " What is the English national instrument?"
I'd say it's the English Concertina ... invented by an Englishman after all!
So, not that it makes any difference but, the English actually have their very own Folk instrument, while Ireland simply adapted other instruments to suit.
# Posted on August 27th 2009 by Ptarmigan
Re: The problem with English music..
Ptarmi, I don't think anyone has said Irish music is *better* than anything else- just that they may prefer it to English or indeed Breton music. That's why they come on an Irish music site as you rightly point out.
# Posted on August 27th 2009 by Here Lyeth
Re: The problem with English music..
I think this sums it up:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VP3fZp4UM2E&feature=related
Bostin!
# Posted on August 27th 2009 by Sugarfoot Jack
Re: The problem with English music..
Thomas Hardy was a celebrated fiddle player from Dorset - his tunes are still played to this day - The Blacksmith (song) was first collected in Dorchester also. The 'Classical'-isation of the music was not just an English phenomonon. Bartok and Kodaly took Hungarian folk songs and presented them as classical arrangments in early 1900's.
# Posted on August 27th 2009 by iwerzon
Re: The problem with English music..
Hey Sugarfoot Jack, you'll probably enjoy these as well:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BS1UKBOYcIE
&
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsDvmQROMHQ
P-K .. negative comments e.g. ... how about these:
"what's wrong with English Folk music"
"the main trouble with English music is...the music"
"England is the only country in the world that doesn't have folk music"
# Posted on August 27th 2009 by Ptarmigan
Re: The problem with English music..
Can England claim all the folk songs written in 'thier' language?
# Posted on August 27th 2009 by shanty
Re: The problem with English music..
Oh and by the way, Standing ovation fo Ptarmigan.
# Posted on August 27th 2009 by shanty
Re: The problem with English music..
To be fair, Irish step dancing and English Morris come pretty much neck and neck in the hilarity and mirth stakes. Fortunately, both nations have a sense of humour...
# Posted on August 27th 2009 by Here Lyeth
Re: The problem with English music..
Shanty, an Ovation you say .... thanks, but I'd prefer a Lowden!
# Posted on August 27th 2009 by Ptarmigan
Re: The problem with English music..
Hi all,
there's lots of reasons given here as to why English music is in its current state relative to Irish or Scots or the other traditions and that's really what I wanted to get at. Thanks all!
There's lots of knowledgeable people on here obviously, that's why I put this up. I hadn't considered and wasn't even aware of half of the historical reasons that people have given as to why English music is the way it is. Following up all the posts has been a great distraction from trying to get any work done!
I was surprised when I was at the gig that I had never even heard of Spiers and Boden. I'd heard bits of Bellowhead over the years, but can't say that I would have had any interest at all. I've had to actually switch them off fairly quick to be honest. Now I know they probably represent English music in about the same way say Kila represent Irish trad, but there doesn't seem to be the same kind of gateway bands for want of a better term in English music. There's plenty of bands and players from Scotland and Ireland, Brittany, Scandanavia or Quebec, Asturias, Spain etc. that make traditional music accessible to people that mightn't otherwise hear music from that tradition, and in lots of ways they can provide a starting point for people delving into the music, even if they're not entirely representative of the tradition. I know recently I was checking out Genticorum and started rooting around and came across Pascal Gemme's site which couldn't be a better starting point for Quebecois fiddle stuff.
http://tradquebec.over-blog.com/
My point is that there's surely more to get out of English traditional music than Morris Dancing and the naff costume stuff, or has it died as tradition for all the reasons people have given already? To me, it doesn't seem too healthy, which is strange when England is surrounded by other countries with such relatively healthy traditions.
# Posted on August 27th 2009 by T
Re: The problem with English music..
English music is plenty healthy. It just hasn't got as loud a voice or as outgoing a personality as Irish or Scottish music.
# Posted on August 27th 2009 by Joe CSS
Re: The problem with English music..
I'd agree with Joe CSS.
One has to remember, English trad music in the later c20 had a much lower base (of actual traditional players, that is) than Scottish or Irish music on which a revival could be built.
That meant that, whereas the Scottish and Irish traditions consistently educated numerous kids to play trad instruments in a competent and "correct" manner (but risking producing a cookie-cutter product), the English approach to their tradition was quite eclectic and piratical: traditional education in the music barely existed. People took it up on the basis of early violin lessons, or nothing at all. The strongest input in the earlier revival, to my mind, was that of several guitarists and singer-guitarists who had cut their teeth on the usual 50s - 60s influences but turned their hand to trad songs and music very well.
A result was themed music - one band after another culling trad material and treating it to suit its own image, and sometimes the image of England or Englishness it wanted to communicate. Fey, olde-world Englishness by Steeleye Span, for example; grungey, underbelly-of-society Englishness by The Oyster Band; both good bands. I think this sort of thing only gets bad when some group of people is determined to monopolise trad in their particular cause, as Ewan MacColl tried to annex it for Communism. He was by-passed. I hope this happens to the BNP if, and as, they try the same thing on. Meanwhile, I think that the plurality which (I think) characterises the English folk / trad scene generally has done nothing at all to hamper those who want to become as good as possible at playing the tunes - English, Irish or whatever.
# Posted on August 27th 2009 by nicholas
Re: The problem with English music..
And the Morris...don't knock it! Done really well, it can be magnificent. I think it enjoys genuine popularity in England now: it's one of those things like Shakespeare, village cricket or "Songs Of Praise" that people might think of as stuffy or quaint, but are glad to see still going on, all the same.
# Posted on August 27th 2009 by nicholas
Re: The problem with English music..
("...that people might think of as *not quite their personal thing*..." might be as true a way of putting it, and less dismissive...)
# Posted on August 27th 2009 by nicholas
Re: The problem with English music..
Fair points Joe and Nicholas,
its probably the themed music, especially the olde worlde stuff that I associate strongly with English music that's the biggest hurdle for me. Its probably due to the disconnect you mentioned earlier Nicholas that the music came to be interpreted that way.
I hadn't thought about the lack of traditional music education as exists in Scotland and Ireland which has to be a big missing cog in the English tradition.
Sorry though lads, I'll never be turned on Morris dancing (or "Songs of Praise"!). I did some time with Shakespeare, it wasn't all bad, and village cricket probably equals the GAA in loads of ways, though probably not as exciting.
Is there a theme emerging here?
# Posted on August 27th 2009 by T
Re: The problem with English music..
Wind-up, don't attack me!
# Posted on August 27th 2009 by T
Re: The problem with English music..
You're welcome, T! It's just that you've opened the floodgates of ruminations that might be beyond the threshhold of boredom for most on this website.
Yes, England is infested with Olde-Worlde musical and other cultural(?) phenomena that are entirely grisly and not to be borne. But there are degrees to this. Steeleye Span and John Renbourn explored rather than exploited their way through this stuff - the latter, I think, with the more sensitivity. A band called Strawhead made a living doing English Civil War songs - crumhorns and whatever and all - but they were investigating and presenting the real material; and so on. The folk world and the archaeology world (which I was in) intersect quite a bit with the world of re-enactment societies. There is more to these than "Let's dress up and play about and get paid for it" - plenty of people get a long way into researching the Romans, Saxons or whoever, and finding out more about how they lived and made / used things, and maybe (for all I know) how they thought.
But the fact does remain, most of us are going into this stuff - and our historical past generally - as tourists. That means, we take it for granted it's not going to bite us on the bum, and that we'll come back safely to (usually) normal modern middle-class homes in the evening. In other words, we want history - and trad - on our own terms.
Trad song was made respectable in England when Cecil Sharp and others published it c1900. Why then? Because it was almost dead - finished, at any rate, as a counter-cultural force. It was no longer a threat to anyone. Formidable people, cultures, you name it, can rely on unabashed praise and much wistfulness to be expended upon them once they are safely dead with a stake through their heart - or seem to be totally dependent on a life-support machine run by controllers.
I'd continue, but it's late! (1.57 a.m....)
# Posted on August 28th 2009 by nicholas
Re: The problem with English music..
The English folk revival is in a very healthy state. I've attended the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards on occasion and its top heavy Anglo-centric with the odd Scots act winning from time to time and a rare Irish act awarded. Check out Mike Harding's BBC Radio 2 site
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006wrmz
You may well be pleasantly surprised.........
# Posted on August 28th 2009 by iwerzon
Re: The problem with English music..
Interesting stuff all the way Nicholas. I've only really started to think about it all since coming to live in the UK from Ireland in the past year. The music and its place in the grand scheme of things was one of the of things I'd talked about with people but I hadn't done a lot of research on. Looking forward to brushing up on my English history with all of the above pointers in mind!
# Posted on August 28th 2009 by T
Re: The problem with English music..
Cheers iwerzon,
will check it out.
# Posted on August 28th 2009 by T
Re: The problem with English music..
Looking forward to subsequent installments of the series: The Problem with Breton Music, The Problem with Bluegrass Music, The Problem with Finnish Music, The Problem with Rock Music, The Problem with Every Music That’s Not What I Like Best …
# Posted on August 28th 2009 by Bob himself
Re: The problem with English music..
The problem with sarky Yanks!
# Posted on August 28th 2009 by T
Re: The problem with English music..
Ouch!
# Posted on August 28th 2009 by Bob himself
Re: The problem with English music..
The problem with Finnish music is that it is inaccessible except to Finns. It resides inside instruments about the size of a student let whose zillions of notes are juxtaposed on an entirely random basis. I suppose one finds half a dozen of them one winter, half a dozen the next, and so on, until one is about sixty, and then one is able to play a tune or two.
The problem with Breton music is that it needs about a hundred blind-drunk performers looking like John Prescott in berets to really make it work. Hear an an-dro or something played on a whistle and mandolin in a session, and you think, "When is the tune actually going to *start*?" It never does. It just stops. But in the scenario I've mentioned, it very definitely starts, again and again. A few dozen striking fishermen blow stupendous peals on shawms, knocking you sideways like the walls of Jericho. They stop, for no apparent reason. Then another lot turn your brain to jelly with an almighty concentration of something like ongoing bat squeak. You pick yourself up. Then it's a pipe band, opening up just behind your right ear - not to mention piano-accordions, fiddles, drums and the rest. I've only seen this on YouTube mind, not for real - but it does seem rather splendid. However, you probably couldn't fish all this up for a mid-week session in Milton Keynes.
As for Bluegrass and American fiddle-and-banjo music generally, the problem with that is it sounds like lots of hound dogs and hysterical horror starlets having their teeth done with no anaesthetics and wind-powered drills. This, I concede is only a problem to a morbidly over-sensitive listener - unless it is discovered that some musicians' reputations as recording artists are actually based on subjecting sundry hound dogs and horror starlets to such felonies as I have described.
Any other problems?
Thought not...
# Posted on August 28th 2009 by nicholas
Re: The problem with English music..
Anyone on this board remember that larger-than-life Kerryman, Noel Murphy?
Whenever some discussion started up regarding the merits or demerits of a particular idiom, he would always interject:
"ALL music is folk music - sure I nivver heard any horses a singing it!"
Some wisdom in that ....
# Posted on August 28th 2009 by Mix O'Lydian
Re: The problem with English music..
I think that was earlier attributed to Louis Armstrong!
# Posted on August 28th 2009 by nicholas
Re: The problem with English music..
i’m tremendously fond of instrumental irish trad. music, which i’ve played on flute the past 7 years. it’s a rich tradition, full of sadness and exuberance simultaneously, music that knows no end. it has that timeless, ineffable quality that all great music has, and i have been very lucky to discover and play it.
however, when it comes to songs, i much prefer the english over the irish tradition. my experience is that irish songs tend to be more sentimental, more about idealized love and romance, less about class, and more chaste than their english counterparts. and thus, in my mind, less interesting. (irish singing has its rebel songs, revolutionary songs, etc., but for some reason, i’ve never made a real connection to that aspect of the tradition).
having said that, it’s of course true that songs in these traditions overlap, with english singers performing and recording irish songs and vice versa. and band members’ nationalities could overlap (for example, gay woods, one of the original members of steeleye span, was from dublin). and both fairport and steeleye recorded irish jigs and reels. now, obviously, nationality counts for a lot less, with globalization, recorded music available everywhere, etc. but in the period from the 1950s to the mid 70s (when the enclosed recordings were mostly made), nationality counted for a lot, and distinct national and regional styles were meaningful components of the music.
to me, it's hard to think of a richer folk SONG tradition than that inhabited by Sandy Denny, Maddy Prior, Ann Briggs, and Shirley Collins, not to mention Fairport Convention, Steeleye Span, and the various Martin Carthy bands. Some of my favorite english songs are below:
1. bruton town (sandy denny): this song always kills me. it’s one of class, the disapproval of the brothers in a noble family for the sister’s love of a servant. he’s killed by the brothers on a hunting ruse and thrown in the briars. the singing is unbelievably personal. very much like billy holiday, denny can take a song and utterly make it her own, it’s hard to listen to another’s version after hearing this. listen to maddy prior doing it on track # 5 on folk songs of olde england. very well done, more metronome like in ryhythm, but emotionally distant compared to sandy. jacqui mcshee of pentangle also recorded this song, but sandy’s is the best.
2. queen among the heather (june tabor): i love tabor’s voice, especially the lower register, where she’s most comfortable.
3. sheep crook and black dog (maddy prior w/steeleye span): shepherd song of lost love, great haunting melody, creative song structure.
4. blackwaterside (anne briggs): great song & great singing. briggs, along with shirley collins, were the forerunners of denny & prior.
5. copshawhomesfair (maddy prior): fantastic market song with wonderful evocative words and great 60s style arrangement. this is maddy prior before steeleye (track 21 of “folk songs of olde england, vols. 1 & 2). steeleye did a shortened, rockier version of this on their first album (track 6 of “lark …”), leaving out the great verses with the woman bartering for wages for a position in service. love these verses:
There's lads for the lasses, there's toys for the bairns,
There's jugglers and tumblers and folks with no arms,
There's a ballad-singer here and a fiddler there,
There are nut-men and spice-men at Copshawholme Fair.
There are peddlers and potters and gingerbread stands,
There are peepshows and puff and darts and the green caravans,
There's fruit from all nations exhibited there
With kale plants from Harwich at Copshawholme Fair.
6. burning of auchidoon (maddy prior & june tabor – ‘silly sisters’): the lyrics, which apparently relate to the burning of a scottish castle in the 16th century, mean little to me; i love this for the great, dissonant two-part singing.
7. bring us in good ale (maddy & tim hart): from their summer solstice record, wonderful thing from the 15th century, have to love these lines:
Bring us in no brown bread, for that is made of bran,
Nor bring us in no white bread, for therein is no grain,
Bring us in no eggs, for there are many shells,
But bring us in good ale, and bring us nothing else.
8. matty groves (sandy denny): another great song about class, with a sexual frankness i don’t find in my experience of irish song (“Come home with me, little Matty Groves, come home with me tonight. Come home with me, little Matty Groves, and sleep with me till light.” as to class, the last line says it all: “But bury my lady at the top for she was of noble kin.” great fairport backing, and nice instrumental ending that adds a kick.
9. willie o’winsbury (anne briggs): great trad. song that not enough people have covered, scottish in origin, great melody, and has again, a sexual frankness. doubt these lyrics would ever appear in an irish song:
Cast off, cast off your berry-brown gown,
You stand naked upon the stone,
That I may ken ye by your shape
Whether you be a maiden or none.”
And she's cast off her berry-brown gown,
She stood naked upon the stone.
Her apron was low and her haunches were round,
Her face was pale and wan.
and i love the wonderful closing lines:
He has made her the lady of as much land
As she'll ride in a long summer's day.
the melody for this song was used by richard thompson in his song farewell, farewell. (on fairports liege & lief), beautifully sung by denny.
10. fotheringay (sandy w/fairport): another castle song, this one being the one where mary queen of scots was imprisoned. amazing arrangement, has a magical quality i think. nice words by richard thompson.
11. murder of maria marten (shirley collins w/albion band): english murder ballad. just love the sound of this, quintessentially english to my mind. wiki has this to say about this song:
The Red Barn Murder was a notorious murder committed in Polstead, Suffolk, England, in 1827. A young woman, Maria Marten, was shot dead by her lover, William Corder, the son of the local squire. The two had arranged to meet at the Red Barn, a local landmark, before eloping to Ipswich. Maria was never heard from again. Corder fled the scene and although he sent Marten's family letters claiming she was in good health, her body was later discovered buried in the barn after her stepmother claimed she had dreamt about the murder.
Corder was tracked down in London, where he had married and started a new life. He was brought back to Suffolk, and, after a well-publicised trial, found guilty of murder. He was hanged in Bury St. Edmunds in 1828; a huge crowd witnessed Corder's execution. The story provoked numerous articles in the newspapers, and songs and plays. The village where the crime had taken place became a tourist attraction and the barn was stripped by souvenir hunters. The plays and ballads remained popular throughout the next century and continue to be performed today.
12. banks of the nile (sandy denny): extraordinary performance by denny. this one, like bruton town, grew on me by degrees, to the point where they are my favorite recordings of denny, along with #15 below. my favorite lines:
In the sultry suns of Egypt your rosy cheeks would spoil.
Where the cannons they do rattle, when the bullets they do fly,
And the silver trumpets sound so loud to hide the dismal cries.
13. quiet joys of brotherhood (sandy denny): stunning singing, great atmospheric electric guitar by thompson, words by richard farina. what else is there to say?
14. my johnny was a shoemaker (steeleye span): great two part singing of maddy and gay woods, the latter being with steeleye for the first album. not of maddy’s caliber, but i love them together, and this song is definitely catchy, makes you want to sing.
15. who knows where the time goes? (sandy denny): one of the great ones, penned by sandy. can’t really imagine anyone else singing this.
# Posted on August 31st 2009 by Mariajef
Re: The problem with English music..
Sandy Denny was flawless. Her singing floated ethereally above her material and at the same time encapsulated it. To me she's the greatest of the British revival's female singers, but there were other different but excellent ones. Nic Jones was for me the finest male singer. He could communicate any song with an empathy that seemed entirely natural, in a field where so generally the material got camped up - whether exhilaratingly or gruellingly.
The earlier English revival drew a lot on Scottish ballads (they were singularly dark and spooky), and was probably inspired a lot by the Scottish folk revival of the early Sixties. From an English middle-class suburban environment - probably that of many kids who graduated to folk or folk-rock bands - the UK was then generally seen as one nation that happened to have different accents at each corner: class differences seemed much more significant than national ones like Scottish / Welsh / English. There was plenty of to-ing and fro-ing of English and Scottish artists and material.
# Posted on August 31st 2009 by nicholas
Re: The problem with English music..
Much as I enjoyed Mariajef's posting, his/her comments should only be regarded as relevant to Ireland's English language song tradition. They're certainly not true in terms of the Gaelic tradition.
# Posted on August 31st 2009 by MacCruiskeen
Re: The problem with English music..
I've just found this wonderful site and discussions, after surfing for the dots for Whinham (thanks).
I guess my levels of expectation had been lowered by too many visits to Birmingham City v Aston Vile discussions, but found this debate very enjoyable.
I live in south west France, where we have a session that many non participants reckon to be an Irish session. We play mazurkas, polkas, waltzes, scottisches , bourees as well as jigs and the occasional Irish reel. The guy who only plays his own Ariegeoise music fits in fine, picking it up and busking the bits he's less familiar with, as we all do.
My point is that when the edges are blurred in sessions made up of a diversity of players, it is different to a specifically Irish session when it is genuinely closely focused and grounded, but may not be seen as such by those listening. When the music is used as I prefer it, for dancing, you can see the differences more clearly, and many sessions don't worry about the music's relationship to dance.
Now I'm away to see if the level of ideas might have covered the great Scottish genius Michael Marra - pathetically ignored by other media; even his own website calls him only 'one of Scotlands best songwriters'.
Refer to his song 'If I Was an Englishman' from the wonderful Five EP, and dedicated to Martin Carthy. Apparently at an afterhours get together in the USA, Carthy remarked to MM about the way the Scots/Irish could celebrate their heritage together in a way we English cannot seem to.
(PS - wow, mariajef, where have you been for the past 30 odd years?)
# Posted on September 2nd 2009 by Potter