tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13908442.post753403717836679588..comments2023-09-15T05:23:13.228-07:00Comments on Folk Buddies.: AnnotationsUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger21125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13908442.post-72941560595971195972011-06-06T03:34:46.316-07:002011-06-06T03:34:46.316-07:00I'd guess that "Celtic" may also be ...I'd guess that "Celtic" may also be used as a shorthand for "rather whimsy-ish sounding music sung either in Gaelic or in high-pitched droning English by attractive but slightly consumptive-looking auburn-haired women in long floaty dresses".<br><br>Which can actually be quite nice sometimes. But which is in no danger whatsoever of being called "hip" or "trendy".Phil Mastershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12533451060065715833noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13908442.post-35305515444242406582011-06-06T03:32:23.168-07:002011-06-06T03:32:23.168-07:00This comment has been removed by the author.This comment has been removed by the author.Phil Mastershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12533451060065715833noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13908442.post-43777570706270460892011-06-03T08:22:22.470-07:002011-06-03T08:22:22.470-07:00I had always assumed the lyric 'Afro Celt'...I had always assumed the lyric 'Afro Celt' as a direct refernce to the act Afro Celt Sound System who were a world music/electric dance crossover.<br><br>But the other thing I'd assumed was that it was a mild dig at the way in which 'Celtic' became a category in music shops, reviews and these days is in the 'genre' on section of the mp3 description.<br><br>This seemed to be a marketing ploy designed to sell music that would have been labelled 'folk' to people who would otherwise have been scared to be associated with something so unhip. Folk music has been seen as a bus spotter subculture that would provoke jokes about beards & sweaters from the more fashion concious. By rebranding some of it as Celtic the trendies could enjoy it without having to worry about their image.Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06228167950784719048noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13908442.post-72893155148145351222011-05-26T03:37:16.066-07:002011-05-26T03:37:16.066-07:00” I understand the need for roots, but mine are he...<i>” I understand the need for roots, but mine are here, where everything is tangled together and you draw from whatever nourishes you.”</i><br><br>But of course it’s not just you, even if it might be more obvious in your particular case. I agree with your comments, as I do with Joseph’s (at least his general statements), as I do with Phil Master’s that people want ‘ethnic identities’ which are neat and simple and all boxed up. It’s at times like this, that I tend to cite <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workid=26429" rel="nofollow">Yukinori Yanagi’s ‘Pacific’</a> (currently visible in the Tate Modern), which to me sums up the distinction between what it says on the lid and what actually goes on in the world.<br><br>I wonder, however, if we are not a little at cross-purposes in this debate. Once you acknowledge there is a rich tradition of English folk, it seems to me it would be a shame to stop singing those songs. They shouldn’t be reified or set in stone, or sung to the exclusion of other types of music. They should just be kept in the mix, an ingredient thrown in with other ingredients until it throws up more colours and tastes. I grew up listening to English folk, because my Dad liked it. I also grew up listening to American blues, because my Dad liked <i>that.</i> In an immediate sense those are my musical roots.<br><br>Of course it’s conceivable to argue that Show Of Hands’ perspective on this is regressive rather than progressive. I incline towards disagreement, but I’d have to know more about the band to properly argue the point.<br><br>And of course there is a murky area where celebrating English folk spills over into white English nationalism. Things are not neat, simple or boxed up, as said above. We might debate where the distinction lies. (Personally I would want nothing to do with the flag of the British Empire, while obviously others who post here disagree.) But to suggest celebrating English folk leads <i>inherently</i> into all that Spode stuff would be to agree with Nick Griffin. Which, by and large, we don’t.Gavin Burrowshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16347163260510316959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13908442.post-91919802472149914352011-05-25T21:08:17.260-07:002011-05-25T21:08:17.260-07:00From a distant shore, she comments...Mr. Knightly ...From a distant shore, she comments...<br><br>Mr. Knightly makes me feel a bit anxious. See, I'm an American -- which means that my ancestry is Jewish (from different parts of Europe), my first marriage was to what we here call a WASP, my second is to a gentleman who can walk into Kerry and find a mountain range with his name on it, and the mother of my grandson is a Schmidt, from Germantown, Ohio.<br><br>Also, I don't speak Hebrew. And I'm an Episcopalian, which is C of E only shaken, not stirred.<br><br>On the other hand, the vast bulk of what passes for "popular" music is mind-numbingly boring and basically unsingable, and even unhummable. So I sing the songs my father sang me -- "Greensleeves," and "The Golden Vanity," and "Oft in the Stilly Night," -- many of the Childe ballads, in fact -- and some American songs you may not have heard -- "Stewball," and "Michael, Row the Boat Ashore," and "Lily of the West."<br><br>And quite a bit of the Tolkien songbook.<br><br>What I'm not doing is trying to learn Hebrew or German or Yiddish or Polish or Roumanian or Russian so I can somehow sing "my" folk music. I understand the need for roots, but mine are here, where everything is tangled together and you draw from whatever nourishes you.Lirazelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07740446717034940156noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13908442.post-82425061211333409492011-05-22T13:29:52.288-07:002011-05-22T13:29:52.288-07:00The way I've always thought of the song is not...The way I've always thought of the song is not that it's necessarily against modern English culture, just that it's suggesting there's a way of having an English identity in a fairly inclusive way (ie being English doesn't make you better than anyone else, but it's still ok to be English and to celebrate our own culture just as everyone else is free to celebrate theirs). <br><br>I also don't think it's so much about rejecting modern English culture as appreciating our history... Folk songs are very often about ordinary people (hence the name :) ) - it's a different sort of connection to the past from the 'top-down' way history tends to be remembered. I like hearing songs about people who smashed machines or did naughty things in woods much more than hearing Rule Britannia, I identify more with that sort of Englishness than the arrogance of many patriotic songs (Although I do like Flanders and Swann's contribution to the genre...)<br><br>I don't think that the song is saying that, for instance, English people shouldn't enjoy 'American Pie', just that it's a little sad if every aspect of our cultural knowledge comes from elsewhere... that we feel we must either nationalistically embrace Englishness, complaining about immigrants and asserting our superiority, or else reject it entirely, so that anything with a hint of Englishness is lost to the mists of time.<br><br>I suspect as a folk singer, Knightley is biased towards folk music as an expression of culture, but I don't really see that he is condemning modern culture, just the sense of shame that surrounds Englishness and the English cultural heritage.Helen Louisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07600284354557428351noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13908442.post-85523303661975718382011-05-22T09:39:44.928-07:002011-05-22T09:39:44.928-07:00Before I say anything else, can I say "Thank ...Before I say anything else, can I say "Thank you for a very interesting post, and for taking the trouble to respond to what I wrote"?Andrew Rilstonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16934052271846235431noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13908442.post-70887087307024811652011-05-22T06:48:30.478-07:002011-05-22T06:48:30.478-07:00Knightley's lament is a perfect example of thi...Knightley's lament is a perfect example of this. He writes off everything that actually constitutes contemporary English popular folk culture, the actual lived experience of being English in 2011, and as such he guarantees his own irrelevance. Folk revivals come through fusion with the present, through engagement with the way people actually live now, the music they actually listen to, the way they actually sing and dance; not the way you think they should, or the way that you imagine they once did. A musician contemptuous of the music his audience actually want to hear him play has little to look forward to. When I lived in East London, people – ordinary, working-class people, who almost certainly considered themselves English rather than British – sang in the local pub all the time. They had a karaoke machine. They used it to sing old pop songs. They sang songs like 'American Pie', and everyone drank too much, and ate burgers, and had a splendid time. It's not at all clear to me that it would have been inherently better if they'd been singing Child ballads instead. <br><br>The sacred drumming rituals of ancient West Africa, through which the Ibo and Yoruba would dance their way into ecstatic states and commune with the spirits of their ancestors, still echo through the beat of all of contemporary rap, hip-hop, and R&B; indeed, artists such as Jamelle Monae even specifically refer to their presence within their music, self-consciously employing modern black music as a contemporary way to interact with the ancestral Loa. But it remains a lived tradition, changing with every generation, and thus ensuring its own continuity, as it could never do if it remained imaginatively wedded to the vanished West African cultural world obliterated by British imperialism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Parallels with Batman or Dr Who may be drawn at the reader's leisure.<br><br>I like Show of Hands a great deal, but I'm not sure they have any such forward-looking vision; in fact I get the impression they've moved steadily further away from it over the years. (Their first album included a folk cover of 'First We Take Manhatten'!) Such a retreat is imaginatively comforting, but culturally suicidal. A much better method, I'd suggest, is that employed by P.J. Harvey in her latest, highly critically-acclaimed album, 'Let England Shake': music deeply engaged with English history, English national mythology, and English folk tradition, but also recognisably, urgently, of the present moment, and as such capable of reaching a much wider audience than Knightley's. 'Let England shake,' Harvey's helium-voiced speaker declares, 'Weighted down / By the silent dead!' To respect the dead is piety, but side with the dead against the living is ultimately to partake of their silence, and their sleep, when every exemplar of Englishness worth paying any attention to – John Milton, Gerrard Winstanley, John Wesley, Tom Paine, William Blake – has called us, instead, to a great awakening.Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05387275537008858939noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13908442.post-82648057610454426442011-05-22T06:48:04.502-07:002011-05-22T06:48:04.502-07:00As an individual of mixed Scottish - English - Jew...As an individual of mixed Scottish - English - Jewish descent, who loved English folk music in general – and Show of Hands in particular – deeply as a teenager about twelve years ago, but has since moved on to other things, I'm sufficiently interested by this topic to attempt a response.<br><br>A nation is its people. Morris dancing isn't an important part of Englishness because it's not very important to most of the people who self-identify as English. That could change: kilts used to be marginal to the Scots, as well. But, right now, it's a simple fact that most of what's identified as 'English Folk culture' is not, in truth, part of the day-by-day cultural life of most actual English folk.<br><br>The English do have a national mythology. It's the royal family and Henry the Eighth and Queen Victoria and the World Wars and Churchill and D-Day and the London Blitz and winning the World Cup in 1966. They have a national music that stretches from the Beatles and the Stones up through Punk and Britpop and on into the contemporary Post-Punk Revival. One can object that English national mythology and national music used to be something different, that it used to involve more sea shanties and Morris dances and England Expects Every Man To Do His Duty and whatnot. But times change. Nations enter into different relationships with their own history and cultural heritage. Lily Allen tells me more about what being English means right now than Steve Knightley ever did. (She also, unlike him, sings in a genuine contemporary folk vernacular. Real, living, 21st-century English people don't spend a lot of time talking about tall ships and preachers on islands, but they say things like 'It's not fair, and I fink you're really mean!' all the time.)<br><br>I sympathise with Knightly's plight, with his cultural predicament, as the practitioner of a form of folk culture in which the folk themselves no longer have very much interest. But to turn, as individuals in such situations almost always do, to the dream of a past whose cultural plenitude is imagined to be capable of healing the lacerations of the present is seldom very helpful. That past died for a reason. It's not coming back. The historical conditions that created and maintained it are gone with the wind. We barely even have a navy any more, for God's sake! It may well contain cultural resources very well worth mining out; but they will have to be, as the man said, renewed, transfigured, in another pattern. I retain a lot of fondness for English folk music, and for English folk culture in general, but its current cultural trajectory is not promising. It spends far too much time looking inwards and backwards.<br><br>[Continues]Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05387275537008858939noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13908442.post-56797278922982674802011-05-21T05:26:29.222-07:002011-05-21T05:26:29.222-07:00"The Fortune Cookie man went away months ago....<i>"The Fortune Cookie man went away months ago."</i><br><br>Maybe if I posed as him the Spam Filter would like me better. "You will accidentally swallow a small, greasy piece of paper encased in monosodium glutamate." How's that?<br><br><i>"In fairness to myself, what he sings on the video is "We borrgh to be ashamed before we morrgh."</i><br><br>And who hasn't thought that at one time or the other?Gavin Burrowshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16347163260510316959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13908442.post-11459097494151862882011-05-21T04:33:30.452-07:002011-05-21T04:33:30.452-07:00In fairness to myself, what he sings on the video ...In fairness to myself, what he sings on the video is "We borrgh to be ashamed before we morrgh.Andrew Rilstonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16934052271846235431noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13908442.post-54060343084999788982011-05-21T04:02:28.737-07:002011-05-21T04:02:28.737-07:00Yes. I think it sometimes filters someone out to r...Yes. I think it sometimes filters someone out to relieve the monotony. The Fortune Cookie man went away months ago.Andrew Rilstonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16934052271846235431noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13908442.post-35293622557361547572011-05-21T02:35:18.950-07:002011-05-21T02:35:18.950-07:00I fear I have been spam-filtered again. (I also fe...I fear I have been spam-filtered again. <br><br>(I also fear a collective cry of "Hey, a spam filter with <i>taste!"</i>Gavin Burrowshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16347163260510316959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13908442.post-40722282098557234342011-05-20T10:59:09.067-07:002011-05-20T10:59:09.067-07:00Sam; the Rush gig featured random sausages withou...Sam; the Rush gig featured random sausages without any explanations and is therefore formally exempted from po-facedness (unlike many of the fans...)<br><br>Not a folk fan (possibly more accurate to say have heard very little folk, unless Billy Bragg and Frank Turner count, which I've never been sure about) but I would rather listen to people expressing opinions even if I don't much agree with them than to seventeen verses about parson's pigs.Louise Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15120364497851844081noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13908442.post-8421952645189014772011-05-20T10:25:30.027-07:002011-05-20T10:25:30.027-07:00“The Singer doesn't resent, hate or feel super...<i>“The Singer doesn't resent, hate or feel superior to these other communities: he specifically says that he thinks they are better than us in this regard and wishes that we could learn from them.”<br> <br>“The implication that Celtic people are somehow intrinsically different from Anglo-Saxon people would, if pressed, contradict the main thrust of the song: that the English chose to stop singing for historical and sociological reasons and could choose to start singing again if they wanted to.”</i><br> <br>I quote your second point to show I am not riding over it. However, your first kind of reminds me that we could do with a term for quasi-positive stereotyping. There’s a type of white person who tends to think all black or Asian people have it all sorted, just like there’s a rather type annoying type of male who will insist all women have it all sorted. <br><br>It’s common in folk music but even more common in punk, which tends to be just as white a scene as folk but even more avowedly PC. The Clash sang “black man’s got a lot of problems, but he ain’t scared to throw a brick.” Crass sang (if that’s the word for Crass) “black man’s got his problems and his ways to deal with it, so who do you think you’re fooling with your white liberal shit?” (Yes, they were poets in Crass indeed!)<br> <br>I think these romantic notions about ‘the oppressed’ are terribly convenient if you’re not in that minority group yourself, as it tends to suggest the whole situation is in some way okay. I always want to ask, then how come they’re still oppressed? It’s like the way women often say they don’t like blokes in the street shouting things out about their appearance, and don’t particularly distinguish ‘positive’ from ‘negative’ comments. Either way, it’s a case of why should I get defined by you?<br> <br><i>”I myself have recently come to a place where I value "authenticity" in art above almost any other quality.”</i><br> <br>At great surprise to nobody at all, I side with Chumbawamba. To me any genre of art is like a language. And, like any Guardian-reading type, I do not like the way so many languages are dying. You sometimes hear of an unseemly rush to record the last native speaker of some language or other. Which is better than nothing of course. But the language is then only <i>preserved,</i> not kept alive. Living things change and develop.<br> <br>Moreover, when folkies talk about “preserving the tradition” I always want to ask “which tradition?” Those songs always varied from place to place, from time to time. There’s no single authentic text to file in a library.<br> <br>Incidentally, based on your previous postings and clips, I went to see Show Of Hands last night. Had I read the comments here earlier, I would have been able to inspect their faces for signs of po-ness. I don’t remember anything particularly po, though. Mostly just an enjoyable way to spend an evening. The audience formed a discussion group after 'Roots' was played. (They didn't really.)Gavin Burrowshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16347163260510316959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13908442.post-84057824760126825702011-05-20T04:57:37.082-07:002011-05-20T04:57:37.082-07:00Mandatory nitpick: I'm afraid that Barack Obam...Mandatory nitpick: I'm afraid that Barack Obama <i>does</i> have Celtic blood. Great-great-great-grandfather on mother's side. Ireland. 1850.<br><br>(So the joke about Irish ancestry being mandatory for US presidents still works.)<br><br>But let's face it, people like Obama and Halle Berry are stuck with "ethnic identities" that ignore 50% of their genes because people want this stuff to be simple. It's easier to preserve racist 19th century categories than to deal with complexity.Phil Mastershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12533451060065715833noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13908442.post-52761116007802151842011-05-20T01:20:03.550-07:002011-05-20T01:20:03.550-07:00the po-faced section of English folkI should proba...<i>the po-faced section of English folk</i><br><br>I should probably resist the temptation to say this but... weren't you at a Rush gig the other day?Sam Dodsworthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01534273379447820097noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13908442.post-38344343513864746302011-05-20T00:33:37.258-07:002011-05-20T00:33:37.258-07:00Thanks for checking! Ok, so I'm going to thin...Thanks for checking! Ok, so I'm going to think a bit more about "my flag too and I want it back". <br><br>I thought of another interpretation of "learn to be ashamed before we walk" : the huge marketing effort aimed at children, and how so much marketing is based on "you are worthless, but our fabulous product will make you better". You've got a hilarious West Country accent and you're chubby, but at least you can buy our bling.Rachelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18378781219538060119noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13908442.post-87871709670930639292011-05-19T17:15:53.078-07:002011-05-19T17:15:53.078-07:00Nick: Not sure of the relevance of this comment. P...Nick: Not sure of the relevance of this comment. Provided you tube links and a spotify play list if you were interested. Wouldn't describe them as "po-faced", no, not at all. "Angry folk rock" would be my characterisation. But hey, we don't need to listen to music before judging it, really do we?<br><br>Rachel: You are absolutely right. Gosh. I stand corrected and embarassed. The sleeve notes on "Best of" say "We <i>learn</i> to be ashamed before we walk..." It is "I lost St George <i>in</i> the Union Jack, though.Andrew Rilstonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16934052271846235431noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13908442.post-86408671390823507922011-05-19T14:05:22.924-07:002011-05-19T14:05:22.924-07:00There are two lines where I hear different words t...There are two lines where I hear different words to you, which rather changes the meaning. I haven't got an official set of lyrics (sleeve notes?) to consult, so am willing to defer to your version. However, this is what I've always heard ...<br><br>"And we're <b>taught</b> to be ashamed before we walk<br>of the way we look and the way we talk"<br><br>which I've always thought of as the embarrassed post-Empire Englishness, especially as viewed by Americans. On reading this and your version "And we <b>ought</b> ..." I find another interpretation: perhaps it's about how people growing up with regional accents and "chavvy" dress are delivered a London-middle-class view of how they should speak and look.<br><br><br>"I lost St George <b>and</b> the Union Jack, it's my flag too and I want it back" <br><br>which is just a fairly simple response to racists nicking the use flags. One of the things I remember kindly about the summer of 2002 is that between Jubilee and World Cup, it became acceptable to wear/display the national flags (English and British) without it being assumed you were a BNP member.<br><br>Your interpretation and consequent analysis is much more interesting though.Rachelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18378781219538060119noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13908442.post-52031421848000030982011-05-19T12:04:48.509-07:002011-05-19T12:04:48.509-07:00Never heard them. Assume from your piece that they...Never heard them. Assume from your piece that they're the extreme wing of the po-faced section of English folk and therefore I wouldn't want to.NickPheashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06650111383223877362noreply@blogger.com