In search of the English Folk Song
Apr. 16th, 2026 05:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustIn the run-up to Easter - yes, two weeks ago, and this post has been in progress ever since - Washington Arts Centre hosted a mini folk festival: this preview gives more information than anything else I could find. We attended two events, one of which was only semi-attached to the festival: another we would have gone to, if it hadn't been sold out (an evening with the Davy Lamp Folk Club). Swings and roundabouts.
The Arts Centre devoted its regular 'Heritage Reels' screening (vintage documentary plus talk) to Ken Russell's 'In Search of the English Folk Song' (made for Channel 4 in 1997) - and of course, here it is:
in which Ken Russell, playing a cartoon version of himself, awakes from a dream of a very classical rendition of Brigg Fair, compares it to the original field recording and sets off to discover what English folk song might be in 1997. It's a lot of fun: Russell's character is played for laughs, but the question is taken seriously enough. Various people appear: Ashley Hutchins talks, while loading his car, about when folk music died (when other forms of entertainment became available), Waterson Carthy sit in a churchyard and sing Stars in My Crown, Donovan hitches a lift to Nirvana, June Tabor performs The King of Rome and discusses it afterwards ...
After the screening there was a talk. This was scheduled to be by Sandra Kerr, but she had to cancel, and Eileen Richardson stepped up. I was primed for a discussion of what is folk song? and, indeed, what is folk music?, becaue Russell had barely touched on instrumental music. The talk did start by offering a definition of folk music (she quoted Steve Roud, and I can't find the exact formulation she used, but looking for it I found this interview in which Roud effectively declines to define anything beyond "this is what I study" which seems sensible) but moved on to talking about the songs of Wearside, which is her area of expertise. The audience was small enough that we could have gone into a round-table discussion, if only we'd been sitting at a round table, not in raked cinema seating...
So I hadn't had a chance to exorcise all those thoughts about what is folk song? and, indeed, what is folk music? by the time we returned to the Arts Centre on Good Friday to see Martin Simpson. Which is interesting, because on the one hand Martin Simpson is pretty central to what I think of when I think of folk music, but his sheer virtuosity also challenges what I see as a characteristic, that it's about the material, not the performer. Then again, his virtuosity seems to arise from the ferocity of his commitment to his material; and he is, before everything, a brilliant interpreter. So perhaps it's a circular argument. Aren't they all?
Therr were two support acts. Callum O'Neil is "a teenage musician inspired by Sam Fender," (it says here) and there's nothing wrong with that. If I'd heard him singing one of his introspective songs as a floor spot at a folk club, I wouldn't have thought it was any further out of place than much of what you hear in those circumstances; four songs was more than I really wanted. Laurie Shepherd and the Moonfires may be "an alternative folk trio" (according to booking details for a past gig - I wish people still had websites!) but that wasn't the first description that came to my mind - cool, almost jazzy harmonies, but in a good way. And just when I'd reached the point of "It isn't folk music, but I like it!" she came up with marketing and tick-boxes, which is surely a protest song and therefore legitimately folk.
Martin Simpson himself was in fine form. Also, he is preparing an album revisiting songs from a 50 year career of recording. So there were opportunities to consider a repertoire which runs from Mary Hamilton (which he learned, as we all did, from Joan Baez, and paired with Don't think twice, it's alright) to Down where the drunkards roll.
To complete this survey, on Tuesday the Bears steered us to Treuddyn Village Hall for the Dragon's Breath folk club: a very friendly singaround club, not English but Welsh, though you couldn't have told from the material. Donovan's Colours, "one of my own poems," and a generous admixture of self-penned material, none of which was actively terrible. Also some classical recorder and flute, Stan Rogers' Tiny Fish for Japan (I hadn't met this before, had to look it up and was delighted to learn who it was by), O'Carolan's Sí Bheag, Sí Mhór and the real blast from the past, Roy Harper's Tom Tiddler's Ground. The Bears made me particularly happy by doing Raglan Road. If there is any line you can trace through all of this and say, That's folk music! I am no closer to discerning it. But maybe if you take the mixture as a whole...?
The Arts Centre devoted its regular 'Heritage Reels' screening (vintage documentary plus talk) to Ken Russell's 'In Search of the English Folk Song' (made for Channel 4 in 1997) - and of course, here it is:
in which Ken Russell, playing a cartoon version of himself, awakes from a dream of a very classical rendition of Brigg Fair, compares it to the original field recording and sets off to discover what English folk song might be in 1997. It's a lot of fun: Russell's character is played for laughs, but the question is taken seriously enough. Various people appear: Ashley Hutchins talks, while loading his car, about when folk music died (when other forms of entertainment became available), Waterson Carthy sit in a churchyard and sing Stars in My Crown, Donovan hitches a lift to Nirvana, June Tabor performs The King of Rome and discusses it afterwards ...
After the screening there was a talk. This was scheduled to be by Sandra Kerr, but she had to cancel, and Eileen Richardson stepped up. I was primed for a discussion of what is folk song? and, indeed, what is folk music?, becaue Russell had barely touched on instrumental music. The talk did start by offering a definition of folk music (she quoted Steve Roud, and I can't find the exact formulation she used, but looking for it I found this interview in which Roud effectively declines to define anything beyond "this is what I study" which seems sensible) but moved on to talking about the songs of Wearside, which is her area of expertise. The audience was small enough that we could have gone into a round-table discussion, if only we'd been sitting at a round table, not in raked cinema seating...
So I hadn't had a chance to exorcise all those thoughts about what is folk song? and, indeed, what is folk music? by the time we returned to the Arts Centre on Good Friday to see Martin Simpson. Which is interesting, because on the one hand Martin Simpson is pretty central to what I think of when I think of folk music, but his sheer virtuosity also challenges what I see as a characteristic, that it's about the material, not the performer. Then again, his virtuosity seems to arise from the ferocity of his commitment to his material; and he is, before everything, a brilliant interpreter. So perhaps it's a circular argument. Aren't they all?
Therr were two support acts. Callum O'Neil is "a teenage musician inspired by Sam Fender," (it says here) and there's nothing wrong with that. If I'd heard him singing one of his introspective songs as a floor spot at a folk club, I wouldn't have thought it was any further out of place than much of what you hear in those circumstances; four songs was more than I really wanted. Laurie Shepherd and the Moonfires may be "an alternative folk trio" (according to booking details for a past gig - I wish people still had websites!) but that wasn't the first description that came to my mind - cool, almost jazzy harmonies, but in a good way. And just when I'd reached the point of "It isn't folk music, but I like it!" she came up with marketing and tick-boxes, which is surely a protest song and therefore legitimately folk.
Martin Simpson himself was in fine form. Also, he is preparing an album revisiting songs from a 50 year career of recording. So there were opportunities to consider a repertoire which runs from Mary Hamilton (which he learned, as we all did, from Joan Baez, and paired with Don't think twice, it's alright) to Down where the drunkards roll.
To complete this survey, on Tuesday the Bears steered us to Treuddyn Village Hall for the Dragon's Breath folk club: a very friendly singaround club, not English but Welsh, though you couldn't have told from the material. Donovan's Colours, "one of my own poems," and a generous admixture of self-penned material, none of which was actively terrible. Also some classical recorder and flute, Stan Rogers' Tiny Fish for Japan (I hadn't met this before, had to look it up and was delighted to learn who it was by), O'Carolan's Sí Bheag, Sí Mhór and the real blast from the past, Roy Harper's Tom Tiddler's Ground. The Bears made me particularly happy by doing Raglan Road. If there is any line you can trace through all of this and say, That's folk music! I am no closer to discerning it. But maybe if you take the mixture as a whole...?
