1
"The purpose [of genre is] to organise the reproduction of an ideology." Robert Walser quoted in Charles Hamm. 1995, p.373.
"I'm glad Fairport existed. I'm glad they re-exist and I think in a sense they are a certain yardstick by which modern electrified traditional music is measured. I'm glad the Spinners don't exist any more and Fairport are in a kind of seniority." Richard Thompson to Sarah Coxon: Folk Roots, December, 1988, page 15.
"When I started to learn my instrument all those years ago it was Johnny and the Hurricanes and Bill Black's Combo I longed to emulate, not the Spinners or the Kingston Trio; in the early days of Fairport there was very little folk music." Ashley Hutchings, founder of Fairport Convention, to MGB, October, 1995.
Authenticity is an often-used expression within the British folk revival. It appears to reveal or clarify a particular musical history ['authentically English'; 'authentically original'; 'the authentic sound of the bagpipes']. Authenticity is used as an index or an indicator of a musical past, as an historical meter in the re-establishment of a living dialogue with a tradition. It can suggest an active involvement with history. But this involvement can also imply an affirmation of dogma, unity and coherence.
To those historians who maintain that research ought involve an immersion in the widest possible range of primary sources, notions concerning musical authenticity require great caution. For it becomes quite clear that any search for musical authenticity can involve the creative appropriation of the past. Political evidence rather than musical evidence is often used as an indicator of authenticity [e.g. 'an authentically black soundtrack'; 'the authentic sound of Scotland'] and when this occurs, an historical amnesia can be created by a search for a musical history from a limited amount of possibilities. This is a recipe for musical parochialism rather than a critical regionalism and, for the folk revival, remains very paradoxical. Does not the unity of an emancipatory project such as the folk revival actually call for an acknowledgement of plurality and dispersion rather than an historically authenticated soundtrack? And does not the search for authenticity in traditional music simply deny the possibility for music to exist as a vast argumentative texture through which people construct their own reality? Folk/rock is something of a peculiarity as far as its inclusion in the larger British folk scenario is concerned. It is often tolerated rather than exalted because it fails to be grounded in any algorithmic certainty. It does, however, require investigation, for if one mixes certain aspects of an increasingly multilayered society into a musical genre initially based upon 'authenticity' then the results are of primary significance.
The hybrid of folk/rock can be viewed as both an attempt to overcome revivalist concepts of authentic re-performance ['do it this way, and this way, alone'], and an acknowledgement of the intrinsic value of musical traditions. A great example of dialectic processes of struggle at play, perhaps. For example, Dave Swarbrick formerly of Fairport Convention, speaking in 1995:
It's really a long time ago now, and in some respects I'm back to doing what I used to do then, but that's OK because I choose to, but, and I've said this so many times, it was starting to become a real minority thing. It was a musical closed shop. Now, in the wake of all of the things that were happening then ... how could I sit and watch all of that? You need to find out whether it'll work for you, too.However, for many people interested in traditional music in Britain, Swarbrick's enthusiasm for embracing and experimenting with an amalgam of 'commercial' rock music and 'authentic' folk music was [and remains] anathema. Acoustic and/or unaccompanied performance still evidently means more than what has been contemptuously called the concept of: 'placing a few thousand watts up the jaxi of Matty Groves.
3 Folk signifies the participant within the collective, whereas rock was/is still viewed by many as the individual and exploitative. The following contrasting quotes indicate a real level of disagreement which still exists within the folk movement about the hybrid of folk/rock; firstly from The Living Tradition, July/August, 1994:
An article on folk rock - that bete noire for the purists of the folk world-surely out of place in a magazine like this! Well maybe, but to my ears at least the grafting of our traditional lyrics and tunes onto harder-edged rock roots has produced a hybrid that deserves to be listened to. The genre has always had its critics ... and I find it rather sad that today "folkies" [their label not mine] base their criticisms, in the main, on the noise level rather than the merits or otherwise of the lyrics and tune.But from Taplas, April/May, 1995:
Then, of course came folk/rock, a peculiarly mismatched hybridisation for 95% of the time. And it still is. That's not to say enjoyable things havn't come out of it, but I'll be amazed if much of it lasts for fifty years. It won't get a listen once the nostalgia's worn off.Each of these comments illustrate, in its own way, the historical importance and influence of groups such as Fairport Convention, the rock band largely held responsible for the advent of the folk/rock genre in the United Kingdom. There is a division of opinion concerning the 'authentic validity' of the whole folk/rock subset within the ranks of the British folk movement. For example, while Fairport Convention fragmented the concept of folk in the late-1960s and have subsequently been regarded as dabbling anti-preservationists by some; others also view the group as a high watermark of folk achievement and a folk institution in their own right. We will return to a detailed consideration of Fairport Convention later. First we need to observe that, while this paradox appears to be habitually ignored by many folklorists, it poses at least two substantial questions for popular music historians:
(i). How significant was the synchronic impact of rock upon the notions of folk authenticity?(ii). What have been the diachronic consequences and cultural assimilations following that impact?
Since the folk/rock 'tradition' is in itself open-ended, it is responsive to the diverse assimilative processes that take place in society. Although [say] the Oysterband have continued the Fairport Convention dialectic, their own musical identity and the responses from the folk revival to that identity have become modified in one way or another over the passage of time. Abandonment of the myth of authenticity leads to a proliferation of discursive musical interventions and arguments. As the subsequent dialectics between what constitutes folk and rock music have become more and more open-ended, so the discourse becomes the source of greater diversification and activity. This discursive activity can then draw attention to the source material of older forms of musical tradition in a joyful and unselfconscious way; in a way, perhaps, that forces us to read performance history as disjunctive fragments rather than as a cohesive whole.
The Oysterband's musical development during the late-1980s and early-1990s certainly suggests as much. Their sound became 'harder' once they signed to the folk/rock/indie label Cooking Vinyl in 1986. The 1987 album Wild Blue Yonder was certainly 'edgier' than previous releases and, by 1990 the album Little Rock To Leipzig even contained a very furious country rock version of the Bobby Fuller Four '60s garage 'classic' [and also latterly recorded by the Clash] I Fought The Law; but it also accommodated a very moving unaccompanied lament for the British miners Coal Not Dole.
By 1995 they were moving even further into what some commentators described as 'indie rock' with their album Holy Bandits, something that would have been considered anathema even to the most hardened folk/rocker in the late-1970s and early-1980s [at least until the arrival of former friend of the Sex Pistols, Shane MacGowan and the Pogues]. And yet they continue to play traditional material and draw attention towards their inspirational sources. Their reputation as a folk festival band par excellence has now grown to such a level that they are considered to be amongst the elite of the folk-influenced acts currently performing in the British Isles. An approving 1993 review of the album Deserters described the group as 'The Levellers after a good bath' and now no reviews contain any references to their earlier folk incarnation as Fiddler's Dram and their hit single from December 1979, Day Trip To Bangor. A real legacy of Fairport Convention, one might say. In an interview with Rock 'n' Reel in 1994 John James of the band stated "I've always thought this music, 'roots', 'folk', call it what you like, should stand alongside the hardest rock music."
However, if the Oysterband have enjoyed an osmosis of their sound by folkies, a further question needs to be asked. If rock has been assimilated into an aural mainstream, enough for a large section of folk fans to understand and buy it, where does that leave its status [and the status of its hybrids] as a musical soundtrack amongst 1990s popular music lovers? Despite the Oysterband appearing to be working on the cutting edge of something musical by continuing the folk/indie/rock hybrid [the track Jam Tomorrow, a diatribe against Thatcherism, is a good example of this], are they really musically engaging in anything radical at all? Is any endeavour with this style of rock music now simply an experiment with one piece of aural wallpaper amongst many, a sort of 'hyper-reality'? The dissolution of the myth of authenticity might radicalise the emancipatory possibilities of music, but it also offers a level of cultural assimilation to previously long-standing oppositional soundtracks.
The previous assumptions that the rock 'V' sign really meant an 'up yours' to society has come in for heavy criticism over the past ten years, or so. During the late-1980s Tony Parsons frequently argued that the [once] emancipatory potential of rock had devolved somewhat. Philip Tagg 6 even views this devolution as an 'entrepreneurial egoism' that is difficult to ignore. He claims that rock has been 'elevated' to simple ostentation via its adoption as a soundtrack to such 'conventional' uses as Vauxhall cars [Layla], Lucozade [Iron Maiden] and innumerable tailor-made advertisements such as Bodyform sanitary towels [actually a re-working of a Heart song]. Similarly, 'natural' folk music modes have also found their way onto the advertising soundtrack 'wants list'. More recently, Bono soundalikes have been extolling the virtues of Scotland's tourist board, singing Wild Mountain Thyme [1994]. This 'traditional' list also includes 'probably the most popular band in Scotland' Runrig, whose music has been used to advertise Carlsberg lager from Denmark, whilst actors play cricket on a beach [very Scottish?].
So what is 'alternative, authentic and/or oppositional' about all of that? Tagg even suggests that this devolution is actually now quite logical in that the 'perverted "mega-individual" of rock should be used to perpetuate such double standards'. 7 So perhaps the Oysterband and Runrig [who mix their own Scots tradition with a Marillion-style 'progressive rock' sound] have reached an acceptable folk/rock blend because rock has, in itself, been absorbed into the over-arching monocentric 'hobnobbing' strategies indicative of the Thatcher/Reagan 1980s. If one is constantly hearing either Brian May's Everything We Do is Driven by You, or the 'rock' Gillette advert, then the pedal-enhanced sound of an electric guitar on overdrive eventually becomes little more than one register on an ever-expanding soundscape and thus acceptable at even the Cambridge Folk Festival. Even the Velvet Underground's sado-masochistic Venus In Furs [1967] was used to advertise Dunlop tyres in 1996!
However, there is a degree of discriminating authenticism in these statements and, although acknowledging Tagg's concern, one might equally convincingly cite advertising appropriation as little more than an occasionally interesting recontextualisation of themes [anything else would then suggest that advertisers are trampling on our original dreams and memories]. We are surrounded by myriad fabricated and delegitimized narratives, but this apparent subversion of a so-called truth does not limit the potential of the 'original' [which is, more often than not, a hybrid, in any case]. In fact delegitimation via multifarious usage could be a very positive step towards demystifying the politics surrounding the advent of both rock 'n' roll and the folk revival. Musical attractions via advertising are not always 'motivated' associations, but can involve arbitrary associative qualities. Although origins and authenticity are still taken for granted by many within the folk and rock scenes, musical intersections with the apparent simulacra in modern society occur all of the time, very often causing a re-placement of itself at the perceived root of meaning, or at least opening a window into usage as experience, therefore unveiling inadvertent musical-historical experience in the process. If any musical identity is ambiguous, it can easily avoid internalised agency and motivation. Music remains an open-ended horizon despite being used by so-called inauthentic narratives such as advertising.
There has been a real absence of debate over the patriarchial historicity that has aided and abetted folk's and rock's history. For example, despite much of society's desire to demonise Heavy Metal music, members of the H/M fraternity appear perfectly able to deconstruct discriminatory images for themselves, even if lovers of other genres [ie. folk] cannot. As Robert Walser puts it:
Heavy Metal perpetuates some of the worst images and ideals of patriarchy at the same time that it stands as an example of the kinds of imaginative transformations and rebuttals people produce from within such oppressive systems.Walser suggests that there is an emancipatory quality in heavy metal music that enables lovers of the genre to understand the ontological status of the music as a discourse, and themselves in relation to that discourse. It isn't enough simply to discuss an apparent musical 'truth' [ie. the 'satanic' nature of Judas Priest's rock music]; one needs also to look at the conceptual systems that have positioned it as such. Therefore upon closer investigation, heavy metal is as much a cultural critique as folk music.
9 One might look at successive phases of musical/cultural/artistic representations along Baudrillard's model to discover where perceptions about the 'authentic' and the simulated diverge for lovers of folk music. This would then give us an insight as to why certain musical soundtracks and accompanying representations are regarded as 'fake' and others as 'genuine'. For example, common assumptions concerning images surrounding the mediation and simulation of folk music might be divided into 4 distinct types:
(i). That the musical representation is a reflection of basic reality. This is a good, wholesome image, a natural appearance or sound that represents a truth. The work of, say, Aly Bain might cover this area: 'authentic' Hebridean fiddle-playing of a virtuoso standard without any 'frills'. The artist playing natural music within his natural environment ... in contrast with ...Former Planxty member Bill Whelan's Riverdance has also received similar criticism from the folk movement:(ii). another musical representation which masks and perverts a basic reality. This, according to Baudrillard is then regarded as a base appearance. The music is being transformed and fails to deal with the natural truth. The electrification of folk music might be an appropriate illustration here, where the 'natural' sound of [say] a Fylde guitar, being made from one piece of wood, is far preferable to the distorted sounds from a Fender/Marshall amplification set-up. Or that the 'filtering' processes of tradition have been loosened, leaving many dubious musical items to survive with 'quality' clearly in doubt. Modern recording is now so accessible that many items pass directly from the writers pen to the CD. Is it now too easy to record new work? and whose job is it to pass judgement on the value of the writing?
(iii). There is a more extreme interpretation of simulation when the musical representation masks the entire absence of basic reality. This means that the music 'plays-at' being the natural in a system which is actually designated for other uses; music is artifice disguising itself as original. The aforementioned use of Wild Mountain Thyme in advertising might be an appropriate example, although, because the song [Scottish] is actually advertising Scotland [its national source], this may be an acceptable process. Certainly advertising Danish lager being drunk on an English beach, with cricket wickets embedded into the sand to the sound of Runrig would not be. Nationalism is an important feature of this musical 'masking of reality'.
(iv). The ultimate insult to the aesthetic of the authenticist might be that the musical image bears no relation to any concept of historical 'reality' whatsoever, is pure simulation. This suggests that the musical image does not even warrant inclusion as a reference point even within its own simulated appearance; that it is simply almost non-existent as a piece of traditional music because it is so reliant on the immanence of its own appearance, subsuming any influences whatsoever into a nightmarish scenario; it ultimately bears no relationship to, and fabricates, insults and destroys the sources of the original. A single, categorical line is thus drawn in the sand beyond which this type of representation leaves no concept of 'folk music' whatsoever. This distinction might be the use of modal [ie. 'folk'] musemes within the [often despised] rave culture. A good example of this being the work of the folk-influenced 'group' Mouth Music.
Celtic music is suddenly the bees knees ... Riverdance conversations are obligatory at every chattering class dinner party; and Irish traditional music and dance is just about the coolest thing on the planet right now. Hey, fab, isn't it? Isn't it?The overriding impression here is that when the real is no longer viewed as being 'what it used to be' ["precious"], it is a corrupted simulation. Nostalgia assumes the major significance and the vulnerabilityof the singer/songwriter in singing about personal and contemporary experience can also become subservient to the tradition. Peter Heywood feels that:Hmm ... very possibly not as it happens. Such leaps are too often followed by not so much a fall, as a posse of imposters diluting not only the music but the ideal too, dulling it and damaging it incontrovertibly. There's enough people doing that of their own accord anyway without an artificial injection of commercial appeal to encourage the real waistrels and opportunists. Some of us remember the embarrassing parade of charlatans whocame crawling out of the woodwork in the name of 'protest' music. Even more will recall the barrage of safety-pinned walking spitoons who re-invented themselves as punks in the late '70s. Irish music is too precious, too pure, too wonderful to deserve any truck with the worrying consequences of Riverdance.
... singer/songwriters are often not helping their own cause by performing largely their own songs ... perhaps the best of each writer's work could be elevated by performing it alongside the best of other writer's material or traditional music. Ewan MacColl easily mixed his own songs and traditional songs and in doing so, I feel he highlighted his own work.To the traditionalist quoted above, 'tradition' appears more valuable and rewarding than any other musical text ["the best of" ... etc.]. The drawback with this claim is that it is plainly unreliable: many other musical discourses have great value, but not all of them have value thrust upon them in the same 'authentic' way. By limiting certain works to ideas about 'value' we ignore the fact that that value criticism is part of the institutions which constitute value in the first place. There are indefinite ways of discussing music, not all of them fall within the canonic nature of 'authenticity' and 'value' promulgated during the folk revival.
For example, if one accepts that Baudrillard's contention has a certain force, then one might be drawn to the conclusion that, in a sense, the mediated hybrids of folk and rock are both potentially more hyper-realistic than the tradition of [say] unaccompanied singing, precisely because the latter still attempts to make us believe that what we are hearing reproduces an historical reality! The Carlsberg/Runrig advert, on the other hand, makes it perfectly clear that within its limited time but massive enclosure of space on the TV, it is effectively reproducing a fantastic sound/picture. Advertisments with accompanying generic soundtracks can permit themselves to present their reconstructions as almost masterpieces of falsification, because what are ultimately being offered are goods, and because this world revolves around the ultimate reality of money, then the real 'genuine article' is, ultimately, the merchandise.
While we continue to consider music in advertising as a falsification, we avoid confronting our delusions concerning the musical bona fide. This is coupled with a lack of recognition that such conclusions remain on the inside of a critical discourse; a critical discourse that effectively 'polices' musical value and authenticity. This, of course, could be described as a highly cynical and rather hollow point of view.
But perhaps it should not be totally dismissed, for what become at least observable is the potentially important role that traditional music, or ideas about it, can play in subverting this fantasy land of the advertiser. Folk and folk/rock music could both be vital links to a level of understanding about alternative sounds and modes of performance - not claiming 'preciousness' and 'purity' [Irwin] but rather 'otherness'.
Certainly if advertising is so all-pervading and powerful, then the enlistment of any adverts as potentially powerful folk media [just as the radio was enlisted by Lomax, Lloyd and MacColl in the early-1950s] might actually prove to be of vital importance in keeping folk sounds in touch with the modern world, instead of retaining the rather dubious, politically nostalgic 1950s folk club model of folk dissemination as the 'original' and 'classical' environment. There is no historical obligation imposed upon us as lovers of folk music. The historical period within which the defining of authentic musical goals took place has passed. Folk music does have an advantage in that it still sounds 'other', so when it converges with other soundtracks and forms of media [rather than avoiding them], folk music might just be a musical antidote to the above kind of hyper-real musical soundtracks that conform to the prototypes of the society of the spectacle [Debord, 1968]. If, as Tagg suggests, the 'Bodyform' commercial is a musical reflection of the 'go for it' attitudes of the Reagan/Thatcher axis, perhaps the very periodicity of such a sound is doomed because that periodicity has now passed. There is now a nostalgia for the synthesisers of the 1970s rather than the 'brash' modes of the '80s Korgs and Yamahas and the introduction of modal sounds might even induce different levels of cognition from those used to the familiar patterns utilised for the Thatcher-Rock of TV advertising, or for driving to or shopping at Sainsbury's. Even Niall MacKinnon concludes his work by suggesting as much:
One of the reasons for the extraordinary success of rock music is that its ideological attachment to 'newness' means that it could readily utilise new sound potentialities and use this to restructure musical communication, in essence rock music evolving through and via the development of sound technology. However, just as this 'newness' can be equated with 'that which is modern and fresh', so this contains within it an essential periodicity. The symbolic function of electronic sound as an emblem of modernity has already waned and as it loses this connotation, when the musical meaning of electronic sound does not mean the negation of other forms of musical communication, then I suspect we will see the integration of the potentialities of electronic music-making within other genres. I believe this is true of the folk scene today and, in consequence, we may even see a 'reverse newness'."Reverse newness" is an interesting concept. MacKinnon's enthusiasm for a folk scene operating in terms what he describes as "postmodern novelty" is clearly evident. Perhaps this scenario may happen; however his polemic avoids modern dance music, which distinguishes itself for many people as existing outside of rock's canon. Dance music has, for many, literally superseded rock as an aural and social discourse. More revealing, however, is his final sentence in The British Folk Scene. By circumscribing his own and the folk world's social status and lack of knowledge of modern soundtracks such as dance, he acknowledges that "perhaps the folkies have found their niche as the reluctant bourgeois of contemporary popular culture".
15 If this is the case, while the folk scene continues as a "yuppie leisure pursuit" [Bill Pook, 1995] defined by its consumption rituals rather than its inventiveness, it is far from "doubly interesting" [as MacKinnon submits]. Perhaps a 30 year old folk/rock hybrid is a convenient pseudo-oppositional soundtrack to hide behind.
These authenticity problems may well be a British preoccupation. Senegalese musician, Baaba Maal stated to The South Bank Show, 2nd June, 1996 that he found great excitement attempting to resolve the apparent tensions between technology and Senegalese musical tradition. In addition, he described himself as a musical 'relativist', selecting certain 'funky' rhythms and licks when playing to certain European audiences. The sight of a western audience attempting to genuflect in front of a Senegalese musician because they perceive a genuine musical 'root' when, in actual fact, he is using a specific repertoire for that very audience, [based, in no small measure, upon western sounds] is an irony not lost, I suspect, on the musician himself. Baaba Maal's musical themes are deliberately diluted, but never diminished, through adopting western soundtracks and production methods as and when the occasion arises.
As for direct engagement with advertising, have not rock, blues and folk/country always been successfully used in that context? For example, in the United States, The Martha White Flour Company sponsored Earl Scruggs and Lester Flatt to appear at the Grand Ol' Opry. Flatt and Scruggs' Martha White Theme was used to start and finish the shows sponsored by the flour company and became so popular that it was performed by the duo at New York's Carnegie Hall! The flour company's sponsorship created a demand for bluegrass and intensifed the American nation's interest in 'folk' sounds.
So is advertising a dishonest inversion of a musical 'original'? An advertisement can actually work in a completely independent and free standing way and against the intended grain of meaning [ie. to buy a product]. From personal experience I can vouch that I used to patiently wait for a ‘folkie’ butter commercial to appear on the ITV in order to listen to its soundtrack. At the same time, the BBC were also screening the series Take Three Girls which included what I viewed as a remarkable soundtrack played by the Pentangle. Both the folk-butter advert and the 'soapy' Take Three Girls were undoubtedly my weekly musical highlights for months. I was far less concerned about the content of the blurb or the programme. When I received enough money at Christmas I purchased the Basket of Light by the Pentangle and Fairport Convention's Unhalfbricking [whose vocalist, Sandy Denny, I was told by a colleague at school, replicated the butter advert's vocalist ... not the other way around!], not half a pound of butter. This is a perfect example of the positive effects of bricolage, that being "The re-ordering and re-contextualisation of objects to communicate fresh meanings, within a total system of significances which already includes prior and sedimented meanings attached to the objects used." 16 Student and musician Lester Brown also informed me that:
It was the track All Right Now by Free, being used on a chewing gum advert at the time, that inspired me to go out and buy a cheap second-hand drum kit.The selections that both Lester Brown and I made were in flagrant denial of a predetermined system ['this music goes here, that music goes there']. An abundance of disconnected images surrounded me as I made my selections which were based on the immanence and immediacy of my own experiences, not on a predetermined canon of folk music [which reminded me of school, in any case]. When I came to discover the verities of Fairport Convention, it was together with this liberating freedom away from the folk concepts of inverted high and low cultures. The first song that I ever sang at a folk club was, in fact, Wild Mountain Thyme at Oily Joe's in Liverpool in 1970 [I was 17]. But I had learned my version from the Byrds' album Fifth Dimension, not from any 'authentic' oral tradition.
There is no reason why 'value' should be restricted to the so-called genuine, when that veracity is part of the repetitious violence which recreates it. Why should one soundtrack be musically superior to the other? Why are the works of [say] Bert Jansch and Mick Jagger 'superior' to those of Jack Jones and Andy Williams? Why, indeed, is 'workers culture' superior to Workers Playtime? What has been taken to be the reflective, natural, or unmediated in music can no longer be certain. Copies are forever being placed into the field of activity, challenging the right of the 'centrality of the original', and the presuppositions of the 'authentic' ... that authentic which "... impinges upon popular music in two ways. 'Authentic' folk music is presented as an 'Other', with which popular music can be adversely contrasted." 18 If society truly does use aesthetics in order to control us via our spending patterns then it must also be possible to subvert that act. Finding new meanings in rediscovering and revaluing what is on offer as being cheap and readily available is also possible. Even more satisfying must be the ability to create new aesthetics both from what society has thrown out and from what has previously been regarded as 'tradition'.
The ultimate questions raised by this amazing recording [as important, in its own way, as Sgt. Pepper] are evident: why should it be true that what comes later is less valuable than what comes before? What entitles a sort of centrality in music to be more important than the peripheral? This seminal record does not leave one with the impression that differences ought to be subsumed in a folk category of 'undifferentiation' where a thematic sameness survives. It affirms that difference and contradictions can be allowed space to stand freely within a loose framework which acknowledges both the centre and the divergencies and has the potential to reverse both. All music signifies other music, commenting on other performances and other styles along the way. The key to the appreciation of folk/rock lies in the acknowledgment of how it can draw our attention to other forms through its very resonance. That is the very principle by which Liege And Lief stands. Fairport Convention were [are] a criticism: they captured our attention through extending and elaborating upon previously created themes while, at the same time, illustrating deep significances in the work of both the folk revival and rock music.
Attention was drawn to the responsibilities on the shoulders of the revival: had it succeeded up to that point? had it actually captured our imagination as a nation or posited musicology in a museum? Indeed, Liege and Lief implied that folk music could never be simply an object, but was a cultural negotiation, overworked with the values of differing historical contexts and in need of continual arbitration in order to continue to understand the values on offer. This is surely how folk music can continue to evolve. Bill Whelan:
One of the things in Riverdance, certainly from an Irish perspective, is that people recognised in it music and dance they saw as their own. Although it was being presented in a way that they might necessarily not have been used to, it was something they were quite comfortable to accept as being Irish music.The cultural stratification of the folk movement in the 1960s was challenged by an effort to rethink historical 'authenticity'. Folk/rock was a soundtrack that moved beyond the somewhat mechanistic cause and effect theories of the folk hierarchy. In a 1969 interview in Disc & Music Echo, Simon Nicol, guitarist with Fairport Convention, attempted to explain what they were trying to achieve on Liege And Lief:
When it comes down to folk, it's still a form of music that's very alive, but has always been restricted. The songs exist in libraries and in folk clubs, but the people who play in folk clubs, and the people who go to listen, never advance. It's always been the same people singing the same songs to the same audience. A kind of innate snobbery ... I'm sure the kids are completely unaware of their heritage. I count myself among the kids, because I was reared on music that was always a distillation of American influences. We feel the time is right to bring the music out - getting away from the blues scale and introducing something completely new. All the folk songs have reached a very pure form by now - a kind of sorting the wheat from the chaff. And there are some fantastic songs about. I mean there's nothing like a good murder ballad to get them going!Fittingly, perhaps, even before Liege and Lief was in the shops the group began to fracture and two members left Fairport Convention in November, 1969 [Ashley Hutchings and Sandy Denny] as if to confirm that this group representation in itself was also open to fracture. Denny actually used Fairport Convention as a way out of the folk scene. She went onto form Fotheringay and then record a succession of albums which also place the later work of Mary Black [ex-DeDannan] into a similar important historical context: that of a graduated musical move away from conventional wisdom about tradition. Denny did rejoin the group in 1974 for twelve months before leaving again, tragically dying from an accidental fall in 1978.
But what of these former 'young turks' the Fairports themselves in the 1990s? Wendy Williams, writing on the Fairport Convention concert at the Chester Northgate Arena, 1995 for Chester's Electric Muse was more than a little dismissive:
During the evening it soon became apparent that there were groups of people in the audience who must have followed the group around the country ... middle-aged groupies. They knew all the 'in' jokes and the allusions the group made. They didn't seem to want anything that they didn't know or couldn't handle. The next thing that struck me was that the people actually making their way into the venue were considerably older than me and many of them were arriving in groups, some of whom seemed to know each other. It was a bit strange going in alone but I sat next to a group of nine people who were mid-late 40s and a couple of younger people ... there were people in their teens but they were definitely in the minority.And, as for rock? Steve Hillage:
It's been going for 30 years without any really major change, and it can't change its sound. It is how it is. Like it or not, the house and techno end of things is now where all the radical, progessive and revolutionary ideas are. It's just the way it is. It's unfortunate, but rock music is not the same sort of experimental force it used to be and, as a guitar player, I've found a new forum for that sort of invention.Evidently, nothing is sacred; there are no immutable soundtracks. The report on the Fairports' Jewel In the Crown tour [1995] appears to be suggesting that it was something of a boys' club outing [and boys won't grow up, will they?], the second quote, from an eminent rock musician of the same 'vintage' as Fairport Convention suggests that rock music is an under-achieving and ailing genre. So, are we [as lovers of folk (and) rock music] guilty of making the all-too-easy assumption that one important synchronic moment in music history [ie. the making and releasing of Liege and Lief] should continue to represent an entire genre and epoch? Perhaps the group are based upon not exactly what they actually do anymore, but rather, what they represent. The Guinness Who's Who of Folk Music describes Fairport Convention as:
The unchallenged inventors of British Folk/Rock ... the name ... now represents not so much who is in the band, but what it stands for.The Penguin Encyclopedia of Popular Music agrees: "Fairport's influence was profound, inventing folk rock almost single-handedly, paving the way for ... countless others."
24 Not everybody in the folk movement would agree with these sentiments, however:
They delight in their annual sham swan-song at Cropredy, self indulgently, but publicly not expecting which ex-member will turn up. It's a con. Fairport really do represent some sort of mark on the British folk scene, but a tide mark, not a high water mark. It's middle-aged, clandestine and that's the way they want to keep it.I feel that the final comment is more than a little harsh, given the Fairport's propensity for de-evolution and their bolt-on notion of tradition. The pre-eminence of Fairport Convention as a name [its band members are as fluid as one would expect with new arrivals and imminent departures as common in 1996 as they were in 1970] is dependent upon a distinct fissure and this, as an historical event, is a continual reminder via their very presence. In fact the group's sense of irony is never very far away from its status in the centre of the British folk movement. The annual Fairport reunion at Cropredy is far from a sub-urban 'Tupper Ware' party, after all, and it does celebrate the idea of pleasure in opposition to the somewhat dour affairs at, for example, the 24th International Ballad Conference held in the Faroe Isles in 1994, which David Atkinson reviewed by stating, quite categorically, that "you cannot just treat this stuff as 'entertainment': it demands understanding, and that includes thinking about our involvement with it."
26 Surely every form of music demands understanding, including that which "entertains"!
The group have always celebrated their ability to transcend conventional wisdom and expectations. The 1980 reunion from which the Cropredy festival sprang was such a success that it was decided to keep it regular, possibly realising that their fan base was not at that stage sufficient to keep the group surviving for 12 months of the year, but also in recognition that the 'group' needed to live up to their nuisance value. The Cropredy celebrations duly exceeded all expectations as an event and led to the Fairports not only holding their own very public party, but also having their own marketing, recording and re-issue conduit in Woodworm Records and studios. The example of Fairport Convention, in particular [and folk/rock - or, if one listens to Talitha MacKenzie, folk/techno - in general], displays that all song exists in a polymorphous state. An essential ingredient of popular music is its ability to change. Musical roots indicate where popular styles have been and are most vital when one recontextualises them, rather than holding them up as an untouchable icon.
The Fairports may not be at the cutting edge of popular music any longer, but at least they represent a break with the formalised perceptions of that performing past. As Humphries [1982] has suggested they will happily move from Matty Groves to High School Confidential to Dylan's Country Pie with consummate ease, eclipsing the norm by ostentatiously deviating from it. This leaves the group as not only spokespersons for attacks on musical traditions, but also as ironical advocates of 'becoming' rather than simply pausing at 'being', what Lyotard might describe as "the jubilation which result[s] from the invention of new rules of the game, be it pictoral, artistic, or any other". 27
Perhaps we can even draw a comparison between the Fairports' treatment of folk music and the iconoclastic reactions of late-1970s punk rock. Placing the unpresentable in live performance, denying the 'enlightened' versions of folk via the usual prevailing themes of 'good taste', ignoring the concept of the shared romantic nostalgia of the music. Fairport Convention did not simply 'borrow' Matty Groves. They transformed it, used it rhetorically and figuratively. They were able to show great respect for concepts about 'tradition', but also goad and poke fun at those concepts. They showed both reverence and irreverence towards previously agreed musical conclusions and values.
So, despite their acceptance as a folk icon [in fact in ironic facsimile of it] the present and former members of Fairport Convention still proceed to 'invent' tradition even if, perhaps, the rock music that they use may no longer be at the forefront of popular music development, at least for the time being. The straight-forwardness of their approach to folk/rock has helped to simplify and release apparently fixed relationships between 'authentic' tradition and popular music. Fairport Convention display that music created out of the folk 'legacy' involves conscious artifice. And if, as is the case with this group, the name is venerated so much that any prospect of reunions is hailed as an event, that event [Cropredy] is turned into a party of musical bricolage, hence 'tradition'; surely a pointer to a potentially new musical objectivity. Long-time folkie David Hatfield:
As someone who has been actively involved in the 'folk' scene since 1966 as a performing musician, record retailer and distributor, promoter, festival and gig organiser, tour co-ordinater and fan, I have read every issue of Southern Rag and Folk Roots from cover to cover every month ... I have always felt comfortable with the gradual broadening of taste as it has developed over the years-from the 'Is it a Traditional folk club or a Contemporary folk club?' argument; the gradual acceptance of roots music as a general label for a whole range of musical strands-folk rock, Dylan using electric guitars; bluegrass, Appalachian, Tex-Mex and Cajun all coming to the forefront; the 'World Music' revelation; WOMAD; Country music finally getting a serious audience; the fantastic development of blues and its offshoots-jump jive, pub rock and R&B; 'Rogue Folk' the Boot Hill Foottappers and Pogues and all the young exciting bands that followed; the development of the Folk Festival industry-a platform that has given so many people achance to see so many exciting performers, not only from these islands, but from across the world.And young folk/rock performer, Vera Dalcis:However, I must say there is something quite amazing and somehow 'earthy' and spiritual that is beginning to happen. I can feel the first ripples of a potentially massive revolution in music - where roots in all its guises is being drawn into [whether it likes it or not] a vast global melting-pot of what can only be described as New Music. It has no bounds - it draws on all styles, all instruments, all rhythms, from natural sounds to the bounds of cutting edge technology. The entrances to this Aladdin's Cave are various - it has a lot to do with a 'modal sound' linked with basic tribal rhythms ... Dr Didg; Whirlygig at WOMAD; discovering William Orbit ... Transglobal Underground ... 'the Grid' ... realising that Mouth Music and Capercaille have the same feeling ... I could go on for hours about this, but the point I am trying to make is that aside from a few cursory mentions of the above, FOLK ROOTS somehow doesn't seem to have felt this groundswell, when so many people, young and old, have ... please open your ears to this revolution.
Folk rock is an accessible form that attracts young audiences ... which is what folk music needs to survive. Martin Carthy says he would like to hear young people playing folk music ... we are ... you're not listening.Perhaps the amalgam of folk/rock reveals that the aura of authenticity can be exorcised. What is authentic? Journalist Fintan O'Toole:
Tourism, anyway, makes it very hard to remember what is authentic in the first place. Some years ago I went for a drink in the 'Irish' pub in the basement of the Europa Centre in Berlin. The place was expensively decorated with authentic Irish road signs, shop fronts and post boxes. On a low stage was a trio of musicians playing Irish folk tunes. Two of them were execrable, playing out of tune, and occasionally dancing on the table with gyrations that owed more to Zorba the Greek than the Man of Aran. The third, the banjo player, was terrific ... quiet, serious, with an unmistakable feel for the authentic pulse of the music.I analysed the situation instantly: two German chancers had teamed up with one genuine Irish traditional musician. When they finished playing, I went up to the banjo player to sympathise and let him know that although the burghers of Berlin couldn't tell the difference between his authenticity and the awful antics of his companions, I could. He looked at me with hurt in his eyes. As it turned out, he was Austrian, and the two chancers were from County Roscommon. He loved Irish music very deeply and considered it a great privilege to be allowed to play with two native and authentic masters of the form.
I resolved there and then that if I ever wrote a best seller and made enough money to buy a pub in the West of Ireland, I would hire only Austrians to play Irish traditional music for my American tourists.
Mike Brocken
Article MT025
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