1
"One aspect of the traditional music scene that has been recognised is that it doesn't have a professionally managed infrastructure. Some of the informal amateur structures within the folk scene are at times one of its greatest strengths but at other times one of its weaknesses." Peter Heywood. Editorial: The Living Tradition, Jan/Feb, 1996.
The first part of this study discussed some of the ways in which context and politics effectively 'produced' the folk revival musically, socially and materially. In doing so, it suggested that a 'hidden history' of folk music exists. The second part of the study highlights contemporary contexts, illustrating some of the devices through which the folk revival continues to be represented and sustained and, beginning with a selective view of the industry and media, suggests new directions in which the folksong can move.
Within the British folk music industry, an artistic ['natural'] versus industrial ['mass produced'] dichotomy has been central to a continual struggle for meaning. The pop industry's concern for marketability is viewed by many within the folk scene as being at odds with the folk ideas surrounding authenticity and credibility and, together with the pop industry's marginal status as an industry, is held suspect by folkies as indicating something amiss and untrustworthy [in Chris Sugden's words "reducing [music] to the lowest common denominator in order to suit the mass market" 2 ]. The popular music industry is seen as shamelessly drawing attention to an ephemerality in music; a leisurely withdrawal into the materiality of people's lives. This is at odds with what remains of the 'revolutionary' optimism of the folk revival.
The folk music industry in Britain survives through a network of relatively small, independent businesses [many actually part-time] and the devotion of the enthusiastic amateur. This network includes record companies; distributors; instrument makers, repairers and retailers; festival organisers; promoters; artiste agencies; folk clubs and a periodical-based media system. While all of these business and media strands do tend to compete with each other for musicians, articles and indeed consumers, they also attempt to co-ordinate their activities informally through the social networks that have survived into the 1990s.
The British folk 'industry' is not simply an 'industry' as such, but also a rather dispersed community made up of business associates, friends and fellow enthusiasts. Some parts of this community do attempt to make a living out of the genre [eg.Chris Wade, full-time promoter and organiser of the Beverley Festival], but many others [eg. Rita O'Hare, organiser of the Nantwich Folk & Boat Festival] do not; all of them appear to desire a wider recognition for the music, but not under 'any' terms. There is a general consensus of non-concession, that the music as a visible attestation of a 'legitimate', 'authentic' aesthetic ought not be compromised. In this way, the folk music industry sees its task as representing not only a musical style, but a valuable historical/cultural entity. However, if these ad hoc formulations replicate nearly every other non-mainstream music in the contemporary popular music marketplace why does the folk industry view itself as different? Recent history, as well as ideology, has a part to play in this self-visualisation.
The folk industry and media have both developed something of a cautious and rather protectionist stance, reflecting a slowing down of the folk revival since the early-1980s. By the late-1970s popular music reception had visibly fragmented and many young people turned to cheap forms of technology in order to create music. As punk rock and new wave came to incorporate cheap synthesisers and drum machines, and as technologically-enhanced dance music began to evolve alongside rap and hip-hop, the folk scene failed - perhaps for the first time since the post-war era - to recruit en masse a new generation of followers. In addition, by the early 1980s the major industrial players in the popular music market-place, having momentarily lost ground to a host of independent labels, were forced to re-invent themselves with leaner, younger, more dynamic appendages who were also bent on using technology, rather than 'tradition', to its fullest capacity. Furthermore, many major record companies also began to employ teams of young accountants who saw little future in uncommercial 'acoustic' music, thus systematically removing many major British folk artists from their rosters [Ashley Hutchings, Martin Carthy, John Martyn, Al Stewart ... the list is almost endless].
Record Labels
As a consequence of the growth-contraction economic cycle that had begun to overtake small businessmen and entrepeneurs by the mid-1970s, independent record companies such as Transatlantic, Island, Topic, Leader, Trailer, Ash, Kicking Mule, Village Thing, Peg and Mooncrest [B&C], Criminal, all previously very sympathetic towards acoustic music, began either to mutate, sell-out to a major with little interest in their back catalogues and/or disappear altogether. This resulted in a huge depression in the folk industry [which places music before economics, in any case] leaving, by the mid-1980s, innumerable posthumous and sometimes rather 'tacky' licence deals, with back catalogues being repackaged in a variety of insensitive ways. These deals failed to reimburse, let alone re-sign, any original artistes [eg. Cambra Sound & Logo/Transatlantic, 1977; Castle Communications and B&C during the early-1980s]. The largest profile casualty was Nathan Joseph's Transatlantic label, but Topic also found the going very tough. In both cases contraction put an end to small, but vital, offshoots and licence contracts; for example Transatlantic distributed Prestige and Audio Fidelity [USA] and MK [USSR] in the UK, and had an excellent budget label in Xtra, whereas Leader [and Trailer] had grown out of Topic [Bill Leader] to become an independent, distributed by Transatlantic. Topic subsidiaries Free Reed and Impact were also important tutor labels.
Topic, although never technically ceasing to trade, were forced to radically re-invent themselves. They resurfaced as a good example of how efforts had to be made to co-ordinate and streamline business activity in order to represent folk music to a wider audience. The label managed to survive well via the astute managerial techniques of Tony Engle, an enthusiast who took over from Gerry Sharp following the latter's death in the mid-1970s. Engle learned a great deal about generic independent record distribution from the punk/new wave Rough Trade cartel. 'Direct Distribution' was created by Engle to wholesale folk music distribution in this country and it now handles at least 50% of all UK folk distribution. Direct Distribution are also a clearing house for independent American labels such as Bearcat, Blacktop, Philo and Rounder. Two other like-minded distributors, Pinnacle and ADA handle much of the rest.
Transatlantic, on the other hand, disappeared. They were relaunched by Demon in 1994 but then re-leased to Castle Communications in 1996. Although both high quality reissues and new signings were promised, there is now also a Transatlantic 2 label to further confuse the record-buying public. Demon, however, did intelligently repackage a series of Bert Jansch albums for the first time on CD with good liner notes and the ensuing reviews and publicity led to Jansch obtaining a recording deal [When the Circus Comes to Town, 1995] with Cooking Vinyl. This is another sensitive and fiercely independent label from London, launched in 1986, which has learned a great deal from the activities of rock independents such as Stiff, Chiswick and [latterly] Creation. Cooking Vinyl have been the closest of the independents thus far to a 'folk' hit single with Ancient Beatbox [1989] and Billy Bragg [various releases]. Arguably the biggest folk/rock band of the 1990s, The Oysterband, are signed to Cooking Vinyl and the label also markets a few rock groups with little or no connection with the folk scene, but with an 'indie' or punk tradition and kudos, such as Poison Girls, Pere Ubu and The Wedding Present. This tends to suggest that Cooking Vinyl are fully aware of the capacity for differing genres to realise their own 'traditions', rather than merely accepting the conventional quiescent concept of there being a 'traditional' [ie. 'folk'] music. Direct Distribution also manage Cooking Vinyl's wholesale markets.
Despite the sad loss and repackaging of important folk labels, market-inspired contraction has not been entirely bad news for folk music recording. In fact Cooking Vinyl appear to have the potential to become as important to the folk/rock scene in the 1990s as Island, Topic and Transatlantic were thirty years ago. Recently, Billy Bragg's latest album release on the label, William Bloke, topped the Virgin Megastore Roots 20 and also appeared in their 'mainstream' pop album charts. While the folk industry and media certainly suffered from the industrial contraction of the early-mid 1980s, those that survived learned a great deal about the need for lean-ness, marketing and promotion in the process. David Longly of the Whole Wide World record retailer in Yeovil, and former employee of 1980s/90s casualty Projection, stated in October, 1996:
I cannot agree that involvement in the folk industry [cottage or otherwise] implies that the heart must rule the head. This attitude has led to the downfall of too many independent labels, festivals, promoters and indeed festival merchandisers, whose enthusiasm for their business activity led them to undervalue administrative and financial considerations. For the public to get the best choice, the best value and the best service, folk businesses must become more professional. Professionalism means being on top of your job, controlling costs, good presentation and most importantly establishing long term trust relationships with suppliers and customers. It does not mean a ruthless drive to dominate the market by monopolising product and driving all competition to the wall. Happily the tendency in the folk world is weighted towards co-operation and I detect a community of shared interest and understanding developing which can only be of benefit to the customer.A level of cautious optimism is detectable in Longly's comments, but the traces of idealism still bother some leading music industry executives, leaving them with an impression that folk enterprises are rather retro 'hippie-based' romanticist structures. Wayne Bickerton, former head of the PRS, told me in 1996:
I must say, I still find the folk labels rather inconsequential and idealist. The world has changed radically over the past ten years or so. They need to get real. I'm not suggesting that there's no room for a communal-based folk industry. If it works, it works. But does it work? Just take a look at the casualties. Projection for example; they sank owing loads of cash. If I was a bank manager, I probably wouldn't give them the time of day, to be honest. You have to have solid ideas about commercial potential before you even set foot into the music business. While the folkies still appear to disagree on fundamentals like that, folk record labels will continue to go under, in my opinion.Comments such as this suggest that Bickerton's perceptions of changes 'over the past ten years or so' are informed as much by social and political ideas as by industrial and financial contradistinctions. Nevertheless financial considerations are paramount and any form of music scene in the 1990s requires solid finance and realistic marketing strategies. If some within the folk scene and industry previously considered sales to be something of a certainty or constant, then the monetarism of the 1980s and 1990s certainly brought about a degree of sobering relativism together with a shrinking market. Casual, passing interest dropped away, sales fell dramatically and it was left to the bastions of the folk movement to keep the 'flag flying'. Hence, perhaps, the demise of labels and distributors such as [the aforementioned] Projection and Making Waves during that decade. Those parts of the folk industry that did not reconsider the changing social climate in which they were attempting to sell folk records simply ceased to exist. The survivors such as Fellside and Topic found themselves having to engage in those very market forces and digital technologies that were redefining 'traditional' ideas about music making and recording. All in all, the 1980s and early 1990s were very ambivalent years for many involved in the British folk industry, whether as a business man, festival organiser or even a club member [often one and the same person]. Liverpool 'folkie' Les Parry, involved in a variety of small projects during the 1980s, including the abortive August Records, expressed a sense of confusion about his love of folk music during this time:
I've found myself feeling a little guilty about it all, really. You kept the club going for yourselves, which was a bother, but you loved the 'crack'; also you went to work in the very environment which you felt was somehow attacking the scene [I'm a computer analyst]. You also got accused of keeping it going for your own good, which was right in a way, but is only half of the issue. It all ended up being more than a little confusing, and I left the scene for a while because I had to sort out my ideas. Did I want my head stuck up Ewan MacColl's arse for the rest of my life, or did I want to see how folk music worked in the modern world? It wouldn't have been so bad if it was a genre of music that was simply about having a good time, but you'd been telling yourself for 'donkey's years' that folk was more than that, you know? And then you find yourself coming away from a folk club questioning yourself whether you're a hypocrite. Maybe others didn't, but I did on more than a few occasions, sort of ... 'what am I? some kind of weekend hippie?' ... In the end I still love folk but I treat all performance as I find it. And you've got to make things pay in this day and age, no doubt about it. In a perfect world, folk labels would proliferate, but this is not a ... and hang on, would that be a 'perfect world'? Sometimes I can't imagine anything worse!Recently, two of the larger folk record labels attempted to highlight the problems of the younger travellers and disappearing customs in the country via very commercial compilations.
6 They sold well for a time with donations being made to appropriate charities and organisations. This suggested that while no record company's motives can afford to be anything other than mostly self-seeking in the 1990s, a potential exists to mix commerce and altruism up to a point. The identification of this significant market demand for folk music with a message has been interesting, for the logic of travelling communities' drive for self-determination has little in common with the somewhat 'upwardly mobile paranoia' of Les Parry [above], nor of the kind which, for example, was the original inspiration behind Topic. The leading players in the folk industry may have recognised that single issues campaigns and the travelling communities could be social barometers with market potential. By highlighting these campaigns through folk music, they are recognising potentially multifarious uses for traditional music without the previous a priori assumptions of the hard left. Has the industry recognised a re-galvanising of protest culture perhaps? This could be stimulating, especially when, as this writer would testify, travellers are not always welcome at some of the 'leafier' folk clubs. 7
Folk-based labels have also begun to identify a need to widen the age grouping of their purchasers beyond the 25-50 range which has been their traditional source for many years. This could be an important identification because it is still young people, of whatever social disposition, who set trends. Any record company eventually has to identify that it needs to engage with a youth market, whatever musical genre/s it is purveying. Not only is British society obsessed with 'youth', but consumers between ages ten and twenty-four purchase the largest amount of discs and tapes. There is evidence that the folk music independents are recognising a need to 'follow the money' and to market themselves in a more dynamic way, in order to reach out to the youth market. It is worthy of note, too, that a few of the majors are reconsidering their attitudes towards the genre and signing folk/rock/roots bands such as Capercaillie and the Equation.
As noted above, major recording companies, having paid little attention to folk music during the 'dead-wood shedding' of the 1980s, have more recently begun to acknowledge that the folk scene's independents, just like the independent rock network, are significant breeding grounds for performers with crossover potential. The problem remains, however, that, when performers such as Clannad and Capercaillie [BMG], Runrig [Chrysalis], Altan [Virgin], and more latterly The Equation [WEA] have signed to majors, they still have to face criticism from within the folk clubs that they have 'used' the folk scene as a 'non-league' base from which to scramble out and have duly 'sold out' once this was achieved [Beverley Festival Open Forum, 1995]. When I questioned a few folk club members about the 1995 Big Youth remixes of Miracle of Being by Capercaillie, one Stockport folk club afficianado informed me she was 'insulted', while another from Bollington suggested a 'total sell out'.
Reviews of the re-mixed album also expressed shock and bafflement in equal quantities. Kevin Cooper, writing in The Living Tradition, asked "is there any long-term gain or development to be had in such cross-pollinations?" whilst stating in bewilderment at the end of the review "the wisdom of pursuing the style further is debatable, but for the moment Capercaillie have shown themselves equal to the task." What appears absent within the folk milieu is the perception that the success of artists such as Capercaillie has exposed folk and folk-related music to a wider audience, which, one might argue, was the point of the revival in the first place.
Having shown a degree of willingness to enter into debate about its future role, the independent folk industry in the mid-1990s has begun to prosper in a limited way once again, albeit on the margins of the broader music industry. There has been a notable degree of commercial success for record companies such as Cooking Vinyl [Billy Bragg], Fellside [Jez Lowe], Mrs Casey's [Eliza Carthy & Nancy Kerr], Greentrax [Shooglenifty] and Whirlie [Aly Bain], amongst others. These companies have remained steadfastly independent and yet they have upgraded their media relations with press releases, kits and advertising material in order to stimulate outside interest in folk music. Being 'indie' folk labels, however, they have also continued to operate from the regions, rather than London, so as not to be accused of ignoring the essential grass roots element of the folk aesthetic. For example: Fellside are from Cumbria, whereas Park hail from Oxford. Mrs Casey's are in Aylesbury, Bucks, NMV in Yorkshire, while Lismore trade from Glasgow and Greentrax operate from East Lothian, etc. Success has, indeed, bred success, but this success remains relatively small. Mrs Casey's, for example, have required assistance from the Arts Council. Nevertheless the era of dying and deceased folk music labels appears to be behind us and the notion of trade, with all of its connotations of commerce and profit, has become less of a dirty word in the folk industry of the 1990s.
Small-Time Operators
Alongside the 'larger' folk independents, there are also a vast number of minute companies, often owned by a musician exclusively releasing and distributing cassettes and/or CDs of his or her own recordings. Local folk singer Bob Buckle has his own label which recently [1995] released his latest live CD, recorded at BBC Radio Merseyside, entitled Both Sides of the River. Bob mastered the whole project himself in his own recording studios in Wallasey, on Merseyside. He expects to sell no more than a couple of thousand of these CDs, which will basically recoup his outgoings. Bob told me:
The CD's sold about 600 so far, and I expect to sell-out eventually, but album sales from smaller folk artists are not what they were. The Leesiders recorded for Ash [Zella] in Birmingham, and we shifted thousands and thousands of albums through specialist shops and at at gigs. But the gigs aren't there now and the shops don't tend to specialise much either, and, of course, a CD is expensive. Still, you need to record, just to keep on top of everything, and a live CD for me is a good showcase.Veteran Tapes are another small folk music recording company who release tapes and [now] CDs of 'field work'. Over the past few years John Howson, sole proprietor, has been building up an impressive list of traditional material from his base in Stowmarket in Suffolk. It has taken considerable determination and ingenuity on Howson's part to carry through a commercially-based project surrounding the traditional singing of the Eastern Counties. With support from his wife, Katie, he has played the role of researcher, editor, producer, publisher and marketing manager for his label. For the first six volumes, issued between 1987 and 1992
9, Eastern Arts provided limited financial assistance towards the cost of tape production. Since then Veteran's catalogue has expanded considerably and, while its core remains based around the music of Suffolk, Norfolk and East Anglia, it also includes music from further afield eg: Vic Legg's Cornish Family Songs VT129 and Will Noble's South West Yorkshire Songs VT124. Veteran have also begun to deal with some Irish music now that there is a rush of popularity for Irish sounds in England. John Howson:
I'm from Liverpool originally, and I used to run folk clubs there. I got interested in traditional music and started collecting records of traditional singers-most of whom turned out to be from East Anglia. In the 1970s I fancied a change and started applying for teaching jobs all round the country; one came up in Suffolk, and there was a chance to hear some of the singers I'd got records of ... I didn't know I was going to do it, I just started asking around and it snowballed. To them [the singers of Suffolk], a song is a song as long as it tells a story. Charlie Stringer would sing Two Little Boys which he'd learned from the Rolf Harris record, followed immediately by A Farmer From Cheshire.The output from Veteran Tapes is mostly disregarded by mainstream record retailers. For example, in August, 1996, the Chester Virgin Megastore assistant manager had no knowledge of the label and could not find any catalogue details on his database. "Obviously not very commercial" was his rather puzzled response. However, there is a steady demand for Veteran material. The company is usually well represented at festivals via specialist retailers such as Festival Records from Keighley. It also has a lengthy mail order list and is distributed via Direct Distribution, ADA and Dragon.
Small-time operators have always thus far been regarded as an intrinsic part of the folk revival's history; however, there now appears to be a growing aversion to some homespun product. Many CDs arriving at Folk Roots for review are cut by artistes and bands themselves and a debate has arisen which is ostensibly over musical 'quality', but with the burning issue of accessible and cheap technology as a sub-text. For some, the CD appears to be reducing 'quality'. Ian A Anderson, editor of Folk Roots:
Obviously the main factor at work is the easy availablity at affordable prices of quality home recording equipment and desk-top publishing technology, so anybody with a thousand or so to throw away can now have their own CD manufactured, visually indistinguishable from the REAL THING [my emphasis] ... Meanwhile, people send out bigger and bigger press packs full of even more self-congratulatory crap. There is a decreasing desire, time and patience to read these chunks of recycled rain forest ... We get the most calls from the people putting out the worst records. Their lack of quality control even extends to human interaction.Mark Moss, editor of American folk magazine Sing Out!, printed a similar diatribe in the summer edition of that journal in 1996. However, Henry Smithson of Sounds Good Ltd, CD and cassette manufacturers, stated this in defence:Just because your small circle of friends was polite about some songs which sound vaguely like the rejects at the bottom of Joni Mitchell's waste-bin, just because a bunch of drunks thought it was fun hearing those jigs 'n' reels down the pub, just because you managed to get a half-decent recording of some second-rate hotel band in the third world country where you went on package holiday, and particularly just because you have the money, do you HAVE to put it out on CD?
You're right, there are a whole lot of CDs around these days ... I guess I'm partly to blame as my company is in the business of making CDs and cassettes for bands and artists, a lot of whom operate in the Folk/Roots/World field and doubtless contribute to your vast mountain of review copies ... Why do they do it? Well, because they can - thanks in no small part to companies like mine ... and at the risk of stating the obvious, for a gigging act, selling CDs at the gigs provides a lucrative supplement to the often meagre pittance they get paid for playing ... You're not going to stop people making these CDs and sending them to you, so it's a bit pointless whinging about it.There is obviously a clash of tradition and commerce which Anderson finds difficult to reconcile, but with which Smithson finds few problems as a folk-orientated business-man. Possibly Anderson is displaying his aversion to 'do-it-yourself' technology because it allows a certain level of disruption of the folk hierarchical recording/reviewing system. Certainly, he directs his polemic at digital technology as much as at the alleged 'naffness' of the musical product; Smithson, on the other hand, sees the whole process as democratising. Furthermore, if there is a plethora of rather inferior folk product at the moment, perhaps that is as much due to poor production as poor musical quality, something that individual artistes have to learn as they progress. One cannot help think that the advent of more accessible recording facilities can only be a good thing for folk music. Perhaps we are even witnessing a musical catalyst for another level of growth; recognisable by some, but not by others.
From the start I approached things differently to other makers. This country has a long history of failed manufacturing attempts in guitars, mostly because the makers had an 'arty' approach to the business, and didn't consider that it was necessary to make a profit. Apart from the thing about making musical instruments, I have always been fascinated by the way things are done, and spend a lot of time inventing production methods, so I was able to set up ways of making the guitars that were more accurate and productive than was usual at the time [1973]. Nowadays all of the bigger makers employ all sorts of clever jigs and tools, but at the time, I think Fylde could have shown most of them a few tricks.It was resilience rather than 'tricks' that Roger needed in 1980, when the harsh realities of the fading folk market, coupled with a typically unsecured business ["I was dealing with mates to begin with so you just believed that people would eventually pay you ..."], resulted in the closing of his business, despite desperate attempts to save it. He was soon back:
I started again straight away, with just one friend helping ... A year after F.I.Ltd. closed down we were still making 100 instruments a year as Fylde Guitars. I supplied guitars to Andy Summers, Stewart Copeland and Sting, but a lot of people thought that we had stopped production and I didn't do much to deny it.Fylde are still producing high quality guitars as well as a number of other instruments such as mandolins, while the kudos-building one-off custom orders from the folk market have returned. Despite Roger discovering that he has developed a very painful allergy to some woods, Fylde Guitars can be seen for sale at festivals stands once again. Bucknall's promise to prospective customers to echo both their concerns for a 'natural' product, and for disappearing raw materials, is testing his resourcefulness to the point where 'tradition' is now where he can find it:
Many of the timbers traditionally used in guitar making have become very scarce, and will almost certainly disappear in the next few years. Along with my own allergy problem this is pushing me to find new materials which are renewable, and I've committed myself not to buy any more rosewood or ebony.
Following the arrival of Radio 1 in 1967, however, folk music was perceived as being too specialised for pop listeners. Radio 2 producers also viewed folk as a specialised genre and effectively ceased to broadcast folk music during the day. This specialisation [and thus marginalisation] was contextual, for, by the late-1960s, all popular music was undergoing pigeon-holing of one form or another by so-called experts. Thematic specialisation, and the social codes and conventions attached [e.g. the 'cool'/'uncool' debate - Chris Welch, Melody Maker throughout 1970], overtook folk music, thus 'producing' a specialised context within which folk music was subsequently defined. Yet, from the short-lived Sunday evening In Concert productions on Radio 1 in 1969 [featuring Pentangle, Steeleye Span, Fairport Convention, the Famous Jug Band and Mr Fox, etc.] to the Andy Kershaw broadcasts of a Saturday afternoon in the late-1980s and early-1990s, folk music has remained an extremely popular genre for radio ... if only people can find it. Thematic specialisation, far from keeping the music alive, only succeeded in further marginalisation.
The number of local BBC stations grew in the late-1960s and they tended to have a strong affinity with folk music, however complex regulations surrounding the allocation of needletime meant that folk music was rationed by the mid-1970s. As far as the BBC was concerned, folk music became restricted to a once-per-week slot on both national and regional programming. From the mid-1970s a similar story occurred on the local independent radio network. Almost every independent radio station set up in the 1970s began with a folk music programme, however, by the 1990s, with increasingly tight playlists and pressure from advertisers, folk music was deemed uncommercial and virtually shut out of commercial broadcasting. Bob Buckle was the folk music presenter on Radio City, one of the country's first commercial stations:
It was all rather promising to begin with. I was allowed to produce myself, which was what I wanted ... so I would do a few record reviews, maybe play a bit, and have a guest or two in to play and talk. The programme was popular, the mailbag was always full and it kept the profile of the local scene up quite well. It was on during the week after six, but still we had a good response. One day I walked into the station in Stanley Street only to be told by the station manager that I was to get a producer ... another way of saying the programme was to end ... Advertisers and folk don't mix, I suppose.Local radio stations have become more sport-and-talk orientated during the 1990s, and they have tended to systematically remove any niche music programming at a moment's notice, especially if an important sports story 'breaks'. In March, 1997, Geoff Speed's folk programme for BBC Radio Merseyside was 'dumped' in order to make way for a phone-in following the resignation of Everton Football Club manager, Joe Royle. Ron Davies, traffic and travel broadcaster at the station, informed me that this was "common practice" and that any "minority music sadly takes second place to sports on local BBC radio". Yet, from personal experience of daytime broadcasting on Radio Merseyside, I can vouch that folk music is popular during peak hours. Linda MacDermott and I have played innumerable folk and folk/rock tracks of a Friday afternoon and have received letters and phone calls in support of this variety. After presenting a programme in May 1997 dealing with the US folk revival, one Radio Merseyside listener rang to inform me that she "used to hear this stuff all the time in the old days, now how am I supposed to hear it? It is commercial, but people, even the folkies, think it's a speciality thing. How wrong they are!"
Folk music has been relegated to a degree of radio exile, being [mainly] broadcast from regional stations or at specialised time slots on the Radio 2 network. Very few commercial radio stations display anything more than a passing interest in folk music and deejays seldom have any knowledge of the genre whatsoever. Of those regional folk programmes that have been broadcast, they have usually been presented by the enthusiastic amateur. One even gets the impression that local radio has come to rely on these amateurs, without whom there would be no folk music programmes at all [interview with Ev. Draper, Radio Merseyside, August 1997]. This lack of faith in folk's popularity by those in charge of radio has inevitably induced rather 'Adornian' navel contemplation by presenters. Folk presentations on the radio are often rather serious, protective and conditional to their image of the music: rare, difficult to obtain ['dying-out' even] and catalogue numbers of music releases are read-out slowly and meaningfully. Thus, committed broadcasters are hoist with their own petard, for the nature of folk broadcasting has often been rather dry, over-solemn and aimed at an [often mythical] older listener.
In the summer of 1996, however, the BBC changed the controller of Radio 2, with the new manager Jim Moir taking over from Frances Line. Line had long associations with folk music, having been the producer of Folk On Friday in the 1960s. She was partly responsible for the establishment of the specialist music department at BBC Pebble Mill in Birmingham. This had both positive and negative results; positive in that folk was at least considered as part of the 'canon' of music associated with the BBC; but negative, in that by describing folk music as a specialist genre, the BBC effectively marginalised the music, promoting it for the connoisseur. Jim Lloyd's Folk On 2 is a product of Pebble Mill, as are a few 'specials' and short series about traditional music, usually broadcast at 'ungodly hours'.
Moir's background is one of TV light entertainment and concern has been expressed in the folk press that his ideas about 'star quality' and 'public recognition' may have detrimental effects upon further folk music broadcasting. The folk media tend to disapprove of anybody moving in to control folk music broadcasting without an obviously 'committed' background in the genre, and this is understandable. However, the current climate within the BBC has also been one of realising potentially popular external markets, whereby departments have been 'encouraged' to support its public service finance by generating a trading revenue, and Moir is also an advocate of this. One by-product of this market economy has been that Folk On 2 has been able to release material from its archives on CD. Although, commercially-speaking, there is a potential danger in this [what may have been an exciting live concert when heard on the air can turn into an embarrassment when released in a more durable format], nevertheless this less specialised and more commercial approach might attract a wider listening public demanding more folk music on the airwaves.
Commitment of another nature, i.e. raising finance, may prove to be more productive for folk music, than commitment towards a selective connoisseurship of the genre. It certainly shows up on the balance sheets at the end of a financial year. The BBC has already realised the commercial value of some of these archives by licencing them to Cooking Vinyl [eg. Dave Swarbrick and Fairport Convention, MASH CD001; Ewan MacColl & Peggy Seeger, MASH CD002].
The BBC also promotes the Radio 2 Young Tradition Awards but this, too, has created as many questions as answers about whether the award has an adverse effect upon developing an interest in folk music from a younger listener. The most obvious point remains that although Radio 2 is currently the most popular BBC national radio station, the vast majority of its listeners are over-30s. Also, the question of just what constitutes 'tradition' in this multi-cultural society has been raised by Folk Roots editor Ian A Anderson:
As far as I know the entry rules have never specified what tradition the competitors should come from, but the finalists are always white anglo/celts. There has never been any sign of young musicians from the multiplicity of other cultural traditions in the UK today, and no clue apparently given that they would qualify, be welcome or be fairly judged. Of course I don't know what efforts the BBC makes to remedy this, but they aren't working.The BBC recently attempted to re-locate Andy Kershaw's 'roots' programme on Radio 1 to what is commonly described in broadcasting as a 'graveyard slot'.
In October, 1996, Kershaw's programme was moved to midnight-2am, Sunday-Monday. This decision was made on the assumption that his programme was of a limited, 'specialist' nature. However the judgment was subsequently reversed owing to complaints from the general public, who drew the BBC's attention to the fact that, far from being a 'specialist', Kershaw presented a wide variety of popular music genres from all over the world. It appears that the consanguinity of folk and popular music [which this study has identified] can also remain somewhat unnoticed by decision-makers from the popular side of the fence. Ian Anderson comments that:
We know the BBC's game. It's a standard move carried out by tin-pot programme controllers on every station in the country. If you've got a show that's popular but you don't understand it, move it to a graveyard spot, then use the drop in audience figures to justify axing it completely.16
But one is also tempted to remind him that perhaps his solemn pride and defensive attitude towards his beloved traditional music simply plays into the hands of "tin-pot programme controllers". Kershaw's [and, to a lesser extent, Ralph McTell's] broadcasts celebrate undiminished global popularity, while Jim Lloyd and Ian Anderson appear to demand thematic specialisation. Which will aid folk's survival?
Journals - Cultural Capital?
There are a number of folk/roots publications available in 1997, however to declare that they are all on the 'open' market would be a little misleading. They range from fanzine-like publications, processed on computers and/or photocopiers [e.g. North West Buzz; Shire Folk], to the long established EFDSS publications English Dance & Song and Folk Music Journal, to top of the range product such as Folk Roots which is very glossy, highly professional and even gives away a couple of free CDs every year. Folk Roots can occasionally be purchased at W.H.Smith but many of the others are more difficult to find.
In between North West Buzz and Folk Roots there exists a pyramid structure of magazines with decidedly regional perspectives, and other magazines that are committed to the music in and of one of the countries making up the United Kingdom. An example of the former is a glossy black and white publication, self-financing but loosely issued under the auspices of the North West Federation of Folk Clubs, entitled Folk North West. This magazine can be purchased via subscription, at local folk clubs, or at festivals and the occasional specialist shop and is produced on a voluntary basis three to four times each year. It is an important contact point for local musicians as well as a mouthpiece for the Federation [although it does claim that the views expressed in the magazine are not necessarily those of the Federation] and also reviews albums and performances. Perhaps the most important feature in the magazine is the 'Youthful Perspective' page, usually written by young fiddle player Jenny Shotliff who is working extremely hard in order to establish her Youthquake project as a viable vehicle for bringing young musicians into folk music. Youthquake also issues a newsletter 'for young folkies', edited by Jenny's sometime playing and teaching partner Ben Broughton from Chester. His first editorial delivered the following challenge to the folk music establishment:
It doesn't matter if you call it Roots music, Traditional or Acoustic music. It doesn't matter if you play it straight or mix it with rock ... or jazz, funk or blues. Folk music is music FOR the folk, it is about everyone having a good time ... and that's what we certainly intend to do.Taplas, the folk magazine for Wales, is published from Cardiff but covers the whole of Wales. It has an editorial board and is supported by the Arts Council of Wales. It publishes six issues per year and has now passed its fifteenth birthday milestone. Until the early-1990s Taplas printed at least a page of information in the Welsh language, but has now dropped that policy. There are still a number of Welsh language advertisements, however. While mainly dealing with [inter]national folk music issues it still carries a strong Welsh perspective and is regarded as an important part of the British folk establishment network. Philip Freeman is part of the editorial committee and his views are regarded as rather reactionary by some readers, who use the letters page to agree/disagree. Freeman is known throughout Welsh folk circles as a writer who "inspires debate!" [editor Keith Hudson] ... This is something of an understatement [!]. Taplas is typeset and does not incorporate colour.
It is a part-time operation that relies upon its subscription list together with a network of venues, clubs and festivals. It can be seen for sale in shops in South and Mid-Wales from time to time. In my own research, I have never been able to purchase the magazine outside of Wales, although it claims to be 'widely distributed' and available in Bristol, Cleckheaton, Oswestry and Shrewsbury. Like Folk North West, the magazine has a number of review pages, and relies on voluntary contributions. Taplas has altered neither views nor typeface in the fifteeen years it has been in production.
The EFDSS has always published a journal of its findings. The Journal of the Folk Song Society began in 1899 in order to publish collected songs. This continued until 1931 when it was re-named The Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society for the following year. The Journal was relaunched in 1965 as the Folk Music Journal and has continued relatively unabated up to the present day. During the mid-1980s the Society almost ceased to operate owing to dwindling numbers and financial mismanagement. The storm was weathered, however, and the Journal continued to publish songs, articles and transcriptions of papers of interest to the Society and its members. It is only available to members of the Society as part of their annual subscriptions. The EFDSS also publishes a quarterly periodical entitled English Dance and Song with runs of about 4,500-5,000. This is also [officially] only available to members, however it has been know to circulate at folk clubs, festivals and in the folk shop at Cecil Sharp House. English Dance and Song began in 1936. Both publications have an academic slant and for many years continued to represent the rather cloistered opinions of the EFDSS hierarchy; however more recently they have attempted to deal with the changing nature of folk music definition and I would recommend them for this.
There are two relatively new journals that have a slightly different perspective on the scene and, like the latter editions emanating from the EFDSS, are attempting to be a little more radical than, say, Folk Roots or Taplas. Firstly there is The Living Tradition, a Scottish magazine published in Kilmarnock, with a distinctly Scottish perspective but an interest in all folk music in the British Isles. It is semi-glossy, and offers the occasional free CD for subscribers. It began in 1993 and has contributed to the growing debate about whether Britain's tradition requires a certain level of redefinition. The very title of the magazine suggests debate and editor Peter Heywood certainly encourages discussion in his editorials. The Living Tradition is also available on the Internet.
This concern for tradition is echoed by another semi-glossy magazine which has only recently [1995] begun to trade, reflecting the great interest current in all things Irish, that being Irish Music. This is published from Bray in County Wicklow and is still rather difficult to purchase in England. Specialist centres such as ECTARC in Llangollen keep a small but regular stock, however. Both The Living Tradition and Irish Music have recently embraced an important debate about the roots of traditional music in the British Isles. In the spring of 1995, a seven part documentary series ran on RTE [Radio Telefis Eireann] entitled The River of Sound. From the minute the series ended it began to provoke outcry from staunch traditionalists both in Ireland and the United Kingdom, while simultaneously invoking praise from musicians, traditional or otherwise, from all over the British Isles. This fall-out then led to the highly charged 'Crossroads Conference' in Dublin which both The Living Tradition and Irish Music reported and analysed.
One more magazine entered the fray in the 1990s, entitled Rock 'n' Reel. This journal is published in Cleator Moor in the North of England and has struggled against considerable financial adversity to build up a small but devoted following mainly, once again, via a subscription list, although there are always volunteer sellers at most of the larger festivals such as Cambridge, Fylde, Beverley and Sidmouth. Rock 'n' Reel is distributed by ADA Distribution. In addition to being an outlet for all of the folk labels currently on sale in Britain, ADA has been directly involved with the Yorkshire-based label No Master's Voice, for which John Tams and Lal Waterson have both recorded. Rock 'n' Reel's first few issues were in an NME/Melody Maker format but it has now adopted a tabloid arrangement. It features articles on new country, blues and a little indie rock as well as folk and roots music, alongside masses of reviews. Visually, Rock 'n' Reel resembles the popular music weeklies and its style of writing by younger journalists is one which is more commonly found in the NME, however it seldom debates folk-related issues, and, except for its editor/mentor Sean McGhee, is forced to rely upon amateur copy. At the Cambridge Folk Festival in 1994 I witnessed the enthusiastic but unfortunate vendors unable to sell Rock 'n' Reel in its larger format. One trader informed me that he suspected that the "largely middle-class punters maybe preferred something that was closer to Cosmopolitan!". Hence the change in format, perhaps, and also the relative success of 'Cosmopolitan lookalike' Folk Roots.
Despite its highly professional 'visage' and its small full-time staff, Folk Roots still relies upon the enthusiastic folkie for copy. It remains a rather glorified gig guide, devoting several of its pages to forthcoming events listings and club news. Most of this information is compiled by news editor John Crosby, who is reliant upon club and festival officials and press officer handouts. Published by Southern Rag Limited [the magazine's former name] Folk Roots receives some of its information/correspondence on e-mail and has an interesting web-site which is regularly updated. It is a professional and tightly run organisation which attempts to maximise its potential as the most glamourous of all of the magazines devoted to folk music in this country. It relies on the few remaining freelance journalists writing about folk such as Colin Irwin, Dave Peabody, Paul Fisher and Andy Kershaw. There is, as with the other magazines, a great amount of space given over to disc and tape reviews - so much, in fact, that a subsidiary review page mentions disc releases in brief detail. Reviewers appear happy to receive free CDs [which they can 'move on'] as a form of remuneration. 18 Folk Roots is a glossy mag and its major overheads appear to be expended upon production costs rather than copy.
Folk Roots - A Hidebound Medium?
As one would imagine for the magazine with the highest profile and the largest sales Folk Roots discusses folk very meticulously and rather evangelically. In addition it also delves into what it describes as 'roots' music and the name of the magazine was especially changed to encompass the growing market in this country for world music in the late 1980s. Classification remains a journalistic nightmare, of course, and the task that Folk Roots sets itself is not one to be envied. It attempts to discuss a wide range of world traditions, all the way through from [say] Byzantine music to [say] Salegy dance music from Madagascar. But if one was to search for a debate about the very nature of concepts about 'roots' music on the European stage [indeed the very title of this magazine!] then one would have some difficulty, for the journal seldom involves itself in any form of convincing dialectic. There is a rather vague assumption that its readership understands the equally vague definitions, and as long as the dreaded popular music does not infiltrate the output of the magazine [what is 'popular' in, say, Senegal appears to be 'roots' in the UK], no questions are asked.
Folk Roots is both idealistic and honourable in its aims to carry forward a British tradition of folk music in print. It perhaps presumes to 'even up' the balance of all music appreciation, by highlighting other musics as well as the neglected and declining traditions of our own. However, while the magazine exists to thwart our expectations as to what should be counted as 'quality', the fact that it is mounted as an object for contemplation from within the British folk revival only succeeds in containing and smothering any encounter one might have with it. Folk Roots represents the folk revivalists growing up and attempting to extend their horizons, but only according to their own matrix. As with Lloyd's Folk Song in England, our sensibilities are supposed to be generally elevated and improved by reading Folk Roots.
No matter how much the magazine tries to represent a longing for a society without classes and without what it views as the worst aspects of the music industry to boot, Folk Roots constantly runs the risk of performing a considerable disservice to the various nations' musics that it purports to encourage. It does this via a continuance of bourgeois 'coffee table' generalisations. There is an admirable interest in 'the people' as a mass conception, in all that belongs to them and all that they have created, but, by presenting apparently 'hidden soundtracks' such as Malian Baramba [No.162], Folk Roots runs the risk of providing its readers with the exotic and the curious, rather than global variations on the popular. For example, in March, 1994, Andy Kershaw, writing in Folk Roots no.128 described his entry into a town in Guinea like a scene from Apocalypse Now. While seldom attempting to disembody what it sees as musical integrative signals, Folk Roots suggests a core of natural, unspoilt musical truth, a distinction between 'real' music and the 'artificial' products of the manipulator. This distinction appears to define the rather vague term ‘roots’ music, however, the very use of the word ‘roots’ within the context of a British folk magazine still suggests that folk is of the first world, whereas roots belongs to the second and third. Folk Roots is, perhaps, a good example of a cultural product compelled to authenticate its own judgemental relevance. Despite being a product, Folk Roots has an image of itself as a judge of aesthetic pleasure and collective nostalgia without ever considering the limits of its own image of global difference.
A degree of musical absolutism may have been challenged by Folk Roots having embraced 'roots' music, but this location still runs the risk of viewing foreign forms as novelties. Roots music is written about as if it is the product of unenlightened natives who continue to interpret reality through traditional forms. It is a term constructed out of an imperialistic past and an elitist present.
Although Folk Roots does not make claims for mass popularity, it presents folk music in order to appeal to a 'coffee table' buying public and is an anodyne, imbibed with the middle-class values and social mores of its clientele. Folk music soundtracks are then mediated in terms of what they perceive their audience demographics to be. This takes account of age, class, ethnic and gender locations as well as financial stability, but fails to debate both its own global perception from that demographic standpoint as well as its own sense of good taste. In describing this form of literature as 'cultural capital' Shuker 19 quotes Bourdieu accurately, here, that:
... nothing more clearly affirms one's class, nothing more infallibly classifies, than tastes in music".Certainly, if Folk Roots is anything to go by, it would appear that nothing more clearly affirms class than the media’s interpretation of one's taste in music!
With the notable exceptions of Irish Music and The Living Tradition, one could hardly call the majority of the folk press a critical forum. There are a few other magazines on the folk circuit and many, many more have come and gone over the years 20 but, by and large, enthusiastic amateurism is most evident in the writings of the folk media. Bad album reviews are a rarity. Perhaps criticising an album by an artist attempting to eke-out a living, and imminently expected in your own [perhaps declining] club, remains politically incorrect. Also, while reviews remain volunteered, they are usually favourable [and demo CDs supplied free of charge]. The language used in reviews of festivals and club nights is invariably 'uplifting'.
Towards a Different Future? - The Folk Alliance
Like many other contemporary cultural forms with strong historical links, folk music represents more than just a musical style. Folk music is a point of identification, an expression of something 'authentic', and a source of affective alliances among fans, business partners and professional musicians. Indeed, many professionals could earn far more money in other genres, or in non-musical careers. A common truism on the folk circuit is that the only person to have made a million pounds singing folk music was the one who began with two. There is a long-standing perception amongst the industry and media that nobody will ever become rich selling folk music. But why not? Perhaps because there is also the disturbing perception that nobody wishes to become rich via selling folk music.
Tensions are evident throughout the industry because both the media and business people are concerned with the music as a cultural entity rather than as a 'mere' commodity. Many have felt that folk music cannot exist as both. Ian Croft [Folk Roots 157] recently asked how the folk revival is expected to succeed when growth leads to the destabilisation of the reasons for being involved in the first place. Peter Heywood, editor of The Living Tradition, also questions whether a traditional music agency, if established, would seek to serve the folk scene or control it. Would any organisational structure empower those for whom it claims to act, or frustrate their efforts?
Ultimately, it appears that while folk music is understood as being an artistic and specifically traditional music genre, it has to remain 'organic', or at least protected by a structure that will not sell out. However, are these simply 'folk' questions? I have heard, on many occasions, the Merseyside Music Industry Association [MMIA] discuss exactly the same issues, and there are no representatives from the folk movement on that body!
Therefore, the debate over what actually constitutes a 'sell out' remains blurred. The folk journals tend to deliver up a judgement over something they consider to be 'other than tradition' in a rather glib and unproductive manner. Folk music continues to be disassociated and isolated from genres such as rock and disco, without any in-depth analysis about the capacity for these other genres to develop their own traditions. Cultural capital decrees that generic mediation takes place only within chosen fields. In other words, a folk journal does not discuss the roots of, say, hip-hop, because it is not perceived as a musical activity that is traditional. Even if value might have existed [say in Bob Dylan or the Beatles] it is judged to have eroded, turned into a commodity, been rendered inauthentic and irrelevant.
The folk industry and media have thus far defined themselves via what they perceive themselves not to be. Many folkies have seen the industry's goals as being a provision of a non-intrusive, yet commercial structure through which folk music can be successfully produced and distributed without despoiling the innate integrity of the music. However, if no music genre can ever be fully independent from the economic pressures of a market economy, this stance has engendered an important contradiction: the folk industry and media attempting to function as relatively non-commercial businesses, marketing and discussing a potentially commercial music, while protecting it from the influence of a commercial structure which would broaden its appeal. This, however, may be about to change.
Recently, rather than attempting to deal with what has previously been considered two 'opposing' and mutually exclusive terms [commerce and tradition], the independent folk recording companies have begun to foster alliances in order to further the potential of folk music within a larger industry. This is not being seen as a 'sell out', but rather an attempt to balance commerce and tradition and to promote ideas about folk music as both traditional and commercial. Previously, ideas about folk trade organisations fell on deaf ears because any call for unity via trade structures and practices was considered a departure from the non-commercial organic trust and harmony espoused by the non-materialistic ideals of the revival. The commerce of 'lawyers and advertisers', of 'promoters and agents' was seen as conflicting with the 'tradition' of folk clubs, amateur musicians and the politics of the 1950s-left. However, if that folk revival ideology merely succeeded in systematically cutting the music off from reaching out to those people who liked, but didn't know where to find it, then a need now exists for a fostering of business alliances, not just those embodying visionary speculation. Surely, as long as folk music remains hard to find on the radio, on stage and in the record shops, only the specialised hardcore, willing to search out product, will be served with any degree of satisfaction.
In February, 1996, about fifty people from all over Scotland, England and Ireland gathered for a weekend of discussion at Auchincruive College, near Ayr. The purpose was to discuss the possibilities of setting up a version of the North Amercian Folk Alliance and to canvass opinions on this matter. The idea for an alliance had arisen after the realisation that the folk industry needed a co-ordinating body, and that the American model might be a good example of an organisation that, while not directly interfering with its members' business, nevertheless assisted in helping members co-ordinate their business activities without over-arching beaurocratic intervention. A name for this group: The Traditional Arts Alliance was chosen and the steering group was given specific tasks:
(i). To organise a first conference [November, 1997].A conference attendee was to later remark that:(ii). To target as delegates key figures in the folk scene and music business, to include organisers and organisations, the media and retailers as well as generally interested parties.
(iii). To draw up a proposal for core values for an on-going Alliance organisation to be submitted for approval at the first conference.
Facilitating a stronger alliance among people actually attempting to make a living out of folk music [not simply musicians] would greatly assist identification of common goals and also, in the process, highlight ways of solving common problems and correcting common misconceptions".A new period for the folk music industry [and, therefore, revival] might be dawning; one that comes to be distinguished by a reconcilliation of adherents to a business/musical life under conditions of venture; an appreciation that folk music exists in the presence of an unlimited amount of equally 'valid' competing forms; a realisation that the folk movement is incapable of discovering new audiences when that potential audience have no knowledge of the music's existence. At last there appears to be an acknowledgement that the folk revival might even be able to learn something from the popular, suggesting an acknowledgement that previous claims for musical authenticity were grounded in an historically-shaped convention.
... I have a vision. I think that we could work towards a folk equivalent of real ale. Real ale aims to be an honest, natural product, not altered to suit some idea of modern tastes ... promoted for its own intrinsic qualities ... The Campaign for Real Folk - I'll drink to that.Like many folkies, Sugden still assumes that technology and trade have historically been external influences upon music; that music has somehow 'struggled' against these 'heinous' authorities. Yet, to divide music communication from technology, production and finance, even in a pre-industrial society, is as fallacious as separating 'real' from 'manufactured' ale. Keith Negus:
Musical composition and performance have always depended on the instrument technologies available; whether European classical music, orally transmitted folk music, music of different regions of the African continent or contemporary popular music with its complex industrial networks of production and distribution. The character, conventions and reception of a particular music have been shaped by the machines of sound creation.From this albeit limited overview of the British folk industry and media, one can see that it has been largely made up of small independent businesses of varying size and importance that are in some cases motivated as much by their owners' and employees' devotion to the music than by either the hope of financial gain or the need to theorise about the origins of the concepts behind words such as 'tradition' and 'authenticity'. The divisions among fans, business people, and professional musicians are blurred and a record company owner [say, Tony Engle of Topic] and a festival producer [Chris Wade, Beverley] remain fans; a musician or a member of a musician's family often runs a festival or books tours [Rita O'Hare, Nantwich], and a 'fan' is often a practicing musician who might play a little, or a lot, depending on personal circumstances. This indistinct activity has corresponded to predetermined notions of folk music as 'authentic' and has appeared to conflict with the nature of folk music as a commercial enterprise. However, whether it is actually unique in comparison with other popular music genres is, indeed, open to serious debate. The folk music industry has begun to question whether any folk business can survive and maintain its identity as the former without engaging professionally within a market economy for music that is dependent upon the latter, and the creation of the Folk Alliance in 1997 may go some way towards answering this dichotomy, by at least ensuring a credible stance in its reverence for tradition via a decent financial return for both the industry and the musician.
The industry has also been influenced in its decision to come together by commercial activities on the periphery of the folk scene. There has been a growth of commercial venues across the country offering miscellaneous music evenings throughout the week. The only 'music policy' in these venues is the maintainance of a specific genre each evening. Thus a folk evening can occur on a Wednesday whereas a soul or dance promotion can happen on a Friday, and so on. These venues have attracted a great deal of attention from younger audiences, many of whom would not be interested in visiting a folk club, owing to its methods of presentation and performance. The venues are run as commercial going-concerns where money has to be made and so the evidence for the popularity of folk/roots evenings lies in their continued existence.
Lessons are being learned, here, one suspects, in marketing folk music. Visiting artistes, for example, sell their own CDs and tapes at these venues in considerably greater numbers than they do at folk clubs [Ashley Hutchings: 1996]. Telford's Warehouse in Chester is one such venue and its popularity has been so pronounced that the management even produced a glossy free magazine for a period of time entitled Electric Muse. This magazine promoted its parent venue but did also debate various issues surrounding genre relationships precisely because the venue embraced a variety of genres. This encouraging enterprise only ceased to function when the club became so busy that no free time was available to continue to produce it; however, it did serve its purpose in both questioning and effecting changes in perceptions in the Chester area to folk music and in attracting punters to the venue. Telford's has the largest attendances for folk-related gigs in the area - many more, in fact, than the three local folk clubs put together.
For their part, the folk media do not constitute a critical forum but, rather, they serve as an information giver and spiritual uplifter. This role is as a form of sustenance, rather like that of a Church parish magazine. The media do not appear to reflect the musical aspirations of many of the musicians about whom they write. Quite frequently a musician states that he or she is experimenting with new approaches or forms, or has imbibed influences from popular spheres, but this is seldom debated as a living issue, but regarded as a peculiarity of a musicians 'quirkiness' [Taplas 76: 'Norma Waterson'].
The editor of Folk Roots, Ian A Anderson, is a great example of this contradiction. As editor of Folk Roots he takes a rather conservative line; as a musician and producer he has been involved in all sorts of curious amalgams such as Rogue Records, Orchestre Super Moth and Tiger Moth. 23 While a musician appears to define a scene by its unattainable musical horizon, a writer appears to prefer discernable generic boundaries. Yet if the folk revival grew out of a dissatisfaction with music history then similar debates are bound to recur, for music performance is a boundless discipline. Are folk music writers condemning themselves to ethnocentrism, while they have to reduce the 'alien' to some culture-bound total vision?
Unlike the industry, the folk media are a classic example of how folk's theoretical development since its days of quasi-Marxism has been very modest indeed. Instead of debating defining concepts, which some might presume a journal's task is so to do, they continue to mediate ideas about 'tradition' as central. Meanwhile, a complex hate-love attitude towards popular music and urban society still saturates the folk media, leaving the reader with a combined image of twisted dialectics of inextricable contradictions about the apparent over-abundance of cultural product. Perhaps folk writing ought to consider the concept of not existing inside or outside of popular music history at all, for it is clearly within any number of musical 'traditions' at once, most of which are, like many forms of popular music activity as a whole, 'undercurrents' of any given mainstream. The evidence exists to suggest that the musical/historical estate of the folk movement is a far more fluid image of interacting juxtapositions, the point of which represents not so much a given territory as the extending of defining borders; indeed the cutting edge of folk music activity might be well explained via one long border which is frequently criss-crossed. Therefore a more combative, self-reflexive folk criticism also has to position itself on that border and must see folk music activity in its changing historical and cultural relation to that other body of literary and musical texts identified by folk writing as 'popular'.
The folk industry appears to be leading the way in this respect; the Folk Alliance proposal has given the industry an annual opportunity for a large number of individuals and business groups scattered across the country to meet, make deals and discuss common areas. The folk media also have to rise to this challenge of tradition versus commerce in order to animate the debate to all interested parties. It will then surely help to re-evaluate folk broadcasting at the BBC and independent radio stations. Does folk music really prosper via specialised programming? Television acknowledgement might take considerably longer, although the Unplugged sessions on MTV together with televised excerpts from Riverdance and Michael Flatley's Lord of the Dance have certainly raised the musical profile of acoustic instrumentation, if not necessarily the musician!
A common joke amongst folk lovers answers the question "how many folkies does it take to change a light bulb?" with the reply, "three: one to fit it, and two to complain about how it was much better in the old days." But folk musicians and business people work under conditions in which 'tradition' and 'commerce' can both coexist and this struggle to bring the music and the goods and services together is part of the greater debate to resolve issues of authenticity in meaningful and yet popular ways. Ironically, many of these same issues are beginning to recur on the electronic mailing list and web site at Folk Roots and the internet at The Living Tradition. There is now also a folk magazine on the internet [edited by Rod Stradling] entitled Musical Traditions. So the e-mail and world-wide-web reconfigure and recontextualise an avowed 'authentic' folk art in the most modern of contexts quite successfully. Advanced technology is providing a home-base for conflicts and debates over precisely what 'real' folk music is! This is surely a good indicator that folk music can move forward without abandoning any form of dialectic about the anterior. There has to be room for both the future and the past in the British folk scene.
The question remains, however, just what is the British folk scene in the 1990s? There is an all-too-common outward perception of the scene of one dominated by mature folkies, folk clubs, real ale and beards. 24 If these images do have some basis in reality, just how representative are they of all folk activity in the British Isles? If the servers of the industry have begun to identify a multivalence attached to the phrase 'folk scene', rather than a holism surrounding the ubiquitous folk club, ought we not look for a more permeable and less permanent definition of 'scene'? Are the folk clubs simply one facet of a larger scene? Can we even describe the folk club coterie as a scene at all? The following section will question whether the 'British Folk Scene' can actually be described as one scene, and asks to whom does the meaning of folk music belong? To those who can apply it to their own lives, or to a cultural hierarchy of antiquarian connoisseurs?
Mike Brocken
Article MT026
| Top of page | Home Page | Articles | Reviews | News | Map |