Difference between revisions of "Anarchy 51/What have they done to the folk?"
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| − | <div style="text-align:justify;">{{sc|One day you wake up}} and find that your {{w|minor­ity cult|Subculture|Subculture}} has mush­roomed. It may be your polit­ics, or your anti{{h}}polit­ics, it may be a place, it may be some activ­ity, a sport, a music. Do you re­joice at the ar­rival of the {{w|mil­len­nium<!-- 'millenium' in original -->|Millenarianism|Millenarianism}}? No, the chances are you don{{t}}. More likely you feel re­sent­ment, per­haps you move on further out, trek into the wil­der­ness and re­store your minor­ity cult—until the crowd fol­lows on. | + | <div style="text-align:justify;">{{sc|One day you wake up}} and find that your {{w|minor­ity cult|Subculture|Subculture}} has mush­roomed. It may be your polit­ics, or your anti{{h}}polit­ics, it may be a place, it may be some activ­ity, a sport, a music. Do you re­joice at the ar­rival of the {{w|mil­len­nium<!-- 'millenium' in original -->|Millenarianism|Millenarianism}}? No, the chances are you don{{t}}. More likely you feel re­sent­ment, per­haps you move on further out, trek into the wil­der­ness and re­store your minor­ity cult—until the crowd fol­lows on.<br /> |
{{tab}}There is an in­trinsic self­ish­ness in most en­thu­si­asms—you may preach, spread the good word, but al­ways there is a part of you that takes pleas­ure in the very con­di­tion of cliquish­ness. Thus, where a cult {{p|134}}sud­denly ceases to be a cult and turns into some­thing more like a cru­sade, there is re­sent­ment. It is partly a quite under­stand­able and jus­ti­fi­able pleas­ure in hav­ing things on the human, per­sonal scale. Pleas­ure in know­ing what is going on, who is who—and also in form­ing part of a move­ment or group, in which there is only rudi­ment­ary de­vel­op­ment of or­gan­isa­tional bar­riers—of bar­riers be­tween audi­ence and per­former, be­tween those whose tastes tend one way and those whose tastes tend the other. | {{tab}}There is an in­trinsic self­ish­ness in most en­thu­si­asms—you may preach, spread the good word, but al­ways there is a part of you that takes pleas­ure in the very con­di­tion of cliquish­ness. Thus, where a cult {{p|134}}sud­denly ceases to be a cult and turns into some­thing more like a cru­sade, there is re­sent­ment. It is partly a quite under­stand­able and jus­ti­fi­able pleas­ure in hav­ing things on the human, per­sonal scale. Pleas­ure in know­ing what is going on, who is who—and also in form­ing part of a move­ment or group, in which there is only rudi­ment­ary de­vel­op­ment of or­gan­isa­tional bar­riers—of bar­riers be­tween audi­ence and per­former, be­tween those whose tastes tend one way and those whose tastes tend the other. | ||
| Line 28: | Line 28: | ||
{{tab}}And there is, of course, reason in this re­ac­tion—the big money is more likely to go, for the most part, to the sweet­ened, smoothed{{h}}up im­it­at­ors, who are mov­ing in now, rather than to the sing­ers who have been around so long with­out the bait of big money. But though this is un­fair, the fringe pick­ings that go to the people who built up the club scene are at any rate big­ger than they were. | {{tab}}And there is, of course, reason in this re­ac­tion—the big money is more likely to go, for the most part, to the sweet­ened, smoothed{{h}}up im­it­at­ors, who are mov­ing in now, rather than to the sing­ers who have been around so long with­out the bait of big money. But though this is un­fair, the fringe pick­ings that go to the people who built up the club scene are at any rate big­ger than they were. | ||
| − | {{tab}}And ac­tu­ally of course, the present boom is very largely not a nat­ive thing at all, but an Amer­ican im­port. It{{s}} the clubs, and the nat­ive scene, oddly enough, that are in a sense para­sitic, pro­fit­ing from the in­ter­est that spreads over from the im­ports. Sim­il­arly with tele­vi­sion. That is the way it{{s}} been for a long time, in a less ex­treme form. I{{d}} haz­ard a guess that nine out of ten folk en­thu­si­asts, even the most aus­tere eth­niks, had their taste for folk aroused in the first place by Amer­ican songs (or by songs in Amer­ican style—e.g. most {{w|CND|Campaign_for_Nuclear_Disarmament|Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament}} songs). And that in­cludes many of those who hail from a still com­par­at­ively liv­ing folk tra­di­tion. Many is the {{w|Scot|Scottish_people|Scottish people}} or the {{w|Irish­man|Irish_people|Irish people}} who hardly thought of sing­ing a {{w|Scots|Scots_language|Scots language}} or {{w|Irish|Irish_language|Irish language}} song until he came to {{w|England}} or {{w|Amer­ica|United_States|United States}} and had his taste aroused by Amer­ican ma­ter­ial. And the folk scene as it has existed for the last few years was pre­dom­in­antly com­posed of ex{{h}}{{w|skiff­lers|Skiffle|Skiffle}}. | + | {{tab}}And ac­tu­ally of course, the present boom is very largely not a nat­ive thing at all, but an Amer­ican im­port. It{{s}} the clubs, and the nat­ive scene, oddly enough, that are in a sense para­sitic, pro­fit­ing from the in­ter­est that spreads over from the im­ports. Sim­il­arly with tele­vi­sion. That is the way it{{s}} been for a long time, in a less ex­treme form. I{{d}} haz­ard a guess that nine out of ten folk en­thu­si­asts, even the most aus­tere eth­niks, had their taste for folk aroused in the first place by Amer­ican songs (or by songs in Amer­ican style—e.g. most {{w|CND|Campaign_for_Nuclear_Disarmament|Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament}} songs). And that in­cludes many of those who hail from a still com­par­at­ively liv­ing {{p|135}}folk tra­di­tion. Many is the {{w|Scot|Scottish_people|Scottish people}} or the {{w|Irish­man|Irish_people|Irish people}} who hardly thought of sing­ing a {{w|Scots|Scots_language|Scots language}} or {{w|Irish|Irish_language|Irish language}} song until he came to {{w|England}} or {{w|Amer­ica|United_States|United States}} and had his taste aroused by Amer­ican ma­ter­ial. And the folk scene as it has existed for the last few years was pre­dom­in­antly com­posed of ex{{h}}{{w|skiff­lers|Skiffle|Skiffle}}. |
{{tab}}The danger with an en­thu­si­asm is that it can blind you to waht lies out­side its lim­its. You build walls round your gar­den, and the walls be­come the gar­den, and it is only a flower if ti grows within the walls. So a pur­ist might listen to Bob Dylan, say {{qq|It{{s}} not Folk}}, and ig­nore the truth that per­haps it{{s}} bet­ter than much that is folk. Or he might listen to a folk{{h}}in­flu­enced {{w|pop|Pop_music|Pop music}}{{h}}record, and de­nounce it as a cor­rup­tion, dis­miss­ing the truth that it may have its own spe­cial and dis­tinct merits. Or he may cry {{qq|en­ter­tainer}} at, for ex­ample, {{w|Alex Camp­bell|Alex_Campbell_(singer)}}, as if this were an in­sult (and as if he were mak­ing a for­tune out of it in­stead of a pit­tance). | {{tab}}The danger with an en­thu­si­asm is that it can blind you to waht lies out­side its lim­its. You build walls round your gar­den, and the walls be­come the gar­den, and it is only a flower if ti grows within the walls. So a pur­ist might listen to Bob Dylan, say {{qq|It{{s}} not Folk}}, and ig­nore the truth that per­haps it{{s}} bet­ter than much that is folk. Or he might listen to a folk{{h}}in­flu­enced {{w|pop|Pop_music|Pop music}}{{h}}record, and de­nounce it as a cor­rup­tion, dis­miss­ing the truth that it may have its own spe­cial and dis­tinct merits. Or he may cry {{qq|en­ter­tainer}} at, for ex­ample, {{w|Alex Camp­bell|Alex_Campbell_(singer)}}, as if this were an in­sult (and as if he were mak­ing a for­tune out of it in­stead of a pit­tance). | ||
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{{tab}}However, it seems over­whelm­ingly prob­able that the cur­rent boom is likely to be rel­at­ively short lived, on the pop side, if only be­cause pop music is es­sen­tially for dan­cing, and words are ultim­ately of second­ary im­port­ance. But the col­lapse of the boom is not im­port­ant, for the kind of change I{{m}} talk­ing about is es­sen­tially a long-term one, and each turn of the wheel ad­van­ces it. Skiffle died and left be­hind it the basis of a folk under­ground, and also the seeds of the beat groups and r {{a}}n{{a}} b. The pres­ent thing will leave a sim­ilar res­idue but at a higher level, and one which ap­proaches more closely the kind of uni­fied cul­ture of which I am writ­ing. | {{tab}}However, it seems over­whelm­ingly prob­able that the cur­rent boom is likely to be rel­at­ively short lived, on the pop side, if only be­cause pop music is es­sen­tially for dan­cing, and words are ultim­ately of second­ary im­port­ance. But the col­lapse of the boom is not im­port­ant, for the kind of change I{{m}} talk­ing about is es­sen­tially a long-term one, and each turn of the wheel ad­van­ces it. Skiffle died and left be­hind it the basis of a folk under­ground, and also the seeds of the beat groups and r {{a}}n{{a}} b. The pres­ent thing will leave a sim­ilar res­idue but at a higher level, and one which ap­proaches more closely the kind of uni­fied cul­ture of which I am writ­ing. | ||
| − | {{tab}}Already you have in­div­id­u­als who have made the bridge, though it is still fairly ten­u­ous. In {{w|America|United_States|United States}} you have {{w|Bob Dylan|Bob_Dylan}} as a kind of cross be­tween {{w|Yevtu­shenko|Yevgeny_Yevtushenko|Yevgeny Yevtushenko}} and {{w|Woody Guthrie|Woody_Guthrie}}, and {{w|Pete Seeger|Pete_Seeger}} as a one man per­son­if­i­ca­tion of the {{w|folk revival, US style|American_folk_music_revival|American folk music revival}}. Here, the cult of per­son­al­ity is less ob­vi­ous. There is of course {{w|Ewan Mac­Coll|Ewan_MacColl}}, but though he may be the High Priest of Brit­ish Folk, he is a bit short in the ecu­men­ical spirit. He is so firmly rooted in his­tory that he some­times seems to be ap­proach­ing the 20th cen­tury as an im­mi­grant—as a kind of eth­nic {{w|Dr. Who|The_Doctor_(Doctor_Who)|The Doctor (Doctor Who)}}. This is of course a gross over-simplif­i­ca­tion, I hasten to add, to save you the trouble of scrawl­ing this in the mar­gin. What­ever does de­velop in the way of neo-folk will owe a fan­tastic debt to Mac­Coll, to his sing­ing, his song writ­ing, and par­tic­u­larly to his work in the {{w|radio-bal­lads|Radio_ballad|Radio ballad}}. It is largely due to him, di­rectly or in­di­rectly, that {{p|137}}trad­i­tional songs have es­caped from the cus­tody of the col­lec­tions, and the {{w|Eng­lish Folk Dance and Song So­ci­ety|English_Folk_Dance_and_Song_Society}} (not that I{{m}} knock­ing the EFDSS which, with the help of {{w|Peter Ken­nedy|Peter_Kennedy_(folklorist)}}, among others, has under­gone an in­ternal re­vo­lu­tion in the last few years). And it is again largely Mac­Coll{{s}} di­rect and in­di­rect in­flu­ence that has saved the next gen­er­a­tion of sing­ers and song writ­ers from being pale re­flec­tions of the Amer­i­cans. There can scarcely be a singer in the coun­try (within the rel­ev­ant con­text) whose whole way of sing­ing and at­ti­tude to ma­ter­ial has not been deeply in­flu­enced by Mac­Coll, and the in­flu­ence stretches fur­ther—even a style that is on the face of it totally dif­fer­ent, Bob Dylan{{s}} fre­quently shows traces of Mac­Coll (e.g. ''{{w|North Coun­try Blues|North_Country_Blues}}''). But for all that, listen to a song by Ewan Mac­Coll such as ''The Gal­lant Col­liers'' (on his {{w|LP|LP_record|LP record}} ''{{l|The Best of Ewan MacColl|https://www.discogs.com/Ewan-MacColl-The-Best-Of-Ewan-MacColl/release/4771909|Discogs: The Best of Ewan MacColl'' | + | {{tab}}Already you have in­div­id­u­als who have made the bridge, though it is still fairly ten­u­ous. In {{w|America|United_States|United States}} you have {{w|Bob Dylan|Bob_Dylan}} as a kind of cross be­tween {{w|Yevtu­shenko|Yevgeny_Yevtushenko|Yevgeny Yevtushenko}} and {{w|Woody Guthrie|Woody_Guthrie}}, and {{w|Pete Seeger|Pete_Seeger}} as a one man per­son­if­i­ca­tion of the {{w|folk revival, US style|American_folk_music_revival|American folk music revival}}. Here, the cult of per­son­al­ity is less ob­vi­ous. There is of course {{w|Ewan Mac­Coll|Ewan_MacColl}}, but though he may be the High Priest of Brit­ish Folk, he is a bit short in the ecu­men­ical spirit. He is so firmly rooted in his­tory that he some­times seems to be ap­proach­ing the 20th cen­tury as an im­mi­grant—as a kind of eth­nic {{w|Dr. Who|The_Doctor_(Doctor_Who)|The Doctor (Doctor Who)}}. This is of course a gross over-simplif­i­ca­tion, I hasten to add, to save you the trouble of scrawl­ing this in the mar­gin. What­ever does de­velop in the way of neo-folk will owe a fan­tastic debt to Mac­Coll, to his sing­ing, his song writ­ing, and par­tic­u­larly to his work in the {{w|radio-bal­lads|Radio_ballad|Radio ballad}}. It is largely due to him, di­rectly or in­di­rectly, that {{p|137}}trad­i­tional songs have es­caped from the cus­tody of the col­lec­tions, and the {{w|Eng­lish Folk Dance and Song So­ci­ety|English_Folk_Dance_and_Song_Society}} (not that I{{m}} knock­ing the EFDSS which, with the help of {{w|Peter Ken­nedy|Peter_Kennedy_(folklorist)}}, among others, has under­gone an in­ternal re­vo­lu­tion in the last few years). And it is again largely Mac­Coll{{s}} di­rect and in­di­rect in­flu­ence that has saved the next gen­er­a­tion of sing­ers and song writ­ers from being pale re­flec­tions of the Amer­i­cans. There can scarcely be a singer in the coun­try (within the rel­ev­ant con­text) whose whole way of sing­ing and at­ti­tude to ma­ter­ial has not been deeply in­flu­enced by Mac­Coll, and the in­flu­ence stretches fur­ther—even a style that is on the face of it totally dif­fer­ent, Bob Dylan{{s}} fre­quently shows traces of Mac­Coll (e.g. ''{{w|North Coun­try Blues|North_Country_Blues}}''). But for all that, listen to a song by Ewan Mac­Coll such as ''The Gal­lant Col­liers'' (on his {{w|LP|LP_record|LP record}} ''{{l|The Best of Ewan MacColl|https://www.discogs.com/Ewan-MacColl-The-Best-Of-Ewan-MacColl/release/4771909|Discogs: The Best of Ewan MacColl}}'') and I think you will see what I mean. |
{{tab}}Closely re­lated to Mac­Coll in their ap­proach, are sing­ers like {{w|Lou Killen|Lou_Killen}}, {{w|Bob Daven­port|Bob_Davenport_(singer)}}, {{l|Enoch Kent|https://www.discogs.com/artist/1547921-Enoch-Kent|Discogs: Enoch Kent}}, {{w|Matt Mc­Ginn|Matt_McGinn}} and {{w|Johnny Handle|The_High_Level_Ranters|The High Level Ranters}}. The last three, with Ewan Mac­Coll him­self, are per­haps the most im­port­ant es­sen­tially trad­i­tional song writ­ers of the present day. But though they have pro­duced and are pro­du­cing fine songs, I cannot help feel­ing that to fol­low di­rectly in their paths is to run the risk of going up a {{w|cul-de-sac|Dead_end_(street)|Dead end}}. | {{tab}}Closely re­lated to Mac­Coll in their ap­proach, are sing­ers like {{w|Lou Killen|Lou_Killen}}, {{w|Bob Daven­port|Bob_Davenport_(singer)}}, {{l|Enoch Kent|https://www.discogs.com/artist/1547921-Enoch-Kent|Discogs: Enoch Kent}}, {{w|Matt Mc­Ginn|Matt_McGinn}} and {{w|Johnny Handle|The_High_Level_Ranters|The High Level Ranters}}. The last three, with Ewan Mac­Coll him­self, are per­haps the most im­port­ant es­sen­tially trad­i­tional song writ­ers of the present day. But though they have pro­duced and are pro­du­cing fine songs, I cannot help feel­ing that to fol­low di­rectly in their paths is to run the risk of going up a {{w|cul-de-sac|Dead_end_(street)|Dead end}}. | ||
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--> From which my sub­con­scious folk-pro­cess had made ''I{{ve}} got a secret.'' | --> From which my sub­con­scious folk-pro­cess had made ''I{{ve}} got a secret.'' | ||
| − | {{tab}}You are likely to get the most au­da­cious and suc­cess­ful trans­form­a­tions in con­texts where there is a height­ened emo­tion of some kind in­volved. | + | {{tab}}You are likely to get the most au­da­cious and suc­cess­ful trans­form­a­tions in con­texts where there is a height­ened emo­tion of some kind in­volved. It may be the kind of help­less rage that is aroused by the ca­sual brut­al­ity of gov­ern­ments, by {{w|napalm|Napalm|Napalm}} {{w|raids|Close_air_support|Close air support}} on vil­lages, by {{w|lynch­ings|Lynching|Lynching}}, by apathy, by the uni­versal ac­cept­ance of the in­toler­able. It may be in­dig­na­tion at some com­par­at­ively minor in­just­ice, or ex­ult­a­tion at some token vic­tory of just­ice. Or it may be more per­sonal—per­haps you{{re}} in love. What­ever the reason, you are more in­ter­ested in what you want to say than in how you say it. You are not after ap­plause from an au­di­ence; rather you want to help them, her, or your­self, to feel in a par­tic­u­lar way, or to under­stand a par­tic­u­lar emo­tion. |
| + | |||
| + | {{tab}}So where does enter­tain­ment fit in? Is it just a coat­ing of sugar on a bit­ter medi­cine—a ploy to en­tice the poor suck­ers in and then preach at them? Evid­ently, since I phrased the ques­tion in that way, I{{m}} going to an­swer {{qq|No}}. And to just­ify my an­swer I fall back on two {{p|139}}{{w|aphor­isms|Aphorism|Aphorism}} which I won{{t}} elabor­ate at the mo­ment: | ||
| + | |||
| + | : (a) The pur­pose of art is to help you ap­pre­ci­ate life (and hence also to as­sist and en­cour­age you in mak­ing life worth ap­pre­ci­at­ing). | ||
| + | : (b) Enter­tain­ment is what you have when art is suc­cess­ful (the degree of suc­cess of course varies). | ||
| + | |||
| + | {{tab}}This, the range of art and enter­tain­ment, is as wide as you can go. And there is no con­flict be­tween dif­fer­ent parts of it. A song may have no pur­pose beyond arous­ing laugh­ter, or it may aim at arous­ing laugh­ter for some pur­pose, or it may aim at do­ing a thou­sand dif­fer­ent things to the listener. And it is all en­ter­tain­ment and itt is all art. | ||
| + | |||
| + | {{tab}}A good club ses­sion will in fact have songs from widely separ­ate parts of the range. If it{{s}} all jolly chorus stuff, or all doom and soul, or all pro­test, it will lose much of its value and im­pact. It is li­able to be­come en­ter­tain­ment in the nar­row escap­ist sense, cater­ing to people who know what they want, giv­ing thenm a pre­pack­aged com­mod­ity. You lose the sense that any­thing might hap­pen, as it be­comes noth­ing more than a pleas­ant way to spend the evening. Flex­ibil­ity is grad­u­ally super­seded by rigid­ity. | ||
| + | |||
| + | {{tab}}Un­doubt­edly this tend­ency is en­cour­aged and em­phas­ised in any folk boom. Sing­ers also lose flex­ibil­ity, and con­cen­trate on sup­ply­ing what is ex­pected—{{w|Joan Baez|Joan_Baez}} tends to sing all kinds of songs in the same voice, and the same mood. For that mat­ter, Ewan Mac­Coll does ex­actly the same thing. You have, in fact, that tend­ency to self-fix­a­tion, even {{w|self-parody|Self-parody|Self-parody}}, that seems to be in­ex­tric­ably linked with suc­cess, whether it is on the scale of Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger, or of hund­reds of ama­teurs in clubs every­where who get them­selves trapped within an image. And it is of course a uni­versal human trait—call it ''{{popup|mau­vaise foi|bad faith}}'' if you pre­fer pigeon holes. | ||
| + | |||
| + | {{tab}}But the very pres­ence of a strong trad­i­tional found­a­tion in folk-song, works against this trait. There is a cer­tain ana­logy with a {{w|masked ball|Masquerade_ball|Masquerade ball}}, where by as­sum­ing a formal mask, you shed the one that you wear the rest of the time. The very elem­ent of trad­i­tion to which any­one who gets in­volved in folk-song to any real ex­tent is go­ing to get ex­posed, can nour­ish a kind of in­divid­u­al­ism which can then go on to grow, to in­tegrate, to pro­pa­gate—and to re­move the mask. | ||
| + | |||
| + | {{tab}}So per­son­ally, I am op­tim­istic. One may squirm to hear the {{w|Search­ers|The_Searchers_(band)|The Searchers}} as­sas­sin­at­ing ''{{w|What Have They Done to the Rain|What_Have_They_Done_to_the_Rain}},'' and tremble for the fu­ture of those who get caught up in the glare of pub­li­city (for all one knows, {{w|Donovan}} might have great poten­tial—and we{{ll}} prob­ably never find out now). But it{{s}} some­thing when you can have ''{{w|Masters of War|Masters_of_War}}'' blast­ing out of a mil­lion trans­ist­ors tuned to a {{w|pirate sta­tion|Pirate_radio_in_the_United_Kingdom|Pirate radio in the United Kingdom}}. | ||
| + | |||
| + | {{tab}}And when the pres­ent thing dies down, the fer­ment will still be work­ing, and the new trad­i­tion grow­ing and chan­ging. | ||
</div></div> | </div></div> | ||
Latest revision as of 12:43, 1 October 2021
What have they done
to the folk?
There is an intrinsic selfishness in most enthusiasms—you may preach, spread the good word, but always there is a part of you that takes pleasure in the very condition of cliquishness. Thus, where a cult
As things get bigger, the barriers go up—there is an audience to be entertained, and entertainers to do the job. And the barriers get institutionalised; you get internal segregation developing, clashes of doctrine, almost amounting at times to holy war. Where once ethnik, folknik, popnik and r ’n’ b exponents could all go to the same club, and be aware of what they have in common, now the differences come to the fore.
As the next stage of the boom comes along, the public at large starts to take note—Bob Dylan is heard on Housewives’ Choice—gets a profile in Melody Maker—The Observer starts trying to pontificate on the subject in its customary switched-
The easy reaction is to reel away in horror, shouting “commercialism”, and pointing to the mass of fake-
And there is, of course, reason in this reaction—the big money is more likely to go, for the most part, to the sweetened, smoothed-
The danger with an enthusiasm is that it can blind you to waht lies outside its limits. You build walls round your garden, and the walls become the garden, and it is only a flower if ti grows within the walls. So a purist might listen to Bob Dylan, say “It’s not Folk”, and ignore the truth that perhaps it’s better than much that is folk. Or he might listen to a folk-
The funny thing is that of all types of cultural activity, folk-
There are two distinct elements running like separate threads through the folk revival, since its earliest days (which I suppose one could say were some time in the 18th century—Bishop Percy, Robert Burns, etc.—revival is not perhaps the best word, but it is current). There is an antiquarian element, and a refugee element. Or, less elliptically, you may be interested primarily in preserving something that is in danger of being lost, or you may be a fugitive from some aspect of mainstream culture, finding in folk-
So the most important thing about the folk-revival, at least so far as I am concerned, is what is produced in the way of new songs, new kinds of songs. For once you have access to the storehouse of images, themes techniques, etc., used in folk traditions (note the plural), you have a vastly increased potential for saying important things, expressing yourself in terms that enable real communication, such as become virtually impossible in mainstream culture, poetry or pop song. And it becomes possible to at least hope for a kind of culture that will sidestep arbitrary barriers of this kind (pop, intellectual, etc.) and replace them with a graduated spectrum with the merging divisions based on functional criteria—so that you would have songs for dancing, songs for explaining, songs for preaching, songs for exalting. In fact this kind of distinction one can (but need not) make within folk music in the wild.
However, it seems overwhelmingly probable that the current boom is likely to be relatively short lived, on the pop side, if only because pop music is essentially for dancing, and words are ultimately of secondary importance. But the collapse of the boom is not important, for the kind of change I’m talking about is essentially a long-term one, and each turn of the wheel advances it. Skiffle died and left behind it the basis of a folk underground, and also the seeds of the beat groups and r ’n’ b. The present thing will leave a similar residue but at a higher level, and one which approaches more closely the kind of unified culture of which I am writing.
Already you have individuals who have made the bridge, though it is still fairly tenuous. In America you have Bob Dylan as a kind of cross between Yevtushenko and Woody Guthrie, and Pete Seeger as a one man personification of the folk revival, US style. Here, the cult of personality is less obvious. There is of course Ewan MacColl, but though he may be the High Priest of British Folk, he is a bit short in the ecumenical spirit. He is so firmly rooted in history that he sometimes seems to be approaching the 20th century as an immigrant—as a kind of ethnic Dr. Who. This is of course a gross over-simplification, I hasten to add, to save you the trouble of scrawling this in the margin. Whatever does develop in the way of neo-folk will owe a fantastic debt to MacColl, to his singing, his song writing, and particularly to his work in the radio-ballads. It is largely due to him, directly or indirectly, thatClosely related to MacColl in their approach, are singers like Lou Killen, Bob Davenport, Enoch Kent, Matt McGinn and Johnny Handle. The last three, with Ewan MacColl himself, are perhaps the most important essentially traditional song writers of the present day. But though they have produced and are producing fine songs, I cannot help feeling that to follow directly in their paths is to run the risk of going up a cul-de-sac.
Further away from MacColl are a large number of song writers. These range from those who are still in many ways very close to MacColl (such as perhaps Ian Campbell) to a lone wolf like Leslie Haworth. What these writers do tend to have in common is songs with a greater degree of accessibility. (Incidentally I only use the word “writers” for lack of a convenient alternative. In this context it can be misleading, since it carries the implication that a song is made up on paper, whereas in many cases, and these perhaps the most important, the actual writing down of a song only comes at a late stage. Indeed there are many contemporary songs, even quite widely sung ones, that have probably never been written down—and I don’t just mean the ones that would scorch the paper. Leslie Haworth is the obvious example.) By “a greater degree of accessibility” I don’t necessarily mean that the songs are simple. But even where they are difficult, they are related to the world outside. You do not need to undergo an apprenticeship in folk-song before you can see there is something in them that concerns you. They are not wearing fancy dress.
I picked out three essentially traditional song writers. To set against them, a suitable trio of the more accessible variety might be Fred Dallas, Cyril Tawney and Sydney Carter. All three are definitely rooted in the British tradition, but in addition they have obviously incorporated elements of other traditions as well and, paradoxically, the finished result, at least in my opinion, has a greater oneness in consequence. If you live in a diversified cultural milieu, then it is only when you allow the multitude of influences that are working upon you to mingle and breed and come out in your songs, that these songs canSo, in the writers I selected, you may have clear American influences, the trace of the chansonniers, or the flavour of Brecht. Cyril Tawney comes out with The Grey Flannel Line with its borrowings from Dink’s Song, Sydney Carter writes Port Mahon with a Greek tune and echoes of Venezuela.
This borrowing of what is needed, without worrying about its former context, is carried to a beneficial extreme by Bob Dylan, e.g. Hard Rains (Lord Randall inter alia), Restless Farewell (The Parting Glass), Bob Dylan’s Dream (Lord Franklin), With God on Our Side (The Patriot Game). Not that there is anything in the least new or unusual in reworking old songs to fit new circumstances—but what is special, as with the Cyril Tawney example I quoted, is that the new contexts are, conventionally speaking, so utterly removed from the old. In some ways it resembles the cultural miscegenation that gave rise to jazz—or for that matter, to the Renaissance.
Take away the barriers and you can get anything. And this is what the whole folk revival can do—except where it erects new barriers of its own.
This kind of borrowing and reworking can, and probably typically does, take place unconsciously—as indeed it does in a traditional folk culture in the wild. To give a personal example, on the 1963 Aldermaston, while walking from Reading RSG shelter, I made up a song. The tune sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it. The same for the words. Both of which presumably helped it catch on for the limited period of its topicality. It was not, so far as I recall, till the last day of the march that I read in the evening papers about marchers “singing their new marching song to the tune of I love a lassie”, and remembered. Though I was more aware of it as I love a sausage. From which my subconscious folk-process had made I’ve got a secret.
You are likely to get the most audacious and successful transformations in contexts where there is a heightened emotion of some kind involved. It may be the kind of helpless rage that is aroused by the casual brutality of governments, by napalm raids on villages, by lynchings, by apathy, by the universal acceptance of the intolerable. It may be indignation at some comparatively minor injustice, or exultation at some token victory of justice. Or it may be more personal—perhaps you’re in love. Whatever the reason, you are more interested in what you want to say than in how you say it. You are not after applause from an audience; rather you want to help them, her, or yourself, to feel in a particular way, or to understand a particular emotion.
So where does entertainment fit in? Is it just a coating of sugar on a bitter medicine—a ploy to entice the poor suckers in and then preach at them? Evidently, since I phrased the question in that way, I’m going to answer “No”. And to justify my answer I fall back on two- (a) The purpose of art is to help you appreciate life (and hence also to assist and encourage you in making life worth appreciating).
- (b) Entertainment is what you have when art is successful (the degree of success of course varies).
This, the range of art and entertainment, is as wide as you can go. And there is no conflict between different parts of it. A song may have no purpose beyond arousing laughter, or it may aim at arousing laughter for some purpose, or it may aim at doing a thousand different things to the listener. And it is all entertainment and itt is all art.
A good club session will in fact have songs from widely separate parts of the range. If it’s all jolly chorus stuff, or all doom and soul, or all protest, it will lose much of its value and impact. It is liable to become entertainment in the narrow escapist sense, catering to people who know what they want, giving thenm a prepackaged commodity. You lose the sense that anything might happen, as it becomes nothing more than a pleasant way to spend the evening. Flexibility is gradually superseded by rigidity.
Undoubtedly this tendency is encouraged and emphasised in any folk boom. Singers also lose flexibility, and concentrate on supplying what is expected—Joan Baez tends to sing all kinds of songs in the same voice, and the same mood. For that matter, Ewan MacColl does exactly the same thing. You have, in fact, that tendency to self-fixation, even self-parody, that seems to be inextricably linked with success, whether it is on the scale of Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger, or of hundreds of amateurs in clubs everywhere who get themselves trapped within an image. And it is of course a universal human trait—call it mauvaise foi if you prefer pigeon holes.
But the very presence of a strong traditional foundation in folk-song, works against this trait. There is a certain analogy with a masked ball, where by assuming a formal mask, you shed the one that you wear the rest of the time. The very element of tradition to which anyone who gets involved in folk-song to any real extent is going to get exposed, can nourish a kind of individualism which can then go on to grow, to integrate, to propagate—and to remove the mask.
So personally, I am optimistic. One may squirm to hear the Searchers assassinating What Have They Done to the Rain, and tremble for the future of those who get caught up in the glare of publicity (for all one knows, Donovan might have great potential—and we’ll probably never find out now). But it’s something when you can have Masters of War blasting out of a million transistors tuned to a pirate station.
And when the present thing dies down, the ferment will still be working, and the new tradition growing and changing.
