What the folk

Recently I was reminded of how strongly the debate still rages – what is folk? I was at the No Direction Home festival at Welbeck Abbey, and Will Hodgkinson had been asked to come and talk about his book The Ballad of Britain. In 2009 he took a trip round Britain to cast his eye on the state of the folk revival. Sadly he couldn’t make the festival, but the discussion went ahead in the lovely literature and comedy yurt. New descriptions for folk music genres have been explored by Rob Young in his book Electric Eden, and by Jeanette Leech in Seasons They Change – acid folk, twisted folk, psychedelic folk. Academically I’m a folklorist, though it doesn’t really give you a day job. I was lucky enough to be an undergraduate in the Institute of Dialect and Folk Life Studies at the University of Leeds back in the early 1970s. Undergraduates mixed with postgrads studying all sorts of interesting aspects of folklore and traditions including music, song and dance. Later I did an MA in Folklore and Cultural Tradition at Sheffield. Back in those days folk rock was the prevalent alternative form of folk music, with performers like Richard Thompson, the Strawbs, and Fairport Convention. Traditional songs were borrowed and adapted – sometimes ‘stolen’ and claimed as newly written – Simon and Garfunkel’s Scarborough Fair comes to mind. Some even made it on to Top of the Pops – Steeleye Span’s All Around my Hat and Sandy Denny singing Si Tu Doit Partir are among my memories – exciting times for folk music. Not long ago I joined C P Lee for one of his Bob Dylan walks round Manchester. The Free Trade Hall was identified as the place where Dylan was accused of treachery to the traditionalists – ‘Judas!’ Strong words. Dylan had been to England and had hung out with the traditional singers and musicians who were part of the growing folk club scene. His friend and lover Joan Baez had a repertoire of Scottish, Irish and English ballads, recorded for Vanguard in the early days of her career. We were taught folk songs and dances at school, thanks to Cecil Sharpe’s influence on teacher training between the wars. Read Georgina Boyes’ fantastic book, The Imagined Village, (now back in print) for the bigger picture. The group took their name from the book by the way. My parents loved Scottish and Irish folk music – from Margaret Barry to Robin Hall and Jimmy MacGregor by way of The Clancy Brothers with Tommy Makem. My dad also loved Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, and I still have some early vinyl from his collection. I was not alone growing up in the 60s, listening to live and recorded folk music as often as I listened to the Beatles, the Stones, the Small Faces and the Kinks. Our Catholic upbringing also gave us a kind of Irish social life, where people sang or played party pieces at gatherings of family and friends. I will never forget hearing She Moves Through the Fair for the first time, sung by Angela Mangan, aged about 15. The song haunted me until I could identify it and track it down, too young and shy to find out more about it at the party. And then came the acoustic singers and songwriters. Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, Neil Young, John Martyn and Al Stewart. How did you define them? From the States came country and blues influences, the left wing politics of the Seeger family and Woody Guthrie. Mix that with Salford’s own Jimmy Miller, better known as Ewan MacColl. Folk became a kaleidoscope of influences. If you played a folk club did that make you a folk singer? Who knew? The problem starts when one faction claims ownership of the territory. On the one hand you have – or had – the traditionalists, finger in ear, contrived local accent and slightly tuneless delivery. On the other hand, the influence of pop, rock and commercialisation. Now I know, as a member of an informal group of harmony singers, that sometimes you just have to put your finger in your ear, especially if like me you are easily distracted and can’t always hold a tune. Back in 1974, listening to field recordings of people who couldn’t sing in tune in a tutorial, I had light bulb moment. I realised that the performers weren’t necessarily the ones who had a good voice, but they were the ones prepared to perform and who could remember the words. Nowadays I’d think of comparing it to karaoke. And of course much of the folk revival in this country was a Victorian construct – a political desire for a national identity and a return to Merrie England. Some so called traditional songs collected in the early 20th century were hymns and music hall songs. Tunes were borrowed and new lyrics were added. Lyrics were tidied up and bowdlerised. What makes it folk music could be in the method of transmission – from singer to singer, musician to musician. But in our electronic and digital age that is no longer the only way to share and learn a song. Listen to the songs Lennon and McCartney wrote – there’s a significant amount of playground lore and urban folklore in their early lyrics, reflecting their 1950s childhood in Liverpool. Ray Davies, Kirsty MacColl, Damon Albarn – they all reflect a similar awareness of how and where we live in their work. And just consider for a moment a song like Ewan MacColl’s The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face. A love song in a folk ballad style, it transformed into a huge hit for Roberta Flack – a far cry from Dirty Old Town. So in the discussion over what folk music is, Lavinia Blackwall claimed that Trembling Bells were psychedelic rock. I certainly recognised that her voice has as much in common with Grace Slick as it does with Sandy Denny. Alex Neilsen however sang one of his own songs, the Bells of Oxford, unaccompanied and containing imagery and a turn of phrase worthy of any traditional ballad. Lavinia was defensive about her beautiful voice – ‘classically trained’. Whilst it’s fascinating to hear old field recordings of an old lady from Kent singing in the early 20th century, and lovely to hear Anne Briggs or Shirley Collins singing old songs in a simple and unadorned way, for me there’s nothing like listening to a voice like Lavinia’s, with its power and beauty. It transcends labels like classical or traditional or psychedelic. To hear her sing The Quiet Joys of Brotherhood was a magical experience. There we were, sitting in a yurt, listening to a classically trained singer who defines herself as psychedelic rock, singing a song whose words were written by a Californian hippy poet, (Richard Farina), with links to the 60s folk scene ( married to Joan Baez’s sister) and set to the tune of a Northern Irish air ( My Lagan Love) This debate on how to define any aspect of culture – not just music - as ‘folk’ isn’t going to go away. There is no definitive answer, just many possibilities. Open to argument but never worth falling out over. It’s a big enough concept to embrace all its potential. A spider’s web. A kaleidoscope. A tapestry woven over time, the shuttle going back and forth from past to future to create the patterns you shouldn’t try to unpick. The heartbeat goes on.

Remember...just...remember

A few more memories stirred by the mix of experiences at No Direction Home last weekend. Beth Jeans Houghton hanging out at Green Man in 2006, and invited up on stage to play with Devendra Banhart. Robert Saul, last seen performing at the Rude Shipyard in Sheffield, sitting next to us in the literature yurt. Taking my mother to see Richard Hawley at Buxton Opera House for her 80th birthday - she'd heard him on the radio, loved his voice, and liked the Sheffield connection. I will never see Ed Miliband in the same way after Josie Long's comedy set. John Robin's sad story about being sold fake Captain Beefheart paintings - my friend Cathy gave the sketch he did for her away when she went to live in an ashram back in the early 70s. Seeing Trembling Bells at Green Man only days after Lavinia Blackwall had lost her mother - and appreciating how helpful and comforting it would be to be held in such affection and creativity in those circumstances. Her unaccompanied version of the Quiet Joys of Brotherhood reduced me to tears last Sunday afternoon. Tune from the traditional My Lagan Love, and lyrics from a poem by Richard Farina, brother in law to Joan Baez - none of us could remember who had written the words at the time.

No Direction Home - notes from a festival

'Remember...(pause) just (shorter pause) remember'. Warren Ellis' last instruction to the crowd as Dirty Three finished an amazing set on the first night of the festival.That man looks like he's wiped and rebuilt more memory banks than most. Another role model for growing older with energy and style. My favourite wellies had sprung a leak. I had used a plastic bag as a temporary repair. We'd pitched the tent, but we were in the eye of a storm, it felt like seaside weather but we were at Welbeck Abbey, in the middle of the Midlands.No direction home seemed an apt description of the site, as the mud slides built up on the access routes. I was wet and cold, and beginning to think I should give up on festival going. But I was in good company - my older son and daughter, and we are veterans of some very wet Green Man festivals. We were also less than an hour from home if things got bad - as long as we could get the car off the field. So Warren, I do remember, I will remember. That's what this blog is all about. Back in the day I recognise that I was more observer than participant. I feel like a witness, and I'm a witness who had my wits about me. I remembered other festivals - Bath in 1970, one I have written about recently. Knebworth in 1976 - the Stones played but Todd Rungren made the big impression. Lincoln and Bickershaw with Joe's cafe - an offshoot of On the 8th Day in Manchester - it had more in common with a refugee camp soup kitchen than the pretty and vintage style food outlets you get at festivals nowadays. At Lincoln we were outside the corrugated festival perimeter fence - I don't remember seeing any of the music, though I think I heard Rod Stewart and the Faces. Bickershaw was great, in spite of the mud, because we were just at the side of the stage.I remember Dr John, and Beefheart and Hawkwind. And of course the man who did the high dive into a tiny tank of water! We were next to the Release tent, and I wish I still had a copy of their typewritten instructions on what to do if you were busted by the drug squad at the festival! I remember it quoting the words 'Oi sonny, you're nicked'. I went to Womad for a day when it was in Morecambe and saw Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. And then I didn't camp or go to a festival for a long time - until we made Green Man in the Brecon Beacons our annual family get together back in 2006. But this year we thought we'd try No Direction Home. The food was great, especially the breakfast pastries from the Welbeck Farm Shop tent. The Literature and Comedy yurt was a good place to get warm and dry whilst being entertained - and taking off muddy wellies in the entrance definitely helped keep it clean and comfortable. The Somerset cider bus, the red double decker bus cafe, the Mexican cafe - all highlights.Three generations in one place - the babies in their trollies with coloured covers like miniature wagon trains. A swan in the evening moving over the lake.Performers enjoying the festival, in the queues for the loos ( good) and drinks. Comedy highlights were Josie Long and Simon Munnery. Literature highlights were Jon Ronson, Mick Jackson , Katherine Hibbert and Richard King. All very thought provoking.And people you'd never see anywhere else, wearing clothes they'd never wear anywhere else. There were some familiar faces among them. Babies dressed as fairies ( cute) and a 7 year old and a 57 year old ( I'm guessing) wearing Sex Pistols T shirts! And the comedy compere revealed himself as a massive Captain Beefheart fan, so I had a conversation with him about my on tour experience back in Clear Spot days. John Robins - if you are reading this take a look at the last post of my old blog, Life and Death in the Peak District, written in response to the news of Beefheart's death. On Friday night I thought it would be my last festival. On Sunday after a gloriously sunny day, I look forward to the next.

Early Byrds

On Saturday night I found myself reminiscing about the Bath festival in June 1970. If you follow this blog, you will know that I went to it in rather unusual circumstances, my friend and I having persuaded the nuns who ran our boarding school that it was essential for our Duke of Edinburgh Award. In the course of the conversation I realised that there were people on the bill that I have no recollection of seeing, though there was only one stage, and as we had no tents, sleeping bags, food, water etc etc, I was under the impression that I stayed awake and watched everything from under a piece of clear plastic sheeting, handed out, refugee camp style to the inexperienced festival crowd. There was a lot of rain. So much rain that the running order was disrupted, due to the danger of mixing rain with electricity on stage. As the sun rose on the last morning, I was down the front near the stage, watching the Byrds play an acoustic set. I was wearing a Nigerian Fulani blanket my dad had brought back from Northern Nigeria a couple of years before. I still have it. Pure magic. At the weekend my friend James William Hindle posted a link to the Byrds 'Get to You' from the Notorious Byrd Brothers. As I listened, I was in floods of tears, happy to hear the song again, but overwhelmed by emotion I had no idea was there. Bath was my first ever festival. This weekend I'm off to No Direction Home at Welbeck Abbey - if it rains I'll come home. I'll take food and water and tents and air beds and sleeping bags. I know it will be a great experience, but there's still a bit of me that wishes I could be that totally unprepared 16 year old again.

The Blank Generation - my punk experience

Late 1976. I had left university with an English degree. I was married. I owned my house. I was working in a wiring factory, waiting to hear if I'd got funding to do a masters , studying vernacular architecture in West Yorkshire. Late 1977. I was living with my Dutch boyfriend, Jan, former roadie to Alberto y Los Trios Paranoias.I was dyeing his hair black over the shared bathroom sink, and sewing his jeans to his skinny long legs, Ramones style. I was living in a flat on Northen Grove, West Didsbury, famous for being the residential road where a disgruntled cannabis dealer had once planted a home made bomb under the drug squad's Jag.I was treasurer for On the 8th Day,whole food shop and cafe on Oxford Rd, once the centre of idealistic hippiedom in Manchester and now a serious part of the workers' co-operative movement. How did this happen? Some of it was down to punk. At 22 in 1976 I felt a little too old, and possibly a little too conventionally pretty ( though I wouldn't have been able to articulate that back then)to fully embrace the punk movement, but it still had an impact. How did we learn about it? There was no internet. TV, radio and the music press were limited in their scope when it came to reporting new influences in music, lifestyle and fashion. Viral was cold sores and chicken pox. Some friends were in the music business, some independent record shops shared what was coming, some journalists had ears to the ground and John Peel did his bit. Word of mouth. I was aware of Blondie, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, Patti Smith, Television and of course the Velvet Underground and Iggy Pop.Manchester grew its own - Magazine, Buzzcocks, Fast Breeder, Ed Banger and the Nosebleeds. I've already written about how bored I felt, how middle-aged and past it, with the mainstream music scene that was becoming so bland and corporate. I still loved soul, and Little Feat, and Captain Beefheart, but the rest was all just a bit too much about singing in tune. There had to be more. I was back at 8th Day. My husband had been made an offer he couldn't refuse, as were many unemployed graduates - poacher turned gamekeeper - and was working for the Department of Employment at the local Labour Exchange.One of the co-op members had just inherited some money. He also had a new baby. He had cut his hair short, bought a bright green Citroen 2CV and a stylish leather jacket. We heard that the Sex Pistols were playing Wigan Casino that night. We followed the road to Wigan, but the Sex Pistols didn't - it was just an ugly rumour. However Ed Banger and the Nosebleeds were on and we experienced a punk gig. On leaving Wigan casino, the Northern Soul crowd were waiting to go in for their customary all nighter. There was a police presence. When our friend opened the boot of his new car, we were all pounced on by uniformed officers, arrested, searched and taken down to the station. Unfortunately my husband's boss had given him a small piece of cannabis the day before, as she was 'giving up', and this was discovered in his jeans pocket. He was charged and prosecuted. He had to resign from the civil service before he was fired.I can only assume that because we didn't look like typical punks or Northern Soul fans, the police assumed we were drug dealers. We were all straddling several worlds at this point - from hippy ideals to left wing socialist politics. We were educated but not interested in conventional professions.We were rebels in our own time, but these days were different. The time was ripe for shock tactics and the rejection of the status quo. Pretty went out the window and in came pretty vacant. 1977 was the year the year of the Silver Jubilee, of desperate unemployment and a lack of connection ( deliberate and accidental) from the government of the day. The working class was unemployed and unemployable.Rock against Racism took a stand against the fear and ignorance of attitudes towards the new wave of refugees finding their way to the UK.Echoes of the present time. Punk's attitude was - if we can't be free we'll make bondage a fashion statement. If you think we are rubbish we'll wear bin bags as dresses. Ripped and torn clothing, held together with safety pins, laddered tights, shaved heads, sugar water and food dye mohicans.Let's make fashion out of necessity, take it to the limit one more time. Razor blades as earrings.The symbolism is amazing, and it gave fashion a whole new vocabulary. This wasn't simply a political movement, it was about taste, bad taste, and it was rotten. And that was amazing.I was more observer than participant, but it changed my attitudes. Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren recognised this as a piece of performance art, to be managed and manipulated through the media. It was soon absorbed and adapted by the mainstream. Katherine Hamnett and Zandra Rhodes took on the aesthetic - even Versace's safety pin dress for Liz Hurley referenced it. Never Mind the Buzzcocks is a jolly family music quiz. I have just been informed that there is a perfume called Anarchy in the UK. I'd like to think it's a joke but I have a horrible feeling it isn't. What price Smells Like Teen Spirit next.

The Bard of Salford

BBC 4' Punk Britannica and the documentary Evidently John Cooper Clarke got me fired up with recollections this week. The Bard of Salford was one of our own. I was brought up in Salford, as were both of my parents, but it was the place that dare not speak its name for my mother. Synonymous with slums. My mother is a Catholic doctor's daughter from Salford - a very troubled heritage if there ever was one. She denies it but her lifetime obsession with Coronation St is a bit of a giveaway. So the punk poet appealed to me on many levels - familiar turn of phrase, wicked sense of humour, literary interest. Before I was sent to boarding school I went to school in Salford - to Adelphi on the Crescent. I worked in Salford Central Library when I left school, before I went to university, all paid for by Salford. Salford was good to me. There were many points of contact with Mr Clarke through my 20s - music venues, performances, mutual friends. I'm not sure he ever really knew who I was - he tended to confuse me with my next door neighbour Jackie, Bruce Mitchell's wife. I was flattered. I've seen him perform several times over the last few years - Buxton Opera House and the Green Man festival. A far cry from the slightly seedy pubs and clubs of late 70s/early 80s Manchester. Some years ago I thought about booking him for the Bakewell Arts Festival but took the advice of a former member of the Invisible Girls and didn't - problems of communication, management, money and reliability were presented to me in a succinct and convincing way.Wise words I suspect at the time, but it could have caused a revolution in Bakewell's cultural life if I'd pulled it off! I'm encouraged to hear that he's part of the National Curriculum. I'm pleased I saw him back in the day.I wish my mum hadn't paid for elocution lessons for me. I'm glad he's recognised as the talent and influence he has always been. I asked someone at work if they'd seen it. 'Is he dead?' was their response. It's something special to have a documentary like this shown when you are still alive and creating. It was very poignant to see film of Martin Hannett as I remember him, and Alan Wise larger than life admitting to putting about the rumours of John's 'long relationship' with Nico. Enough of punk poets. More about punk as it appeared to me next time.