THE BRITISH FOLK REVIVAL Almost 20 years ago Michael Brocken created, from his doctoral research, what became both a seminal and contested volume concerning the social mores surrounding the British Folk Revival up to that point in time: The British Folk Revival 1944– 2002. In this long- overdue second edition he revisits not only his own research, but also that of others from the 1990s and early 21st century. He then considers how a discourse of folkloric authenticity emerged in the closing years of the 19th century and how a worrying nationalistic immanence came to surround folk music and dance during the inter- war years. Brocken also proposes that the media: records, radio and TV in post- WWII folk revivalism can offer us important insights into how self- directed learning of the folk guitar emerged. Brocken moves on to consider the business structures of the contemporary folk scene and how relationships are formed between contemporary folk business and the digital and social media spheres. In his penultimate chapter he discusses the masculinisation of folk traditions and asks important questions about how our folk traditions are carried and are authorised. In the final chapter he also considers the rise of an exciting new folk live music built environment. Michael Brocken is Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. He is a freelance researcher, lecturer, writer and broadcaster and lives in Prestatyn, North Wales. Mike currently presents Folkscene on BBC Radio Merseyside: the longest running specialist music radio show in British broadcasting history. ASHGATE POPULAR AND FOLK MUSIC SERIES Series Editors: Lori Burns, Professor, University of Ottawa, Canada Justin Williams, Senior Lecturer in Music, University of Bristol, UK Popular musicology embraces the field of musicological study that engages with popular forms of music, especially music associated with commerce, entertainment and leisure activities. The Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series aims to present the best research in this field. Authors are concerned with criticism and analysis of the music itself, as well as locating musical practices, values and meanings in cultural context. The focus of the series is on popular music of the twentieth and twenty- first centuries, with a remit to encompass the entirety of the world’s popular music. Critical and analytical tools employed in the study of popular music are being continually developed and refined in the twenty-f irst century. Perspectives on the transcultural and intercultural uses of popular music have enriched understanding of social context, reception and subject position. Popular genres as distinct as reggae, township, bhangra and flamenco are features of a shrinking, transnational world. The series recognizes and addresses the emergence of mixed genres and new global fusions, and utilizes a wide range of theoretical models drawn from anthropology, sociology, psychoanalysis, media studies, semiotics, postcolonial studies, feminism, gender studies and queer studies. The Genesis and Structure of the Hungarian Jazz Diaspora Ádám Havas One- Track Mind: Capitalism, Technology, and the Art of the Pop Song Edited by Asif Siddiqi The British Folk Revival, 2nd edition Michael Brocken For more information about this series, please visit: www.routle dge.com/ music/ ser ies/ APFM THE BRITISH FOLK REVIVAL Michael Brocken Cover image: Getty Images Second edition published 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 Michael Brocken The right of Michael Brocken to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. First edition published by Ashgate Publishing 2003 British Library Cataloguing- in- Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Brocken, Michael, author. Title: The British folk revival / Michael Brocken. Description: Second edition. | Abingdon, Oxon ; New York : Routledge, 2022. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022016429 (print) | LCCN 2022016430 (ebook) | ISBN 9781032309156 (hardback) | ISBN 9780367766870 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003307242 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Folk music–Great Britain–History and criticism. | Folk music–Social aspects–Great Britain–History. | Popular music–Great Britain–History and criticism. Classification: LCC ML3650 .B76 2022 (print) | LCC ML3650 (ebook) | DDC 781.62/2–dc22/eng/20220404 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022016429 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022016430 ISBN: 978- 1- 032- 30915- 6 (hbk) ISBN: 978- 0- 367- 76687- 0 (pbk) ISBN: 978- 1- 003- 30724- 2 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/ 9781003307242 Typeset in Bembo by Newgen Publishing UK newgenprepdf CONTENTS 1 The inherent morphology of folklore and folk song: a ‘changing same’ 1 2 A selective consideration of folk literature in relation to the first edition of The British Folk Revival 27 3 The aesthetics and practicalities of revivalism: a conservative- socialist- recorded sound ‘revolution’? 57 4 Folk, blues and self- directed learning with the post- WWII Britain media 85 5 The business of folk 114 6 New folk media in the social sphere 144 7 Gendered folk mythologies 171 8 The folk built environment and the development of ‘thirdspace’ 199 Bibliography 227 Index 239 1 THE INHERENT MORPHOLOGY OF FOLKLORE AND FOLK SONG A ‘changing same’ Man is an historical animal, with a deep sense of his own past; and if he cannot integrate the past by a history explicit and true, he will integrate it by a history implicit and false. The challenge is one which no historian with any conviction of the value of his work can ignore; and the way to meet it is not to evade the issue of ‘relevance’, but to accept the fact and work out its implications.1 Revivals: an introduction The folk songs, tunes, dances, stories and passions of past generations continue to attract the attention of succeeding cohorts of researchers, artists and archivists. Some might feel that our algorithmic rationality has placed us as human beings ‘out of kilter’ with the natural world and that we need to remind ourselves to abide by environmental- based laws and lore. Others perhaps believe that by keeping alive folk crafts and myths, vivid corollaries can be drawn between our own experiences and those aspirations and authenticities of our ancestors. According to A. MacIntye, by devoting ourselves to the ‘construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained … a healthy [moral] tradition is [also] sustained by its own internal arguments and conflicts’.2 Conversely, the study of folk arts and myths can also reveal disparities between then and now, asking us whether we should indeed bind ourselves to such signs and symbols – especially in their untransformed states. Yes, they might contain significant elements of intertwining ecologies of place, beliefs and lived experiences, but the narrative models of personal identities presented by such tales (‘wicked stepmothers’, ‘misguided kings’, etc.) also make us contemplate whether they should be turned into universal creative expressions DOI: 10.4324/9781003307242-1 2 The inherent morphology of folklore of independent and alternative living. Perhaps most problematic of all is the question of how exactly the female half of the population is supposed to react to the narrative tendencies of folklore, for authentic female experiences are often lost and surviving folk traditions can be viewed as little more than male doctrines of adherence. Therefore, although the study of the histories and historiographies of folk revivalisms are fascinating, revivalist logics do have a tendency to discard the unknown and infill with masculinised ‘rational certainties’ which are, in fact, little more than value judgements. Further, once the belief systems of contemporary historians are inflicted upon these past ‘folk’ living in different times (and facing different problems), they are transformed into narrative archetypes furnished by ‘modern’ ideologies and authenticities, in the process morphing into representations of those albeit con- scientious people undertaking the research. Therefore, via the dual interventions of masculine historical-p olitical mindsets, together with modernist historical classifications that owe their existence less to the pursuit of history and more to ‘presentist’ dogmas, our interpretations of folk crafts and folklore end up defining something far less than the sum of their overall significance. Perhaps precisely because of such dilemmas, folk revivals intent on bringing about a kind of singular ‘folk’ reality continue to be of great interest to the popular culture historian, for it becomes obvious that that folk traditions and myths are frequently recruited as component parts of ongoing discourses (i.e. rather than his- torically ‘speaking for themselves’). This is not to say that (for example) the voices of the 19th- century rural poor did not contain pejorative didacticisms, resentments and bitterness, just like their modern counterparts; indeed, for many living in pre- vious centuries across the British Isles, injustice probably seemed to be an inte- gral part of their landscape. However, when contemporary ideologies play a part in the reconstruction of any past (but perhaps especially when that past is mal- leable and/ or practically impossible to fully locate), in order to provide us with seemingly deeper elemental insights to the human condition, we run the risk of dealing in non-m etaphysical essentialisms. Therefore, one crucial ‘historical’ issue facing the researcher concerns how such notions of ‘the folk’ have actually been ‘revived’. How, for example, different 20th-c entury political rhetorical tropes might have been inflicted upon those from whom such lore and arts apparently emerged. Indeed, how our ancestors might have been so misrepresented by contemporary ideologies posing as revivalist histories that, in all likelihood, they would not have been able to recognise themselves. John Arnold informs us that historians can and do ‘make up’ false notions of identity, according to their own belief systems (if you like, their own ‘myths’): ‘Essences’ can get us into trouble, as when we come to believe that the term ‘man’ can always stand for ‘woman’ also; or when we think that different ‘races’ have intrinsic characteristics; or when we imagine that our [bold in original] mode of politics and government is the only proper pattern of The inherent morphology of folklore 3 behaviour. So the historian might take on another job: as reminder to those who seek ‘essences’ of the price that might be exacted.3 Nevertheless, when folk traditions are revived, we are at least awarded the oppor- tunity to consider how everyday pleasures’ and pastimes’, such as the passing of the seasons, regard for the soil and the kindness of organic husbandry might have been woven into peoples’ everyday lives. Via the retrieval of values and authenticities from those perhaps more organic ways of doing things, we are reminded that arts, crafts and artisanal pathways can be rewarding, providing us with pointers towards restoring heterogeneous and collective ways of life, even bringing about inventive choices and diverse pathways to help protect ‘Mother Earth’. Yet, the his- torical crisis embedded in all of this is how we actually go about characterising our conceptualisations of these previous folk, their traditions and folklore. For, given the limits of our modern linguistics and lifestyles, recognising and defining truly mean- ingful signifiers concerning their past identities without using present[ist] rhetorical stereotypes, is practically impossible. One might argue that if our knowledge of traditional ways of both doing and mythologising is considered ‘artistic’ (i.e., rather than essentially ‘historical’), we might be provided with creative oppositions to the doctrines of artistic talent being restricted to those with a ‘rare gift’. In this way, folk crafts are useful in questioning elitisms and posing serious questions about the hegemonic discourse of ‘art’. Indeed, once branded as ‘folk’ and or ‘traditional’, such crafts (together with their associated ‘ways of living’) might draw our attention to one of the great fallacies of ‘high art’ and its surrounding cultures: that being the false distance created between ‘the artist’ and everyday praxis. Folk arts and crafts displaying patience, care and attention to detail emerge from harmonies connected with working to and learning from one’s own or one’s progenitor’s script, rather than those of others. This ‘oral tradition’, one which encourages self- directed learning still carries important signifiers connoting authenticity via a ‘lore’ or wisdom, learnt through time and space. It might be argued that romantic folkie attitudes towards life can, on their own, appear rather hopeless for one cannot live by mythologies alone. However, when per- haps better understood and appreciated by and through the creative and performing arts (rather than perhaps out-a nd- out ‘histories’ per se), the underlying practices and purposes of folk art, craft and myth can help make our lives more sustainable, our skills more purposeful and perhaps even our daily rituals more philosophical and less stressful. Therefore, folk culture revivals, via music-m aking, story- telling, and myth- making, together with festival-b ased cultures incorporating various traditions and crafts, can at the very least provide nourishment for our creative minds. One might argue that the influence of folklore and crafts upon our creativity can be highly productive, for the relational logics of syntagmatic artistic combinations of ‘past’ and present practices can open up fascinating creative pathways and conceptualisations. Used together, lore, arts and crafts help us recognise important signs from previous semiotic systems that, although long- abandoned in the name of progress, are still