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The folk music of England is traditionally based music, which has existed since the later medieval period. It is often contrasted with courtly, classical and later commercial music. Folk music has been preserved and transmitted orally, through print and later through recordings. The term is used to refer to English traditional music and music composed, or delivered, in a traditional style. English folk music has produced or contributed to several important musical genres, including sea shanties, jigs, hornpipes and dance music, such as that used for Morris dancing. It can be seen as having distinct regional and local variations in content and style, particularly in areas more removed from the cultural and political centres of the English state, as in Northumbria, or the West Country. Cultural interchange and processes of migration mean that English folk music, although in many ways distinctive, has particularly interacted with the music of Scotland, Ireland and Wales. It has also interacted with other musical traditions, particularly classical and rock music, influencing musical styles and producing musical fusions, such as electric folk, folk punk and folk metal. There remains a flourishing sub-culture of English folk music, which continues to influence other genres and occasionally to gain mainstream attention
In the strictest sense, English folk music has existed since the arrival of the Anglo-Saxon people in Britain after 400 CE. The Venerable Bede's story of the cattleman and later ecclesiastical musician Caedmon indicates that in the early medieval period it was normal at feasts to pass around the harp and sing 'vain and idle songs'.[1] Since this type of music was rarely notated, we have little knowledge of its form or content.[2] Some later tunes, like those used for Morris dance, may have their origins in this period, but it is impossible to be certain of these relationships.[3] We know from a reference in William Langland's Piers Plowman, that ballads about Robin Hood were being sung from at least by the late 14th century and the oldest detailed material we have is Wynkyn de Worde's collection of Robin Hood ballads printed about 1495.[4]
While there was distinct court music, members of the social elite into the 16th century also seem to have enjoyed, and even to have contributed to the music of the people, as Henry VIII perhaps did with the tavern song "Pastime with Good Company".[5] Peter Burke argued that late medieval social elites had their own culture, but were culturally ‘amphibious', able to participate in and affect popular traditions.[6]
In the 16th century the changes in the wealth and culture of the upper social orders caused tastes in music to diverge.[6][7] There was an internationalisation of courtly music in terms of both instruments, such as the lute, dulcimer and early forms of the harpsichord, and in form with the development of madrigals, pavanes and galliards.[8] For other social orders, instruments like the pipe, tabor, bagpipe, shawm, hurdy gurdy, and crumhorn accompanied traditional music and community dance.[9] The fiddle, well established in England by the 1660s, was unusual in being a key element in both the art music that developed in the baroque, and in popular song and dance.[10]
By the mid-17th century, the music of the lower social orders was sufficiently alien to the aristocracy and "middling sort" for a process of rediscovery to be needed in order to understand it, along with other aspects of popular culture such as festivals, folklore and dance.[6] This led to a number of early collections of printed material, including those published by John Playford as The English Dancing Master (1651), and the private collections of Samuel Pepys (1633–1703) and the Roxburghe Ballads collected by Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Mortimer (1661–1724).[4]
In the 18th century there were increasing numbers of collections of what was now beginning to be defined as "folk" music, strongly influenced by the Romantic movement, including Thomas D'Urfey's Wit and Mirth: or, Pills to Purge Melancholy (1719–20) and Bishop Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765).[4] The last of these also contained some oral material and by the end of the 18th century this was becoming increasingly common, with collections including John Ritson's, The Bishopric Garland (1784), which paralleled the work of figures like Robert Burns and Walter Scott in Scotland.[4]
With the Industrial Revolution the themes of the music of the labouring classes began to change from rural and agrarian life to include industrial work songs.[11] Awareness that older kinds of song were being abandoned prompted renewed interest in collecting folk songs during the 1830s and 1840s, including the work of William Sandys' Christmas Carols Ancient and Modern (1833), William Chappell, A Collection of National English Airs (1838) and Robert Bell's Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of the Peasantry of England (1846).[12]
Technological change made new instruments available and led to the development of silver and brass bands, particularly in industrial centres in the north.[13] The shift to urban centres also began to create new types of music, including from the 1850s the Music hall, which developed from performances in ale houses into theatres and became the dominant locus of English popular music for over a century.[14] This combined with increased literacy and print to allow the creation of new songs that initially built on, but began to differ from traditional music as composers like Lionel Monckton and Sidney Jones created music that reflected new social circumstances.[15]
From the late 19th century there were a series of movements that attempted to collect, record, preserve and later to perform, English folk music and dance. These are usually separated into two folk revivals.
The first, in the later 19th and early 20th centuries, involved figures including collectors Gustav Holst (1874–1934) and Frederick Delius (1862–1934).[16][17] In 1932 the Folk-Song Society and the English Folk Dance Society merged to become the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS).[11]
The second revival gained momentum after the Second World War, following on from the American folk music revival as new forms of media and American commercial music appeared to pose another threat to traditional music.[16][18] The key figures were Ewan MacColl and A. L. Lloyd. The second revival was generally left wing in politics and emphasised the work music of the 19th century and previously neglected forms like erotic folk songs.[4] Topic Records, founded in 1939, provided a major source of folk recordings.[16] The revival resulted in the foundation of a network of folk clubs in major towns, from the 1950s.[19] Major traditional performers included the Copper Family, The Watersons, the Ian Campbell Folk Group, and Shirley Collins.[20] The fusing of various styles of American music with English folk also helped to create a distinctive form of guitar fingerstyle known as ‘folk baroque’, which was pioneered by Davy Graham, Martin Carthy, John Renbourn and Bert Jansch.[21]
The process of fusion between American musical styles and English folk can also be seen as the origin of British progressive folk music, which attempted to elevate folk music through greater musicianship, or compositional and arrangement skills.[22] Many progressive folk performers continued to retain a traditional element in their music, including Jansch and Renbourn, who with Jacqui McShee, Danny Thompson, and Terry Cox, formed Pentangle in 1967.[23] Others totally abandoned the traditional element and in this area particularly influential were the Scottish artists Donovan, who was most influenced by emerging progressive folk musicians in America like Bob Dylan, and the Incredible String Band, who from 1967 incorporated a range of influences including medieval and eastern music into their compositions. Some of this, particularly the Incredible String Band, has been seen as developing into the further sub-genre of psych or psychedelic folk and had a considerable impact on progressive and psychedelic rock.[24]
There was a brief flowering of English progressive folk in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with groups like the Third Ear Band and Quintessence following the eastern Indian musical and more abstract work by group such as Comus, Dando Shaft, The Trees, Spirogyra, Forest, and Jan Dukes De Grey, but commercial success was elusive for these bands and most had broken up or moved in very different directions by about 1973. Perhaps the finest individual work in the genre was from artists early 1970s artists like Nick Drake and John Martyn, but these can also be considered the first among the English ‘folk troubadours’ or ‘singer-songwriters’, individual performers who remained largely acoustic but who relied mostly on their own individual compositions.[25] The most successful of these was Ralph McTell, whose ‘Streets of London’ reached number 2 in the UK Single Charts in 1974, and whose music is clearly folk, but without much reliance on tradition, virtuosity, or much evidence of attempts at fusion with other genres.[26]
Electric folk is the name given to the kind of folk rock pioneered in England from the late 1960s, by the band Fairport Convention.[16] It uses traditional music, and compositions in a traditional style, played on a combination of rock and traditional instruments.[27] It was most significant in the 1970s, when it was taken up by groups such as Pentangle, Steeleye Span and the Albion Band.[28] It was rapidly adopted and developed in the surrounding Celtic cultures of Brittany, where it was pioneered by Alan Stivell and bands like Malicorne; in Ireland by groups such as Horslips; and also in Scotland, Wales and the Isle of Man and Cornwall, to produce Celtic rock and its derivatives.[29] It has been influential in those parts of the world with close cultural connections to Britain, such as the USA and Canada and gave rise to the sub-genre of Medieval folk rock and the fusion genres of folk punk and folk metal.[30] By the 1980s the genre was in steep decline in popularity, but has survived and revived in significance as part of a more general folk resurgence since the 1990s.[31]
In the mid-1980s a new rebirth of English folk began, this time fusing folk with energy and political aggression derived from punk rock. Leaders included The Pogues, The Men They Couldn't Hang, Oyster Band and Billy Bragg.[32] Folk dance music also became popular in the 80s, with acts like the English Country Blues Band and Tiger Moth.[33] The decade later saw the use of reggae with English folk music by the band Edward II & the Red Hot Polkas, especially on their seminal Let's Polkasteady from 1987.[34]
In a process strikingly similar to the origins of electric folk in the 1960s, the English thrash metal band Skyclad added violins from a session musician on several tracks for their 1990 debut album The Wayward Sons of Mother Earth.[35] When this was well received they adopted a full-time fiddle player and moved towards a signature folk and jig style leading them to be credited as the pioneers of folk metal, which has spread to Ireland, the Baltic and Germany.[35]
The peak of traditional English folk, like progressive and electric folk, was the mid- to late-1970s, when, for a time it threatened to break through into the mainstream. By the end of the decade, however, it was in decline.[36] The attendance at, and numbers of folk clubs began to decrease, probably as new musical and social trends, including punk rock, new wave and electronic music began to dominate.[37] Although many acts like Martin Carthy and the Watersons continued to perform successfully, there were very few significant new acts pursuing traditional forms in the 1980s. This began to change with a new generation in the 1990s. The arrival and sometimes mainstream success of acts like Kate Rusby, Nancy Kerr, Kathryn Tickell, Jim Moray, Spiers and Boden, Seth Lakeman, Frank Turner and Eliza Carthy, all largely concerned with acoustic performance of traditional material, marked a radical turn around in the fortunes of the tradition.[20] This was reflected in the adoption creation of the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards in 2000, which gave the music a much needed status and focus and the profile of folk music is as high in England today as it has been for over thirty years.[38]
Although there were a handful of clubs that allowed space for the performance of traditional folk music by the early 1950s, its major boost came from the short-lived British skiffle craze, from about 1956-8.[16] New clubs included the ‘Ballad and Blues’ club in a pub in Soho, co-founded by Ewan MacColl.[11] As the craze subsided from the mid-1950s many of these clubs began to shift towards the performance of English traditional folk material.[16] Many became strict ‘policy clubs’, that pursued a pure and traditional form of music.[11] By the mid-1960s there were probably over 300 in Britain.[16] Most clubs were simply a regular gathering, usually in the back or upstairs room of a public house on a weekly basis.[39] They were largely a phenomenon of the urbanised middle classes and known for the amateur nature of many performances.[40] There were also ‘residents’, who performed regular short sets of songs.[41] Many of these later emerged as major performers in their own right, including A. L. Lloyd, Martin Carthy, and Shirley Collins.[42] A later generation of performers used the folk club circuit for highly successful mainstream careers, including Billy Connolly, Jasper Carrott, Ian Dury and Barbara Dickson.[16] The number of clubs began to decline in the 1980s, in the face of changing musical and social trends. But the decline began to stabilize in the mid-1990s with the resurgence of interest in folk music and there are now over 160 folk clubs in the United Kingdom, including many that can trace their origins back to the 1950s.[43]
The difficulty of gaining regular appearances on television in England has long meant that radio has remained the major popular medium for increasing awareness of the genre. The EFDSS sponsored the BBC Home Service radio program, As I Roved Out, based on field recordings made by Peter Kennedy and Séamus Ennis from 1952 to 1958, which probably did more than any other single factor to introduce the general population to British folk music in the period.[44] Also important were occasional radio shows, such as Lomax’s Ballads and Blues, MacColl’s Radio-ballads (1958–64) and The Song Carriers (1968).[44] John Peel frequently included folk music of his Top Gear show on Radio One from 1968, but dropped it when punk arrived in the 1970s.[44] The most consistent source of folk music on radio, has been BBC Radio 2. In 1967 "My Kind of folk" was broadcast on Wednesdays. In 1970 "Folk on Friday" began, presented by Jim Lloyd. In 1972 it became "Folk on Sunday".[45] "Folkweave" was presented by Tony Capstick 1975-8. "Folk on Two" (Wednesdays) began in 1980. In 1998 Jim Lloyd retired from the programme and was replaced by Mike Harding. In 2007 it was renamed "The Mike Harding Folk Show". In October 2012 it was announced that Mike Harding would be leaving the programme to be replaced by Mark Radcliffe.[46] Ian A. Anderson, editor of "fRoots", also presented the occasional series for Radio Two. He hosted a World music programme on "Jazz FM" and then spent 10 years broadcasting on the BBC World Service. He currently hosts "fRoots Radio" on the web.[47] For over twenty years, until 2006, Charlie Gillett presented World music on BBC London.
Folk festivals began to be organised by the EFDSS from about 1950, usually as local or regional event with an emphasis on dance, like the [48] One of the largest and most prestigious English folk festivals at Cambridge was founded in 1965 and attracts about 10,000 people.[48] Probably the largest is Fairport's Cropredy Convention, which since 1979 has provided a venue for folk, electric folk and rock artists and now attracts up to 20,000 people a year as well as performances for Fairport Convention and their friends.[49] Like rock festivals, folk festivals have begun to multiply since the 1990s and there are over a hundred folk festivals or varying sizes held in England every year.[50]
A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative story and set to music. Many ballads were written and sold as single sheet broadsides. They are usually narrative in structure and make considerable use of repetition.[51] The traditional ballad has been seen as originating with the wandering minstrels of late medieval Europe.[51] There have been many different and contradictory attempts to classify traditional ballads by theme, but commonly identified types are religious, supernatural, tragic, love, historic, legends and humour.[51]
A carol is a festive song, in modern times recognised as being exclusively associated with Christmas, but in reality there are carols celebrating all festivals and seasons of the year and not necessarily Christian festivals. They were derived from a form of circle dance accompanied by singers, which was popular from the mid-12th century.[52] From the 14th century they were used as processional songs, particularly at Advent, Easter and Christmas, and to accompany religious mystery plays.[53] They declined after the Protestant Reformation which banned many religious festivals, but some famous carols were written in this period, including 'The Holly and the Ivy' and they were more strongly revived from the 19th century and began to be written and adapted by eminent composers.[54]
The earliest vernacular children's songs in Europe are lullabies from the later medieval period.[55] From soon after we have records of short children's rhyming songs, but most nursery rhymes were not written down until the 18th century.[56] The first English collections were Tommy Thumb's Song Book and a sequel, Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book, are both thought to have been published before 1744, and John Newbery's, Mother Goose's Melody, or, Sonnets for the Cradle (c.1785), is the first record we have of many classic rhymes.[57] These rhymes seem to have come from a variety of sources, including traditional riddles, proverbs, ballads, lines of Mummers' plays, drinking songs, historical events, and, it has been suggested, ancient pagan rituals.[57] Roughly half of the current body recognised 'traditional' English rhymes were known by the mid-18th century.[56] From this period we sometimes know the origins and authors of rhymes, like 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star', which combined an 18th-century French tune with a poem by English writer Jane Taylor and 'Mary Had a Little Lamb', written by Sarah Josepha Hale of Boston in 1830.[57] The first, and possibly the most important collection to focus in this area was, James Orchard Halliwell's, The Nursery Rhymes of England (1842) and Popular Rhymes and Tales in 1849.[58] At the height of the revival Sabine Baring-Gould produced A Book of Nursery Songs (1895), and Andrew Lang produced The Nursery Rhyme Book in 1897.[56] Children's songs, unlike folk songs, have remained part of a living and continuous tradition, for although added to from other sources and affected by written versions, most adults pass on songs they learned from oral sources as children.[57]
It has been noted by most recent commentators on English folk song, that love, the erotic and even the pornographic, were major traditional themes and, if more than ballads are considered, may have been the largest groups of printed songs.[59] Many collectors in the first revival either ignored such songs, or bowdlerized them for publication, as Francis Child and Cecil Sharp did in their collections.[60] In the second revival, erotic folk song was much more accepted as part of the canon of traditional song, helped by the publication of books such as Gershon Legman’s, The Horn Book: Studies in Erotic Folklore (1964) and Ed Cray’s, The Erotic Muse: American Bawdy Songs, which printed many previously unpublished songs (1968).[61] In England A. L. Lloyd was the key figure in introducing erotic songs to the canon, lecturing and publishing on the subject. He recorded The Foggy Dew and Other Traditional English Love Songs in 1959, and then The Bird in the Bush, Traditional Erotic Songs in 1966 with Frankie Armstrong, and Anne Briggs.[62] He drew a distinction between erotic songs, i.e. those that dealt with love and suggested sexuality through innuendo (like 'The Bonny Black Hare' and 'The Bird in the Bush'), and pornographic songs that were explicit and therefore unworthy of attention.[63] Some authors, however, find these distinctions more difficult to maintain. Although erotic songs became part of the standard fare in folk clubs and among electric folk musicians, relatively few of the more explicit songs have been placed on record.[64]
The hornpipe is a style of dance music thought to have taken its name from an English reed instrument by at least the 17th century.[10] In the mid-18th century it changed from 3/2 time to 2/2, assuming its modern character, and probably reaching the height of its popularity as it became a staple of theatrical performances.[65] It is most often associated with the Sailor's Hornpipe, but has formed the basis of many individual and group country dances into the modern period.[66] Like many dances it was taken up in Scotland and Ireland and given a distinctive national character and moved to America with emigration.[67]
Jigs are a style of dance music developed in England to accompany a lively dance with steps, turns and leaps. The term jig was derived from the French 'giguer', meaning 'to jump'.[10] It was known as a dance in the 16th century, often in 2/4 time and the term was used for a dancing entertainment in 16th century plays.[68] The dance began to be associated with music particularly in 6/8 time, and with slip jigs 9/8 time.[67] In the 17th century the dance was adopted in Ireland and Scotland, where they were widely adapted, and with which countries they are now most often associated.[69] In some, usually more northern, parts of England, these dances would be referred to as a "Gallop" - such as the Winster Gallop from Derbyshire (though this owes its origins to the Winster Morris).
Perhaps the oldest clear example of an English protest song is the rhyme ‘When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?’, used in the [81] These industrial protest songs were largely ignored during the first English folk revival of the later 19th and early 20th century, but were recorded by figures like A. L. Lloyd on albums such as The Iron Muse (1963).[19] In the 1980s the anarchist rock band Chumbawamba recorded several versions of traditional English protest as English Rebel Songs 1381–1914.[82] Ewan MacColl became the leading writer of English protest songs in the 1950s, with pro-communist songs such as "The Ballad of Ho Chi Minh" and "The Ballad of Stalin", as well as volatile protest and topical songs concerning the nuclear threat to peace, most notably "Against the Atom Bomb".[83] The leading voice of protest in Thatcherite Britain in the 1980s was Billy Bragg, whose style of protest song and grass-roots political activism was mostly reminiscent of those of Woody Guthrie.[84]
In England songs about military and naval subjects were a major part of the output of ballad writers from the 16th century onwards, including one of the earliest British ballads ‘The Ballad of Chevy Chase’, which deals with the events of the Scottish victory of the Battle of Otterburn in 1388 and may date to the early 15th century.[88] The conflicts between England and Spain in the later 16th and early 17th centuries produced a number of ballads describing events, particularly naval conflicts like those of the Spanish Armada.[78] The English Civil War (1642–1653) produced a sub-genre of ‘Cavalier ballads’, including ‘When the King Home in Peace Again’.[89] Many of these were adapted and reused by Jacobites after the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688.[90] The Anglo-French Wars of the 17th and 18th centuries saw more descriptive works, usually couched in patriotic terms, but some, like ‘Captain Death’ (1757) dealt with loss and defeat.[78] As regimental identities emerged songs were adopted for marching, like ‘The British Grenadiers’, based on a 17th-century dance tune.[91] Output became a flood during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1797–1815), seeing numerous patriotic war songs, like ‘Heart of Oak’ and the emergence of a stereotype of the English seaman as ‘Jolly Jack Tar’, who appeared in many ballads and on stage.[92] As the musical hall began to take over the lead in popular music and folk song declined, folk song ceased to deal with contemporary wars in the later 19th century.
Work songs include music sung while conducting a task (often to coordinate timing) or a song linked to a task or trade which might be a connected narrative, description, or protest song. The two main types of work song in England are agricultural work songs, usually are rhythmic a cappella songs sung by people working on a physical and often repetitive task, like the 'Harvest song' common in south-west England.[93] The songs were probably intended to increase productivity while reducing feelings of boredom.[94] Rhythms of work songs can serve to synchronize physical movement in a group or gang. Industrial folk song emerged in Britain in the 18th century, as workers took the music with which they were familiar, including ballads and agricultural work songs, and adapted them to their new experiences and circumstances.[95] Unlike agricultural work songs, it was often unnecessary to use music to synchronise actions between workers, as the pace would be increasingly determined by water, steam, chemical and eventually electric power, and frequently impossible because of the noise of early industry.[96] As a result, industrial folk songs tended to be descriptive of work, circumstances, or political in nature, making them amongst the earliest protest songs and were sung between work shifts or in leisure hours, rather than during work. This pattern can be seen in textile production, mining and eventually steel, shipbuilding, rail working and other industries.[95]
Despite enjoying relative geographical uniformity and history [105]
Due to its lack of clear boundaries and a perceived lack of identity in its folk music, the [108] Cecil Sharp’s interest in the region was largely confined to the south, particularly the Cotswold morris villages of Oxfordshire and Warwickshire, which provided him with an archetype of English ceremonial dance.[11] From 1905 Percy Grainger was actively collecting in Lincolnshire, acquiring recordings of songs that would provide the basis for his Lincolnshire Posy (1937).[109] It was not until the early 1970s that the broader heritage of the region, including the many industrial and work songs associated with mining or The Potteries, began to gain serious attention.[110] Despite this neglect there was an active folk scene in the region, which produced several key artists of the second revival from the 1960s, including Anne Briggs from Nottinghamshire, The Settlers from the West Midlands and from Birmingham one of the most influential groups of the period, the Ian Campbell Folk Group, which numbered among its members later electric folk musicians Dave Swarbrick and Dave Pegg.[16] Slightly later a number of folk groups came out of Derbyshire, including The Druids, Ram's Bottom Band and Muckram Wakes, which included one of the most highly regarded modern performers John Tams.[16] Lincolnshire has produced Martin Simpson, perhaps the most highly regarded folk guitarist of his generation.[111] Birmingham’s position as a centre for folk music has been emphasised by its place as the home of the Birmingham Conservatoire Folk Ensemble, led by former Albion Band fiddler Joe Broughton, which provides something of a clearing house of promising young folk musicians.[112] The regions has numerous folk clubs and host many major folk festivals, including those of Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, Loughborough in Leicestershire, Shrewsbury in Shropshire, Warwick and Moseley.[113]
Although relatively neglected in the first folk revival North West England had a rich tradition of balladry stretching back at least to the 17th century and sharing in the tradition of Border ballads, including perhaps the finest ‘The Ballad of Chevy Chase', thought to have been composed by the Lancashire born minstrel Richard Sheale.[114] Lancashire in particular was a common location for folk songs, including ‘The Lancashire Miller’, ‘Warrington Ale’ and ‘The soldier’s farewell to Manchester’, beside several local Wassailing songs.[114] With a variety of dialects and acting as something of a crossroads for the cultures and immigrants of England, Scotland and Ireland, there is a distinctive local character to folk music, which expressed itself in local enthusiasm that emerged as a major factor within the wider folk movement in the second revival. The key event in the history of folk music in the counties of the north west of England was the Industrial Revolution, which divided the region economically and culturally into a northern, often highland and pastoral region, in Westmorland and Cumberland and a more urbanised and industrialised southern zone with large and growing conurbations like Manchester and Liverpool, where changing social and economic patterns emerged in new traditions and styles of folk song, often linked to migration and patterns of work, these included processional dances, often associated with rushbearing and the Wakes Week festivities and types of step dance, most famously clog dancing.[115] These were very different from the styles of dance that collectors like Cecil Sharp had encountered in the Cotswolds and were largely dismissed by him as contaminated by urbanisation, yet they were, and remain, a thriving tradition of music and dance.[11] A local pioneer of folk song collection in the first half of the 19th century in Lancashire was Shakespearian scholar James Orchard Halliwell, and he was followed a little later by John Harland, William E. Axon, Thomas T. Wilkinson and Sidney Gilpin, who performed a similar service for Cumberland.[116] Most of these works, although important in unearthing, and in some cases preserving, locally relevant ballads, largely depended on manuscript sources, rather than oral collection and often did not give tunes, but only lyrics.[114] It was not until the second folk revival that the full range of song from the region began to gain attention. The region not only produced one of the major figures of the revival in Ewan MacColl but also a local champion in Harry Boardman, who from 1965 onwards probably did more than anyone to popularise and record the industrial folk song of the region, in several albums and books.[117] The region produced no significant bands in the electric folk movement of the 1970s but can claim one of the most significant figures, as Maddy Prior was brought up in Blackpool. However, perhaps the most influential folk artists to emerge from the region in this period were folk troubadour Roy Harper and comedian and broadcaster Mike Harding.[118] More recently it has produced some significant performers including guitarist Ken Nicol and mother and daughter singer songwriters Chris and Kellie While.[119] The region is home to numerous folk clubs, many of them catering to Irish and Scots folk. Folk festivals include the Fylde Folk Festival at Fleetwood in Lancashire.[120]
Northumbria possesses a distinctive style of folk music with a flourishing and continuing tradition.[20] The region is particularly noted for the unique Northumbrian smallpipes and strong fiddle tradition that was already well-established in the 1690s. Northumbrian music is characterised by considerable influence from other regions, particularly southern Scotland, other parts of the north of England and Ireland.[20] Local tunes were collected from the mid-18th century by figures including Henry Atkinson and William Vickers and in the first revival by John Bell, Bruce. J. Collingwood and John Stokoe.[121] The Northumbrian Small Pipes Society was founded in Newcastle in 1893 and the Northumbrian Pipers' Society in 1928, and they are generally credited with keeping the distinctive tradition alive.[122] Border ballads were a major part of those collected by Francis James Child and make up most of the sixth volume of his ten volume collection of The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (1882–98).[123] The second folk revival saw a number of acts drawing on this work, and enjoying some success. Probably the most influential piper at that time was Billy Pigg.[18] Performers such Louis Killen, The High Level Ranters and Bob Davenport brought Northumbrian folk to national and international audiences.[20] The 1970s saw folk rock bands like Lindisfarne, and the more traditionally focused Jack the Lad and Hedgehog Pie.[20] More recently, Northumbrian folk music, and particularly the use of the Northumbrian pipes, has become one of the liveliest and most widely known subgenres of folk music in Britain, with artists like fiddler Nancy Kerr, piper Kathryn Tickell and Rachel Unthank and the Winterset gaining international reputations.[20] Currently the region has over thirty active folk clubs and hosts several major folk festivals, including the Traditional Music Festival at Rothbury.[124][125]
Even excluding Sussex and London, Alfred Williams in Oxfordshire and Berkshire and Cecil Sharp in Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, and Kent.[127] In the second folk revival the region contributed several figures, with probably the most important being Martin Carthy from Hertfordshire. The most significant electric folk group from the region were the Oyster Band, formed in Canterbury, while guitarist John Martyn came from Surrey and fiddle player Chris Leslie from Banbury in Oxfordshire. From the current crop of young folk musicians probably the most prominent are Spiers and Boden from Oxfordshire and Chris Wood, born in Kent. The region is host to numerous folk clubs, and festivals, including the Oxford festival and Fairport’s Cropredy Convention in Oxfordshire and St Albans in Hertfordshire.[120]
Eastbourne, Crawley and Lewes.[137]
The music of Cornwall is often noted for its similarity to that of Brittany and, as a result of the close physical and cultural ties between the two peninsulas, some older songs and carols share the same root as Breton tunes.[138] From the late Middle Ages the fiddle (crowd in Cornish), bombarde (horn-pipe), bagpipes and harp all seem to have been used in music. The Cornish bagpipes died out, as elsewhere in southern England, in the 16th century, but have recently been re-created.[139] From the mid-19th century accordions became progressively more popular as a folk instrument in the county, as in the rest of the West Country. There is long and varied history of Cornish dance from the medieval period, with records of strong traditions of morris dancing, mumming, guising, and social dance.[140] These seem to have been interrupted by the Reformation and Civil War and Commonwealth in the 16th and 17th centuries.[141] However, there was revival from the late 18th century and seasonal and community festivals, mumming and guising all flourished.[142] In the 19th century a strong tradition of nonconformity and temperance may also have affected dancing and music adversely and encouraged choral and brass band movements, while traditional tunes were used for carols. Some community events survived, such as the 'Obby 'Oss festival in Padstow and the Furry Dance in Helston.[143] Folk songs include ‘Sweet Nightingale’, ‘Little Eyes’, and ‘Lamorna’. 'Trelawny' is often sung at sporting events and is seen by many as an unofficial anthem.[144] Few traditional Cornish lyrics survived the decline of the language, but in some cases lyrics of common English songs became attached to older Cornish tunes.[145] Some folk tunes have Cornish lyrics written since the language revival of the 1920s.[145] Modern Cornish musicians include the former Cornish folk singer Brenda Wootton and the Cornish-Breton family band Anao Atao.[145] Recently bands like Sacred Turf, Skwardya and Krena, have begun performing electric folk in the Cornish language.[146] The Cornwall Folk Festival has been held annually for more than three decades.[147]
Outside Devon and Cornwall Celtic influence on music in the West Country is much less obvious, but folk music still retains many distinctive local characteristics. As in Cornwall there are very strong traditions of folk dance and mumming, the best known being the Hobby horse celebrations at Minehead in Somerset.[148] The maritime heritage of Devon made sea shanties, hornpipes and naval or sea ballads important parts of regional folk music.[87] From the 19th century accordions have been a popular and accepted part of the local folk sound. Folk songs from the West Country include ‘Widdecombe Fair’, ‘Spanish Ladies’ and ‘The Seeds of Love.’ The region was important in the first folk revival, as the Devon-born antiquarian Sabine Baring-Gould invested effort in collecting regional music, published as Songs and Ballads of the West (1889–91), the first collection published for the mass market. He later collaborated with Cecil Sharp who, with Charles Marson, produced a three volume Folk-Songs from Somerset (1904–09).[149] Other collectors included Henry and Robert Hammond in Dorset, the Reverend Geoffrey Hill in Wiltshire, Percy Grainger in Gloucestershire and, perhaps the most famous, Ralph Vaughan Williams' 'Folk Songs from Somerset', which provided themes for his English Folk Song Suite.[150] In the second folk revival the most famous West country musicians were melodeon-player Bob Cann and writer, performer and broadcaster Cyril Tawney, 'The Father of the West Country Folk Revival'.[151] In the 1970s there were figures such as Tony Rose.[152] The same period saw one of the most surprising hybrids in music history Scrumpy and Western with bands like the Wurzels and The Yetties, who took most of the elements of West Country folk music for comical folk-style songs with affectionate parodies of more mainstream musical genres, delivered in local West Country dialects.[153] More seriously, the West Country and particularly Devon, have produced some of the most successful folk artists of recent years, including Show of Hands, Mark Bazeley and Jason Rice, Paul Downes, Jim Causley, Seth Lakeman and his brothers.[154] The region has numerous folk clubs and annual festivals, including those at Portsmouth and the first modern English folk festival to be established at Sidmouth in Devon.[155]
Yorkshire has a rich heritage of folk music and folk dance including the Long Sword dance.[156] Folk songs were collected there from the 19th century but, though it probably had more attention than other northern counties, its rich heritage of industrial folk song was relatively neglected.[157] It was not until the second revival in the 1950s that Nigel and Mary Hudleston began to attempt to redress the balance, collecting Yorkshire songs between 1958 and 1978.[158] Yorkshire folk song lacked the unique instrumental features of folk in areas like Northumbria and was chiefly distinguished by the use of dialect, particularly in the West Riding and exemplified by the song ‘On Ilkla Moor Baht 'at’, probably written in the later 19th century and using a Kent folk tune (almost certainly borrowed via a Methodist hymnal), but often seen as an unofficial Yorkshire anthem.[159] Most Yorkshire folk songs were not unique and tended to be adapted to fit local geography and dialect, as was the case with probably the most commercially successful Yorkshire song, ‘Scarborough Fair’, recorded by Simon & Garfunkel, which was a version of the Scottish ballad ‘The Elfin Knight’.[160] The most famous folk performers from the county are the Watersons from Hull, who began recording Yorkshire versions of folk songs from 1965.[161] Other Yorkshire folk musicians include Heather Wood (born 1945) of the Young Tradition, the short-lived electric folk group Mr Fox (1970-2), The Deighton Family, Julie Matthews, Kathryn Roberts, and the Mercury Prize nominated Kate Rusby.[161] Even considering its position as the largest county in England, Yorkshire has a flourishing folk music culture, with over forty folk clubs and thirty annual folk music festivals.[162] In 2007, the Yorkshire Garland Group was formed to make Yorkshire folk songs accessible online and in schools.[163]
United Kingdom, Angles, Cornwall, Isle of Man, English language
United Kingdom, City of London, Paris, Greater London, Australia
Polka, Jazz, Music, Flute, Folk music of Ireland
Polka, Waltz, Accordion, Irish dance, England
Polka, Dance, Waltz, Irish dance, Reel (dance)
Music, Country music, Oclc, Béla Bartók, Bob Dylan