The folk music of England is a tradition-based music which has existed since the later medieval period. It is often contrasted with courtly, classical and later commercial music. Folk music traditionally was preserved and passed on orally within communities, but print and subsequently audio recordings have since become the primary means of transmission. The term is used to refer both to English traditional music and music composed or delivered in a traditional style.[citation needed]
There are distinct regional and local variations in content and style, particularly in areas more removed from the most prominent English cities, as in Northumbria, or the West Country. Cultural interchange and processes of migration mean that English folk music, although in many ways distinctive, has significant crossovers with the music of Scotland. When English communities migrated to the United States, Canada and Australia, they brought their folk traditions with them, and many of the songs were preserved by immigrant communities.
English folk music has produced or contributed to several cultural phenomena, including sea shanties, jigs, hornpipes and the music for Morris dancing. It has also interacted with other musical traditions, particularly classical and rock music, influencing musical styles and producing musical fusions, such as British folk rock, folk punk and folk metal. There remains a flourishing sub-culture of English folk music, which continues to influence other genres and occasionally gains mainstream attention.
History
Origins
In the strictest sense, English folk music has existed since the arrival of the Anglo-Saxon people in Britain after 400 AD. The Venerable Bede's story of the cattleman and later ecclesiastical musician Cædmon 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 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]
16th century to the 18th century
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]
Original score of Pastime with Good Company (c.1513), held in the British Library, London.
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] Pepys notably mentioned in his famous diary singing the ballad Barbara Allen on New Year's Eve, 1665, a ballad that survived in the oral tradition well into the twentieth century.[11] 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 Joseph Ritson's, The Bishopric Garland (1784), which paralleled the work of figures like Robert Burns and Walter Scott in Scotland.[4]
The first page of an 1840 printed version of "Barbara Allen" one of the most widely collected English language folk ballads.
It was in this period, too, that English folk music traveled across the Atlantic Ocean and became one of the foundations of American traditional music. In the colonies, it mixed with styles of music brought by other immigrant groups to create a host of new genres. For instance, English ballads, along with Irish, Scottish, and German musical traditions when combined with the African banjo, Afro-American rhythmic traditions and the Afro-American jazz and blues aesthetic led in part to the development of bluegrass and country music.
Early 19th century
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.[12] 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).[13]
Technological change made new instruments available and led to the development of silver and brass bands, particularly in industrial centres in the north.[14] 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.[15] 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.[16]
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 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.[32] 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.[33] 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 subgenre of psych or psychedelic folk and had a considerable impact on progressive and psychedelic rock.[34]
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.[35] 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.[36]
British folk rock developed in Britain during the mid to late 1960s by the bands Fairport Convention, and Pentangle which built on elements of American folk rock, and on the second British folk revival.[17] It uses traditional music, and compositions in a traditional style, played on a combination of rock and traditional instruments.[37] It was most significant in the 1970s, when it was taken up by groups such as Pentangle, Steeleye Span and the Albion Band.[38] 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; in Canada by groups such as Barde; and also in Scotland, Wales and the Isle of Man and Cornwall, to produce Celtic rock and its derivatives.[39] It has been influential in those parts of the world with close cultural connections to Britain, such as the US and Canada and gave rise to the subgenre of Medieval folk rock and the fusion genres of folk punk and folk metal.[40] 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.[41]
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.[42] Folk dance music also became popular in the 80s, with acts like the English Country Blues Band and Tiger Moth.[43] 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.[44]
In a process strikingly similar to the origins of British folk rock 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.[45] 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.[45]
Traditional folk resurgence 1990–present
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.[46] 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.[47] 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, Bellowhead, Nancy Kerr, Kathryn Tickell, Jim Moray, Spiers and Boden, Seth Lakeman, Frank Turner, Laura Marling and Eliza Carthy, all largely concerned with acoustic performance of traditional material, marked a radical turn around in the fortunes of the tradition.[22] 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.[48]
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.[17] New clubs included the 'Ballad and Blues' club in a pub in Soho, co-founded by Ewan MacColl.[12] As the craze subsided from the mid-1950s many of these clubs began to shift towards the performance of English traditional folk material.[17] Many became strict 'policy clubs', that pursued a pure and traditional form of music.[12] By the mid-1960s there were probably over 300 in Britain.[17] Most clubs were simply a regular gathering, usually in the back or upstairs room of a public house on a weekly basis.[49] They were largely a phenomenon of the urbanised middle classes and known for the amateur nature of many performances.[50] There were also 'residents', who performed regular short sets of songs.[51] Many of these later emerged as major performers in their own right, including A. L. Lloyd, Martin Carthy, and Shirley Collins.[52] 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.[17] 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.[53]
Folk music and the radio
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.[54] Also important were occasional radio shows, such as Lomax's Ballads and Blues (1951),[55] MacColl's Radio-ballads (1958–64) and The Song Carriers (1968).[54]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.[54] 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".[56] "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.[57]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.[58] 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 Sidmouth Festival (from 1955) and the Keele Festival (1965), which was abandoned in 1981 but reinstituted three years later as the National Folk Festival. The EFDSS gave up its organizing role in these festivals in the 1980s and most are locally run and financed.[59] One of the largest and most prestigious English folk festivals at Cambridge was founded in 1965 and attracts about 10,000 people.[59] Probably the largest is Fairport's Cropredy Convention, which since 1979 has provided a venue for folk, British folk rock, and rock artists; it now attracts up to 20,000 people a year as well as performances for Fairport Convention and their friends.[60] 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.[61]
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.[62] The traditional ballad has been seen as originating with the wandering minstrels of late medieval Europe.[62] 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.[62] Many ballads were brought by English settlers to the New World, thus contributing in part to the bedrock of American folk music that had been established via the Afro-American rhythmic traditions, the blues aesthetic, and the cross-pollination of the American immigrant cultures at the time.
A carol is a festive song. In modern times, carols are associated primarily 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.[63] From the 14th century they were used as processional songs, particularly at Advent, Easter and Christmas, and to accompany religious mystery plays.[64] 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.[65]
The earliest vernacular children's songs in Europe are lullabies from the later medieval period.[66] From soon after we have records of short children's rhyming songs, but most nursery rhymes were not written down until the 18th century.[67] 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.[68] 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.[68] Roughly half of the current body recognised 'traditional' English rhymes were known by the mid-18th century.[67] 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.[68] 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.[69] 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.[67] 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.[68]
Erotic folk songs
It has been noted by most recent commentators on English folk song even if it was a bit immoral, 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.[70] 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.[71] 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).[72] 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.[73] 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.[74] Some authors, however, find these distinctions more difficult to maintain. Although erotic songs became part of the standard fare in folk clubs and among folk rock musicians, relatively few of the more explicit songs have been placed on record.[75]
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.[76] 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.[77] Like many dances it was taken up in Scotland and Ireland and given a distinctive national character and moved to America with emigration.[78]
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.[79] The dance began to be associated with music particularly in 6/8 time, and with slip jigs 9/8 time.[78] 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.[80] 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).
English Elizabethan clown Will Kempe dancing a jig from Norwich to London in 1600
A morris dance is a type of English folk dance, usually accompanied by music, and based on rhythmic stepping and the execution of choreographed figures by a group of dancers, often using implements such as sticks, swords, and handkerchiefs. The name is thought to derive from the term 'moorish dance', for Spanish (Muslim) styles of dance and may derive from English court dances of the period.[81] References have been found that suggest that morris dance dates back to the mid-15th century, but claims of pre-Christian origins are now largely dismissed.[3] Morris dance appears to have been widespread in England by the early 17th century, particularly in pastoral areas, but was suppressed, along with associated festivals during and after the English Civil War.[82] It recovered after the Restoration in 1660 but was in steep decline after agricultural and industrial revolutions by the 19th century, when collectors like Cecil Sharp recorded the practice, particularly from versions of dance he found in the Cotswolds.[12] This led to a revival of the tradition, although it may also have affected form and practice.[83] Morris dance took something of a back seat to unaccompanied singing in the second revival, but received a further boost when it attracted the attention of British folk rock musicians like Ashley Hutchings, who produced several albums of dance music, including the influential Morris On series from 1972.[84] Traditionally Morris dance was accompanied by either a pipe and tabor or a fiddle, but from the mid-19th century most common instruments were the melodeon, accordion, concertina and drums.[85] Particularly in Cotswold and Border morris, many tunes are linked to particular dances. Morris dance survives in the distinct local traditions of Cotswold morris, north-west morris, Border Morris, rapper dance and Long Sword dance.
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 Peasants Revolt of 1381.[86] Songs that celebrated social bandits like Robin Hood, from the 14th century onwards can be seen as a more subtle form of protest.[87] With the Levellers and Diggers in the mid-17th century, more overt criticism surfaced, as in the ballad "The Diggers' Song".[88] From roughly the same period, songs of protest at war, pointing out the costs to human lives, also begin to appear, like "The Maunding Souldier or The Fruits of Warre is Beggery", framed as a begging appeal from a crippled soldier of the Thirty Years War.[89] With industrialisation from the 18th century.[90] A surprising English folk hero immortalised in song is Napoleon Bonaparte, in songs such as the "Bonny Bunch of Roses" and "Napoleon's Dream".[91] As labour became more organised songs were used as anthems and propaganda, for miners with songs like "The Black Leg Miner", and for factory workers with songs like "The Factory Bell".[92] 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).[21] In the 1980s the anarchist rock band Chumbawamba recorded several versions of traditional English protest as English Rebel Songs 1381–1914.[93]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".[94] 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.[95]
Sailors working at a capstan with musical accompaniment
Sea shanties are a type of work song traditionally sung by sailors. Derived from the French word 'chanter', meaning 'to sing', they may date from as early as the 15th century, but most recorded examples derive from the 19th century.[96] Shanties were usually slow rhythmic songs designed to help with collective tasks on labour-intensive sailing and later steam ships. Many were call and response songs, with one voice (the shantyman) singing a lead line and the rest of the sailors giving a response together. They were derived from varied sources, including dances, folk songs, polkas, waltzes and even West African work-songs.[97] Since different songs were useful for different tasks they are traditionally divided into three main categories, short haul shanties, for tasks requiring quick pulls over a relatively short time; halyard shanties, for heavier work requiring more set-up time between pulls; and Capstan shanties, for long, repetitive tasks requiring a sustained rhythm, but not involving working the lines.[97] Famous shanties include, the 'Blow the Man Down and 'Bound for South Australia', some of which have remained in the public consciousness or been revived by popular recordings. There was some interest in sea shanties in the first revival from figures like Percy Grainger,[98] who recorded several traditional versions on phonographs.[99][100][101] In the second revival A. L. Lloyd attempted to popularise them, recording several albums of sea songs from 1965.[21]
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.[102] 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.[89] The English Civil War (1642–1653) produced a subgenre of "Cavalier ballads", including "When the King Home in Peace Again".[103] Many of these were adapted and reused by Jacobites after the 'Glorious Revolution' of 1688.[104] 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.[89] As regimental identities emerged songs were adopted for marching, like 'The British Grenadiers', based on a 17th-century dance tune.[105] Output became a flood during the French 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.[106] 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.[citation needed]
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 rhythmica cappellasongs sung by people working on a physical and often repetitive task, like the 'Harvest song' common in south-west England.[107] The songs were probably intended to increase productivity while reducing feelings of boredom.[108] 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.[109] 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.[110] 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.[109]
Like many regions of England there are few distinctive local instruments and many songs were shared with the rest of Britain and with Ireland, although the distinct dialects of the regions sometimes lent them a particular stamp and, with one of the longest coastlines of any English region, songs about the sea were also particularly important. Along with the West Country, this was one of the regions that most firmly adopted reed instruments, producing many eminent practitioners of the melodeon from the mid-19th century. Also like the West Country it is one of the few regions where there is still an active tradition of step dancing and like the Midlands the tradition of Molly dance died out in the 1930s.[111] The region was relatively neglected by folk song collectors of the first revival. Lucy Broadwood and Cecil Sharp collected in Cambridgeshire, as did and Vaughan Williams as well as in Norfolk and Essex from 1905, but most important regional figure was composer Ernest John Moeran, who collected over 150 songs in Norfolk and Suffolk in the 1920s.[112] The second folk revival led to the discovery of many East Anglian folk musicians, including Suffolk melodeon player Oscar Woods, Norfolk singers Sam Larner (1878–1965), Harry Cox (1885–1971) and Walter Pardon (1914–96); Suffolk fiddler Harkie Nesling (1890–1978); Suffolk singer and bargeman Bob Roberts (1907–82), many of whom recorded for Topic Records.[113] Perhaps the most influential folk dance musical album was English Country Dance Music (1965), put together by Reg Hall and Bob Davenport with largely Norfolk musicians, it was the first instrumental recording of folk instruments.[22] Also from Norfolk was Peter Bellamy, who in solo projects, with the Young Tradition and in theatrical productions was probably one of the most influential musicians of the post revival period.[114] The Norfolk melodeon player and singer Tony Hall has given the tradition a unique style.[115] East Anglia made a contribution to the British folk rock scene of the 1970s, producing the short-lived, but more recently reformed, bands Midwinter and Stone Angel, based in Great Yarmouth and the more successful Spriguns of Tolgus from Cambridge, who produced four albums.[116] The most successful folk artists from the region in recent years are probably the Essex born Billy Bragg and the Norfolk born Beth Orton.[117] The region is home to numerous folk clubs and hosts many folk festivals, including Steeleye Span's Spanfest at Kentwell Hall, Suffolk and the Cambridge Folk Festival, generally seen as the most prestigious in the calendar.[61] Since 2000 the East Anglian Traditional Music Trust has been promoting folk music in the region, organising a 'Traditional Music Day' every year in August.[118]
The Midlands
Due to its lack of clear boundaries and a perceived lack of identity in its folk music, the English Midlands attracted relatively little interest in the early revivals. However, in more recent years a distinct cultural heritage has been recognised including unique folk traditions and songs, many associated with the regions industrial connections. It has also produced a number of important performers and some particular local instruments, such as the Lincolnshire bagpipes, however the last player, John Hunsley, died in the 19th century and no actual examples of the pipes have survived.[119] From the 19th century the instruments used appear to have been much like those in other regions, with fiddles, accordions and eventually silver and brass. Although, some traditions, like Molly dance died out in the 1930s, the Midlands retained strong traditions of both ceremonial and social dance, particularly in the south Midlands and Cotswolds and in the distinctive Border Morris from Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Shropshire.[22] The region also furnished some important material for folk songs, including a claim by Nottinghamshire for one of the most popular series of ballads, that of Robin Hood, while local places appear in songs such as 'The Leicester Chambermaid' and 'Oxford' or 'Worcester City'.[120] Folk song collecting in the first revival was much less comprehensive than for many other regions. In the 1860s Llewellynn Jewitt, collected songs from Derbyshire, and some songs were printed by Georgina F. Jackson in her study of Shropshire folk lore.[121] 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.[12] From 1905, Percy Grainger was actively collecting in Lincolnshire, acquiring recordings of songs that would provide the basis for his Lincolnshire Posy (1937).[122] 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.[123] 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 British folk rock musicians Dave Swarbrick and Dave Pegg.[17] 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.[17] Lincolnshire has produced Martin Simpson, perhaps the most highly regarded folk guitarist of his generation.[124] 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.[125] The regions has numerous folk clubs and host many major folk festivals, including those of Gainsborough, Lincolnshire; Loughborough, Leicestershire; Shrewsbury, Shropshire; Warwick, Warwickshire; and Moseley, West Midlands.[126]
The North West
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 sixteenth century minstrel Richard Sheale.[127] 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.[127] 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.[128] 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.[12] 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.[129] 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.[127] 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.[130] The region produced no significant bands in the folk rock 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.[131] More recently it has produced some significant performers including guitarist Ken Nicol and mother and daughter singer songwriters Chris and Kellie While.[132] 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.[133]
Billy Purvis (1784–1853) one of the last travelling minstrel pipers of the south of Scotland and the north east of England.
Northumbria possesses a distinctive style of folk music with a flourishing and continuing tradition.[22] 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.[22] 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.[134] The short-lived 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.[135] 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).[136] 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.[20] Performers such Louis Killen, The High Level Ranters and Bob Davenport brought Northumbrian folk to national and international audiences.[22] The 1970s saw folk rock bands like Lindisfarne, and the more traditionally focused Jack the Lad and Hedgehog Pie.[22] 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.[22] Currently the region has over thirty active folk clubs and hosts several major folk festivals, including the Traditional Music Festival at Rothbury.[137][138]
The South East
Even excluding Sussex and London, South-east England has been one of the key areas of English folk music and collection. It had retained a strong tradition of wassailing, and seafaring songs were important in the coastal counties of Kent and Hampshire. Arguably the published collection of oral material was made in this area by John Broadwood, as Old English Songs, As Now Sung by the Peasantry of the Weald of Surrey and Sussex (1843).[139] When the first revival was at its height in the first decade of the 20th century, George Gardiner and Alice Gillington both collected songs in Hampshire, Lucy Broadwood in Surrey, Hampshire and Oxfordshire, Alfred Williams in Oxfordshire and Berkshire and Cecil Sharp in Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, and Kent.[140] In the second folk revival the region contributed several figures, with probably the most important being Martin Carthy from Hertfordshire. The most significant British folk rock 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.[133]
London
Street vendors in a 16th-century print
Despite being the centre of both folk revivals and the British folk rock movement, the songs of London were largely neglected in favour of regional and rural music until relatively recently. London, unsurprisingly, was the most common location mentioned in English folk songs, including 'London is a Fine Town', and the 'London Prentice' and it was the centre of the broadside publishing industry.[89] From the 17th century to the 19th, street singers were characteristic of London life, often selling printed versions of the songs they sang.[141] The capital is home to the Folk-Song Society and the English Folk Dance Society since the late 19th century (now known as the English Folk Dance and Song Society), but the most distinctive genre of London music, its many street cries, were not considered folk music by mainstream collectors and were recorded and published by figures such as Andrew White in Old London Street Cries; and, The Cries of To-day (1885).[142] Both Ewan MacColl and A. L. Lloyd gravitated to London in the 1950s, it was the base of Topic Records and it was there that the first folk clubs were formed before they spread out across the country.[4] It was also the home of folk musicians like Ashley Hutchings, Richard Thompson and Simon Nicol who formed Fairport Convention, and many artists, like Bert Jansch and Davy Graham, moved there in order to be able to pursue their careers or for the greater networks and opportunities the capital allowed.[143] More recent performers of folk music include Noah and the Whale, Emma Lee Moss, Mumford and Sons, The Border Surrender and Anna Tam.[144][145]
Sussex has disproportionately affected the history of English folk music. This was due to a flourishing tradition of folk dance, mummers plays and folk song, but also in part because of the rural nature of the county in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and yet its relatively close proximity to London. It was thus a rich and convenient place for the collectors of the first folk song revival, including Kate Lee, Lucy Broadwood and W. P. Merrick.[146] Sussex material was used by the composers of the English pastoral school, for example in Percy Grainger's arrangement of 'The Sussex Mummers' Christmas Carol', Ralph Vaughan Williams' use of the tune 'Monk's Gate' as a setting for John Bunyan's 'To be a Pilgrim' and George Butterworth's arrangement of 'Folk Songs from Sussex'.[147] Most important of the collector's sources were the Copper Family of Rottingdean, who emerged as authorities on folk song and eventually as major recording artists.[148] Sussex folk song also had a formative effect on one of the major figures of the second revival, as it was as a child of five in Sussex that A. L. Lloyd first heard folk music.[149] Other performers include Scan Tester, Henry Burstow and the sisters Dolly and Shirley Collins. Sussex songs were also the foundation of the repertoire of the influential Young Tradition.[150] The county has over twenty folk clubs and other venues hosting folk music by organisations such as Acoustic Sussex. There are also annual folk music festivals at Eastbourne, Crawley and Lewes.[151]
The red party attending the red 'obby 'oss in the Padstow mayday festival
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.[152] 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.[153] 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, guise dancing, and social dance.[154] These seem to have been interrupted by the Reformation and Civil War and Commonwealth in the 16th and 17th centuries.[155] However, there was revival from the late 18th century and seasonal and community festivals, mumming and guising all flourished.[156] 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.[157] 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.[158] 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.[159] Some folk tunes have Cornish lyrics written since the language revival of the 1920s.[159] Modern Cornish musicians include the former Cornish folk singer Brenda Wootton and the Cornish-Breton family band Anao Atao.[159] Recently bands like Sacred Turf, Skwardya and Krena, have begun performing British folk rock in the Cornish language.[160] The Cornwall Folk Festival has been held annually for more than three decades.[161]
The rest of the West Country
Seth Lakeman on stage in 2008
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.[162] The maritime heritage of Devon made sea shanties, hornpipes and naval or sea ballads important parts of regional folk music.[98] 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 antiquarianSabine 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).[163] 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.[164] 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'.[165] In the 1970s there were figures such as Tony Rose.[166] 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.[167] 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.[168] 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 along with its associated 'Late Night Extra' venue at Bulverton .[169]
Yorkshire
Yorkshire has a rich heritage of folk music and folk dance including the Long Sword dance.[170] 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.[171] 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.[172] 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 Methodisthymnal), but often seen as an unofficial Yorkshire anthem.[173] 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'.[174] The most famous folk performers from the county are the Watersons from Hull, who began recording Yorkshire versions of folk songs from 1965.[175] Other Yorkshire folk musicians include Heather Wood (born 1945) of the Young Tradition, the short-lived folk rock group Mr Fox (1970–2), The Deighton Family, Julie Matthews, Kathryn Roberts, and the Mercury Prize nominated Kate Rusby.[175] 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.[176] In 2007, the Yorkshire Garland Group was formed to make Yorkshire folk songs accessible online and in schools.[177]
See also
English country music – term used in 1960s to 1970s to describe a genre of instrumental traditional music
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↑ R. A. Reuss and A. Green, Songs about Work: Essays in Occupational Culture (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1993), p. 335.
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1 2 A. L. Lloyd, Folk song in England (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1967), pp. 323–8.
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↑ R. Vaughan Williams, Folk Songs from the Eastern Counties (London, 1908) and E. J. Moeran, Six Folk Songs from Norfolk (London, 1924) and E. J. Moeran, Six Suffolk Folk-Songs (London, 1932).
↑ R. B. Dobson and J. Taylor, Rymes of Robyn Hood, An Introduction to the English Outlaw (London: Book Club Associates, 1976), p. 14.
↑ L. Jewitt, The Ballads & Songs of Derbyshire, with Illustrative Notes, and Examples of the Original Music, etc. (London, 1867); C. S. Burne, ed., Shropshire Folk-Lore: A Sheaf of Gleanings, from the Collections of Georgina F. Jackson, rpt. in 2 parts (Wakefield: EP Publishing, 1973–4).
↑ P. O'Shaughnessy, ed. Twenty-One Lincolnshire Folk-Songs from the Manuscript Collection of Percy Grainger (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968).
↑ R. Palmer, ed., Songs of the Midlands (Wakefield: EP Publishing, 1972); M. Raven, ed., The Jolly Machine: Songs of Industrial Protest and Social Discontent from the West Midlands (Stafford Spanish Guitar Centre, 1974); R. Palmer, ed., Birmingham Ballads: Facsimile Street Ballads (City of Birmingham Education Department, 1979).
1 2 3 D. Gregory, The Songs of the People for Me: The Victorian Rediscovery of Lancashire Vernacular Song, Canadian Folk Music/Musique folklorique canadienne, 40 (2006), pp. 12–21.
↑ J. O. Halliwell, ed., Palatine Anthology: A Collection of Ancient Poems and Ballads Relating to Lancashire and Cheshire (London: Halliwell,1850) and his Palatine Garland, being a Selection of Ballads and Fragments Supplementary to the Palatine Anthology (London: Halliwell. 1850); J. Harland, ed., Ballads and Songs of Lancashire, Chiefly Older than the Nineteenth Century (London: Whittaker & Co., 1865. 2nd edn: London: 1875); William E. A. Axon, Folk Song and Folk-Speech of Lancashire: On the Ballads and Songs of the County Palatine, With Notes on the Dialect in which Many of them are Written, and an Appendix on Lancashire Folk-Lore (Manchester: Tubbs & Brook, 1887); John Harland & Thomas Turner Wilkinson, Lancashire Folk-lore (London: F. Warne, 1867); S. Gilpin, The Songs and Ballads of Cumberland and the Lake Country, with Biographical Sketches, Notes, and Glossary (2nd ed. 3 vols. London, 1874).
↑ Folk North West, "Harry Boardman". Archived from the original on 2009-02-12. Retrieved 2009-02-25., retrieved 16/02/09.
↑ J. Bell, ed., Rhymes of Northern Bards: Being a Curious Collection of Old and New Songs and Poems Peculiar to the Counties of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Northumberland and Durham (1812), rpt. with an introduction by David Harker (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Frank Graham, 1971); B. J. Collingwood, and J. Stokoe, eds, Northumbrian Minstrelsy: A Collection of the Ballads, Melodies, and Small-Pipe Tunes of Northumbria (Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1882); and F. Kidson, English Folk-Song and Dance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1915, Read Books, 2008), p. 42.
↑ A. Baines, Woodwind Instruments and Their History (Mineola, NY: Courier Dover, 1991), p. 328.
↑ J. Reed, Border Ballads: A Selection (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 10.
↑ J. Broadwood, Old English Songs, As Now Sung by the Peasantry of the Weald of Surrey and Sussex, and Collected by One Who Has Learnt Them by Hearing Them Sung Every Christmas from Early Childhood, by the Country People, Who Go About to the Neighbouring Houses, Singing, or 'Wassailing' as It Is Called, at that Season. The Airs Are Set to Music Exactly as They Are Now Sung, to Rescue Them from Oblivion, and to Afford a Specimen of Genuine Old English Melody: and the Words Are Given in Their Original Rough State, with an Occasional Slight Alteration To Render the Sense Intelligible (London, 1843).
↑ G. B. Gardiner, Folk Songs from Hampshire (London: Novello, 1909) and A. E. Gillington, Eight Hampshire Folk Songs Taken from the Mouths of the Peasantry (London: Curwen, 1907); A. Williams, Folk songs of the Upper Thames (London, 1923) and C. Sharp, Cecil Sharp's Collection of English Folk Song, ed., Maud Karpeles, 2 vols (London: Oxford University Press, 1974).
↑ Marcellus Laroon (artist) and Sean Shesgreen (editor), The Criers and Hawkers of London: Engravings and Drawings (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 1990), p. 100.
↑ A. White, Old London street cries; and, The cries of to-day: with heaps of quaint cuts including hand-coloured frontispiece / Cries of to-day (London: Field & Tuer, The Leadenhall Press, 1885).
↑ P. Humphries, Meet on the Ledge, a History of Fairport Convention (London: Virgin Publishing Ltd, 2nd edn., 1997), pp. 7–9.
↑ C. J. Sharp, Sword Dances of Northern England Together with the Horn Dance of Abbots Bromley, (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2003).
↑ C. J. D. Ingledew, Ballads and Songs of Yorkshire (London, 1860); C. Forshaw, Holyrod's Collection of Yorkshire Ballads (London, 1892).
↑ N. Hudleston and M. Hudleston, Songs of the Ridings: The Yorkshire Musical Museum, ed., M. Gordon and R. Adams (Scarborough: G. A. Pindar and Son, 2001) and P. Davenport, ed., The South Riding Songbook: Songs from South Yorkshire and the North Midlands (South Riding Folk Network, 1998).
↑ A. Kellett, On Ilkla Mooar baht 'at: the Story of the Song(Smith Settle, 1988).
↑ F. J. Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads Dover Publications (New York, 1965), vol 1, p. 8.
1 2 R. Nidel, World Music: The Basics (London: Routledge, 2005), pp. 90–1.
A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry and song of Great Britain and Ireland from the Late Middle Ages until the 19th century. They were widely used across Europe, and later in Australia, North Africa, North America and South America.
Folk music is a music genre that includes traditional folk music and the contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be called world music. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted orally, music with unknown composers, music that is played on traditional instruments, music about cultural or national identity, music that changes between generations, music associated with a people's folklore, or music performed by custom over a long period of time. It has been contrasted with commercial and classical styles. The term originated in the 19th century, but folk music extends beyond that.
Bluegrass music is a genre of American roots music that developed in the 1940s in the Appalachian region of the United States. The genre derives its name from the band Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys. Like mainstream country music, it largely developed out of old-time music, though in contrast to country, it is traditionally played exclusively on acoustic instruments and also kept its roots in traditional English, Scottish and Irish ballads and dance tunes, as well as incorporating blues and jazz. It was further developed by musicians who played with Monroe, including 5-string banjo player Earl Scruggs and guitarist Lester Flatt. Bill Monroe once described bluegrass music as, "It's a part of Methodist, Holiness and Baptist traditions. It's blues and jazz, and it has a high lonesome sound."
A roots revival is a trend which includes young performers popularizing the traditional musical styles of their ancestors. Often, roots revivals include an addition of newly composed songs with socially and politically aware lyrics, as well as a general modernization of the folk sound.
Throughout the history of the British Isles, the land that is now the United Kingdom has been a major music producer, drawing inspiration from church music and traditional folk music, using instruments from England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales. Each of the four countries of the United Kingdom has its own diverse and distinctive folk music forms, which flourished until the era of industrialisation when they began to be replaced by new forms of popular music, including music hall and brass bands. Many British musicians have influenced modern music on a global scale, and the UK has one of the world's largest music industries. English, Scottish, Irish, and Welsh folk music as well as other British styles of music heavily influenced American music such as American folk music, American march music, old-time, ragtime, blues, country, and bluegrass. The UK has birthed many popular music genres such as beat music, psychedelic music, progressive rock/pop, heavy metal, new wave, and industrial music.
The term American folk music encompasses numerous music genres, variously known as traditional music, traditional folk music, contemporary folk music, vernacular music, or roots music. Many traditional songs have been sung within the same family or folk group for generations, and sometimes trace back to such origins as the British Isles, Mainland Europe, or Africa. Musician Mike Seeger once famously commented that the definition of American folk music is "...all the music that fits between the cracks."
Scotland is internationally known for its traditional music, often known as Scottish folk music, which remained vibrant throughout the 20th century and into the 21st when many traditional forms worldwide lost popularity to pop music. Traditional Scottish music comprises a variety of different styles such as ballads, reels, jigs and airs. Traditional Scottish music is closely associated with the bagpipes which is credited as having a prominent role in traditional music originating from the country. The bagpipes are considered to an "iconic Scottish instrument" with a history dating back to the 15th century. Other notable Scottish instruments include the tin whistle, the accordion and the fiddle.
Scottish folk music is a genre of folk music that uses forms that are identified as part of the Scottish musical tradition. There is evidence that there was a flourishing culture of popular music in Scotland during the late Middle Ages, but the only song with a melody to survive from this period is the "Pleugh Song". After the Reformation, the secular popular tradition of music continued, despite attempts by the Kirk, particularly in the Lowlands, to suppress dancing and events like penny weddings. The first clear reference to the use of the Highland bagpipes mentions their use at the Battle of Pinkie Cleugh in 1547. The Highlands in the early seventeenth century saw the development of piping families including the MacCrimmons, MacArthurs, MacGregors and the Mackays of Gairloch. There is also evidence of adoption of the fiddle in the Highlands. Well-known musicians included the fiddler Pattie Birnie and the piper Habbie Simpson. This tradition continued into the nineteenth century, with major figures such as the fiddlers Niel and his son Nathaniel Gow. There is evidence of ballads from this period. Some may date back to the late Medieval era and deal with events and people that can be traced back as far as the thirteenth century. They remained an oral tradition until they were collected as folk songs in the eighteenth century.
Cecil James Sharp was an English collector of folk songs, folk dances and instrumental music, as well as a lecturer, teacher, composer and musician. He was a key figure in the folk-song revival in England during the Edwardian period. According to Roud's Folk Song in England, Sharp was the country's "single most important figure in the study of folk song and music".
Albert Lancaster Lloyd, usually known as A. L. Lloyd or Bert Lloyd, was an English folk singer and collector of folk songs, and as such was a key figure in the British folk revival of the 1950s and 1960s. While Lloyd is most widely known for his work with British folk music, he had a keen interest in the music of Spain, Latin America, Southeastern Europe and Australia. He recorded at least six discs of Australian Bush ballads and folk music.
Industrial folk music, industrial folk song, industrial work song or working song is a subgenre of folk or traditional music that developed from the 18th century, particularly in Britain and North America, with songs dealing with the lives and experiences of industrial workers. The origins of industrial folk song are in the British Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth century as workers tended to take the forms of music with which they were familiar, including ballads and agricultural work songs, and adapt them to their new experiences and circumstances. They also developed in France and the US as these countries began to industrialise.
A folk club is a regular event, permanent venue, or section of a venue devoted to folk music and traditional music. Folk clubs were primarily an urban phenomenon of 1960s and 1970s Great Britain and Ireland, and vital to the second British folk revival, but continue today there and elsewhere. In America, as part of the American folk music revival, they played a key role not only in acoustic music, but in launching the careers of groups that later became rock and roll acts.
British folk rock is a form of folk rock which developed in the United Kingdom from the mid 1960s, and was at its most significant in the 1970s. Though the merging of folk and rock music came from several sources, it is widely regarded that the success of "The House of the Rising Sun" by British band the Animals in 1964 was a catalyst, prompting Bob Dylan to "go electric", in which, like the Animals, he brought folk and rock music together, from which other musicians followed. In the same year, the Beatles began incorporating overt folk influences into their music, most noticeably on their Beatles for Sale album. The Beatles and other British Invasion bands, in turn, influenced the American band the Byrds, who released their recording of Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" in April 1965, setting off the mid-1960s American folk rock movement. A number of British groups, usually those associated with the British folk revival, moved into folk rock in the mid-1960s, including the Strawbs, Pentangle, and Fairport Convention.
Appalachian music is the music of the region of Appalachia in the Eastern United States. Traditional Appalachian music is derived from various influences, including the ballads, hymns and fiddle music of the British Isles, and to a lesser extent the music of Continental Europe.
Classical music of the United Kingdom is taken in this article to mean classical music in the sense elsewhere defined, of formally composed and written music of chamber, concert and church type as distinct from popular, traditional, or folk music. The term in this sense emerged in the early 19th century, not long after the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland came into existence in 1801. Composed music in these islands can be traced in musical notation back to the 13th century, with earlier origins. It has never existed in isolation from European music, but has often developed in distinctively insular ways within an international framework. Inheriting the European classical forms of the 18th century, patronage and the academy and university establishment of musical performance and training in the United Kingdom during the 19th century saw a great expansion. Similar developments occurred in the other expanding states of Europe and their empires. Within this international growth the traditions of composition and performance centred in the United Kingdom, including the various cultural strands drawn from its different provinces, have continued to evolve in distinctive ways through the work of many famous composers.
Medieval folk rock, medieval rock or medieval folk is a musical subgenre that emerged in the early 1970s in England and Germany which combined elements of early music with rock music. It grew out of the British folk rock and progressive folk movements of the late 1960s. Despite the name, the term was used indiscriminately to categorise performers who incorporated elements of medieval, renaissance and baroque music into their work and sometimes to describe groups who used few, or no, electric instruments. This subgenre reached its height towards the middle of the 1970s when it achieved some mainstream success in Britain, but within a few years most groups had either disbanded, or were absorbed into the wider movements of progressive folk and progressive rock. Nevertheless, the genre had a considerable impact within progressive rock where early music, and medievalism in general, was a major influence and through that in the development of heavy metal. More recently medieval folk rock has revived in popularity along with other forms of medieval inspired music such as Dark Wave orientated neo-Medieval music and medieval metal.
The British folk revival incorporates a number of movements for the collection, preservation and performance of folk music in the United Kingdom and related territories and countries, which had origins as early as the 18th century. It is particularly associated with two movements, usually referred to as the first and second revivals, respectively in the late 19th to early 20th centuries and the mid-20th century. The first included increased interest in and study of traditional folk music, the second was a part of the birth of contemporary folk music. These had a profound impact on the development of British classical music and in the creation of a "national" or "pastoral" school and led to the creation of a sub-culture of folk clubs and folk festivals as well as influential subgenres including progressive folk music and British folk rock.
Music of Scotland in the nineteenth century includes all forms of music production in the period, in Scotland or by Scottish people.
Music in Medieval England, from the end of Roman rule in the fifth century until the Reformation in the sixteenth century, was a diverse and rich culture, including sacred and secular music and ranging from the popular to the elite.
A sentimental ballad is an emotional style of music that often deals with romantic and intimate relationships, and to a lesser extent, loneliness, death, war, drug abuse, politics and religion, usually in a poignant but solemn manner. Ballads are generally melodic enough to get the listener's attention.
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