Folk Revivals in Britain

We left off before the holidays with some background on how medieval fantasy suddenly became mainstream in the ’60s. There were also some other semi unintentional mirrorings of the values of the Victorian medieval revivals, where a previously fringe elements advocating for pre-industrial communal lifestyles also became more mainstream.

With these cultural threads established, let’s start looking at what they have to do with popular music. As far as I’ve discerned, these medievalist threads that had endured since the late 19th century don’t really enter into pop until the ’60s—when folk music began entering into mainstream pop music. [1] There were folk revivals in the US and the UK after WWII. The American revival was populist and became linked to industrial workers, with prominent artists such as Woody Guthrie and the Seegers. In the US, “folk” gradually came to refer simply to a style of music based on acoustic singer-songwriters. Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land” is a pretty great example of the American revival style:

It’s an original song with a populist theme, but you might note that he uses a traditional clawhammer “bum-ditty” strumming style, and in the left hand, he uses sliding accent notes that are a staple of American bluegrass.

Let’s step back to define “folk music,” first. Folk music and popular music are distinct entities. Folk is not just a kind of pop. In part, this is because definitions of pop often include a commercial aspect—while folk music is defined as an authentic, immediate expression of a people. It’s not made by highly trained artists, it’s made by regular folk, and it’s not for sale.

I hope you thought “wait a minute” while reading the above paragraph, because there are a lot of problems in these definitions. Folk artists were not only anonymous farmers who made music as a hobby—there were professional performers, too. The commercial component of music making hardly began with recording technology. It didn’t even begin with sheet music. People have always been compensated for their professional activities, and there have always been professional musicians. And folk musicians were not hillbilly savants who bumbled in the dark to learn how to play their banjos. There are, and were, extensive communities of musicians coming together to learn how to play from masters. They just weren’t teaching and learning in an academy, so, the academy that defines these terms marginalized them. “Folk artist” really only means “not formally educated in Western classical music.” It’s just a separate tradition.

How did we get this idea that folk music was a quaint rural tradition? Well, we have nineteenth century historians to thank/blame. The actual term “folksong” originates in Enlightenment Germany, but the concept takes off in the late 19th century, with the growth of nationalism. (Hence the importance of the word “folk.”) One of the first major anthologists of folk music was Cecil Sharp, an English music educator. He is basically responsible for the first British folk revival, and he set the definition of folk music as we know it:

• it is passed on by oral tradition
• it reflects local/national traits (regional subjects in the lyrics, in a native dialect, using regional poetic forms, etc)
• songs have been carried on through many generations
• songs are made by rural artisans.

There are also certain tunings, modes, picking patterns, instruments, and other musical criteria that are unique from region to region, so these help to define individual bodies of folk music. Sharp specifically linked folk music to the music of the countryside, and it was the urban spread of the industrial revolution that prompted him to catalog British folk music. There was a concern that rural ways of life—which were viewed as more authentic to the soul of a nation than cosmopolitan cities—were disappearing. This definition of folk music holds true through most of Europe. (It is also true throughout central Asia and China. Hmm, what do these places have in common? Communism! For good and for ill, the concept of folk music is inescapably linked to Marxism.)

The first folk revival was happening alongside medieval revivals, especially in Britain, and all of these threads become tangled. All of these currents fell under the umbrella of nationalism, and they were spearheaded by scholars and artists who knew that they were all working on the same wavelength in their respective disciplines. The arts and crafts design movement, for example, is dictated by similar ideals: prizing the craft of pre-industrial, regional artisans.

Because one of the criteria of folk music is being an established tradition, there are many centuries-old seasonal traditions and songs, some going back to the Middle Ages. So, there we have that. (The leading folk club in the early ’60s was even called the Troubadour. This self-conscious sense of continuing an ancient tradition of the wandering solo performer is very common in folk music. Look at hits collections and press on basically any folk, or folk-rock performer. They’re all called modern-day troubadours.)

The second British revival was far from immune to American influence, but it specifically drew from Sharp’s original revival, so it proceeded on different terms from the American revival. There was a distinct effort to draw from and be true to British traditional music, even though all performers develop their own hallmarks.

One of the major figures in the second British revival was Martin Carthy.

His style is pretty traditional, as you can hear, but by the early ’60s, there were a growing number of artists who also performed original songs and integrated components of other styles, such as jazz or skiffle or rock. For my money, it’s these progressive folk artists who become the most interesting studies in folky medievalisms.

Martin Carthy himself joined one of the more important progressive folk groups, Steeleye Span. Steeleye Span’s first album is called Hark! The Village Wait (1970), based on an English tradition of village wind ensembles, called waites, that would go around playing fanfares to wake everyone up and announce the arrival of important people. Waites are documented as early as 1272 but I think are more strongly associated with Early Modern England. They were outlawed in 1835, after which they were most commonly associated with Christmas waits, a phenomenon of caroling for money that was basically Victorian but was perceived as ancient.

The most traditional sounding song on this album is actually an original song, the opening “Calling-On Song.”

It’s based on a traditional concept and tune, but the lyrics are original. Note the line “we have come to relate many stories / concerning our forefathers’ times.” The remaining songs on the album are traditional, but given a rock treatment.

Their most famous recording by far, though, is a medieval-esque Christmas carol, “Gaudete.”

This arrangement comes from the 16th century, but the skipping rhythm sounds much older. (Edited to add: I got to the bottom of “Gaudete”! For an in depth look at how old it actually is, see this post.) The arrangement they’re performing comes from a book of mostly of central European songs, Piae cantiones, so what does this have to do with British folk music? I’m glad you asked!

In 1853, English cleric and musician John Mason Neale received an original edition of Piae cantiones, which he translated (or wrote new English texts for) and rendered in modern notation. This set the manuscript’s repertory into circulation in the UK, and ultimately, several of the songs from it were published in an enormously popular collection of Christmas music for choirs in 1961. So, another coincidence of 19th century excavations of medieval material suddenly blowing up in the ’60s.

This is quite enough for one post, so I’ll wrap up here. I wanted to introduce some of the more traditional folk revival roots with this post. I’ll go over more progressive and psychedelic medievalings in my next post.

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[1] Part of my dating comes from the fact I’m using a blues/rock based definition of “popular music.” Before rock and roll, there were jazz and blues, and there were also urban popular songs, such as those from music halls. So even before 1955, folk and pop were separate entities. Jazz and blues are considered kinds of popular music, but they usually get their own distinctive scholarly attention because of their ethnographic elements. But in my experience with jazz and blues, I’ve never encountered medievalisms. I’m less knowledgeable of mainstream popular music of the 19th and early 20th centuries, but again, in what I know, I can’t think of anything that was medievally inspired. If you know something, send it my way!