British Folk (and Revival)

from http://www.daveygraham.moonfruit.com/
WHITECHAPEL ART GALLERY
80 - 82 WHITECHAPEL HIGH STREET
LONDON E1 7QX
Tel: 020 7522 7888
WWW.WHITECHAPEL.ORG
Friday 3 Feb, 7pm
DAVEY GRAHAM
Virtuoso guitarist Davey Graham plays a rare and intimate acoustic show at the Whitechapel Gallery. One of the key figures in the British folk-blues movement of the 1960s and one of the earliest exponents of world music, Graham has inspired a host of artists from Richard Thompson, Ry Cooder, Nick Drake, Jimmy Page, Bert Jansch, to Graham Coxon
and a ream of younger musicians.
Limited tickets advanced booking only:
£10/8 concs*
Book now : 020 7522 7888
CONTACT: BEATRICE DILLON
07940 464676 [email protected]

http://www.daveygraham.moonfruit.com/

It looks like he's another cult/off the critical map type UK artist who got fucked over by his record company (see also: bill nelson) w/no hope of recompense, & who is not "big" enough to get enough publicity to rectify this?

I'll stick an order in for his new self-produced CD, I think.

I ordered a copy of the forthcoming CD, anyway, looking forward to hearing it.

And Folk

I started to say Folk Routes/New Routes is stunning. I love the way DG adds a bluesy twang to the likes of Nottamun Town. Wonderful.

Espers I find pretty but they don't really have the songs. Maybe I need to give them more time, but live, they only got going in the last song.
Lucky Luke are great and as lovely as the record is they sound quite different live. More stripped down, with a more rockin' rhythm section. It really suits them, and Lucy's voice is getting stronger all the time.

Espers... oh dear. What is the point in this day and age of somebody doing the same old version of 'Rosemary Lane' ripped off from Anne Briggs or Bert Jansch? And doing it completely insipidly and unoriginally, moreover?

There's something a lot weirder about hearing the great above-mentioned Duncan Williamson sing an ancient traditional ballad such as, for example, 'The Lady and the Blacksmith' (Child #44) than there is about the output of some wispy-bearded bedroom boy with a copy of 'Pink Moon', a sampler an acoustic guitar.

Then again, most of what passes for contemporary 'traditional' British music such as Kate Rusby, Jim Moray and the dread Cara Dillon, et al, is IMO just as unpalatable. Your best best is to go back to the field recordings, the proper singers.

I love electricity too.

But don't you think that some great art can come out of romanticism?

This comment speaks volumes about your ignorance. You will miss out on some good stuff if this continues to be your attitude.

A lot of the people you disparage (probably without having listened to them properly) as 'whiskery old geezers' from the 'turn of the century' (which century?) are AMAZING singers. It's a shame that you won't be open-minded enough to find that out.

Of course there is a lot of great music and a lot of great singers nowadays too. But not in the field of 'folk' music or 'new folk' music.

I apologise. It's just that appreciating, say, Fairport or Steeleye Span etc but then not appreciating the source singers from whom they got a lot of their material... well, that just don't add up to me.

Can you recommend some titles on CD? ie pre-1960s revival?

First, it really comes down to a question of taste, and for me, music is all about the arrangement. Ed (of this parish) recently copied me a bunch of Nu Folk - mainly Bellowhead and John & John. Predictably, I enjoyed the Bellowhead a great deal more, even though it covered a lot of the same material, (same songs in a couple of incidences) because I just enjoyed listened to an 11 piece band with multiple harmonies more than I enjoyed listening to just two blokes, with more limited arrangements.

But that brings back to the notion of "authenticity" and which is more "authentic" - listening to some "turn of the century crackly voiced bloke on an old record" and field recordings or listening to more modern people reinterpreting or "romanticising" it.

Well, folk has *always* been a participatory artform. It's not just about one bloke with a guitar, it's about everyone down the pub, or on the village green, or wherever, getting together to sing songs they all know. The second point I wanted to make is that folk has always been about co-opting traditional songs, changing them to suit your conditions or your needs - every person who performs a song adds something of their own to it. That's what the folk tradition is. Not slavishly recreating whatever someone else used to do.

Anyway, that's just my 2p. I should get my dad in here to comment further because he knows what he's talking about more than I do.

With regard to the vocal qualities of some of the old singers - the important thing was the songs they sang, not the singers... and anyway, I'd rather listen to an unpolished singer than some Radio Two-friendly 'folk' singer like... won't name any names.

Also, the only way to avoid refashioning the past (in the mistaken belief that you're doing something 'new' - i.e. Espers, Tunng, etc) -is to be aware of the past.

Exactly. So is it really necessary to listen to unaccompanied field-recordings?

Of course you don't HAVE TO listen to anything.

Were they really "aware" of that? Or were they just people who weren't very good singers?