British Folk (and Revival)

It's a part of folk music all over the world, not just England.

People are silly.

people like to laugh!
even a light lol is a lol

Too right.

Just got a copy of the Hangman's Beautiful Daughter by Incredible String Band and I'm very into stoned whimsy right now

not a bad place to be! :)

when will the Shirley Collins doc make it to my city?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!? that is what i would like to know

Yeah that looks amazing

A book on Dr. Strangely Strange coming out in March, looks promising (got a blurb from Rob Young who wrote Electric Eden):

https://drstrangelystrange.co.uk/index.html

Oof, I picked up a vinyl copy of the reissue and it's so, so wonderful. It's really, really got to me. Less than NV but I have some vaguer connections with the Hull area and it's enchanting me. Love this place, this is really unexpected.

Was surprised to see a copy of Domino's Bright Phoebus in Fopp and I bought it. I assumed they'd all be gone.

I freaked out and ended up with two copies - bought the cheapest new copy on discogs, then found one in a local record shop before the first order had been confirmed so I bought that too just in case

Does it have the second disc, the demos? I love Song for Thirza.

For those into ‘digital ownership’ and who are trying to figure out what to spend their emusic credits on as that service spins down the drain, they still had the expanded version for sale as of this past Monday

Hmm. The download code I got with my sealed vinyl copy didn't work.

I've just ordered the 2 CD version of Bright Phoebus on German Amazon Marketplace. I own the single disc version, but want to get the deluxe set.

The seller says they have one new copy in stock for standard price

C'mon "Shady Lady" and "Rubber Band" are amazing. Amazing how they made such a great song out of just effectively saying "you need more sun" repatedly. Maybe my second or third favorite.

RAG you are a mensch

I ordered from a Barnes & Noble marketplace seller, just got randomly refunded and order cancelled : /

Someone must've gone to discogs

Of all my favorite genres, I have the least experience with folk music and I'm quite scared to find how deep it goes (but I guess even with other genres I like, you rarely get a sense of how big the whole picture is). This feels long delayed because I got into June Tabor about 15 years ago (see my Tabor thread revive) and only occasionally dip back in to folk.

How good a guide is the Electric Eden book? I guess it leans more towards the psychedelic side?

Are there any guides that go through European folk that has a similar enough aesthetic to british folk?

How did you guys find your way around?

About 20 years ago a friend gave me a stack of C90 cassettes of mostly Enlglish fold and folk rock. I had just gotten out of a lengthy relationship and, because I worked retail, would be mostly alone during the holidays and unable to travel back home. I was unfamiar with the genre but these tapes really resonated with me and I was grateful for the time my friend spent recording the tapes which even included some handmade cover art. I still have these in a box somewhere.

Silly Sisters and Tabor's Airs and Graces comprised one tape. Fotheringay and Triona another? Definietly Steeleye Span and some Sandy Denny and Fairport.

Anne Briggs The Time Has Come was reissued maybe a month later and that record really broke the genre open for me. I essentially followed the thread created by those records and would flip through issues of Dirty Linen when I came across them for other names and connections. I feel like I've really only scratched the surface and haven't even really begun exploring other European folk music.

I learned about Shirley Collins, bought and read and listened to everything I could find, it led me to everyone else. Her stuff is still my favorite for Dolly's arrangements (Anthems in Eden with EMC of London in particular) and there is a huge family tree to explore from there. I was also really into the US/UK folk divide so I enjoyed all of the Lomax-recorded Child Ballads etc. Electric Eden is a good read and I would definitely recommend it.

European folk that is not UK/British folk is a total mystery to me but I would love to find an interpreter I love as much as I love Shirley & co.

Yes! How could I forget that Shirley and Dolly For As Many As Will was on one of these tapes. I need to rummage through my closet and pull my cassettes out and revisit them.

I remember seeing some intriguing but small RYM lists with Russian folk that looked like it should appeal to british folk fans. I guess French folk is fairly well known compared to a lot of countries.

Véronique Chalot’s J'ai vu le loup is a good mix of French and British styles, a bit like Comus or Catherine Ribiero in places, but mostly gentle pastoral.

Can't think of much European folk that sounds too similar to British/Irish folk music - Alan Stivell, of course, from 'Little Britain'.

She’s Breton too

I've been listening to Malicorne (amazing) and there's a lot of Scottish sounding stuff in there. I have heard that a lot of Scottish tradition comes from france though (I should know this, could have swore a music teacher told us that bagpipes and tartan were french).

There's bagpipes everywhere - even England!

Been topping up my amazon wishlist and Watersons - Yorkshire Garland isn't on CD.

Malicorne is the one French folk group I am familiar with and the records I’ve heard I absolutely love. The droning quality is blissful to me. If anyone knows more about the French folk scene, I’m all ears.

Re Electric Eden. I haven’t read it but the library has a copy I should borrow. Sounds like a good winter read

I read as much as google books would allow me of a folk/psych-folk book by Jeanette Leech called Seasons They Change - pretty absorbing.

I did a posts search for Malicorne the other day and found a lot of helpful info about French folk. I came at Malicorne more as a prog band but seemingly their early days were more in the classic folk rock mode.

I should watch BBC's Folk Britania again, that was very generous to give us a full 3 episodes because the other ones on metal, prog and synth only really skimmed the surface (although it was nice to see some less familiar faces). I didn't pay close enough attention to all 3 episodes when they first aired.

Electric Eden is a great read. Covers lots of ground - a lot of it probably familiar to many ILMers, but I'd definitely recommend it.

https://rateyourmusic.com/genre/folk

Checking all the subgenre charts could take forever but there's a lot of interesting looking stuff there (Warsaw City Folk?). Cant find a Russian category oddly. Charts probably aren't particularly reliable outside of the traditions most familiar to us (Robbie Robertson at no2 of Native American, Okami videogame soundtrack at no1 of East Asian).

How good a guide is the Electric Eden book? I guess it leans more towards the psychedelic side?

Are there any guides that go through European folk that has a similar enough aesthetic to british folk?

How did you guys find your way around?

― Robert Adam Gilmour

electric eden is a great book but i found it unfortunately not very useful as a listening guide. rob young has a real gift for describing music in a creative and tantalizing way that i found in many cases the reality didn't hold up to.

rym charts have some good stuff in them but require extensive filtering to get rid of, say, strasserites.

here i stumbled onto this list copied from holy warbles, probably better to go with lists than charts as a general rule on rym

https://rateyourmusic.com/list/ceesar/holy-warbles/

I bought myself 'anthems in eden' on vinyl as a xmas present. Been digging the other Watersons stuff I got too; was the 'soul cake' song really creepy for people in the past, or is it just modern ears?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQ20dtnZG14

It reminds me of a Xmas Carol, which I guess must have been made in the same mode...but I can't remember which.

"Christmas is Coming" has the same "if you haven't got a penny" bit

I can't quite remember what it was I was thinking of. We Three Kings is maybe similar in what seems to me like the 'flatness' of the tune?

Or maybe 'God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen' - I have no clue about music theory, they just have something in common to my ears.

I get you, I was also thinking about the Coventry Carol because of the eerie minor key vibe

It's kind of the old 'minor key = sad' kind of debate. Did the people at the time find these eerie and negative, or do we think they are because of associations we have.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5CZHHK2WQQ

I feel a wyrd Christmas coming on

I feel like there's something - maybe deliberate - that folk revival people were doing that generates a lot of the eerieness. Compare different versions of a standard like "Lord Bateman", Nic Jones's for example has a tune that's at odds with the lyric in adding this layer of melancholy to it

https://youtube.com/watch? v=wMI11GaHC00

https://youtube.com/watch? v=0C_wyEpaNP8

https://youtube.com/watch? v=wMI11GaHC00

https://youtube.com/watch? v=0C_wyEpaNP8

I'm in my cups listening to Bright Phoebus, which will probably be the tone of the holidays.