This was going to be review of the 45th Towersey Folk Festival, but, d’you know, I couldn’t be arsed, not by the time I got back. OK, this was in part not the fault of the organisers and their agents; it’s a jolly fine festival and all that, Heck, I’d even been before, sometime in the 90s, but maybe I am just being churlish. It rained a lot. Not, I accept, their fault. The beer was 50p more than usual. Or more than I thought fair. (£4.50 since you ask. It mounts up.)
So who played? OK, I probably went because of that Thompson. And he was good. I went to bed happy on Friday. But I shouldn’t have struggled to find owt else. Over the next 3 days. But it wasn’t easy. Apart from unfeasibly good concertina whizzes, Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne, a (very) young Lenny Kravitz lookalike who could squeeze shit hot box, most else was essentially worthy and intrinsically dull. I ain’t going to name and shame but you can see for yourselves. Yes, Beth Orton gave a delightfully elfinesque gamine performance, Big Country showed off the conceit of a band based around a long since dead focus, not a compliment, and I could hear the Proclaimers in my tent, or, at least, their audience singing the du der der da da bit, try as hard as I might not to. Martin Simpson played against type and produced a scorcher, someone I usually adore on record and regret live.
So why have I bothered? This lot. Pons Aeolius, graduates of the folk course at Newcastle, playing a heavily prog-infused scottish flavoured instrumental joy. I caught ’em twice and they got better. Hell, we moan about the graduates of the Brits school, whatever it is in London, but if this single course can produce Elephant Sessions and now, this band, I am all for it.
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Tell me there isn’t a folk course.
https://www.ncl.ac.uk/undergraduate/degrees/w344/#courseoverview
I think Kathryn Tickell started it off or up.
Words fail me.
Dear sir,
You are a cynic.
Yours,
Dr. Foxy McFoxface
BSc Dub (hons) PhD (prog) +bar
In year three you get to write a song! Hurrah!
What you will study
The first year lays the foundation for understanding folk and
traditional music. There is a strong emphasis upon
performance, including:
• a range of modules on folk traditions
• regular one-to-one lessons on your main instrument (18
hours)
• weekly tutor-led workshops to develop your ensemble
playing skills
In second year, your choice includes a broad range of
modules, such as:
• ensemble playing
• academic approaches to the history and understanding
of folk music
• approaches to traditional musics from around the world
In your final year, you take advanced modules linked to our
research. You also complete a major specialist study, which
may be:
• an original composition
• a creative project or performance
• a dissertation/project on an area of interest
Christ allmighty. So if I do a fine arts degree in my dotage, I’ll actually get to draw something in the last few weeks before I graduate. Might as well give the degree away with Cornflakes.
The folk course has its detractors within folk circles, for sure. The thinking is that you can’t study creativity, authenticity etc, least of all in folk, which should be a ‘ground up’ genre rather than a subject of dry academia. Doubtless Ewan MacColl’s grave is a scene of spinning mayhem; he would expect it all to come up from clubs in once smoky rooms and sessions in pubs that don’t serve decent food.
But do we have tertiary education studying other realms of the arts? Of course we do: conservatoires, creative writing degrees (my niece has got one), arts colleges without which our own tastes in music would be less well served. So why not folk music? A good point made in defence of the course is that other European countries got there long ago. The establishment of the Northumbria course was seen by many that we were at last taking our own culture seriously.
You know what Mr Cat? I know very little about folk or indeed Folk Courses but that is a very well reasoned post.
Hear hear, especially with the quality of music coming out of the bands and projects that graduates have formed. I see it as our UK equivalent of Berklee in the US for jazz. Or eventually.
Well I am with the detractors and entirely agree there is something un-organic about a degree in folk – it’s almost tautological. But I can’t have a problem if the music which comes out is good and the more people playing the better for me.
The comparison with jazz or classical schools is wrong though to me – these have well established and codified “rules” for any given part of the genre which need to be learnt. You can’t just do jazz by going to jam sessions like you can folk. There’s a lot of theory underlying that seamless improvisation.
Jazz only started to have “rules” after it started being taught in schools post-WWII. I dare say if you went back far enough (a very, very long way back, I grant you) the same probably applied to what we now call Classical.
And all these codified musical genres have their rule-breakers moving the goalposts or even creating new goals of their own.
I imagine an advantage of a formal folk music course is that it provides some employment opportunities for a few good knowledgeable players with the ability to teach. Players who now don’t have quite such a financial struggle while they pass on useful presentation and technique tips and solid repertoire.
Almost all of the pro jazz players in Ireland make most of their livings from teaching at jazz courses at either a place near Dublin now affiliated to Berklee or at Ulster University in Derry. There’s a race for all these people to get PhDs!
Yes I know a few “professional” jazz musicians (and a funk bassist) who have teaching jobs that help keep them solvent when gigs either aren’t there or aren’t paying well enough. In-demand players who aren’t in-demand-enough to be able to rely solely on playing.
It’s a bit like classical music or poetry/literary fiction in that respect – there may be great lengths one has to go to become sufficiently good at the art, but there’s no real living at the end of it in creating the art – just in teaching it to other people, often in university-level jobs or bog-standard peripatetic music tutoring… and the best of those being taught will become teachers of it too…. and so on. It’s strange, when you think about it.
There’s a parallel for me. I sing in all sorts of environments – from the big well known chorus songs in boozy festival bars to hushed, respectful rooms where you can play more with nuance. Some singers go to great lengths to tell the audience the origins of the song – which Edwardian gentleman collected it and from which bucolic parish, how it was taken by settlers across the Atlantic and then came back again during the revival. That environment is also where you may just be picked up for skipping a verse or swapping a word for a synonym because it scans better for your voice. I happily share a space with this crowd and respect their dedication and research, but couldn’t go there myself. If the song moves me, I’ll sing it, and I’ll sing the version which means most to me, which might be as trad as they come, but could easily be Martin Simpson’s take.
As a fairly regular attendee at medium size folk gigs I find that inability to sing a song without spending at least as long telling everyone about it beforehand beyond tedious. I guess those who came out of that environment and were better at the talking than the music just became better know for that instead (Billy Connelly, Jasper Carrot).
For the others, they always seem so bad at the talking bit too. Even a master, vastly experienced folkie like Martin Carthy ums and errs his way through the lengthy introductions while he seems like more of his attention is focused on retuning. The performers must hear the sigh of relief from the audience when they finally start playing so I would thought the message should have sunk in by now.
I agree. Much as I love Martin Carthy when he’s on form – and I’ve found that makes a difference: he can be utterly mesmerising or he can be drab – he only just gets away with the length of his pre-song descriptions of what the song is about. I think most people would be happy to hear a lot less of that sort of thing at these kind of gigs. Just sing the song.
And yet he and Norma and Eliza will think nothing of putting a song to a different tune because he likes it better and it fits, or leaving a verse or two out if the song seems too long, or adding a verse in from elsewhere if the song seems too short. They are certainly not purists.
True but the language got much more complicated as the form evolved so some sort of teaching was needed. Whereas by definition folk music is created by and evolved in the community, by osmosis.
Splendid to see you here BTW Cat. What have you been up to? Still singing?
Thanks. Very much so. Getting very occasional gigs, including what I hope will be a regular one at the Knutsford Music Festival (we only had the second this June). Now on the committee of my local club and it sounds like I have been roped into getting more involved with the local festival too. Dancing also. Blowzabella are 40 this year and the gig tally will be six by the end of the year.
Knutsford! That’s not far away from me. I’ll give it a look.
Ha I was in Knutsford recently. Twang jr did a week at music camp at the Clontor Opera so we delivered him then had a week in the peaks near Longnot. Delightful! I’ll remember next time Tig, and come and admire your driving gloves.
Good to hear you’re busy Cat. Don’t be a stranger!
It will probably be in the back half of June next year. So far, they’ve not been announcing it far in advance. The council is still taking baby steps with it.
I saw Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne (to name but three) at our local folk club (Royal Traditions near Sheffield) and he is indeed a remarkable player of a squeezie thing. I strongly recommend catching him if you get the chance.
Dan Walsh is another young virtuoso worth seeing if clawhammer banjo is your thing (or even, frankly, if it isn’t.
I’m not sure 2018 has been a great year for festivals. We went to Lunar which was poorly attended and largely underwhelming musically, save for the Unthanks and – arguably – Damo Suzuki. Bestival was rained off that same weekend too. Anyone been to a good one?
Interesting (?) edition of The Bottom Line last month (as I was doing the washing up).
In short: have lots of rich friends willing to lend you money to get started, be prepared for a million quid overdraft if it rains, and don’t expect to break even for a few years.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0bbt619
Yes, my son got his fingers well and truly burnt a few years back: he and 4 older and richer friends spent a year (and their mortgages) on setting up a festival at Radley Hall. They got within 72 hours of opening the gates when it was pointed out they had barely sold a ticket. They pulled and got some bad press from the punters who had shelled out, albeit with refunds via the credit card companies and the company they had set up. As the boy on the team, and with no money to lose, he lost the least. He had to come back home for 6 months to lick his wounds. The other 4 lost homes and whatever else available. Being a chef suddenly seemed so attractive again, not that there is any money there either any more…….
Tried Elephant Sessions yet, Retro? I’ve been playing it a fair bit since BDs. Decent record, but quite a lot tamer than the live experience.
Indeed I have. I bought it at Towersey on your recommendation. As you say, a broad hint of Shooglenifty. Excellent stuff. (Who I have discovered have decided to continue, with Eilidh Shaw ” replacing” Angus, following a successful memorial show in his memory.
I too am shivering at the very thought of a ‘folk course’.
Interesting festival situation last weekend in my area – TWO one-day punk revival festivals 10 miles apart on the same day: ‘Bangor is an Energy’ in, well, Bangor featuring PIL, The Outcasts, Undertones, XSLF (two guys from SLF plus others) plus Lydon Q&A event, plaque unveiling (there are those who posit the punk began in Bangor with a load of camp hairdressers and a club called the Trident) and aftershow pub gigs by Petesy Burns’ Arse – Petesy also featuring earlier with the Outcasts.
In Belfast, meanwhile, there was SLF plus the Damned, the Buzzcocks, the Defects etc with post gig disco featuring Terri Hooley.
Obviously, I went to neither.
However, the previous weekend Petesy Burns’ Arse had played a free show at a park in Bangor – one of those ‘bring your own deckchair’ punk revival gigs – and this kind of bougeois milieu was much more my sort of thing. Here’s Petesy and boys rocking the bandstand at that very show, with 999’s ‘Homicide’.
*shoots self*
Oh, I don’t know – I thought it was fun!
Can’t see your beard in that shot, Colin.
(O, its a moving picture….)
When Nick Cash (geddit! eh?!) wrote Homicide, I believe he wanted the video to begin with a small girl doing cartwheels in a park. And now his work is done.
Does that mean Nick can now retire/stop performing? Will someone tell him?
Incidentally, the chap in the front row with the newspaper had been snoozing when the show began – Petesy woke him up. He proceeded to read one newspaper then ask me, at the interval, ‘Who is this band?’ I replied, ‘It’s Petesy Burns’ Arse’. He looked at me for a while then said, ‘Can you watch this deckchair?’ He went off to get another newspaper and proceeded to read it throughout the entirely of the second half.
I swear punk rock is getting too art school.
Well yeah.
That guy with the newspapers was probably an “installation” if only we’d known it.
What could go wrong? Think of the Brit School!
….er….