FROM THE FLOOR, OR FROM THE STAGE?

By Karen Duncombe 

Janice and Jon met when doing the BA course in Folk and Traditional Music at Newcastle University and began playing together in their first year. They both came into folk in different ways; Jon had a more “traditional” introduction to folk music. He grew up in Gloucestershire and his father was a Morris dancer. He soon joined the Morrismen and then began to play the fiddle and, eventually, to sing. He found that there weren’t many young people there, partly because Gloucestershire is an expensive place to live, so young people tend to leave. 

So, what do they think is the reason that younger folk aficionados aren’t as “visible” as the more mature folkies? After all, the majority of members of clubs that sing from the floor are older people. Janice thinks that this may be a class issue and that folk music is less accessible to people from workingclass backgrounds. Jon agrees, saying that people like Alistair Anderson (from The High Level Ranters and course tutor) are champions of that – bringing folk music “back to the people” as it were. 

We need more people like Alistair, he says, to travel round teaching the concertina! Apart from that, they both feel that there are no easy answers to making folk more accessible to people from different backgrounds, which is sad because the roots of folk music have always been in the hands of working-class people, writing about injustice and social issues. For example, nobody could have called Tommy Armstrong anything other than working-class! 

Janice mentions a project looking at gender inequality and folk music; this has found that some young women find it hard to go to folk clubs because of the sexist nature of some of the traditional songs, and because they feel that they have been “talked down to” by the older men in the groups. Jon agrees and says that there needs to be something that is accessible to younger people, other than travelling all the way to Newcastle to do a folk music degree. 

So, what did they get out of the degree course? Apart from being able to meet and collaborate with other young people, they both found out that folk music was more than “being able to play a tune nicely” and have the opportunity to learn about folk music as a genre, along with its history and where it “fits” in society. They are very aware that the people who collected folk music back at the late Victorian/early Edwardian period, had a great deal of influence over what we now call traditional music; they set their parameters for deciding what was worthy of keeping. Jon also found that one of the most important things he took away from the course is learning the difference between singing/performing from the floor and having the skills to be a professional musician.

 How is the scene changing then? Jon is of the view that folk clubs in their current iteration are, sadly, on the way out – there is a lack of “community” generally in society and so things are very different from the 60s when the folk revival really took off. 

What do they have to say about the degree course, especially taking into consideration that some people are against the idea of folk and traditional music becoming “academicised”? Jon recognises that it is a controversial degree and that some people do have issues with it, these people feeling that it is killing tradition. Jon is keen to stress that the degree is not a “grow your own band/musician” course; it gives the opportunity to look at traditional music from one remove, as it were. 

They both have concerns about losing the egalitarian nature of folk music and feel that there may be a need to revise some of the traditional song lyrics so that they are more inclusive or, at least, less discriminatory. Surely, says Janice, it’s not too hard to decide not to sing a particular verse of a song than to lose people who would be offended or hurt by it. 

Sorry, they say, that they haven’t been very positive about the future of folk music in its current form. But, echoing Benny Graham, they agree that it doesn’t matter how folk music continues, as long as it does continue. The pandemic has changed the way music is performed, for example and, using Zoom has made clubs and gigs accessible to people who otherwise wouldn’t have been able to attend. It has also opened doors to international audiences and musicians.