Analysing amateur musicmaking - reporting work-in-progress to the BFE

The BFE Conference at Newcastle was something of a hit-and-run event for me. I was only able to attend the first day of the 4-day event and inevitably there were several items that I would have enjoyed attending, including Eoghan Neff's talk on the 19th century fiddle-playerEdward Cronin and a cylinder recording of his performance of Banish Misfortune - scheduled for Day One but got put back last minute to Day Four.

I was fortunate to attend Simon McKerrell's talk: Modern Scottish bands (1970-1990): 'Cash as authenticity'. This raised some fascinating (and for my research, highly relevant) points on how financial considerations proved to be a driving force in the popularisation of traditional Scottish music. He referred to the success of bands such as Silly Wizard, the Battlefield Band and Capercaillie to demonstrate how the priorities of making a living, touring, producing albums and playing through a PA system have become dominant factors in the revival of traditional music in Scotland. Quoting from his abstract:

...commercial success [is] measured through record sales and cash from gigs, as the new authenticity which eventually prevailed over the earlier, ideological revivalist model of success based upon repertoire and style.

My own presentation was well attended, with some interesting follow-up questions on my research work-in-progress. Here is the abstract that appeared in the programme:

Regulating the amateur: traditional music and cultural control

This paper examines the discourses of folk music within the ‘amateur’ network of folk clubs and music and song sessions across the UK. It provides details of research in progress into the tensions between the largely unregulated practices of amateur folk music and three external agencies which appear to impinge upon them:

1. The music industry as a commercial enterprise setting 'professional' standards in performance, organisational practices and technical resources.

2. Administrative and bureaucratic practices of regulation ranging from the PRS, local authority licensing, etc. to cultural agencies seeking to promote folk as a form of creative or community artistic expression.

3. 'Mainstream' popular culture and its transformation of 'folk' culture into commodity forms, e.g. for Irish theme pubs, medieval banquets, etc.

I argue that these agencies represent a form of cultural control seeking to regulate amateur music practices and the experiences of performers and audiences. Based primarily on participant-observation study of folk clubs in the English Midlands the research examines how discourses of ‘mainstream’ culture, commodification and political management are apparent in amateur folk events and asks whether these undermine the perceived integrity of amateur music as a genuine form of cultural expression.

The research acknowledges studies of folk music as forms of cultural expression (e.g. Blacking, 1974; Finnegan, 1992) and of generic and structural developments in forms of traditional music (e.g. Oakley, 1977; Sweers, 2005). It develops themes identified in Brocken’s study of the British Folk Revival (2003) through its localised focus on a folk music circuit and its experiential, ethnographic approach.

The bottom-line argument that I tried to put across was the surprising lack of research that currently exists on folk music as performed in small, non-commercial, back room folk clubs. There is plenty of literature on folk music as folklore, folk music as a social and cultural phenomenon and folk as a style or genre but I argued that my research would be filling a gap in the understanding of 'amateur' folk music as a social practice.

Feedback from fellow delegates included some good constructive support and advice. I was reminded of one, albeit dated, study of a folk club in action - Smith, J.L., 1987, ‘The Ethogenics of Music Performance, a Case Study of the Glebe Live Music Club’, published in Pickering and Green's Everyday Culture, Popular Song and Vernacular Milieu. It was also suggested that I refer to former BFE chair, Jonathan Stock - this is one item by him that I've found useful.

It was also reassuring (if slightly alarming at first) to speak to one delegate who had actually performed at two of the folk clubs that I referred to as case studies of social and cultural spaces for amateur music practice. She recognised and supported points I'd raised about room layout and proxemics for 'concert' style and 'singaround' events. I may blog on that more later.

BFE Conference    Eoghan Neff    Simon McKerrell     amateur music    
traditional music     popular music     folk revival    folk clubs

The day the music died

While preparing for the Newcastle Conference (see previous item of this blog), I thought it would be useful to consider sub genres and hybrid genres of 'folk' music. There are of course many, ranging from roots and world music through to folk rock, punk folk, acid folk, folk metal, folktronica, neofolk and 'anti-folk' - click here for the Wikipedia entry on this latter concept!

I've only recently become familiar with the idea of'anti-folk'. One of my UCE colleagues, Mark Sampson runs Iron Man Records in Birmingham and regularly manages UK tours for New York band with anti-folk tendencies, Dufus (pictured).

Jason Toynbee discusses genre in popular music and argues for an understanding of ‘genre as a social process’, rather than simply as a set of textual properties:

…social formations often have a strong affiliation with musical genres and may invest them with intense cultural significance. (Toynbee 2000:103 - see references below)

This is an important point. Genres are often seen as a set of properties inherent in the music itself, or self-referential categories. People who talk about genres often ignore the social processes that brought them about in the first place. From other texts I've been looking at (Georgina Boyes 1993, Niall Mackinnon 1993 and, in particular, Dave Harker 1985 and Michael Brocken 2003), a view is emerging of a post-revival folk scene, at least in the UK, appropriated by the middle-classes imposing their own definitions of 'folk' as a musical genre. Their 'cultural capital' and skills in academic research of folklore have produced a huge reservoir of folksongs and tunes (and dances and mummers plays) which can be preserved, covered and arranged, often by new blood folk musicians with access to modern instruments, digital recording studios and the short list to Radio 2's Folk Awards.

This is great if you don't mind the 'folk music' genre affiliated with bourgeois myths reinforced through the 'preservation' of 'traditions' (folk-as-heritage). But this masks the essential revolutionary act of performance that folk music represented in the 1950s and early 60s as a back-room-of-the-pub alternative to an encroaching, glitzy and commercialised pop music culture. Think of Ewan McColl in the UK and Woody Guthrie in the US.

Preservation techniques for any 'museum' piece could include embalming or even taxidermy, but for processes like these to be applied, the original life force must first be removed. So here's something to think about - by preserving 'folk', are the middle classes essentially killing it and stuffing it?

'Anti-folk' suggests a convergence of traditional music and punk mentality, rejecting the polish and professional gloss that folk music has had to acquire to get accepted by mainstream media propomoting 'populist' tastes. The author of the Wikipedia entry refers to:

music that sounds raw and poorly executed, but mocks the seriousness and pretension of the established mainstream folk scene and also mocks itself.

This appeals to the revolutionary sentiments that my own middle class upbringing didn't quite succeed in suppressing. Some who know me may argue that this description is not a million miles from the sound of The Oddsods - a band that I know has been accused by some as not a 'serious' folk band (although we're seriously not 'anti' folk - we just see folk music as something that should be fun and broad in appeal!)

The trouble with 'anti folk' as a sub genre is that it could end up heading in the same direction as 'punk' - a category of commercial music that has its own section in the CD displays of HMV and Virgin Megastores.

genre    anti-folk    Dufus     Iron Man Records     preservation of folk     Oddsods    
folk music     middle-class




Boyes, G., 1993, The Imagined Village: Cultural Ideology and the English Folk Revival, Manchester: Manchester University Press

Brocken, M. 2003, The British Folk Revival: 1944-2002, Aldershot, Ashgate

Harker, D., 1985, Fakesong: The manufacture of British ‘folksong’ 1700 to the present day, Milton Keynes: Open University Press

Mackinnon, N., 1993, The British Folk Scene: Musical Performance and Social Identity, Buckingham, Open University Press

Toynbee, J. 2000, Making Popular Music: Musicians, Creativity and Institutions, London: Arnold