Sharp looked into the roots of the terminology of this strange shadow culture which had survived decades of neglect, he discovered that the first use of the word ‘folklore’ did not occur until 22 August 1846, in a letter to the Athenaeum magazine by one W. J. Thoms.
Finally finished this wonderful book on the flight back from Galway. I’m a sucker for BBC music documentaries, and this scratched exactly the same itch.
It’s the story of British folk music over the last hundred years or so, essentially. Which sounds dry as dust. Except that Young convincingly positions British folk as our visionary music, the true sound of mad Albion. From William Morris and song collector Cecil Sharp, through Vaughn Williams and Peter Warlock, Seeger and McColl, scattering through the explosion of the Sixties and out to the complex obituaries of the Seventies (taking in The Wicker Man and hauntological touchstone The Changes), it’s an absolutely fascinating journey.
Don’t seek the ‘original’ copy, insisted Sharp; focus on the transformations themselves – for they are the substance of the song. He conceded that most songs probably had a sole author in the indistinct past, but unlike in high culture, the ‘original’ is not the authentic prototype; instead, it should be thought of as the equivalent of a composer’s first draft – ‘the source from which it is sprung’.
There are some confusing gaps towards the end – I’m still unsure how you spend so many pages on Talk Talk (the drummer used to live down the road from me when I was a kid) and manage not to address, say, XTC or Billy Bragg. But that’s an entirely personal caveat (if I played Devil’s Advocate I could probably see an argument against including Billy, but I think Mr Young may have missed a trick in not using him to unify and tie up so many of his themes) and doesn’t deserve to be held against an immensely impressive, clever and thoughtful piece of work, superbly researched and very well written. If you have any interest at all in British music, native musics or mad people, then you want a copy of this.
ELECTRIC EDEN, Rob Young (UK) (US+)
originally written March 2011
CONNECTED:
- The Spirit World Of Our Age: THE MAGIC BOX, A Book Of Strange British TV Culture by Rob Young
- Telemetric Folklore
- Shipwreck Radio
- just a few pictures
- Folklands: Witch Country part 2
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