Physical Folk

Folk is often about movemnent: physical work, rhythm. Sea shanties, harvest, battles. Folk is about touch and smell and taste. It's what you can hold with your hands. In other words it is essentially vital, sensory. Take the kiss of a dead lover in Bonnie Light Horseman: " And I'd kiss the white lips, that lie cold in the clay".

Folk songs are not often about wealth, but delight in other things. In Spencer the Rover we have lines like: "With bread and cold water he laid down to rest, and it tasted far sweeter than the gold he had wasted, sweeter than honey and gave more content".  Folk music is also rarely esoteric. Songs tend to have a definite subject. Real problems, real people, real places.

Steve Tilston sets the physical reality that folk music takes as it's subject against the manufactured reality of the free market economy:

And behind their hedge
They don't plant wheat,
They don't cut corn,
They don't pick tea,
They don't dig coal,
They don't forge steel,
They just push numbers all about,
They push too far we bail them out,
Keep their fingers firm on fortune's wheel.

The bankers don't do anything. The market has no physical reality, it is only a collection of numbers that go up and down. The people who push the numbers do not make anything like steel or bread. They only make more money for themselves, and get bailed out if they fail. They deal in inconsistencies, in thin air. They are the new magicians, the new priests. For these City men are the only people left in this rational society who can make everyone believe in something they cannot see and touch. Money is the new god.

Folk music sees real value in physical experience: the birds, the bees, the bonking and the beer. The flora and fauna, the value of friends and community. It reminds us of what is really important. Money is not real. The market is not real. And in the end it can bring no comfort. As Jon Fletcher puts it: "I never met a wealthy man who didn't want for more".

As the Native American Cree say: "Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realise we cannot eat money".

Goodbye London

The time for travelling on draws closer. I've been saying goodbye to London. Fleeting moments.

It's funny, you never really look at a place until you're leaving it. I was walking across the Waterloo Bridge today in the misty sunlight looking at the Oxo tower and the muddy, sludgy Thames. It was beautiful. I noticed bars I'll probably never go to and thought of the mass of London I've never seen or experienced and probably never will. I saw a young girl in a bus gazing up at the buildings with wonder. Fresh to the fray. Circles of London life. For me, there's an exquisite melancholy in breaking out of London.

London has overwhelmed me. It cannot be conquered. It is always changing and shifting. A truly mercurial city, it slips through my fingers. I can explain my love of folk music with reference to London. I find harmony, comfort, roots, fellowship and security in folk music. It insulates me against the beguiling yet eventually overpowering change at the surging heart of London.       

London won't miss me. I feel like I'm going away from a swirl of activity where exciting things will happen without me. But I'm tired of the distance and the drudge and the diarising. I want to knock on a friends door as I pass. I don't want to have to plan to meet him in two weeks time at a mutually agreed location for the limited amount of time before he has to catch the Death Hole.

Now for Oxford. Cohesion. Community. A pint of ale in the Half moon. And a good song..... 

 

Grumpy Mr Wood?

Is it me or does Chris Wood come across as incredibly bitter on stage. He seems to literally sneer at the audience. Perhaps he is angry? He does wish to reclaim English culture, which isn't a doddle I must admit. But it's just his manner. I mean, it's just not pleasant. That might sound typically English and overly polite, but it's true. He might be a wizard of song-craft, but he just aint nice to watch sometimes. 

But sometimes is sometimes. True, when I watched him in 2007 he was very grumpy. But look here, he's happy as Larry!

I've had to edit my original post. I take it back Chris! :->

Narratives

I was watching my most favourite DVD of all time, The Last Waltz, when I suddenly thought how wonderful watching performances really is. It's not just what the performers give to the performance that creates an impression, oh no. The observer also creates his own little version of what is happening. His own narrative.

For instance, in Neil Young's performance of Helpless he looks extremely high on something. I heard somewhere that 'they' had to take a rock of cocaine out of his nose before he went on stage. I don't know whether this is true or not, or even where I heard it. But in it goes - into the mixing bowl of my interpretation. Well, to be fair, Neil is gurning his face off and hunching like some sort of gothic 'Egor' character.  When Neil starts singing "The big birds flying across the sky" Robbie and Rick start looking up at the ceiling and swaying with mocking smiles on their faces - I can't help thinking they are emphasising he is high as a kite - or in this case high as a bird.

It's these little aspects that can make performances special. Little nuances, touchstones, bits of hero-worship you can dust off and contribute in those moments when you're down the pub and everything is great, music is great - our heartbeat.