Tis gave me an insight into what it is like to function as a com- mitee and work as a heavily funded arts organisation. Arts orga- nisation has always been something I have done – seting up the Haworth Arts Festival, Tree’s Company a co-operative artists agency, currently I’m involved in two ventures, Royal Tra- ditions is a singer’s club at our local which has potential plans to expand into the workshop/festival domain and Bright Phoebus, another artist and music lover collective who want to promo- te great live music in Sheffield. Te later has received nationwi- de coverage and is, she says modestly, something prety special.
Te House Band is Martin Simpson, Jon Boden and my- self with whichevernfolk luminaries we can encourage along. Regulars include Andy Cuting, Roy Bailey, Sam Sweeney, Hannah James, and one offs have seen Pete Coe, Gina Le Faux, Belinda O’Hooley and Heidi Tidow… Organising events has always been a passion. Partly because I love an excel spread sheet but it is important to keep things moving out there. Tere have been cries from the folk scene that there is stagnation and no new singers/musicians/organisers are out there.
Whenever such a cry is made there are frequent examples of people doing things, but oſten go unnoticed until there is a scene. Scenes don’t just pop up out of nowhere, and hopefully with models like the Bright Phoebus nights, other pods of activity will develop. Tere are of course others doing similar things, in London for example Sam Lee is leading the way with various ventures and clubs or one off events are being run by the new generation in Bath and Bristol. All of this together will help forge a new way of accessing traditional music and hopefully help the younger audiences which are abundant on the festival scene into the folk scene more widely.
While a lot of this new activity focuses on PA/ stage/audience styley gigs to the distress of many a die-hard folkie whose heart is in the participative
elements of folk music, all I can say is this is a way in, and with other things like Royal Traditions we can provide extensions once they are hooked. Tis view of the folk scene has been long in the making. From my early days singing as a teen/early 20 year old I received numerous well-meaning but terribly patronising and infuriating comments such as ‘you’ll be a great singer once you setle in.’ or ‘you’re too young to get
the material yet, but you’re geting there’. Tis coupled with the seemingly ceaseless snippets of information given to me about the song I was singing, previous recordings, sources and linked versions made me ponder the big question in life: what is folk music? Or rather: what do all these people know that I don’t and why do they think I need to know it to be able to sing?
In a timely coincidence, Folkworks launched the Folk and Traditional Musics degree at Newcastle University.
I was at a
crossroads in life and spurred on to apply by Maggie Boyle and my sister. I was accepted in the first intake and off I went. Four years pondering the big question you might have thought would be enough, but it seems not and I went onto the University of Sheffield to continue my musings for another 5 years. Tis is the point I am at now – a doctor of folk, or at least holding a beter understanding of how the scene functions conceptually, socially and musically. Although the Newcastle degree is a BMus (meaning it focuses on practical music-making)
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