Now that’s what I call music ... Robb Johnson


O


nce upon a time, back in the good old days of Bad Queen Thatch, me and Mark and Graham decided that we would form an acoustic agit-prop trio called The Ministry of Humour, and overthrow the Tories by singing about how evil they were at any and every given opportunity. We sang and busked at all sorts of places, for all sorts of people, from stalwart picket lines (ask your gran about picket lines kids), through Labour party socialists (this was a long time ago), to bemused punters at summer fetes. We even terrorised folk clubs by doing floor spots, and some of them actually gave us bookings. Some didn’t. It was probably a 40/60 split in favour of not booking us. Our favourite response came from the magnificent Hugh Diamond, accordion-monger and diamond geezer who later graced a couple of our recordings with his singing and playing. After an aghast response from a nice folk club audience nestling quietly along the Thames valley, he took us to one side and in a consoling throaty whisper said “Like what you do lads, but…” he paused and grimaced and shook his shaggy beard, “we don’t like too much politics round here.”


I always thought that was a bit strange – for people going to folk music events not to like too much politics. What is politics after all but the wider world and how it is organised? Let’s think about the wider world and how it is organised for a bit; what are the obvious manifestations of that organisation? Does this crop up from time to time in the generally accepted cannon of folk music? What about wars? Plenty of those in folk songs; people are forever trudging off to Higher Germany, Flanders or the plains of Waterloo etc in folk songs. Work and economic relationships? Yes, lots of ploughboys, miners and fishermen there too. Immigration? Again, gypsies and travellers and tinkers and tunes from here, there, and Scotland, Ireland and France abound. And what about the personal politics of gender relationships? Lots of songs about that too, often involving a spot of cross-dressing (cross reference also songs about wars).


The Living Tradition - Page 10 “...we don’t like too much politics round here...”


We had a pretty standard response in The Ministry of Humour if challenged about the openly political nature of much of our material. Graham, who usually played bass, and so whose demeanour was usually appropriately darkly taciturn and impassive, would suddenly uncoil into action. He would draw rapidly on a cigarette, exhale at impressive length and simultaneously announce categorically from the corner of his mouth, “Everything’s political”. This usually did the trick of stunning, or perhaps bewildering, our interlocutors into silence.


“...if there’s a


shortage of potatoes, you write a song


about onions...” It was a bit of an old leftie cliché, redolent of notions of conflict and class struggle, but actually, if you think about it, you don’t have to understand it only in terms of situations of obvious social conflict. Overtly political art (and I’m using “art” as a term describing human aesthetic creativity, which includes everything from massive operas through a session in a pub, to someone’s bedroom where they’ve got a computer, internet access and myspace) usually gets created in conflict situations, where people feel moved to create music and sing songs that ask “Which side are you on?” and where artists feel that in saying nothing, you are condoning an oppression. Throughout history there are artists who have used their art courageously to make political statements. Under many regimes, just being an artist in itself was a dangerous undertaking; Shakespeare wasn’t just a fine playwright, he was also a politically astute fine playwright, so avoided the experience of getting arrested, being tortured or murdered, unlike many of his contemporaries. With the renewed tendency towards state control and great totalitarian regimes of


the last century, artists have had to consider very carefully how they write to escape the censor and the secret police. We should be in absolute awe of writers like Bulgakov in Soviet Russia and Fallada in Nazi Germany who simply kept writing. Artists often have to develop strategies to ensure their creative survival. My friend the writer Ken Hunt talks about how in Germany there is a tradition dating back to the Austro-Hungarian empire of avoiding censorship by singing about something by singing about something else – if there’s a shortage of potatoes, you write a song about onions.


It is easy to perceive the political dimension to art in these situations of conflict; the absence of overt conflict doesn’t however mean that things stop being political. And equally, just because an artist’s work appears to be uninterested in the wider world of politics, doesn’t mean they don’t have political views, or indeed, political import. Looking at his – ahem – body of work, you wouldn’t think that popular singer Rod Stewart was interested in anything much beyond the contents of his trousers. However, during one of our recent post-imperial military excursions abroad, he decides to appear at his Royal Albert Hall concert draped with a union flag in support of “Our boys”. Folk music’s recent tendency – presumably to address the tastes and aspirations of that 60% of clubs who didn’t like too much politics round here in the 1980s – to reconfigure itself as nice old songs and tunes from merrie-olde pre-industrial tymes nicely sung and nicely played by nice young curly-haired lasses and lads was so steeped in hazy nostalgia that it presented as being ripe for co- option in support of the politics of the BNP.


However, even when politics isn’t rudely rearing its ugly unwanted head with a capital P on it, making direct reference to lamentable outbreaks of contemporary dischord, there are constants, regardless of the content of the art, that remain the same in relatively peaceful situations. Art is


produced by individuals and then disseminated to other individuals (or not); both these truisms are affected by the social conditions and relationships at the time of production.


Whatever you think about Cecil Sharp and his collecting methodology, he played a significant part in a process of transmission that made a body of music and songs available to a much wider audience. Whatever you think of Malcolm MacClaren and his situationist methodology, he played a significant part in a process of transmission that made a body of music and song available to a much wider audience. Whether you are one of the 311 singers Cecil Sharp listened to between 1904 and 1909, or Sid Vicious, your creativity is not entirely determined by, but influenced and characterised by your experience of your contemporary world, its wars, social relationships and gender relationships. And how your art gets transmitted, whether it’s by Cecil Sharp bowdlerising the rude bits and writing a formal piano accompaniment, or by Virgin Records, again depends on the means of production, and access to the means of reproduction, of your contemporary world. And who owns those means, which is a very political consideration indeed. As indeed is Ewan MacColl and the mid century revival, but more of All That later.


But that’s why I like folk music so much. Because despite all the Cecil Sharps and Malcolm Maclarens, and all those other movers and shakers, fraudsters and fakers (don’t let me get started on Mumford and Sons); of all the art forms and opportunities for creativity and self-expression, what we largely accept as - and grumble about precise definitions of - as folk music, it is Art where we sing and dance for ourselves and each other, and continue to maintain as much autonomy, and control over both the creativity and the dissemination as possible. Now that’s what I call (political) music…..


Robb further reveals his thoughts on politics and the folk scene in the next issue of Living Tradition.


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