17 f Ranting & Reeling


moustaches for charity. I don’t know why fRoots even has this bit. No one likes it.


O


Wait. I think I’ve found a subject we can all agree on: songwriters. There are too many songwriters in folk, aren’t there? Writing their songs about things they’ve thought of, and then singing them. What’s that abo… No? Oh it’s not easy this. Every month trying to think of a subject we might form a consensus about, so I can avoid being tagged in a Facebook post full of strangers who think I’m an arsehole for making a joke about Nizlopi. It’s not easy.


But I have been thinking about the proliferation of young singer-songwriters on the scene for some time. I just don’t know how to tackle the subject without treading on a few sensitive guitar leads. What if I made it clear that I don’t mean you and your songs? If you're reading this and you write songs then I think your songs are great. I especially loved that one you wrote about the horse.


h here he is. What’s he gonna have a go at this time? He proba- bly hates penguins now. Or crisps. Or those people who grow


I just think I’d like to hear more tra- ditional songs being sung by new voices. Is that OK to say? The songwriting bar is set so giddily high these days that most new writers simply flop onto the crash mat in a heap. But the Child Ballads (named after song collector Francis J Children) are an inexhaustible source of tried and tested bangers. Why not put your face in a volume of Bronson and drink deeply? You can't go wrong. Well you can. Horribly wrong. Fusing it with jazz is rarely pleasant. But the brilliant thing about traditional songs is they can survive any misguided reimagining and come up shiny and new in the next per- son’s tinkering hands.


That’s not my idea, of course. Martin Carthy put it far better when he said, “There's nothing you can do to harm a song except not sing it.” I just never thought there’d come a time when people chose not to sing the old songs in favour of their own.


In truth I don’t know that there are too many singer-songwriters on the folk scene, it just feels that way to me. And that’s no basis for any kind of action. Act- ing on unsubstantiated gut feelings about


personal preju- dices just isn’t the British way. So I guess all I really want to say to any musi- cians under the age of regret and back pain is thank you for coming, please try the trad. We’ve an awful lot of it and it


would be a shame to let it go to waste.


And writing songs is hard. Not as hard as writing magazine columns but still a real bugger. Why put yourself through all that artistic strife when there are people long since dead and anonymised, who’ve done most of the work for you? All you have to do is take out the “thees”, “thous” and “diddle all days” and you’ll have a festival set in no time. Also don’t do the voice. You don’t need to do the folk voice, your own voice is fine. Unless it isn’t. Then you should probably just play the melodeon.


Tim Chipping


The Elusive Ethnomusicologist “R


ight mum, I need a portable chair, a travel pillow, a really warm and soft sleeping bag, Timberland boots, thick


socks…” The list went on. The eighteen- year old is taking a trip to BoomTown. She who refused to have anything further to do with the Duke of Edinburgh and his award scheme after one night under can- vas, has forked out £200.00 to camp for four nights at the festival.


She rang from the queue to get in. “Mum we’ve been standing for six hours, with all our bags. We’ve moved about three feet. They say it’s going to be anoth- er four hours ’til we get to the gate.” Then much, much later that night: “Mum, my chair’s been stolen, and my boots… and my sleeping bag! But got to go, am meet- ing O in the Psych Forest now.”


It wasn’t like that at Womad even before it pitched up in the Earl of Suffolk’s garden. And certainly not at Cornbury. where riding high on the recording of our ‘double B-side’ single, West London’s The Love Trousers kicked-off the festival one Saturday morning.


10.30 am was a bit early even for those of us who had children. But my mum was there and she enjoyed it. I’m sure


David Cameron would have done too if he’d got off his arse and pitched up for the whole show rather than just wander- ing about after lunch, basically presaging his approach to the Brexit referendum.


It’s Cornbury that spawns column inches on the middle class appropriation of festival culture. It’s the inauthentic heart of (not) getting down and dirty in a field with music. My friend thinks it’s not just festivals that are being sanitised by the bourgeoisie, but music itself. “Take folk,” he says, “it’s just servicing the agrarian fantasies of the urban rich. It’s become middle class. It’s got it’s own university course!”


“Aside from Stick In The Wheel,” he said, “name me one truly working class folk artist! And as for ‘nu folk’, or ‘alt folk’ – all Emperors ‘Nu’ Clothes. And not even new! More Laura Ashley running around in meadows.”


Blimey. I look on line, only to find a branch of folk where if there’s any run- ning round it’ll be in a car park. Here’s Isarnos, belting out a subtle blend of “Melodic Death and traditional folk”. Plus, oh, joy! They’re appearing at the authentic sounding ‘Beermageddon’. For 40 quid you get three days camping, “parking and all facilities, including stalls,


cheap beers, real ales, hot food and prop- er toilets.”


Billed as a


family festival (small children should have ear defenders”) it features a themed fancy dress competi- tion “Christ- mas-geddon”.


The line up includes: “Your mum’s favourite: Deep Throat Trauma!! earning two exclamation marks, whilst ‘Bring on the bastards, Wolf Bastard!!!” get three. Isarnos, with their bagpipes and hurdy gurdy provide the “folk-metal power-bal- lads”. Who knew? I bet you won’t find David Cameron wandering about here. Nor Nigel Farage even with his propensity for a pint.


Meanwhile, back home, my daugh-


ter’s miserable. “Don’t worry, it’s not your fault everything was stolen.” “It’s not that mum. It was the best four days of my life. Nothing will be that good again.” But she doesn’t yet know about Beermaggedon.


Elizabeth Kinder


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