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breathtaking ride through folk song, dance, storytelling, art and textiles. And like the mongrel roots of British folk, the conference was outward looking, taking in folk traditions from across the world; from America and the Caribbean, across Europe and India to Asia and the South Pacific.
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Within these cultures and the whole gamut of folk disciplines, the role of women as practitioners, collectors, researchers, edu- cators and social reformers was explored, their lives pulled out from the guts of con- vention that has kept them hidden and brought into the spotlight, centre stage, so we could see how their pioneering work reverberates down the centuries to us.
From Lucy Neal’s keynote speech on the extraordinary creative activism of her great, great aunt Mary Neal (fR357) – piv- otal to the Morris revival, the suffragette movement and social reform – to the head- line event, Shirley Collins reading from her new book All In The Downs and in conver- sation with Dr Elizabeth Bennett, the day celebrated the difference that one person (female) can make against all the odds.
And all those odds were shaken out into the light of day. Women’s positioning in song texts and folk tales, whether by the Brothers Grimm or the blokes on the football terraces, revealed how inequality in both gender and class is codified and persists. We could see too how women’s occupation of physical space, whether through dance or singing in a club, is impacted by those narratives of male dom- inance. We saw how song texts could address that inequality and become a ral- lying cry for change.
The conference looked to the future by exploring how women’s fundamental con- tribution to folk can be addressed and given equal value. And if this all sounds a bit dull and worthy it denies the wit and passion of all the speakers, male and female, from the American Nora Rodes (the youngest at 16) to the grande dames of folk, Sandra Kerr and Shirley Collins. They made their work live and breathe, showing the continual negotiations between outer life and inner, deeper life, so we too could imagine creating positive change.
There was so much on offer it was impossible to see it all, but what I saw woke me up. After Lucy Neal’s brilliant evocation of her ancestor, in which she touched on the middle-class appropriation of folk song and dance by Cecil Sharp et al, whilst her Aunt Mary had focused on pass- ing on the working-class tradition to the working classes, there was a folk ballet dis- play. The performers said they were pitch- ing against the notion that ‘Folk is rustic and rural and pretty’ which they suggest- ed was a stereotypical view, though quite how they were doing this by apparently rolling around on the floor was beyond me. It was a reminder that personal taste is just that. Others said it was “amazing, beautiful to listen to and to watch…”
Dr Elizabeth Bennet, Laura Hockenhull, Dr Margaretta Jolly, Laura Smyth & Steve Roud.
Later Nicola Kearey, presenting her experience of making the album From Here, picked up on the rustic theme, explaining that she was very much against the middle-class rural Laura Ashley pranc- ing about in fields idea that she felt typi- fied the folk scene, explaining that her East London urban working-class roots made her an outsider to the folk world.
At which point Shirley Collins, whose rural roots are well documented, pointed out, “I’m working class!” She took issue with Kearey’s stance that a tough work- ing-class life made you an outsider – since Shirley herself has experienced what could easily be described as a tough, making- ends-meet life, and is obviously not just in the folk world, but is one of its defining members (although she didn’t point out that last bit).
Having stated that they’d designed their album so that it didn’t look like a folk record, and played to audiences in clubs that weren’t folk clubs, Kearey outlined the band’s brilliant (and successful) aim to widen the appeal of folk, to introduce it to new audiences so that people might understand their tradition and be proud of it, without the baggage of a bigoted nationalism. So she pitches the songs in the framework of class struggle, which is her experience, and in an authenticity that she says lies in simplicity and “being true to one’s self.”
She referred to the song she sings on
From Here, Georgie, which she said was “basically a song about a woman bawling out the coppers in the middle of the street because they've got her man for a paltry crime of stealing from a rich man.”
For Collins, who is all about being true
to one’s self and delivering authenticity in straightforward no-nonsense singing, and who’s very much alive to the enduring rel- evance of folk songs and issues of class, this was too much. “The song is not ‘a bawling out’,” she said. “It’s a lament … on the fate of true love in the face of social inequality and injustice…”
Later, looking at the text, there’s the scene where the woman begs the judge for mercy: her Georgie was stealing to put food
on the table. It’s an obvious tale of ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’, of systemic injustice that highlights uncomfortable notions of class. It’s a cautionary tale about what happens if you form relationships outside your social status. Arguably, none of these things need any further explanation to make them cur- rently relevant, and to frame it as a ‘bawl- ing out in the street,’ whether to coppers, rozzers, the fuzz, the pigs or even the police is not necessarily helpful.
However, that the songs themselves can support multiple readings and can be delivered authentically in many different sound worlds, from unaccompanied singing to the multi-layered sonic brilliance of, say, False Lights, is testimony to their timeless relevance. And authenticity itself is a question of personal taste, precisely because it is about being true to one’s self.
I asked Kearey why she found the folk world so initially unwelcoming, why she felt like an outsider. “I just found it really inaccessible. I mean this sincerely: people need to check their privilege if they can’t see that.”
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t was a day when critical thinking and self-reflection brilliantly high- lighted how we all need to check our privileges, how we all need to question our assumptions whatever our intention, whatever we’re doing, whenever we’re doing it, and why.
Folk songs, stories, dance, costumes and art allow us to tap into common mem- ories through creative expression, helping us draw maps from the past with which to navigate our present. The conference showed us how we all stand in line and that we need to understand how we take up the threads of our own lives and weave them on the loom of lives that have gone before to make sense of the world around us. Unless we continually question our assumptions, then like Don Quixote we’ll be chasing windmills, monsters of our own making, and how will that help those com- ing after us make sense of their world?
Sometimes the socks no longer fit and should not be re-cycled but put in the bin.
sussex.ac.uk/clhlwr/research/ conferences/womeninthefolk
F
iven the widespread, in-depth expertise and fine perfor- mance background of the organising body, it’s no sur- prise that the conference was a
Photo: Tunde Alabi Hundeyin
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