FOLK MUSIC: search & destroy/classic or dud?

I like to sing folk music although I have very little contact with any recordings or live stuff other than occasional ceadilhs. All due to being involved in an organisation a little bity like the scouts that takes kids camping and we sing around the fire. Mainly songs about drinking, sailors, sailor's shagging and breaking the legs of strike breakers and throwing them down mines.

I did get played some Blythe Power and Men they Couldn't Hand stuff in a car driving back from one of these camps. And it is pretty good. Although this is more of an anarcho folk rock thang good shouty music.

If you want access to a murky world of folk lyrics and tunes try The Mudcat Cafe, the digitrad section.

Country dancing in the right enviroment with the right bunch of drunkards is a definate classic

And Donovan - wasn't he really a "folk singer" for like, one album? I thought he had some great pop singles, but I guess that's not appropriate to a "folk" discussion.

I like old American folk styles like you find on old Smithsonian records, but I'm not sure if that's what this person is looking for.

It would be nice if someone who actually liked folk and knew the genre(s) responded to this thread.

Nico's Cale-produced albums are, for me, folk: dirges on the harmonium, nursery rhymes dipped in Poe. Folk is also Rednex doing 'Cotton Eye Joe'. It's Kraftwerk making their 'industrial folk music'. It's Bjork and Matmos deciding that objects, too, have their own indigenous sounds: the clattery folk of atoms bashing together.

Folk is a genre that looks back beyond Elvis to the troubadours. It's a song form that isn't afraid to tell a story, sometimes in 24 verses. I think it's great when it falls into the 'wrong' hands, uses weird scales, primitive instruments and odd timings and tells strange tales. I think it's crap when you see on daytime German TV, in the form of Schlager, with a lot of fascist pensioners in Bavarian leather feather hats singing along.

Destroy: Enya.

When asking, my head was full of 'proper' English folk music: Martin Carthy, June Tabor, through to new people like Kate Rusby and Bill Jones. I'd search out all this stuff. As to the American protest thing, I'm less informed and less convinced. I enjoy Bruce more than Bob! (and which of these two is most politically focused these days?)

US Folk: the late great John Fahey, whose music is a unique synthesis of blues, folk and Indian styles/sounds. But yes, the question/category is a bit too broad - Howling Wolf, John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters were all marketed as folk artists in the late fifties/early sixties, once their labels decided that folk was 'where it's at'.

Anyway my top choices

Richard & Linda Thompson - I want to shoot out the bright lights tonight, one of Eno's favourites apparently.

Jackie Leven. He has a new album out soon provisonally titled @the sexual loneliness of Jesus Christ' (!), and regularly collaborates with David Thomas. To be going on with though try Forbidden songs of the dying west or Fairytales for hard men.

John Martyn - Solid air.

Gillian welch - Hell amongst the yearlings.

Anything by Sandy Denny, Nick Drake or early Fairport Convention.

And, seriously Tiger Bay by Saint Etienne.

Search: 'Rosemary Lane' by Anne Briggs - anything by Briggs actually. The purity and the pristine soulfulness of her voice would stop a Slipknot fan at twenty paces.

I quite like Kate Rusby, I've got the 'Sleepless' album, it's a splendid modern folk album. I like how it still manages to 'keep it real' while remaining relevant - it's of the now but no traditionalist sell-out.

Eliza Carthy's 'Red Rice' is equally utterly vital.

Hmm. There was meant to be a folk revival but, the modest success of the above albums aside, I wonder if it has/will ever arrive. Though the increasingly popular acoustic balladry from the likes of Kings of Convenience; Alfie; Badly Drawn Boy; Belle & Sebastian; Matthew Jay and others, with their name dropping of Tim Buckley and Nick Drake, are, if anything, probably *it*.

Graham Coxen appeared at a folk awards ceremony last year to hand out a gong. He exitedly blabbed: "Oh God, this is so cool, I'd much rather get one of these than a Brit [award]". So if folk *is* 'cool' it would be the first time since the mid seventies when the afformentioned Buckley and Drake roamed the Earth - not that Drake caught any of the backslapping of course, but... y'know, - acoustic guitars and stools were acceptable. Untill Punk arrived. And the rest is Indie. A few acts like The Smiths and Billy Bragg - who labelled his albums 'urban folk' - still had echoes of folk, but mainly the Indie bands' wall-of-guitar noise drowned out the last traces of the simpler but more direct traditional folk music.

It still hasn't quite shaken off it's folderol/weird-beard/chunky- knit sweater image that has unfairly (by and large) dogged it for a good while, and whether the latest batch of earnest, young, folk-ish acts can save the genre from the pit of eternal un-cool, remains to be seen.

That said, also Search: Buckley/Drake; Tim Hardin; Karen Dalton; Incredible String Band; early Fairport Convention/Sandy Denny; June Tabor; Maddy Prior and Fred Neil.

Dar Williams is a folkie, I believe (though she can be a bit earnest, and her newer stuff isn't quite as folky, from what I've heard). Danielle Howle has earned quite a following within the confines of "indie rock" (thanks to associations with Simple Machines & Kill Rock Stars), but she's a great storyteller, and an amazing singer. I'd namecheck Ida yet again, but I'm their Number One Fan, so I'm a bit biased. Damn it, I namechecked them anyway. They cover a Cindy Kalett song on _I Know About You_ that's amazing.

Is Leo Kottke "folk", or is that "bluegrass"? Either way, it's amazing stuff (the bits I heard while watching _Sessions on West 54th_, that is).

Mcgarigle sisters
McCarthys (Eliza and Nick)
Buffy St Marie
Joan Baez (espically the covers and duets with Dylan
Tom Paxton

I also include alot of country in this, ( ie The Carter Family, Tom T Hall, Smog, 16 horsepower)

I'm glad someone else thinks "Tiger Bay" is a folk album and, more to the point, a very good one.

Everyone I can think of has been mentioned apart from the Pentangle circa 1969 / 1970. So, search them as well.

Good Good Good! Well, it can be (like most anything else). I'm a big fan of Fairport, the ISB (which I'm glad to see getting some mention), and early Pearls Before Swine. Lately obsessed with Arlo Guthrie's cover of the traditional "Stealin'" (1969); playing it over and over. Download it, you'll see what I mean.

Others? I think Christine Lavin has done some classic bits of comedy disguised as folk (see "Shopping Cart of Love: The Play", "Sensitive New Age Guys") balanced with some 'legit' numbers. Well, any seasoned folkie is like that. I saw Patty Larkin play last Autumn, a truly seasoned pro. Finally, check out Anne Hills' song "Follow That Road". Perfection.

Tangerine's "De L'Autre Cote de la Foret" remains one of my favorites over the years. If you see it (on the Spalax label), pick it up. They were a French quartet, early 70s. Sublime harmonies led by Valerie Btesh, crzy flute player. Particularly, listen to the songs "Meditations" (perfect for those melancholy moods) and "Direction Sud" (great chorus hook).

Kate: I thought you said your parents were MODS?
Surely Rule #1 of Mod = NO CAMPING!!

Here goes then: June Tabor, "Abyssinians" (Topic), NME, w/e 11th February 1984:

"It was called 'broadening folk's appeal'. It consisted, largely, of strapping it to a rock rhythm section, and chucking it into pop's rich pond. It left Ian Anderson rich, and folk quite as despised as before. All right, picking off its pimples might have made it prettier, but it also stripped it of its expressive features: because, in a certain narrow range, folk is as harrowing a chronicle of cruelty and loss as the blues.

The heart of its tradition is the accompanied voice, and that's the essence of this record, Tabor's pure voice. Rich, cold, and sad, it's a flood of tightly-reined power. In a song like 'The Scarecrow', itself a masterpiece of understated anger, her restraint can be devastating. Accompaniment is used rarely and sparely, and only to focus and enhance the voice.

For a weaker form, the emotional charge of the subject matter here, sexual and political oppression, would be too much, however obliquely dealt with: it would collapse into useless theatrics. But folk's reclusive nature seem to give it an eccentric power, strength and authority. Like the yokel prophet come to the city."

I can only endorse what you said about her voice, and the last line obviously.

xoxo

My parents were mods from about 1962 to 1968. Then they gave up and became flower children, like the rest of Britain. By the 80s (which is when my dad's worrying folk obsession began) my dad had hair down to his arse, which is another sure mod no-no.

she is lovely

I could listen to her all day long

in the meadows of Herefordshire

or by the springs of Buxton

twirl her trad. arr. songs

I think the English perception of all this is somewhat different? I have no use for those old folk ballads myself, altho I understand liking them as a corrective to supposed "pop" impurities. I want to hear someone who's professional, myself. I never bought into the American folk-revival thing, either; I have never listened to a Bob Dylan record made before 1965 in my life, and have no plans to do so. I do like the same things most pop fans like--Fairport Convention, etc. To me, the mods had the absolute right idea and at this point I don't see changing.

But I do have an affection for things like "Have Moicy!" I have no idea what that is, but I like it. I'm not from the Appalachians, nice spot to hike and camp, and I'm highly suspicious of attempts to romanticize other people's bad experiences. And I think "folk" is just another marketing term...that's just me.

carter family
doc watson
dock boggs
mississippi john hurt
blind willie mctell
buell kazee
bill monroe
blue sky boys
blind willie johnson
rev. gary davis
clarence ashley
uncle dave macon
woody guthrie
leadbelly
skip james
son house
robert johnson
golden gate jubilee quartet
silver leaf quartet
mahalia jackson
sister rosetta tharpe

all this stuff is best discovered through box set type affairs (anthology of american folk music, goodbye, babylon, or field recording type things by the lomaxes (the southern journey series).

in a broader description of the genre you could check out some leonard cohen or nick drake. some of will oldhams output could be called folk. im listening to a devendra barnhart album right now that im sort of digging.

i guess 60s folk revival stuff is less well thought of, but i picked up Deep Lancashire: songs, ballads and verse from the industrial north west of england, and its pretty great i think! lots of Oldham Tinkers on there, in fact the whole compilation seems to be oldham/rochdale based as far as i can tell.

interested in this Bill Price record

http://81.109.69.82/BillPrice/foyg.html

anyone heard it?

no, me either

Folk is a genre that looks back beyond Elvis to the troubadours

o momus you were a treat

Surprised no mention of Exuma. What people used to call folk is so many different kinds of music. No Pete Seeger, either? Maybe it's peculiar to my background, but he's one of the great performers in my book. My folk-singing dad loved A Mighty Wind by the way...