Could a folk song a day keep the BNP away?
By Tom Moyser
Life is no High School Musical. We are not half as good looking, we cannot dance half so well and we do not, as a general rule, carry basket balls around with us to remind our audience that we belong to sports teams. But one thing we did do a lot in Britain until fairly recently was a lot of singing.
Until the early twentieth century it was very much the norm to burst out into song socially to provide the evening’s entertainment, to keep up spirits whilst working, or, more usually, whilst drinking. And then, for some reason, as if in a game at a child’s party, the music stopped and we all sat down.
The change is a logical one. Throughout the last century manual jobs disappeared to the east and shiny new toys came from the west – like rock ‘n’ roll, with its semblance of anarchy and much later, a new vernacular music, hip-hop. Our society became more diverse, multi-ethnic and metrasexual. And social song got left behind, buried next to Wilfred Owen in a book of war poems, consigned to history. The folk revival of the fifties and sixties is iconic now, but looks more like a five o’clock shadow of a once great institution than it does a rebuild.
So it surprised me greatly this summer when myself and a dozen other people (many were complete strangers) burst into song. We were at Sidmouth Folk Week, a small but well loved music festival in Devon. We had eighteenth century workers’ songs. Songs about whiskey. Something by Bob Marley. We were there for hours. It was raining. But more people joined us – maybe thirty came and went. A few looked old enough to remember the last revival. And they still remembered the songs.
Could social singing come back into fashion? We do live in a post-ironic age where it’s cool to look uncool, where people are less conscious of difference and of separation. The live music scene is on the up, and flash mobs are routine.
We desperately need, especially in England, a positive British identity. We have been lacking it for decades. The left had too much post-colonial guilt for flag waving. The right didn’t believe in society at all. In the meantime, nationalist movements gained strength from a white working class suffering a mid-life identity crisis. Nationalism never went away, it just went bad. And the best way of turning that around is to make Britishness something that is inclusive, not exclusive, something that is social and embracing and owned by the people. Something, perhaps, like social singing.
Jon Boden, lead singer of folk super-group Bellowhead, is spending one year posting a folk song on his blog afolksongaday.com every day. He wants it to kick-start another revival of social singing by teaching us all the old songs we’ve forgotten. Will it work? Maybe. Will it last? Probably not. But I think I might learn some songs. Fancy a sing-a-long?
Toque
15/11/2010 at 13:24
I agree with the sentiment but not the conclusion. It’s Britishness, and the way that it ocludes English identity, that is the problem; what we desperately need, especially in England, is a positive English identity
Joan
15/11/2010 at 15:18
http://www.folkagainstfascism.com/about.html
Wyrdtimes
15/11/2010 at 21:35
“We desperately need, especially in England, a positive British identity.”
Er no what we need more of in England is a positive English identity. You know like the Scots have a positive Scottish identity and the Welsh a positive Welsh identity?
Actually lots of people in England already do have a positive English identity but the British government and establishment does it’s best to keep it down.
Myself I only have positive English identity – “British identity” only features as something to be thrown off like chains.
tally
16/11/2010 at 10:29
A good read spoiled by “We desperately need, especially in England, a positive British identity”.#fail
Chris
16/11/2010 at 22:37
I totally disagree with your whole article. You have tried, and
judging from the few comments there are here, failed to put across some very bad left wing persuasion talk about making the English think constantly about feeling British.
This is your first mistake, then there is the more inclusive stuff? how much more forced inclusive do you want it to become. We are the most multicultural country in the world so they are saying. There will be no English left to listen and burst into “Folk Song” the way things are going. You are so self-loathing you can’t even foresee you own end.
The people of England should march to London and kick the lot of them out, straight into prison for treason, then setup an English parliament, and make sure people like you are checked out by doctors, just to see if it’s safe for you to be let out for fear of realising what you have become. Try as you people do the English hearts will one day soon roar so loud the world will follow.
An English Heart
CW
18/11/2010 at 21:14
What is it that makes English identity and British identity mutually exclusive?
I consider myself to be both English and British in equal measure and see no contradiction between the two, nor between any identities arising from that.
The Tom makes is valid, whether you want that positive identity we so need to be British, English or both.
Andrew
19/11/2010 at 02:14
Is this a joke? The title is basically a Tom Lehrer pun:- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yygMhtNQJ9M
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