British and Irish folk

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scottT
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British and Irish folk

Post by scottT » Wed Nov 22, 2017 10:38 am

We had a folk thread, and for some reason (my connection?) I have limited search capabilities. Watching Poldark and Demelza sing traditional (Cornish?) folk music gave me the bug to seek out more of this haunting music. David has linked to some great new artists in the genre. One particularly, a woman who accompanies herself very sparsely on stringed instruments like acoustic guitar and banjo whom I cannot remember.

I would especially like acoustic stringed instrument accompaniment, similar to a haunting, plaintive, Appalachian quality.

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Re: British and Irish folk

Post by shadowplay » Wed Nov 22, 2017 12:04 pm

I imagine my lady folkie is either Lisa Knapp (her album Hidden Seam is a masterpiece but not straight folk) or Sharron Kraus.

If you want to hear arguably the best folk singer of all time check out Anne Briggs. This is a pretty good short radio show on her..

The Time Has Come is an incredible album but if you are looking for more traditional stuff like Child Ballads her earlier mostly accapella material is going to be it.

Anne Briggs - full album on yoootoob this record might be instructive to you, firstly the influence on a certain band of hairy rockers and also because her arrangements are canon in many ways and also because it's fun to hunt down other versions of the songs. Here's Pentangle doing a great live version of Willie O'Winsbury, one of my favourite songs to sing and play. Some other bands beat her to recording some of these songs but it's impossible to overstate how important Anne Briggs is in the development of folk in Britain and in the written songs finding the tunes we all know.

Another female folk titan is Shirley Collins, she's made a recent comeback with a superb album Lodestar (made with help from Cyclobe). When I first heard Shirley some tim ein the early 80's it struck right at my core. You see I LOVE Nico and I feel the same ancientness lying deep within. IMO no one has sung old carols as well as Shirley. probably my favourite is The Moon Shines Bright. Frankly Rudolf The Red Nosed Reindeer can get fucked.

Shirley Collins - The Sweet Primroses full album

Shirley & Dolly Collins ‎– Love, Death & The Lady full album

Shirley Collins - The Power of True Love Knot full album

Another amazing female folk voice is Lal Waterson who has a voice to turn your bone marrow to ice...she makes Nico look like Lulu.

The Watersons were the real deal and as an aside when I see old photos of them it's amazing how much cooler they looked than all the supposed cool rock peacocks int heir flares and blouses. You can watch the famous film Travelling For a Living for free on the BFI site.

She's best known for the song Fine Horseman off the brilliant Bright Phoebus album (Anne Briggs covers it) . I'd also draw yiour attention probably for the 20th time to this amazing live cover; Promise & The Monster - Fine Horseman (Lal Waterson Cover). The girl sitting down is Lisa Isaksson, who is a really key Swedish musician. Not really in the sope of this but hek her out. She played on the amazing Entheogens record but she's on loads of records.

One of my favourite Lal songs is Lal Waterson & Oliver Knight - So Strange Is Man, it's a bit later but what a song...so withered and parched.

I hear so much folk in my beloved Coil.

I could literally go on forever, I've hundreds and hundreds of folk records, well known and almost unknown but this is where I reckon you should start.

You'll be wanting this book.

Oh and btw I've noted some rockers on here saying folk is sappy campfire shit but anyone looking at a lot of traditional folk lik the Child Ballads and Rouds will see a style of storytelling that butts the fantastical, the grotesque and grim reality up against each other in a way no rock concept album could challenge. It's all creatures drinking your children's blood, infanticide, women being turned into swans, women murdered because they are mistaken for swans, sister killing each other, rapists who may or may not be able to shape shift into a fox getting their comeuppance or a poor man wooing a kings daughter, dodging the hangman's noose because the father finds him attractive too ('if he was a lady like I am a man') but rejecting his wealth and crown just wanting the woman and; 'He’s mounted her on a milk-white steed, himself on a dapple-grey, And made her a lady of as much land She could ride in a whole summer day.'

D

PS anyone looking for total guitar wizardry checketh; John Renbourn (of Pentangle)- The Lady And The Unicorn (btw years ago I wondered on here about where the all Christmas Owls came from but these days...WHAT'S WITH ALL THE UNICORNS EVERYWHERE?
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Re: British and Irish folk

Post by scottT » Wed Nov 22, 2017 6:04 pm

Yes--it was Sharron Kraus. Two birds with one stone because I remember reading about a singer who went back to her roots in mid-Wales and was trying to find her, and it turns out to be Sharron Kraus as well. These other names do sound familiar also.

I have Anne Briggs on as I write. The podcast was very interesting. You can hear the influence of nature in this music which she references. I've just returned from a long stint in California, and it's good to back on Oregon coast. The mists are surrounding me and shrouding the river and hillsides and I'm looking for something elemental and melancholy to match. These things you have suggested fits the bill. Brigg's voice is as pure and clear as a mountain stream. It is surprising that she never recorded with Jansch since the two were so close. (That hairy band wouldn't be Led Zeppelin? Black Mountain Side.)

I'm sampling some Shirley Collins and have listened to Lal Waterson. I have to say Lal Waterson is knocking me out with that amazing voice. Really mesmerizing. Unfortunately your link to the Waterson documentary won't work over here, but I'll bet I can find it elsewhere. because now I'm interested.

I have the book on the way. I feel like I need new (old) worlds to explore, and look forward to the adventure. Nice you have you as "Sherpa".

I agree with your assessment of the subject matter. Love, loss, mortality, and magic---folklore! Whenever I hear it, I feel like I'm plugging into something very ancient. The '60s Folk revival over there seemed to follow along older, traditional lines than how it developed here.

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Re: British and Irish folk

Post by budda12ax7 » Wed Nov 22, 2017 7:57 pm

If you have the Tunein radio app.....do a search for Irish Folk music and you can find several on-line radio stations devoted to this music. One thing I REALLY like is a station called "back porch blue grass"....this run from some dudes house. He just has his neighbors over for some Appalachian style moonshine jams. Great Stuff.

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Re: British and Irish folk

Post by scottT » Wed Nov 22, 2017 8:41 pm

Thanks! I will check that out. And I've been into bluegrass since forever. In fact I first learned guitar to accompany a banjo playing friend.

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Re: British and Irish folk

Post by shadowplay » Thu Nov 23, 2017 4:49 am

scottT wrote:
Wed Nov 22, 2017 6:04 pm
. (That hairy band wouldn't be Led Zeppelin? Black Mountain Side.)

Aye it would.

Going back to Sharron Kraus I can't overstate how much I love her music. She's the real deal.

Anne Briggs is just an exceptional singer, she makes it sound easy when it's far from that. My opinion is that florid and crotch thrusting singers in the modern idiom probably seem more like 'singers' to most folk but it's only when you try and sing straight and simple that you realise how hard it is to be Anne Briggs, there's nowhere to hide, it's just your vocal timbre laid bare.
scottT wrote:
Wed Nov 22, 2017 6:04 pm


I agree with your assessment of the subject matter. Love, loss, mortality, and magic---folklore! Whenever I hear it, I feel like I'm plugging into something very ancient. The '60s Folk revival over there seemed to follow along older, traditional lines than how it developed here.
In the US I think it was linked to beatnik and later hippy and unfortunately there was a lot of ernest strumming and even though some US stuff is actually quite overt politically it's very different from the UK where it was in all intents and purposes a bit of a communist ( ;) ) thing. A lot of musicians were trying to look back to find the real spoken folk history of working Britain, somethign they felt had been written over. Admittedly some of this falls down becuase the folk collecting the songs in the past hundred years were well meaning academics but this is really fine because they did save many of them, most people wouldn't have the time to go out collecting songs and they really did place a value on it at a time when the gentry were more concerned with controlling the working classes for their own ends.

When I say Communist I really mean it, the likes of Ewan McColl even took a rather dim view of guitars, regarding them as sort of barrier to entry and they often focussed more on acapella. The Watersons are IMO the masters of this early on. I LONG to go a wassialing. This to me is real deal Christmas music, nothing else comes close.

One interesting thing is how many of the stories are present in other folk song traditions, perhaps the stories are universal or more excitingly they were sung by travellers and then changed for the locality. A lot of songs like The Cruel Sister/Twa Sisters/Binnorie/The Bonny Swans have differnet themes and meanings across several different versions.

Btw Folk Song in England by Steve Roud is a new and rather great book.

You mentioned music in Poldark which I've not seen in it's modern form but you might enjoy the magnificent folk singing by Isla Cameron in the original Far from The Madding Crowd. She also sings Bushes and Briars. You might see Sandy Denny has song called Bushes and Briars but it's an original song.

Carey Mulligan gives it ago in the recent version. I appreciate them giving it a go and Carey trying to sign it herself, even if it's really sugary.

Isla also sang the INCREDIBLE WIllow Waly in the Innocents. This is a longer version you can actually buy.

Sometimes quite unlikely people have credible folk records. I've an obscure private press record by Barbara Dickson (sadly best known for this) that has a KILLER version ofDown in Yon Forest. A lot of serious folkies also used to turn up on childrens television. I ADORE this song from Bagpuss, which is by Jason Faulkner and Sandra Kerr. The film is really beautiful to go with it.

Btw if you have never heard Martin Carthy singing Scarbourgh Fair, I hardly need to point out who ripped off the arrangement.

D
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Re: British and Irish folk

Post by scottT » Thu Nov 23, 2017 10:28 pm

Here are a couple of songs from Poldark performed by Eleanor Tomlinson as Demelza. She has a fragile and vulnerable voice. I've heard rumors of her doing a full album. The songs in the series are a combination of lyrics by the author of the books set to music, actual folk songs, and songs written "in the style of".

I d' Pluck A Fair Rose (Demelza's Song)

Medhel an Gwyns

Coincidentally as I was posting yesterday, I had been watching another series called Alias Grace which features the song "Let No Man Steel Your Thyme by someone doing an Anne Briggs impression. Like the movies you cited, I think that once one's ear is tuned to this music it seems to turn up frequently.

The Innocents is a truly terrifying movie. I didn't recall that song Willow Waly in it, but now that I hear it again in that context it will always have a spooky connotation. I like the lyrics in Down in Yon Forest and Dickson has a huskier voice than is usual for this music which is nice to hear.

Reading that Guardian review of the book, I see that you had your own version of our Alan Lomax...a musicologist who traveled the hills and dales and hollers with his field recording equipment to record and preserve old songs before the tradition disappeared. It's wonderful that there were people who did that. I believe these are stored in the Library of Congress, and are also released as collections.

I'm not especially into the political nature of some folk music here. Basically the tradition started with Woody Guthrie and the line runs through Pete Seeger, to Dylan with lots of stops in between. It's funny now thinking back to middle school where we actually had folk music time and we would sing some of those songs. I don't think they do that any more here. I think one of the better things to come out of the folk music scene of the 50s and 60s was the rediscovery of many Old Time and Blues singers who got recognized and finally found a degree of fame and income from their music.

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