The Fiddle and the Drum

Songwriter John Richards attempts to untangle the threads of traditional music ... but will we ever know the answer to that burning question 'What is Folk?'

Archive Post

First published in the original Folk21 blog, January 2015

I’d like to raise some points that lead to questions about pigeon holing and definitions within folk and roots music. 

This is not a ‘What is folk?’ discussion so please let’s not get bogged down by that but I do think this demonstrates just how very difficult the question is and how blurred some of the lines actually are.

I wonder how people perceive traditional music and how many traditions they encompass in their consideration.

I also wonder if people consider traditional music to be music from history, and from a particular period in the past.

Let’s consider some of the history.

Back in 1650 some 40,000 Irish were sent as slaves by Cromwell to work the plantations in the Caribbean alongside black slaves from Africa.

The Irish took the fiddle to the plantations and the Africans had brought with them the predecessor of the banjo. The Irish and Black slaves shared music, dancing and singing which were later to have a substantial effect on music in America and the UK and Ireland.

I believe that some early English music was sung unaccompanied, as with work songs including shanties, while other early music was played or accompanied by Pipe, Tabor, Bagpipes, Shawm, Hurdey Gurdey or Crumhorn. Then in 1829 the English concertina was added to the options for accompaniment.

European settlers in big numbers had been heading for America since the 17^th Century and had taken amongst other instruments early guitars from Europe, fiddles from Scotland and Ireland, the cittern from England and many tunes and songs and stories.

P.J. Curtis*, the award winning record producer and radio presenter, says in his book Notes from the Heart - A celebration of Irish Traditional Music: 

The tradition of white singers and dancers blacking up goes back to around 1750 when an itinerant troupe of actors and musicians called the Ethiopian Delineators were shipped to Kentucky from the Caribbean to entertain the elite and well to do of that state. The group were neither Ethiopian nor African nor indeed European. They were in fact Irish migrants, just off the boat and desperate to make a living. They did so by blacking their faces, strumming banjos, an instrument hitherto unknown in the New World, and dancing a step dance that was a hybrid of an African foot stomp and an Irish jig. And so the black faced minstrel was born and from 1750 on, the Irish were to dominate the tradition right up to the early part of the century.

"The Irish simply blacked up" writes the black scholar and playwright Leni Sloan, "disguised themselves as Afro Americans and became one of the first generations of American minstrels."

This led eventually to such minstrel shows touring America, the UK and Ireland and even a long running TV programme in England, the Black and White Minstrel Show. You’ll remember from above that Irish and Black slaves had worked together and shared music and dance together on the plantations.

The first banjo and fiddle duet was allegedly played by slaves in 1774 but somehow the banjo also found its way to the mountains and old time music developed during the 19^th century with fiddle and banjo prevalent.

In 1830 C.F. Martin arrived in New York from Germany to start making American guitars which had developed from earlier gut strung guitars in Europe but were now using steel strings and heavier bracing to get a much fatter sound.

The 19^th century saw enormous developments in use of the guitar and also American roots music with the black folk and spiritual singers and the development of the blues, while the guitar also arrived in old time music towards the end of the 19^th century.

Throughout this time folk songs from the UK and Ireland had been sung by the settlers in America and had travelled to various areas and often changed slightly as they were passed on orally and arrived in new areas.

The second half of the 19^th century saw the Child Ballads (collected by Francis J. Child) published and the collection of songs from the UK with American variants emerged.

The first British folk revival from 1890 to 1920 had strong political influence with the British striving to create a more nationalistic music and to dilute some of the previous popularity of German composers, and the government encouraging the provision of folk music in education. The first revival was criticised though for being weighted in favour of rural songs, missing out urban work songs and shanties and also avoiding and bowdlerising the erotic songs of the time.

In the 1920s, Cecil Sharp was collecting songs in the Appalachian Mountains and the earlier invention of sound recording equipment meant that other collectors had created field recordings to provide more accurate versions (than notation provided) of performances. There were a number of other very influential collectors active in the UK and the USA during the 19^th and 20^th centuries. The 1920s also saw the development of the phonograph and the start of record production of countless blues, old time, country and folk artists.

The 1930s and 1940s saw the emergence of the hugely influential Woody Guthrie, travelling round a very depressed America in the 1930s and then later becoming part of the emerging New York scene with his friends, including Pete Seeger, while later becoming a hero and figurehead for the newly developing American folk revival.

All collections were drawn upon extensively by singers and musicians during the UK Folk Revival of the 1950s and subsequently with Ewan MacColl, as an example, recording a large number of the Child Ballads and A.L. Lloyd adding other dimensions to the genre.

The greatest initial influences in the UK on guitar came from Burl Ives, Josh White and Big Bill Broonzy in the 1940s and early 1950s and then we moved into the Skiffle craze as the 1950s progressed.

The second UK folk revival which started in 1945 was very different from the first; it followed a similar revival in America, was often overtly left wing and included the work songs, shanties and erotic songs that the previous revival had shied away from. The American Revival had seen folk music enjoying mainstream success with Pete Seeger and The Weavers and others until the 1950s left wing persecutions pushed it back into minority interest again. There was resurgence in the later 1950s with The Kingston Trio enjoying success, a number of similar bands emerging and then the Greenwich Village scene and the emergence of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and their contemporaries. This American revival was truly eclectic with a number of different threads of roots music involved in the generic folk scene.

In the UK in 1959 Davey Graham changed the face of the guitar in folk music forever. He was a brilliant finger style guitarist who invented the DADGAD open tuning but his roots were not just in folk, he was a master of the blues, ragtime, jazz and classical guitars and he went on to influence a long line of superb English guitarists with Bert Jansch, John Renbourne and Martin Carthy (to name just three) all very highly influential.

                                                                             Davey Graham and Bert Jansch

Of course, in America, Bob Dylan was finding his way to Greenwich Village by now before becoming an enormous influence on so many people with his writing and performance.

Some years later in Ireland in the late 1960s a friend of Johnny Moynihan who was in Sweeney’s Men with Andy Irvine, brought back a bouzouki from Eastern Europe suggesting that Johnny might like to use it in the band. This gave rise to the Irish Bouzouki, the flat back, which proved to be a wonderful instrument for accompanying tunes and has been seen in countless bands subsequently.

So in conclusion, from the 17^th century on, traditional music, songs and instruments from the British Isles and Europe travelled to America, and subsequent developments continued to travel to and fro influencing people on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond; In 1650 Cromwell sent Irish slaves to work alongside black slaves, who had brought the early versions of the banjo to the Caribbean plantations, The Irish and black salves shared their music and a blacked up band of Irish musicians arrived in America with the banjo for the first time in 1750. 

Slaves and Mountain men started to utilise fiddles and banjos in duets, then in 1830 C.F. Martin arrived from Germany to make steel string guitars and the guitar emerged in blues, old time, folk and country music; In the second half of the 19^th century came the collection of the Child Ballads; then came the build-up to the First World War and the British government’s efforts to collect and promote English Music as opposed to Germanic composers, so Cecil Sharp and other collectors drove the first British folk revival; then came Woody Guthrie (who listened as a child to his mother singing ballads learned from her family (learned before the clearances and their journey to America), Pete Seeger and friends and the labour movement in America; then Pete Seeger and The Weavers popularised folk music in America as the folk revival began but the generic popularity of the music was badly damaged by the Communist witch hunts; then in the 1940s Skiffle developed, the second  British folk revival started with Ewan MacColl and A.L. Lloyd, and then came the later developments of Davey Graham’s ground breaking guitar playing in the late 1950s, then the writing and enormous influence of Bob Dylan and then Johnny Moynihan’s Irish Bouzouki in the late 1960s; and we haven’t even mentioned folk rock and the enormous Fairport influence from the 1960s onwards, nor the singer songwriters and the artists that mixed music and comedy that regularly filled folk clubs in the 70s 80s and 90s.

I hope by now that any of you not entirely familiar with the history of the genre can see the complicated developments in traditional folk and roots music over the centuries. Global instrument influences, exchanges of music, songs and instruments, between America and the UK and Ireland and as recently as the 1950s and 1960s the addition of two new styles of accompaniment, the Davey Graham guitar influence and the Johnny Moynihan bouzouki influence. Is it any wonder that the ‘What is Folk?’ question can’t be answered by a short definition.

So shouldn’t we all be  open minded when it comes to considering traditional and contemporary folk and roots music and also British and American music and the way each has influenced the others and realise that the tradition has seen a lot of inputs, a lot of exchanges and a lot of developments that have made it what it is today which is not historic music from a defined period in time but a style of music ‘Of the people, by the people, for the people’ that has continued, and will continue, to develop.

As a songwriter I have always had great interest in this and I believe that like the instruments that were added along the way some contemporary songs already have, and new ones can potentially, become accepted in time as a part of the tradition. That has happened with songs from Woody Guthrie, Ewan McColl, Pete Seeger, and a long list of other songwriters and to write songs that are contemporary and relevant to the lives of ordinary working people now but which could also form a very small part of a magnificent cannon of song that might be sung in 100 years’ time and more is something that I will always continue to strive for, it remains my driving aim.

And when it comes to the eternal and infernal ‘What is folk?’ question the answer, in my opinion, (apart from “It’s complicated” 😊) is, that it will be defined by the people who are involved in the folk movement. If organisers like the music of a particular act and feel that it fits with their philosophy they may well book the act and if audiences enjoy the act they will turn up to watch them.

If it doesn’t fit and isn’t accepted and audiences don’t turn up to watch then the act won’t be playing folk venues for very long.

* PJ Curtis is/ was an award winning record producer and radio presenter, 33 albums by 1994 including Mary Black, Maura O’Connell, Stockton’s Wing and Dolores Kean, also work on the Altan albums.