Music of England
Encyclopedia
Classical music
Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...
and later commercial music, for which evidence exists from the later medieval period. It has been preserved and transmitted orally, through print and later through recordings. The term is used to refer to English traditional music
Traditional music
Traditional music is the term increasingly used for folk music that is not contemporary folk music. More on this is at the terminology section of the World music article...
and music composed, or delivered, in a traditional style. English folk music has produced or contributed to several important musical genres, including sea shanties
Sea Shanties
Sea Shanties is the debut album of Progressive Rock band High Tide. The cover artwork was drawn by Paul Whitehead.-Production:Denny Gerrard produced Sea Shanties in return for High Tide acting as the backing band on his solo album Sinister Morning...
, jigs, hornpipe
Hornpipe
The term hornpipe refers to any of several dance forms played and danced in Britain and elsewhere from the late 17th century until the present day. It is said that hornpipe as a dance began around the 16th century on English sailing vessels...
s and dance music
Dance music
Dance music is music composed specifically to facilitate or accompany dancing. It can be either a whole musical piece or part of a larger musical arrangement...
, such as that used for Morris dancing. It can be seen as having distinct regional and local variations in content and style, particularly in areas more removed from the cultural and political centres of the English state, as in Northumbria
Northumbria
Northumbria was a medieval kingdom of the Angles, in what is now Northern England and South-East Scotland, becoming subsequently an earldom in a united Anglo-Saxon kingdom of England. The name reflects the approximate southern limit to the kingdom's territory, the Humber Estuary.Northumbria was...
, or the West Country
West Country
The West Country is an informal term for the area of south western England roughly corresponding to the modern South West England government region. It is often defined to encompass the historic counties of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset and Somerset and the City of Bristol, while the counties of...
. Cultural interchange and processes of migration mean that English folk music, although in many ways distinctive, has particularly interacted with the music of Scotland
Music of Scotland
Scotland is internationally known for its traditional music, which has remained vibrant throughout the 20th century, when many traditional forms worldwide lost popularity to pop music...
, Ireland
Folk music of Ireland
The folk music of Ireland is the generic term for music that has been created in various genres in Ireland.-History:...
and Wales
Music of Wales
Wales has a strong and distinctive link with music. The country is traditionally referred to as "the land of song". This is a modern stereotype based on 19th century conceptions of Nonconformist choral music and 20th century male voice choirs, Eisteddfodau and arena singing, such as sporting...
. It has also interacted with other musical traditions, particularly classical and rock music
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
, influencing musical styles and producing musical fusions
Fusion (music)
A fusion genre is music that combines two or more styles. For example, rock and roll originally developed as a fusion of blues, gospel and country music. The main characteristics of fusion genres are variations in tempo, rhythm, i a sometimes the use of long musical "journeys" that can be divided...
, such as electric folk
Electric folk
Electric folk is the name given to the form of folk rock pioneered in England from the late 1960s, and most significant in the 1970s, which then was taken up and developed in the surrounding Celtic cultures of Brittany, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and the Isle of Man, to produce Celtic rock and its...
, folk punk
Folk punk
Folk punk , is a fusion of folk music and punk rock. It was pioneered in the late 1970s and early 1980s by The Pogues in Britain and Violent Femmes in America. Folk punk achieved some mainstream success in that decade...
and folk metal
Folk metal
Folk metal is a sub-genre of heavy metal music that developed in Europe during the 1990s. As the name suggests, the genre is a fusion of heavy metal with traditional folk music...
. There remains a flourishing sub-culture of English folk music, which continues to influence other genres and occasionally to gain mainstream attention.
Origins
Morris dance
Morris dance is a form of English folk dance usually accompanied by music. It is based on rhythmic stepping and the execution of choreographed figures by a group of dancers. Implements such as sticks, swords, handkerchiefs and bells may also be wielded by the dancers...
, may have their origins in this period, but it is impossible to be certain of these relationships. We know from a reference in William Langland
William Langland
William Langland is the conjectured author of the 14th-century English dream-vision Piers Plowman.- Life :The attribution of Piers to Langland rests principally on the evidence of a manuscript held at Trinity College, Dublin...
's Piers Plowman
Piers Plowman
Piers Plowman or Visio Willelmi de Petro Plowman is the title of a Middle English allegorical narrative poem by William Langland. It is written in unrhymed alliterative verse divided into sections called "passus"...
, that ballads about Robin Hood
Robin Hood
Robin Hood was a heroic outlaw in English folklore. A highly skilled archer and swordsman, he is known for "robbing from the rich and giving to the poor", assisted by a group of fellow outlaws known as his "Merry Men". Traditionally, Robin Hood and his men are depicted wearing Lincoln green clothes....
were being sung from at least the late 14th century and the oldest detailed material we have is Wynkyn de Worde
Wynkyn de Worde
Wynkyn de Worde was a printer and publisher in London known for his work with William Caxton, and is recognized as the first to popularize the products of the printing press in England....
's collection of Robin Hood ballads printed about 1495.
The 16th century to the 18th century
While there was distinct court music, members of the social elite into the 16th century also seem to have enjoyed, and even to have contributed to the music of the people, as Henry VIIIHenry VIII of England
Henry VIII was King of England from 21 April 1509 until his death. He was Lord, and later King, of Ireland, as well as continuing the nominal claim by the English monarchs to the Kingdom of France...
perhaps did with the tavern song 'Pastime with Good Company
Pastime with Good Company
"Pastime with Good Company", also known as "The King's Ballad" , is an English folk song written by King Henry VIII in the first years of the 16th century, shortly after being crowned. It is regarded as the most famous of his compositions, and it became a popular song in England and other European...
'. Peter Burke
Peter Burke
Peter Burke is a British historian and professor.He was born to a Roman Catholic father and Jewish mother . He was educated by the Jesuits and at St John's College, Oxford, and was a doctoral candidate at St Antony's College...
argued that late medieval social elites had their own culture, but were culturally ‘amphibious', able to participate in and affect popular traditions.
In the 16th century the changes in the wealth and culture of the upper social orders caused tastes in music to diverge. There was an internationalisation of courtly music in terms of both instruments, such as the lute
Lute
Lute can refer generally to any plucked string instrument with a neck and a deep round back, or more specifically to an instrument from the family of European lutes....
, dulcimer
Hammered dulcimer
The hammered dulcimer is a stringed musical instrument with the strings stretched over a trapezoidal sounding board. Typically, the hammered dulcimer is set on a stand, at an angle, before the musician, who holds small mallet hammers in each hand to strike the strings...
and early forms of the harpsichord
Harpsichord
A harpsichord is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It produces sound by plucking a string when a key is pressed.In the narrow sense, "harpsichord" designates only the large wing-shaped instruments in which the strings are perpendicular to the keyboard...
, and in form with the development of madrigal
Madrigal (music)
A madrigal is a secular vocal music composition, usually a partsong, of the Renaissance and early Baroque eras. Traditionally, polyphonic madrigals are unaccompanied; the number of voices varies from two to eight, and most frequently from three to six....
s, pavane
Pavane
The pavane, pavan, paven, pavin, pavian, pavine, or pavyn is a slow processional dance common in Europe during the 16th century .A pavane is a slow piece of music which is danced to in pairs....
s and galliard
Galliard
The galliard was a form of Renaissance dance and music popular all over Europe in the 16th century. It is mentioned in dance manuals from England, France, Spain, Germany and Italy, among others....
s. For other social orders, instruments like the pipe, tabor
Tabor (instrument)
Tabor, or tabret, refers to a portable snare drum played with one hand. The word "tabor" is simply an English variant of a Latin-derived word meaning "drum" - cf. tambour , tamburo...
, bagpipe, shawm
Shawm
The shawm was a medieval and Renaissance musical instrument of the woodwind family made in Europe from the 12th century until the 17th century. It was developed from the oriental zurna and is the predecessor of the modern oboe. The body of the shawm was usually turned from a single piece of wood,...
, hurdy gurdy
Hurdy gurdy
The hurdy gurdy or hurdy-gurdy is a stringed musical instrument that produces sound by a crank-turned rosined wheel rubbing against the strings. The wheel functions much like a violin bow, and single notes played on the instrument sound similar to a violin...
, and crumhorn
Crumhorn
The crumhorn is a musical instrument of the woodwind family, most commonly used during the Renaissance period. In modern times, there has been a revival of interest in Early Music, and crumhorns are being played again....
accompanied traditional music and community dance. The fiddle, well established in England by the 1660s, was unusual in being a key element in both the art music that developed in the baroque
Baroque music
Baroque music describes a style of Western Classical music approximately extending from 1600 to 1760. This era follows the Renaissance and was followed in turn by the Classical era...
, and in popular song and dance.
By the mid-17th century, the music of the lower social orders was sufficiently alien to the aristocracy and "middling sort" for a process of rediscovery to be needed in order to understand it, along with other aspects of popular culture such as festivals, folklore and dance. This led to a number of early collections of printed material, including those published by John Playford
John Playford
John Playford was a London bookseller, publisher, minor composer, and member of the Stationers' Company, who published books on music theory, instruction books for several instruments, and psalters with tunes for singing in churches...
as The English Dancing Master (1651), and the private collections of Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys FRS, MP, JP, was an English naval administrator and Member of Parliament who is now most famous for the diary he kept for a decade while still a relatively young man...
(1633–1703) and the Roxburghe Ballads
Roxburghe Ballads
In 1847 John Payne Collier printed "A Book of Roxburghe Ballads". It consisted of 1,341 broadside ballads from the seventeenth century, mostly English, originally collected by Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Mortimer , later collected by John Ker, 3rd Duke of Roxburghe.Unfortunately Collier...
collected by Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Mortimer (1661–1724).
In the 18th century there were increasing numbers of collections of what was now beginning to be defined as "folk" music, strongly influenced by the Romantic movement, including Thomas D'Urfey
Thomas d'Urfey
Thomas D'Urfey was an English writer and wit. He composed plays, songs, and poetry, in addition to writing jokes. He was an important innovator and contributor in the evolution of the Ballad opera....
's Wit and Mirth: or, Pills to Purge Melancholy (1719–20) and Bishop Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765). The last of these also contained some oral material and by the end of the 18th century this was becoming increasingly common, with collections including John Ritson's, The Bishopric Garland (1784), which paralleled the work of figures like Robert Burns
Robert Burns
Robert Burns was a Scottish poet and a lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland, and is celebrated worldwide...
and Walter Scott
Walter Scott
Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet was a Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet, popular throughout much of the world during his time....
in Scotland.
The early 19th century
With the Industrial RevolutionIndustrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...
the themes of the music of the labouring classes began to change from rural and agrarian life to include industrial work songs. Awareness that older kinds of song were being abandoned prompted renewed interest in collecting folk songs during the 1830s and 1840s, including the work of William B. Sandys
William B. Sandys
William B. Sandys , was an English solicitor, member of the Percy Society, fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, and remembered for his publication Christmas Carols Ancient and Modern , a collection of seasonal carols that Sandys had gathered and also apparently improvised...
' Christmas Carols Ancient and Modern (1833), William Chappell, A Collection of National English Airs (1838) and Robert Bell
Robert Bell (writer)
Robert Bell was an Irish man of letters.Bell was born at Cork, and educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where he was one of the founders of the Dublin Historical Society...
's Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of the Peasantry of England (1846).
Technological change made new instruments available and led to the development of silver and brass bands, particularly in industrial centres in the north. The shift to urban centres also began to create new types of music, including from the 1850s the Music hall
Music hall
Music Hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment which was popular between 1850 and 1960. The term can refer to:# A particular form of variety entertainment involving a mixture of popular song, comedy and speciality acts...
, which developed from performances in ale houses into theatres and became the dominant locus of English popular music for over a century. This combined with increased literacy and print to allow the creation of new songs that initially built on, but began to differ from traditional music as composers like Lionel Monckton
Lionel Monckton
Lionel John Alexander Monckton was an English writer and composer of musical theatre. He was Britain's most popular musical theatre composer of the early years of the 20th century.-Early life:...
and Sidney Jones
Sidney Jones
James Sidney Jones , usually credited as Sidney Jones, was an English conductor and composer, most famous for producing the musical scores for a series of musical comedy hits in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods....
created music that reflected new social circumstances.
Folk revivals 1890-1969
From the late 19th century there were. a series of movements that attempted to collect, record, preserve and later to perform, English folk music and dance. These are usually separated into two folk revivals.The first, in the later 19th and early 20th centuries, involved figures including collectors Sabine Baring-Gould
Sabine Baring-Gould
The Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould was an English hagiographer, antiquarian, novelist and eclectic scholar. His bibliography consists of more than 1240 publications, though this list continues to grow. His family home, Lew Trenchard Manor near Okehampton, Devon, has been preserved as he had it...
(1834–1924), Frank Kidson
Frank Kidson
Frank Kidson was an English folksong collector and music scholar.He was born in Leeds, where he lived for most of his life. He worked briefly with his brother in an antique business, then turned to landscape painting, for which he travelled widely, which gave him the opportunity to get to know...
(1855–1926), Lucy Broadwood
Lucy Broadwood
Lucy Etheldred Broadwood was principally an English folksong collector and researcher during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As one of the founder members of the Folk-Song Society and Editor of the Folk Song Journal, she was one of the main influences of the English folk revival of that...
(1858–1939), and Anne Gilchrist
Anne Gilchrist (collector)
Anne Gilchrist OBE FSA was a British folk-song collector.Anne Geddes Gilchrist was born in Manchester, to Scottish parents. She had a musical upbringing and was related to Rev Neil Livingston, who compiled a psalter. After meeting Sabine Baring-Gould she became involved with folk music and joined...
(1863–1954), centred around the Folk Song Society, founded in 1911. Francis James Child
Francis James Child
Francis James Child was an American scholar, educator, and folklorist, best known today for his collection of folk songs known as the Child Ballads. Child was Boylston professor of rhetoric and oratory at Harvard University, where he produced influential editions of English poetry...
's (1825–96) eight volume collection The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (1882–92) became the most influential in defining the repertoire of subsequent performers and Cecil Sharp
Cecil Sharp
Cecil James Sharp was the founding father of the folklore revival in England in the early 20th century, and many of England's traditional dances and music owe their continuing existence to his work in recording and publishing them.-Early life:Sharp was born in Camberwell, London, the eldest son of...
(1859–1924), founder of the English Folk Dance Society, was probably the most important figure in understanding of the nature of folk song. The revival was part of a wider national movement in the period around the First World War, and contributed to the creation of a "national" or "pastoral" school of classical music which incorporated traditional songs or motifs, as can be seen in the compositions of Percy Grainger
Percy Grainger
George Percy Aldridge Grainger , known as Percy Grainger, was an Australian-born composer, arranger and pianist. In the course of a long and innovative career he played a prominent role in the revival of interest in British folk music in the early years of the 20th century. He also made many...
(1882–1961), Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams OM was an English composer of symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film scores. He was also a collector of English folk music and song: this activity both influenced his editorial approach to the English Hymnal, beginning in 1904, in which he included many...
(1872–1951), George Butterworth
George Butterworth
George Sainton Kaye Butterworth, MC was an English composer best known for the orchestral idyll The Banks of Green Willow and his song settings of A. E...
(1885–1916), Gustav Holst
Gustav Holst
Gustav Theodore Holst was an English composer. He is most famous for his orchestral suite The Planets....
(1874–1934) and Frederick Delius
Frederick Delius
Frederick Theodore Albert Delius, CH was an English composer. Born in the north of England to a prosperous mercantile family of German extraction, he resisted attempts to recruit him to commerce...
(1862–1934). In 1932 the Folk-Song Society and the English Folk Dance Society merged to become the English Folk Dance and Song Society
English Folk Dance and Song Society
The English Folk Dance and Song Society was formed in 1932 when two organisations merged: the Folk-Song Society and the English Folk Dance Society. The EFDSS, a member-based organisation, was incorporated as a Company limited by guarantee in 1935 and became a Registered Charity The English Folk...
(EFDSS).
The second revival gained momentum after the Second World War, following on from the American folk music revival
American folk music revival
The American folk music revival was a phenomenon in the United States that began during the 1940s and peaked in popularity in the mid-1960s. Its roots went earlier, and performers like Josh White, Burl Ives, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Richard Dyer-Bennett, Oscar Brand, Jean Ritchie, John Jacob...
as new forms of media and American commercial music appeared to pose another threat to traditional music. The key figures were Ewan MacColl
Ewan MacColl
Ewan MacColl was an English folk singer, songwriter, socialist, actor, poet, playwright, and record producer. He was married to theatre director Joan Littlewood, and later to American folksinger Peggy Seeger. He collaborated with Littlewood in the theatre and with Seeger in folk music...
and A. L. Lloyd
A. L. Lloyd
Albert Lancaster Lloyd , usually known as A. L. Lloyd or Bert Lloyd, was an English folk singer and collector of folk songs, and as such was a key figure in the folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s....
. The second revival was generally left wing in politics and emphasised the work music of the 19th century and previously neglected forms like erotic folk songs. Topic Records
Topic Records
Topic Records is a British folk music label, which played a major role in the second British folk revival. It began as an offshoot of the Workers' Music Association in 1939, making it the oldest independent record label in the world.-History:...
, founded in 1939, provided a major source of folk recordings. The revival resulted in the foundation of a network of folk clubs
Folk clubs
A folk club is a regular event, permanent venue, or section of a venue devoted to folk music and traditional music. Folk clubs were primarily an urban phenomenon of 1960s and 1970s Great Britain and Ireland, and vital to the second British folk revival, but continue today there and elsewhere...
in major towns, from the 1950s. Major traditional performers included the Copper Family
Copper Family
The Copper Family are a family of singers of traditional, unaccompanied English folk song. Originally from Rottingdean, near Brighton, Sussex, England, the nucleus of the family now live in the neighbouring village of Peacehaven.-History:...
, The Watersons
The Watersons
The Watersons were an English folk group from Hull, Yorkshire. They performed mainly traditional songs with little or no accompaniment. Their distinctive sound came from their closely woven harmonies.-Career:...
, the Ian Campbell Folk Group
Ian Campbell Folk Group
The Ian Campbell Folk Group were one of the most popular and respected folk groups of the British folk revival of the 1960s. The group made many appearances on radio, television, and at national and international venues and festivals. They performed a mixture of British traditional folk music and...
, and Shirley Collins
Shirley Collins
Shirley Elizabeth Collins MBE is a British folksinger who was a significant contributor to the English Folk Revival of the 1960s and 1970s...
. The fusing of various styles of American music with English folk also helped to create a distinctive form of guitar fingerstyle known as ‘folk baroque
Folk baroque
Folk baroque or baroque guitar is the name given to a distinctive and influential guitar fingerstyle developed in Britain in the 1960s, which combined elements of American folk, blues, jazz and ragtime with British traditional music to produce a new and elaborate form of accompaniment...
’, which was pioneered by Davy Graham, Martin Carthy
Martin Carthy
Martin Carthy MBE is an English folk singer and guitarist who has remained one of the most influential figures in British traditional music, inspiring contemporaries such as Bob Dylan and Paul Simon and later artists such as Richard Thompson since he emerged as a young musician in the early days...
, John Renbourn
John Renbourn
John Renbourn is an English guitarist and songwriter. He is possibly best known for his collaboration with guitarist Bert Jansch as well as his work with the folk group Pentangle, although he maintained a solo career before, during and after that band's existence .While most commonly labelled a...
and Bert Jansch
Bert Jansch
Herbert "Bert" Jansch was a Scottish folk musician and founding member of the band Pentangle. He was born in Glasgow and came to prominence in London in the 1960s, as an acoustic guitarist, as well as a singer-songwriter...
.
Progressive folk
The process of fusion between American musical styles and English folk can also be seen as the origin of British progressive folk music, which attempted to elevate folk music through greater musicianship, or compositional and arrangement skills. Many progressive folk performers continued to retain a traditional element in their music, including Jansch and Renbourn, who with Jacqui McSheeJacqui McShee
thumb|300px|right|Jacqui McShee performing with [[Pentangle]] at the 2007 [[BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards]]Jacqueline 'Jacqui' McShee is an English singer. Since 1966 she has performed with Pentangle, a jazz influenced folk rock band.-Biography:McShee's musical career began as a soloist in British folk...
, Danny Thompson
Danny Thompson
Daniel Henry Edward 'Danny' Thompson is an English multi-instrumentalist best known as a double bassist and businessman...
, and Terry Cox
Terry Cox
Terence William Harvey 'Terry' Cox played drums in the British folk rock bands The Pentangle, Duffy's Nucleus and Humblebums....
, formed Pentangle
Pentangle (band)
Pentangle are a British folk rock band with some folk jazz influences. The original band were active in the late 1960s and early 1970s and a later version has been active since the early 1980s...
in 1967. Others totally abandoned the traditional element and in this area particularly influential were the Scottish artists Donovan
Donovan
Donovan Donovan Donovan (born Donovan Philips Leitch (born 10 May 1946) is a Scottish singer-songwriter and guitarist. Emerging from the British folk scene, he developed an eclectic and distinctive style that blended folk, jazz, pop, psychedelia, and world music...
, who was most influenced by emerging progressive folk musicians in America like Bob Dylan, and the Incredible String Band
Incredible String Band
The Incredible String Band were a psychedelic folk band formed in Scotland in 1966. The band built a considerable following, especially within British counterculture, before splitting up in 1974...
, who from 1967 incorporated a range of influences including medieval and eastern music into their compositions. Some of this, particularly the Incredible String Band, has been seen as developing into the further sub-genre of psych or psychedelic folk and had a considerable impact on progressive
Progressive rock
Progressive rock is a subgenre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s as part of a "mostly British attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility." John Covach, in Contemporary Music Review, says that many thought it would not just "succeed the pop of...
and psychedelic rock
Psychedelic rock
Psychedelic rock is a style of rock music that is inspired or influenced by psychedelic culture and attempts to replicate and enhance the mind-altering experiences of psychedelic drugs. It emerged during the mid 1960s among folk rock and blues rock bands in United States and the United Kingdom...
.
There was a brief flowering of English progressive folk in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with groups like the Third Ear Band
Third Ear Band
Third Ear Band evolved within the London alternative and free-music scene of the mid 1960s.-History:Members came from The Giant Sun Trolley and The People Band to create an improvised music drawing on Eastern raga forms, European folk, experimental and medieval influences...
and Quintessence following the eastern Indian musical and more abstract work by group such as Comus
Comus (band)
Comus is a British progressive rock / folk band which had a brief career in the early 1970s; their first album, First Utterance, gave them a cult following which persists. They have revived in the late 2000s and played several festivals.-History:...
, Dando Shaft
Dando Shaft
Dando Shaft is the name of a short-lived psych/progressive folk and folk jazz band that was primarily active in the early 1970s. The band has attracted a measure of attention from recent compilation releases and Dando Shaft is today known primarily as one of the major influences on the progressive...
, The Trees, Spirogyra
Spirogyra (band)
This article refers to the British folk band. For the American jazz fusion band, see Spyro Gyra.Spirogyra are a British folk/prog band that recorded three albums between 1971 and 1973, with further original albums in 2009 and 2011.-History:...
, Forest
Forest
A forest, also referred to as a wood or the woods, is an area with a high density of trees. As with cities, depending where you are in the world, what is considered a forest may vary significantly in size and have various classification according to how and what of the forest is composed...
, and Jan Dukes De Grey
Jan Dukes de Grey
Jan Dukes de Grey is a short-lived Acid/Progressive folk and progressive rock band that was primarily active in the early 1970s. Despite a relatively meager total output and a lukewarm contemporary reception in terms of sales, the band has attracted a cult following and has seen a moderate revival...
, but commercial success was elusive for these bands and most had broken up or moved in very different directions by about 1973. Perhaps the finest individual work in the genre was from artists early 1970s artists like Nick Drake
Nick Drake
Nicholas Rodney "Nick" Drake was an English singer-songwriter and musician. Though he is best known for his sombre guitar based songs, Drake was also proficient at piano, clarinet and saxophone...
and John Martyn
John Martyn
John Martyn, OBE , born Iain David McGeachy, was a British singer-songwriter and guitarist. Over a forty-year career he released twenty studio albums, working with artists such as Eric Clapton and David Gilmour...
, but these can also be considered the first among the English ‘folk troubadours’ or ‘singer-songwriters’, individual performers who remained largely acoustic but who relied mostly on their own individual compositions. The most successful of these was Ralph McTell
Ralph McTell
Ralph McTell is an English singer-songwriter and acoustic guitar player who has been an influential figure on the UK folk music scene since the 1960s....
, whose ‘Streets of London’ reached number 2 in the UK Single Charts in 1974, and whose music is clearly folk, but without much reliance on tradition, virtuosity, or much evidence of attempts at fusion with other genres.
Electric folk
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
from the late 1960s, by the band Fairport Convention
Fairport Convention
Fairport Convention are an English folk rock and later electric folk band, formed in 1967 who are still recording and touring today. They are widely regarded as the most important single group in the English folk rock movement...
. It uses traditional music, and compositions in a traditional style, played on a combination of rock and traditional instruments. It was most significant in the 1970s, when it was taken up by groups such as Pentangle
Pentangle (band)
Pentangle are a British folk rock band with some folk jazz influences. The original band were active in the late 1960s and early 1970s and a later version has been active since the early 1980s...
, Steeleye Span
Steeleye Span
Steeleye Span are an English folk-rock band, formed in 1969 and remaining active today. Along with Fairport Convention they are amongst the best known acts of the British folk revival, and were among the most commercially successful, thanks to their hit singles "Gaudete" and "All Around My Hat"....
and the Albion Band. It was rapidly adopted and developed in the surrounding Celtic cultures of Brittany
Brittany
Brittany is a cultural and administrative region in the north-west of France. Previously a kingdom and then a duchy, Brittany was united to the Kingdom of France in 1532 as a province. Brittany has also been referred to as Less, Lesser or Little Britain...
, where it was pioneered by Alan Stivell
Alan Stivell
Alan Stivell is a Breton musician and singer, recording artist and master of the celtic harp who from the early 1970s revived global interest in the Celtic harp and Celtic music as part of world music.- Background: learning Breton music and culture :Alan was born in the Auvergnat town of Riom...
and bands like Malicorne
Malicorne (band)
- The traditional years :Gabriel Yacoub and Marie Yacoub formed Malicorne in 1974, naming it after the French town, Malicorne, famous for its porcelain and faience. Since several of their albums are called simply Malicorne it had become the custom to refer to them by number, even though no number...
; in Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
by groups such as Horslips
Horslips
Horslips are an Irish Celtic rock band that compose, arrange and perform songs based on traditional Irish jigs and reels. The group are regarded as 'founding fathers of Celtic rock' for their fusion of traditional Irish music with rock music and went on to inspire many local and international acts....
; and also in Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
, Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
and the Isle of Man
Isle of Man
The Isle of Man , otherwise known simply as Mann , is a self-governing British Crown Dependency, located in the Irish Sea between the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, within the British Isles. The head of state is Queen Elizabeth II, who holds the title of Lord of Mann. The Lord of Mann is...
and Cornwall
Cornwall
Cornwall is a unitary authority and ceremonial county of England, within the United Kingdom. It is bordered to the north and west by the Celtic Sea, to the south by the English Channel, and to the east by the county of Devon, over the River Tamar. Cornwall has a population of , and covers an area of...
, to produce Celtic rock
Celtic rock
Celtic rock is a genre of folk rock and a form of Celtic fusion which incorporates Celtic music, instrumentation and themes into a rock music context...
and its derivatives. It has been influential in those parts of the world with close cultural connections to Britain, such as the USA and Canada and gave rise to the sub-genre of Medieval folk rock
Medieval folk rock
Medieval folk rock, medieval rock or medieval folk is a musical sub-genre that emerged in the early 1970s in England and Germany which combined elements of early music with rock music. It grew out of the electric folk and progressive folk movements of the later 1960s...
and the fusion genres of folk punk
Folk punk
Folk punk , is a fusion of folk music and punk rock. It was pioneered in the late 1970s and early 1980s by The Pogues in Britain and Violent Femmes in America. Folk punk achieved some mainstream success in that decade...
and folk metal
Folk metal
Folk metal is a sub-genre of heavy metal music that developed in Europe during the 1990s. As the name suggests, the genre is a fusion of heavy metal with traditional folk music...
. By the 1980s the genre was in steep decline in popularity, but has survived and revived in significance as part of a more general folk resurgence since the 1990s.
Folk punk
In the mid-1980s a new rebirth of English folk began, this time fusing folk with energy and political aggression derived from punk rock. Leaders included The PoguesThe Pogues
The Pogues are a Celtic punk band, formed in 1982 and fronted by Shane MacGowan. The band reached international prominence in the 1980s and early 1990s. MacGowan left the band in 1991 due to drinking problems but the band continued first with Joe Strummer and then with Spider Stacy on vocals before...
, The Men They Couldn't Hang
The Men They Couldn't Hang
The Men They Couldn't Hang are a British folk punk group. The original group consisted of Stefan Cush , Paul Simmonds , Philip "Swill" Odgers , Jon Odgers and Shanne Bradley .- Controversy and success:Their first single, "The Green Fields...
, Oyster Band and Billy Bragg
Billy Bragg
Stephen William Bragg , better known as Billy Bragg, is an English alternative rock musician and left-wing activist. His music blends elements of folk music, punk rock and protest songs, and his lyrics mostly deal with political or romantic themes...
. Folk dance music
Dance music
Dance music is music composed specifically to facilitate or accompany dancing. It can be either a whole musical piece or part of a larger musical arrangement...
also became popular in the 80s, with acts like the English Country Blues Band and Tiger Moth. The decade later saw the use of reggae
Reggae
Reggae is a music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s. While sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to most types of Jamaican music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that originated following on the development of ska and rocksteady.Reggae is based...
with English folk music by the band Edward II & the Red Hot Polkas
Edward II (band)
Edward II is an English band named for King Edward II, which play a fusion of world music, English folk and reggae. Active from 1985, the band broke up after losing several key members in 1999, relaunching as "e2K" in 2000...
, especially on their seminal Let's Polkasteady from 1987.
Folk metal
In a process strikingly similar to the origins of electric folk in the 1960s, the English thrash metalThrash metal
Thrash metal is a subgenre of heavy metal that is characterized usually by its fast tempo and aggression. Songs of the genre typically use fast percussive and low-register guitar riffs, overlaid with shredding-style lead work...
band Skyclad
Skyclad (band)
Skyclad are a British heavy metal band with heavy folk influences in their music. They are considered one of the pioneers of folk metal. The etymology behind the term "skyclad" comes from a pagan/wiccan term for ritual nudity, in which rituals are performed with the participants metaphorically clad...
added violins from a session musician on several tracks for their 1990 debut album The Wayward Sons of Mother Earth
The Wayward Sons of Mother Earth
The Wayward Sons of Mother Earth is the first album by British folk metal group Skyclad, and is thus probably the first ever folk metal album, with the track "The Widdershins Jig" in particular pointing the way for the genre....
. When this was well received they adopted a full time fiddle player and moved towards a signature folk and jig style leading them to be credited as the pioneers of folk metal, which has spread to Ireland, the Baltic and Germany.
Traditional folk resurgence 1990-present
The peak of traditional English folk, like progressive and electric folk, was the mid- to late-1970s, when, for a time it threatened to break through into the mainstream, however, by the end of the decade it was in decline. The attendance at, and numbers of folk clubs began to decrease, probably as new musical and social trends, including punk rockPunk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
, new wave and electronic music
Electronic music
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
began to dominate. Although many acts like Martin Carthy and the Watersons continued to perform successfully, there were very few significant new acts pursuing traditional forms in the 1980s. This all began to change with a new generation in the 1990s. The arrival and sometimes mainstream success of acts like Kate Rusby
Kate Rusby
Kate Anna Rusby is an English folk singer and songwriter from Penistone, South Yorkshire. Sometimes known as The Barnsley Nightingale, she has headlined various British national folk festivals, and is regarded as one of the most famous English folk singers of contemporary times...
, Nancy Kerr
Nancy Kerr
Nancy Kerr is an English folk musician, specialising in the fiddle and singing. She is the daughter of London-born singer-songwriter Sandra Kerr and Northumbrian piper Ron Elliott....
, Kathryn Tickell
Kathryn Tickell
Kathryn Tickell is an English player of the Northumbrian smallpipes and fiddle. She has recorded over a dozen albums, and toured widely.-Life and career:...
, Jim Moray
Jim Moray
Jim Moray is an English folk singer, multi-instrumentalist and record producer.-Recording artist:While studying classical composition at the Birmingham Conservatoire, Moray released the home-recorded I Am Jim Moray EP. During 2002 he appeared at the Glastonbury festival and the Cambridge Folk...
, Spiers and Boden
Spiers and Boden
Spiers and Boden are an English folk duo. John Spiers plays melodeon and concertina, while Jon Boden sings and plays fiddle and guitar while stamping the rhythm on a stomp box.-Biography:...
, Seth Lakeman
Seth Lakeman
Seth Bernard Lakeman is an English folk singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist, who is most often associated with the fiddle and tenor guitar, but has also mastered the viola and banjo...
and Eliza Carthy
Eliza Carthy
Eliza Carthy is an English folk musician known for both singing and playing fiddle. She is the daughter of English folk musicians singer/guitarist Martin Carthy and singer Norma Waterson.-Life and career:...
, all largely concerned with acoustic performance of traditional material, marked a radical turn around in the fortunes of the tradition. This was reflected in the adoption creation of the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards
BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards
The BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards celebrate outstanding achievement during the previous year within the field of folk music. The awards have been given annually since 2000 by British radio station BBC Radio 2....
in 2000, which gave the music a much needed status and focus and the profile of folk music is as high in England today as it has been for over thirty years.
Folk clubs
Although there were a handful of clubs that allowed space for the performance of traditional folk music by the early 1950s, its major boost came from the short-lived British skiffleSkiffle
Skiffle is a type of popular music with jazz, blues, folk, roots and country influences, usually using homemade or improvised instruments. Originating as a term in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century, it became popular again in the UK in the 1950s, where it was mainly...
craze, from about 1956-8. New clubs included the ‘Ballad and Blues’ club in a pub
Public house
A public house, informally known as a pub, is a drinking establishment fundamental to the culture of Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. There are approximately 53,500 public houses in the United Kingdom. This number has been declining every year, so that nearly half of the smaller...
in Soho
Soho
Soho is an area of the City of Westminster and part of the West End of London. Long established as an entertainment district, for much of the 20th century Soho had a reputation for sex shops as well as night life and film industry. Since the early 1980s, the area has undergone considerable...
, co-founded by Ewan MacColl. As the craze subsided from the mid 1950s many of these clubs began to shift towards the performance of English traditional folk material. Many became strict ‘policy clubs’, that pursued a pure and traditional form of music. By the mid 1960s there were probably over 300 in Britain. Most clubs were simply a regular gathering, usually in the back or upstairs room of a public house on a weekly basis. They were largely a phenomenon of the urbanised middle classes and known for the amateur nature of many performances. There were also ‘residents’, who performed regular short sets of songs. Many of these later emerged as major performers in their own right, including A. L. Lloyd
A. L. Lloyd
Albert Lancaster Lloyd , usually known as A. L. Lloyd or Bert Lloyd, was an English folk singer and collector of folk songs, and as such was a key figure in the folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s....
, Martin Carthy
Martin Carthy
Martin Carthy MBE is an English folk singer and guitarist who has remained one of the most influential figures in British traditional music, inspiring contemporaries such as Bob Dylan and Paul Simon and later artists such as Richard Thompson since he emerged as a young musician in the early days...
, and Shirley Collins
Shirley Collins
Shirley Elizabeth Collins MBE is a British folksinger who was a significant contributor to the English Folk Revival of the 1960s and 1970s...
. A later generation of performers used the folk club circuit for highly successful mainstream careers, including Billy Connolly
Billy Connolly
William "Billy" Connolly, Jr., CBE is a Scottish comedian, musician, presenter and actor. He is sometimes known, especially in his native Scotland, by the nickname The Big Yin...
, Jasper Carrott
Jasper Carrott
Jasper Carrott OBE is a British comedian, actor, television presenter and personality.-Early life:...
, Ian Dury
Ian Dury
Ian Robins Dury was an English rock and roll singer, lyricist, bandleader and actor who initially rose to fame during the late 1970s, during the punk and New Wave era of rock music...
and Barbara Dickson
Barbara Dickson
Barbara Ruth Dickson, OBE is a Scottish singer whose hits include "I Know Him So Well" and "January February"...
. The number of clubs began to decline in the 1980s, in the face of changing musical and social trends. But the decline began to stabilize in the mid-1990s with the resurgence of interest in folk music and there are now over 160 folk clubs in the United Kingdom, including many that can trace their origins back to the 1950s.
Folk music and the radio
The difficulty of gaining regular appearances on television in England has long meant that radio has remained the major popular medium for increasing awareness of the genre. The EFDSS sponsored the BBC Home ServiceBBC Home Service
The BBC Home Service was a British national radio station which broadcast from 1939 until 1967.-Development:Between the 1920s and the outbreak of The Second World War, the BBC had developed two nationwide radio services, the BBC National Programme and the BBC Regional Programme...
radio program, As I Roved Out, based on field recordings made by Peter Kennedy
Peter Douglas Kennedy
Peter Douglas Kennedy was an English collector of folk songs in the 1950s. Peter's father, Douglas, was EFDSS director after Cecil Sharp....
and Séamus Ennis
Séamus Ennis
Séamus Ennis was an Irish piper, singer and folk-song collector.- Early years :In 1908 James Ennis, Séamus's father, was in a pawn-shop in London. Ennis bought a bag of small pieces of Uilleann pipes. They were made in the early nineteenth century by Coyne of Thomas Street in Dublin. James worked...
from 1952 to 1958, which probably did more than any other single factor to introduce the general population to British folk music in the period. Also important were occasional radio shows, such as Lomax’s Ballads and Blues, MacColl’s Radio-ballad
Radio-ballad
The radio ballad is an audio documentary format created by Ewan MacColl, Peggy Seeger, and Charles Parker in 1958. It combines four elements of sound: songs, instrumental music, sound effects, and, most importantly, the recorded voices of those who are the subjects of the documentary...
s (1958–64) and The Song Carriers (1968). John Peel
John Peel
John Robert Parker Ravenscroft, OBE , known professionally as John Peel, was an English disc jockey, radio presenter, record producer and journalist. He was the longest-serving of the original BBC Radio 1 DJs, broadcasting regularly from 1967 until his death in 2004...
frequently included folk music of his Top Gear show on Radio One from 1968, but dropped it when punk arrived in the 1970s. The most consistent source of folk music on radio, has been BBC Radio 2
BBC Radio 2
BBC Radio 2 is one of the BBC's national radio stations and the most popular station in the United Kingdom. Much of its daytime playlist-based programming is best described as Adult Contemporary or AOR, although the station is also noted for its specialist broadcasting of other musical genres...
. In 1967 "My Kind of folk" was broadcast on Wednesdays. In 1970 "Folk on Friday" began, presented by Jim Lloyd. In 1972 it became "Folk on Sunday". "Folkweave" was presented by Tony Capstick
Tony Capstick
Joseph Anthony 'Tony' Capstick was an English comedian, actor, musician and broadcaster.-Life and career:...
1975-8. "Folk on Two" (Wednesdays) began in 1980. In 1998 Jim Lloyd retired from the programme and was replaced by Mike Harding
Mike Harding
Mike Harding is an English singer, songwriter, comedian, author, poet and broadcaster. He is known as 'The Rochdale Cowboy' after one of his hit records...
. In 2007 it was renamed "The Mike Harding Folk Show". Ian A. Anderson
Ian A. Anderson
Ian A. Anderson is an English magazine editor, folk musician and broadcaster.-Country blues and The Village Thing:...
, editor of "fRoots", also presented the occasional series for Radio Two. He hosted a World music programme on "Jazz FM" and then spent 10 years broadcasting on the BBC World Service. He currently hosts "fRoots Radio" on the web. For over twenty years, until 2006, Charlie Gillett presented World music on BBC London.
Folk festivals
Folk festivals began to be organised by the EFDSS from about 1950, usually as local or regional event with an emphasis on dance, like the Sidmouth FestivalSidmouth Festival
Sidmouth FolkWeek , is a folk festival held every year in the first week of Augustin the coastal town of Sidmouth in South West England. It offers a range of activities including concerts, ceilidhs, pub sessions, workshops, dance displays, and children's activities...
(from 1955) and the Keele Festival (1965), which was abandoned in 1981 but reinstituted three years later as the National Folk Festival
National Folk Festival
The National Folk Festival is the name of several festivals that celebrate the folk music of a particular nation.*The Touring National Folk Festival in the US National Folk Festival...
. The EFDSS gave up its organizing role in these festivals in the 1980s and most are locally run and financed. One of the largest and most prestigious English folk festivals at Cambridge
Cambridge Folk Festival
The Cambridge Folk Festival is an annual music festival held on the site of Cherry Hinton Hall in Cherry Hinton, one of the villages subsumed by the city of Cambridge, England. The festival is renowned for its eclectic mix of music and a wide definition of what might be considered folk. It occurs...
was founded in 1965 and attracts about 10,000 people. Probably the largest is Fairport's Cropredy Convention, which since 1979 has provided a venue for folk, electric folk and rock artists and now attracts up to 20,000 people a year as well as performances for Fairport Convention and their friends. Like rock festivals, folk festivals have begun to multiply since the 1990s and there are over a hundred folk festivals or varying sizes held in England every year.
Ballads
A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative story and set to music. Many ballads were written and sold as single sheet broadsidesBroadside (music)
A broadside is a single sheet of cheap paper printed on one side, often with a ballad, rhyme, news and sometimes with woodcut illustrations...
. They are usually narrative in structure and make considerable use of repetition. The traditional ballad has been seen as originating with the wandering minstrels of late medieval Europe. There have been many different and contradictory attempts to classify traditional ballads by theme, but commonly identified types are religious, supernatural, tragic, love, historic, legends and humour.
Carols
A carol is a festive song, in modern times recognised as being exclusively associated with Christmas, but in reality there are carols celebrating all festivals and seasons of the year and not necessarily Christian festivals. They were derived from a form of circle danceCircle dance
"Circle dance" is the most common name for a style of traditional dance usually done in a circle without partners to musical accompaniment.-Description:...
accompanied by singers, which was popular from the mid-12th century. From the 14th century they were used as processional songs, particularly at Advent, Easter and Christmas, and to accompany religious mystery plays. They declined after the Protestant Reformation
Protestant Reformation
The Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century split within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin and other early Protestants. The efforts of the self-described "reformers", who objected to the doctrines, rituals and ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Catholic Church, led...
which banned many religious festivals, but some famous carols were written in this period, including 'The Holly and the Ivy
The Holly and the Ivy
"The Holly and the Ivy" is an English traditional Christmas carol. The carol contains intermingled Christian and Pagan imagery, with holly and ivy representing Pagan fertility symbols. Holly and ivy have been the mainstay of Christmas decoration for church use since at least the fifteenth and...
' and they were more strongly revived from the 19th century and began to be written and adapted by eminent composers.
Children's songs
Lullaby
A lullaby is a soothing song, usually sung to young children before they go to sleep, with the intention of speeding that process. As a result they are often simple and repetitive. Lullabies can be found in every culture and since the ancient period....
from the later medieval period. From soon after we have records of short children's rhyming songs, but most nursery rhymes were not written down until the 18th century. The first English collections were Tommy Thumb's Song Book
Tommy Thumb's Song Book
Tommy Thumb's Song Book is the earliest known collection of British nursery rhymes. Though it was printed in 1744, no original copy has survived, but its content has been recovered from later reprints...
and a sequel, Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book
Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book
Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book is the earliest extant printed collection of English language nursery rhymes, published in London in 1744. It was a sequel to the lost Tommy Thumb's Song Book and contains the oldest version of many well-known and popular rhymes, as well as several that have been...
, are both thought to have been published before 1744, and John Newbery
John Newbery
John Newbery was an English publisher of books who first made children's literature a sustainable and profitable part of the literary market. He also supported and published the works of Christopher Smart, Oliver Goldsmith and Samuel Johnson...
's, Mother Goose's Melody, or, Sonnets for the Cradle (c.1785), is the first record we have of many classic rhymes. These rhymes seem to have come from a variety of sources, including traditional riddles, proverb
Proverb
A proverb is a simple and concrete saying popularly known and repeated, which expresses a truth, based on common sense or the practical experience of humanity. They are often metaphorical. A proverb that describes a basic rule of conduct may also be known as a maxim...
s, ballads, lines of Mummers' plays, drinking songs, historical events, and, it has been suggested, ancient pagan rituals. Roughly half of the current body recognised 'traditional' English rhymes were known by the mid-18th century. From this period we sometimes know the origins and authors of rhymes, like 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
"Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" is a popular English nursery rhyme. The lyrics are from an early nineteenth-century English poem, "The Star" by Jane Taylor. The poem, which is in couplet form, was first published in 1806 in Rhymes for the Nursery, a collection of poems by Taylor and her sister Ann...
', which combined an 18th century French tune with a poem by English writer Jane Taylor
Jane Taylor (poet)
Jane Taylor , was an English poet and novelist. She wrote the words for the song Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star in 1806 at age 23, while living in Shilling Street, Lavenham, Suffolk....
and 'Mary Had a Little Lamb', written by Sarah Josepha Hale of Boston in 1830. The first, and possibly the most important collection to focus in this area was, James Orchard Halliwell's, The Nursery Rhymes of England (1842) and Popular Rhymes and Tales in 1849. At the height of the revival Sabine Baring-Gould
Sabine Baring-Gould
The Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould was an English hagiographer, antiquarian, novelist and eclectic scholar. His bibliography consists of more than 1240 publications, though this list continues to grow. His family home, Lew Trenchard Manor near Okehampton, Devon, has been preserved as he had it...
produced A Book of Nursery Songs (1895), and Andrew Lang
Andrew Lang
Andrew Lang was a Scots poet, novelist, literary critic, and contributor to the field of anthropology. He is best known as a collector of folk and fairy tales. The Andrew Lang lectures at the University of St Andrews are named after him.- Biography :Lang was born in Selkirk...
produced The Nursery Rhyme Book in 1897. Children's songs, unlike folk songs, have remained part of a living and continuous tradition, for although added to from other sources and affected by written versions, most adults pass on songs they learned from oral sources as children.
Erotic folk songs
It has been noted by most recent commentators on English folk song, that love, the erotic and even the pornographic, were major traditional themes and, if more than ballads are considered, may have been the largest groups of printed songs. Many collectors in the first revival either ignored such songs, or bowdlerized them for publication, as Francis Child and Cecil Sharp did in their collections. In the second revival, erotic folk song was much more accepted as part of the canon of traditional song, helped by the publication of books such as Gershon Legman’s, The Horn Book: Studies in Erotic Folklore (1964) and Ed Cray’s, The Erotic Muse: American Bawdy Songs, which printed many previously unpublished songs (1968). In England A. L. Lloyd was the key figure in introducing erotic songs to the canon, lecturing and publishing on the subject, he recorded The Foggy Dew and Other Traditional English Love Songs in 1959, and then The Bird in the Bush, Traditional Erotic Songs in 1966 with Frankie ArmstrongFrankie Armstrong
Frankie Armstrong is a singer and voice teacher.She has worked as a singer in the folk scene and the women's movement and as a trainer in social and youth work...
, and Anne Briggs
Anne Briggs
Anne Briggs is an English folk singer. Although she traveled widely in the 1960s and early 1970s, appearing at folk clubs and venues in England and Ireland, she never aspired to commercial success or to achieve widespread public acknowledgment of her music...
. He drew a distinction between erotic songs, that dealt with love and suggested sexuality through innuendo (like 'The Bonny Black Hare' and 'The Bird in the Bush') and pornographic songs that were explicit and unworthy of attention. Some authors find these distinctions more difficult to maintain, however, although erotic songs became part of the standard fare in folk clubs and among electric folk musicians, relatively few of the more explicit songs have been placed on record.
Hornpipes
The hornpipe is a style of dance music thought to have taken its name from an English reed instrument by at least the 17th century. In the mid-18th century it changed from 3/2 time to 2/2, assuming its modern character, and probably reaching the height of its popularity as it became a staple of theatrical performances. It is most often associated with the Sailor's Hornpipe, but has formed the basis of many individual and group country dances into the modern period. Like many dances it was taken up in Scotland and Ireland and given a distinctive national character and moved to America with emigration.Jigs
Jigs are a style of dance music developed in England to accompany a lively dance with steps, turns and leaps. The term jig was derived from the French 'giguer', meaning 'to jump'. It was known as a dance in the 16th century, often in 2/4 time and the term was used for a dancing entertainment in 16th century plays. The dance began to be associated with music particularly in 6/8 time, and with slip jigs 9/8 time. In the 17th century the dance was adopted in Ireland and Scotland, where they were widely adapted, and with which countries they are now most often associated.Morris dance
English Civil War
The English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists...
. It recovered after the Restoration
English Restoration
The Restoration of the English monarchy began in 1660 when the English, Scottish and Irish monarchies were all restored under Charles II after the Interregnum that followed the Wars of the Three Kingdoms...
in 1660 but was in steep decline after agricultural and industrial revolutions by the 19th century, when collectors like Cecil Sharp recorded the practice, particularly from versions of dance he found in the Cotswolds
Cotswolds
The Cotswolds are a range of hills in west-central England, sometimes called the Heart of England, an area across and long. The area has been designated as the Cotswold Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty...
. This led to a revival of the tradition, although it may also have affected form and practice. Morris dance took something of a back seat to unaccompanied singing in the second revival, but received a further boost when it attracted the attention of electric folk musicians like Ashley Hutchings, who produced several albums of dance music, including the influential Morris On
Morris On
Morris On is a folk/rock album released in 1972 under the joint names of Ashley Hutchings, Richard Thompson, Dave Mattacks, John Kirkpatrick and Barry Dransfield...
series from 1972. Traditionally Morris dance was accompanied by either a pipe and tabor
Pipe and Tabor
Pipe and tabor is a pair of instruments played by a single player, consisting of a three-hole pipe played with one hand, and a small drum played with the other...
or a fiddle, but from the mid-19th century most common instruments were the melodeon, accordion
Accordion
The accordion is a box-shaped musical instrument of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone family, sometimes referred to as a squeezebox. A person who plays the accordion is called an accordionist....
, concertina
Concertina
A concertina is a free-reed musical instrument, like the various accordions and the harmonica. It has a bellows and buttons typically on both ends of it. When pressed, the buttons travel in the same direction as the bellows, unlike accordion buttons which travel perpendicularly to it...
and drums. Particularly in Cotswold and Border morris, many tunes are linked to particular dances. Morris dance survives in the distinct local traditions of Cotswold morris, north-west morris, Border Morris
Border Morris
The term Border Morris refers to a collection of individual local dances from villages along the English side of the Wales-England border in the counties of Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Shropshire. They are part of the Morris dance tradition.- History :...
, rapper dance and Long Sword dance
Long Sword dance
right|YorkshireThe Long Sword dance is a hilt-and-point sword dance recorded mainly in Yorkshire, England. It is related to the rapper sword dance of Northumbria, but the character is fundamentally different as it uses rigid metal or wooden swords, rather than the flexible spring steel rappers used...
.
Protest songs
Perhaps the oldest clear example of an English protest song is the rhyme ‘When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?’, used in the Peasants Revolt of 1381. Songs that celebrated social bandits like Robin HoodRobin Hood
Robin Hood was a heroic outlaw in English folklore. A highly skilled archer and swordsman, he is known for "robbing from the rich and giving to the poor", assisted by a group of fellow outlaws known as his "Merry Men". Traditionally, Robin Hood and his men are depicted wearing Lincoln green clothes....
, from the 14th century onwards can be seen as a more subtle form of protest. With the Levellers
Levellers
The Levellers were a political movement during the English Civil Wars which emphasised popular sovereignty, extended suffrage, equality before the law, and religious tolerance, all of which were expressed in the manifesto "Agreement of the People". They came to prominence at the end of the First...
and Diggers in the mid-17th century, more overt criticism surfaced, as in the ballad "The Diggers' Song
Diggers' Song
The "Diggers' Song" is a 17th century ballad, in terms of content a protest song concerned with land rights, inspired by the Diggers movement, composed by Gerrard Winstanley. The lyrics were published in 1894 by the Camden Society...
". From roughly the same period, songs of protest at war, pointing out the costs to human lives, also begin to appear, like "The Maunding Souldier or The Fruits of Warre is Beggery", framed as a begging appeal from a crippled soldier of the Thirty Years War. With industrialisation from the 18th century. A surprising English folk hero immortalised in song is Napoleon Bonaparte, in songs such as the "Bonny Bunch of Roses" and "Napoleon’s Dream". As labour became more organised songs were used as anthems and propaganda, for miners with songs like "The Black Leg Miner", and for factory workers with songs like "The Factory Bell". These industrial protest songs were largely ignored during the first English folk revival of the later 19th and early 20th century, but were recorded by figures like A. L. Lloyd
A. L. Lloyd
Albert Lancaster Lloyd , usually known as A. L. Lloyd or Bert Lloyd, was an English folk singer and collector of folk songs, and as such was a key figure in the folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s....
on albums such as The Iron Muse (1963). In the 1980s the anarchist rock band Chumbawamba
Chumbawamba
Chumbawamba is a British musical group who have, over a career spanning nearly three decades, played punk rock, pop-influenced music, world music, and folk music...
recorded several versions of traditional English protest as English Rebel Songs 1381-1914. Ewan MacColl
Ewan MacColl
Ewan MacColl was an English folk singer, songwriter, socialist, actor, poet, playwright, and record producer. He was married to theatre director Joan Littlewood, and later to American folksinger Peggy Seeger. He collaborated with Littlewood in the theatre and with Seeger in folk music...
became the leading writer of English protest songs in the 1950s, with pro-communist songs such as "The Ballad of Ho Chi Minh
Ho Chi Minh
Hồ Chí Minh , born Nguyễn Sinh Cung and also known as Nguyễn Ái Quốc, was a Vietnamese Marxist-Leninist revolutionary leader who was prime minister and president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam...
" and "The Ballad of Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
", as well as volatile protest and topical songs concerning the nuclear threat to peace, most notably "Against the Atom Bomb". The leading voice of protest in Thatcherite
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990...
Britain in the 1980s was Billy Bragg
Billy Bragg
Stephen William Bragg , better known as Billy Bragg, is an English alternative rock musician and left-wing activist. His music blends elements of folk music, punk rock and protest songs, and his lyrics mostly deal with political or romantic themes...
, whose style of protest song and grass-roots political activism was mostly reminiscent of those of Woody Guthrie
Woody Guthrie
Woodrow Wilson "Woody" Guthrie is best known as an American singer-songwriter and folk musician, whose musical legacy includes hundreds of political, traditional and children's songs, ballads and improvised works. He frequently performed with the slogan This Machine Kills Fascists displayed on his...
.
Sea shanties
Sea shanties are a type of work songWork song
A work song is a piece of music closely connected to a specific form of work, either sung while conducting a task or a song linked to a task or trade which might be a connected narrative, description, or protest song....
traditionally sung by sailors. Derived from the French word 'chanter', meaning 'to sing', they may date from as early as the 15th century, but most recorded examples derive from the 19th century. Shanties were usually slow rhythmic songs designed to help with collective tasks on labour intensive sailing and later steam ships. Many were call and response
Call and response
Call and response is a form of "spontaneous verbal and non-verbal interaction between speaker and listener in which all of the statements are punctuated by expressions from the listener."...
songs, with one voice (the shantyman) singing a lead line and the rest of the sailors giving a response together. There were derived from varied sources, including dances, folk songs, polka
Polka
The polka is a Central European dance and also a genre of dance music familiar throughout Europe and the Americas. It originated in the middle of the 19th century in Bohemia...
s, waltz
Waltz
The waltz is a ballroom and folk dance in time, performed primarily in closed position.- History :There are several references to a sliding or gliding dance,- a waltz, from the 16th century including the representations of the printer H.S. Beheim...
es and even West African work-songs. Since different songs were useful for different tasks they are traditionally divided into three main categories, short haul shanties, for tasks requiring quick pulls over a relatively short time; halyard shanties, for heavier work requiring more set-up time between pulls; and Capstan
Capstan (nautical)
A capstan is a vertical-axled rotating machine developed for use on sailing ships to apply force to ropes, cables, and hawsers. The principle is similar to that of the windlass, which has a horizontal axle.- History :...
shanties, for long, repetitive tasks requiring a sustained rhythm, but not involving working the lines. Famous shanties include, the 'Drunken Sailor
Drunken Sailor
Drunken Sailor is a traditional sea shanty also known as What Shall We Do with the Drunken Sailor?It begins with the question, "What shall we do with a drunken sailor, early in the morning?" Each verse thereafter suggests a method of sobering—or castigating, or simply abusing—the sailor.The song...
' and 'Blow the Man Down
Blow the Man Down
Blow the Man Down is a sea shanty. The lyric "Blow the man down" refers to the act of knocking a man to the ground.-Lyrics:The full lyrics areChorus:Oh, blow the man down, bullies, blow the man downWay aye blow the man down...
'. There was some interest in sea shanties in the first revival from figures like Percy Grainger. In the second revival A. L. Lloyd attempted to popularise them, recording several albums of sea songs from 1965.
War songs
In England songs about military and naval subjects were a major part of the output of ballad writers from the 16th century onwards, including one of the earliest British ballads ‘The Ballad of Chevy ChaseThe Ballad of Chevy Chase
There are two extant English ballads known as The Ballad of Chevy Chase, both of which narrate the same story. As ballads existed within oral tradition before being written down, other versions of this once popular song may also have existed....
’, which deals with the events of the Scottish victory of the Battle of Otterburn
Battle of Otterburn
The Battle of Otterburn took place on the 5 August 1388, as part of the continuing border skirmishes between the Scottish and English.The best remaining record of the battle is from Jean Froissart's Chronicles in which he claims to have interviewed veterans from both sides of the battle...
in 1388 and may date to the early 15th century. The conflicts between England and Spain in the later 16th and early 17th centuries produced a number of ballads describing events, particularly naval conflicts like those of the Spanish Armada
Spanish Armada
This article refers to the Battle of Gravelines, for the modern navy of Spain, see Spanish NavyThe Spanish Armada was the Spanish fleet that sailed against England under the command of the Duke of Medina Sidonia in 1588, with the intention of overthrowing Elizabeth I of England to stop English...
. The English Civil War
English Civil War
The English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists...
(1642–1653) produced a sub-genre of ‘Cavalier
Cavalier
Cavalier was the name used by Parliamentarians for a Royalist supporter of King Charles I and son Charles II during the English Civil War, the Interregnum, and the Restoration...
ballads’, including ‘When the King Home in Peace Again’. Many of these were adapted and reused by Jacobites
Jacobitism
Jacobitism was the political movement in Britain dedicated to the restoration of the Stuart kings to the thrones of England, Scotland, later the Kingdom of Great Britain, and the Kingdom of Ireland...
after the ‘Glorious Revolution
Glorious Revolution
The Glorious Revolution, also called the Revolution of 1688, is the overthrow of King James II of England by a union of English Parliamentarians with the Dutch stadtholder William III of Orange-Nassau...
’ of 1688. The Anglo-French Wars of the 17th and 18th centuries saw more descriptive works, usually couched in patriotic terms, but some, like ‘Captain Death’ (1757) dealt with loss and defeat. As regimental identities emerged songs were adopted for marching, like ‘The British Grenadiers
The British Grenadiers
The British Grenadiers is a marching song for the grenadier units of the British and Commonwealth militaries, the tune of which dates from the 17th century. It is the Regimental Quick March of the Grenadier Guards, Corps of Royal Engineers, the Honourable Artillery Company and the Royal Regiment of...
’, based on a 17th century dance tune. Output became a flood during the Revolutionary
Revolutionary Wars
Revolutionary Wars may relate to:*American Revolutionary War*French Revolutionary Wars...
and Napoleonic Wars
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...
(1797–1815), seeing numerous patriotic war songs, like ‘Heart of Oak
Heart of Oak
"Heart of Oak" is the official march of the Royal Navy of the United Kingdom. It is also the official march of several Commonwealth navies including the Royal Canadian Navy, the Royal Australian Navy and the Royal New Zealand Navy....
’ and the emergence of a stereotype of the English seaman as ‘Jolly Jack Tar
Jack Tar
Jack Tar was a common English term used to refer to seamen of the Merchant or Royal Navy, particularly during the period of the British Empire. Both members of the public, and seafarers themselves, made use of the name in identifying those who went to sea...
’, who appeared in many ballads and on stage. As the musical hall began to take over the lead in popular music and folk song declined, folk song ceased to deal with contemporary wars in the later 19th century.
Work songs
Work songs include music sung while conducting a task (often to coordinate timing) or a song linked to a task or trade which might be a connected narrativeNarrative
A narrative is a constructive format that describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount", and is related to the adjective gnarus, "knowing" or "skilled"...
, description, or protest song
Protest song
A protest song is a song which is associated with a movement for social change and hence part of the broader category of topical songs . It may be folk, classical, or commercial in genre...
. The two main types of work song in England are agricultural work songs, usually are rhythmic a cappella
A cappella
A cappella music is specifically solo or group singing without instrumental sound, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. It is the opposite of cantata, which is accompanied singing. A cappella was originally intended to differentiate between Renaissance polyphony and Baroque concertato...
song
Song
In music, a song is a composition for voice or voices, performed by singing.A song may be accompanied by musical instruments, or it may be unaccompanied, as in the case of a cappella songs...
s sung by people working on a physical and often repetitive task, like the 'Harvest song' common in south-west England. The songs were probably intended to increase productivity while reducing feelings of boredom. Rhythms of work songs can serve to synchronize physical movement in a group or gang. Industrial folk song emerged in Britain in the 18th century, as workers took the music with which they were familiar, including ballads and agricultural work songs, and adapted them to their new experiences and circumstances. Unlike agricultural work songs, it was often unnecessary to use music to synchronise actions between workers, as the pace would be increasingly determined by water, steam, chemical and eventually electric power, and frequently impossible because of the noise of early industry. As a result, industrial folk songs tended to be descriptive of work, circumstances, or political in nature, making them amongst the earliest protest songs and were sung between work shifts or in leisure hours, rather than during work. This pattern can be seen in textile production
Textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution
The industrial revolution changed the nature of work and society. Opinion varies as to the exact date, but it is estimated that the First Industrial Revolution took place between 1750 and 1850, and the second phase or Second Industrial Revolution between 1860 and 1900. The three key drivers in...
, mining and eventually steel, shipbuilding, rail working and other industries.
East Anglia
Despite enjoying relative geographical uniformity and history East AngliaEast Anglia
East Anglia is a traditional name for a region of eastern England, named after an ancient Anglo-Saxon kingdom, the Kingdom of the East Angles. The Angles took their name from their homeland Angeln, in northern Germany. East Anglia initially consisted of Norfolk and Suffolk, but upon the marriage of...
is often seen as the region of England with the weakest attachment to regional identity, at least outside of the historical kingdom of East Anglia. Like many regions of England there are few distinctive local instruments and many songs were shared with the rest of Britain and with Ireland, although the distinct dialects of the regions sometimes lent them a particular stamp and, with one of the longest coastlines of any English region, songs about the sea were also particularly important. Along with the West Country, this was one of the regions that most firmly adopted reed instruments, producing many eminent practitioners of the melodeon from the mid-19th century. Also like the West Country it is one of the few regions where there is still an active tradition of step dancing and like the Midlands the tradition of Molly dance
Molly dance
Molly dancing is a form of English Morris dance, traditionally done by out of work ploughboys in midwinter in the 19th century.-History:Molly dancing has been recorded in many parts of the English Midlands and East Anglia. It died out finally in the 1930s, the last dancers seen dancing in Little...
died out in the 1930s. The region was relatively neglected by folk song collectors of the first revival. Lucy Broadwood and Cecil Sharp collected in Cambridgeshire, as did and Vaughan Williams as well as in Norfolk and Essex from 1905, but most important regional figure was composer Ernest John Moeran
Ernest John Moeran
Ernest John Moeran was an English composer who had strong associations with Ireland .-Early life:...
, who collected over 150 songs in Norfolk and Suffolk in the 1920s. The second folk revival led to the discovery of many East Anglian folk musicians, including Suffolk melodeon player Oscar Woods, Norfolk singers Sam Larner (1878–1965), Harry Cox
Harry Cox
Harry Fred Cox , was a Norfolk farmworker and one of the most important singers of traditional English music of the twentieth century, on account of his large repertoire and fine singing style....
(1885–1971) and Walter Pardon (1914–96); Suffolk fiddler Harkie Nesling (1890–1978); Suffolk singer and bargeman Bob Roberts
Bob Roberts
Bob Roberts is a 1992 film written and directed by Tim Robbins. It is a satirical mockumentary, chronicling the rise of Bob Roberts, a conservative politician who is a candidate for an upcoming United States Senate election...
(1907–82), many of whom recorded for Topic Records
Topic Records
Topic Records is a British folk music label, which played a major role in the second British folk revival. It began as an offshoot of the Workers' Music Association in 1939, making it the oldest independent record label in the world.-History:...
. Perhaps the most influential folk dance musical album was English Country Dance Music (1965), put together by Reg Hall and Bob Davenport with largely Norfolk musicians, it was the first instrumental recording of folk instruments. Also from Norfolk was Peter Bellamy
Peter Bellamy
Peter Franklyn Bellamy was an English folk singer. He was a founding member of The Young Tradition but also had a long solo career, recording numerous albums and touring folk clubs and concert halls...
, who in solo projects, with the Young Tradition and in theatrical productions was probably one of the most influential musicians of the post revival period. The Norfolk melodeon player and singer Tony Hall has given the tradition a unique style. East Anglia made a contribution to the electric folk scene of the 1970s, producing the short-lived, but more recently reformed, bands Midwinter and Stone Angel, based in Great Yarmouth
Great Yarmouth
Great Yarmouth, often known to locals as Yarmouth, is a coastal town in Norfolk, England. It is at the mouth of the River Yare, east of Norwich.It has been a seaside resort since 1760, and is the gateway from the Norfolk Broads to the sea...
and the more successful Spriguns of Tolgus
Spriguns of Tolgus
Spriguns of Tolgus was an electric folk group formed in 1972. They managed to obtain a record deal with a major label and the attention of some most significant figures in the folk rock world. They produced four albums with growing originality and recognition, but were unable to attain mainstream...
from Cambridge, who produced four albums. The most successful folk artists from the region in recent years are probably the Essex born Billy Bragg
Billy Bragg
Stephen William Bragg , better known as Billy Bragg, is an English alternative rock musician and left-wing activist. His music blends elements of folk music, punk rock and protest songs, and his lyrics mostly deal with political or romantic themes...
and the Norfolk born Beth Orton
Beth Orton
Beth Orton is a BRIT Award–winning English singer-songwriter, known for her 'folktronica' sound, which mixes elements of folk and electronica. She was initially recognised for her collaborations with William Orbit and the Chemical Brothers in the mid 1990s. However, these were not Orton's first...
. The region is home to numerous folk clubs and hosts many folk festivals, including Steeleye Span’s Spanfest at Kentwell Hall
Kentwell Hall
Kentwell Hall is a stately home in Long Melford, Suffolk, England. It includes the hall, outbuildings, and a rare breeds farm and gardens. Most of the current building facade dates from the mid 16th century, but the origins of Kentwell are much earlier, with references in the Domesday Book of...
, Suffolk and the Cambridge Folk Festival
Cambridge Folk Festival
The Cambridge Folk Festival is an annual music festival held on the site of Cherry Hinton Hall in Cherry Hinton, one of the villages subsumed by the city of Cambridge, England. The festival is renowned for its eclectic mix of music and a wide definition of what might be considered folk. It occurs...
, generally seen as the most prestigious in the calendar. Since 2000 the East Anglian Traditional Music Trust has been promoting folk music in the region, organising a ‘Traditional Music Day’ every year in August.
The Midlands
Due to its lack of clear boundaries and a perceived lack of identity in its folk music, the English MidlandsEnglish Midlands
The Midlands, or the English Midlands, is the traditional name for the area comprising central England that broadly corresponds to the early medieval Kingdom of Mercia. It borders Southern England, Northern England, East Anglia and Wales. Its largest city is Birmingham, and it was an important...
attracted relatively little interest in the early revivals. However in more recent years a distinct cultural heritage has been recognised including unique folk traditions and songs, many associated with the regions industrial connections. It has also produced a number of important performers and some particular local instruments, such as the Lincolnshire bagpipes
Bagpipes
Bagpipes are a class of musical instrument, aerophones, using enclosed reeds fed from a constant reservoir of air in the form of a bag. Though the Scottish Great Highland Bagpipe and Irish uilleann pipes have the greatest international visibility, bagpipes of many different types come from...
, however the last player, John Hunsley, died in the 19th century and no actual examples of the pipes have survived. From the 19th century the instruments used appear to have been much like those in other regions, with fiddles, accordions and eventually silver and brass. Although, some traditions, like Molly dance
Molly dance
Molly dancing is a form of English Morris dance, traditionally done by out of work ploughboys in midwinter in the 19th century.-History:Molly dancing has been recorded in many parts of the English Midlands and East Anglia. It died out finally in the 1930s, the last dancers seen dancing in Little...
died out in the 1930s, the Midlands retained strong traditions of both ceremonial and social dance, particularly in the south Midlands and Cotswolds
Cotswolds
The Cotswolds are a range of hills in west-central England, sometimes called the Heart of England, an area across and long. The area has been designated as the Cotswold Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty...
and in the distinctive Border Morris
Border Morris
The term Border Morris refers to a collection of individual local dances from villages along the English side of the Wales-England border in the counties of Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Shropshire. They are part of the Morris dance tradition.- History :...
from Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Shropshire. The region also furnished some important material for folk songs, including a claim by Nottinghamshire for one of the most popular series of ballads, that of Robin Hood
Robin Hood
Robin Hood was a heroic outlaw in English folklore. A highly skilled archer and swordsman, he is known for "robbing from the rich and giving to the poor", assisted by a group of fellow outlaws known as his "Merry Men". Traditionally, Robin Hood and his men are depicted wearing Lincoln green clothes....
, while local places appear in songs such as ‘The Leicester Chambermaid’ and ‘Oxford’ or ‘Worcester City’. Folk song collecting in the first revival was much less comprehensive than for many other regions. In the 1860s Llewellynn Jewitt, collected songs from Derbyshire, and some songs were printed by Georgina F. Jackson in her study of Shropshire folk lore. Cecil Sharp’s interest in the region was largely confined to the south, particularly the Cotswold
Cotswold
The Cotswolds are a range of hills in central England that give their name to:*Cotswold *Cotswold *Cotswold Chase, a horse race*Cotswold Games, annual games in Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire...
morris villages of Oxfordshire and Warwickshire, which provided him with an archetype of English ceremonial dance. From 1905 Percy Grainger was actively collecting in Lincolnshire, acquiring recordings of songs that would provide the basis for his Lincolnshire Posy
Lincolnshire Posy
Lincolnshire Posy is a piece by Percy Grainger for concert band composed in 1937 for the American Bandmasters Association. Considered Grainger's masterpiece, the work is composed of six movements, each adapted from folk songs that Grainger had collected on a 1905–1906 trip to Lincolnshire,...
(1937). It was not until the early 1970s that the broader heritage of the region, including the many industrial and work songs associated with mining or The Potteries, began to gain serious attention. Despite this neglect there was an active folk scene in the region, which produced several key artists of the second revival from the 1960s, including Anne Briggs
Anne Briggs
Anne Briggs is an English folk singer. Although she traveled widely in the 1960s and early 1970s, appearing at folk clubs and venues in England and Ireland, she never aspired to commercial success or to achieve widespread public acknowledgment of her music...
from Nottinghamshire, The Settlers
The Settlers (band)
The Settlers were a folk-oriented group from the English West Midlands , who formed in the mid 1960s. They started out as a trio comprising Cindy Kent , Mike Jones and John Fyffe , but added a bassist, Mansel Davies.-Formation...
from the West Midlands
West Midlands (region)
The West Midlands is an official region of England, covering the western half of the area traditionally known as the Midlands. It contains the second most populous British city, Birmingham, and the larger West Midlands conurbation, which includes the city of Wolverhampton and large towns of Dudley,...
and from Birmingham one of the most influential groups of the period, the Ian Campbell Folk Group, which numbered among its members later electric folk musicians Dave Swarbrick
Dave Swarbrick
Dave Swarbrick is an English folk musician and singer-songwriter. He has been described by Ashley Hutchings as 'the most influential [British] fiddle player bar none' and his style has been copied or developed by almost every British, and many World folk violin players that have followed him...
and Dave Pegg
Dave Pegg
Dave Pegg is an English multi-instrumentalist and record producer, arguably most visible as a bass guitarist. He is the longest-serving member of the pre-eminent electric folk band Fairport Convention and has been bassist with a number of important folk and rock groups including The Ian Campbell...
. Slightly later a number of folk groups came out of Derbyshire, including The Druids, Ram's Bottom Band and Muckram Wakes
Muckram Wakes
Muckram Wakes was a folk band from the north-west midlands of England.The original line up of Muckram Wakes was Roger and Helen Watson and John Tams. Their album Map of Derbyshire, on Trailer Records, contributed greatly to the promotion of folk music from that county...
, which included one of the most highly regarded modern performers John Tams
John Tams
John Tams is an English actor, singer, songwriter, composer and musician.- Folk musician :John Tams was a member of Derbyshire folk group Muckram Wakes in the 1970s, then worked with Ashley Hutchings as singer and melodeon-player on albums including Son of Morris On, and as a member of the...
. Lincolnshire has produced Martin Simpson
Martin Simpson
Martin Simpson is an English folk singer, guitarist and songwriter. His music reflects a wide variety of influences and styles, rooted in the British Isles, America and beyond.-Biography:...
, perhaps the most highly regarded folk guitarist of his generation. Birmingham’s position as a centre for folk music has been emphasised by its place as the home of the Birmingham Conservatoire Folk Ensemble, led by former Albion Band fiddler Joe Broughton, which provides something of a clearing house of promising young folk musicians. The regions has numerous folk clubs and host many major folk festivals, including those of Gainsborough, Lincolnshire
Gainsborough, Lincolnshire
Gainsborough is a town 15 miles north-west of Lincoln on the River Trent within the West Lindsey district of Lincolnshire, England. At one time it served as an important port with trade downstream to Hull, and was the most inland in England, being more than 55 miles from the North...
, Loughborough
Loughborough
Loughborough is a town within the Charnwood borough of Leicestershire, England. It is the seat of Charnwood Borough Council and is home to Loughborough University...
in Leicestershire, Shrewsbury
Shrewsbury
Shrewsbury is the county town of Shropshire, in the West Midlands region of England. Lying on the River Severn, it is a civil parish home to some 70,000 inhabitants, and is the primary settlement and headquarters of Shropshire Council...
in Shropshire, Warwick
Warwick
Warwick is the county town of Warwickshire, England. The town lies upon the River Avon, south of Coventry and just west of Leamington Spa and Whitnash with which it is conjoined. As of the 2001 United Kingdom census, it had a population of 23,350...
and Moseley.
The North West
Although relatively neglected in the first folk revival North West EnglandNorth West England
North West England, informally known as The North West, is one of the nine official regions of England.North West England had a 2006 estimated population of 6,853,201 the third most populated region after London and the South East...
had a rich tradition of balladry stretching back at least to the 17th century and sharing in the tradition of Border ballads, including perhaps the finest ‘The Ballad of Chevy Chase
The Ballad of Chevy Chase
There are two extant English ballads known as The Ballad of Chevy Chase, both of which narrate the same story. As ballads existed within oral tradition before being written down, other versions of this once popular song may also have existed....
', thought to have been composed by the Lancashire born minstrel Richard Sheale. Lancashire in particular was a common location for folk songs, including ‘The Lancashire Miller’, ‘Warrington Ale’ and ‘The soldier’s farewell to Manchester’, beside several local Wassailing
Wassailing
The tradition of Wassailing falls into two distinct categories: The House-Visiting wassail and the Orchard-Visiting wassail. House-Visiting wassail, very much similar to caroling, is the practice of people going door-to-door singing Christmas carols...
songs. With a variety of dialects and acting as something of a crossroads for the cultures and immigrants of England, Scotland and Ireland, there is a distinctive local character to folk music, which expressed itself in local enthusiasm that emerged as a major factor within the wider folk movement in the second revival. The key event in the history of folk music in the counties of the north west of England was the Industrial Revolution, which divided the region economically and culturally into a northern, often highland and pastoral region, in Westmorland and Cumberland and a more urbanised and industrialised southern zone with large and growing conurbations like Manchester and Liverpool, where changing social and economic patterns emerged in new traditions and styles of folk song, often linked to migration and patterns of work, these included processional dances, often associated with rushbearing and the Wakes Week
Wakes week
The wakes week is a holiday period in parts of England and Scotland.- History :Wakes were originally religious festivals that commemorated church dedications...
festivities and types of step dance
Step dance
Step dance is the generic term for dance styles where the footwork is the most important part of the dance. Body and arm movements and styling are either restricted or considered irrelevant.Step dance is one end of a spectrum of dance styles...
, most famously clog dancing. These were very different from the styles of dance that collectors like Cecil Sharp had encountered in the Cotswolds and were largely dismissed by him as contaminated by urbanisation, yet they were, and remain, a thriving tradition of music and dance. A local pioneer of folk song collection in the first half of the 19th century in Lancashire was Shakespearian scholar James Orchard Halliwell, and he was followed a little later by John Harland, William E. Axon, Thomas T. Wilkinson and Sidney Gilpin, who performed a similar service for Cumberland. Most of these works, although important in unearthing, and in some cases preserving, locally relevant ballads, largely depended on manuscript sources, rather than oral collection and often did not give tunes, but only lyrics. It was not until the second folk revival that the full range of song from the region began to gain attention. The region not only produced one of the major figures of the revival in Ewan MacColl but also a local champion in Harry Boardman
Harry Boardman
Harry Boardman was a folk singer who was born in Failsworth, Lancashire.-Discography:*Owdham Edge, Topic Records *A Lancashire Mon, Topic Records *Golden Stream, AK Records *Personal Selection...
, who from 1965 onwards probably did more than anyone to popularise and record the industrial folk song of the region, in several albums and books. The region produced no significant bands in the electric folk movement of the 1970s but can claim one of the most significant figures, as Maddy Prior was brought up in Blackpool. However, perhaps the most influential folk artists to emerge from the region in this period were folk troubadour Roy Harper
Roy Harper
Roy Harper is an English folk / rock singer-songwriter and guitarist who has been a professional musician since the mid 1960s...
and comedian and broadcaster Mike Harding
Mike Harding
Mike Harding is an English singer, songwriter, comedian, author, poet and broadcaster. He is known as 'The Rochdale Cowboy' after one of his hit records...
. More recently it has produced some significant performers including guitarist Ken Nicol and mother and daughter singer songwriters Chris
Chris While
Chris While is an award-winning songwriter, singer and musician, known particularly for her powerful and moving vocals and the quality of her compositions and live performances. She has enjoyed success both as a solo artist, a songwriter and as a member of a number of notable and influential...
and Kellie While
Kellie While
Kellie While is a British singer-songwriter considered to have one of the outstanding voices of her generation. She has been a member of some of the most influential and innovative British folk groups of her era, is a much sought after contributor to the work of major artists and has emerged in...
. The region is home to numerous folk clubs, many of them catering to Irish and Scots folk. Folk festivals include the Fylde Folk Festival at Fleetwood
Fleetwood
Fleetwood is a town within the Wyre district of Lancashire, England, lying at the northwest corner of the Fylde. It had a population of 26,840 people at the 2001 Census. It forms part of the Greater Blackpool conurbation. The town was the first planned community of the Victorian era...
in Lancashire.
Northumbria
.jpg)
Northumbria
Northumbria was a medieval kingdom of the Angles, in what is now Northern England and South-East Scotland, becoming subsequently an earldom in a united Anglo-Saxon kingdom of England. The name reflects the approximate southern limit to the kingdom's territory, the Humber Estuary.Northumbria was...
possesses a distinctive style of folk music with a flourishing and continuing tradition. The region is particularly noted for the unique Northumbrian smallpipes
Northumbrian smallpipes
The Northumbrian smallpipes are bellows-blown bagpipes from the North East of England.In a survey of the bagpipes in the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford University, the organologist Anthony Baines wrote: It is perhaps the most civilized of the bagpipes, making no attempt to go farther than the...
and strong fiddle
Fiddle
The term fiddle may refer to any bowed string musical instrument, most often the violin. It is also a colloquial term for the instrument used by players in all genres, including classical music...
tradition that was already well-established in the 1690s. Northumbrian music is characterised by considerable influence from other regions, particularly southern Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
, other parts of the north of England and Ireland
Music of Ireland
Irish Music is the generic term for music that has been created in various genres on the island of Ireland.The indigenous music of the island is termed Irish traditional music. It has remained vibrant through the 20th, and into the 21st century, despite globalizing cultural forces...
. Local tunes were collected from the mid-18th century by figures including Henry Atkinson and William Vickers and in the first revival by John Bell, Bruce. J. Collingwood and John Stokoe. The Northumbrian Small Pipes Society was founded in Newcastle in 1893 and the Northumbrian Pipers' Society in 1928, and they are generally credited with keeping the distinctive tradition alive. Border ballads were a major part of those collected by Francis James Child
Francis James Child
Francis James Child was an American scholar, educator, and folklorist, best known today for his collection of folk songs known as the Child Ballads. Child was Boylston professor of rhetoric and oratory at Harvard University, where he produced influential editions of English poetry...
and make up most of the sixth volume of his ten volume collection of The English and Scottish Popular Ballads
Child Ballads
The Child Ballads are a collection of 305 ballads from England and Scotland, and their American variants, collected by Francis James Child in the late nineteenth century...
(1882–98). The second folk revival saw a number of acts drawing on this work, and enjoying some success. Probably the most influential piper at that time was Billy Pigg
Billy Pigg
Billy Pigg was an English player of Northumbrian smallpipes. He was a Vice-President and an influential member of the Northumbrian Pipers Society from 1930 until his death.-Life and music:...
. Performers such Louis Killen, The High Level Ranters
High Level Ranters
The High Level Ranters are a Northumbian traditional musical group founded in 1964, best known for being one of the first bands in the revival of the Northumbrian smallpipes....
and Bob Davenport brought Northumbrian folk to national and international audiences. The 1970s saw folk rock bands like Lindisfarne
Lindisfarne (band)
Lindisfarne were a British folk/rock group from Newcastle upon Tyne established in 1970 and fronted by singer/songwriter Alan Hull. Their music combined a strong sense of yearning with an even stronger sense of fun...
, and the more traditionally focused Jack the Lad
Jack The Lad
Jack the Lad was a folk rock or electric folk group from North East England formed in 1973 by three former members of the most successful band of the period from the region Lindisfarne. They moved from the progressive folk rock of Lindisfarne into much more traditional territory and were in the...
and Hedgehog Pie
Hedgehog Pie
Hedgehog Pie were an electric folk group from the north-east of England, formed in 1971. Despite frequent line-up changes, they build up a considerable regional and national following and produced three highly regarded albums...
. More recently, Northumbrian folk music, and particularly the use of the Northumbrian pipes, has become one of the liveliest and most widely known subgenres of folk music in Britain., with artists like fiddler Nancy Kerr
Nancy Kerr
Nancy Kerr is an English folk musician, specialising in the fiddle and singing. She is the daughter of London-born singer-songwriter Sandra Kerr and Northumbrian piper Ron Elliott....
, piper Kathryn Tickell
Kathryn Tickell
Kathryn Tickell is an English player of the Northumbrian smallpipes and fiddle. She has recorded over a dozen albums, and toured widely.-Life and career:...
and Rachel Unthank and the Winterset
Rachel Unthank and the Winterset
The Unthanks are an English folk group from Northumberland, known for their eclectic approach in combining traditional English folk with other musical genres.-Rachel Unthank and the Winterset:...
gaining international reputations. Currently the region has over thirty active folk clubs and hosts several major folk festivals, including the Traditional Music Festival at Rothbury
Rothbury
Rothbury is a town and civil parish in Northumberland, England. It is located on the River Coquet, northwest of Morpeth and north-northwest of Newcastle upon Tyne...
.
The South East
Even excluding Sussex and London, South-east England has been one of the key areas of English folk music and collection. It had retained a strong tradition of wassailing, and sea faring songs were important in the coastal counties of Kent and Hampshire. Arguably the published collection of oral material was made in this area by John Broadwood, as Old English Songs, As Now Sung by the Peasantry of the Weald of Surrey and Sussex (1843). When the first revival was at its height in the first decade of the 20th century, George Gardiner and Alice Gillington both collected songs in Hampshire, Lucy Broadwood in Surrey, Hampshire and Oxfordshire, Alfred WilliamsAlfred Williams
Alfred Williams is a former American football player. He was a linebacker and defensive end for the Cincinnati Bengals, San Francisco 49ers and the Denver Broncos. He finished his career with the New Orleans Saints.-College:...
in Oxfordshire and Berkshire and Cecil Sharp in Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, and Kent. In the second folk revival the region contributed several figures, with probably the most important being Martin Carthy from Hertfordshire. The most significant electric folk group from the region were the Oyster Band, formed in Canterbury, while guitarist John Martyn came from Surrey and fiddle player Chris Leslie from Banbury in Oxfordshire. From the current crop of young folk musicians probably the most prominent are Spiers and Boden
Spiers and Boden
Spiers and Boden are an English folk duo. John Spiers plays melodeon and concertina, while Jon Boden sings and plays fiddle and guitar while stamping the rhythm on a stomp box.-Biography:...
from Oxfordshire and Chris Wood
Chris Wood (folk musician)
Chris Wood is an English folk musician and composer who plays fiddle, viola and guitar, and sings. He is an ardent enthusiast for traditional English dance music , including Morris and other rituals and ceremonies, but his repertoire also includes much French folk music and traditional Québécois...
, born in Kent. The region is host to numerous folk clubs, and festivals, including the Oxford festival and Fairport’s Cropredy Convention in Oxfordshire and St Albans in Hertfordshire.
London
Despite being the centre of both folk revivals and the electric folk movement, the songs of LondonLondon
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
were largely neglected in favour of regional and rural music until relatively recently. London, unsurprisingly, was the most common location mentioned in English folk songs, including ‘London is a Fine Town’, and the ‘London Prentice’ and it was the centre of the broadside publishing industry. From the 17th century to the 19th, street singers were characteristic of London life, often selling printed versions of the songs they sung. The capital was home to the Folk-Song Society and the English Folk Dance Society from the late 19th century, but the most distinctive genre of London music, its many street cries
Street cries
Street cries are the short lyrical calls of merchants hawking their products and services in open-air markets. The custom of hawking led many vendors to create custom melodic phrases...
, were not considered folk music by mainstream collectors and were recorded and published by figures such as Andrew White in Old London Street Cries ; and, The Cries of To-day (1885). Both Ewan MacColl and A. L. Lloyd gravitated to London in the 1950s, it was the base of Topic Records and it was there that the first folk clubs were formed before they spread out across the country. It was also the home of folk musicians like Ashley Hutchings, Richard Thompson and Simon Nicol who formed Fairport Convention, and many artists, like Bert Jansch and Davy Graham, moved there in order to be able to pursue their careers or for the greater networks and opportunities the capital allowed. More recent performers of folk music include Noah and the Whale
Noah and the Whale
Noah and the Whale are an English indie folk band from Twickenham, London, England formed in 2006. The band consists of Charlie Fink , Tom Hobden , Matt "Urby Whale" Owens , Fred Abbott , and Michael Petulla .-Early years and Peaceful, the World Lays Me Down...
, Emma Lee Moss, Mumford and Sons and The Border Surrender
The Border Surrender
The Border Surrender are an English rock band based in North London. The band members are Keith Austin , Simon Shields , Johnny Manning and Mark Austin...
.
Sussex
SussexSussex
Sussex , from the Old English Sūþsēaxe , is an historic county in South East England corresponding roughly in area to the ancient Kingdom of Sussex. It is bounded on the north by Surrey, east by Kent, south by the English Channel, and west by Hampshire, and is divided for local government into West...
has had an impact on the history of English folk music disproportionate to its size. This was due to a flourishing tradition of folk dance
Folk dance
The term folk dance describes dances that share some or all of the following attributes:*They are dances performed at social functions by people with little or no professional training, often to traditional music or music based on traditional music....
, mummers plays and folk song, but also in part because of the rural nature of the county in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and yet its relatively close proximity to London. It was thus a rich and convenient place for the for collectors of the first folk song revival, including Kate Lee
Kate Lee
Kate Lee, born Catharine Anna Spooner, was a singer and folksong collector.She was born in Rufford, Nottinghamshire, the daughter of Lucius and Margaret Spooner; her cousins included William Archibald Spooner, who gave his name to the "spoonerism".She entered the Royal Academy of Music in January...
, Lucy Broadwood
Lucy Broadwood
Lucy Etheldred Broadwood was principally an English folksong collector and researcher during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As one of the founder members of the Folk-Song Society and Editor of the Folk Song Journal, she was one of the main influences of the English folk revival of that...
and W. P. Merrick. Sussex material was used by the composers of the English pastoral school, for example in Percy Grainger
Percy Grainger
George Percy Aldridge Grainger , known as Percy Grainger, was an Australian-born composer, arranger and pianist. In the course of a long and innovative career he played a prominent role in the revival of interest in British folk music in the early years of the 20th century. He also made many...
’s arrangement of the ‘The Sussex Mummers' Christmas Carol’, Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams OM was an English composer of symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film scores. He was also a collector of English folk music and song: this activity both influenced his editorial approach to the English Hymnal, beginning in 1904, in which he included many...
' use of the tune ‘Monk's Gate
Monk's Gate
Monk's Gate is a hamlet in the Horsham District of West Sussex, England. It lies on the A281 road 2.6 miles southeast of Horsham.-Hymn tune:...
’ as a setting for John Bunyan
John Bunyan
John Bunyan was an English Christian writer and preacher, famous for writing The Pilgrim's Progress. Though he was a Reformed Baptist, in the Church of England he is remembered with a Lesser Festival on 30 August, and on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church on 29 August.-Life:In 1628,...
’s ‘To be a Pilgrim
To be a Pilgrim
"To be a Pilgrim" "To be a Pilgrim" "To be a Pilgrim" (also commonly known as "He who would Valiant be" is the only hymn John Bunyan is credited with writing but is indelibly associated with him. It first appeared in Part 2 of Pilgrim's Progress, written in 1684 while he was serving a twelve-year...
’ and George Butterworth
George Butterworth
George Sainton Kaye Butterworth, MC was an English composer best known for the orchestral idyll The Banks of Green Willow and his song settings of A. E...
’s arrangement of 'Folk Songs from Sussex'. Most important of the collector’s sources were the Copper Family
Copper Family
The Copper Family are a family of singers of traditional, unaccompanied English folk song. Originally from Rottingdean, near Brighton, Sussex, England, the nucleus of the family now live in the neighbouring village of Peacehaven.-History:...
of Rottingdean
Rottingdean
Rottingdean is a coastal village next to the town of Brighton and technically within the city of Brighton and Hove, in East Sussex, on the south coast of England...
, who emerged as authorities on folk song and eventually as major recording artists. Sussex folk song also had a formative impact on one of the major figures of the second revival, as it was as a child of five in Sussex that A. L. Lloyd first heard folk music. Other performers include include Scan Tester
Scan Tester
Scan Tester was an English folk and English country musician.-Overview:Lewis "Scan" Tester was born in Chelwood Gate, near Horsted Keynes, Sussex. At about the age of five he acquired the nickname "scantelope"...
, Henry Burstow
Henry Burstow
Henry Burstow was a shoemaker and bellringer from Horsham, Sussex, best known for his vast repertoire of songs, many of which were collected in the folksong revival of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries...
and the sisters Dolly
Dolly Collins
Dorothy Ann Collins, known as Dolly Collins , was an English folk musician, arranger and composer. She was the older sister of Shirley Collins....
and Shirley Collins
Shirley Collins
Shirley Elizabeth Collins MBE is a British folksinger who was a significant contributor to the English Folk Revival of the 1960s and 1970s...
. Sussex songs were also the foundation of the repertoire of the influential Young Tradition. The county has over twenty folk clubs and other venues hosting folk music by organisations such as Acoustic Sussex. There are also annual folk music festivals at Eastbourne
Eastbourne
Eastbourne is a large town and borough in East Sussex, on the south coast of England between Brighton and Hastings. The town is situated at the eastern end of the chalk South Downs alongside the high cliff at Beachy Head...
, Crawley
Crawley
Crawley is a town and local government district with Borough status in West Sussex, England. It is south of Charing Cross, north of Brighton and Hove, and northeast of the county town of Chichester, covers an area of and had a population of 99,744 at the time of the 2001 Census.The area has...
and Lewes
Lewes
Lewes is the county town of East Sussex, England and historically of all of Sussex. It is a civil parish and is the centre of the Lewes local government district. The settlement has a history as a bridging point and as a market town, and today as a communications hub and tourist-oriented town...
.
Cornwall
Cornwall
Cornwall is a unitary authority and ceremonial county of England, within the United Kingdom. It is bordered to the north and west by the Celtic Sea, to the south by the English Channel, and to the east by the county of Devon, over the River Tamar. Cornwall has a population of , and covers an area of...
is often noted for its similarity to that of Brittany
Music of Brittany
Since the early 1970s, Brittany has experienced a tremendous revival of its folk music. Along with flourishing traditional forms such as the bombard-binou pair and fest-noz ensembles incorporating other additional instruments, it has also branched out into numerous sub-genres...
and, as a result of the close physical and cultural ties between the two peninsulas, some older songs and carols share the same root as Breton
Breton people
The Bretons are an ethnic group located in the region of Brittany in France. They trace much of their heritage to groups of Brythonic speakers who emigrated from southwestern Great Britain in waves from the 3rd to 6th century into the Armorican peninsula, subsequently named Brittany after them.The...
tunes. From the late Middle Ages the fiddle
Fiddle
The term fiddle may refer to any bowed string musical instrument, most often the violin. It is also a colloquial term for the instrument used by players in all genres, including classical music...
(crowd in Cornish), bombarde (horn-pipe), bagpipes
Bagpipes
Bagpipes are a class of musical instrument, aerophones, using enclosed reeds fed from a constant reservoir of air in the form of a bag. Though the Scottish Great Highland Bagpipe and Irish uilleann pipes have the greatest international visibility, bagpipes of many different types come from...
and harp
Harp
The harp is a multi-stringed instrument which has the plane of its strings positioned perpendicularly to the soundboard. Organologically, it is in the general category of chordophones and has its own sub category . All harps have a neck, resonator and strings...
all seem to have been used in music. The Cornish bagpipes
Cornish bagpipes
Cornish bagpipes are the forms of bagpipe once common in Cornwall. Bagpipes and pipes are mentioned in Cornish documentary sources from c.1150 to 1830 and bagpipes are present in Cornish iconography from the 15th and 16th centuries....
died out, as elsewhere in southern England, in the 16th century, but have recently been re-created. From the mid-19th century accordion
Accordion
The accordion is a box-shaped musical instrument of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone family, sometimes referred to as a squeezebox. A person who plays the accordion is called an accordionist....
s became progressively more popular as a folk instrument in the county, as in the rest of the West Country. There is long and varied history of Cornish dance
Cornish dance
Cornish dance originates from Cornwall in the British Isles. It has largely been shaped by the Cornish people and the industries they worked in. In most cases, particularly with the step dancing, the dances were still being performed across the region when they were collected...
from the medieval period, with records of strong traditions of morris dancing, mumming, guising, and social dance
Social dance
Social dance is a major category or classification of danceforms or dance styles, where sociability and socializing are the primary focuses of the dancing...
. These seem to have been interrupted by the Reformation
English Reformation
The English Reformation was the series of events in 16th-century England by which the Church of England broke away from the authority of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church....
and Civil War
English Civil War
The English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists...
and Commonwealth in the 16th and 17th centuries. However, there was revival from the late 18th century and seasonal and community festivals, mumming and guising
Guise Dancing
Guise dancing is a folk practice celebrated between Christmas Day and Twelfth Night in Cornwall, UK...
all flourished. In the 19th century a strong tradition of nonconformity and temperance may also have affected dancing and music adversely and encouraged choral and brass band movements, while traditional tunes were used for carols. Some community events survived, such as the 'Obby 'Oss festival
'Obby 'Oss festival
Padstow, in Cornwall, UK is internationally famous for its traditional Obby 'Oss day . Held annually on May Day , which in Cornwall, largely dates back to the Celtic Beltane, the day celebrates the coming of Summer....
in Padstow
Padstow
Padstow is a town, civil parish and fishing port on the north coast of Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The town is situated on the west bank of the River Camel estuary approximately five miles northwest of Wadebridge, ten miles northwest of Bodmin and ten miles northeast of Newquay...
and the Furry Dance
Furry Dance
The Furry Dance, also known as The Flora , takes place in Helston, Cornwall, and is one of the oldest British customs still practised today...
in Helston
Helston
Helston is a town and civil parish in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It is situated at the northern end of the Lizard Peninsula approximately 12 miles east of Penzance and nine miles southwest of Falmouth. Helston is the most southerly town in the UK and is around further south than...
. Folk songs include ‘Sweet Nightingale
Sweet Nightingale
Sweet Nightingale, also known as "Down in those valleys below" is a Cornish folk song which probably dates from the seventeenth century, and is said to be a translation from the ancient Cornish tongue.-Lyrics:Sweet Nightingale'My sweetheart, come along!...
’, ‘Little Eyes
Little Eyes
Little eyes or Little Lize is a folksong popular in Cornwall but originated in America. It was written by Buford Abner of the Suwannee River Boys in the late 1940s or early 1950s...
’, and ‘Lamorna
Lamorna (folk song)
I met the other evening at the corner of the square.She had a dark and roving eye, she was a charming rover,And we rode all night, through the pale moonlight away down to Lamorna.ChorusTwas down in Albert squareI never shall forget,...
’. 'Trelawny
The Song of the Western Men
"The Song of the Western Men" was written by Robert Stephen Hawker. It is also known by the title of "Trelawny".Hawker wrote the song in 1824, telling of events that took place in 1688. When the song first appeared many thought it to be a contemporary record of events, although in fact the song...
' is often sung at sporting events and is seen by many as an unofficial anthem. Few traditional Cornish lyrics survived the decline of the language, but in some cases lyrics of common English songs became attached to older Cornish tunes. Some folk tunes have Cornish lyrics written since the language revival of the 1920s. Modern Cornish musicians include the former Cornish folk singer Brenda Wootton
Brenda Wootton
Brenda Wootton was a Cornish poetess and folk singer and was seen as an ambassador for Cornish tradition and culture in all the Celtic nations and as far away as Australia and Canada....
and the Cornish-Breton family band Anao Atao. Recently bands like Sacred Turf, Skwardya and Krena, have begun performing electric folk
Electric folk
Electric folk is the name given to the form of folk rock pioneered in England from the late 1960s, and most significant in the 1970s, which then was taken up and developed in the surrounding Celtic cultures of Brittany, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and the Isle of Man, to produce Celtic rock and its...
in the Cornish language
Cornish language
Cornish is a Brythonic Celtic language and a recognised minority language of the United Kingdom. Along with Welsh and Breton, it is directly descended from the ancient British language spoken throughout much of Britain before the English language came to dominate...
. The Cornwall Folk Festival has been held annually for more than three decades.
The rest of the West Country
West Country
The West Country is an informal term for the area of south western England roughly corresponding to the modern South West England government region. It is often defined to encompass the historic counties of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset and Somerset and the City of Bristol, while the counties of...
is much less obvious, but folk music still retains many distinctive local characteristics. As in Cornwall there are very strong traditions of folk dance and mumming, the best known being the Hobby horse
Hobby horse
The term hobby horse is used, principally by folklorists, to refer to the costumed characters that feature in some traditional seasonal customs, processions and similar observances around the world. They are particularly associated with May Day celebrations, Mummers Plays and the Morris dance in...
celebrations at Minehead
Minehead
Minehead is a coastal town and civil parish in Somerset, England. It lies on the south bank of the Bristol Channel, north-west of the county town of Taunton, from the border with the county of Devon and in proximity of the Exmoor National Park...
in Somerset. The maritime heritage of Devon made sea shanties, hornpipes and naval or sea ballads important parts of regional folk music. From the 19th century accordions have been a popular and accepted part of the local folk sound. Folk songs from the West Country include ‘Widdecombe Fair’, ‘Spanish Ladies
Spanish Ladies
Spanish Ladies is a traditional English naval song, describing a voyage from Spain to the Downs from the viewpoint of ratings of the British Royal Navy.- Origins :...
’ and ‘The Seeds of Love.’ The region was important in the first folk revival, as the Devon-born antiquarian
Antiquarian
An antiquarian or antiquary is an aficionado or student of antiquities or things of the past. More specifically, the term is used for those who study history with particular attention to ancient objects of art or science, archaeological and historic sites, or historic archives and manuscripts...
Sabine Baring-Gould
Sabine Baring-Gould
The Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould was an English hagiographer, antiquarian, novelist and eclectic scholar. His bibliography consists of more than 1240 publications, though this list continues to grow. His family home, Lew Trenchard Manor near Okehampton, Devon, has been preserved as he had it...
invested effort in collecting regional music, published as Songs and Ballads of the West (1889–91), the first collection published for the mass market. He later collaborated with Cecil Sharp who, with Charles Marson, produced a three volume Folk-Songs from Somerset (1904–09). Other collectors included Henry and Robert Hammond in Dorset, the Reverend Geoffrey Hill in Wiltshire, Percy Grainger in Gloucestershire and, perhaps the most famous, Ralph Vaughan Williams' 'Folk Songs from Somerset
Folk Songs From Somerset
Folk Songs from Somerset is the third movement of Ralph Vaughan Williams' English Folk Song Suite. It consists of several different English folk songs that originated in Somerset-Blow Away the Morning Dew:...
', which provided themes for his English Folk Song Suite
English Folk Song Suite
Written in 1923, the English Folk Song Suite is one of English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams's most famous works for military band. Although it is commonly known by the title given above, it was actually published as "Folk Song Suite" - the title which is used on the score and parts...
. In the second folk revival the most famous West country musicians were melodeon-player Bob Cann and writer, performer and broadcaster Cyril Tawney, 'The Father of the West Country Folk Revival'. In the 1970s there were figures such as Tony Rose. The same period saw one of the most surprising hybrids in music history Scrumpy and Western
Scrumpy and Western
Scrumpy and Western refers humorously to music from England's West Country that fuses comical folk-style songs, often full of double entendre, with affectionate parodies of more mainstream musical genres, all delivered in the local accent/dialect...
with bands like the Wurzels
The Wurzels
The Wurzels are a British Scrumpy and Western band...
and The Yetties
The Yetties
The Yetties are an English folk music group and take their name from the Dorset village of Yetminster which was their childhood home. In 2007 The Yetties celebrated 40 years as a professional folk band....
, who took most of the elements of West Country folk music for comical folk-style songs with affectionate parodies of more mainstream musical genres, delivered in local West Country dialects
West Country dialects
The West Country dialects and West Country accents are generic terms applied to any of several English dialects and accents used by much of the indigenous population of South West England, the area popularly known as the West Country....
. More seriously, the West Country and particularly Devon, have produced some of the most successful folk artists of recent years, including Show of Hands
Show of Hands
Show of Hands is an English acoustic roots and folk duo comprising singer-songwriter Steve Knightley and multi-instrumentalist Phil Beer. In recent years they have been accompanied on tour and in the studio by jazz double-bassist Miranda Sykes.-Origins:...
, Mark Bazeley and Jason Rice, Paul Downes, Jim Causley
Jim Causley
Jim Causley is an English folk singer, songwriter, and musician from Whimple, East Devon, England.-Biography:Jim Causley is a folk singer and musician from Devon who specializes in the traditional songs and music of the West Country and Devon in particular...
, Seth Lakeman
Seth Lakeman
Seth Bernard Lakeman is an English folk singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist, who is most often associated with the fiddle and tenor guitar, but has also mastered the viola and banjo...
and his brothers. and Jackie Oates
Jackie Oates
Jackie Oates is an English folk singer and fiddle player. In addition to her solo work, she currently performs as part of the folk trio Wistman's Wood and sings with Morris Offspring.She was born in Congleton in Cheshire in 1983, but grew up in Staffordshire...
(who grew up in Staffordshire, although has lived in Devon for some time).The region has numerous folk clubs and annual festivals, including those at Portsmouth and the first modern English folk festival to be established at Sidmouth in Devon.
Yorkshire
YorkshireYorkshire
Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...
has a rich heritage of folk music and folk dance including the Long Sword dance
Long Sword dance
right|YorkshireThe Long Sword dance is a hilt-and-point sword dance recorded mainly in Yorkshire, England. It is related to the rapper sword dance of Northumbria, but the character is fundamentally different as it uses rigid metal or wooden swords, rather than the flexible spring steel rappers used...
. Folk songs were collected there from the 19th century but, though it probably had more attention than other northern counties, its rich heritage of industrial folk song was relatively neglected. It was not until the second revival in the 1950s that Nigel and Mary Hudleston began to attempt to redress the balance, collecting Yorkshire songs between 1958 and 1978. Yorkshire folk song lacked the unique instrumental features of folk in areas like Northumbria and was chiefly distinguished by the use of dialect, particularly in the West Riding and exemplified by the song ‘On Ilkla Moor Baht 'at’, probably written in the later 19th century and using a Kent folk tune (almost certainly borrowed via a Methodist hymnal
Hymnal
Hymnal or hymnary or hymnbook is a collection of hymns, i.e. religious songs, usually in the form of a book. The earliest hand-written hymnals are known since Middle Ages in the context of European Christianity...
), but often seen as an unofficial Yorkshire anthem. Most Yorkshire folk songs were not unique and tended to be adapted to fit local geography and dialect, as was the case with probably the most commercially successful Yorkshire song, ‘Scarborough Fair
Scarborough Fair
"Scarborough Fair" is a traditional ballad of the United Kingdom.The song tells the tale of a young man, who tells the listener to ask his former lover to perform for him a series of impossible tasks, such as making him a shirt without a seam and then washing it in a dry well, adding that if she...
’, recorded by Simon & Garfunkel, which was a version of the Scottish ballad ‘The Elfin Knight
The Elfin Knight
"The Elfin Knight" is a traditional Scottish folk ballad of which there are many versions, all dealing with supernatural occurrences, and the commission to perform impossible tasks.-Synopsis:...
’. The most famous folk performers from the county are the Watersons
The Watersons
The Watersons were an English folk group from Hull, Yorkshire. They performed mainly traditional songs with little or no accompaniment. Their distinctive sound came from their closely woven harmonies.-Career:...
from Hull
Kingston upon Hull
Kingston upon Hull , usually referred to as Hull, is a city and unitary authority area in the ceremonial county of the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It stands on the River Hull at its junction with the Humber estuary, 25 miles inland from the North Sea. Hull has a resident population of...
, who began recording Yorkshire versions of folk songs from 1965. Other Yorkshire folk musicians include Heather Wood (b. 1945) of the Young Tradition, the short-lived electric folk group Mr Fox (1970-2), The Deighton Family
The Deighton Family
The Deighton Family is a folk ensemble from Yorkshire, England. The group is led by husband and wife Dave and Josie Deighton, and the five other members are their children, Maya, Arthur, Kathleen, Rosalie, and Angelina....
, Julie Matthews
Julie Matthews
Julie Matthews is an award-winning singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and record producer. She has been a member of some of the most influential British folk duos and groups and is acknowledged internationally as a major songwriter, with her work being covered by a wide range of artists and...
, Kathryn Roberts
Kathryn Roberts
Kathryn Roberts is an English folk singer, from Barnsley, South Yorkshire.Her first released recordings were on the album Intuition, a collection of songs by various South Yorkshire folk artists which also included her friend Kate Rusby...
, and the Mercury Prize
Mercury Prize
The Mercury Prize, formerly called the Mercury Music Prize and currently known as the Barclaycard Mercury Prize for sponsorship reasons, is an annual music prize awarded for the best album from the United Kingdom and Ireland. It was established by the British Phonographic Industry and British...
nominated Kate Rusby
Kate Rusby
Kate Anna Rusby is an English folk singer and songwriter from Penistone, South Yorkshire. Sometimes known as The Barnsley Nightingale, she has headlined various British national folk festivals, and is regarded as one of the most famous English folk singers of contemporary times...
. Even considering its position as the largest county in England, Yorkshire has a flourishing folk music culture, with over forty folk clubs and thirty annual folk music festivals
Folk festival
A Folk festival celebrates traditional folk crafts and folk music.-Canada:Alberta*Calgary Folk Music Festival*Canmore Folk Music Festival*Edmonton Folk Music Festival*Jasper Folk Festival*Wild Mountain Music FestOntario*Barriefolk...
. In 2007, the Yorkshire Garland Group was formed to make Yorkshire folk songs accessible online and in schools.