EVERY GENRE PROJECT - August 12 - English Folk Music

Genre of the Day - English Folk Music

Album of the Day - Hark! The Village Wait by Steeleye Span (1970)

It seems apt that I’d be served with English folk music on a day as gloomy as today. There are days when it’s crushingly hard to muster the energy to write. There are times when I don’t know why I’m holding myself to do so. Though I’m grateful for so much in my life, fulfilling this self-imposed daily duty is one of the few things I can consistently count on. I’m still a dilettante, but music writing is such a powerful act: even with lyrical music, it’s hard to express why a given stretch of music resonates so profoundly. Music’s picture becomes so much richer when we put words to sounds and bridge the gap between feeling and understanding. It’s why for comfort, I often find myself turning to my favorite pieces of music journalism: today’s read was one of the most insightful artist portraits I’ve read, titled “SZA’s Ruination Brought Her Everything.” I’m hoping a new bout with emotional ruination that clobbered my day brings me a fraction of that abundance. Like SZA, sometimes I know I have to just write it out to survive. 

Pain can prompt us to turn back the years, to a time before the muddled messes of adulthood. When thinking of English folk music, one of the best known melodies in the western world came to my mind—“Greensleeves.” I distinctly remember some digitized version, perhaps on a toy keyboard of “Greensleeves” being one of the first melodies that captured me as a child. So, gray as old England is, it floated a joyful musical memory into my mind—I have to give props. Though the melody is reminiscent of Spanish and Italian composition styles of the Renaissance, the bereft lyrics are English handiwork. It’s one of the most enduring rebuttals against the insulting “land without music” moniker leveled upon England by continental European music critics, though that name referred to its lack of renowned classical composers rather than folk’s robustness. Nonetheless, the fact remains that England didn’t become much of a renowned musical center until the rock’n’roll era, but turning to its folk past reveals valuable stories of life and love stories of life and love before the country kicked off the Industrial Revolution.

England’s folk music is as tied to dancing as many other folk genres, in jigs, rapper swords, shanties, and the morris. One of the joys of English folk music is that, even as a native English speaker, the English of yore befuddles with its jarring spellings and whimsical words. Traditionally common instruments of England centuries ago also amuse, though some like the harp and bagpipes are still familiar: the gittar (a small, portable lute predating the guitar), the shawm (a less ornate oboe), the crumhorn (an upturned pipe). Interest in traditional folk songs has long percolated among English intellectual society for centuries, bringing up the question: are traditions still alive if they’re constantly being reconstructed? What defines a tradition, then? Is it still folk music if it’s not per se living? Enough questions: classic English folk wit might suggest we get on with it.

An old English gittar.

Steeleye Span slotted their English folk revivalism in an era of early ‘70s progressive rock. Today’s album sets those contemporary musical ideas and odd time signatures against centuries-old tunes in the ever-evolving process of English culture, like a water wheel. Pressing concerns of yesteryear sometimes center on what lies beyond England, ironically: “Lowlands of Holland” and “The Dark-Eyed Sailor” both mourn a sailor who died at sea, lamenting the practice known as impressment that forced many unwitting men into navy service. Certain tunes’ English is refreshingly unburdened by English’s insistence on being understood, such as “Twa Corbies” “Mony a one for him lies slain / But nane shall ken where he is gane.” Gorgeous, counterpoint harmonies sail on “My Johnny Was a Shoemaker,” and if you didn’t already presume, Johnny was a shoemaker but is now a sailor. “Copshawholme Fair” is a back-home beacon of joy on dry, English land. The island may be gray, dense, and claustrophobic at times, but the sea swallows men whole. So if someone asks you if you’re going to Scarborough Fair, perhaps it’d be wise to say yes.