This is a really great book on British folk music throughout the 20th Century to the present day that focuses on its 60s 70s heyday. It pays particular attention to Folk music as a medium for expressing a peoples relationship with their community and landscape, a response to seminal events such as industrialisation and WWI and ultimately as a lament for a Golden Age long gone or utopian vision never fully realised. Quite a lot of areas are covered from 19th Century Arts and Crafts founder to Warp and The Caretaker.
Here is an excellent primer on the book that was featured as part of Wire magazines Salon series. Its an interview with the author Rob Young and features some great tuneage.
Here is an excellent primer on the book that was featured as part of Wire magazines Salon series. Its an interview with the author Rob Young and features some great tuneage.
the interview is great. i'll have to read the book now.
ReplyDeleteForgot to mention William Morris as he is the 19th C thinker and Arts and Crafts founder that I was referring to above.
ReplyDeletelook forward to reading this, the podcast is great some top choices of tracks there. The thing is i have a slight problem with the Hauntology thing, it's just a personal thing as it seems that someone has lumped all this music i've loved for years into one genre, i never saw the link before until i read about it, and yes i can see it now, but from a purely musical/recording sense it's a tad tenuous. But i look forward to reading this as it it might join some dots about the thinking of the time, and sure it's always good to know more about the music you like.....
ReplyDeleteanother good book on folk is Dazzling Stranger: Bert Jansch and the British Folk and Blues Revival. A Bert Jansch bio really, but half the book concentrates on the early folk revival in the UK
ReplyDeleteI agree that attempts to bracket a lot of similar stuff into one Hauntology bracket is tenuous and somewhat vague but this book and study by Rob Young does present a context for music that explores the uncanny or utopian ideal. If anything it helps to focus the definition but surely they can come up with a better neologism than Hauntology!
ReplyDeleteThis salon is also much more substantial than the hauntology one earlier in the year which came across as really pretensious probably because they struggled to set a firm context for the music.
Still its a great book.