New Labour Folk Music

I wrote here a week ago about Frank Turner, and what I felt was being falsified in his music; identity. I had a particular problem with his expression of Englishness, and that he was trying to be something he wasn't.

So where is the antidote to this? Traditionally, it's come from the music that is 'of the people'. This has meant 'folk' music, but could also easily encompass certain strands of country, blues, punk, hip-hop, grime, and many other genres. What I find bewildering and sad is that for the majority of those working, as I do, roughly within the 'folk' genre, politics seems to have been all but removed. The 'protest song' movement so expansive in the 1960s is lost. Duties for commenting on the effect of the policies of Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown and Cameron have been handed over to others to sing and play about.

That this has happened is a deep shame and a loss for the music that I love. I believe it has an inherent duty to agitate. It has always done this. Ballads often deal with class prejudice, albeit not explicit - the lord and the servant girl, the mistress and the maid. This music is subversive, coming as it did from those at the bottom of society. It often ridicules the upper classes, or speaks directly to social problems of the time. Take 'Hard Times of Old England' for example:

Provisions you buy at the shop it is true,
But if you've no money there's none there for you.
So what's a poor man and his family to do?
And it's O, the hard times of old England,
In old England very hard times.

This hardly needs updating for today's recession. It is truly relevant and aggressive in it's aim. It shares something with that other most famous of political folk songs, 'The Blackleg Miner':

Divvn't gan near the Seghill mine
Across the way they stretch a line
To catch the throat an break the spine
Of the dirty blackleg miner

My problem is the lack of young folk artists willing to take on this mantle, and part of this problem is that Folk music has become inherently middle class. Folk clubs, festivals, and arts centres, three places where they young folk musician will ply their trade, are hardly crucibles for reactionary opinion. It's hard enough to get work as a professional performing musician in this genre, without adding to it the possible pitfalls of saying something an audience might not like.

I should say at this stage, incidentally, that whilst this problem is not exclusively about the young, this is where it seems to manifest itself most intently. There are mainstays of the genre who will sing songs, whether subtle or explicit, about political intent. Chris Wood has written about Jean Charles De Menezes, the London 'second home in the country' crowd, and a beautiful Atheist hymn, 'Come down Jehovah'. The 'Imagined Village' have reworked 'Hard Times' into a modern anthem, and they include Martin Carthy, who many times has expressed how inherently political folk songs are. Steve Knightley writes almost Bruce Springsteen style songs about local issues - 'Country Life' and 'Arrogance, Ignorance and Greed'. But look around for artists from my generation (I'm 27) who are actively promoting and finding the politics in this music, and the search becomes much harder.

This is the generation bought up largely under New Labour, who proclaimed that class no longer existed. They were also born under the rule of Maggie Thatcher, for whom the working class were not to be helped: they were the enemy. I'd hate to believe that these successive governments have seeped into our consciousness, and somehow disconnected our belief in fighting for a cause, but sometimes it does feel like that. I'm not trying to make any secret, by the way, that most of the young musicians, singers and songwriters I'm talking about are middle class themselves, myself included. I'm certainly not trying to dress myself up as someone who came from mining stock, with an inalienable right to speak for working class communities. We don't have to all be Billy Bragg.

What we can, and should do, however, is take on those issues that are relevant, and take them to the performing stage. Tuition fees are an obvious place to start, one which a largely middle class audience will at least have some knowledge of, and one which many of us can speak about from experience. Pensions, job loss, recession - these things will affect many of us. They should be aired, debated, argued over. Audiences should sometimes get angry - sometimes a performer will have to deal with that ultimate of nerve shaking factors - someone may leave. That's OK with me. I've seen this happen, twice. Most people in the room, if the argument is held intelligently, and presented through genuinely good music and song, will appreciate what the performer is doing. If they don't like it, the artist in these venues is usually hanging around at the end anyway, and should be ready for a good natured debate about these issues.

I'm not saying that this must happen at every gig, at every show. Nor should is necessarily make up the entirety of the performance, and it must be done with humour - which is hard. Not every artist will want to do it.. But we need a balance, and audiences (some of them young, particularly at a folk festival) must be challenged at some time. I passionately don't wish folk music to turn into the music of New Labour, of the coalition: music which is 'nice' but doesn't express anything, doesn't make anyone angry, doesn't make anyone joyful. Even if the effect is negligible, we should try. As a 9 year old I remember hearing Lindisfarne sing 'Bring Down the Government' and loving it, even if I didn't know exactly what it meant. Hearing Martin Simpson sing Dylan's 'Masters of War'. We must keep this up - there is always a need, and that need could not be more important at this moment. I suppose some of this sentiment comes from a sense of jealously, as well. I don't want the genre of music in which I spent most of my time to be utterly de-politicised. I hate seeing it next to 'Easy Listening' in the racks in HMV. This should not be easy to listen to - it should be challenging - just like rap, hip-hop, and grime is. We should not aim to be all things to everyone, a New Labour folk music. Instead I want to question, revolt, and disagree, and I want that to happen on folk festival, folk club and concert stages now.

Frank Turner - A Class Act?

One of my oldest friends a few weeks ago reccomended I listen to Frank Turner. He did this on the basis that, as a folk musician and singer-songwriter, I could be compared to FT, and that I might be interested in the sound he makes. The release of his latest album, 'England Keep my Bones' last week also heightened my interest - was there an artist here writing genuinely interesting commentary on the English, saying something worth hearing to an audience to whom lyrics are not always of the utmost importance? Those who bought the album in great number and who put it at number 12 in the UK album chart are presumably also those who bought the albums around it - those by Lady Gaga, Take That, and The Cast of 'Glee'.

The review here certainly seems to think so, with the verdict that: England Keep My Bones 'oozes more heartfelt English charm and vehement, click-your-heels buoyancy than a Julie Andrews film.'

From the opening track 'Eulogy', through to 'Glory Hallelujah', it truly failed to engage with me at all. The themes - Englishness, Atheism, Work, Compatriotism, normally make me tick. These are new music search terms for me. But I could not stop thinking ' What is this England he's singing about? I don't recognize it.' Then (and before I researched Turner's background) it immediately spoke to me of a different kind of England - one which I (and I am the first to display my middle class 'roots') have never seen, and which I believe most of us never will. It is the Englishness of the sweary, shouty upper class. It is the Englishness of Eton, of Bullingdon, of the Old Boys Network. Of Cameron, of Clegg. This is possibly an album about England, but it is their England, not ours.

I should say at this point that for those that know me, this is hardly a surprising opinion. I have been known to go overboard with the introduction of the class politic into art, and my opinion of it: I once got sent to the Head at school for making some quasi-Marxist complaint about the uniform. But it bothers me somewhat that someone such as Turner, making music such as this can be given the accreditation of defining our Englishness. Turner, who was born in Winchester, attended Eton and the London School of Economics. His father is a city banker, his grandfather on the board of BHS.

This shouldn't bother me. Plenty of musicians of all genres have had similar backgrounds - some of them producing fantastic work. However, they haven't attempted to comment on a subject as Turner has here. He is not singing love songs (not in the Lennon/McCartney, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin mould, anyway), and he is talking about society, culture, and a country. This opens up his references to investigation. When I have stood in front of audiences and sang songs about war, I have been explicit in my introduction to explain the reference point for the song - I haven't been involved in a conflict, so if I am singing a song with a reference to it, I must explain why, and how I wrote it. Here Turner must do the same. When he says “Well I haven’t done what Mum and Dad had dreamed/But on the day I die I’ll say ‘at least I fucking tried’/That’s the only eulogy I need”, he must qualify: what did his Mum and Dad dream for him? The dreams of a city banker for their child may be different from those of a postman, a doctor, or a taxi driver. If they're not, the reality of accomplishing that dream is very different. He uses the language of the down at heel, of the country and western song, of the blues. But I truly believe he lacks the validity to sing of this. I'd rather he sung of his background, of his life. I'd prefer honesty in this record. He almost approaches this when he writes of love, such as in Eva Mae - 'Now Eva Mae,

I won't ever judge your heart,
Just try to be a good girl and do the best with what you got' is nice writing, but doesn't stand out above a dozen other singer-songwriters in the same mould - and there are a lot better.

In this way, I feel the album stinks of a lack of authenticity, or is at least not being truthful about what it is. In a Q&A with the YuppiePunk website (here) Turner explicitly says explicitly: ' I think underground independent punk rock is a wonderful model of independent capitalists doing their thing in an excellent way. And I’m very pro-capitalism as a system.' It's not difficult to be pro-something when you've benefited hugely from it. It's pretty easy. Besides which most punk rock that is released from independent labels is done so because the big labels won't touch anything remotely challenging. Small, independent labels exist not because of capitalism but in spite of it, as the quickest and easiest way of distributing music. Certainly not to make huge profits:- find me an independent label making huge profits and I'll eat my polo stick.

That this is opinion is not challenged bothers me from the off. (Even more so because it sounds like the kind of thing that's said to deliberately infuriate people, and to sell more records). But to dress the album and the lyrics of the album up as something which expresses an experience that more than an elite have of this nation is wrong, and also don't hold true with the two most obvious influences to this record - Folk on one hand, and Punk on the other. Both are musical traditions with their roots very much in the validity of 'ordinariness'. The music of 'the people'. Sung by Ewan MacColl, Joe Strummer, Billy Bragg, Bill Broonzy, Leadbelly, Martin Carthy, and a million more. To reference these, to stylistically locate your music in this area, and then to do something else with them is perfectly valid (and I'm all for challenging the status-quo), but please do something clever, and show us your hand. Frank, you owe a lot to these people - and I don't think you've done them any justice at all.

I should also admit my two other problems with this album: firstly, I don't think much of the writing, and secondly, don't think the music is up to much at all. His nearest cultural reference, Billy Bragg, excelled at being able to deliver an incisive, witty lyric with the most up-front, distinct, and opinion splitting voice known to music with some pretty average guitar playing because the writing was so good. FT surrounds himself with a rock/folk rock/punk band and then doesn't do much with it. It lacks the almost fall off the cliff edge of real punk music, and doesn't manage to have any sophistication either. It manages to sound both over and under produced. If Nick Clegg went into Abbey Road and produced an album, it would probably sound like this. I can hear the cries of 'let's make this one sound really cool, like we've listened to The Clash!' In the case of 'Wessex Boy' it's 'Let's put some foot stomps and hand claps on this one so it sounds like we're all having fun! Also, leave the tape rolling at the beginning so you can hear us laughing! Then we'll sound like a load of pals just having SUCH a laugh! And crack the Moet!'. Zzzzzzzzzzzzz.

This truly isn't the ranting of a folk musician who dislikes anybody 'interfering'. I despise the idea of any music as a museum piece, and would most often prefer to be in a rock club than folk club. In my mind Folk music has become depoliticized to the point where its almost embarrassing. I remember a folk festival five years ago where it took a Quebecois musician to make any kind of political comment from the stage.

Moreover, if this album wasn't pretending to exhibit 'Englishness' it wouldn't bother me at all - I just wouldn't listen to it. But I truly feel that it has pretensions to be something that it is not. Has Frank ever been to the North of England? Or does his geographical basis for this music come from South of Cambridge? Doesn't sound like it. Sorry Frank, if your album is a manifesto for England of the next generation then I'd like to fight that tooth and nail. Whilst there are jobs being lost in huge quantities, families being given food handouts in Manchester, hospitals struggling and wars being fought, forgive me if I can't rejoice in this 'vision' of Englishness, seen through the eyes of someone who cares not at all.