When Roots loses its charm

I was talking to an independent film-maker called Nigel Buck (see his showreel here - warning, it may make you feel you've chosen the wrong career) earlier this week about something else when he drew my attention to this pilot, put together last year, for a documentary that never got made.

The documentary was to have been called Folk the BNP and the pilot features a brief roundup, for television commissioning editors who hadn't followed the story, of what the BNP was attempting to do on the folk scene.

Buck cut the promo for two other film-makers called Andrew Graham-Brown, who owns a production company called AGB Films, and Evie Wright, who was the moving force behind the idea. They showed it around, thinking that it could have been timely for the general election, but as is often the way in the creative industries it failed to find a taker at the time.

"We thought of it for Cutting Edge on Channel Four," said Graham-Brown. "And we heard back from them eventually. But it was one of those stories that had to be done there and then really. And the BBC looked at it but said it was quite like a Storyville they'd made about the goings-on in Barking and Dagenham."

Wright still seems committed to making something in the subject area - describing the project as "dormant but not over" as far as she's concerned. "I've got some footage of Nick Griffin talking about folk immediately after he came off stage after losing the election in Barking and Dagenham," she said.

Graham-Brown mused out loud about the relative merits of attempting to get a three-part series about folk music made, incorporating this story as one  of its elements. "Wierdly, the promo went on YouTube and it got 80,000 hits in a really short space of time - I've got no idea who was watching it. We thought that might impress the commissioning editors. But it hasn't yet." Watch this space...

This made me wonder about the song that kicked some of this hoo-hah off. I've seen Show of Hands several times this summer at festivals and a recurring theme was encores during which the audience muttered appreciatively: "They're not finished yet. They haven't done Roots." Only to find at the end that it hadn't been on the play list.

"I suppose I should sing it more," said Steve Knightley. "Everyone expects. It's just hard work committing to it vocally and morally night after night. It was starting to feel slightly charmless. It's like Arrogance Ignorance and Greed and Country Life: it demands conviction and sometimes my energy flags."

It struck me watching the promo that he must have spent a great deal of time talking about that one song, justifying it, explaining it.

"We have been playing it on occasion - we did it at the last gig. But it's been feeling as if one's forcing oneself to emote or convey anger or indignation long after the original energy of the song brought them naturally. Imagine being in a three year West End run of Look Back in Anger.

"It's nothing about the merits of the song, just the demands of the performance."

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Folk music and sexism

There's a thread on Mumsnet, which began posting a week ago, asking if folk music's sexist? Click on the link to have a look. It's produced a thoughtful discussion, full of links to songs in which women have the upper hand as well as fair few in which they don't. The question was raised because of the number of songs in which pretty fair maids are taken advantage of.

IntergalacticHussy, who started the thread, slightly spoilt her post by writing "I know virtually no one listens to this music," which made me want to invite her to one of the 250 or so annual UK folk festivals for a rethink.

However, putting that carefully to one side... Worrying that folk music might be discriminatory is a bit like blaming Elvis Presley because young people have sex with each other, or trying to ban fairy stories because wolves exist. The songs are a medium, used for entertainment, for telling stories, for passing on information. Condemning them, or wondering whether you should, is classic shoot-the-messenger behaviour.

When someone sings a song about a soldier taking advantage of a young girl and then buggering off to a war, the bad behaviour is the fictional soldier's. Obviously such things happen in real life and to a woman who's had a similar experience the song might be a comfort - oh good, I'm not the only idiot who fell for that - or to a girl about to have a similar experience it could be a cautionary tale (though I doubt even the wisdom of Chris Wood, pic above - I'm thinking Cold Haily Rainy Night - could drown out the raging hormones of a teenage girl). But in the same way that you're not responsible for the actions of someone when you overhear their crime discussed in a newsagent's queue, you're not perpetuating callous behaviour by listening to a song about it.

What I find interesting, though, is when bands return to similar material again and again, betraying their preoccupations. I first thought about it when I started blogging about folk and Show of Hands had discovered that their song Roots was being used without their permission by the BNP. This was before Folk Against Fascism started up and I love that song.

I love it because it's powerful marketing on behalf of folk music and I believe Steve Knightley knew the controversy he was courting when he wrote it: it was a reaction to something stupid said by a government minister. But I'd contend that Roots was one of many songs by that band that are about the alienation of ordinary people from their own land and the fragile bonds that tie us to our place of origin. They do a lot of emigration, exile and sailing songs.

Similarly Seth Lakeman sings straightforward stuff about girls and manly preoccupations - war, lifeboats - and Bellowhead sing about getting ripped off by prostitutes. Not all the time, obviously. And some of the time it's the prostitutes who are getting ripped off.

I guess if a band did a lot of songs about women having a hard time then one might begin to suspect them of not liking women very much because they enjoy the subject matter. But I can't think of any examples.

Why is that?

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