Spotlight on England at Celtic Connections

After yesterday's post about the all-party folk arts group at the House of Commons, in which it was suggested that English and Welsh folk music might benefit from having its own high-profile international showcase - like Celtic Connections - I was sent this video by an English folk fan.

Have a look and see what you think. It went up on YouTube a couple of days ago and it's for something called Spotlight England, which involves England being the guest foreigners at Celtic Connections music festival in Glasgow this winter. Canada has benefited from the arrangement in the past. Just take a moment to think about that...

There is currently a long list of 24 English folk bands that has been put forward by industry experts, so the final six can be chosen next month by Celtic Connections.

Some points

* It doesn't say anywhere in the video what Spotlight England actually is and there is no mention of Celtic Connections. The video might just about work if it were shown on a screen at Celtic Connections where the context would probably be evident, but why waste public money on something that's fit only for one purpose? Just one mention of Celtic Connections would have been enough for you to get the gist. The first time I watched the video I didn't know what Spotlight England was at the end of it and had to go away and look it up.

* Its point of view appears to be "English folk is not as rubbish as it used to be 10 or 15 years ago, although we don't really know why". The tone of the talking heads is apologetic, not explanatory and you are left with the impression that they are marvelling at England's good fortune at having had Bellowhead and Laura Marling beam down from outer space and that young people have deigned to bestow their favours upon folk bands. No explanation for this is offered. Suggestion: perhaps the music's fabulous? In fact to suggest anything else in a promotional video is beside the point.

*  I've often been left breathless with excitement by English folk music. This video makes the entire enterprise seem dull.

* John Tams' name is spelled wrong.

* Where is Show of Hands on the long list of bands being considered to showcase England to the rest of the world? Are they popular enough to fill the Albert Hall several times over but not popular enough for EFDSS to include on its list of England's top 24 folk bands? How has this happened? To hear that they were unaware of the application process - which will inevitably be the case - is silly and poses more questions than it answers. It doesn't take much to pick up the phone.

* Alan Bearman appears on the list of decision makers here and yet many of the bands he represents appear on the longlist. This is a conflict of interests and undermines the integrity of the process since he stands to gain financially. It's not his fault - you would, wouldn't you? It's the fault of the organisers. And no amount of explanation that Alan Bearman was out of the room at the appropriate moment will cut the mustard, I'm afraid. When public money is being used to market an industry - as it is here - there has to be no discernible corruption. It's axiomatic.

* It's bizarre that English music does not have its own international showcase (I'm told that Wales's national Eisteddfod has an international offshoot), organised to the same professional standards as Celtic Connections. Perhaps one day it will and may summon the self-confidence to invite the Scots to participate as foreigners. I wonder how they'd react to that?

By the way, I've also heard a whisper that the folk awards will be held in Glasgow this time around. Interesting, eh?

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Bella Hardy's Cinderella tale

There is a point in most young lives at which it becomes clear that Father Christmas probably doesn't exist, the tooth fairy was your mum creeping around in the middle of the night and Prince/Princess Charming comes with baggage, ill-health and commitment issues.

Magic for grown-ups is hard to source and trickier to maintain.

So when I spoke to Bella Hardy the other day after her gig with O'Hooley and Tidow at The Old Queen's Head and she told me this story I was delighted, as it was evidence of a benign - not to say, slightly pervy - universe.

To set the tone, here's a picture of Bella's lovely shoes from the previous post. Wedges, black suede, nuff said.

For when I asked her about her best rock and roll touring story, she said: "Have you ever been to Celtic Connections in Glasgow? Two years ago I was there and I managed to lose a shoe somewhere between the venue and my hotel."

I pressed her for details about how the shoe came to be lost, thinking that the sight of a single shoe lying around in the street always poses bewildering questions. Was the owner running away from something when it fell off and is that why they didn't stop to pick it up? Where is its counterpart and what will happen to them individually now they've become separated? To my mind, a single shoe in a street is basically one long series of unanswered questions.

From the few details that were forthcoming I gather that the events of that evening are a bit hazy and will draw a veil over them. But I like to think she was wearing something more comfortable and the missing shoe fell out of her bag. Suffice it to say that she didn't realise it was gone until she started packing to leave town.

"A few weeks later I wrote a diary for fRoots magazine about the festival and mentioned it," said Hardy. "And as a result a man contacted my agent, Alan Bearman, last summer and said that he thought he'd got the shoe. We were a bit lax about fetching it from him, so it wasn't until this last year's Celtic Connections that he was able to return it. He brought it to the festival office - so they've been reunited."

I give you the shoes in question, which are a very dark blue and fit for a princess, in a picture taken by Hardy and emailed to me. How's that for a happy ending?

Walking away from The Old Queen's Head after the gig I was very grateful for the observations of David Firn, who took the pictures in the previous post as I was feeling a bit puzzled. Wasn't this all a bit pervy and weird, I asked? I mean, who in their right mind would pick up a single shoe of unknown provenance in the street, take it home and hang on to it? Moreover, what are the odds that the man in question would be a reader of fRoots magazine? Infinitessimal, I'd say - although enhanced slightly by the fact that there was a folk festival going on nearby.

But David simply asked me what kind of a shoe it was and when I explained that it had a heel and a bow, he nodded. "It sounds like a nice shoe. Why wouldn't you keep it if you found it in the street?"

All observations gratefully received.

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The BBC folk awards, raising the blood pressure of folkies everywhere

So the nominations for the BBC Radio Two folk awards 2012 were announced on Wednesday and there's already been a scrap about it.

I was especially interested in all this as I recently discovered that a good friend is a judge for them and asked him to do an interview on the subject.

While being generally helpful, my friend's main concern was that he was under the impression that he wasn't supposed to tell anyone that he was one of the judges, having signed a piece of paper seven or eight years ago when first invited to take part, agreeing not to nominate anyone with whom he has a business relationship and also not - he thought - to broadcast the fact that he's on the panel.

"I think there are somewhere between 150 and 180 of us from all over the music business: PRs, festival organisers, that kind of thing," he said, once we'd agreed that I wouldn't use his name.

"I think I probably know about 100 of them. If you go to the folk awards and look around you can make an educated guess about who they are. There are two levels: the general level and the people who are behind the major awards like the lifetime achievement award. That's up to the company - Smooth Operations", which is contracted by the BBC to produce some radio shows, including Mike Harding's, as well as the folk awards.

"I get a form asking me to nominate up to three artists in each category, from which the company takes the four most nominated for the shortlist. Then we get to vote again for the winner.

"In terms of how I make my nominations, I just keep my ears open. I buy a load of stuff and I get a load of stuff given to me during the course of the year. I suppose the thing the judges have in common is that we're in a position to find out what's out there by going to festivals and listening to music in general. In some ways I wish the list of judges was public because it might save me some of the money I spend buying CDs.

"I think there are probably a lot of women on the panel because those are the people who work in the industry. And as with any sort of award you are going to get a lot of griping by people whose taste doesn't match the judges'. Folkies have a great sense of ownership over the scene."

I wondered why my friend was not supposed to let on about being a judge? I'd think that must be counterproductive, since it makes it much harder for musicians with no real knowledge of the folk scene to get their stuff heard by people with influence. And this in turn would create a bit of a ghetto-ish vibe.

The sort of vibe that, for instance, might lead you to wonder when you compared the list of nominees with the list of this man's clients, whether there was some kind of a stitch up going on? By my reckoning there's about a 50 per cent correlation between those two lists (though interestingly it's the newcomers and the best live act nominees - the two sections with the least opportunity for middle-man input - that most noticeably buck the trend).

In a small scene there are several possible explanations for this, since causation could go either way. By this I mean that it's possible Alan Bearman is such an amazing and powerful agent that he is most folk musicians' first choice.  Or that it's such a small scene that he's the only agent some folkies have heard of when they're looking around for representation. Weirdly, though, in the three or four years since I've been writing about folk I don't think I've ever met or heard from him.

So I asked Mike Harding - the BBC's best known folk DJ and the presenter of the awards - why the names of the judges are secret? And, um, he said that they aren't. In fact, he suggested that I get in touch with BBC compliance department to get hold of the list.

It was the work of a minute to get through to Julian Grundy in compliance, who was helpfulness itself and pointed me back to Smooth Operations, who are responsible for the running of the awards. I went through to a Viv Atkinson there, who told me that Kellie While was my woman.

I've lopped the bottom off this email because it had her mobile phone number on it.

Things went a bit quiet for a day or so and in the mean time I went off to Salisbury to interview Richard Shindell. Then...

In case you can't read that last one (I can't), it says

Hi Kellie,

Some points about the status quo.

(1) If you think the judges aren't susceptible to the fact that the bigger record companies get their stuff circulated better than smaller ones (or artists with no label), I think you are mistaken. They are exactly as susceptible as everyone else. By not printing their names you make it impossible for unsigned artists and smaller bands with little marketing and PR to attract their attention at all because no one knows who they are. A list would mean they would know where to send their stuff. This keeps the playing field as uneven as it always was. I would argue more so, because big labels aren't signing anyone much these days, they're all in such trouble. The internet has flattened the market place, giving an advantage to those signed to small labels known to be folky already. This creates the cabal we've been talking about. 

(2) On the other hand, if the BBC's position is that the judges are susceptible to this kind of lobbying, I hope it wouldn't be impolite to suggest that it might consider choosing its judges more carefully.

(3) Secrecy is inherently wrong. It makes the judges feel as if they've "made it" but it's not appropriate in the present political climate (see my earlier point about MPs and journalists), let alone in a democratic country. Let alone for some folk awards run in association with the BBC, which is partly funded by the taxpayer.

(4) You can't argue that the internet has made everything available to everyone in the folk world. I've never come across a group of people less plugged in to the internet. Many of the top bands and artists aren't on Twitter, many of the PRs don't know how it works, and there's someone involved in managing both Bellowhead and Seth Lakeman who doesn't even have his phone number on his website! 

(5) There is such secrecy surrounding the folk awards that I know a judge who is convinced that he is supposed to be keeping his identity a secret - even though you say there is no such clause in the contract! 

I think it's the BBC Folk Awards's job to draw attention to the best of British folk, which means throwing itself open to all comers.  I can see that you're giving it some thought but isn't it time the awards made some concessions to the 21st century? It might also have the knock-on effect of making the outcome of the awards less predictable and making the entire scene more interesting to non-folkies. Surely the point of it is to market folk, not preach to the converted?  

Thanks
Emma

I've since put in a couple of calls asking whose decision it is not to publish the list of judges, as in "we have discussed this issue at great length", but after three days have heard nothing. I suppose my last email was a bit ranty.

If I hear anything from Smooth Operations I'll let you know.

* Read the next post about the BBC folk awards

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