I have just finished reading Georgina Boyes’ award-winning book
The Imagined Village. (1993, Manchester University Press.)
It was a hard read, albeit a paperback!
My expectations of a romantic account of rural England in bygone days were utterly misplaced.
This is a well crafted and meticulously researched academic social/historical tome about the folk revival in England.
Within these pages Georgina questions the very existence of ‘folk’ in her first chapter.
Enigmatically she entitles that chapter: ‘A Name for our Ignorance’.
She describes the early years of The Folk Song Society, (founded 1898,) as a hegemony overseen and orchestrated by Cecil Sharp.
In 1911 Sharp was instrumental in founding The English Folk Dance Society, and it was not until 1932, (after CJS's death in 1924,) that the two organisations amalgamated to become The English Folk Dance and Song Society.
Key-words in the aims of these organisations were ‘preservation’ and ‘education’.
Georgina has little sympathy for Sharp.
He comes across as an arrogant dictator.
She accuses folk song/dance collectors of appropriation of heritage from those rustic people from whom they recorded their material.
Sharp near-raped country folk for his own commercial benefit.
Then CJS sanitises the lyrics and arranges the songs for piano accompaniment, to be performed during school lessons, and only publicly exhibited by trained singers dressed in evening-wear.
Moreover, CJS claims copyright!
It is clear from Georgina’s account that the folk revival was not immune from politics.
CJS is perceived as an autocrat.
Mary Neal, Sharp’s accomplice in promulgating traditional dance, seems to have been largely ignored by history. I think she was a socialist, and she had suffragette sympathies. Both seem to have been colluding in an effort to bring about a socio-cultural transformation.
Misogyny was rife, even though membership of all these societies was oestrogen-heavy.
FDS declared that morris and sword dancing were exclusively male activities.
Women could only attend social dances if they were accompanied by a man.
Then came Henry B. Gardiner. He is portrayed a fascist.
He was followed by Douglas Kennedy who had near-Nazi sympathies, and very political agenda.
Women remained problematic.
This all gets a bit scary!
Was ‘folk’ rescued by Ewan McColl and Bert Lloyd? (Communists, both.)
McColl used to require that singers at his folk club restricted material to their native language.
The guitar was unwelcome.
Were we in Britain reminded of our heritage only when Joan Baez brought back British songs from across the Atlantic?
What about all those protest songs?
Where do contemporary compositions fit in?
I return to my earlier contention that folk music is what you hear in a folk club.
