Folk Brittannia - BBC4

Have been feeling both mentally and physically exhausted recently, so have not had time to go out much - but have watched lots of telly. So I thought I'd post about the Folk Britannia series on British folk music instead...

1: BALLADS & BLUES
Friday 3 February 9pm-10pm
From the post-war, highly politicised folk clubs to the 1950s skiffle scene that captured the imagination of the nation's youth.
This was rather boring, starting off with American folk music roots - Leadbelly, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and the like. All very well, but it's not like the Yanks invented OUR folk music!!
Why did they not start off with Britain at the time music was just starting to be written down, times of trauma when folk songs provided expression of the hopes and fears of the ordinary people - for instance pagan times, Normans v Saxons v Celts, the English Civil War, Nelson, Revenuers, highwaymen...would have been far more interesting. I bet Martin Carthy could really have gone to town.
The programme also really stuck the knife into Euan MacColl, which I thought was rather unfair. Euan MacColl did so much for the 60s folk revival, he was made out to be a real purist but he wrote many 'new' folk songs, beautiful ones too - a very unusual thing to do at the time, including surely the best love song of all time "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face". He had a genuine love and understanding of the ordinary working people. There's also worse things to be than a Marxist in my opinion!


2: FOLK ROOTS, NEW ROUTES
Friday 10 February 9pm-10pm
In the 1960s the folk boom takes hold, and bands like Fairport
Convention and Pentangle bring the music into unexpected new places.
Bands experimented with crossover music - tut tut!! But then surely we are a crossover culture - Normans, Anglo-Saxons, Celts (a misnomer in itself), Danes, Jutes, and now Asians, Africans, Eastern Europeans all living here and thinking of themselves as British. June Tabor got sniffy at the drum-and-bass merchants, who are still unwelcome in most folk clubs today, but then she is often accompanied by a piano which as I've said is not really a folk instrument. People in glass houses...
This episode was far more interesting and informative. It was great to hear about Fairport, Richard Thompson, Sandy Denny and the seminal 'Liege and Lief' album.
One of my earliest memories is Steeleye Span singing 'All Around My Hat' - all due credit to them for pioneering folk-rock. Maddy Prior had/has the voice of an angel!
Also to hear about Davy Graham whom Phil Beer keeps mentioning and who wrote the theme music for Folk Britannia - 'Angi'. But if you ask me, Paul Downes plays the
definitive version!!

3: BETWEEN THE WARS
Friday 17 February 9pm-10pm
Folk-rock enters the 1970s mainstream, a political edge returns to music in Thatcher's Britain and, today, two very different scenes see folk music flourishing once more.
Ah, them were't days, the late 80s/early 90s - when I first started getting into folk music without even realising it. I loved Kirsty MacColl's album Kite, I loved the Pogues (even though my sister and I used to tease each other that we fancied Shane MacGowan), and of course I was the Levellers biggest fan back in the days when they were a political band. Nice to see the Levellers getting some recognition for a change.
Wasn't really into Billy Bragg but knew he was a top bloke. If only I'd discovered Christy Moore back then - love his work now, of course. But then folk was a 4-letter word back then.
Laughed at Jim Moray's reception at the BBC Folk Awards - I can well imagine it from them museum-pieces in the audience!! I agreed that certain folk clubs need to be more inclusive - next cold snap they will lose all their old-fogey members!! Folk music is far broader than the finger-in-ear purists think. It is OUR music, the people's music, after all, not exclusively Martin Carthy's or Fairport's style of music. That said, some folk clubs are better than others, and some festivals have a broader scope than others.
Comments/discussion welcome, as always!