New folk music mix tape (it’s not what you’re expecting – I promise)

// March 25th, 2010 // Uncategorized

After a friend sent an email asking for a soul mix, I decided to make an executive decision and make her a folk mix instead. It’s something I know a lot more about and have some decent connection to the music too. I guess I feel that writing a blog called Noturno e Celeste – perhaps I should say that the UK at the moment is the dark side of things – climatewise, as my last place of residence, Lisbon, is quite celestial currently. So dark and light – Anglo-Saxon and Latin- isn’t it nice to be bridging the gap between our cultures?

Download the mixtape here

Folk music isn’t about boring men with beards and beer and bells on their clothes – it’s about interesting beer drinking, bearded, belled men. Ha! Just kidding. Actually I hope these two archives give you a better idea about folk music from around the world (with a focus between 68-78 in the UK) and how they took the traditional forms of folk and added blues, rock, jazz, Eastern, progressive influences to make something really new and interesting. I’ve missed out some obvious choices, specifically: Fairport Convention, John Martyn and Nick Drake. If you don’t know much about them, please look further – they really are treasures.

Talking of connections with the music, after being out of the country a while, I’m kind of starting to understand a little bit about my culture, heritage and roots. As English people, we don’t really have a strong sense of national identity and pride in ourselves. I’m not going to get started on some Daily Hate diatribe here, but suffice to say, I think there’s room to understand ourselves as a nation – and to preserve those individual characteristics that we have evolved over millennia before they get wiped out by the next generation’s global monoculture. National characteristics and identity don’t have to be at the expense of tolerance of other nations within our own. There is a middle ground between conservation of tradition and evolution of society – between these so-called left and right ideals. Countless generations have passed down folk music into our hands today – and of course we shouldn’t just follow their ideas and forms blindly – but look backwards to see the way forward.

The two discs are a little bit of a hint at the above. One – ‘Old Folk, New Routes’ has a name taken from a Shirley Collins and Davy Graham disc. The music on both the compilation and the aforementioned album (one track is included) it has one and a half feet in the past – and another half looking forwards. Like the foot of folk stuck on one of the cracks in the pavement of time [please read with a pinch of irony]. You’ll find ballads, blues and just a little hint of jazz and rock on this disc. Mostly though, this music will sound more conventional and pleasing to the ear – perhaps more so than straight folk – for the more familiar sounds to be heard within.

The second disc has more of the same, but a little more of the prog/psychedelic folk of the late sixties and early seventies thrown in. A typical example here would be Comus’ ‘Song to Comus’ – and 8 minute long prog-folk opus, which isn’t half as bad as you might think.

If you’re interested in finding more about British folk – you can download the excellent Folk Britannia series here. Let me know if you need some help with that as you’ll need some software to be able to do it. I also owe a debt to the website www.rateyourmusic.com for it’s user generated lists, forums and genre sorting for getting me more recommendations than I know what to do with.

Good luck on your journey into one of the most amazing styles of music – and as always – please let me know if the music has given you something good.

Jim.