To admit in Britain that you like English folk music has until recently been akin to saying you're a devil worshipper or you communicate in Esperanto. You might as well hang a sign around your neck proclaiming "Hi everybody I'm a weirdo!"
Those of us who did put our heads out of the closet during the dark decades of ridicule, sympathy and mostly total apathy looked longingly across the water at the way Irish traditional music had become a proud and prominent element of the national heritage. We watched in total wonder as Bono duetted with Maire Brennan on In A Lifetime, Sinead O'Connor sang on stage with Christy Moore, Dolores Keane enjoyed regular daytime national airplay and, when interviewed by Smash Hits magazine, Liam O Maonlai of the Hothouse Flowers declared his favourite musician was Sean O Riada. We saw an apparently unbroken oral tradition that was seemingly loved and respected within its own land. Why couldn't it be like that in England?
The whole Celtic upsurge has eclipsed English music since the days of Planxty and the Bothy Band in the 1970s. You couldn't imagine an English equivalent of Riverdance, with wall-to-wall Morris dancers shaking their bells, could you? Yet there's no logic in enjoying colourful customs and traditions, from Africa to Eastern Europe, while being desperately embarrassed by our own traditional culture. A fascinating culture, actually, which involves stirringly exotic if not indeed eccentric spectacles such as the Padstow Obby Oss on May Day, the Bampton Morris festival and the extraordinary Abbots Bromley horn dancers.
In England, the Copper Family was (and still is) perhaps the last in a relatively short line of traditional singers who maintained the repertoire and harmonic styles established through many generations of their own family. The Dylan-fuelled 1960s protest song movement had provoked a network of folk clubs deemed cool and fashionable, while the dual godfathers of the British folk song revival, A.L. Lloyd and Ewan MacColl, had established serious ground rules to protect the home tradition from the ravages of the guitar-toting American musicians flooding onto the scene. Richard Thompson had, since the days of Fairport Convention, written and sung songs in a traditional style.
Yet, once the fashion counter had moved on to the more glamorous climes of heavy metal, prog-rock, glam and punk, the folk scene became a popular target for mockery amid a flurry of damaging cartoon images: pewter mugs, straggly beards, endless ballads about death and debauchery, sandals, fingers in ears, getting old and, ahem, Aran sweaters.
But in the last couple of years there have been some telling shifts in the sand. Nothing as extreme as being fashionable, you understand, but English folk music has undergone a metamorphosis which has wrong-footed many of its tormentors. There's a new respect around now. Some hugely influential and highly talented younger artists are emerging. And a younger new audience is gathering as a result.
In 1996, Norma Waterson, grande dame of English folk song, was not only nominated as a finalist in the Mercury Music Prize, she all but won the thing, missing out to rock band Pulp by one vote in a welter of publicity that did folk song in Britain huge favours. The Mercury Prize has since become something of a barometer for the rejuvenation of English folk, with Norma followed to the finals by her daughter, Eliza Carthy, and last year the belle of Barnsley, Kate Rusby and folk fusion artist, Beth Orton.
Somehow managing not to spit at every glib journalistic mention of "folk babes", Carthy and Rusby have played a key role in the rising cachet of folk music. Rusby and Carthy became friends when they were both hawked around summer festivals while their parents performed. While Carthy has been signed by Warner, however, Rusby walked out on her major label deal while a member of the young band, Equation, because she was worried she wouldn't be allowed to perform her beloved traditional songs any more. She now records for Pure Records, the label she runs in Barnsley with her Mum and Dad, and has sold 50,000 copies apiece of her first two solo albums, Hourglass and Sleep- less.
By contrast, Beth Orton, nominated for a Mercury in the same year, has developed a style based in folk music, and much influenced by Richard Thompson - but has fused this with the most happening dance beats, appearing on albums with the Chemical Brothers and William Orbit.
It may become less and less clear in the future what exactly constitutes folk song at all. Topic Records has laid down its own cards with the release of an astonishing 20album series, Voice Of The People, reflecting the great traditional singers who kept the music alive during the 20th century, when nobody wanted to know. These are the singers and songs which provided the folk revival, when it started in the late 1950s, with so much of its material.
HOWEVER, the music is now taking many directions, and there has always been a thick dividing line in folk circles between the traditional and contemporary artists, or the purists and the politicos. This is nothing to the debates that may rage in years to come. What is considered folk or traditional music now may be entirely different in future generations.
Britain is now a multi-cultural country and the music will reflect that. In future, English folk music will come to mean a hybrid of European and Asian, of a music with its roots in West Indian culture but born and raised in England. Bands like Asian Dub Foundation, Nihtin Sawney and Cornershop are already doing it, cross-fertilising Asian roots with their own European successes and influences. New styles and sounds will inevitably evolve, and some have done so, with spectacular results, providing an appetising vision of folk music. "Our influences come from all over," says John Pandit of Asian Dub Foundation. "I think we do play folk music but it's a folk music we play on our own terms. Yes, it's folk music if folk means it's about music being created naturally by the people, but for many people folk music still means beer and Aran jumpers."
For now, though, English traditional song is in decent shape. Waterson and Carthy - folk royalty indeed - continue to fly the flag for old school traditional singing and ensure at least one boot stays firmly in its roots.
June Tabor remains a front-line singer, while artists like Northumbrian piper Kathryn Tickell, Scots band Capercaillie and John Tams maintain high musical quality. And there are plenty more young musicians coming up on the rails to ensure the music maintains healthy roots. Among them are the bravely adventurous Welsh band, Fernhill, and another young traditional singer in the mould of Kate Rusby, Bill Jones. English music is slowly creaking back into business.
Beth Orton plays at the Black Box Theatre on Friday, July 28th at 8 p.m. Richard Thompson plays at the Black Box Theatre on Saturday, July 29th, at 8 p.m.
June Tabor plays in An Grianan Theatre, Letterkenny as part of the Earagail Arts Festival on July 14th at 8 p.m.; Kate Rusby plays the Ormonde Hotel as part of Kilkenny Arts Festival on July 19th at 9 p.m.
Colin Irwin writes on folk music for Mojo and Folk Roots
