Who's naturalizing the fake folk?

[imomus]

"What would Click Folk or Glitch Folk sound like?", the Other Music newsletter demanded of its readers back in January 2001. "What would Alan Lomax have said if, in 1965, the Newport Folk Festival had been invaded by geeks playing modular Moogs? On Folktronic Momus gives us an idea of what traditional folk music might sound like when married with modern-day electronics. The result is like nothing you've heard before."



Hype aside, the clickfolk, glitchfolk thing was, at the turn of the century, as startling as it was inevitable. Spurred on initially by an angry article in The Face entitled "Who's Faking the Folk?" (a riposte to Beth Orton and her ilk), I published an essay on the Momus website in September 1999 which neutralised the Face's rockist hypocrisy charges by proposing: "Let's imagine a variant of Folk style which, like Camp, loudly and proudly proclaimed its inauthenticity."



"Stars Forever," continued the manifesto, "with its Moogy shanties, forebitters, and broadside ballads, has already begun my efforts to build a catalogue of fake folk music. But I want to go further. I want to release a compilation on Analog Baroque next year of attempts to 'restore' this Switched On Folk which never really existed, but should have. I want to make a parallel world in which sincere jokers compiled a National Folk Synthesiser Archive composed of faked field recordings of hillbillies playing early synths, gap-toothed agricultural workers plugging in ARPs and Korgs for the village hootenanny while bearded, bespectacled researchers, sent by Marxist government bureaus to compile an Elektronische Volksarchiv of Folk Artificielle, set up UNESCO standard-issue ethnological tape recorders. The record will probably be called Fakeways: A Sampler. Anyone can submit material, with or without vocals, and those chosen will be paid in shetland wool and electronic sporrans."



Nine years later, this "click folk" or "glitch folk" or "folktronica" thing is no longer so outlandish, no longer such a novelty, no longer such a lonely trek. So many people (including me) have made chopped, darkfolk tributes to cult pagan horror film The Wicker Man that there's even a subgenre called "Wickerfolk". Everybody -- well, almost everybody -- now has Comus and Incredible String Band mp3s in their collection. Everybody's got some Four Tet, some Books, some Colleen, some Devendra, some CocoRosie. Some might have been to folk clubs like Bob Stanley's Swaddling Songs, or seen beardy young neo-folk artists like The Train Chronicles, Mathew Sawyer and the Ghosts and Emmy the Great (okay, she's not so beardy) playing in Hoxton or modeling folksy clothes in fashion mags. Others are already booking their tickets for the Green Man Festival (named after the pub in The Wicker Man).

It's all been going long enough for bands to have started folksy, gone electro-glam, then come back to folk. Have a listen to Little Bird from the "folktastic" new Goldfrapp album Seventh Tree, for instance, and think of how some have taken to calling Madonna "Oldfrapp".

A decade is long enough for the popportunistic pop world to do to fake folk all the things we know it tends to do: to invent, to experiment, to hybridize, to accommodate, to imitate, to sell, to naturalize, to universalize, to kill, to revive. I'm -- naturally! -- much more interested in the first processes than the last ones, so I won't be buying Goldfrapp's newie or Oldfrapp's eventual tribute to it. But I'm quite interested in the "universalizing" bit of the process, because it's a bit like seeing your kids grow up and charm the pants off people. Right now, my favourite universalizers of the fake folk meme are Tunng.



Tunng started in 2003 as a duo -- Mike Lindsay and Sam Genders -- who worked in a studio under a girly fashion boutique (the entrance was through the dressing room, so they tended not to go out during shop hours). At first they sounded like The Books and did cover versions of "The Maypole Song" from The Wicker Man. Here's "Woodcat" from their second album, released in 2006:

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"A quirky, distinctive blend of ancient and modern," said Andy Gill in The Independent, "its combination of acoustic guitars, folksy ruminations and glitch-tronica rhythms resembling a digital-age Pentangle. It's one of the more successful exercises in folktronica since Momus first coined the phrase back in 2001... The 10 songs here all sound as if they were composed on some remote Scottish island, then electronically interfered with en route."

That dialectic between nature and artifice is a delicate one to maintain, and I'm a little worried by the gradual disappearance of the disruptive electronics in Tunng's work. For instance, despite a general (and not unpleasing) Simon-and-Garfunkelness, Jenny Again still dares to glitch things up in an interesting way midway through:

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But the newest single, Bullets (half a million views on YouTube, not bad, boys!) goes all Mungo Jerry, while the video recalls Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer" or Tears for Fears circa "Sowing the Seeds of Love". It's still nice, very nice, but it doesn't offer quite enough delay, enough challenge. Same goes for the band's engaging live version of Fair Doreen, set in front of a green VW Westfalia Campmobile. It's got nature, sure, and that's good, but it's also got naturalized, and that -- in a genre which derives a lot of its power from setting the manmade and the pastoral somewhat against each other and watching interesting contradictions emerge -- might sap some of the power rather than power the sap.

Comments

Folk coming out of my ears these days

[(Anonymous)]

I posted about radio 2 yesterday, and on the show there was a quite a bit about folk. It dawned on my yesterday how much i like the genre and the new stuff.

Emmy the great is just that, great - and from her i somehow, can't quite remember how, but i somehow got onto Orillia Opry, who are sublime. Especially the track 'I lied'

i'd recommend them to anyone. Go google / myspace

wewillbecome.com

[cielo-terra.livejournal.com]

Tunng played SXSW last year, pretty much the best show I saw there. I distinctly remember thinking at the time "this is new and old at the same time! How wonderful!" I hope I stumble upon similar work in two weeks. Any recommendations?

[eclectiktronik.livejournal.com]

I have to say that a lot of the framing for the debate about folk leaves me cold. As does the idea that it can be reduced to aesthetics (using moogs not acoustic guitars, continuing from the old debate on Dylan using electric in '66...)

for me this all misses the point : folk culture is far more than just guys and gals with acoustic guitars. It can be found everyday, but beyond the 'media machine'. This has been going on for a long time. One example: Zappa used to include snippets of recordings from the tour buses and backstage, documenting the 'tour bus' folklore which no other artist really did. Listen to almost any track by Half man half biscuit and you have millions of minute references to elements of contemporary UK culture and events, in song form. For me this is serving a valuable function, a continuation of the old folk song tradition.This clearly goes way beyond aesthetics.

with regard to folk's 'documentary' value, nowadays we also have people posting home recordings on youtube thanks to the democratisation of channels of distribution the internet has spawned. This sort of stuff bypasses any subssytem of legitimation and as such is perhaps a more meaningful, direct document of modern day 'folklore', attitudes and tendencies.

Personally, i like to think of some of the stuff i produce as a kind of 'folk music' - found tapes and home recordings, often from answering machines, blended with other cast off and sounds from contemporary society. fragments of real lives which would have been lost forever otherwise.

In the pre-industrial past, the 'folk song' form was common amongst classes who had no education and no other form of documenting and spreading reports of events. 'History' was written largely by and for the upper echelons of society who had access to the tools required. The folk songs of the era filled in the gaps from the 'offical' or legitimate version of history. Nowadays, we have a sort of parallel in the multinational media organisations and news gatherers with their partial view of the world, serving certain interests, on the other hand the likes of you tube which is accessible to all. I think it is more productive to focus on this contemporary folk-in-the-making, rather than debates on the merits of cover versions of stuff from the wicker man, etc.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Well, certainly. That was very much what I was trying to say a couple of weeks ago in YouTube as folk music (http://imomus.livejournal.com/351657.html)!

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

I agree with a lot of what eclectiktronik is saying here. Especially the part about folk music being more than just an aesthetic quality.

Your framing of this issue relies too much on the definition of "folk music" being very vague nowdays.

If we were to follow the most exacting definition of folk music; songs like "jiggle bells", "Auld Lang Syne", "Happy Birthday" and the like would be the only songs that qualified now days. They're at the centre of our cultural festivals, they belong to "the people" (nobody gets sued for using them), everyone knows them because they're passed down orally. To my mind, they're the only undeniable folk songs that still exist today, under every definition.

You could also say folk music is any music which is "traditional", but classical music isnt folk music. So obviously theres something else to it.

I would say folk music (or folk culture) is any art shared with other people for free. The reason I say it has to be free is because as soon as you start to charge people for your art, no matter how you dress it up aesthetically, it becomes just another facet of the music industry; it could all be classed as "folk music" if you dont take money out of the equation.

Folk culture is, to my mind, when people share their culture with thier community through the use of art, simply for the sake of sharing culture. Under that definition, Goldfrap doesnt count, and your Folktronic album (ironically) doesnt count because you're both charging money for your art as part of the music industry.

[idletigers.wordpress.com (from livejournal.com)]

I'm not sure that charging money makes something any less "folk", though. Any minstrel would have been grateful for a donation. And I'm fancying of a "music industry" that was just a traveling ballad seller -- a figure who belongs (at least to my imagination) to folk culture. As do highwaymen. Folk figures want your money!

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

A donation is different to having to pay for access to the music.

Putting your cap on the floor and hoping pennies drop in it, or putting up a link to a paypal account on your website telling people to "donate if they so wish", is different to "When you hand over a set amount of cash you will have access to my art".

Like I said, the definition of folk music is vague nowdays. to me, the defining feature between folk and the music industry is money. If you allow for "folk music" to be music you have to buy the rights to listen to, then technically all music is "folk" and it makes this discussion useless.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Folk music still exists. If you find yourself on this side of the pond, K, I'll take to you to Albert Hall in the pine barrens, where regular people--plumbers, firemen, contractors, clammers, etc--meet every Saturday night with their instruments and have pickup sessions of bluegrass and folk on the porch and in the parking lot, and wait their turn inside on the stage. The atmosphere is very congenial and welcoming.

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

"Folk music still exists."

The problem is defining folk music. In your opinion, what does music have to be in order for it to be folk?

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

I don't have to worry about abstract definitions, since it's a living tradition here.

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

What a cop out.

This counts as west country folk music here, "Scrumpy and Western" apparently:



But of course, the Wurzels arent as cool as Goldfrapp and Devendra, so dont expect a shout out to them on Click Opera anytime soon ;o)

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Must everyone dissect the very thing that nourishes them? Not sure what's gained from that, other than a long blog thread.

I dunno--it seems like waxing meta is more warranted when talking about fake folk, where the music is obviously being engaged with on that level.

[microworlds.livejournal.com]

Goddddd, do you ever shut up?? This coming from me of all people! SHUT UP!

[(Anonymous)]

you really are the worst!!!

[microworlds.livejournal.com]

Why do you think I put "this coming from me of all people"? I know I am, at least I acknowledge it!

[(Anonymous)]

that's only the first step! :)

[microworlds.livejournal.com]

Oh I see, have you overcome your annoyingness through Momus Anonymous? Fitting! I shall take your advice, dearest Anon.

[(Anonymous)]

noo i'm still occasionally found to be annoying in person, which i often can't help much. but on the internet i'm much less so, typically. i've accomplished by a.) only contributing when i have at least a basic degree of knowledge on the subject being discussed and am fairly certain i won't be making myself appear foolish, b.) not cutting down others needlessly in the midst of intellectual discourse, and c.) not resorting to humour at innaporopriate times, and attempting to forgo personal high-context humour or inside jokes altogether, except in the most relevant of places.

this is not to say that you personally don't adhere to any or all of these principles at various times, but they are good guidelines to keep in mind if you have a general desire of decreasing the level to which you are found annoying by others.

and sorry for the anonymity, i don't have a livejournal account. if it really bothers you i can provide a relevant link to any of a number of social networking sites. :)

[microworlds.livejournal.com]

a) I do that occasionally, when Momus writes about "the youth of today" or other such subjects that he's getting really wrong
b) In this case, kumakouji was pissing Whimsy off. My pissiness with him has been gathered for a while, because he has an air of pretentiousness and "I know more than you and you are stupid" and I'm tired of seeing threads where he says "what a cop out" etc.
c) You're right, and I've been working on it.

Anyway, I'm described as a "troll" here, just like with electricwitch and tricksey_bird. It's best not to take us seriously, because we aren't being serious in the first place. But I do appreciate the advice rather than just the "you really are the worst!!" :)

[(Anonymous)]

Der!

[(Anonymous)]

Der

[merrow-sea.livejournal.com]

Sorry Kuma,

Happy Birthday is under copyright, which is why you almost never see it used in films. And if you meant Jingle Bells not Jiggle Bells, that's under copyright as well. Not sure about Auld Lang Syne. Just fyi...

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure all non-profit performances of Happy Birthday are perfectly legal, and Jingle Bells and Auld lang Syne have long lost their copyright.

Jingle Bell was written by James Lord Pierpont (1822–1893) and copyrighted under the title 'One Horse Open Sleigh' on September 16, 1857. Copyright lasts for 70 years after the authors death.

My point is, its "cultural music" passed on by oral tradition.

[(Anonymous)]

The Jenny Again song sounds quite simply like a common pop singer over an old Tarwater out-take. My ears don't see the "challenge" at all; perhaps I simply just knew the solution years ago?
-John FF

[(Anonymous)]

AND...That being there is no solution, and perhaps the challenge for fluff like this song (Jenny Again) is in fact making it fluffier. Adding the folk element seems to have become a new way of excusing the lack of experimentation while still shaking-hands with those that want all the invites for ideas not used...in other words it is like a rehash of the benign elements accepted in the after parties of the art-scene after parties; but no one is making the art.
-John FF

[tinyfolk.livejournal.com]

I really like reading about this, because while I've definitely been aware of a number of the bands and of the style you're discussing here (would even say my own music (http://www.myspace.com/tinyfolksings) is part of it in a lot of ways), I never would have thought about it in this way, or constructed this narrative.

[tinyfolk.livejournal.com]

and p.s. you can be my brian eno (http://imomus.livejournal.com/350070.html) anytime.

[tinyfolk.livejournal.com]

I've been coming back to thinking about this all day. The version of this type of music, fake folk, as described in your manifesto, I love it. It seems to coincide with, however, or at least be commonly confused with Devendra Banhardt's "naturalismo" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freak_folk) crew, something I'm not really that fond of, and even reading his definition here, the emphasis on being decidedly "natural" (whatever that means), just seems to be a confused stab at producing some sort of "authenticity," and to, goal-wise, be entirely the opposite of what you proposed in your manifesto.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

The fake folk/freak folk phenomenon is a bit of a mixed bag. Many of my friends are involved (Espers, (http://www.myspace.com/espers) Marissa Nadler, (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aHy8foIM9M) Fern Knight, (http://www.myspace.com/fernknight) Niagara Falls, (http://honeymoonmusic.com/news/) Orion Rigel Dommisse, (http://www.myspace.com/orionrigeldommisse) Tickley Feather, (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehLCz5LyUE4), The Valerie Project, (http://www.valerieproject.org/) Language of Stone, (http://www.languageofstone.com/) etc).

While some among them use unexpected textures along with traditional instruments, not all do. The most successful employ a seamless, well-integrated mix of both electronic and organic elements (I won't say "old" and "new" at this point, as both are equally familiar) that are so well-integrated that the focus is on the overall effect. The bands going in a more straightforward, traditional vein may not be as interesting artistically, but they certainly face quite a technical challenge, as everything rests upon the execution.

Either way, I'm still waiting for the band of my dreams that comes along and creates a microscopic pastorale.

[(Anonymous)]

Oldfrapp, haha. What a great name.

[microworlds.livejournal.com]

I'm still mad about having to describe you to Mormons and having to compare you to Simon and Garfunkel. Now they probably think you sing "Bridge Over Troubled Water" and have a fro.

I'm also mad at Madonna for sampling "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)" by ABBA. I will always be outraged. Every time I go into a clothing store and hear the intro I think "OH MY GOD THEY'RE PLAYING ABBA!" but it's always Madonna. >:O

[count-vronsky.livejournal.com]

[xkolliox.livejournal.com]

I love Tunng, and Bullets might be my favorite song of the year, but it's already a bit exhausted. I long for new, fresh stuff right now.
Couldn't you recommend something, bands you like from this genre?

By the way, you should drop by in our bar again, last time you were there with your friends we didn't have any chairs left, so you left (it was the SilverFuture in Weserstr, don't know if you still remember)

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Oh, you're from SilverFuture! Good bar! Sometimes a bit smokey for us non-smokers, but I like it! I think that evening we went to the Lebanese pipe shop next door and played backgammon.

happy funeral of pop

[(Anonymous)]

topmodel (myspace.com/topmodeltopmodeltopmodel)

we live around the corner,
and mireia _can_ sing a cristall glass to pieces.

greetings from Vienna and the rest of Berlin,

Rinus

[(Anonymous)]

Isn't anyone interested in the emotion of folk music, that cannot be faked. Try you might.

Where does "alt.country" end and "fake folk" begin?

[(Anonymous)]

What about Smog and Neutral Milk Hotel and all those other pricks who should be mulched and pissed onto Saturn?

Marxist Neanderthalus: when does ‘selling out’ occur in a MySpace world?

[(Anonymous)]

When the band earns more than you do? When they get column inches in magazines bought by people you wouldn’t personally invite to lunch?

We need a more considered tipping point than this. The use of personal caprice is the kind of sharky hidden agenda that the Smart Right has accused Marxist Neanderthalus of in the past.

There is no reason why a band’s third album needs to be intrinsically less worthy than their first. That’s a belief in ‘authentic’ in itself. So I’d propose it occurs when they sign the recording contract. That is ‘naturalising’, ‘dispersing’, ‘agreeing to exploitation of your works catalogue’. It is the ‘popularity seeking’ moment.

Beyond that, when the ink dries, naturalise away, I say. That business is successful or not is neither here nor there to anyone’s actual eardrums.

The Pro-Bling Turbo- etc
p.s. Who said capitalism has to be ‘authentic’? I’ve witnessed boardroom posturing camper than at Camber Sands.

Re: Marxist Neanderthalus: when does ‘selling out’ occur in a MySpace world?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

We need a more considered tipping point than this.

Maybe that's why I'm not talking about money or column inches or even rockist authenticity, but the precise relationship of the manmade and the pastoral:

"It's got nature, sure, and that's good, but it's also got naturalized, and that -- in a genre which derives a lot of its power from setting the manmade and the pastoral somewhat against each other and watching interesting contradictions emerge -- might sap some of the power rather than power the sap."

Do you see how different what I'm actually saying here is from what you're saying I'm saying?

Re: Marxist Neanderthalus: when does ‘selling out’ occur in a MySpace world?

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

"Maybe that's why I'm not talking about money or column inches or even rockist authenticity, but the precise relationship of the manmade and the pastoral"

How can you talk about that relationship without first defining the difference? And is "folk culture" really pastoral anymore? How do you define the difference between fake folk and real folk?

Re: Marxist Neanderthalus: when does ‘selling out’ occur in a MySpace world?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I know this isn't very scientific or satisfactory to a logical, categorical mind like yours, but this stuff is all very slippery and relative, and all you can say is something like "you know it when you hear it". It's interesting when Kraftwerk describe what they do as "industrial folk music" because there's a contradiction between what's stereotypically thought of as "industrial" and what's stereotypically thought of as "folk". It's boring when you just get some music students trying to reproduce ancient and dead folk forms on their own terms, as boring as when Quinlan Terry pastiches a Georgian house. There has to be an interesting, dynamic tension between tradition and innovation. That tension is one of the reasons I love Japan -- a very suggestive tension between past and future very palpably exists there.

Re: Marxist Neanderthalus: when does ‘selling out’ occur in a MySpace world?

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

If this is all about "twead, rural folk" vs "folk with electronics", I dont have any qualms with anything you've said, it's all made sense.

I was just interested in carrying on the point eclectiktronik raised -- he was basically trying to say that The Face has its idea of "real folk" so you gave your answer to that with "fake folk" but both sides have kinda lost the plot in regards to what folk actually was and still is.

[anglerfish96.livejournal.com]

From the small bit of what I've heard and seen of Emmy, I think I have a new crush.

Tunng have about as much in common with the The Books as early Bee Jees had with the Beatles, though. Texture-wise I can kind of see it...

Still, who can argue with the VW bus?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I was trying to explain to Hisae why Emmy is so hot, and after a couple of false starts involving bare legs and the young Joan Baez I found the explanation that worked best was "She looks like you".

[(Anonymous)]

Der.

[murmurants.livejournal.com]

The Magic I.D. (http://www.myspace.com/themagicid) release recently made me revisit the wonderful abstract folk of Margareth Kammerer (http://www.japanimprov.com/indies2/charhizma/tobeananimal.html).

[onethinwallaway.livejournal.com]

Pygmalism is such a great song!

[kineticfactory.livejournal.com]

Goldfrapp knows what her place in the musical ecosystem is. It is not that of a first-order artist, but that of a sort of cool-hunter, one who finds trends that have survived on the chaotic front of culture, packages them and commodifies them for the more sophisticated end of the mainstream. (Madonna does something similar, only for a broader, less sophisticated audience.) She did it with dinner-party trip-hop, then electroclash and now has turned on a dime and done folk. She has even lifted the name of freak-folk outfit Voice Of The Seven Woods for her "folk" album.

As beardy-folk becomes the next mainstream, what could be next? The whole Balkan/gypsy/klezmer/eastern-European milieu seems to have a buzz about it these days (all those odd scales and the combination of passion and melancholia keeps it, so far, one step ahead of mass acceptance). The oddly mournful jollifications of mad Serbian gypsies tanked up on slivovitz are not yet marketable to the masses, but only because the culture industry hasn't yet discovered how to market them. (Gangsta rap and guitar "indie" were once too "other" to be marketable as well.)

Anyway, I wonder whether the popularity of Eastern European folk sounds led to Japanese musical instrument company Roland recently releasing a synth accordion (http://www.rolandus.com/products/productdetails.aspx?ObjectId=930&ParentId=32).

traditions need to be shared

[(Anonymous)]

Part of what makes folk music folk music (at least as it's happened up to this point) is the sharing of traditions, the passing on of tunes, often through an oral tradition. Just look at traditional Irish music which is, at least in the northeast US, still passed on as a primarily oral tradition: you learn a tune from your teacher, and you learn your teacher's own version of that tune. This might be different from what you hear on a CD, which you can learn as well. In a session, you play what other people will know, which will likely be the version on the CD, whereas in a solo situation you might play your teacher's version (or, your teacher's version might be ever-so-slightly modified from a version from a CD). Nevertheless, this forms an interlinked, non-linear chain between players that could potentially be traced back to an origin (but one that doesn't matter anymore).

So if this is a model, then where might we see it in contemporary music? I think the sharing, mashups, etc. that come about because of youtube, flickr, etc. are a starting point. But in the end, both traditional and contemporary folk musics depend on openness and a desire to share with others, and so I only see the possibility (but maybe not the actualization, we'll just have to see) increasing in the near future.

nick