Who's naturalizing the fake folk?
Feb. 25th, 2008 12:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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.
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:
[Error: unknown template video]
"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:
[Error: unknown template video]
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.
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-25 02:35 pm (UTC)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.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-25 02:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-25 04:24 pm (UTC)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.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-25 05:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-25 05:13 pm (UTC)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.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-25 05:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-25 05:15 pm (UTC)The problem is defining folk music. In your opinion, what does music have to be in order for it to be folk?
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-25 05:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-25 05:47 pm (UTC)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)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-25 06:16 pm (UTC)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.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-25 08:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-26 04:58 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-26 05:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-26 06:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-26 07:00 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-26 07:35 am (UTC)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. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-26 07:50 am (UTC)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!!" :)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-26 07:56 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-26 11:19 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-26 01:06 am (UTC)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...
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-26 09:20 am (UTC)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.