The American researcher Richard A.Peterson came up with the phrase ‘fabricating authenticity’ when he traced the history of country music. He tells us that the category ‘country music’ was invented as recently as 1952 – the time of the McCarthy witch-hunt which fingered Pete Seeger as a ‘Communist’.
Up until then, there were lots of categories to describe what we now call ‘country’ – ‘Old-time’, ‘’Old Time Tunes’, ‘Old Familiar Tunes’, ‘Hearth and Home’, ‘Hill and Range’, and even ‘Hillbilly and Western’ to name a few. Pete Seeger’s band at the time, The Weavers, described themselves simply as ‘folk’ (as did Hank Williams), but as soon as the Senate hearings demanded that Seeger testified, the music industry junked the term ‘folk’ and the new musical categories ‘country and western’ and ‘country’ came into popular use.
All this is described in Peterson’s book ‘Creating Country Music’ and you’re probably wondering by now why it’s being discussed here, next to one of Chele Willow’s photos of the wonderfully talented young singer Lucy Ward who amazed the packed room of music fans last night at our regular venue, The Boat Inn.
It goes pack to the original post on this blog on musical genres. At first sight, Lucy seemed to attract a distinctively ‘folk’ crowd. The evening started off with three songs from the unaccompanied trio Guthrie (GU3 – but actually they were three members of the established popular Leicestershire vocal group GU4 – Guffaw) and the second half was launched by an impressive set from singer and guitarist Colin Squire, also active on the local folk circuit. Lucy herself sang some songs unaccompanied, including the raunchiest version of The Blacksmith that most of us had ever heard, and she also played concertina on one number – an instrument that had not seen light of day our venue prior to last night.
In the middle of it all, BorderLine Crossing played a selection of our material, much of which was definitely not ‘folk’ – at least in the traditional English sense. We did play a couple of American ‘folk’ songs – Wayfarin’ Stranger (which has been covered by artists ranging from Emmy Lou Harris to Johnny Cash) and Pancho and Lefty written by Townes Van Zandt and recorded by the likes of Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard. We sang a couple of more contemporary American songs – Jackson Browne’s After The Deluge and Patti Scialfa’s Town Called Heartbreak. And we even played a couple of Pete Willow’s songs – 5000 Miles and Heart and Soul – both acoustic rock numbers, verging into funk and rap! Is this the kind of music that could share a room with a concertina?
Well I’m glad to say that we didn’t disgrace ourselves, even within the very high standards of performance set by Lucy and our other guests. What was more refreshing was that the audience at The Boat only seemed to recognise one musical category – ‘live music’. Each act was enjoyed and appreciated on its own terms and the fact that they turned up to play and entertain was reason enough to listen, applaud and share the experience.
Music promoters and journalists are very keen to categorise styles and influences. It’s a useful shorthand way of describing a sound and targeting a fan base. But increasingly artistes are describing themselves in their publicity as ‘eclectic’ or occasionally ‘boundary-spanning’, which could mean anything but should guarantee variety. When we set up our Monday nights at The Boat, we did wonder how to describe the event – folk? blues? acoustic? In the end we decided to use all three and so far, the guests and floor-singers have covered these and more.
Next month’s guest on Monday June 21st is the amazing guitarist Si Hayden who combines flamenco with funk . One of the acts who’ll be supporting him features two ukeleles and bass in its line-up. Eclectic indeed and all good stuff.
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