Ewan MacColl: Ballad and Blues Concert
Ever since the publication of the first collection of folksongs, scholars and collectors have been prophesying the imminent death of folk-music. With the coming of the industrial revolution and the resulting break-up of village communities there appeared so be good grounds for believing they were right.
The nineteenth century folklorists, industrious and well-meaning as they were, did much so foster the myth that folk music was too fragile for this brutal age and too coarse for polite society. It was considered expedient to forget the social origins of folk music. The 'folk' was a nebulous grouping of merry Arcadians, coy rustics prancing perpetually round village maypoles and flirting archly with each other. To have confused the 'folk' with that great army of rural cottagers driven into the Bastilles and factories by successive poor-law acts, with the half-starved Irish navvies building the first railroads, or with the evicted Highland crofters, would have been unthinkable.
The creation of this mythical 'folk' made it necessary to carry out certain structural alterations on the folk music; anthologists and editors pruned it down to respectable proportions, skilled composers and musicians 'improved' the melodies by robbing them of their vitality, and concert singers showed the people how their music should be sung.
The people. however, were unimpressed; they shrugged their shoulders and went off to the music hall. In the countryside, folk-singers, not knowing any better, went on singing the songs in the way they had been sung for generations.
What distinguishes the present folk-music renaissance from previous revivals is the fact that the people are demanding that their music be served up 'neat', and unadulterated, in the authentic traditional style.
And what possible connections can there be between British folk-music and the Blues of America?
'The Blues aint notin' but a good man feelin' bad. The Blues aint notin' but a woman on a poor man's mind. The Blues aint notin' but the poor man's heart disease.' That is how a Blues singer defines the Blues. The same definition might be applied to Lancashire songs such as The Four Loom Weaver' and 'Van Dieman's Land'; to ballads like Lord Randall, 'The Rocks of Baun' and 'The Sheffield Apprentice'.
In tonight's concert there will be traditional songs and ballads, work songs, calypsos, Come-all-ye's and Blues. Some of the songs have been centuries in the making, others are new.
PROGRAMME
FoIk Band
George Harvey Webb - Traditional Scots Fiddle
Bruce Turner - Clarinet
Alf Edwards - English Concertina
Fitzroy Coleman - Guitar
Bryan Daly - Guitar
1 Folk Band
Scots Country Dance
2 Isla Cameron
Two traditional ballads
3 Ewan MacColl
The Dowie Dens of Yarrow (Scots traditional ballad)
4 A. L. Lloyd
Seven Gypsies (English traditional ballad)
Young Musgrave (Kentucky version English trad. ballad)
5 The Colyer Skiffle Group
Boll Weevil Blues
Take this Hammer (Negro convict song)
6 Ken Colyer & his Jazzmen
Sing On (Spiritual)
7 A. L. Lloyd with Skiffle Group
Ghost Soldier Blues (American Negro soldier song)
8 AIf Edwards
Concertina Medley of Irish tunes
9 A. L. Lloyd & Ewan MacColl
English Sea Shanties
1O Isla Cameron
My Miner Lad (North East Coalminer song
Sandgate Nursing Song (Newcastle, traditional)
11 Ewan MacColl
Gresford Disaster (English Coalmining ballad) Sixteen Tons (American Coalmining ballad)
12 A.L.Lloyd
Pay-day at Coal Creek (American Coalmining ballad)
Cosher Bailey's Engine (Welsh industrial song)
13 Michael Gorman & Dan McNiff
Selection of Irish Country Dances for flute and fiddle
14 FoIk Band
Medley of American Folk Tunes
Interval
1 Ken Colyer & his Jazzmen
Faraway Blues (Mardi-gras March)
2 The Colyer Skiffle Group
Old Riley (Negro convict song)
Casey Jones (American Railroad song)
3 Isla Cameron
The Fireman's not for Me (Contemporary ballad)
4 Ewan MacColl
Four Loom Weaver (Lancashire Weaving song)
5 Isla Cameron
She moves through the Fair (Irish traditional)
6 A. L. Lloyd
Morrissey & the Russian Sailor (Irish come-all-ye)
7 Michael Gorman & Dan McNiff
Irish Dance Music for fiddle and flute
8 Ewan MacColl
Van Diemen's Land (Scots version)
9 Ewan MacColl and Ken Colyer's Jazzmen
Another Man done gone (American Convict song)
1O A. L. Lloyd, Ewan MacColl, Ken Colyer & his Jazzmen
St. James' Hospital - St. James' Infirmary
11 Ken Colyer & his Jazzmen
Shimmy-She-Wobble (Stomp)
12 Harvey Webb
Traditional Scots fiddle tunes
13 A. L. Lloyd
The Commissions' Report (Trinidad Calypso)
14 Ewan MacColl
Ballads of Ho Chi Minh
(Contemporary ballad in traditional style)
15 Folk Band
Irish Medley
End