Traditional English Folk Music

A short overview

Giving life to the community - Maypole dance to traditional English musicians: Artist: Mark Taylor

Ask the person on the street where the home of folk music is and there’s a very strong chance they will point to Scotland, Ireland, or America. In fact the person on the street will pretty much site anywhere else in the world before recognising that England has a traditional music heritage that runs just as deep as any of our Scots Irish or Welsh neighbours.

Sadly, for the past 40 years, the perception of folk music in England has been tarnished by unfavourable opinions; not of the music itself, but of an archetypal image of the people who may perform folk music. A bearded man, clad in an Aaron sweater, finger in ear and singing through his nose, may be a cliché, but over the years, it’s an image that’s encouraged many to disinherit themselves from their own musical heritage. From the end of the nineteen fifties there were undeniably enough ‘folkies’ in the clubs who adopted that much maligned look, to justify the lampooning of folk music and its stereo typical performer.

The folk music being performed in the clubs and gatherings during the fifties was most often a revivalist interpretation of indigenous traditional English folk music that was still to be found surviving within the villages of rural England, as well as the industrial working class areas of the country, including fishing and mining communities.

The mid twentieth century saw a burgeoning new wave of young traditional English folk music enthusiasts who had been caught first by an American folk music revival, which carried with it a left wing undercurrent. Championing this movement was the American singer/musician, Pete Segar. This was traditional music driven by a socialist and communist ideology. For these were the songs of the common man and so for one element of the traditional English folk movement, it was the perfect marriage for socio- political expression.

The figurehead in England ploughing a similar furrow was Ewan MacColl. He was tracked by MI5 for over 20 years on the grounds that he was a dangerous communist radical. His interest in drama production and theatre workshops spilled over into an affected way of performing folk songs. His style was indeed the finger cupped around the ear, the jumper, the beard and he was wont to sing sat down on a reversed chair. This style was far removed from the true traditional English folk singers (also referred to as source singers) who in contrast, would typically sing a song simply and directly, sometimes with eyes shut, sometimes seeming detached from the words being sung. It could appear that the singer was acting purely as a conduit for a story set to music. They would carry an air of responsibility in their delivery, not only to the song, but to those long gone who had sung the song before; a trait which no doubt had its roots in our ancient oral tradition.

In the sixties and seventies, traditional English folk music was expanded and expressed in a variety of ways including jazz flavoured folk, rock enhanced folk and progressive avant-garde folk. Even Led Zeppelin fans were proud to point out that far from being out and out rockers; the band also drew on their native folk heritage. In the 1970s, the folk group, The Spinners ran a BBC TV series which presented folk music in a light entertainment format. Their popular shows succeeded in as much as they brought folk music into living rooms all over the country, but many a purist felt they fell short of delivering the full spectrum of traditional music.

All the while the original source singers, fiddlers, dulcimer players, melodeon and concertina players, were a disappearing generation, whose local pubs had now given way to juke boxes. Where once an impromptu ditty would strike up or a drinker down his pint, and begin to step dance; now pubs resounded to the sound of one armed bandits. Traditional live music was being replaced by juke boxes playing rock n’ roll; a sound alien to the generation born in the century before. For the first time teenagers had their own music as well as their own fashion. The pull for youngsters to leave behind the music of former generations was great.

But regardless of the pressure on folk music to keel over and give way to the new, it found a way to survive. It always had done.

As far back as the early 19th century, song collectors from the middle classes were on a mission to save traditional English folk music from extinction. They ventured among the rural working population of the English shires, discovering, noting down, and publishing a vast and wonderful pool of folk songs and tunes. Their work was motivated by the beauty of the music. In 1903, in Hambridge, Somerset; the song collector Cecil Sharp was inspired to collect folk songs, when famously over hearing a friends gardener; John England singing ‘The Seeds of Love’. Sharp later went on to conduct what is considered to be the best regional song collecting exercise in America on a visit to the Appalachians with his assistant Maud Karples. There he discovered songs that had moved across the Atlantic from England, carried over by the first English immigrants. Indeed, Cecil Sharp plays a major role in the history of song collecting and in his honour the offices of the English Folk Dance and Song Society in London were named after him i.e. Cecil Sharp House.

Collectors in the early 20th century including Cecil Sharp, tended to pass on the more bawdy songs; alternatively they would tidy songs up for schools and for middle class consumption. Music Hall songs which grew popular from the mid 19th century were frowned upon by the collectors and considered crude, although the source singers themselves, who were not so discerning, would see no difference singing an ancient ballad one minute and a music hall ditty in the next. To the source singer, a song was either worth singing or it wasn’t. These days Music Hall songs are quite rightly considered to be part of our singing tradition.

Another important contributor to the early 20th century folk revival was the English classical composer Ralph Vaughn Williams who once spoke to an Oxford audience 100 years ago and said:

And that perception among the general public has lingered on. The image generally presented, is that folk songs and music from the UK are solely part of a rich and vibrant Celtic heritage, to which the English music heritage plays second fiddle.

Ralph Vaughan Williams researched, noted and even recorded (on wax cylinder) folk songs across the south of England and today at Cecil Sharp House; the Vaughn Williams Library contains the most important concentration of material on English traditional song, dance, and music in the country. See http://www.efdss.org/

Below are two examples of wax recordings. David Penfold from Rusper in Sussex, is here recorded in May 1907, singing a song called The Trees they do Grow High and the other song is sung by Peter Verrall, Monks Gate, Sussex, recorded in April 1907, singing the Rambling Sailor. Both were recorded by Ralph Vaughan Williams. Allowances have to be made for the quality of these primitive recordings as they are over 100 years old.

Both recordings can be heard online:

• Penfold
• Verrall

In 1898, Folk Song Society member Kate Lee discovered the harmony singing of the Copper Family in Rottingdean, Sussex.

The story goes that she invited two renown local singers from The Copper Family up to the house of Sir Edward Carson Q.C; an acquaintance of hers. She then plied James and Thomas Copper with a bottle of whiskey, while they sang a number of songs from the Copper family repertoire. Some of these songs were published in the Journal of the Folk Song Society in 1899, and James and Thomas became honorary members of the Folk Song Society.

Over fifty years after Kate Lee’s trip to Rottingdean, the BBC took interest in the Coppers, resulting in James Copper appearing on the front page of the Radio Times to promote a radio programme called ‘The Life of James Copper’. The ultimate accolade for the Coppers being James, his brother John and their sons Bob and Ron performing their unaccompanied harmony singing at the Royal Albert Hall in 1952.

At the following link you will hear a recording of Ron Copper (died 1978) singing ‘Hard Times of Old England’.

Ron Copper singing ‘Hard Times of Old England

At the aforementioned lecture given to the Oxford Folk Music Society in 1910 by Ralph Vaughn Williams, he went on to comment on the immerging awareness of English folk music;

Ralph Vaughn Williams used a number of folk songs he had recorded, as inspiration for classical compositions. A fine example being the hymn ‘To Be a Pilgrim’. The original melody originating from the folk song ‘Our Captain Calls All Hands’ which he heard sung by Mrs Verrall from Monks Gate, Sussex.

And so the folk song and music of Sussex and other parts of England continued to be discovered and recorded as with the discovery of Henry Burstow in Horsham and his astounding folk song repertoire of over 400 songs. All of which he could sing at the drop of a hat.

Henry Burstow 1826-1916

In 1952 the BBC employed the American song collector Alan Lomax and seconded Peter Kennedy from the English Folk Dance & Song Society to lead the Folk Music and Dialect Recording Scheme. Simply the idea was to go out among the people of the British Isles and collect songs, music and comment which could subsequently by used by the BBC in programming.

While Lomax and Kennedy did much of the work themselves, they asked local knowledgeable people to help. For example, in Sussex, Bob Copper (of The Copper Family) was employed to collect and record songs in Sussex and Hampshire. Recordings were aired on the BBC in Peter Kennedy’s Sunday morning radio programme, 'As I Roved Out'.

This BBC project inspired amateur collectors to seek out local singers, some re-visiting Lomax and Kennedy’s informants, while others discovered new singers and musicians like Scan Tester (see link below)

To learn and enjoy the history of traditional music in England (as well as the rest of the British Isles) the Voice of the People CD series on the Topic Label comes highly recommended.

As for folk music today; thankfully a new wave of folk musician in England is finally taking the attention away from the stereo typical ‘bearded folkie’.

With the likes of Devons’ Seth Lakeman (whose album ‘Poor Mans Heaven’ reached no. 8 in 2008), our own traditional music is in safe hands. Our new folk singers, musicians and dancers are themselves new shoots, keeping timeless stories and tunes alive for our childrens children.

Mak Norman
English Folk Musician, Singer, Historian