In this article, Assistant Producer Tasnim Siddiqa Amin asked members from the Black Smock Band about English folk music, the power of live music and queer culture today.
The music industry is in a strange place of appearing more democratic than ever, with viral trends and TikTok stars rivalling the traditional gatekeepers of radio stations and record labels. There was a time that the internet felt revolutionary, as anyone was able to find their niche fanbase from across the globe. And yet though anyone can theoretically find fans, those very same algorithms mean that in practice very few artists can make a viable living. Sadly globalisation and mainstream media has pushed local live music to the fringes, and this has had a political impact too as mainstream music is subject to the global forces of neoliberalism, corporate greed and mass inequality. The few artists who do make political radical music are subject to censorship and struggle to get the same visibility.
Thankfully, when we think about resistance in culture we don’t have to start from scratch, we can look back and retrace our radical roots in English folk music, the music of everyday people chatting shit about landlords and plotting their way out of poverty by collective means!
At Daedalus Theatre Company we believe in making our work political and using storytelling to go where politics cannot. In this article, Assistant Producer Tasnim Siddiqa Amin asked members from the Black Smock Band about English folk music, the power of live music and queer culture today.
Tell us about yourself and your creative practice.
Andy Bannister: I'm a musician and a visual artist. I teach fine art to students who focus on sculpture and combined media. Currently, I'm exploring the impact of science and technology on culture, with a focus on the widespread civil opposition to the nuclear arms race during the Cold War period.
Dan Cox: I’m a tour guide, writer, singer and accordionist. In all my roles, I am principally interested in telling stories. In everything I do, I try to reach into the human experience and convey those emotions through whichever medium I am working in.
Paul Burgess: I'm a theatre-maker and musician. I trained as a theatre designer and regularly design shows. Alongside this, I'm a co-director of Ecostage, the Society of British Theatre Designers' sustainability lead, and an MSc student at the Centre for Alternative Technology.
For those who aren’t familiar, what is English folk music?
DC: English folk music is the music of the common people of England, mostly prior to the 20th century. It was played on whatever instruments people had to hand and sung by people who worked the land or in the mines and factories that powered the Industrial Revolution. Some songs go back as far as the 13th century, but the main bulk of English folk is from the Victorian age. However, the folk tradition continues strongly and new material is being produced by a huge diversity of artists to this day.
The history of England is often told through stories of Kings and Queens and Great Deeds, but there is another story of hardship, joy, love, despair and everything in between of the common, ordinary people. Their stories weren’t often written down, but they were sung and many of those songs are still remembered today, thanks to people who collected those songs and preserved them – like John Clare. When I sing those songs, I am helping to preserve the memories of the people of England who are usually forgotten by “history”.
What is queer culture?
DC: Queer culture is often depicted in the media as being very specific – what most people think of as “the scene”, but there is much more to it than that. There’s nothing wrong with being a part of that but it was never somewhere I felt comfortable. When I met the other guys in the band I finally felt I had found a little home in my own comfortable corner of “Queer culture”. Queer people often grow up feeling very isolated. For me, coming from rural Suffolk, it was a very lonely experience, so to find a sense of community with like-minded queers was a fabulous, life-affirming thing. Queer culture is hard to define, but it can be life-saving for the lonely.
PB: I don't think one can define queer culture beyond saying it's culture created by queer people that in some way engages with queer experience. And it's essential to create space for this in our hetronormative society. For us, though, the aim was not so much to do with queer culture per se but to create a space where queer people could enjoy folk music in ways that felt safe and relevant.
How powerful is live music?
AB: Playing live is really important in terms of forming a direct connection with an audience. When the mood is right, there can be a sense that people are actively listening to what you're doing on stage, and as a performer you can really respond to this in the moment.
DC: Live music can be incredibly powerful as a way of bringing people together in community, even if they’ve never met before. To sing and dance together is one of life’s greatest joys, and that’s how I want people to interact with us when we perform.
PB: Before mass media, communities had to make their own entertainment. Live music was central to that, and that's where folk music comes from. That need has never fully gone away - and in some places, like Ireland, that has continued to flourish, but for a while, I think it's fair to say, it was pushed to the margins in England by top-down culture and mass media. A lot of the folk tradition, including much of the music, has been lost. Now, corporate media threatens to overwhelm us, to strip us of individuality, and take away our ability to tell fact from fiction. I think this means live music, and especially grassroots live music, i.e., music that is not under corporate control, suddenly seems really important again.
Can you recommend a folk song that speaks to our times?
AB: 'The Last Ploughshare' by John Connolly and recorded by the folk duo Jimmy Aldridge and Sid Goldsmith. The song is about the consequences of the exploitation of the natural world for profit.
DC: 'The Diggers’ Song' by Gerard Winstanley. He and his ragged band tried to build a socialist utopia in Surrey in the aftermath of the first English Civil War.
Queer Revolutionary Singalong will perform on Weds 22 April at 8:30pm.
