| Description | Track 1: Test tone, 0.28 mins
Tracks 2-9: 'Folk Song and Ballad' programme 6. A discussion about folk music and the folk revival. The programme begins with an introduction by Charles Parker criticising the first five programmes in the series - he contends that bel canto, Bob Dylan, and the Beatles, which were all used in the programmes, have nothing to do with British folk song. He objects to bel canto singers singing folk song texts, and says that none of the presenters of the programmes has 'a real sense of folk song style'. He suggests that the singers used by the presenters of the first five programmes were not as good as the best traditional singers like Paddy Tunney or Joe Heaney. He disagrees with the programme about broadside ballads, which he says are the only models for literate individual composition in a communal, oral form. He talks about songs written as part of the folk song revival, and proposes a song about a black boy killed in a road accident in Gunnersbury as an example of a good revival song.
Tracks 10-18: Roger Owen chairs a discussion between A.L. Lloyd, Derek Cooke, Stephen Sedley, and Charles Parker about folk songs and the revival. This includes discussion on the variety of songs and singers within the tradition, what the revival can learn from the tradition, how to define folk music, the breaking up of communities that produced folk music and whether it is possible to learn from the old tradition in the modern world, the element of artificiality in revival songs, whether folk music should be dissected by middle-class intellectuals, or whether, as Charles Parker argues, we should be developing a critical language which is capable of discussing folk song.
Total: 28.58 mins
Dubber's reference number: PLA KF565D0247380 |