| Description | Track 1: Ewan MacColl talks about Lonnie Donegan's career and the skiffle movement
Tracks 2-3: He talks about the skiffle movement in Britain and its relationship to American music including rhythm and blues and mountain music, the split in the British skiffle movement between those who believed that the music was a foreign idiom and we should try to find an English, Irish, and Scots idiom; and those who believed that American acculturation would produce a new form
Track 4-5: He talks about the Beatles and explains why he does not believe that their sound is English - the interviewer gives examples of the influence of Vaughan Williams and Mahler in Beatles songs - Ewan MacColl says this is nonsense and gives examples of new ideas becoming common currency in popular culture
Track 6: The interviewer asks MacColl about the argument that popular music should not have a function or criticism; he says that this is 'heresy' , he believes that one should apply criteria to it and arrive at an attitude towards it and pop music is bad music because it limits the range of expression available to people and therefore diminishes us as human beings.
Total: 17.20 mins
Dubber's reference number: PLA KF565D0129080 |