Folk Music
Author: Fusive Created: Wednesday, November 09, 2005
This is a blog about folk music. It will include information on music from Ireland, music from Scotland, the U.K, information on musicians and also local Folk from the Lancashire area. Also info on local live music and gigs in the Pendle and Lancashire area.
Neil Young
By Fusive on Friday, January 27, 2006
Neil Young From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Neil Percival Kenneth Robert Ragland Young, better known as Neil Young (born November 12, 1945) is a Canadian singer-songwriter who has become one of the most respected and influential musicians of his generation. Young is recognizable for his high-pitched, nasal voice and for his deeply personal lyrics. Musically, most of Young’s work falls into two distinct styles. The first is an acoustic, country-tinged folk rock, heard on such songs as "Heart of Gold," "Old Man" and "Long May You Run." The other style is a grinding, lumbering form of hard rock, heard on songs like "Cinnamon Girl," "Southern Man" and "Rockin' in the Free World" and often recorded with the backing band Crazy Horse. He has also experimented with soul, swing, jazz, rockabilly, and electronica in his widely varied career.
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Mike Harding - Radio 2 - Wednesday 8pm -
By Fusive on Friday, January 27, 2006
Mike Harding's Folk show on Wednesday nights, always well worth a listen, if you miss it you can always listen again for the next week on the internet. Here's the playlists for the last two weeks. http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/r2music/folk/harding/playlist.shtml
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Dick Gaughan
By Fusive on Thursday, January 26, 2006
Dick Gaughan is a Scottish singer-songwriter. Richard Peter Gaughan was born on 17 May 1948 in Rutherglen, South Lanarkshire, where his father was temporarily working as an engine driver. One and a half years later the whole family moved to Leith, a port on the outskirts of Edinburgh. He has never returned to Rutherglen. Richard's mother was from Lochaber, and was a native speaker of Gaelic. As a child in the 1930s she won a silver medal at the Gaelic Mod. His father was an Irish speaker from Mayo, who played the fiddle. He was the eldest of three children. Dick Gaughan took up the guitar at the age of 7.
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Show of Hands - Steve Knightley - Phil Beer
By Fusive on Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Show of Hands is an English acoustic roots duo comprising singer-songwriter Steve Knightley and multi-instrumentalist Phil Beer. Their appeal is based on the combined power of Knightley's original songs, the quality of their vocals and harmonies, and their multi-instrumental virtuosity. Their performances feature guitars, mandolin, mandocello, fiddle, cuatro, viola and concertina. With thousands of fans on their mailing list, Show of Hands had long wanted to play a concert big enough to gather all those fans together. Different ideas were brought up but none seemed right until London's Royal Albert Hall was suggested; the perfect venue, prestigious and big enough! The undertaking required a huge gamble by the duo and their management, but the show sold out in advance and took place on the evening of March 24, 1996.
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Folk Clubs
By Fusive on Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Folk clubs (as distinct from American folk-music nightclubs) were primarily an urban phenomenon of 1960s and 1970s Britain. Ewan MacColl was a founder of the "Ballad and Blues Club" in a pub in Soho. After a few weeks they moved to "The Princess Louise" at Holborn in 1961. A.L. Lloyd, Martin Carthy, Shirley Collins and many others sang there. Within five years every major city in the UK had a pub where, once a week there would be a room set aside for young people, usually students, to sing traditional and contemporary songs, perhaps with a guitar accompaniment.
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Ralph McTell
By Fusive on Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Ralph McTell (born Ralph May in Farnborough, England, 3 December 1944) is an English singer/songwriter and acoustic guitar player who has been an influential figure on the UK folk scene since the 1960s. Ralph McTell is probably best known for the song Streets of London which has been covered by over a hundred artists around the world. In the 1980s he wrote and played songs for two TV children's programmes, Alphabet Zoo which also featured Nerys Hughes, followed by Tickle On The Tum featuring Jaqui Reddin. Albums were also released from both series. McTell's guitar style has been influenced by many of the USA's country blues guitar players of the early 20th century, including Blind Blake, Blind Willie McTell and Robert Johnson.
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Fairport Convention
By Fusive on Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Fairport Convention is often credited with being the first British folk-rock band. Formed in 1967, Fairport rapidly developed from playing cover versions of American 'west coast' style music to an individual style which melded rock music with traditional English tunes and songs. Bedevilled by numerous personnel changes throughout its first decade, Fairport Convention was temporarily disbanded in 1979 but played annual reunion concerts until it reformed in 1985. Since then, it has enjoyed stability and continues to tour and record regularly. In part, the continuing success of Fairport Convention is due to the annual music festival it organises. Cropredy Festival has been held every year since 1974 near Cropredy, a village five miles north of Banbury, Oxfordshire and attracts 20,000 fans.
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Ballad
By Fusive on Wednesday, January 25, 2006
A ballad is a story in a song, usually a narrative song or poem. It is a rhythmic saga of a past affair, which may be heroic, romantic or satirical, political (affected by the previous three types mentioned, refers to either glorifying the exploits or causes of a particular leader or group, and is typical of totalitarian political systems), almost inevitably catastrophic, which is related in the third person, usually with foreshortened alternating four- and three-stress lines ('ballad meter') and simple repeating rhymes, and often with a refrain. If it is based on political or religious themes, a ballad may then be a version of a hymn. Ballads should not be confused with the ballade, a 14th and 15th century French verse form.
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Whistles
By Fusive on Wednesday, January 25, 2006
The tin whistle, also called the whistle, pennywhistle, or Irish whistle, is a simple six-holed woodwind instrument. The Irish words for the instrument are feadóg ('whistle' or 'flute') or feadóg stáin ('tin whistle'); feadóga stáin is the plural. It can be described as an end blown fipple flute, putting it in the same category as the recorder, Native American flutes, and many other woodwind instruments found in traditional music. History L.E. McCullough notes that the oldest surviving whistles date from the 12th century, but that, "Players of the feadan are also mentioned in the description of the King of Ireland's court found in the Brehon Laws dating from the 3rd century A.D
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Liam O'Flynn
By Fusive on Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Liam O'Flynn (b. 1945) is a well known Irish folk musician. He was born in County Kildare to musical parents, his father played the fiddle and his mother played the piano. After his first encounter with the uillean pipes, the greatest influences of his development were Leo Rowsome, Willie Clancy, and Séamus Ennis. Liam won recognition by winning prizes at the Oireachtas Festival and the Fleadh Ceoil in the 1960s. He became a founder member of Planxty. The Chieftains were the first to record Irish traditional instrumental music in a group format, but Planxty took it one step further.
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