“Folk Songs from Sussex” was the title of the talk at our October meeting. It was an audio and musical venture by Mak Norman into the folk songs of Sussex from 19th century to the 1960s, and the characters who sang and collected them. He told us how folk songs had brought middle class and poor people together as far back as the early 19th century, when song collectors from the middle classes were on a mission to save traditional English folk music from extinction and 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. The songs survived the Industrial Revolution but over the period of the two world wars, were superseded by radio, TV, big bands, jazz, blues and pop.
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.
In 1903, Cecil Sharp began to collect folk songs. He played a major role in the history of song collecting and the offices of the English Folk Dance and Song Society in London were named after him i.e. Cecil Sharp House. Thanks to him folk singing was introduced into schools.
Another important contributor to the early 20th century folk revival was the English classical composer Ralph Vaughn Williams, much of whose music is a classical interpretation of traditional folk songs.
In 1898, Folk Song Society member Kate Lee had discovered the harmony singing of the Copper Family in Rottingdean, Sussex. Over fifty years later, the BBC took interest in the Coppers, resulting in James Copper, his brother John and their sons Bob and Ron performing their unaccompanied harmony singing at the Royal Albert Hall in 1952. Bob Copper was eventually employed to collect and record songs throughout Sussex and Hampshire.
In the mid twentieth century a new wave of young English folk music enthusiasts promoted traditional music driven by a socialist and communist ideology. These were the songs of the common man and it was the perfect marriage for socio- political expression. The figurehead of the movement in England was Ewan MacColl.
Today another new wave of folk musician in England is finally taking the attention away from the stereo typical “bearded folkie”. With the likes of Devon’s Seth Lakeman (whose album ”Poor Man’s Heaven” reached no. 8 in 2008), traditional music is in safe hands. New folk singers, musicians and dancers are keeping timeless stories and tunes alive.
