Trouble and strife

Folk music is sexist. Well of course it is because it’s come from a culture that’s sexist. What matters is not what was written in the past but being alive to how we bring it into a culture where we aim (?) to value all people.

First up today was Morris On, founded by Ashley Hutchings who I’ve seen in several musical incarnations over the years. And with Morris On, obviously, some morris dancers.

Trouble is, it reminded me that back in ‘75 I was part of a group that included some morrismen in need of a fiddler. I enjoyed playing fiddle so offered to play for them. There ensued the most absurd tussle about whether it was OK for a woman to sully the Male Tradition. Finally they deigned to let me play. I should have turned heel and left them to it but I didn’t, and some continued to make their disgruntlement apparent. (I confess, though, that as we toured Peak District pubs and Greater Manchester shopping malls, I did spot that the masculinity of some might not be all they’d have liked it to be. Doubtless the fault of my fiddling.)

Trouble is, it reminded me that back in ‘78, I saw the fabulous adaptation of Lark Rise to Candleford at the National Theatre with music by Ashley Hutchings’s Albion Band. The performance included his then wife, the singer Shirley Collins, and I now know that the affair he was having with one of the other actresses was being played out on stage each night and led to Shirley Collins developing dysphonia and giving up singing for over 30 years.

I was just about managing to put all that behind me till, trouble was, Morris On introduced Cuckoo’s Nest as a song that is often criticised for being misogynist (it does objectify women but at least the sex in it involves some sort of consent, which is not always the case in folk songs). Which should have been an opportunity to say something other than, ‘To prove it’s not sexist the lovely Ruth Angell is going to sing it with us.’ Yeah, yeah, irony. One grade up from a sense of humour failure is a sense of irony failure.

I spent the rest of the day angry and alienated. So this evening’s very well put together musical history of Fairport, with almost all the surviving ex-band members moving on and off the stage chronologically to sing a song or two from the time(s) they were in the band, was of academic interest only to me. Even the massed singing of Meet on the Ledge didn’t draw me in.
 
What a sad end. Farewell, farewell.