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Chosen for October by The Book Foxes
Will Hodgkinson takes the folk-music collector Cecil Sharp as his inspiration, and sets off on his own journey. 21st century technology made this possible; Cecil Sharp could carry his wind-up cylinder recording machine under his arm; Will Hodgkinson can lug around a digital 8-track recording studio desk (‘the Zoom’) in an ASDA carrier bag, a technological full circle, which enables him to search out for himself the range and vitality of grass-roots music-making all over Britain. He visits iconic figures of popular music – Pete Townshend, and (together) Jarvis Cocker who left Sheffield behind when he found success, and Richard Hawley who didn’t, to get them to explore their musical roots, ‘before they were famous’. He shows us how traditional songs and their elemental themes, and cathartic cruelty in some instances, continue to be discovered in wonder by young singers, made personal to them, continuing the oral transmission that was thought to be past and gone.
Each chapter is a different place, and a different musical experience. He traces some of the transmission paths – through families, and so often Gipsy and Traveller families and communities, who lived apart from the mainstream, and smuggled the old songs and tunes through to the present day. Performance is very important too, and the distinctive personal style of each of his subjects is very well-described.
The Ballad of Britain is a convergence of two themes – the traveller in his native land; and a quest for music. The author puts himself, his Zoom and his dreadful wreck of a car at the centre of the story. He sets up interviews, field experiences, journeys, chats in pubs, all with the same unselfconscious, insouciant ease. He’s entitled to be part of the story, which is the intersection of a modern day collector with the musicians he is collecting, but he does not let his ego dominate – he gives ample space for his subjects to find their voice. One of the pleasures of this book is his treatment of the conversations he had on his journey – the different voices come through strong and true. He’s great too on the spirit of place, sketching with bold strokes the landscape so vividly that the reader can see it, whether it’s a wild and beautiful rural setting, or a depressed and depressing inner- or outer-city neighbourhood. Above all, he lets the music and the musicians speak, as he travels in search of, and finds in abundance, the Troubadour spirit still alive and owning the musical soul of Britain.
Full review and at: http://vulpeslibris.wordpress.com/2010/05/07/the-ballad-of-britain-by-will-hodgkinson/
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