This article is about the genre of industrial folk music from the eighteenth century onwards. For the contemporary genre of industrial folk or post-industrial folk, see Neofolk.
Industrial folk music, industrial folk song, industrial work song or working song is a subgenre of folk or traditional music that developed from the 18th century, particularly in Britain and North America, with songs dealing with the lives and experiences of industrial workers. The origins of industrial folk song are in the British Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth century as workers tended to take the forms of music with which they were familiar, including ballads and agricultural work songs, and adapt them to their new experiences and circumstances. They also developed in France and the US as these countries began to industrialise.
Industrial folk song emerged in Britain, the first nation to industrialise, in the 18th century, as workers and their families moved from a predominately rural and agricultural society to an increasingly urban and industrial one. These workers tended to take the forms of music with which they were familiar, including ballads and agricultural work songs, and adapt them to their new experiences and circumstances.[1] Unlike agricultural work songs, it was often unnecessary to use music to synchronise actions between workers, as the pace would be increasingly determined by water, steam, chemical and eventually electric power, and frequently impossible because of the noise of early industry.[2] As a result, industrial folk songs tended to be descriptive of work, circumstances, or political in nature, making them amongst the earliest protest songs and were sung between work shifts or in leisure hours, rather than during work. This pattern can be seen in the first industry to fully develop, textile production, which was particularly important in Lancashire, with songs like 'Poverty knock' which described the relentless movement and noise of the loom.[1] The same trends were soon evident in mining and eventually steel, shipbuilding, rail working and other industries. As other nations industrialised their folk song underwent a similar process of change, as can be seen for example in France, where Saint-Simon noted the rise of 'Chansons Industrielles' among clothworkers in the early 19th century, and in the USA where industrialisation expanded rapidly after the Civil War.[3]
Definitions and characteristics
A. L. Lloyd defined the industrial work song as 'the kind of vernacular songs made by workers themselves directly out of their own experiences, expressing their own interest and aspirations, and incidentally passed on among themselves by oral means...'.[1] His definition did not include songs created by learned writers on behalf of the working class, but he was prepared to accept some popular and musical hall songs that had been adopted by the workers.[1] His definition has been criticised, as it depends on a concept of a pure working class culture unaffected by outside class or media influences, which is at variance with what we know of the spread of ideas and new forms of media from the late 19th century.[4]
Lloyd also pointed to various types of song, including chants of labour, love and erotic occupational songs and industrial protest songs, which included narratives of disasters (particularly among miners), laments for conditions, as well as overtly political strike ballads.[1] He also noted the existence of songs about heroic and mythical figures of industrial work, like the coal miners the 'Big Hewer' or 'Big Isaac' Lewis.[1] This tendency was even more marked in early American industrial songs, where representative heroes like Casey Jones and John Henry were eulogised in blues ballads from the 19th century.[5]
The first wave of folk song revival in Britain and America the later 19th century and early 20th century was largely unconcerned with recording industrial songs. It tended to focus on the rural and agricultural and has been criticised as being obsessed with a rural idyll.[1] As a result, industrial songs tended to be seen as a threat to traditional forms of music, rather than a development from them. In the second wave of revival, which was much more influenced by progressive or labour politics and as a result tended to show a much greater interest in the lives of working people and their music.[6] This movement was evident first in the USA where George Korson followed John Lomax's collection of the work songs of Cowboys with investigations of coal miner's songs, particularly from the Appalachians, from 1927.[7] Despite reservations about these songs, whose authors were often known and so they did not fit into the mould of traditional music, after World War II folklorists largely accepted this music as folk song. Pete Seeger's Folkways LP American Industrial Ballads (1956) was an early survey of this kind of song.[8] The American song collection of over 200 songs in Hard Hitting Songs For Hard Hit People by Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and Alan Lomax in the 1940s (not published till 1967), explored worker's song further.[9] The work of labour historian Archie Green, which included the production of recordings of labour and work songs, provided a wider context for understanding industrial folk song within a wider field of 'labor lore'.[10] Songs written by Seeger and Guthrie, were also important in continuing the tradition and moving it into progressive folk music.[8] Among the most successful of these composed industrial songs was Merle Travis' Sixteen Tons, first recorded in 1946, but made probably the most commercially successful industrial song when it was a major hit for 'Tennessee' Ernie Ford in 1955.[11]
In Britain the leading proponent of, and commentator on, industrial folk music was A. L. Lloyd. His Come All Ye Bold Miners: Ballads and Songs from the Coalfields, a collection of mining songs was published in 1952. Of his own recordings the most influential were his arrangement of various industrial songs on the LP The Iron Muse: a Panorama of Industrial Folk Song (1963).[6] A. L. Lloyd wrote in the 1965 Encyclopædia Britannica a paragraph on 'Industrial Song', part his broader entry on 'Folk Music' and his Folk Song in England (1967) concluded with a chapter titled 'Industrial Folk Song', which popularised the term.[1] Subsequently, David Harker criticised Lloyd for his romanticisation of industrial workers.[12] The other major figure of the second British folk revival, Ewan MacColl also played a significant part in popularising British Industrial folk song, making Shuttle and Cage a 10" LP with Peggy Seeger for Topic Records in 1958 and alone an LP for Stinson in 1963 called British Industrial Folk Songs.[6] From 1957 to 1964 probably the widest audience for British work songs was achieved through the Radio Ballads, of MacColl and Peggy Seeger, many of which focused on work, including rail workers, road building, fishing and coal mining.[13] However, many of the songs in the Radio Ballads were written by MacColl himself in the style of the songs that he, Lloyd and others had collected e.g. 'Shoals of Herring'. In the British folk rock movement of the 1970s industrial folk music was less prominent than traditional ballads, but largely accepted as part of folk music, with songs like 'Blackleg Miner' being recorded beside medieval ballads by leading bands of the genre like Steeleye Span.[14]
Decline and survival
Industrial folk song overlapped with other forms of music from the late 19th century, such as Music hall and popular music and began to disappear as a genre from the mid-20th century as different forms of song provided alternatives and the decline of major industries began to undermine it.[15] However, because of its political associations it has been revived, particularly in times of political and social upheaval such as the 1980s, when anarchist punk band Chumbawamba included several industrial work and protest songs on their English Rebel Songs 1381-1914 album (1988) and the tradition was taken up by folk artists like Billy Bragg.[16] In the United States, arguably the most successful inheritor of the tradition is Bruce Springsteen, often focusing more on industrial decline in songs like "Youngstown" on his 1995 album The Ghost of Tom Joad.[17] Songs from the tradition continue to be recorded, as in the Grammy nominated Music of Coal: Mining Songs from the Appalachian Coalfields (2007), a two CD compilation and booklet of mining songs.[18]
Notes
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 A. L. Lloyd, Folk song in England (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1967), pp. 323-28.
↑ J. Shepherd, Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music, vol. 1: Media, Industry and Society (Continuum International Publishing Group, 2003), p. 251.
↑ E. J. Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: the modernization of rural France, 1870-1914 (Stanford University Press, 1976), pp. 431-5 and Simon J. Bronner, Folk nation: folklore in the creation of American tradition (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), p. 142.
↑ A. Edgar, Cultural Theory: The Key Concepts (London: Routledge, 2007), p. 128.
↑ N. Cohen and D. Cohen, Long Steel Rail: the Railroad in American Folksong (University of Illinois Press, 2000), p. 126.
1 2 3 M. Brocken, The British Folk Revival 1944-2002 (Ashgate, Aldershot, 2003), p. 64.
↑ B. Nettl and P. Vilas Bohlman, Comparative Musicology and Anthropology of Music: Essays on the History of Ethnomusicology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), p. 117.
1 2 M. Halliwell, American culture in the 1950s (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), p. 129.
↑ A. Lomax, W. Guthrie and P. Seeger, Hard Hitting Songs for Hard-Hit People (1967, University of Nebraska Press, 1999).
↑ B. L. Cooper and W. S. Haney, Rock Music in American Popular Culture: Rock 'n' Roll Resources (Philadelphia, PA: Haworth Press, 1995), p. 315.
↑ W. C. Malone, Don't Get Above Your Raisin': Country Music and the Southern Working Class (University of Illinois Press, 2002), p. 43.
↑ D. Harker, Fake Song: the Manufacture of British Folksong' 1700 to the Present Day (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1985), p. 297.
↑ T. Strangleman and T. Warren, Work and Society: Sociological Approaches, Themes and Methods (London: Routledge, 2008), p. 92.
↑ B. Sweers, Electric Folk: The Changing Face of English Traditional Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 59.
↑ E. Lee, Folksong and Music Hall (London: Routledge, 1982).
↑ P. Buckley, The Rough Guide to Rock (London: Rough Guides, 2003), p. 195 and M. Willhardt, 'Available rebels and folk authenticities: Michelle Shocked and Billy Bragg' in I. Peddie, ed., The Resisting Muse: Popular Music and Social Protest (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), pp. 30-48.
↑ B. K. Garman, A Race of Singers: Whitman's Working-Class Hero from Guthrie to Springsteen (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), p. 241.
James Henry Miller, better known by his stage name Ewan MacColl, was an English folk singer-songwriter, folk song collector, labour activist and actor. Born in England to Scottish parents, he is known as one of the instigators of the 1960s folk revival as well as for writing such songs as "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" and "Dirty Old Town".
Alan Lomax was an American ethnomusicologist, best known for his numerous field recordings of folk music of the 20th century. He was a musician, folklorist, archivist, writer, scholar, political activist, oral historian, and film-maker. Lomax produced recordings, concerts, and radio shows in the US and in England, which played an important role in preserving folk music traditions in both countries, and helped start both the American and British folk revivals of the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s. He collected material first with his father, folklorist and collector John Lomax, and later alone and with others, Lomax recorded thousands of songs and interviews for the Archive of American Folk Song, of which he was the director, at the Library of Congress on aluminum and acetate discs.
"Scarborough Fair" is a traditional English ballad. The song lists a number of impossible tasks given to a former lover who lives in Scarborough, North Yorkshire. The "Scarborough/Whittingham Fair" variant was most common in Yorkshire and Northumbria, where it was sung to various melodies, often using Dorian mode, with refrains resembling "parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme" and "Then she'll be a true love of mine." It appears in Traditional Tunes by Frank Kidson published in 1891, who claims to have collected it from Whitby.
The term American folk music encompasses numerous music genres, variously known as traditional music, traditional folk music, contemporary folk music, vernacular music, or roots music. Many traditional songs have been sung within the same family or folk group for generations, and sometimes trace back to such origins as the British Isles, Mainland Europe, or Africa. Musician Mike Seeger once famously commented that the definition of American folk music is "...all the music that fits between the cracks."
A work song is a piece of music closely connected to a form of work, either one sung while conducting a task or one linked to a task that may be a connected narrative, description, or protest song. An example is "I've Been Working on the Railroad".
The Almanac Singers was an American New York City-based folk music group, active between 1940 and 1943, founded by Millard Lampell, Lee Hays, Pete Seeger, and were joined by Woody Guthrie. The group specialized in topical songs, mostly songs advocating an anti-war, anti-racism and pro-union philosophy. They were part of the Popular Front, an alliance of liberals and leftists, including the Communist Party USA, who had vowed to put aside their differences in order to fight fascism and promote racial and religious inclusiveness and workers' rights. The Almanac Singers felt strongly that songs could help achieve these goals.
Albert Lancaster Lloyd, usually known as A. L. Lloyd or Bert Lloyd, was an English folk singer and collector of folk songs, and as such was a key figure in the British folk revival of the 1950s and 1960s. While Lloyd is most widely known for his work with British folk music, he had a keen interest in the music of Spain, Latin America, Southeastern Europe and Australia. He recorded at least six discs of Australian Bush ballads and folk music.
Appalachian music is the music of the region of Appalachia in the Eastern United States. Traditional Appalachian music is derived from various influences, including the ballads, hymns and fiddle music of the British Isles, and to a lesser extent the music of Continental Europe.
Isla Cameron was a Scottish-born, English-raised actress and singer. AllMusic noted that "Cameron was one of a quartet of key figures in England's postwar folk song revival – and to give a measure of her importance, the other three were Ewan MacColl, A. L. Lloyd, and Alan Lomax". She was a respected and popular folk music performer through the 1950s and early 60s as well as appearing in several films; she focused almost exclusively on her acting career from 1966 onwards. Cameron provided the singing voice for actress Julie Christie's part in the hit 1967 film version of Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd, but changed career direction and became a film researcher in the early 1970s before her early death in a domestic accident in 1980. One of the traditional songs in her repertoire, "Blackwaterside", recorded by Cameron in 1962, was subsequently popularised by notable "next generation" U.K. folk music performers Anne Briggs, Bert Jansch and Sandy Denny.
Nimrod Workman was an American folk singer, coal miner and trade unionist. His musical repertoire included traditional English and Scottish ballads passed down through his family, Appalachian folk songs and original compositions.
The American folk music revival began during the 1940s and peaked in popularity in the mid-1960s. Its roots went earlier, and performers like Josh White, Burl Ives, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Big Bill Broonzy, Richard Dyer-Bennet, Oscar Brand, Jean Ritchie, John Jacob Niles, Susan Reed, Paul Robeson, Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey and Cisco Houston had enjoyed a limited general popularity in the 1930s and 1940s. The revival brought forward styles of American folk music that had in earlier times contributed to the development of country and western, blues, jazz, and rock and roll music.
Aunt Molly Jackson was an influential American folk singer and a union activist. Her full name was Mary Magdalene Garland Stewart Jackson Stamos.
Florence Reece was an American social activist, poet, and folksong writer. She is best known for the song "Which Side Are You On?" which she originally wrote at the age of twelve while her father was out on strike with other coal miners, according to The Penguin Book of American Folk Song by Alan Lomax.
Contemporary folk music refers to a wide variety of genres that emerged in the mid-20th century and afterwards which were associated with traditional folk music. Starting in the mid-20th century, a new form of popular folk music evolved from traditional folk music. This process and period is called the (second) folk revival and reached a zenith in the 1960s. The most common name for this new form of music is also "folk music", but is often called "contemporary folk music" or "folk revival music" to make the distinction. The transition was somewhat centered in the United States and is also called the American folk music revival. Fusion genres such as folk rock and others also evolved within this phenomenon. While contemporary folk music is a genre generally distinct from traditional folk music, it often shares the same English name, performers and venues as traditional folk music; even individual songs may be a blend of the two.
Harriet Elizabeth "Hally" Wood was an American musician, singer and folk musicologist. She worked with John and Alan Lomax and participated in the publication of songbooks for the works of artists like Lead Belly and Woody Guthrie. She also performed as a singer and recorded solo and collaborative albums with folk singers such as Pete Seeger.
The British folk revival incorporates a number of movements for the collection, preservation and performance of folk music in the United Kingdom and related territories and countries, which had origins as early as the 18th century. It is particularly associated with two movements, usually referred to as the first and second revivals, respectively in the late 19th to early 20th centuries and the mid-20th century. The first included increased interest in and study of traditional folk music, the second was a part of the birth of contemporary folk music. These had a profound impact on the development of British classical music and in the creation of a "national" or "pastoral" school and led to the creation of a sub-culture of folk clubs and folk festivals as well as influential subgenres including progressive folk music and British folk rock.
George Korson was a folklorist, journalist, and historian. He has been cited as a pioneer collector of industrial folklore, and according to Michael Taft of the Library of Congress, "may very well be considered the father of occupational folklore studies in the United States." In addition to writing and editing a number of influential books, he also issued his field recordings of coal miners on two LP records for the Library of Congress.
John Barrett Hasted was a British physicist and folk musician. He was born in Woodbridge, Suffolk, on 17 February 1921, the son of John Ord Cobbold Hasted and Phyllis Barrett. He was a pioneer of radar development and an atomic physicist, but he was also a pioneer and mainstay of the post-war English folk music revival, a founder and champion of the skiffle movement, and a passionate advocate for both traditional and political folksong.
Sarah Ogan Gunning was an American singer and songwriter from the coal mining country of eastern Kentucky, as were her older half-sister Aunt Molly Jackson and her brother Jim Garland. Although she made an appearance in the New York folk music scene of the 1930s, she was overshadowed by her older brother and half-sister. Rediscovered in the 1960s while living in Detroit, she played at folk festivals at Newport in 1964 and the University of Chicago in 1965.
The Iron Muse (A Panorama of Industrial Folk Song) is the title of two albums released by Topic Records, the first as a 12-inch Long Play vinyl record released in 1963 and the other as a CD released in 1993.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
