Folk club
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A Folk club is a regular event, permanent venue, or section of a venue devoted to folk music and traditional music. Folk clubs were primarily an urban phenomenon of 1960s and 1970s Great Britain and Ireland, but continue today there and elsewhere.
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[edit] Early years
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Ewan MacColl co-founded the "Ballad and Blues Club" in a pub in Soho. Unfortunately the actual name of the original pub is not mentioned anywhere on the web or in any recently published book. The date is equally mysterious. Michael Brocken claims it was "in the 1950s". Georgina Boyes claims in her book "The Imagined Village" that MacColl back-dated the origins of his club in order to appear to be the first in London. After a few weeks they moved to The Princess Louise in 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 musical accompaniment. At this time music on the radio and on television was rather tame, and jazz was seen by many as excessively sophisticated. BBC radio was excessively "safe". For example Lonnie Donegan's "Diggin' My Potatoes" was banned for being overly suggestive.[1]
Some singers who later became famous in popular entertainment started in folk clubs, including Billy Connolly, Jasper Carrott, Ian Dury and Barbara Dickson. Björn Ulvaeus of ABBA, a multi-millionaire, still appears in folk clubs. For example in 2000 he appeared at the "Västerviksfestivalen", playing accordion.[2]
[edit] Later years
The number of clubs has been in decline since the 1980s. On the west coast of Ireland and the far north of Scotland folk clubs exist but are called sessions. Some have existed for more than 30 years. The Bridge Folk club in Newcastle (previously called the Folk Song and Ballad club) claims to the oldest club still in existence in its original venue (1953). In Edinburgh, Sandy Bell's club in Forest Hill has been running since the late 1960s. In London, the Troubador at Earl's Court, where Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Sandy Denny and Martin Carthy have sung, still exists. It became a poetry club in the 1990s but is now a folk club again. The Singers Club closed its doors in 1991. Les Cousins in Greek Street was where John Renbourn often played. Like the Scots House in Cambridge Circus, it stopped being a folk club long ago. One of the most famous clubs in London, Bunjie's Folk Cellar on Lichfield Street has reverted to a restaurant, but the 12 Bar Blues Club nearby has taken on its mantle.
Martin Nail, the organiser of the Islington Folk Club, runs a web site listing about 160 UK folk clubs which have web presences.
[edit] Irish clubs
In Dublin, Irish music pubs are now part of a well-advertised tourist trail. Also, Irish cultural centres have existed in the United Kingdom since the 1950s, primarily for the descendants of Irish immigrants. Mostly on Friday and Saturday nights these have been folk clubs in all but name. They have been able to book major Irish bands that ordinary folk clubs could not have afforded. Changes in the law mean that players often have to become a member 24 hours beforehand. Since 2002 A "public entertainment licence"[3] is required from local authorities for almost any kind of public performance of music. To avoid the constant need to re-apply for licences for new events, some folk clubs have opted to create a "Private members club" instead. This requires that members of the public join at least 24 hours in advance, not on the night of the actual performance. Previously you could pay on entry.
[edit] Festivals
The Inter Varsity Folk Dance Festival began in 1951. Sidmouth Festival began in 1954, and Cambridge Folk Festival began in 1965. All three are still going strong.
[edit] References
[edit] External links
[edit] Bibliography
- The British Folk Revival 1944–2002, by Michael Brocken (2003)
- Electric Folk, by Britta Sweers (2005)
