HOME TRUTHS AND OBSERVATIONS THE MUSIC OF FOLK. Ancient airs and old songs Handed down from mother to child Children grow to pass on remembered fragments To their own offspring Adding rhyming lines and local legends Filling in the forgotten spaces From countryside to city they migrate From fields to factories, shoreline to mills Their musical memories packed up alongside their peasantry The educated see the value among the whistling and child rhymes And submit to pen and ink To become a collected song museum An influence on classical composers A source of inspiration - purity - simplicity The melodies becoming urbanised, married to new street-song words Printed on the penny page Sold on street corners to everyone Echoing around the village and town To land upon the paying publics ears From theatre stage and music hall To the citys barrel organ street chime And then the industry intervened To freeze in time on lathe-cut disc To twirl within the family home A fireside return, of gathering song To keep the wartime spirits high On cinema screen below the silent flicker Chalpin-esque rickety movements And later as the talkies reign A soundtrack for a marching century Culminating in a present day two second attention span Jumping across the TV screen No room or time for lullaby, waltz or Morris tune The modern folk song writer continues to struggle with the word smithery Deviating between the cliches and the obvious These days the traditional tunes are borrowed, bent and kidnapped Held hostage by a money-grabbing few Arrangers (as if such a thing could exist) Re-compiled on compact disc Downloaded and downgraded into a private earphone world To an inner ear existence The old tunes, no longer shared among the masses Like before the coming of the recording device They are left barely breathing as a minority interest For the folk music archeologists.
Posted on: Sat, 03 Jan 2015 20:48:06 +0000
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