Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | N | Notes

The British Folk Revival, 1944-2002.

Article Excerpt
The British Folk Revival, 1944-2002. By Michael Brocken. (Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series.) Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003. [xii, 236 p. ISBN 0-7546-3282-2. $29.95 pbk.] Discography, bibliography, index.

The folk music revival following World War II has come under considerable scrutiny in the last few years. Monographs by Robert Cantwell (When We Were Good: The Folk Revival [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996]) and Ronald D. Cohen (Rainbow Quest: The Folk Music Revival and American Society, 1940-1970 [Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002]) chronicle the American experience, but not until Michael Brocken's The British Folk Revival, 1944-2002, has there been a similar broad view of the second British folk music revival.

From the very beginning, Brocken makes his prejudices and point of view quite clear. As a youngster in the 1960s, he found himself drawn towards the music of Americans Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Phil Ochs, and the folk-rock band, the Byrds. But upon his increased involvement with the British scene of the time, he immediately found himself confronted in the 1960s British folk clubs by the dichotomy between the popularized and admittedly commercial folk style he had come to treasure, and the severe authentic approach which required that all folk music of value be strictly British, or political in nature, or from the past. This ultimately leads to Brocken's thesis, which simply stated is this: "The needless...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!