Viewing: ENGLISH FOLK-HERITAGE - View all posts

Thanks For The Memories (originally posted in 2015) 

I would like to thank the 140 or so folk club, concert and festival organizers who graciously booked an unknown Anglo/ Kiwi folk musician from 2007-2012 and continue to enquire whether I will be touring again. 
Also my sincere thanks to the hundreds of folk who came to hear me perform and perhaps bought my CDs - some of whom still write to ask me if I will be back performing in the UK. To all those lovely people the simple answer is no,  I did my dash and what a wonderful experience it was. 
I thoroughly…

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How Victorian Collectors Plundered English Folk Heritage 

THE MIDSHIRE GAZETTE 

23rd December 2017 

STOP PRESS: How Victorian Collectors Plundered English Folk Heritage
English Heritage and English Ethnic Continuity LOST


We were wrong, and we apologise to Ethnic English folk everywhere. 

A hundred years on and the English folk-arts material that was collected by British Victorians has still NOT been fully and properly returned. 

For a hundred years the entire English people have been kept ignorant of its existence, and denied free access to it.

What is ours has…

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Victorian Collectors Promise To Save England's Folk Treasures (July 1886) 

THE MIDSHIRE GAZETTE 

23rd July 1886 

Victorian Collectors Promise To Save England's Folk Treasures, 
English Heritage and English Ethnic Continuity To Be Preserved Forever 

At first glance it appears that the well-heeled British Victorian collectors of "everything not nailed down" have found a new target for their cultural appropriation, and it is a darned sight closer to home than Egypt or Africa, and doesn't involve an extinct race or ethnic group. 
Down in the English countryside the local yokels have…

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Who stole our English folk-heritage? 

Several British private and academic institutions continue to hoard many thousands of folk songs, tunes and dances that rightly belong to the ethnic English people.
These cultural treasures were plundered by British Victorian collectors and hidden away more than a century ago, ostensibly to preserve them for posterity i.e. to prevent them being lost to future generations of the very same English people. However, more than a hundred years later much of this rich cultural folk-heritage has STILL not been…

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"Roots" - A protest song by Steve Knightley 

In researching examples of anti-English racism I am reminded of the mild furore that was created by Steve Knightley's song "Roots" some years ago. The lyrics are below .... see what you think

I still have no idea what persuaded Knightley to appear on the Radio 2 Mike Harding show to explain the lyrics and (presumably) to allay the fears of (folkie?) New British whingers that they were NOT racist, anti-immigrant or anti-multiculturalist and that he (Knightley) is not actually a paid-up member of the BNP.

I

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My Memory of Dave Swarbrick 

I played support for Dave Swarbrick & Kevin Dempsey at Cambridge Folk Club in 2012. I hadn't seen Swarbs for the best part of 40 years (the Why is a complete 'nother story) and when he turned up in a wheelchair I was shocked because he looked so small. I knew he'd been ill for a very long time and on death's door at least once but when he started fiddling he seemed to fill the stage never mind the wheelchair. I started the evening with a short set that finished with a Lancashire-Maori version of Pokarekare…Read more

All The Way To America 

Hi Phil,
Just bought two of your CDs and can't wait to hear them in full! I've been a folk music enthusiast for many years and found you courtesy of an American Drane who has been spreading word of your music via American genealogy sites!  I'm a descendant of James Anthony Drane who came from England to Maryland in the very early 1600s, so we're cousins many, many times removed!  Now I know where I got my long-time fervent interest in folk music!  It's genetic!  Also appreciate your thoughts on the "New…

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EFDSS and The Full English again 

I came across this article while Googling ‘English folk-heritage’.
http://www.whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com/news/free-archive-reveals-englands-folk-heritage

According to the writer, English people (inter alia) should be grateful to the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS) for "opening up traditional English music to an international audience" by uploading thousands of English manuscripts to the internet and a programme of events patronisingly-named 'The Full English'.
The headline reads “Free Archive…Read more

Praise for Phil Drane 

A selection of organizer's comments .... 

New Zealand

"A fantastic weekend with Phil Drane in concert on Sunday, up to his usual high standard and all those attending had a lovely time with Phil's entertaining programme of English folk heritage music." ..... Steve Tolley, Bent Horseshoe Cafe. Tokomaru, New Zealand

“Your gig was brilliant Phil!! Beautiful songs, well sung and lovely guitar accompaniment. I was engrossed from start to finish and your spot flew by all too quickly. It was obvious that the audience…Read more

Ethnic English Folk-Culture in New Zealand 

The National Library of New Zealand, Alexander Turnbull Library has added my albums Two Ravens, The English Lament, and The Best English Singalong Folksongs CDs to its online audio collection of ethnic immigrant folk-heritage music. They join my first album Full Circle  whch was adopted in 2010.
This is a clear indication that New Zealand (unike the Dis-United Kingdom) clearly recognises the contribution that immigrant ethnic English people and their folk-culture continue to make to New Zealand's evolving…Read more

What Is Folk Music? Well I don't know about you but I'm not in the least bit confused. 

What is folk music?
There are two types of what nowadays we call 'folk music'. Neither is a true, identifiable music genre, like blues or jazz or classical music.

The first type is what I call "Folk Heritage Music" and what Neil Colquhun (Kiwi author of "Song of a Young Country") calls simply "Heritage Music".
My feeling is that "folk-heritage' music better differentiates it as music of the common people as opposed to more highbrow forms of heritage music.
Neil attended a concert I did at Wellington Folk Club…Read more

English Accents and Dialects - The Anglo Files Radio Show - Final Episode (2007) 

Digging through my archives recently I found a recording of the final episode of “The Anglo Files” dated March 2007.
Now that Facebook enables access to the world, I thought it would be a fun to share it , since it features ordinary English people talking about themselves in some of the wonderful regional English accents and dialects that I have known all my life.
So I added a few vintage pics and made it into a video. The opening tune is The Hesleyside Reel played by Tim Van Eyken.
<<Click Here>> to play theRead more