Over a pint of bitter in a muggy Camberwell pub, Daniel S Evans of folk music iconoclasts Shovel Dance Collective regales me with what he calls the “fable” of the group’s origin: a gig featuring “25 minutes of free improv with this incessantly loud sine-wave playing”, ending with a high-speed rendition of Irish traditional The King of the Fairies.
That apparent vibe-clash characterises a folk music movement emerging in Britain in recent years, broadening a genre many young people had deemed irrelevant or even cringeworthy. “When I was a teenager playing this music, I didn’t really talk to people about it,” says Shovel Dance harpist Fidelma Hanrahan. But now “it’s not something to be embarrassed about” as a series of tight-knit groups and collectives upturn expectation while honouring tradition. That’s a tricky balance, as the far right aggressively champion what they see as traditional British culture while leftists confront shameful parts of British history.
The nine-piece Shovel Dance Collective smear traditional tunes with psychogeographic field recordings; during the pandemic they created a swirling, hour-long YouTube drone epic encouraging viewers to join the London Renters Union. Meanwhile, “slacker-trad” duo Milkweed excavate obscure folk literature via samplers to produce an ancient form of experimental hip-hop, and Angeline Morrison uses an English folk song template to craft songs of the untold Black British experience. Artists such as these are focused on their own individual interpretations of Britain’s past, and less bound by the ageing folk culture that re-popularised folk music in the 1960s.
“There’s a lot more activity going on started by younger people and people outside the folk scene,” says Fay Hield, a University of Sheffield professor whose Access Folk project looks at the impact of empire and colonialism on traditions such as folk singing. “What they love about the music and the traditions is that it is folkloric. So bypassing the colonialist and nationalist ideas, it’s rejecting all that and going back to ritual and nature magic … to get away from the sense of nationalism, but to go to more universal truths.”
Campbell Baum is one of the leading figures in folk club/label/band/collective Broadside Hacks, who recently curated an all-star Pogues tribute gig at the Hackney Empire in London, something they will be helping to replicate in Dublin this December. “I’m from a kind of indie, ‘this band could be your life’ background,” Baum says, citing his membership of indie-rockers Sorry and punk-like ethos for the collective. “I’m into bands like the New Eves and Goblin Band and Milkweed. They’re proper bands; they’re gangs.”
That collective mentality has led to Broadside Hacks running well-populated events. In March, one paid tribute to historic Soho folk club Les Cousins, putting 60s stars including Martin Carthy and Bridget St John on bills with bold young artists (their next tribute is over the August bank holiday). Other gigs have had Junior Brother, Daisy Rickman and Clara Mann covering tunes by older legends such as Townes Van Zandt, Nick Drake and John Fahey. “You might think that John Martyn is impossible to play, but watch this person do it really convincingly,” Baum says.
This blend of old and new comes as arguments over British identity have escalated into violence on our streets; a 2022 study from King’s College London found that 54% of Brits agree the country is divided by culture wars. For those on the right, harking back to tradition is an easy way to display nationalistic pride and exclude those who do not fit into narrow definitions of Englishness (the now defunct far-right British National Party even once created its own folk music label).
So the new folk groups acknowledge tradition but repurpose it, with Shovel Dance Collective highlighting feminist, queer and anticolonial narratives within the traditional songs they play. Vocalist Mataio Austin Dean is an outspoken Marxist of mixed Guyanese and English heritage who cut his teeth singing on picket lines including the UCU university staff strikes of the last few years, and sees singing English folk traditionals “as a decolonial process for me as a person of colour, to sing those songs and claim Englishness rather than Britishness, because I think Britishness is toxic. It’s the union, it’s the empire.”
This new embrace of olde England extends beyond music. Peregrinating across pagan Britain, Weird Walk record their psychedelic wanderings through their stylish cult zine. Ben Edge acts as the British folk scene’s tour guide, his ornate paintings animating oddities and rituals from the Greenman of Bankside to the Flaming Tar Barrels of Ottery St Mary. Even morris dancing has seen an uptick in attention via Boss Morris, a female-led dance troupe, jingling bells and clashing sticks from festival stages to collaborating with Wet Leg for their 2023 Brit awards performance.
When looking at the future of folk, Dean celebrates traditional music as having “surprisingly little racial, sexual and gender bigotry and finality in the words and in the music. It has that kind of inclusiveness, which I think is very powerful as a social force.” For Dean, and seemingly so many of his folk music peers, “there isn’t necessarily a conflict between the traditional and the progressive. If we are always crushing things to move forward, then we’re going to be destroying things that people already have.”
• A Second Tribute to Les Cousins: Soho’s Legendary Folk & Blues Club is at various London venues, 24 August to 1 September. The Shovel Dance by Shovel Dance Collective is released on 11 October on American Dream Records. Red Roses for Me: 40th Anniversary Special Performance by the Pogues and Friends is on 17 December, 3Arena, Dublin.
