Inspired in the present

A huge number of artists influenced by traveller folk music. In more recent years, British folk revivalists, such as Laura Marling and Johnny Flynn, have found successful careers in their music.

The Corrs, a well known Irish folk/rock band are a prime example of music that combines tradional roots with the pop/rock genre to create a more contemporary sound. Their earlier albums have a clearer Irish folk origin, as can be heard in the 1995, Forgiven Not Forgotten album intro.

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Johnny Flynn writes songs that are more synonymous with the traditional irish songs. His arrangments are kept simple, often keeping with one guitar, perhaps two and keys and a mandolin. However, Johnny himself says he finds it difficult to think 'about things in terms of any kind of genre or category...I see it as people who are just doing what they're doing.' Again, this comes down to people working with what they have spent time listening to and become attached to, and as Johnny has 'listened to a lot of folk and bluegrass, blues and country blues' and also spends much of his time writing poetry, and being inspired by the likes of Yeats and Shakespeare, the stories he wrote were well formed to be conveyed through the music he writes.

Perhaps he is not conciously immitating the style of traditional folk but the nature of using his style of poems with his music results in a similar structure. There are generally no obvious choruses in his songs, although a musical interlude between every three verses or so could be considered some kind of refrain even though they do tend to change.

Johnny Flynn

The Wrote and the Writ

They're taking pictures of the man from God

I hope his cassock's clean The burden of being our holy fellas Your halo'd better gleam, better gleam What of all those wayward priests? The ones who like to drink Do you suppose they'd swap their blood for wine Like you swapped yours for ink, for ink You wrote me oh so many letters And all of them seemed true Promises look good on paper Especially from you, from you The weight of all those willing words I carried all alone You wouldn't put your pen to bed When we hadn't found our own, our own Your sentences rose high at night And circled round my head The circle's since been broken Like the priest before me is breaking bread

I'm being asked to drink the blood of Christ And soon I'll eat his flesh I'm alone again before the altar Shedding all my old regrets The last of which I'll tell you now As it flies down the sink I never knew a part of you You didn't set in ink, in ink The letters that you left behind No longer shall I read Your blood's between the pages And I can't stand to see you bleed And I'll soon forget what was never there Your words are ash and dust All that's left is the song I've sung The breath I've taken and the one I must If you're born with a love for the wrote and the writ People of letters your warning stands clear Pay heed to your heart and not to your wit Don't say in a letter what you can't in my ear

A question to consider..

Here, we come to the issue of Appropration. In order to emulate a music culture, must it come from ones own experience and growth rather than by studying and duplicating certain aspects of that genre.?

Also what certifies such music as traditional Irish folk music. Perhaps there is no way to appropriate or copy the 'genre' as the reason it is qualified as such, is 'the fashioning and re-fashioning of the music by the community that give it its folk character' [Journal of the International Folk Music Council] , and therefore music cannot be written and performed in the same day by the same person and be considered a part of this genre, however much it might emulate this style of music

Appropriation

'How had composers experienced, understood, interpreted and finally appropriate Gypsy music? Was Gypsy music just another exotic music language among others? Or was it more powerful since composers had direct access to Gypsy performers. (Whereas Japanese, Indian, or Native performance might be harder to come by).' -The Gypsy Caravan (p.8)

To Television

Johnny Flynn wrote the score and theme song for BBC 4 television series: Detectorists. There is little music in the programme, however, as it is Sitcom, though the music there is, consists of simple guitar (and sometimes long string notes). For example, at the end of the pilot episode, the only music is in the last scene, for 45 seconds and after a three second pause, the theme song starts, which blends well.

The theme song: Detectorists

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Bibliography

http://www.platformsmagazine.com/10/contents/johnnyflynn.htm

Karpeles, Maud. “Definition of Folk Music”. Journal of the International Folk Music Council 7 (1955): 6–7. Web...

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