Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.The impulses driving traditional folk music – as depicted on this four-CD set tracking the British Isles folk revival, from the Aran-sweatered Sixties of Ewan MacColl and the Dubliners, through to the pierced, flame-haired Nineties of Eliza Carthy – are directly opposed to the amorphous globalism of Moby, placing a premium instead on particularity of experience and location, location, location. The accompanying track annotations feature notes on not just the performers' roots but those of the song, too, a celebration of regionality that goes way beyond outsized national blocs, and in some cases is directly opposed to them: many of the characters in these songs are suffering through opposition to the status quo, or cheekily thwarting it – a sort of topical samizdat entertainment that found its logical offspring in the workers' rights ballads and CND anthems of the Aldermaston generation. The set's chronological presentation may seem strange for a genre whose aim is, in part, to defy the passage of time, rejecting modernity in favour of antiquity; but mercifully, the "authenticity" prized by purists has always been tempered by the urge to cross-pollinate, with such 1960s pioneers as Pentangle and the Incredible String Band inventing the kind of world/folk crossovers that have since proliferated, a progress that this compilation touches upon. And it's not all shepherds, squires and fair maidens, either.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments