advertisement


Turner Prize 2019

With this year’s group of artists & collaboration & interconnectedness forming their individual portfolios, I would’ve been disappointed if they’d not all decided to join together & form a single winning entity. Part of me wonders if it was a nudge by the Turner prize shortlist committee to see if they could seed or incept such an idea. The Turner Prize always seeks to have a contentious and thought provoking winner to rekindle the discourse surrounding contemporary art. This is another way of achieving that.
 
Mullardman said:
Whoahh!!

Gareth.. I said 'an awful lot' .. that's not 'all'. I was also writing in the context of what I said about the way many people can divorce their political allegiances from their musical taste.. a la Mescalito.

Also. I was referencing 'fans' more than artists. I've not been a regular at folk clubs for many years,mostly because in this neck of the woods they have declined.. but I've seen and rubbed shoulders with many of the greats, including Martin Carthy, the late Swarbrick and others. Shay Black ( Brother of Mary.) and many others in the 'Irish' scene too.

I have to admit that a lot of my opinion was formed in the 1980s when a lot of NF people latched onto the folk scene in my area.. thinking it somehow reinforced their grip on 'Britishness'

Thing is.. your first article, concerning Eliza Carthy, confirms that the UK far right have indeed attempted to infiltrate the UK folk scene and claim it.. in the same way that they have tried to claim the English flag as theirs. Eliza rejects them, I reject them, you reject them and I don't doubt that the bulk of folk fans and musicians do likewise.. but that doesn't negate the fact that the far right Parties have tried it on.. and that more than a few far right individuals have tried it on too.

I may have overstated my case.. within the context of what I was posting.. If I've caused any offence it certainly wasn't intended.. But there is no doubt that the far right tries and will continue to try.. to appropriate any part of 'British' culture that it can, in order to falsely legitimise its views.
Click to expand...

Hi Mull Thanks for the rely, I appreciate the further explanation, maybe I over reacted slightly. I have been closely involved with the Folk scene (mostly English to be fair) since the early 70's as a small child with both parents significantly involved in the Morris dancing world and have been attending folk clubs and festivals since then as well. My experiences have mostly as a attendee and "punter" although I have been a performer as in fact most attendees are in some way. The beauty of the folk world is its inclusiveness where group activities, ceilidhs, workshops - learning musical instruments, dancing, art, circus skills whatever. Most festivals have international guests again teaching their traditions and unique skills. My brother is a professional folk musician as well and through him I have been able to meet many more performers and fans from around the world and I cannot bring myself to mention the far right in the same sentence as them.

I am sure that there are racists and bigots in the folk world (the law of averages would say there must be) just as I am sure there are anti semites in the labour party, but they absolutely do not define them and what they stand for. Having been a part of this world for most of my 53 years I know that the vast majority of them, fans and performers utterly reject this type of appropriation and again I urge anyone to attend a festival or folk club to see for themselves.
 
I’ve always viewed folk music, like blues and jazz etc, as being protest music. A lineage that continues today through much highly political rap etc. It has always baffled me how people with ugly right-wing views could claim to like such music as to do so would demonstrate such a shallow grasp of the music’s form or history. A similar absurdity to racist NF skins liking ska etc.

PS Here’s a nice picture of Woody Guthrie.
 
Tony L said:
I’ve always viewed folk music, like blues and jazz etc, as being protest music. A lineage that continues today through much highly political rap etc. It has always baffled me how people with ugly right-wing views could claim to like such music as to do so would demonstrate such a shallow grasp of the music’s form or history. A similar absurdity to racist NF skins liking ska etc.

PS Here’s a nice picture of Woody Guthrie.
Click to expand...


That is so true and it baffles me as well. It is virtually all written from a working man's (trad) perspective.

Here is one of the current generation of performer/songwriters who I think encompasses what English folk is. If you get a chance, please go and see him, I think he will resonate with most of you on here, especially the political types.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Wood_(folk_musician)

 
Tony L said:
It has always baffled me how people with ugly right-wing views could claim to like such music as to do so would demonstrate such a shallow grasp of the music’s form or history.
Click to expand...

Old friend of mine is still playing covers is in a band of devout Trumpers, the whole lot of them. The playlist reads like a best hits version of snowflake music.
 
jackbarron said:
There are no doubt some antisemites involved with Labour, but nowhere near the amount painted by the media and the Rabbi who is a supporter of Johnson and the Tory Party. This is the Johnson who insults black people and women Muslims who wear burkas. In other words he is a racist.

To follow up an unanswered question: Are Gee Vaucher and Penny Rimbaud your friends?

Jack
Click to expand...

As far as I'm aware the Labour party is the only one currently being investigated by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which has apparently received dozens of submissions by serving Labour party members, with accusations of cover-up and explicit anti-semitism extending right up to the leader's office and to Corbyn himself. I have absolutely no doubt that the tory party has its own issues, but as yet it isn't being investigated. As to the remarks that Johnson made about black people and female Muslims and upon which so much ferocity and hot air is being directed by the left, I can only say that as unnattractive, insulting or even repulsive as they might to many seem in this age of filigree porcelain sensibilities, I note too that they have been willingly taken out of context the better to weaponise them, and that in the first (written in far off 2002) the target was the ugly 'white man's paternalism' of Tony Blair (with an incidental sideswipe at HMQ) and that in the second he was, in the context of calls to 'ban the veil', actively, even if in quite deliberately controversial terms, defending the right of Muslim women to wear whateverTF they like.

Anyway, racism is, as you know, something from which it is possible to be cured, so hopefully both BJ and JC are better now.

The context from which we seem to have drifted is MVV's bizarre submission that people who believe in the concepts of self-determination, democracy and the right to appoint and sanction the people who make our laws and spend our taxes, are unable to appreciate the arts, and my response that it is utter, incomprehensible claptrap. Like satire, for art to work, to have an effect, it needs to have a target, and that target is most commonly 'the establishment'. The best, or the most effective, art tends to come, almost by definition, from the young, hard up, and most ferociously anti-establishment. So the arts tend to be left leaning. The arts tend therefore to be more generously funded by the left. As I said, no shit Sherlock. However, and however unfortunate it may seem, their patronage (and the source, incidentally, of those generously bestowed funds) come from capital, and capital tends to be older, and further to the right.

Why are you so interested in whether or not GV and PR are really my friends? Does it seem incomprehensible to you too that someone who believes in freedom, democracy and the right to self-determination, and whose instincts are to the centre right, could possibly be acceptable to such anti-establishment heroes?
 
cutting42 said:
That is so true and it baffles me as well. It is virtually all written from a working man's (trad) perspective.

Here is one of the current generation of performer/songwriters who I think encompasses what English folk is. If you get a chance, please go and see him, I think he will resonate with most of you on here, especially the political types.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Wood_(folk_musician)

Click to expand...

That was bloody hard to listen to. I actually had to turn it off before it got the the inevitable. Amazing.
 
eternumviti said:
Why are you so interested in whether or not GV and PR are really my friends? Does it seem incomprehensible to you too that someone who believes in freedom, democracy and the right to self-determination, and whose instincts are to the centre right, could possibly be acceptable to such anti-establishment heroes?
Click to expand...

No. You put up a link about them. I asked if they are your friends, but you seem to have a problem answering this.

In terms of what you have to say about Johnson, it appears you are quite happy to support a racist. But I would expect that from a Brexiteer.

Jack
 
jackbarron said:
No. You put up a link about them. I asked if they are your friends, but you seem to have a problem answering this.

In terms of what you have to say about Johnson, it appears you are quite happy to support a racist. But I would expect that from a Brexiteer.

Jack
Click to expand...

Well, hopefully I'll get better. Remind me when it was that you took the cure, Jack?

And I don't mean from the booze.
 
No mention of Margate; really a strange place to site the Tate. Maybe it's achieved some measure of esteem as a consequence since I left, but I have my doubts. There are many better places to live/work in Thanet (says he, trying to think of a worse one).

Music and politics. For me, who's been an avid music lover for over 65 years, that's a new one. I've never associated the two. For me, music is just that; unsullied by anything else regardless of lyrical content. Mind you, lyrics are just adjuncts of the musical whole for me so maybe I'm a bit odd in this respect.

Racism. have never really understood this either so have conveniently put it down to ignorance. Mind you, almost any silly thing seems either racist or politically incorrect nowadays. I could be wrong, but I think there's more mention of and apparent occurrences of racism now than I recall in my past. This seems counter intuitive looking at our multi-ethnic make-up in the west, or maybe, conversely, it isn't. I'm glad to say that my aged black moggy is sublimely unaffected by all this; we soften see fleas but never see mites.
 
Tony L said:
Wow, the Turner Prize is a bit special this year! The four nominees have at the ceremony aligned into a collective refusing to accept the idea of a winner or loser in these divided times and made a very strong joint anti-Brexit/anti-Tory/anti-fascist statement as their acceptance speech. They’ve just done a seriously cool thing IMHO. Its on right now on BBC4 so will be on iPlayer. Make sure to catch their speech in full as it really was powerful and heartfelt.
Click to expand...
I agree, from here on in they should just announce four winners of the prize.
 
Mike Reed said:
No mention of Margate; really a strange place to site the Tate. Maybe it's achieved some measure of esteem as a consequence since I left, but I have my doubts. There are many better places to live/work in Thanet (says he, trying to think of a worse one).
Click to expand...

It was covered briefly in the BBC piece on the award ceremony including a few words from Tracey Emin, who is from the town. The consensus being the new gallery and Turner Prize event has brought huge value to the place, as does high-profile art wherever it appears (e.g. Tate Liverpool, the Liverpool Biennial etc). Arts funding is never wasted money IMO, it always adds huge value in ways that aren’t immediately obvious at first.
 
Tony L said:
including a few words from Tracey Emin, who is from the town.
Click to expand...

Didn't know that, Tony. Depending on her age, I might well have taught her at some juncture, as I covered a number of junior and secondary schools around there, even covering art classes for quite a time at one secondary. There was really only one direction Margate could travel in; even Dreamland amusement park came back from the dead, I believe.
 
Mike Reed said:
Didn't know that, Tony. Depending on her age, I might well have taught her at some juncture, as I covered a number of junior and secondary schools around there, even covering art classes for quite a time at one secondary. There was really only one direction Margate could travel in; even Dreamland amusement park came back from the dead, I believe.
Click to expand...

She’s the same age as me so would have gone through school in the 1970s. Her time in Margate sounds quite tough and unpleasant (she was raped at age 13) and frames her later work (Wikipedia). She’s the real deal as far as I’m concerned, there is always a genuine and heartfelt edge to her work.
 
Tony L said:
She’s the same age as me so would have gone through school in the 1970s. Her time in Margate sounds quite tough and unpleasant
Click to expand...

Looked up her history; born 1963, so she would have left school about the time my secondary boys' closed down and I became a supply teacher. Margate WAS rough; plenty of estates and a bombed out town centre. Nice beaches, architecture and one of the oldest hospitals (still functioning, I believe).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.


advertisement


Back
Top