Establishing an intersection between the fields of traditional music studies, English folk music history and the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, this book responds to the problematic emphasis on cultural identity in the way traditional music is understood and valued. Williams locates the roots of contemporary definitions of traditional music, including UNESCO-designated intangible cultural heritage, in the theory of English folk music developed in 1907 by Cecil Sharp. Through a combination of Deleuzian philosophical analysis and historical revision of England’s folk revival of the Victorian and Edwardian eras, Williams makes a compelling argument that identity is a restrictive ideology that runs counter to the material processes of traditional music’s production. Williams reimagines Sharp’s appropriation of Darwinian evolutionary concepts, asking what it would mean today to say that traditional music ‘evolves’, in light of recent advances in evolutionary theory. The book ultimately advances a concept of traditional music that eschews the term’s long-standing ontological and axiological foundations in the principle of identity. For scholars and graduate students in musicology, cultural studies, and ethnomusicology, the book is an ambitious and provocative challenge to entrenched habits of thought in the study of traditional music and the historiography of England’s folk revival.

Establishing an intersection between the fields of traditional music studies, English folk music history and the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, this book responds to the problematic emphasis on cultural identity in the way traditional music is understood and valued.

A detailed study of the social factors that have given coherence and an enduring identity to the British "folk revival" since the 1960s. The author is a social scientist who lives in the Scottish Highlands. Distributed by Taylor and Francis. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Global Popular Music: A Research and Information Guide offers an essential annotated bibliography of scholarship on popular music around the world in a two-volume set. Featuring a broad range of subjects, people, cultures, and geographic areas, and spanning musical genres such as traditional, folk, jazz, rock, reggae, samba, rai, punk, hip-hop, and many more, this guide highlights different approaches and discussions within global popular music research. This research guide is comprehensive in scope, providing a vital resource for scholars and students approaching the vast amount of publications on popular music studies and popular music traditions around the world. Thorough cross-referencing and robust indexes of genres, places, names, and subjects make the guide easy to use. Volume 2, Transnational Discourses of Global Popular Music Studies, covers the geographical areas of North America: United States and Canada; Central America, Caribbean, and South America/Latin America; Europe; Africa and Middle East; Asia; and areas of Oceania: Aotearoa/New Zealand, Australia, and Pacific Islands. It provides over twenty-four hundred annotated bibliographic entries covering discourses of extensive research that extend beyond the borders of the United States and includes annotated entries to books, book series, book chapters, edited volumes, special documentaries and programming, scholarly journal essays, and other resources that focus on the creative and artistic flows of global popular music.

Performing Englishness examines the growth in popularity and profile of the English folk arts in the first decade of the twenty-first century. In the only study of its kind, the authors explore how the folk resurgence speaks to a broader explosion of interest in the subject of English national and cultural identity. Combining approaches from British cultural studies and ethnomusicology, the book draws on ethnographic fieldwork, interviews with central figures of the resurgence and close analysis of music and dance as well as visual and discursive sources. Its presentation of the English case study calls for a rethinking of concepts such as revival and indigeneity. It will be of interest to students and scholars in cultural studies, ethnomusicology and related disciplines.

Performing Folk Songs is the first full-length volume to explore English folk singing from the perspective of performance studies. Using archival sources, family repertoire and recorded performances of interviewees, this book argues that archives and repertoires are produced in sensory environments and through embodied encounters. Autoethnography, sensory ethnography, life-writing and landscape writing are used to explore the affective and emotional aspects of learning songs 'by heart'. Drawing on her experience as a folk singer, Bennett contributes to discourse on English folk traditions in the 21st century and brings performance scholarship to the contemporary folk song resurgence. In analyzing the performance of English folk songs in the affective context of the archive and the landscape, the book engages with and contributes original insights to scholarship on folk music, performance studies, affect theory, cultural geography and intangible cultural heritage studies.

In Roots of the Revival: American and British Folk Music in the 1950s, Ronald D. Cohen and Rachel Clare Donaldson present a transatlantic history of folk's midcentury resurgence that juxtaposes the related but distinct revivals that took place in the United States and Great Britain. After setting the stage with the work of music collectors in the nineteenth century, the authors explore the so-called recovery of folk music practices and performers by Alan Lomax and others, including journeys to and within the British Isles that allowed artists and folk music advocates to absorb native forms and facilitate the music's transatlantic exchange. Cohen and Donaldson place the musical and cultural connections of the twin revivals within the decade's social and musical milieu and grapple with the performers' leftist political agendas and artistic challenges, including the fierce debates over "authenticity" in practice and repertoire that erupted when artists like Harry Belafonte and the Kingston Trio carried folk into the popular music mainstream. From work songs to skiffle, from the Weavers in Greenwich Village to Burl Ives on the BBC, Roots of the Revival offers a frank and wide-ranging consideration of a time, a movement, and a transformative period in American and British pop culture.

This work represents the first comparative study of the folk revival movement in Anglophone Canada and the United States and combines this with discussion of the way folk music intersected with, and was structured by, conceptions of national affinity and national identity. Based on original archival research carried out principally in Toronto, Washington and Ottawa, it is a thematic, rather than general, study of the movement which has been influenced by various academic disciplines, including history, musicology and folklore. Dr Gillian Mitchell begins with an introduction that provides vital context for the subject by tracing the development of the idea of 'the folk', folklore and folk music since the nineteenth century, and how that idea has been applied in the North American context, before going on to examine links forged by folksong collectors, artists and musicians between folk music and national identity during the early twentieth century. With the 'boom' of the revival in the early sixties came the ways in which the movement in both countries proudly promoted a vision of nation that was inclusive, pluralistic and eclectic. It was a vision which proved compatible with both Canada and America, enabling both countries to explore a diversity of music without exclusiveness or narrowness of focus. It was also closely linked to the idealism of the grassroots political movements of the early 1960s, such as integrationist civil rights, and the early student movement. After 1965 this inclusive vision of nation in folk music began to wane. While the celebrations of the Centennial in Canada led to a re-emphasis on the 'Canadianness' of Canadian folk music, the turbulent events in the United States led many ex-revivalists to turn away from politics and embrace new identities as introspective singer-songwriters. Many of those who remained interested in traditional folk music styles, such as Celtic or Klezmer music, tended to be very insular and conservative in their approach, rather than linking their chosen genre to a wider world of folk music; however, more recent attempts at 'fusion' or 'world' music suggest a return to the eclectic spirit of the 1960s folk revival. Thus, from 1945 to 1980, folk music in Canada and America experienced an evolving and complex relationship with the concepts of nation and national identity. Students will find the book useful as an introduction, not only to key themes in the folk revival, but also to concepts in the study of national identity and to topics in American and Canadian cultural history. Academic specialists will encounter an alternative perspective from the more general, broad approach offered by earlier histories of the folk revival movement.