Winter Trish - Performing Englishness: Identity and Politics in a Contemporary Folk Resurgence

Contents

This project would not have been completed without the support of a number of people and institutions. We would first like to thank all of those folk artists and activists who took part in our research, particularly those who generously gave their time to participate in interviews. Many thanks to those artists who gave us permission to reproduce song lyrics in this book: Maggie Holland, for her lyrics taken from the song A Place Called England; Chris Wood, for his lyrics taken from the song On English Ground; and Steve Knightley of Show of Hands, for lyrics taken from the song Roots. We are grateful to the artist Faye Claridge for allowing us to reproduce her work on the books cover. Particular mention should be given to Steve Heap for his interest in and support of our research, and for helping us to gain access to many individuals and events. We thank the staff at Manchester University Press for their help and patience. We have presented our research findings in numerous seminars and conferences over the last five years, and we are grateful to everyone there who commented and gave feedback on our ideas. In particular we would like to thank our colleagues in Film, Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Sunderland, and the Department of Music, University of Sheffield, who have been a constant source of support and inspiration. Special thanks go to those colleagues who read and commented on drafts of this book, Professors John Storey and Rachel Woodward. We would like to acknowledge the support of the Arts and Humanities Research Council for funding the research on which this book is based, a project entitled Performing Englishness in New English Folk Music and Dance (Ref. AH/E009867/1). Many thanks also to the Centre for Research in Media and Cultural Studies, University of Sunderland, for research leave support towards our writing. Some of the material in this book has been developed through publication elsewhere. Some of commented on drafts from the perspective of the general reader). Her thanks also go to Frank Lee, for teaching her so many excellent English tunes. Simon would like to thank Ann Keegan, Fred Phipps and Rachel Brennan for their continued encouragement with this and every other endeavour. Matthew Keegan-Phipps and Miriam Ayling each deserve special thanks for taking the unenviable role of informant-/discussant-on-call. Our thanks also go to Matthew for last-minute assistance in the creation of figures. Simon would finally like to thank his many friends within the English folk scene who have guided him through the field since he first jumped the gate as a teenager: in particular, Simon Bannister, and the Iron Men and Severn Gilders.

At its best, ethnography has provided a valuable tool for apprehending a world in flux. A couple of years after the Second World War, Max Gluckman founded the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester. In the years that followed, he and his colleagues built a programme of ethnographic research that drew eclectically on the work of leading anthropologists, economists and sociologists to explore issues of conflict, reconciliation and social justice at home and abroad. Often placing emphasis on detailed analysis of case studies drawn from small-scale societies and organisations, the famous Manchester School in social anthropology built an enviable reputation for methodological innovation in its attempts to explore the pressing political questions of the second half of the twentieth century. Looking back, that era is often thought to constitute a gold standard for how ethnographers might grapple with new challenges and issues in the contemporary world.