You (don't really) Need Roots

A year or two ago I heard a song called "Roots" by a folk duo called Show of Hands. It's a very catchy, stirring song, with lyrics that caught my mood at the time -- basically, a feisty lament for the way the English have lost touch with their own native musical traditions (and by implication their national identity). Apparently it was written in reaction to sometime Culture Minister Kim Howells' remark that his idea of hell was three folksingers from Somerset in a pub (Dr. Howells, despite a distinguished career in Parliament, is given to such provocative remarks -- people may remember his comments on the 2002 Turner Prize).

After the speeches, when the cake's been cut
The disco's over and the bar is shut
At christening, birthday, wedding or wake
What can we sing 'til the morning breaks?

With the Indians, Asians, Africans, Celts
It's in their blood, below their belt
They're playing and dancing all night long
So what have they got right that we've got wrong?

As a veteran of the folk scene myself, it spoke to me very clearly. "You need roots" asserts the chorus -- yes, indeed. But the more I thought about it, the more suspicious I became of the feelings the song aroused. The reason we have had at least four "folk revivals" in this country is that the patient is, frankly, dead. And every time we bring it back, it's a bit more of a Frankenstein zombie. And I'm also always uncomfortably aware that "rootless cosmopolitans" was Soviet-era code for "Jews".

The English folk scene now, despite the continuity provided by the likes of the Copper family or the Carthy/Waterson dynasty, is about as authentic as chicken tikka masala. Which is to say, it's a perfectly decent reflection of our own times, but has been refracted and reflected through too many mirrors too many times to accurately show the source. Some might say it was ever thus, and that continual renewal is precisely the point. But to claim these songs as "ours" and thereby somehow intrinsic to our national identity is to raise Balkan and reactionary questions about race, land, culture and belonging. Let's face it, for anyone born post-1945, "Smokestack Lightning" is even more "ours" than "Cold Haily Windy Night". And "Smokestack Lightning" is not "ours" at all.

So it didn't surprise me at all to hear this week that Show of Hands have had to take action to have their song removed from a video put out by the extreme right-wing British National Party. Well, of course. Billy Bragg and Show of Hands might talk of "taking back" the Union Jack and the flag of St. George, but -- come on -- does anyone really want them back, knowing where they've been? The fact is that the strong emotions aroused by talk of "roots" and "tradition" may be real, but they are not progressive, in the sense that they will not take us forward from here -- this imperfect but really rather not at all bad place we call "England" -- to an even better place.

In fact, when you think about it, isn't England leading the world in its casting off of the trappings of nationalism? Have we not perhaps muddled through to a society strong enough in its self-acceptance to find itself ludicrous, and post-modern enough to enable millions of Pick'n'Mix identities to rub along together? After all, why do so many people with rather different roots find this a congenial place to come and live? It sure as shit isn't the food (though chicken tikka was definitely a step forward, except as a flavour of crisps). And why do so many of us not really mind all that much if they do come here? Apart, that is, from a few boneheads with a thing about the dilution of our mongrel "blood" and the preservation of "traditions" most of them are too ignorant to identify.

Ironically, I think the urge to poke fun at morris men and all such solemn attempts to re-invent "traditions" is one of the genuinely life-enhancing legacies on our interesting island. It's our insurance against Kultur-peddling Nazis. Remember the 1983 film The Ploughman's Lunch? Scripted by Ian McEwan, it used the fact that the "traditional" ploughman's lunch was invented as a marketing ploy as a metaphor for the continual and self-serving rewriting of history by our masters, about which we have every right to be cynical.

Of course, apart from a few peculiar backwaters like Rottingdean, the singing of folksongs (other than in folk clubs) died out in most of England so long ago that no-one can actually remember when. People have always sung, of course. In the late 70s my partner and I used to drink most nights in a pub called The Phoenix in Bristol -- on certain weeknights the entire pub would resound with the communal singing of about thirty or forty well-oiled senior citizens. I never did hear them sing a single "traditional" song, though, but "Delilah", I recall, would raise the roof. No more though: subsequent generations have lost the taste for the singalong, and that may be something to be regretted. This has nothing to do with "roots", though, and a lot to do with the professionalisation of entertainment.

But "Playing and dancing all night long?" Give it a rest, some of us have got work in the morning, mate.