‘Don’t laugh at Morris dancers’
Folk music royalty Norma Waterson and Eliza Carthy say it is time we took English traditions seriously
‘When people want to poke fun at something, they laugh at Morris dancers and the maypole,” says Norma Waterson. “There’s no need for that.”
I, for one, am not about to argue with her. Considered royalty in English folk circles, Waterson has been flying the flag for traditional English music since the Sixties and has done more than almost anyone to revive songs lost for centuries – from
Death and the Lady to Hal-an-tow.
And now, at the age of 78 and still suffering from the effects of a stroke that almost proved fatal eight years ago, she is releasing a new album with her daughter, Eliza Carthy, 42, another luminary in the English folk scene.
Among the traditional songs on the LP are The Elfin Knight, which dates from the 17th century, and The Anchor, which used to be sung in churches along the coast just south of Whitby, Yorkshire, where Waterson and her family have lived for decades.
“People are often very surprised to discover that there is such a thing as English folk music,” says Carthy. “And when it’s discussed it tends to be in a very confused way, all mixed up with ideas of Empire, almost as if the English don’t have a working class, which of course is ridiculous.
“But we were considered the ruler, therefore we shouldn’t really have folk song. This is reinforced by Irish and Scottish folk song, which is often about the Imperial oppressor, ie the English.”
Carthy, her mother and her father Martin Carthy, who has performed with Bob Dylan and Paul Simon and influenced them both, are part of a family of musicians that have dominated the English folk scene for decades. Eliza first appeared on stage with her parents when she was four, and formed her first group with her family when she was only 13. Since then she’s released four albums which mingle folk and pop influences in startlingly original ways.
“It just seemed natural to get on stage and sing with all these people I sang with at home,” Carthy tells me when we meet in a folk club in Guildford. Norma agrees that her daughter took to the tradition like a duck to water. “Of course she went through a teenage rebellion thing,” she says. “I remember she took herself off to Manchester to see Prince on one occasion. But she soon came back to the tradition.
“She’s always been a great reader, has Eliza, and one of the things she loves about the tradition is delving into the old books and finding old songs to bring back to life.”
Martin Carthy, who also appears on the new album, has been doing that very thing for 60 years.
“The great thing about Dad is the way he finds something really ancient and frozen in time, which has been collected into a book by someone like Cecil Sharp or Vaughan Williams, and brings it off the page and makes the language current again, and organises it into the kind of emotional arc that will shock and move an audience,” says Eliza. “Folk music ultimately is about a community giving lessons in what to admire and what to avoid. That’s why it always stays relevant.
“English music is ancient, it is beautiful, it’s full of remarkable stories. There’s a great tradition of protest and of generosity and shared stories and moral lessons, passed down from our parents and grandparents.
“Part of the anger the English feel is that we are considered not as soulful or funny or exciting as our Celtic cousins. We need to get over that. I’m not saying folk music can solve our identity crisis, but it can only be a good thing in the search for one.”
Eliza Carthy appears with The Gift Band and Norma Waterson at the Union Chapel London N1 on Sunday. 0871 220 0260. Their new album Anchor is released on the Topic label on Friday.