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'The Ballad of Britain is an enthusiast's jaunt, frothy armchair ethnomusicology, but Hodgkinson understands what very few music writers seem to: simply that music is about flesh and blood.' --The Times
'A brilliant travelogue' --The London Paper
'A brilliant travelogue' --The London Paper
Product Description
In 1903, the Victorian composer Cecil Sharp began a decade-long journey to collect folk songs that, he believed, captured the spirit of Great Britain.A century later, with the musical and cultural map of the country transformed, writer and journalist Will Hodgkinson sets out on a similar journey to find the songs that make up modern Britain. He looks at the unique relationship the British have with music, and tries to understand how the country has represented itself through song. He visits remote pubs in the West Country where families have been passing down local songs for generations, monasteries in Oxfordshire where monks use plainsong to commune with God, sits in with Hindu devotional singers in the suburbs of Birmingham and learns an ancient folk tune from a Sussex farmer.Will goes from the heart of the mainstream music scenes to the very fringes as part of his quest, visiting in turn remote musical heartlands and great urban musical cities. London (The Kinks, The Who and Blur), Liverpool (The Teardrop Explodes, Echo & The Bunnymen, The Beatles), Manchester (Joy Division, Stone Roses, Oasis) and Sheffield (Cabaret Voltaire, The Human League, Pulp and more recently, The Arctic Monkeys) all feature prominently as the respective homes of clusters of great bands that have helped shape the British musical landscape.An engaging blend of humour and musical scholarship, "The Ballad of Britain" is as much a portrait of Britain as an adventure into lyric and melody. The project forced the author into an itinerant life, scouring the length and breadth of the country for singers and songwriters in an attempt to discover whether songs still travel the way they once did, to find out whether folk music still exists in a meaningful sense, and to see how regional variations contribute to a collective musical 'Britishness'."The Ballad of Britain" promises to be the most interesting, funny and original travel book for years, capturing the unique musical mentality of our island nation.It is the newest project from the acclaimed author of "Song Man" and "Guitar Man". It also features contributions from Pete Townshend, Jarvis Cocker, and Bert Jansch. It spans the entire British Isles, from John O'Groats to Land's End. There will be a CD of the music featured in the book available from the 1st September distributed by Heron Records.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Underwhelming,
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This review is from: The Ballad of Britain (Paperback)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
The best I can say is that this is a mildly interesting collection of essays. Like so many books of its sort it comes across as a magazine article which has been stretched to book length.
Its clear that what Hodgkinson set out on was not the mission to take a musical snapshot of Britain, but a wheeze for a book he could write. The result came across to me therefore a bit hollow and soulless. It was all a bit aimless. The travelogue portions in the ailing Astra were largely redundant. The sections were clumsily linked. Each chapter seems to end with a paragraph beginning "But it was time...." as we were lead by the nose to the topic over the page. I became more and more irritated as he kept using this pointless device. I also have a problem with his belief that he was in some way following in the footsteps of the great field musicologists of the past. Song collectors of yore did not put themselves in the picture. They were interested in the music for its own sake, rather than telling the world how the music made them feel. It perhaps reflects that Hodgkinson is from the 21st Century media village that this book is considerably more about him than it is about the musicians and songs he encounters. That worked very well in his previous book, Guitar Man, but here it seems to do his subjects a real disservice. And when those old-time song collectors jotted down transcriptions or made rudimentary recordings they were genuinely preserving a snapshot of heritage which might otherwise be lost. But this author points his microphone at performers who have Myspace profiles and access to digital technology which they themselves can use to preserve their every utterance. Which left me thinking of this book - what is the point?
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not sure what it wants to be,
By Peter Lee (Manchester ,United Kingdom) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE) (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: The Ballad of Britain (Paperback)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
A few years ago I read Dave Haslam's book about Manchester, and it was superb - diving into the history of the city but focusing on the musical aspects, explaining why certain types of music were more popular in the city. I was hoping that this book would be similar, albeit bigger in scale, but it didn't quite meet my expectations.
Will Hodgkinson writes in a light and enjoyable style, almost chatty in fact, but whilst the book advertises itself as an exploration of music in Britain it doesn't really achieve this goal. Instead he seems to spend more time writing about the places he visits, how he gets there, the somewhat dilapidated car he drives, and also the "Zoom" portable recording studio he takes with him in a carrier bag. He concentrates on the folkier styles of music, and sadly he fails to draw any real conclusions apart from that a certain type of song is popular in a particular place because that's how it has always been. At one stage he visits Liverpool and concentrates on why Pink Floyd, Captain Beefheart and Love are so popular there (answer: they all played concerts there) yet scarcely mentions the whole Merseybeat sound, then travels to Manchester (briefly) and concentrates on how the city itself has changed since his last visit, before decamping to the suburbs to listen to a band. The overwhelming feeling I got from this book was that it was an extended thesis, almost every chapter the same length, as though they were written to read a particular word count, and that he didn't really draw any conclusions at all, and instead turned it into something of a travelogue where he could spend more time writing about his car's declining health. There are, however, enjoyable sections, particularly the chapter set in Sheffield where he describes Jarvis Cocker and Richard Hawley's friendship, and from time to time I laughed out loud. It's a light, enjoyable read, but not the exploration of music I'd expected and looked forward to.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Short Folk Singing Travel-blog,
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This review is from: The Ballad of Britain (Paperback)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
It took me a few days to get 'into' this book. I wasn't too sure what it was all about. I originally was attracted by the title as I've been running an acoustic club for 19years+ and I thought it might offer some insights.
Yes, Will was inspired by Cecil Sharp's life-time quest to record all the 'old songs' in the UK, before they 'died-out'.....but I couldn't quite square Will's journey as being even a teeny bit the same. This is an account of Will driving around the UK in his battered and 'extremely unpleasant white Vauxhall Astra' to get 'field recordings' of various singers and players he is 'guided to' meet over a few months. A lot of his meetings are random to say the least and I got the feeling that he must have been more bored with his life in Peckham SE London than inspired to 'discover' the music hidden away in little,local crevices. I suppose my disappointment was there was nothing 'new' in what he was doing and that the people he describes are what every folk/acoustic club in the UK comprises of. A variety of singing styles as different and unique as people are.....But not one of the meetings stuck in my memory, or made me want to know more about them. Maybe it's Will's rather 'English' style of writing, more restrained and self-deprecating. I got to the end of the book.....and felt rather flat.
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