NORTHUMBRIAN MUSIC
NIGHTS
What we said about
Alistair Hulet with Aidan
O'Rourke
Passionate Polemic raises nostalgia
levels
at the King's Head, Allendale
In these halcyon days when nobody really seems to care about anything much, it's worth remembering the season just beyond the last turn of the century when riotous passions were aroused by great orators and giants among men.
That, at least, was the sense of last Saturday evening at the King's Head in Allendale, when Alistair Hulet entertained in deadly earnest with a series of history lessons about some of the struggles of the past centuries. Harmonised with the weeping fiddle of Aidan O'Rourke, the strident message of revolution, class warfare and "the working man" brought a sense of nostalgia to the hearts and minds of many in the audience; this was classic, earnest folk music of a kind rarely heard nowadays.
If a century ago the message from Glasgow was the fiery John McClain's "Don't sign up for war" with the subtext that a bayonet is a weapon with a working man on either end, or the polemic of fierce Mary Barber was the inspiration that elicited the Rent Restriction Act of 1915 from a reluctant Lloyd George, where is the musical message of today's agitating firebrands? If the Highland Clearances and the 'Year of the Sheep' could elicit such agonised laments as 'Destitution Road' or 'The Dark Loch', what injustices do we face today to foment such stormy, pulse-raising music?
On the one hand, there's always the Common Agricultural Policy to rail against, and the threat of removal of EU subsidies on sheep stints is certainly another rallying cry. Then again, there's the nasty neighbour who won't even eat our beef -- that could be an intriguing grist for a song mill. And on the other hand, I suppose there's the issues of 'right to roam', of the welfare of the foxes, or of travellers' rights and wrongs to set the musical muse a- banging.
So why aren't there dramatic musical ventures of the passionate political kind, today? Maybe it's just harder to write a good song about the deprivations imposed on country living by the current roads and environmental policy, or the state of education and the health service today. But injustice real and perceived is still with us, even though it usually seems at least once-removed from the absolute life-and-death certitudes of yesterday.
I suspect, to be fair, that music reflects the pre-occupations of its age, and it seems today that our intense interests lie elsewhere: in deeply personal issues of relationships, of love and friendship; in questions of individual morality; in crises of personal betrayal. Issues far removed from any national, regional or local political scene that find a voice and a receptive ear in music because it's these concerns that we are passionate about today.
And so the start of Alistair's song set, considering the woes of young 'Geordie', the common suit of the fisherman and the tinker, or the sad elfen lament of Tam Linn, all seemed more contemporary and resonated more musically in our minds, than the strident political rousers of yesterday, which seemed to arouse only a skeptical glance to the side, and a sense somehow of embarrassment at how such issues could ever contrive to arouse such passion.
Who is to say, however, that potent political polemics will not one day find another musical platform? Who can say, for example, whether the political protest songs of the Sixties with their metaphors and different levels of subtext will or will not find an answering call in some unrestful decade hence? If that day arrives, Alistair Hulet will still be singing his thoughtful songs of struggle, and he will be ready.
