It has comforted the downtrodden, inspired Britain’s schoolchildren and even been sprayed as graffiti. Now, the book has shifted shape again – into music
It felt like the folk music equivalent of Avengers Assemble. Last September, I found myself sitting at a wooden dining table in the Lake District with multiple superheroes of British folk. Karine Polwart, Kris Drever, Julie Fowlis, Beth Porter, Rachel Newton, Kerry Andrew, Jim Molyneux– could they really all exist in the same room together? Or would their convergence in a confined space cause a small black hole to open somewhere near the Keswick Tesco?
Karine, trying to find the beginnings of a shape for the performance we were planning, pulled out a notebook and asked people to say what they could play or do. Remarkable answers were modestly given; most people there had three instruments minimum, plus voice; all were also songwriters and composers. Rachel and Julie were bilingual in Gaelic and English; Karine and Kris sang in Scots. It came round to me. “Um … grade-one recorder? Backing kazoo? Also, I once sat on my brother’s oboe and broke it in half.”
The response is about more than a book –it’s about what Michael McCarthy chillingly calls ‘the great thinning’
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