homepage : press : Folk music, multiculturalism and cake - part 2
Folk music, multiculturalism and cake
(part 2)
[press release, 22 November 2003]
[MG] What are you trying to achieve by mixing up cultural traditions within your programming?
[SH] For this we have several bad reasons and one good.
The bad reasons include: it makes the events more interesting and resonant; it makes the club's character more appropriate to the contemporary context; and it introduces new artists to new audiences as both deserve.
The good reason is that the artists are there. It makes no sense to exclude them.
We started with the idea of a folk-club-style event, which would have something about it which would preserve the folk-club format by adapting it slightly for the 2000s rather than the 1960s or 1970s. The obvious adaptation to be made was to recognise the changes in the world outside the club, namely the increase in the cultural diversity of the body of obviously bookable artists. The harder we looked, the more we realised that there was a great and largely unrecognised richness of musical and performance culture in Sheffield, and it was an obvious resource for us to explore and use.
My personal point of entry into this was discovering that the postmaster of Ellesmere Road Post Office in Spital Hill was an internationally famous Indian violinist. It used to be my local post office, and it's like buying gas tokens from Yehudi Menuhin, but I never knew, because it isn't the sort of thing you'd necessarily notice unless you were aware of the Indian music scene in the UK and abroad, and I wasn't. The audiences still seem to be quite compartmentalised.
At Phoenix, we're all largely standard-issue members of the Anglo folky compartment by background and experience, so we're currently doing our homework and networking, to try and find out who else is out there. To a very limited extent, we are trying in a hamfisted way to be PC about it, and make a point of acquiring a good working knowledge of the work of non-"Anglo" artists in Sheffield and further afield. This has its pitfalls. Arguably, for example, some would feel unhappy presenting an Indian violinist as a "folk" or "traditional" musician, because as I understand it Indian music is not a vernacular music, it's a high-brow art tradition like Western classical music, which means that by rights it belongs in the Bridgewater Hall, not in a smallish acoustic club on Mappin Street. But at the end of the day, it's palpably absurd not to book world-class artists when they live and work on your doorstep, and you can argue that it falls within the stated remit of the club - for example, it's no sillier than inventing categories like "world music," or putting Ravi Shankar on at a pop festival in the 1960s. If it came to that I myself wouldn't object in theory to booking a Western classical violinist to do unaccompanied Bach sonatas all night. That'd be quite a gig for a scruffy folk club, wouldn't it?
So we probably won't get everything right, but we just hope we can manage the issues appropriately enough so that everyone will take it in the spirit in which it's meant.
[MG] Folk music isn't really relevant today, it it?
[SH] Relevant to what?
[MG] Have you done away with "floor spots"?
[SH] No. We're tackling this in several ways.
Firstly, we hope to revive the old folk club practice of the residency. A resident is an artist or group which undertakes to perform regularly at the club, not for the full going rate, but for the love of it, and expenses and various perks. It's by invitation and residents have a slightly privileged status as performers within the club. They are a group of "insiders." They provide, for example, most of the floor or support slots. The reason why we're doing this is to make best use of the fact that there are a lot of really, really good artists in the area looking for places to play, and willing in principle to support the club. A resident body guarantees that there's something interesting, and mostly familiar, on a particular night. It's a kind of guarantee of consistency which will hopefully hook in an audience.
As explained, our idea is to get audiences to focus on the club as a permanent ongoing entity, rather than this particular gig or that particular gig, and the residents are a big part of that. It allows the club to develop a consistent character and it also guarantees quality, which is probably the single most important issue for a new club. We're unapologetic about the fact that we need to be able to hear a real reason for putting anyone on in front of a paying audience, especially to start with, before we've built up trust.
However, and somewhat in tandem with this, we're hoping eventually to run some regular open nights, where the ticket price will be lower, and where absolutely anyone can get up and have a go, with a bit less pressure on them and on us, and we'd expect this to be one possible way to inspire the offer of a full residency.
The wider picture is that we do want to fulfil some outreach and educational function, but without compromising the viability of the events as events. There are lots of details which need to be worked out on this, but this is the general idea.