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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #19746 in Books
• Published on: 2009-08-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Review
'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

About the Author
Will Hodgkinson was born in Newcastle and now lives in London with his wife and two children. He has written for the Guardian, Mojo, Vogue, Daily Telegraph, the Idler and Wallpaper. He is the author of the highly acclaimed books 'Guitar Man' and 'Song Man' (Bloomsbury).

Customer Reviews

DILETTANTE'S DIARY
Never having heard of Will Hodgkinson before, I read too much into the introductory chapter to this book. I thought, or at least hoped, that I was going to get a serious piece of musicology, some attempt to define the British identity through Britain's music, or at least to draw the threads of the different schools and traditions together. What I got instead was the laid-back narrative of a rather meandering tour in which the author chats to Interesting People Who Say Interesting Things.

This formula just does not cut it for me. People in books, autobiographical books just as much as fiction, are interesting if and only if the author makes them interesting. What happens here is that the numerous participants are largely left to talk for themselves in direct speech, and that seems to me dangerously close to dereliction of an author's responsibility. However this book has a good deal to be said in its favour too, so let me say some of that before I complain any more. Will Hodgkinson is obviously a very gifted writer, and that much is obvious from the very first page. His style is relaxed and lucid, he has a real flair for description and scene-setting, and he can sustain his narration well. As would also be expected, so intelligent an author makes some intelligent observations, and one of my main regrets regarding this book as a whole is that Will Hodgkinson did not exert himself more by way of generalisation, something his first chapter had led me to expect.

In this view I am probably criticising a fashionable genre of writing at least as much as an individual author. Quoting people in extenso turns them into bores, and that is not a fair thing to do, but all kinds of established broadsheet journalists do it. The opinions of Pete Townshend, surely, are pretty significant when he is talking about the British musical scene. However when he is quoted verbatim over several pages you have to keep reminding yourself that this is Pete Townshend, because what you are listening to is just someone droning on. Another irritating convention is throwing in `interesting' details without relating them to the overall narrative. Apparently Jarvis's dad (not Jarvis Cocker - he comes a lot later, this is an unfamous Jarvis) `had just finished crafting some...enormous phalluses...' Well, so what? Jarvis's dad features in this one remark throughout the entire book. Don't leave these phalluses dangling, so to speak. Either give some indication why they are being mentioned or don't mention them at all. Also there is some wince-makingly naff detail that we could do without - `...red peppers stuffed with wild rice, sautéed onions and garlic, peas, thyme, raisins, parsley and feta. It was delicious.' Peas, eh? I'd better make a note of that. The clunking `It was delicious' is, sadly, not the only example of its type either. The author who can offer a good many really enlightening apercus can also offer `To think you can make assumptions on how people live according to the kind of house they live in or the appearance they have is to be misguided. We can never really know.' What a philosopher.

It is, I suppose, a bit of a Who's Who of contemporary British music. That may be all it was ever intended to be, but the first chapter had led me to look for more, and the final summary - if it can be called that - suggests that Hodgkinson feels he ought to make some token gesture in the direction of Vaughan Williams and the others who graced the opening pages but more or less disappeared thereafter. Viewed from this angle it may, for all I would know, be perfectly satisfactory. We certainly meet many major names from all four quarters of the British Isles, plus many minor names from all four quarters of the labour exchange. One detail did strike me as odd to say the least - surely the Green Knight who famously confronted Sir Gawain in Arthur's court did not appear in `Elsinore'? That was Hamlet's pad. One way or another, I hope I am not being unfair in this notice. I just do not like this way of doing things or this style of writing. However I can recognise talent when I read it, or I hope I can, and I now hope that Will Hodgkinson will raise his game.

Not sure what it wants to be
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.

Musical snapshots of the British character .
I have an inherent admiration of people who can travel from place to place introducing themselves to complete strangers and engaging them in conversation . This is mainly because this sounds like a truly excruciating way to spend your time .I don't mind talking to people but i want to get the impression they desire to talk back to me and it's likely that half the time they don't .My fragile ego could not cope with that. So hats off to Will Hodgkinson who rather on a whim decided to tour Britain catching local artists on a portable recording called a zoom.
His original aim was rather nebulous , as his wife put it to get a "sense of Britain now " and do what Cecil Sharp had done some forty odd years ago. So talking to Morris Dancers, gypsy communities , rambling singers, eccentrics living in Devon cottages and some of the more contemporary figures in music Hodgkinson wandered up and down the country , rather like a minstrel himself, trying to catch the "Spirit of the land through its people and it's music ".
It's an enjoyable trip told in a humorous engaging style . He engages in chats with Norma Waterson , Jarvis Cocker , Richard Hawley ,James Yorkston, Ian McCulloch ,Gruff Rhys Ian Broudie,amongst others while regaling the reader with the minutiae of the trip ,some of which , as any travelling venture does in this logistical nightmare of a country does, borders on the farcical.
I'm not entirely convinced that these meanderings across the country actually achieve any definitive conclusion though the one that Hodgkinson comes to that "British music , like the British character is melancholic ,localised ,tragicomic and averse to the grandiose" is as good as anything I could come up with....probably better in truth. Like all good books about music it makes you want to check out the artists involved ( especially Stephanie Hladowski) and a CD is available through Heron records .Another assertion that music is for everybody and that everyone can do it is slightly more problematical .They had obviously never seen me play guitar . Still it's good that those with talent always seem to find a way to express their gift and give us "Musical snapshots of Britain in the 21st century ".