BBC Wildlife - UK 2020-07)

48 BBC Wildlife July 2020

A prime example is one of the oldest

known folk songs, first recorded in the

Wessex dialect of medieval English in the

mid-13th century and commonly known by

its opening line: Sumer is Icumen in. Roughly

translated into modern English, it proclaims:

Summer has arrived.

Loudly sing, cuckoo!

The seed is growing

And the meadow is blooming,

And the wood is coming into leaf.

I

n subsequent centuries,

even as British – specifically

English – society became

increasingly urban and industrialised,

that heritage of predominantly rural

airs was rediscovered in stages. From the

17th century, enthusiasts including Samuel

Pepys, Robert Burns and Walter Scott took

up the baton. Then, from the 19th century, a

more intensive effort – later dubbed the ‘first

British folk revival’ – saw musicologists and

collectors such as Carl Engel, Francis Child,

Anne Gilchrist, Lucy Broadwood, Percy

Grainger and Cecil Sharp transcribe and

record English folk songs, while others did

the same in Scotland and Wales.

This movement was rather in tune with

idealised Victorian visions of agrarian life,

in contrast to the grit of urban society, and

linked with a surge in nationalism.

Indeed, that renaissance coincided with

a corresponding renewal in British (as

opposed to European-influenced) classical

music. In the early 20th century, composer

We’re lled with

song from birth.

It’s how we

communicate,

before speech

• researchers

suggest babies’

cooing and

babbling reects

innate musicality.

Ralph Vaughan

Williams transcribed

hundreds of folk songs over a 10-

year period culminating in the creation

of his most enduringly popular composition,

The Lark Ascending.

While those collectors strove to save the

melodies and words of ‘Olde’ England, in

the post-WWII era a new – often angrier –

wave of folk was clamouring, among other

things, for its protection. As long ago as

1837, American songwriter George Pope

Morris begged Woodman, Spare that Tree,

often cited as the first environmental protest

song. But it was with the arrival of 1960s

counterculture on both sides of the Atlantic

that the canon burgeoned. The likes of Pete

Seeger (who popularised Woody Guthrie’s

earlier This Land is Your Land) and, later, Joni

Mitchell (Big Yellow Taxi) tackled pollution

and habitat loss. And it wasn’t just the folk

scene – the original hotbed of protest – that

voiced fears for the planet.

I

n North America, Marvin Gaye (Mercy

Mercy Me) and Neil Young & Crazy

Horse (Mother Earth – Natural Anthem)

fretted tunefully, along with unlikelier

eco-champions such as Pixies

(Monkey Gone to Heaven) and Lou Reed,

characteristically forthright in Last Great

American Whale. In the UK, such disparate

acts as Jamiroquai (Emergency on Planet

Earth) and Radiohead (Idioteque) continued

the theme.

Pitching the right tone has been a

perennial problem for musicians punting

Talking

point

Left to right: Gems/Getty; Hayley Madden/Getty; Sam Falk/Getty; Tony Russell/Getty; Keystone/Getty