The radio presenter talks about the new series of '21st Century Folk', protest songs, and why you shouldn't care if music is 'cool'
The radio presenter talks about the new series of '21st Century Folk', protest songs, and why you shouldn't care if music is 'cool'Then again, adds the 66-year-old, the phrase “ordinary people” is meaningless. “Ordinary people can be billionaires, I guess. Or paupers. So maybe the term ‘working people’ might be better. Although again…” Queens and astronauts and film stars are all “working people”, right? “Yeah, yeah.
The new series is themed around our island’s human encounters with the sea: the unpredictable water socially distancing us from the rest of the world. “We all share that love and fascination with the sea with a fear of it, don’t we?” The question is rhetorical. Radcliffe has spent too many decades alone at the mic to need an answer from me. His thought rolls on like a wave.
“A lot of men – as well as women – experienced quite traumatising separation from the world during the pandemic,” nods Radcliffe. “The idea of coming together to make a song, a sound, a conversation, often while drinking beer, which I think never does any harm, will always be important.” “We have such a long tradition of whaling songs in folk music,” Radcliffe notes. “Two of my own favourite folk songs are about whaling – ‘Little Pot Stove’ and ‘Humpback Whale’ from Nic Jones’ classic album Penguin Eggs mention it.” The reference to “whalemeat sausages” washes in on a swell of concertina on that record. “But those are songs that… what do they say at the beginning of old TV programmes?… ‘reflect attitudes that were prevalent at the time’.
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