Anti Folk

[The Man With Brass Eyes]

Hello.

A new thread - hoping to serve two purposes... in no order: one - to let people go "hey man - this is great - check this out!!!" and 2, to talk about the following:

Anti-Folk is a term I hear bandied about quite a lot recently - often with the names Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom mentioned as key players in this new inverted-commas "movement".  (Others less known might include Regina Spektor, Devon Sproule or Danny Schmidt)

Wikipedia describes Anti-Folk as combining "the raw, abrasive, and frequently politically charged attitudes of the punk scene with the sounds of American folk tradition" or acoustic folk music with narrative songs taking influences from punk.
However... maybe I've got it wrong and Banhart & Newsom are not "anti-folk" at all but just a continuation of traditional folk music.  Their lyrics are not especially "punk" or abrasive - they are however, straightforward and honest... so in-turn how is that any different to conventional folk music?.  It may not have the obvious political charge of Bob Dylan or Joan Baez, but it is still conventional folk.  Isn't it?  That's the question I raise.

All things considered, and reading the above description of "anti-folk" - isn't political folk music (Dylan as case in point) inherently "punk".  It might not be aggressive, and predates the actual genre of "punk", but it still has a caustic message to offer.

Option three is that we should ignore all genres.  Stop inventing new ones and just listen to the damn music?  Isn't Anti-Folk just another manufactured genre?

[phantom_power]

i thought that anti-folk was more like the moldy peaches, adam green, kimya dawson and jeffrey lewis, where the attitude was more punk and diy with lyrics that were different from the gentle, slightly hippy element you get in regular folk.

i agree that it is a silly sub-genre though

[trotsky assortment]

Funny...when I saw 'Anti-Folk' and read politically charged and punk scene, I instantly thought of Billy Bragg's earliest work.

I really think they're making up genres now, though.  Why must everything be pigeonholed?

...And why is it that Joanna Newsom seems hugely popular, when the far superior (and almost equally squawky) Victoria Williams hardly rates a mention anywhere these days?

[23 Daves]

i thought that anti-folk was more like the moldy peaches, adam green, kimya dawson and jeffrey lewis, where the attitude was more punk and diy with lyrics that were different from the gentle, slightly hippy element you get in regular folk.

i agree that it is a silly sub-genre though

It's definitely got more to do with Jeffrey Lewis, The Moldy Peaches and Dufus (who I would consider to be the "big three") rather than the usual names that get bandied around.  There are also all sorts of posh people with acoustic guitars and twee ballads wandering around the gig circuit claiming to be "anti-folk" now, which confuses matters still further.  They're opportunistic liars trying to tag on to a movement, basically.  Ignore them.

In defence of the use of the phrase, it was coined by a New York fanzine about a decade ago before it was ever picked up on by the mainstream press, and met with the approval of numerous artists who felt there was a valid "collective movement" going on.  A lot of the bands are friends with each other, live with each other and there's a lot of genuine warmth and shared ideals.  It's not like shoegazing or baggy, then, it is a grass roots movement which rose up, rather similar to Riot Grrrl.  Therefore I have no problems with the tag being applied to numerous people, just so long as it's used reasonably accurately and not by people whose political and musical ideals couldn't be further from the mark.

[23 Daves]

Just a quick bump to say there's a massive anti-folk free festival going on in Brighton next weekend - go here for more info:  http://www.antifolk.co.uk/gigs.php

And also, there's a great example of a Dufus video over on YouTube - though easy listening it is not:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yr6SnbhXkSo&search=Dufus

[TOCMFIC]

I really think they're making up genres now, though.  Why must everything be pigeonholed?

Because then it can be branded and sold by the suits.

[lazyhour]

Not in this case, however.

[A Passing Turk Slipper]

Indeed, I really can't think of a less 'sellable' kind of music than anti-folk, which is one of the great things about it.

[23 Daves]

Indeed, I really can't think of a less 'sellable' kind of music than anti-folk, which is one of the great things about it.

Mmm... that said, Milk Kan's "Bling Bling Baby" was Chris Moyles' record of the week, and the NME did declare The Bobby McGees to be "our favourite new band" or somesuch recently.... still though, Milk Kan only crawled to #76 in the charts off the back of that support and I can't see the Bobby McGees troubling the mainstream any time soon, so I don't think much more will change.

Really, it's almost at the point now that C86 was at in the mid-eighties, and I reckon that's as far as it will go.  It's a nice little community of people, though.

[monkhouse terror]

I really think they're making up genres now, though.  Why must everything be pigeonholed?

Because then it can be branded and sold by the suits.

HAHAHA

Could it just be because people inherently like to categorise things as it makes everything a lot less confusing?

yeh man down wiv da kingdoms, phylums, classes, orders, families, genuses and speices, were all mother earfs children iiniit the MAN jus usin it to keep our protozoan brothers down

[Brutus Beefcake]

Hahaha "we're all the same and it's just systems that keep us apart".