America the Great

Here’s a teaser for you: what makes Britain great? It’s a question that’s constantly asked by the British in an unselfconscious fashion that highlights how UK culture has remained unthinkingly chauvinistic. From the folksy whimsicality that defined the British popular music of the post-war era and surfaced even in bands such as The Beatles and The Kinks, we get a picture of a nation whose self image is cosy and insular. Britain’s folk music, too, tends to reflect a lack of pre-occupation with society – maybe even a lack of awareness of the possibility of social change within a society that’s altered so little over the centuries. In a mostly stagnant society, folk music was largely centred around an idyllic, unchanging vision of Britain.

America, on the other hand, can scarcely be said to have a ‘folk music’ in that sense at all. In a country barely three centuries old, there isn’t one single tradition to draw on. So what, then, makes America great? Well, America was built in the space of a few peoples’ memories, by an accretion of people from very different national backgrounds who had to sublimate their outward chauvinistic leanings in order to work together. But there are deeper cultural resonances that have remained in American society from these earlier times. The Irish, the Russians, the Italians, all played a huge part in shaping the emerging country. If there’s a common cultural legacy it is a respect for the elder generation, a realisation that these members of society serve as a repository of wisdom won the hard way.
The themes that dominate folk music hinge around wisdom learnt through pain and hurt, changing circumstances, betrayal and bitterness. But whereas these same themes can be found in rock and pop music they tend to be treated in an angsty fashion. In the folk canon there tends to be more of a graceful acceptance of the hand dealt by fate or a righteous moral anger at the injustices handed down. One of the hallmarks of great folk music is that often the musicians seem to appear fully fledged with an old head already perched on their young shoulders, having absorbed a lifetime’s worth of wisdom in their milk and cookies. The acceptance of loss and separation in Dylan’s ‘Boots of Spanish Leather’ is something that pop music can offer nothing comparable to. That's because pop is a medium where loss is most commonly bleated at as a shameful betrayal.
Jackson Browne’s ‘These Days’, written when he was only 19, does not seem at all incongruous when sung by the 72-year-old Glen Campbell. If anything, it beds into that gnarly old voice as if written specifically for it.
American folk music embedded itself in America’s popular consciousness at a time when the country seemed under threat from itself – in the '60s when the black and white communities struggled to re-define their relationship with each other and when the younger generation railed and rallied against the death sentence that the Vietnam war hung over them. In that era folk music went native in the American soul in a way that has never happened in the UK. In the UK’s hour of darkness during the Second World War they turned to the escapism of American big band music and during the '60s psychedelia seemed more attractive to the bulk of the population that the political and lyrical engagement of folk music.
In the USA, psychedelic music and counter-culture often crossed paths with folk but the consistent presence of songwriters and performers like Browne and his long time friend Bruce Springsteen have kept a folk singer’s outlook very much in the forefront of popular music.
With the advent of the Obama era there may be a sense that the turbulence and trials of the ‘60s have now been resolved and that the political issues addressed by folk music will drop away, leaving only the personal domain as an arena for folk writers.
Although this might be a fetching and utopian vision, the truth is that there is still an intensely militaristic current in American life and the Obama presidency will be pressured to conform to those norms. History is not good at about-turns and it’s far more likely that what we’ll see now is the start of a slow bend towards a more peaceful future. Within contemporary American society there is still enough inequality and injustice to engage a generation of folk singers – surely a fresh generation of writers and singers will rise to the challenge. Unlike the rush to crown Obama as combined king and saviour, though, we can wait for someone to grow into the role. If we have learned anything from our Springsteens, Dylans, Millers and Campbells it is that this is no sprint from the blocks, it’s a marathon.