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Think of English folk music and maybe thoughts come to mind of villagers lamenting lost loves or sailors bellowing tales of adventure at sea.<\/p>\n
But when the rising British folk band Shovel Dance Collective performs, its members want their listeners to think of more contemporary concerns.<\/p>\n
At the band\u2019s shows, the singer Mataio Austin Dean sometimes introduces \u201cThe Merry Golden Tree,<\/a>\u201d a song about a badly treated cabin boy, as a tale of \u201cbeing shafted by your boss\u201d \u2014 a scenario many office workers might relate to.<\/p>\n The group also performs \u201cI Wish There Was No Prisons<\/a>\u201d and \u201cA Hundred Stretches Hence\u201d: probable 19th-century ditties that Alex McKenzie, who plays accordion and flute in the group, said could be thought of as pleas for prison abolition.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Many folk songs \u201cring very true\u201d today, McKenzie said: \u201cThere\u2019s a very easy thread you can draw between what ordinary people were concerned about 100, 200 years ago, or whatever, and what we\u2019re concerned with now.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Folk music is having a resurgence in Britain and several London-based acts, including Shovel Dance Collective and Goblin Band, have won acclaim and growing fan bases by playing old-time tunes that echo the preoccupations of today\u2019s activist left, including trans rights and the precariousness of the gig economy.<\/p>\n Shovel Dance Collective\u2019s most recent album, for instance, includes \u201cNewcastle<\/a>,\u201d an upbeat 17th-century jig with the chorus, \u201cWhy can I not love my love? Why can my love not love me?\u201d Jacken Elswyth, the band\u2019s banjo player, said that because several of the group identify as queer or transgender, its fans may interpret those lyrics as being about queer romance.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Rowan Gatherer, a singer and hurdy-gurdy player in Goblin Band, said that British folk musicians had always used the genre to comment on the politics of their day: In the 1960s, for instance, England had a folk revival featuring artists like Ewan MacColl who promoted pro-labor and antiwar messages. Similarly, Gatherer said, the genre was \u201cgoing through a moment\u201d in London, where young musicians were performing ancient songs \u201cthat relate to their own experience and their own values.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The resurgence of interest in folk music in Britain coincides with a revival of other traditions including Morris dancing<\/a>, in which dancers weave around one another, waving handkerchiefs; and wassailing<\/a>, where rural revelers sing to bless the year\u2019s cider crop.<\/p>\n In interviews, members of Shovel Dance Collective said they had discussed what was driving the interest in traditional arts. McKenzie said it could be that young people were searching for a sense of belonging at a time when soaring rents and limited job prospects can make life feel daunting. \u201cEverything feels so precarious,\u201d McKenzie said, \u201cand suddenly there\u2019s these songs that put you in dialogue with people going back over hundreds of years. That\u2019s a really beautiful antidote to the precarity and uncertainty.\u201d<\/p>\n Shovel Dance Collective\u2019s members had different explanations for their own attractions to folk music. Fidelma Hanrahan, the band\u2019s harpist, said she grew up playing folk tunes in Ireland. Austin Dean, the singer, said he largely turned to the genre in his teens after discovering Marxism. (He called folk music \u201cthe organic cultural product of the proletariat.\u201d)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n To find the folk songs they perform, the bands\u2019 members often trawl YouTube, delve into online folk music archives or scour old anthologies they find in secondhand bookstores. Politics isn\u2019t always on their minds, however: Gatherer, of Goblin Band, said that finding catchy or emotional melodies was his priority.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Sometimes, Gatherer added, he only sees a song\u2019s political or social relevance once the band starts playing it. Goblin Band\u2019s last release, an EP called \u201cCome Slack Your Horse!\u201d<\/a>, includes a version of \u201cThe Prickle Holly Bush,\u201d a folk song about a man condemned to death whose family members refuse to pay a fee to save his life. Gatherer said that he thought the song\u2019s lyrics spoke to the experience of some gay people who felt abandoned by their families.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s hard to find politics, though, in songs like \u201cTurmut Hoer<\/a>,\u201d about turnip farming, on Goblin Band\u2019s EP. Gatherer said that, for this reason, the band\u2019s members were always open about their political views in interviews, at concerts and on social media, to frighten away nationalists who are drawn to folk music seeking a connection with England\u2019s past. The band didn\u2019t want a conservative fan base, he said.<\/p>\n Members of the Shovel Dance Collective debated whether old folk songs could be vehicles for even the most modern political concerns. Austin Dean, the singer, said some issues, \u201clike A.I. taking people\u2019s jobs,\u201d were perhaps too contemporary \u2014 but then he corrected himself.<\/p>\n One of the band\u2019s tracks is a mournful a cappella version of \u201cFour Loom Weaver<\/a>,\u201d a song about a starving mill worker during the Industrial Revolution. \u201cThat\u2019s all about losing work, and losing the quality of life, because of machines,\u201d Austin Dean said. \u201cIt\u2019s exactly the same thing, the same struggle.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n