in the joint act of making and receiving music in a known and valued tradition with its evocative visual as well as acoustic associations: the glittering polished instruments, band insignia, proud display of uniforms, and quasi-military and tradition-hallowed bearing.
Figure 11 An informal photograph of the Woburn Sands Band shortly after competing in the National Brass Band Finals, showing the age range typical of many music groups (here 11 to 70)
The music above all was central, with its burst of sound filling the surroundings, arising from not just hours but years of skilled work and enacted by two dozen or so people participating as both individuals and a collectivity in a context in which age and background were of no account for ‘you’re pursuing an activity and in pursuit of that activity one loses oneself’. Building on their hours of practice, they were taking part in a performance to the highest standard the band could produce, an event unique to them yet tradition-drenched, of both public acclaim and rich aesthetic meaning. Small wonder that one player summed up banding as ‘a way of life’ which, despite the grumbles, ‘I wouldn’t be without’.
This sense of belonging to an integrated distinctive world, the inheritors of a proud and independent tradition, was further enhanced by the continuation of the long tradition of brass bands performing a public function for the local community. Of course such a statement needs qualification. What was seen as ‘local’ or ‘the community’ varied according to the speaker(s), the situation, even the time of year. And in some respects brass bands were just like any other musical groups performing in and around their own local base at both small and large events, not necessarily admired by or (probably unlike nineteenth-century bands) even known to all the local residents. What was striking, however, was the explicit ideology that brass bands had a direct relationship to their ‘own’ locality. The band was expected to turn out on ‘public’ occasions and to play a part in rituals of the musical, religious and official year, while in return members of the locality should support them not only in musical events but also in fundraising, particularly in street donations to band funds during the ‘Christmas carolling’. The local band’s public appearances at Christmas festivities, local carnivals and shows, ceremonies like the public opening of some new institution, or (as representatives of their own locality) in competitions or visits outside were seen as a necessary part of such events and an expected function of the band. The sense of let-down when there was once a mix-up and the local brass band did not play at the local Remembrance Day brought home the importance many people attached to this function – even those who did not particularly like brass band music.
One of the images associated with local brass bands in the 1980s (as earlier) was of a group performing an integrating and public role for their locality. Even though by the 1980s band players did not necessarily live in the immediate neighbourhood at all, local brass bands could still see themselves as somehow representing and enhancing the whole ‘community’ at public events – whatever that ‘community’ might be in different circumstances: the local village for the Woburn Sands Band; the town of Wolverton and its workers for the Wolverton Town and British Rail Band; or, in some situations, the whole developing new city of Milton Keynes. This aspect was no doubt facilitated by the ability of brass bands to perform so visibly and audibly in the open air, but even so it was remarkable that a musical tradition which was also seen as separate from others and was certainly not to everyone’s taste should nevertheless have been accepted as being some how ‘above the battle’ and, despite its basis in the world of privately organised voluntary associations, as providing mutually beneficial support for the large ‘community’ occasions.
Up to a point, just about all the voluntary musical groups performed something of this public function, but it was in the case of brass bands that this idea was most prominent. Brass bands both constituted a quite explicitly perceived ‘world of their own’ and, at the same time, were called on most directly of all the groups considered here to support the public celebrations of the communities in which they practised.
6
The folk music world
Active performers of the music known as ‘folk’ were a select minority in Milton Keynes, in contrast to the wider distribution of many other local forms. But for the performers their participation in the folk music world was a source of the greatest satisfaction, often taking up just about the whole of their non-working time and playing a large part in their self-definition. Their numbers were not negligible either. In the Milton Keynes area in the early 1980s, there were at any one time about a dozen ‘folk groups’, four or more ‘ceilidh’ dance bands and five or six ‘folk clubs’, the latter dependent on a pool of local performers. ‘Folk music’ was also heard and danced to by a much wider circle through the established custom of local associations hiring a folk dance band to play for their annual socials.
Understanding the folk music world can best start from some description of the ‘folk clubs’. These were independent clubs with their own clientele and organisation, meeting regularly in local pubs: the Song Loft (earlier the Stony Stratford Folk Club) at the Cock Hotel in Stony Stratford on every other Friday; the Hogsty Folk Club (later the Hogsty Music Club) weekly or fortnightly on Mondays, then Tuesdays, at the Holt, Aspley Guise; Folk-at-the-Stables at WAP, usually monthly on Saturdays (a more professionally oriented club than most, though with an amateur resident band, the Gaberlunzies); the Fox and Hounds Folk Club at Whittlebury (earlier the Whittlebury Folk Club) on the alternate Fridays from the Song Loft; and the slightly different Lowndes Arms Ceilidh Club at Whaddon on the last Thursday of the month, a folk dance club similar to the folk clubs in atmosphere, music, personnel and resident band. It will be clear from the list both that the club network was extensive and that clubs went through different locations, names and timing. This immediately points to one characteristic of local folk clubs – their relative transience under a given title. There were others too, even less long-lasting, which for a time engaged people’s enthusiasm but faded out after a few years or months, among them the Black Horse Folk Club, the Bull and Butcher Singers’ Club, the Cannon Blues and Folk Club, and the Concrete Cow Folk Club; and how the new Merlin’s Roost Folk Music Club would do (founded autumn 1984) still remained to be seen. There were also gatherings on a regular but less formal basis, like the Sunday lunch sing-songs that drew 50–100 people at the Bull Hotel in Stony Stratford, then shifted to the Black Horse at Great Linford, where (as one leading singer put it) ‘anybody’s welcome to join in, play along, sing a song, add some harmony to a chorus, or simply have a beer and listen’.
Amidst all these changes there were always some five or six clubs which devotees could attend. The accepted system was that club meetings were arranged on a periodic cycle, avoiding mutual competition by functioning on different nights throughout the week or month. A real enthusiast could spend almost every night each week at one or other of the nearby clubs.
There were detailed differences between clubs, for, as one experienced performer commented, ‘each club goes its own way, does it how it works for them’; but there were also recognisable patterns. Almost all were associated with a local pub, meeting weekly or fortnightly in its ‘special function’ room. They were open to casual visitors, but also normally had membership subscriptions, and the entrance fee of around £1.00–£1.50 was lower for members. Around 40–70 typically came on any one night, roughly half men and half women, with 120 or 150 for a well-known artist. Clubs usually ran both ‘singers’ nights’, at which the club members provided free entertainment, and evenings with visiting ‘guests’. The visitors were paid a fee, the amount varying according to reputation and distance: a local musician might get £10–£20, a well-known non-local artist up to £100. The balance between singers’ and visitors’ nights partly depended on club size (and hence funds). A well-off club aimed to have three or four guest nights to one ‘singers’ night’, but this was not always easy since even with an entrance charge of £1.50 the room (and audience)
