without them.
No study of this kind would be possible without the help of large numbers of local people – musicians and others – who shared their time and insight so freely not only in formal ‘interviews’ but in friendly conversations and tolerant understanding of my own musical inadequacies. I can never fully repay what they gave or write as complete an account as each would deserve, but I hope they will feel that what is written here gives at least some idea of the valued part they play in our musical pathways. Because it is impossible to name all who contributed it seems wrong to single out any; but I cannot refrain from mentioning the particular kindnesses and help given by Matt and Jane Armour, Doreen Beacham, John Close, Malcolm Crane, John and Lila Drinkwater, Rod Hall, Sue Jarvis, Arnold Jones, Clive Keech, Gordon Ratnage, David Stevenson, Anita Tedder, Pauline Thompson, Peter Waterman, Ralph and Cora Willcox, and – let me remember them with particular warmth and gratitude – Ella and Franklin Cheyne. I would also thank my three daughters Rachel, Kathleen and Brigid and their teachers (helpful, if partly unwitting, participants in the research) and – in a very personal tone – Sherwood Choir members for putting up with me over the years, before, during and after this research. To all of these, and to the many others who shared so much with me, my admiration and thanks.
Because this is an unusual study, drawing on many academic areas but not quite orthodox in any of them, I have particularly appreciated friends and colleagues outside the locality who have encouraged me, listened patiently, read part of the typescript, or – maybe without realising it – suggested some new line of thought. Once again they are too many to name, but let me at least acknowledge the great stimulus I received from the participants (critical as well as sympathetic) in the various seminars and workshops where I tried out earlier versions, and, among individuals, from John Blacking, Dieter Christensen, John Davis, Mary Douglas, Jerry Eades, Steven Feld, Simon Frith, Ralph Grillo, Mark Hustwitt, Bernice and David Martin, the McCaugheys of Melbourne, Alan Macfarlane, Jim Obelkvich, Leo Treitler, Elizabeth Whitcombe and Tokumaru Yosihiko (not that any of them will necessarily agree with what I say here). Four friends did their best to delay this too-slowly maturing book by capturing my time for other tasks: Jean La Fontaine, the unstoppable combination of Peter Zorkoczy and Nick Heap, and, most of all, Raymond Illsley; but I find that I am unexpectedly grateful to them too, since the detachment and wider experience they forced on me ultimately helped its completion.
My more general academic debts will probably be obvious from the text of the book. Among them I would particularly pick out the work of Howard Becker, John Blacking, Ulf Hannerz, Richard Bauman and Roger Abrahams. Finally Sue Allen-Mills and her colleagues at Cambridge University Press provided invaluable help, my husband David Murray gave his usual unequalled academic stimulus and moral support, and my mother, as all through my life, started it all off and kept me going.
Sources for illustrations
Figures 1, 2, 4, 5, 6: Milton Keynes Development Corporation; 3: Charlie Wooding; 7: Mrs Betty Pacey; 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 19(b) and (c), 20, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27 and 31: Lionel Grech Milton Keynes Photo Services; 13: Rod Hall; 15: Dennis Vick; 16: the T-Bone Boogie Band and Trevor Jeavons; 18: G. Vulliamy and E. Lee, Popular music: a teacher’s guide (Routledge, 1982), p. 8; 19(a): Roger Hawes and the Void; 19(d): Pat Collins and Static Blue; 21: Mrs Trude Bedford; 23: John Close and Basically Brian; 29: Betty Black, Brackley
Abbreviations
| BMK | Borough of Milton Keynes (boundaries somewhat wider than the new city ‘designated area’ – see figures 1 and 2) |
| MKDC | Milton Keynes Development Corporation (responsible for the development of the ‘new city’, and in the early 1980s gradually handing over some of its earlier functions to BMK) |
| MU | Musicians’ Union |
| WAP | Wavendon Allmusic Plan (professional organisation based at Wavendon just outside the new city area but within the BMK boundaries, directed by John Dankworth and Cleo Laine, popularly referred to as ‘WAP’) |
| CRMK | Community Radio Milton Keynes |
1
Introductory
1
The existence and study of local music
A choir of local residents – men, women and children – file in special costume on to the platform for their annual concert accompanied by visiting soloists and an orchestra of local amateurs. A jazz and blues group play to enthusiastic fans over Sunday lunchtime in the foyer of a local leisure centre. A brass band of players from their teens to their seventies thunder out Christmas carols beside the local shops, making a bright show as well as resounding harmony with their military-style uniforms and gleaming instruments, and one member rattling the collection box. An inexperienced but ambitious band of teenagers set up their instruments in a pub for their first gig, nervous about performing in public but supported by friends sitting round the tables, and deeply enthusiastic about the new songs they have spent months working on. Or a part-time church organist extricates herself from her other commitments to come again and yet again to provide the musical framework for another Saturday wedding or Sunday service.
Most readers will have encountered at least some of these events – or of the many similar activities that take place in one form or another in English towns today.1 It is to such events and their background that this book is devoted: grass-roots music-making as it is practised by amateur musicians in a local context.
It is of course widely accepted that musical activities of this kind are part of modern English culture. But the organisation behind them is seldom thought about or investigated. In fact we regularly take them so for granted that we fail to really see the unacclaimed work put in by hundreds and thousands of amateur musicians up and down the country. Yet it is this work,
