Folk music needs community, not awards or charts

Many people will have wondered why folk musicians nowadays struggle to emerge and survive, will have worried about the fact that small folk festivals are disappearing and only the most important ones survive, or will have wondered why all the folk clubs have disappeared in Italy and across the continent: I will try to provide some explanations.

by Loris Böhm

As I was saying in the title: folk music needs community to survive; the passion for this musical genre is not something indispensable for the human race, but it certainly improves and completes it culturally. The cover of this issue of Lineatrad features a slogan that should remain firmly imprinted in the minds of all those who love folk music: folk music cannot exist without folk clubs.

I have already spoken in previous issues of Lineatrad about the publishing crisis concerning important magazines dealing with world and folk music, and the failure of many of them both in Italy and around the world; and it was the first symptom of the malaise in this cultural sector.

It is not necessary to consult ethnomusicologists, holy men, or gurus to understand that a folk festival is not enough to guarantee the survival of folk music: it is an annual or biennial event that, generally speaking, brings together a scarce handful of artists, who in many cases, especially here in Italy, are re-proposed year after year (see the Celtica festival in the Aosta Valley, or the Monsano Folk Festival in the Marche), though I could give many other examples. This philosophy based on friendships and convenience certainly does not help the huge number of excellent folk musicians find a space to perform, and, worse still, presents the public with a false idea of what is available on the folk music market. Bustofolk, for example, is implementing a strategy of international sponsorships aimed at proposing different artists every year, and all our partner festivals are making remarkable efforts to differentiate their programming from year to year.

Generally speaking, folk festivals—if we exclude the most important ones like Paimpol or Lorient, which can boast hundreds of thousands of paying spectators at each edition—fly blind, because they cannot present a definitive program until a couple of weeks before it starts.

The reason is soon told: small festivals do not have a corporate fund capable of guaranteeing the next edition and must await public funding and sponsor checks, which usually arrive at the last moment (if they arrive at all), in order to draw up a program. Large festivals can boast a substantial corporate fund derived from the previous year's ticket sales, which can be used immediately to set up a broad, high-quality program without having to rely necessarily on outside grants.

Numerous gadgets and catering are a significant source of earnings for these large festivals, and to a lesser extent, specialized courses in ethnic instruments, which instead abound in small festivals. Often even all these measures are not enough to have fresh money available, considering the increased costs due to inflation and devaluation, and that is where folk clubs used to come in... only they no longer exist.

What did folk clubs have that was particularly indispensable? Easy answer: the community I mentioned in the title. Only members enrolled in an association can guarantee a number of spectators sufficient to justify organizing a concert without incurring a loss.

Until about thirty years ago, everything was delegated to folk clubs, as we have already anticipated in previous issues of Lineatrad, and it made sense: hierarchies of organizers existed who took care of the economic, promotional, logistical, insurance side, etc., capable of staging many concerts throughout the year... and if anyone remembers the StraBollettino, a newspaper that was later integrated into the Folk Bulletin, they must also remember the abundance of appointments one could choose from in the course of a single month, among reviews, festivals, isolated concerts, workshops, and dance parties.

Today a newspaper like the StraBollettino would no longer make sense, considering the scarcity of events in circulation, and the situation is even more grotesque and absurd when you think that fairs, expos, and folk music contests have increased exponentially over the last twenty years... but to promote whom, if in the end all these folk groups that are awarded prizes or simply featured cannot play anywhere?

The problem has never been taken into consideration, and risks breaking the bank even for historical trade fair events like Womex, Midem, Fira Mediterrània de Manresa, Celtic Connections, and others, or stripping meaning from the countless annual awards dedicated to deceased artists, or the speed meetings of UpBeat dedicated to young emerging groups, or contests like the Transglobal World Music Chart, which produces a monthly ranking of record productions by artists who then have few opportunities to perform in public... so what is the use of being in the top ten?

I have often happened to promote contest "winners", with the sole result of hearing them ask me: "have you found any dates for our band to play?"... in plain words, we have reached the paradox where musicians now consider the music magazine to be an agency capable of organizing a tour for them.

In fact, in the past there were many agencies, but they didn't work for free for musicians (as magazines have always done). You win a plaque or an award, and then who gets you to play? No one. The problem that I raised in July on Lineatrad was taken up in the first of the European Folk Network's online single-topic meetings, which will be held on Tuesday, September 15 - TALKING POINTS: "Is there an imbalance between supply (musicians) and demand (promoters).

Is the market in crisis?" with expert speakers from both sectors. During this meeting, problems will certainly come to light and hopefully also some ideas to find solutions to a situation that is becoming unsustainable.

Personally I believe that there is a lot of hunger for folk music among enthusiasts, and what is missing, deep down, is a "volunteer" entrepreneur who takes on the burden and the honor of refounding the folk club; who commits to proselytizing to gather members, and then finally, when the books balance, begins to schedule those concerts that have been missing for so many years. Obviously the younger generations are being called upon, because the old enthusiasts who ran the folk clubs can no longer manage to pick up where they left off... but they can teach young people how to run an association of this type.

There you have it, I hope that after September 15, a new spirit can be born from that meeting (based on old experiences) capable of giving life to a new generation of "Folk Club 2.0".