‘I’d better not sing that here’

Musical environments, genre stereotypes and folk singers’ performance strategies

Abstract

This article focuses on how amateur folk singers approach performing in different live music settings, particularly those outside their regular and familiar environments. The paper incorporates personal experience, a small sample of interviews with local singers in the East Midlands of England and observational data. The interview responses indicate a range of strategies being employed by singers to balance their preferred repertoire choices – especially when the preference is for traditional song – with the circumstances of the specific event. This strategic thinking may, it is argued, reflect underlying issues about definitions of and assumptions about folk music as a genre. The discussion suggests that the situations that confront singers are complex, combining implicit stereotypes about what folk singers do (or should) sing and the multiple features that create the totality of the live music event for performers and audiences. It could, indeed, be held that relatively little about a performance event is controllable by the performer themselves. This is particularly relevant when a singer is performing in an unfamiliar place to an unfamiliar audience. Lastly, the paper proposes that, notwithstanding the challenges posed by different environments and audiences, the unclear boundaries of what constitutes folk music may provide positive opportunities for communities and performers to repurpose folk repertoire for their own objectives.