Keegan-Phipps, S. orcid.org/0000-0002-3873-9455 (2017) Identifying the English: essentialism and multiculturalism in contemporary English folk music. Ethnomusicology Forum, 26 (1). pp. 3-25. ISSN 1741-1912
Abstract
Recent trends in ethnomusicology have included a growing concern with indigeneity. A conceptual alternative to the discipline’s long-standing preoccupations with diaspora, indigeneity is frequently characterised through a narrative in which ‘native’ groups assert their identity in opposition to an invading—historical or contemporary—oppressor. The recent explosion of interest in the expression of an English identity within contemporary, multicultural Britain offers a very different narrative. Amid wider public celebrations of Englishness, and popular concerns about immigration, UK devolution, EU federalisation and US-led globalisation, a resurgence has taken place in the profile of specifically English folk music and dance since around 2000. The last 10 years have seen an emerging movement to reclaim Englishness by the political left, yet the folk arts pose specific problems for such a project—namely, the reification of nostalgia for a rurality that is necessarily pre-multicultural. Through examining some case studies of the current English folk resurgence, this article will discuss how contemporary English folk artists (the majority of whom share left-of-centre politics) attempt to negotiate Englishness in relation to their multicultural and multinational British context.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2017 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | England; Folk Music; National Identity; Indigeneity; Multiculturalism; Whiteness |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Arts and Humanities (Sheffield) > Department of Music (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 08 Mar 2017 11:27 |
Last Modified: | 28 Jul 2023 15:42 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Taylor & Francis |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1080/17411912.2017.1302809 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:113147 |