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Hatfield And The North - It Didn't Matter Anyway

So what exactly does folk music purport to be? Nowadays, it's almost anything at all... and if you're playing steel string acoustic guitar, you're almost automatically a folk musician, even if you've never heard a song that predates the Beatles. But the term folklore was coined in 1846, and its anthropological definition is, more or less, the orally transmitted expression, often anonymous, unselfconscious and spontaneous, of a small homogenous group with a long common tradition. It's certainly not hard, then, to call the music of the Navajo or the Ba Benzélé pygmies folklore.

In the early 20th century, however, problems arose. The main one was that cultural integration had all but eliminated the purity of most of the groups in Europe and America producing folklore.

But most folklorists assumed that distinct and culturally separate groups ranging from American blacks to Appalachian whites still existed, despite the evidence that their music had undergone countless transformations through the mixing of traditions. John Lomax, who, along with his son Alan was the premier collector of American folk music, embarked on his monumental quest for black American folk songs in 1933... when deciding which songs were most unlike those of the white race, Lomax would always choose the most primitive forms of expression, disregarding the jaw dropping complexity and sophistication of much of the black music of his time.


Hatfield And The North - It Didn't Matter Anyway
  • Released in: March 1975
  • Recorded in: January - February 1975
  • Genre: Progressive rock,

"In mid 1972 the band grew out of a line up of ex members of blues, jazz, rock band Delivery, Pip Pyle, drums, who had since played with Gong, Phil Miller, guitar, who had joined Matching Mole, and Phil's brother Steve Miller, Wurlitzer electric piano, who had joined Caravan."

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