ABSTRACT

In 1954 the International Folk Music Council decreed that the music they had decided to study was: the product of a musical tradition that has been evolved through the process of oral transmission. Fracture and mutation had already commenced some 10 years before Simon Frith's year of significance. Skiffle was 'a side product of the British Traditional jazz movement' and, as such, operated through the presentation of real materials as an image of energy. Skiffle's life was short but it was, without doubt, the foundation upon which the next two decades of British popular music was built. By the late 1960s there was a clearly defined generation gap within the folk revival. Hart and Prior, like others, were very conscious of not becoming part of a folk meritocracy. Hart desired to fulfil a musical potential; this led him into experiments with technology and musical amalgamation, stretching the limits of his own discourse – actually the real tradition of any musician.