ABSTRACT
The English folk song revival that was conceived during the 1950s and 1960s was obliged to devise performance styles and develop a repertoire that would be attractive to young audiences. In doing so, it departed significantly from the practices of traditional singers and from the content of source material. This chapter describes the role of Ewan MacColl and A. L. Lloyd in setting the revival’s direction, the early schisms in the movement and the role of the next generation in developing the template these two had established. Interviews with significant artists describe the attitudes and practices of the revival, and a detailed analysis of influential recordings by MacColl and especially Lloyd reveals the extent of their reworking of both melodies and texts of songs that became ‘standards’ for other performers. The consequences for folk song scholarship, and the lasting potency of this modified repertoire in the twenty-first-century revival, are discussed.
