Most countries take a certain pride in their indigenous culture. But here in England - as opposed to Ireland and Scotland - there remains a whiff of post-imperial guilt about our attitude to our own music.
People think they know what English folk songs amount to - but the cliche of chunky knit sweaters and fingers in the ear bears little relation to the songs that form the body of English music. The cliche was exacerbated in the Fifties and Sixties by the more rigorous approach of Ewan MacColl. But folk music isn't about strictures. It's about an oral tradition kept alive through the people who choose to celebrate it.
That's why Topic Records' The Voice of the People collection is a good place to start. You don't need to buy all 12 volumes, but nonetheless what you've got here is recordings of real people recorded at various points during the past century, singing what are essentially fragments of oral history. What really comes through is the struggle of everyday life, be it among farmers, fishermen, soldiers - or the travails of the wives that they have left behind.
If we're talking about an accessible entry point into this stuff, though, the obvious place to start is the output of various members of the Waterson/Carthy family. What I love about Eliza Carthy's Anglicana is the way it sets out to demonstrate what Englishness can be - and her choice of material is always spot on. It's harder to isolate one record by her parents. On Norma Waterson's side, you've got the Watersons' Frost and Fire - their 1967 'calendar of ritual and magical songs' - which represents a very fertile area. With Martin Carthy, you really are getting something unique. This is a man who devised his own tuning and has stuck with it ever since. If you buy A Collection , not only will you hear his version of 'Scarborough Fair', but you'll see how he inhabits the material he performs.
Relative to other genres, folk yields a truly diverse array of strong female characters. In terms of her consistently excellent output over nearly four decades, I feel that Maddy Prior is one of our most overlooked singers. Listen to her on Steeleye Span's Below the Salt and her warmth just shines through - witness the licentious way she sings, 'For I am frolicsome and I am easy' on 'Saucy Sailor'!
Shirley Collins is the most quintessential of English singers. Along with her sister, Dolly, she's been involved in some of the most interesting musical experiments of the whole genre: No Roses [recorded with The Albion Country Band], Adieu to Old England , Anthems in Eden all have an intimacy about them that serves the song exquisitely.
Three decades ago, it would have seemed strange to hold June Tabor up as a great English stylist. When I first met her she carried an audible debt to Gaelic music, but that has elapsed. Now she is someone who can really suspend your sense of self in a narrative. Recent albums such as Aleyn are slightly bigger instrumentally, but there's also something to be said for songs like 'Flash Company' from A Cut Above which radiate this unadorned beauty.
It would be criminal to talk about English folk music without mentioning the contribution of The Copper Family. There's a phrase that Martin Carthy uses to describe the synergy that comes of family members singing together - blood harmonies. You can't write them down. They just happen and they bring you out in goosebumps - they're all over The Copper Family's A Song For Every Season . Bob died earlier this year, aged 89, but on that collection you'll hear songs that he would hear his father singing as a boy in prewar Sussex. As a passionate blues fan, Bob understood better than most people that this music was our blues. And it would be a chronic shame if a few outmoded cliches allowed us to lose sight of that fact.
