new music

I went to the Colchester Arts Centre last night to hear The Urban Folk Quartet.  I'd never heard of them, or at least they had registered minimally on my radar because I think the Radio 2 folk programme played a track of theirs a few weeks ago, but it wouldn't have occurred to me to go and see them.  However, a friend was interested in going, based on the blurb from the arts centre, and I didn't mind giving it a whirl.  Back in the days when my employers used to subject our team to (probably academically dubious) psychological tests, to discover our strengths and weaknesses, my results always indicated an almost unnaturally balanced personality, slightly lacking on what was termed the Completer-Finisher dimension, with a small and unconvincing upwards spike on the Creativity axis.  My creativity score diminished the longer I worked for them, which worried them, but the one dimension on which I consistently scored highly was Openness.  Show me a new folk act, and I'll listen to it, at least once.

The UFQ, as they term themselves, are Birmingham based.  One is originally Galician.  The line-up of instruments is two fiddles, a set of drums that's several degrees more sophisticated than your 1970s back-beat folk-rock outfit's ever was, and perm any two out of banjo, assorted guitars and mandolin.  They used to have an oud player, but he left and was replaced by the banjoist (who can do a pretty convincing oud impersonation on his banjo when required).  All four sing.

Their style is hybrid, but in a good way.  It is quite difficult to describe, which is maybe why virtually all the websites I've looked at of folk clubs that have hosted the Urban Folk Quartet have simply lifted the phrase from the group's own website, that they perform fiddle-led music that draws heavily from celtic dance forms.  They do, and there is the germ of a reel or slip jig inside most of their instrumental sets, along with traces of Bulgarian folk rhythms, jazz, American trad, shades of Ravi Shankar, funk and afrobeat (I'm not entirely sure what that last one is, but it's in their self-description).

That lot could amount to a huge god-awful mash-up, but works for them (most of the time) because they are all very, very accomplished virtuoso musicians, and because they seem to share a joint idea of what they want their sound to be.  Their explanation is that since they come from an urban background, surrounded by people and music from many nationalities, it is natural for them to incorporate these influences into their music, while it would be unnatural and false for them to go all rural and pre-industrial.  On the whole I buy that argument.  At any rate they sound authentic. It's not an easy act to pull off.  There's been a fashion in recent years for performing traditional English or Irish tunes with a little jazzy something added, or the odd Klezmer inflection, and it can sound mannered and quite teeth gratingly irritating.

My only criticism of the UFQ is that they need to let their audience be.  We were repeatedly chivvied from the stage to shout more loudly, to whoop, to clap along, and generally provide feedback to the band that we were enjoying ourselves.  The thing is, we were listening.  There was no talking, no visible checking of phones during the sets, no rustling, no coughing.  I have been to classical concerts with worse behaved audiences than yesterday evening's motley band of folkies. The Urban Folk Quartet should learn to appreciate an attentive audience when they meet one.