Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music
British folk revival traced back past Fairport Convention to Vaughan Williams and older visions still.
Rob Young follows the current running from Fairport Convention, Nick Drake and the Incredible String Band back through the folk collectors and the pastoral composers, Vaughan Williams, Holst and Bax among them. His argument is that these are one tradition rather than two, a recurring British attempt to locate something visionary in the landscape.
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Tyler Cowen
Rob Young, Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music. This book covers Fairport Convention and its many folk offshoots, and ties it in to earlier British traditions of Vaughan Williams, Bax, Holst and so on, plus traditional song and yes The Wicker Man. This is the right book, and it is also a good way to try to understand Britain (a much written-up place) by unusual, roundabout means.
Source · January 2025
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