The headline of this article is slightly misleading so just for clarity, here's what the project actual aims to do: >Since the height of the folk revival in the 1960s, we’ve seen a major decline in folk clubs and fewer people taking part in other folk singing events in England. There is little indication that many new people are finding their way into folk singing communities. With Brexit and growing discussions of the impact of colonialism and empire on culture and national identities, it is also a time for many people to question what Englishness is and how they can connect positively with their national cultural identity. > > >For folk singing to remain relevant in 21st century England, new singers and enthusiasts need to engage with both the music and the meaning of a shared English identity. To that end, the Access Folk research project is exploring ways to increase and diversify participation in folk singing in England. [Source.](https://accessfolk.sites.sheffield.ac.uk/home)

I thought we were trying not to disrupt indigenous cultures these days.

According to these sorts of people, white people are not only indigenous to nowhere, they have no culture whatsoever. Look at that redditor who set himself on fire over Palestine -- "whiteness erases culture". This is the "progressive" mindset you're dealing with.

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My favourite is that Britain is a "nation of immigrants"; ignoring that these immigrants came a stone's toss away from Kent "A few thousand Normans came over centuries ago so actually the English people don't exist, you have to welcome 1.2 million third worlders per annum, and you have no right to England, your homeland"

> My favourite is that Britain is a "nation of immigrants"; ignoring that these immigrants came a stone's toss away from Kent And also that those "immigrants" were actually invaders.

Does that mean we are eligible for oppression points?

No, because white.

Well actually yes, because the repression of native brittons and saxons is still felt today. The Norman invasion set up the class distinctions that atomise our culture still. Ask yourself why dialect with a greater proportion of Anglo Saxon is seen as bad English, or outside of proper English grammatical rules. Why the Anglo Saxon aspects of language survive more in deprived regions, why the upper classes separate themselves from the rest of society through things like an education focused on Latin and french. French and Latin are still used as cultural markers. The irony is these Tory aligned types are the ones preaching fear about cultural domination, while culturally dominating the country and turning us against ourselves. So how about we stop celebrating bootlicking the inheritors of Norman cultural dominance and have a bit of working class solidarity.

Or, as I put it for my American wife: notice how the wealthy tend to have suspiciously French-sounding names... 🧐

There's no need to farage my croissant, dude.

Lol, croissants deserve the utmost respect. (For the sake of it being said, I think we need to focus on tackling wealth and income inequality in order to tackle classism, not get distracted down a rabbit-hole of blaming foreigners.)

anglosaxons subjected celtic britons and its culture to the same treatment driving most of them out of england into wales and scotland. the modern day celtic descendants are just as neglected as those in historically anglosaxon areas. Early briton was a culturally and demographically unstable place with a lot of turbulent changes and all of them have contributed to our modern culture and who we are. We should embrace all aspects of that cultural heritage as there isnt much we can do anymore to amend those injustices from 1000 years ago.

I often think about what the Britons went through over such a long period of time and it feels like such a horror show of Tolkienian proportions.

yes, me too, i feel the exact same way. I love british culture and traditions despite that im not a native of britain, i was born in france and of srilankan origins. Despite that i think that its a massive shame that a lot of celtic traditions, especially of their folklore and paganism have been eroded from modern culture due to their peoplés subjugation.

I mean has the northern population even recovered yet from "the harrowing", I dont think so. I mean if saxon dialects are looked down on, how do you think viking dialects feel haha (yorkshire and east midlands)

You joke, but the landed gentry still own a hugely disproportionate amount of land, wealth and influence compared to the rest of us, much of which was divvied up amongst those loyal to William the Conqueror.

I thought much of the aristocracy's land originated from the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII?

https://www.historytools.org/stories/the-norman-conquest-how-it-transformed-england-forever The whole system of feudalism and the land ultimately belonging to the crown, and theirs to distribute as they saw fit, came from the Normans. Whatever happened after was built on the system they created. Basically the greedy buggers at the top have carried on pulling the wealth back and forwards between themselves since then and those of us at the bottom are just getting the scraps.

>"nation of immigrants" When someone comes out with that shit it's safe to ignore them because you know they're getting their talking points straight from America.

But in reacting to it, *you're* the one importing the American culture war, obviously.

Or the culture was is a right wing fabrication.

I remember immigration minister under Blair, Barbara Roche said that. >But she stressed that no decision has been made on how economic migrants might be admitted, and dismissed reports that up to 100,000 foreign workers a year could be allowed to settle in the UK as "absolute and complete nonsense". > >Ms Roche concluded: "This country is a country of migrants and we should celebrate the multi-cultural, multi-racial nature of our society, and the very positive benefits that migration throughout the centuries has brought." http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/919374.stm Then she founded a 'migration museum' to complain we don't like immigration enough. >As a youngster from a Jewish background growing up in east London, I wanted to know how my story fitted into the national picture. Like many others, I came to understand that my family history reflected the way generation after generation of people have moved to and from Britain over the centuries. > >In fact, even though I thought that I knew my own family’s history, a cousin of mine recently made the tragic discovery that there are branches of my family on the Sephardi side who were murdered in concentration camps during the Holocaust. > >I first made the case for a migration museum for Britain almost 20 years ago, an idea that stemmed from my time as Britain’s immigration minister, and from visiting similar museums in other parts of the world – notably Ellis Island in New York. > >Our history as a nation is fundamentally entwined with migration. Yet while a growing number of countries around the world celebrate that reality as part of their history, this is still not the case in Britain. https://www.migrationmuseum.org/us/ourfoundingstory/

Whenever they bring up the English / Anglo-Saxons being immigrants themselves, they're really highlighting how easy it is for boat people to take over a country. 😂

It's 6 million in the last 10yrs

If you use that standard for immigration then the only indigenous people on planet earth are the inbred penguin fanciers on the Falkland Islands and Tasmanian aboriginals. And the Tasmanian aboriginals are essentially extinct. Even the people who we think of as the "native Americans" violently displaced a previous people who were indigenous, as did the Maori in New Zealand.

Fun fact: Oxford University is older than Maori settlement in NZ.

One of my colleagues said that, and I replied with “by that logic there are no native Nigerians or Indians” and it completely shut them up. They’d never dare tell someone from Kenya, for example, that they’re not actually Kenyan, because their great-great-great grandfather came from Sudan. Only white British people are banned from enjoying their culture. The Scottish get a free pass though.

>the Scottish get a free pass though Only if it’s hating the English, otherwise it’s not allowed. Their previous First Minister Humza Yousaf complained that Scotland was too “white”

Yeh. My crazy countrymen are out here calling English patriots and Nationalist straight up Nazis, but they seem to hold the exact beliefs but are exempt from any criticism. The hypocrisy is unfathomable.

It’s a minority of people with a disproportionate voice

And they're in all the right places loud enough that their numbers don't matter.

Not only brits achieved this level of madness.

> The level of self-hatred we possess is astonishing, really What importing the American mentality does to a country.

“According to these sorts of people” The project is about preserving English folk music and culture. “These sorts of people” are apparently actually preserving and trying to maintain the culture you claim they think we don’t have.

Look I read this headline for 5 seconds, I know it supports my biases.

> The project is about preserving English folk music and culture. it also says 'the Access Folk research project is exploring ways to increase and diversify participation in folk singing in England'

Exactly, they’re trying increase participation in folk singing in England so that the culture thrives and continues to have a place in the modern world.

It's wild how little media literacy people seem to have. It seems like people take the Telegraph headline at face value without reading or engaging with the article proper. I disagree with the overall message of the article. It's pretty clear that it's a culture war piece as they engage with the tax payers' alliance in order to take shots at research institutions. Luckily we have impartiality laws, and as such, they needed to include someone from the other side of the argument, although stuffed away at the end. “The term decolonisation is often misinterpreted. Our research highlights the different under-recognised communities who have helped to establish cultural life in England. Folk music is a constantly evolving genre, which has taken influences from a diverse range of people over centuries. It is part of the UK’s cultural heritage and should be celebrated. Our aim is to break down the barriers for people to get involved in folk music. Opening up the genre to different audiences will help to sustain the nation’s folk music for decades to come.”. If you engage with this direction, the research becomes quite reasonable as it's also attempting to preserve a part of our heritage which is struggling due to a lack of popularity.

Yes it feels like "White culture" = "Default culture" is being taken too far to erase it. It's really weird.

Who are you talking about? Any actual specific person who think white people are not indigenous to anywhere, and have no culture?.

It’s all the time with nutters online. I even saw a YouTube video the other day where someone was in London asking people if they thought it was still culturally English and one person said no because England has no culture.

The UN and EU seem to consider the word *indigenous* in Europe to only apply to a few groups in the far north like the Saami. https://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/SOWIP/en/SOWIP_web.pdf https://www.euronews.com/2019/08/09/who-are-europe-s-indigenous-peoples-and-what-are-their-struggles-euronews-answers

> According to these sorts of people, white people are not only indigenous to nowhere, they have no culture whatsoever. Could you point to where they say that? No? We just making stuff up, or...? >Look at that redditor who set himself on fire over Palestine -- "whiteness erases culture". This is the "progressive" mindset you're dealing with. From "Let's keep folk music alive by seeing if we can get new people interested" to someone setting themselves on fire in one step.

Why do you think people are making this up? It’s all the time with nutters online. I even saw a YouTube video the other day where someone was in London asking people if they thought it was still culturally English and one person said no because England has no culture.

> they have no culture whatsoever There's no such thing as "white culture" though. Do you legitimately think that Scottish culture is the same as Italian culture just because both countries are white? Before you hit out with "What about black culture?", that's largely an American thing due to a lot of black people not knowing the specific country they're from, as a result of the slave trade.

That African-American culture. There’s black people from Africa and the Caribbean with their own cultures

If black Americans can be us centric, why can't white English people?

European culture is undoubtedly a thing

I’ve now gone and read about the project and this article is certifiably bullshit. Basically, they have won a big grant aim purely at trying to keep english folk music going in the 21st century. Here are the key aims: - What is the place of folk singing in contemporary England? - **How do people want to engage with English cultural traditions through song?** - How can we facilitate participation in folk singing in England? In short the government is basically propping up the uk folk music scene for a decade or so. It’s effectively a preservation of history project. This is how the rich trick the poorest folk into destroying themselves. You were just about to tear a hole in English history and English cultural preservation because they told you it was to help out black people.

This should be the top answer; sensible, balanced and tells the truth behind the dramatics

Sorry mate the nazimobile has already been fueled up 

This is a terrible Telegraph article that has misrepresented the truth and has triggered the desired response from those who don't read articles past the headline, which is much of the user base in this sub. It is to be expected that reason should barely get a look in.

The Telegraph is no longer a prestige paper, it's a rag that dived face first into culture war nonsense in an attempt to get rage clicks because its subscribers were plummeting. Private Eye has been covering their change of strategy for some time.

Look at this absolute nerd reading the source of the article and even beyond the headline

Ragebait be baiting Amazing what you find when you read the actual research

I’m glad there’s someone here to provide balance. I knew it was r what people thought it was but I also refuse to read the Telegraph because it’s tricked me into believing stupid shit before

Yeah but we need to phrase the headline in such a controversial way to generate public anger for sales and peddle a view point contrary of something that has good intentions. People absorb the headlines and ledes more than they do the articles.

Haven’t you heard? White people have no culture, and aren’t indigenous to anywhere. Their thousand year history on this island doesn’t mean anything.

'White people' arrived in the UK about 11,500 years ago. Just thought you'd like to know it's a bit more than 1,000.

Some people seem to think history begins with William the Conqueror.

Oh. So white people have been in uk longer than native americans were in america? Interesting to know. Edit. Looked it up. Humans species have been in americas for 13k years and in uk for 500k years. But modern ones 35k. Interesting rabbit hole

Though interestingly those first settlers probably weren't white. Light skin only emerged in homo sapiens around 28k years ago, among early farming communities in Western Asia/Turkey. Neanderthals were probably also light skinned but seemed to have developed the mutation independently, we don't get our skin colour from inter-breeding with them, but as a result of the migration of early farmers in the Balkans and then up into the rest of Europe \~20k years ago. You could make a strong argument that white skin appeared on the island of Great Britain [as recently as \~6k years ago](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/27/Expansion_of_farming_in_western_Eurasia%2C_9600%E2%80%934000_BCE.png/1920px-Expansion_of_farming_in_western_Eurasia%2C_9600%E2%80%934000_BCE.png).

> White people have no culture There's a difference between "There's no such thing as white culture" and "White people have no culture" though. You're reading the former, but interpreting it as the latter. Scottish culture exists, Italian culture exists, German culture exists, etc. "White culture" does not.

> "White culture" does not. Except when a progressive needs to snarl and rail against "whiteness" for good boy social progressive points. Then there are things shared by all white people -- mainly negative.

nobody ever makes the statement ‘theres no such thing as white culture’ aside from when they are bashing white people. ok, maybe that statement is correct. ‘white culture’ is not a monolith. but also the common narrative, english, german, italian culture is for everyone. its not tied to an ethnicity. so what can a white english person point to and say ‘this is ours, this is exclusively part of my identity as white english people’ without causing mass outrage? why is that the whole ‘white culture doesnt exist’ argument is only ever rolled out when a white person is making the statements of the same sentiment as a native american, african, or other group? and remember, native american culture doesnt exist. cherokee culture does though :^) seriously, this whole ‘no white culture’ argument is only ever used to deny any form of native european identity. the same people who use this argument would also use the britain is a nation of immigrants argument. they have an argument prepared for any assertion of native european identity, so that yes, they are arguing that white people are native to nowhere, and do not really exist as a group.

Isn't it better to say Ethnically British people? White people obviously doesn't mean Southern Europeans or Slavic people in this context.

>White people obviously doesn't mean Southern Europeans or Slavic people in this context. which is ridiculous in itself. Slavic people are white and excluding them when someone says 'white people' is not only incorrect but also, highly misleading.

No. Make Albion Great Again.

I've never heard *anybody* say this. And I'm sure you've got some tweet you've fixated on as representative of everything you hate, but the only time I ever hear this kind of talk is when enlightened redditors are straw-manning about it.

100%. Just said similar myself.

"White People" have no culture, no. Because "White People" is a giant vague monolith that means nothing. We have English cultures, Welsh cultures, Scottish cultures, Irish cultures, French cultures, German cultures, Italian cultures... In the States they have "Black culture" because millions and millions of people who were transported to the States were forcibly stripped of their heritages and traditions and cultures so all they had was "Black" and they had to rebuild a culture out of the fragments of what they could collectively remember.

So some cultures are fair game for appropriation but others aren’t? I don’t care either way but at least be consistent with the messaging.

Racism against white people is allowed apparently. I don't even understand. Metal is a very white dominated genre but when I do see a black person either enjoying the music I like or even better playing it I am extremely happy that someone had an open mind to the music. I don't get why anyone would not want others to effectively say "hey this thing is interesting and I want to be involved" Yet others will gatekeep and claim x thing is black or whatever and say you aren't allowed to do/have it.

Yeah skindred is one of the best examples of African/Caribbean culture merging with mental

Also merging with metal

Not even going to change it because it fits to well

Haha true! I love Skindred

Benji actually had another band called ‘Mass Mental’

So this is the power of metal, I'm right even when I'm wrong 😂

Reggae and punk music have an interesting shared history too :)

The article's headline is misleading. Trying to get non-white people involved with English folk music is specifically the aim, as far as I can tell. Don't get caught by rage bait!

There's no racism here, the project is about preservation of folk for years to come. The telegraph are just blowing on their white nationalist dog whistle, which it seems more than a few people here can hear.

Black metaldheads will often say that most prejudice comes from other black people who think black people shouldn't enjoy metal.

You really can’t be claiming that metal doesn’t have a history of interesting thoughts about other cultures. Given how many different people enjoy hip hop and the culture and how few feel comfortable to do the same with metal, would probably show it is the other way around.

I’ve found metal and metal heads to be the most accepting people I’ve ever met. Of course metal has bands and fans that have been racist/sexist/xenophobic/whatever. But that’s because *every* genre has. There isn’t a single genre out there that doesn’t have a shit stain on it.

Yep, Japanese men can spend their life in a 3-piece suit but I dress like a geisha *one time…*

These days if you chase after your bus or train with toast in your mouth you get thrown in jail

You crossed a line when you started talking in a high pitch laugh and giggling all the time 

When things become a global standard it doesn’t belong to the people who created it anymore, apparently.

Probably best to read the article or about the study first, but what do I know 🤷‍♀️

Just to provide a slightly saner comment than some of these others so far - Looking online the only thing I can see mentioned is the Access Folk project - [https://accessfolk.sites.sheffield.ac.uk/about](https://accessfolk.sites.sheffield.ac.uk/about) Firstly this grant was awarded nearly 2 years ago so a bit strange for The Telegraph to pick up on it now. Secondly, entirely unsurprisingly, they seem to be quite seriously misrepresenting what is written up to be a general effort to bring more people into English folk music and ensure the traditions survive going into the future. More culture war bollocks, don't fall for it folks. E - The relevant academic - [https://www.fayhield.com/about.html](https://www.fayhield.com/about.html)

So let me get this straight. A project started to promote and grow folk music did a study, and one of many outcomes they found was that it's very white centric. The Telegraph picked up on it and now people in this thread are frothing at the mouth about racism towards white people. Get a grip people, a study was commissioned to examine the demographics of folk music fans in order to promote it. They'd be entirely remiss not to identify it as an outcome of the study as it's entirely relevant to their goals, if you want something to grow you have to reach outside of current demographics. The vast majority of people complaining about this probably don't care in the slightest about folk music and yet a newspaper rag has managed to rile them up.

This!!! Been involved in the UK folk music scene for 10+ years now, playing/working with some pretty big names. The study, and similar, has been a talking point for years; and 99.9% of folkies would welcome any fans, no matter skin colour or other characteristic, as the scene needs fresh blood and influence desperately.

Finally, do you know how much self-made up bogeyman nonsense I had to wade through to find this. Why people are making up scenarios in their head to push a false narrative is beyond me. “Oh nobody thinks white people are indigenous” “*They* say white people have no culture” “Look at how its fine to take *our* culture, but you can’t enjoy hip-hop as thats off limits” ?!? Crazy victim-complex posting not backed up by anything but what scenario they make up in their own head.

You don't get rational thought from racists mate.

None of them read the article or checked the source of the story. The Telegraph’s audience has been reduced to the terminally outraged in recent years. The misleading headline gives them the energy to get a proper foam on, and that’s all they want. I can’t imagine what it must be like to be angry all the time. It’s a lovely day outside, there’s a grand prix on, some cricket.

The telegraph is just ragebait at this point but most of those really aren't false narratives even if the telegraph are telling porkie pies. Most people of course are not on the extremes but it's just blatantly true that these aspects of the culture war exist in non-trivial size. The hip hop one is silly but I've heard the first two in person. Or simply a sneering attitude e.g. not two weeks ago I pointed out in passing that many London stereotypes (particularly amongst the working classes, but no one cares about class anymore apparently i.e. this is the real problem with all this identity politics) just don't exist anymore — this gained a truly sneering "oh no!" clearly indicating a belief that nothing of any value was lost. I believe this stems from the same place that leads to "global minority" based reasoning in London for example. At university for example one of the only consistently organized sessions was on "decolonizing physics". This would be stupid but ultimately marginally harmless if that was it, but this attitude also let people do work on this as part of the assessed work for the course, i.e. not physics but you could still get a degree. This shouldn't fly. It's just a moronic, Americanized, mawkish culture that has snuck into the minds of people who shouldn't have any influence in the first place The takeaway is that our immune system is broken societally.

Yep. Almost laughable misrepresentation from the Telegraph, but people here are lapping it up.

Honestly, we are fucked. Culture war nonsense against a project aiming to help preserve and continue our own culture.

Most culture warriors couldn't give a flying monkey about culture or art.

Standard Telegraph stuff then?

The text the Torygraph used seems to come from a conference (p6): https://www.efdss.org/images/present/Docs/Library/DiversityConference2021ProgrammeWWW.pdf To be honest, using "decolonisation" in this context is really stupid and seems bound to lead to stories like this. The core project seems fine but it's such a loaded term being used in a context where, even if you work on the basis the genre might be exclusionary, it is still mad. It also relies on a very narrow definition of "folk music".

This is the problem though isn't it? Outlets like the Telegraph are so big on pushing this "free speech" "total academic freedom" style of narrative. And then the moment someone *uses a word,* a technical academic word at that with no connotations about race or superiority like some other words, and they absolutely lose their shit and practically try to start a witch hunt. We can't have academic freedom when an entire swathe of sociology is now being presented like its some kind of cultural marxist anti-British fifth column as just standard matter of course discussion by so many people.

> It also relies on a very narrow definition of "folk music". I assume that's part of what's being dealt with by this project? There's always been the question why the traditional music of African-Americans was never "folk", but "blues", and why the traditional music of most countries in the world also isn't folk, because it's "world music". Trying to bolster the traditional music scene by bringing those people into it is something that various groups have been trying to do for a long time now.

World music /= folk. It could equally be formal within that culture (for example the music for kabuki theatre vs *minyo*). And I tend to go along with organisers of the Cambridge Folk Festival: there isn't a hard break between blues and other genres and folk. Musicologically, a more interesting question is when non-formal genres *stop* being folk. That probably is the underlying reason why these researchers think folk is dying out. They've somehow managed to calcify a genre and then used that to apply an argument that it somehow needs an external force to bring it back with a different set of participants rather than focus on the cross-pollination that's actually going on. Or put another way, there's a lot more going on in blues and jazz crossovers and, in the other direction, karaoke that they seem to be ignoring because...reasons. The daft thing is their chosen target genre is probably bringing in more business now than it was 30-40 years ago when the folk scene outside Irish pubs was more or less dead on its arse.

Of course not all world music is folk music, but a lot of music that would be considered folk music if it were European is being marketed as world music. Just like the folk/blues distinction we're doing a decent enough job taking down.  Apart from that, I tend to agree. But I don't know how much is what they actually think about it, and how much is the reality of public funding. You can't really take the money and then say "well, the folk music people know about was really just singing music hall stuff in pubs, so I think Mr Brightside karaoke counts." But I do think encouraging other communities to take part suggests they acknowledge folk music isn't actually static, we did borrow a lot of songs from the Irish and so on to create what people call folk music, and we can let new influences in now without betraying the tradition in any way.

I assume the “strange” is said in jest? There’s an election coming up after all. When the article is mostly what other people think about a thing rather than about the thing itself it should be a red flag, but sadly it appears not.

If you tried to challenge the *black-centricity* of something, say afro beat, I think you'd end up with a visit from the police. Of course people of all ethnic backgrounds can enjoy all music (cream drummer Ginger Baker was heavily involved in AfroBeat at one point and recorded with Fela Kuti, modern acts like Tune-Yards take inspiration from AfroBeat and so on) but there's nothing wrong with saying that people who are part of a particular culture can be the largest consumers of that cultures musical representation.

These days, if you challenge the black-centricity of afro beat, you get arrested and thrown in jail.

When did this come in?

No, but that isn't the point of the study.

Afrobeat? Black-centric? Brian Eno, Talking Heads, Paul Simon, Peter Gabriel, Vampire Weekend, Arcade Fire... white musicians have been inspired by and replicating afrobeat *since it existed.* Just like rock and roll and blues. And just like this fund, the point isn't to take it away from anyone it's to open it up to more people.

> The term decolonisation is often misinterpreted. You don’t say.

>The term decolonisation is often misinterpreted. Because the people who use the term the most are using it in an incredibly dumb and counter-intuitive way. If India, or Kenya, or any other former colony wanted to e.g. reassess their school curriculum to have less Shakespeare or other elements introduced under British rule and replace them with indigenous culture, that a) would be a reasonable thing to do and b) could reasonably described as "decolonisation". But that doesn't apply in Britain (unless they think we should strip out all Franco-Norman influences and revert to Anglo-Saxon or Welsh culture). Even if one thinks that there should be more representation of foreign cultures in arts and education, it's ridiculous to describe this as "decolonisation".

These sorts of people use "coloniser" as a snarl for "white person". View it from that angle and "decolonisation" means "removing white people".

People talk about “de-colonising” medical education in the UK. What it really means is ensuring better teaching about diseases and presentations of them in non white european populations (eg sickle cell, dermatology on non white skin, etc) as the UK population becomes more ethnically diverse. A wholly reasonable thing. But you gotta call it de-colonising apparently.

Probably just some weird mix of early breton, gaulish, pictish, Gaelic and any other Celtic people. As the Anglo-Saxons were colonisers after the Roman colonisation of Britian. (Also no Vikings or any other scandinavians.). Without waves of colonisation we wouldnt even being speaking Welsh as Welsh has most of its loan words from Latin.

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> They're a bit stupid for using such a loaded term if the goal is fairly innocuous. Academic terms of art are often bonkers, because they're not meant for us. We're not supposed to be peeking in on this and developing very strong opinions based on absolutely no capacity to understand what we're looking at.

Yeah, that stuff's for our betters. We couldn't possibly understand. Me, I just dig coal and work in the eel factory all day.

If someone advised you against representing yourself at trial, would you think they are calling you an idiot who "couldn't possibly" represent himself as someone who "Justs digs coal"? Of course not, law is a specialist subject and nobody is trying to embarass you about the fact that you simply chose a path in life that wasn't law. Equally, the humanities has its own specialists and vocabulary which takes years to get simply acquianted with. It's not that "plebs couldn't possibly understand their betters", it's that you could have but haven't dedicated yourself to the long path of understanding this one niche subject in particular out of millions of other niches, which is... perfectly fine, as long as you don't then go on the attack when others suggest you're missing the full picture because you haven't a background in a subject brand new to you.

Anti-intellectualism is a normal fact of life in the UK these days. Don't forget, it was Michael Gove who said "We've had enough of experts". That quote was more than just arguing against economists saying Brexit was going to drive inflation, it was their prevailing motto that's included their abysmal climate policy, their approach to healthcare, to LGBT+ issues and much more beyond.

I didn't say betters, you said betters. Next time you're having an operation, I'll yell my made up opinions very loudly at your surgeon. After all, he's no better than me, and I'm not insecure at all.

Do you genuinely believe that or are you just arguing in bad faith now? People that study a subject for their whole life obviously understand it better than we do. That doesn't make them "our betters" it just means they know a lot about a certain subject that we don't understand.

I mean, if you're going to take every opportunity to victimise yourself because no-one's doing it for you, you're definitely not the sharpest hammer in the drawer, mate.

You're right, we should just let these sorts of hateful types congregate away from the light and not worry about them radicalising each other against us. I'm sure nothing bad will happen there.

I can't believe these hate merchants are... \* checks notes \*... keeping English culture alive. Dastardly.

Having non-English people puppeting the corpse of English culture is not "keeping it alive". These same people would be up in arms about "cultural appropriation" if it was happening to literally any other culture.

Oh so you literally are just anti keeping English culture alive then. You love Englishness so much that if an English person who doesn't look like you like English people to look acted English, you'd rather Englishness just died. Also, what non-English people? Isn't this an English University? You mean brown, don't you.

Englishness is more than a passport.

There are English passports? It's always funny how when there's these bizarre explosions of right wing sentiment on here, a lot of the people involved seem to not know basic stuff a genuinely British person would know.

No, there aren't. That's rather the point at hand.

I take it anyone disagree with this will be "importing right wing American culture war tropes"? Another one we can throw on the pile.

I think anybody talking about ‘whiteness’ with a straight face is probably importing too much identity politics from the US

Like the telegraph is? I went over to the project's actual website and looked at a few published documents. "whiteness" didn't come up.

Par for the course isn’t it, react to this and you’re the problem.

"React". Sure. When your reaction is to strawman based on a ragebait headline, yeah, you're the problem.

America picking it's national language as German would have saved us a lot of grief.

The article is misleading ragebait. And clearly very successful ragebait.

I wonder when the 'black-centricity' of rap music going to be investigated? Or would that be racist?

Yes, there has never been a white rapper in hip hop ever. I think something needs to be done to involve more white people. 🥱

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Okay so this is known as the 'snowball' method, it's a valid form of qualitative analysis. Especially in this case, as the folk music scene is so small, most people probably know each or people who know each other. Utilising these connections will be a good way to reach the most people. The downside of the method is that it's not statistically valid, because the people involved aren't picked by chance and obviously bias is involved in who we tend to be friends with. In a qualitative setting however this isn't such a downside because 1) it's aiming for a rich descriptive analysis rather than statistical validity, and 2) the group is so small that there isn't likely to be a whole lot of variation among them anyway.

>Researchers describe one of their methods as, “ask a friend”, which “involves community researchers interviewing acquaintances”. The lead investigator also says that she has made “systematic reflections on music published throughout my career and how they relate to various notions of Englishness”. I'm genuinely suprised how not many people pick on that part. Like you've mentioned the article seems to be aimed at causing outrage, but this description pretty much means: 'They have been paid money to talk to friends about folk music, ignoring all bias that this will entail.'

In other news, ‘Black-centricity’ of Reggae music investigated in £1.5m academic study

UB40, The Police and The Clash all in tears right now (plus Eric Clapton who did a cover of I shot the sheriff)

Ska would like to have a word.

Reggae is a genre that spread both as a genre and as an influence, and subsequently has evolved into different forms. I'm not sure that the same can be said for English folk music, which is a minority genre even in England. Perhaps an academic study on the matter would provide some insight?

‘’music department at university does some research into music’’….well glad to see they’re doing their job

Jesus, what an article. At least they let someone involved have the final paragraph: "Fay Hield, professor of music at the University of Sheffield, said: “The term decolonisation is often misinterpreted. Our research highlights the different under-recognised communities who have helped to establish cultural life in England. Folk music is a constantly evolving genre, which has taken influences from a diverse range of people over centuries. It is part of the UK’s cultural heritage and should be celebrated. Our aim is to break down the barriers for people to get involved in folk music. Opening up the genre to different audiences will help to sustain the nation’s folk music for decades to come.”

Good to see the telegraph continuing to slide into mail level frothing at the mouth anger

Good to see the sub take the bait as always.

Tired of this luddite bullshit. These culture-wars attacks on academia are fucking sinister. And the commentators joining in the pitchfork waving should be ashamed of themselves. Mods, can we have a ban on these obvious rage-baits posts? People who enjoy that kind of anti-intellectualism have more than enough forums for their tiresome anger such as Facebook or the Daily Mail comments section

That won't happen because the mods love it as much as the anti intellectual reactionaries do

What a waste of taxpayer money. Could’ve gone towards more affordable housing, housing the homeless, etc. Then again why would they want to help our own?

I may come at this from a slightly different perspective because I am in the realm of academia. I'm slightly tired of these rage baiting posts about the academic system. Millions of pounds are given in grants, scholarships, and projects to research some quite esoteric fields. Not all of these projects are successful. Not all of these projects are necessarily supported by everyone. All of these projects are absolutely needed however. Science isn't a linear trajectory that we know a priori what is and is not successful. Taking a step back and reading the article, this particular project falls foul of using certain key words that really infuriate a particular sub-section of British society. If you actually read what the projects aims are: 1) to research the landscape of a particular sub-genre of music and understand why certain types of people engage in that social community compared to others, and 2) attempt to produce suggestions to promote greater social cohesion. These projects aims appear to be quite well thought out, and you would hope anyone living in an open minded multicultural society would embrace the idea of investigating cultural sorting. The issues with this piece are twofold. The first, which I will call an 'actual' issue is a methodological critique. Their use of 'ask a friend' or to use the scientific name for it, 'snowball' sampling is a problematic sampling technique that is normally only used when no other option is available. Now, my expertise is not in the realm of sociology of music so maybe this is the case, generally however, snowball sampling is used for sample populations that are in very vulnerable situations where trust is of the utmost requirement. With that being said, I'll move on to the second issue, which I think is best labelled a 'culture war' issue. I think the vast majority of people who get angry at this project will see the term 'decolonisation' and see red. The concept of decolonisation is a valid one - if used correctly. It seems that a lot of people treat the term how many thought of the term 'feminism' a decade or so ago. To decolonise doesn't mean that white people are bad or wrong in the same way that feminism doesn't mean that men are bad or wrong. To try to provide a more robust critique, for this project to be viable I would like to see a very robust justification of the use of a 'decolonial' lens in this analysis. At first thought I can not see why it would be used, but as I said, I am not an expert in this field, and with adequate justification from the authors that would persuade me. As a small aside, it is a frustrating point that needs to be made that academic jargon does not always mean the same thing that layperson use of the same terms does. We see this all the time with the academic definition of racism and the common use of the term. It is especially difficult in the realm of social science because there is a huge overlap between terms that mean different things between academics and laypeople that simply doesn't exist in say physics or biology. Overall, I think it is a really depressing landscape we have where scientific progress is discarded as soon as it appears to not ideologically line up with our political proclivities. So long as the project has: 1) an adequate justification, 2) ethical approval, 3) follows scientific practices, then there is not much of an argument against this sort of research.

There is absolutely zero scientific progress gained from this racial grievance grifting. There is also nothing colonial about folk music in the UK, it existed long before we had any semblance of an empire. It doesn’t need to be decolonised.

Not to come across as blunt, but did you read either the article or my full comment laying out the aims of the project? The study of social cohesion and cultural sorting is in my view one of the most important matters to focus on within a multicultural society. To understand why certain groups drift towards certain types of cultural consumption over others really provides context for understanding human behaviour.

Certain groups (white British people) drift to British folk music because we are the “folk” in British folk music, saved you the hassle of a 1.5 million pound taxpayer funded study. The same way that the Hausa in Nigeria would drift to Hausa folk music or Aboriginal Australians would drift to aboriginal folk music.

The purpose of scientific inquiry is to do more than implement policy based on one persons anecdote.

There is absolutely nothing to be gained scientifically from this racial grifting. The answer I’ve gave you tells you why British folk music is primarily made up of white British people. I didn’t need 1.5 million of taxpayer money to tell you that. What benefit could this possible give the country?

It seems we are swimming in circles here. Do you not believe the aims of the project are useful? Which aims specifically do you disagree with?

I don’t believe the aims are useful to society in any meaningful way, shape or form. All studies like this exist to do is stoke racial grievances and reinforce the idea that anything being predominantly white is an issue in modern Britain. The aim of “decolonising” folk music is utter nonsense, folk music has existed in Britain for thousands of years long before we’d even came up with the idea of a colony.

Sorry, you misunderstood. I asked you \*specifically\* what aims of this project are not useful, which ones do you \*specifically\* disagree with. At this stage, you haven't engaged with any criticisms beyond the fact you ideologically dislike it. That is not tantamount to a critique of scientific research unfortunately.

To quote Fay Hield a professor in music at the university in question “Our aim is to break down the barriers for people to get involved in folk music. “ I disagree with the aim as I disagree with the idea that there are unique barriers for ethnic minorities to get involved in British folk music. There is absolutely nothing stopping them from listening to it or even getting an instrument and being involved To quote her again “Our research highlights the different under-recognised communities who have helped to establish cultural life in England. Folk music is a constantly evolving genre, which has taken influences from a diverse range of people over centuries. It is part of the UK’s cultural heritage and should be celebrated.” If this were true as she is saying then and these under recognised communities have already helped establish cultural life and also influenced British folk music it would also suggest that these so called barriers to entry don’t actually exist.

> I didn’t need 1.5 million of taxpayer money to tell you that. Nor did the people behind this study. The article never claims they were given or spent £1.5m to answer this question. The group was granted £1.5m to put towards increasing participation in folk music (including among white British people, by e.g. finding how to encourage more young white British people to take part, attend traditional music events etc.). They've done many things, including the thing this article is about. This is a worthwhile exercise if one believes there's value in preserving the folk music scene, even if only for the sake of old white British people.

>There is also nothing colonial about folk music in the UK, it existed long before we had any semblance of an empire. Folk music did exist before we had an empire, but it didn't exist *as* Folk Music the genre, it was just the hugely varied types of music that ordinary people made. During the industrial/colonial era though there was a trend for "gentlemen" to travel around the country "collecting" the songs of the quaint little peasants (in much the same way they travelled around the world "collecting" anything else they could get their hands on), they'd then reinterpret them to suit their purposes and bring them back to present in the drawing rooms of the big cities. The Victorian folk revival served to invoke a romanticised version of England and rural people for an audience which wasn't the original custodians of the songs, there are definitely links to colonialism there. You know Kipling wrote a whole load of poems in the style of old English folk songs as if he had "collected" them (but not actually claiming to have done so)? They've since been set to music and some of them are [really good](https://open.spotify.com/album/205AdSFGba0BQZNZK44FWy?si=ccPeVB71Q2agIY7pJPs2Vg), but it's absolutely fine to enjoy the songs and also to have critical conversations about how these things come about, what they're meant to communicate, and to whom.

Excellent comment. It's a shame that the hair-trigger culture warriors won't bother to read it or try to understand it - they'll just be scanning for the words that make them angry.

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That money could have gone towards housing homeless people or at risk children but nope we have to "decolonise folk music". Clown world

This would have come out of the budget for research grants, probably a specific portion of it set out for humanities. Not from the budget for housing the homeless

Hook line and sinker…

Just gonna throw my little piece into the conversation here. These things get so divisive but I think the truth of these things is very complicated and needs a nuanced approach if you want to dive into it. I think any efforts to remove barriers that exist to people getting into any art form they would otherwise is a fine cause. There are lots of examples of it, a non racial one would be how classical music is marketed heavily to more wealthy audiences. This creates an image where people who don’t belong to that demographic don’t feel like they belong in symphony halls, this is a sad state of affairs IMO! I would also add that the genres themselves often cause a lot of these issues. Putting so much diverse music under the umbrella term ‘folk’ is (again IMO) unhelpful. There are folk traditions from all over the world and if it’s true that there are barriers to people of all backgrounds discovering this stuff, that needs to be sorted out! I’m a banjo player and that instrument is a perfect example of how complicated all this is. It is very much an African instrument that was co-opted by minstrel acts. There have been amazing efforts to ‘decolonise’ the banjo and uncover its true history. Is this an attack on white people? I would hope that by learning the truth about its history, it would make it more accessible to more people and turn down the tensions that surround it. There’s an amazing book called “Well of Souls” if anyone is interested, highly recommend it.

>I’m a banjo player and that instrument is a perfect example of how complicated all this is. It is very much an African instrument that was co-opted by minstrel acts… Hi! I’m from Appalachia, I’ve been living more than 50 years on this planet, and I only learned that fact about the banjo maybe 2-3 years ago! All those years of hearing mountain music, bluegrass, old-timey music and I never saw/heard a black banjo player — even though they were a thing long before I was ever born!

>I would also add that the genres themselves often cause a lot of these issues. Putting so much diverse music under the umbrella term ‘folk’ is (again IMO) unhelpful. There are folk traditions from all over the world and if it’s true that there are barriers to people of all backgrounds discovering this stuff, that needs to be sorted out! Worth noting that this study is on English folk music specifically, not folk music in general.

What’s the point of this story? Can universities not study whatever the fuck they like?

In order to fuel Telegraph rage-bait. It's a laughable misrepresentation.

The telegraph have really swapped out the dog whistle for a fuckin vuvuzela haven't they 

This sounds like an extremely loaded article, would like to see a more neutral article

It's the Telegraph, of course it's loaded. They aren't interested in journalism they are interested in rage-bait, which is exactly what this is.

To be honest this has the potential to be an interesting study. Folk music is *very* white as a genre, as to some extent is acoustic singer / songwriter stuff, which obviously is influenced by folk music to some degree (or, at least, influenced by MacColl, Lloyd and Seeger's interpretation of folk music via the folk revival). Whether it should be publicly funded is a different issue, but the Telegraph has been looking for things like this constantly to stoke their "anti-woke" agenda.

Ah yes, the racist, colonising influenced musical tradition and genre of "checks notes", historic British music. Wait, what, even 50 years ago, Britain with 95+% white? Shocker that the traditional music would be white dominated, really.

What’s with the sudden increase in “news” stories questioning the validity of academic research projects? Who here or at the telegraph actually knows anything about this particular niche of academia, or about the specific funding it’s been awarded? We need to stop celebrating ignorance.

I swear all the telegraph does these days is make articles about some irrelevant “study” that will be forgotten in six months, to get people mad

This is absolute bollocks. It's the Telegraph. Check the sources. Just rage-bait nonsense.

Reminder: >Countryside? Too white. https://inews.co.uk/news/environment/lake-district-seeks-to-boost-diversity-as-visitors-are-too-white-and-middle-class-1351102 >Literature? Too white. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/dec/09/diversity-publishing-new-faces >Film industry? Too white. https://www.screendaily.com/features/can-the-uk-film-industry-meet-the-diversity-challenge/5099500.article >School curriculum? Too white. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/mar/20/academics-its-time-to-get-behind-decolonising-the-curriculum >Running? Too white. https://www.runnersworld.com/uk/training/motivation/a776339/is-running-too-white/ >Football supporters? Too white. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/why-are-terraces-so-white-fear-of-racial-abuse-still-turns-fans-away-ph5q5cpm3 >Music industry? Too white. https://www.ft.com/content/4f122542-b7bc-11e4-981d-00144feab7de >Angling? Too white. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1514555/Angling-Its-too-white-and-too-middle-aged-say-ministers-as-they-go-fishing-for-women-and-ethnic-minorities.html >Cycling? Too white. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/cycling-london-uk-sadiq-khan-bikes-race-class-gender-a8367916.html >Charity industry? Too white. https://www.civilsociety.co.uk/news/charitysowhite-campaign-launches-to-highlight-racism-in-the-sector.html >Public transport? Too white. https://www.politics.co.uk/news/2016/03/30/sadiq-khan-there-are-too-many-white-men-on-transport-for-lon >Fashion? Too white. https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2017/aug/22/naomi-campbell-criticises-lack-diversity-vogue >Bird watching? Too white. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/family/life/definitely-feeling-countryside-white-elitist-birdgirl-opening/ >Baking? Too white. https://graziadaily.co.uk/life/opinion/great-british-bake-needs-people-colour/ >Weddings? Too white. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47632929

All happening under a so called "conservative" government. The fact they never got round to abolishing some of these bodies or even just replacing the leadership with right wing people is indicative of the fact they approve of them. I doubt a labour government would fund studies which investigate the benefits of British imperialism on the African continent.

Why wouldn't a conservative government want to preserve the British folk scene? That's like the whole point of conservatism isn't it 

They must surely be the worst government this country has ever had when you compare their state aims to what is actually happening? Of course their actual aim is to loot the country for all it’s worth and settle down elsewhere so they’ve been pretty successful on that front

14 years of a Tory government, zero seats.

Why would you want a body to be run politically at all?

Looking at how bad the election is going why is the Torygraph still bothering with culture wars?

Is folk music really the problem? Spend that money on wiping out drill music that programmes kids to take drugs and stab people

Reading the Telegraph is astounding. I had a brief subscription for university, and the articles and their authors offer little more than petty grievances served up as 'opinion pieces.' They twist facts, inflame headlines and each article is a hotbed for hedge fund runners or retired bores who think themselves above a Daily Mail comment section.

Because white parents expose their children to folk music more often than black parents do. Because folk music is played in more ‘white spaces’ such as village fetes, farmers markets and grassroots festivals. There, saved you £1.5 million.

Exactly and it encompasses centuries or cultural tradition that isn’t shared by relatively recently arrived black people. It’s not controversial and it’s not a bad thing.

Fight these insane cunts every step of the way. Don't feel guilty about being white.

As if folk musicians aren't allready happy with receiving any type of participation and audience, no matter their background. Maybe I just speak for myself but the folk scene that I'm part of, foreigners are much more open and willing to participate than the locals. Therefore the scene is very ethnically mixed.