Move Slow, Make Things
a manifesto
I was born into a beautifully ragtag community of hippies, agitators, advocates and artists. There were poets, playwrights and painters; kids ran in circles while the oldies sat in circles. We had a songbook of our originals from which we’d sing every week. Once a year, we’d all congregate at a national gathering in what always felt like a joyous family reunion. By my teens, most of the artists had moved on, and the thing kind of started to turn in on itself. By my twenties, it was dominated by the old guard; revivalist and inward-facing. When I eventually walked away from the cult, no-one really noticed.
I still feel uncomfortable around anything which feels like a club, a committee or a scene. Funny, I know, given I co-host a folk club, host a song circle in my home, volunteer on a folk festival committee, and am fairly embedded in the Australian folk scene. It's not about folk, though; I still squirm in these circles. I am involved because I care about artists. I loved those creatives from my youth, and I felt their absence like a ghost limb. I watched that movement become a machine and then a museum – a mausoleum, really – after they disappeared. We lost our music makers and our dreamers of dreams, then we lost everything.
Artists matter.
My first entry into a folk song contest was, after my performance, quietly derided by the white middle-aged male organiser as “not really folk.” He never told me what “folk” actually was, but as I shuffled back to my seat, it was clear I had been pushed to the edge of something.
This experience might be familiar to you, especially if you’re a musician standing patiently knocking on the door of the folk scene, getting one festival rejection letter after another. The folk world, much like the movement in which I was raised, can be a wonderfully fulfilling community if you’re “in.” But for most people on the edge, it can feel like a lot of bewildering secret rules designed to keep them at a distance.
In my experience, this us-and-them stuff is typical of both the community I grew up in – a religious one – and the music community in which I now find myself. Binary thinking. In fact, it’s pretty much the norm everywhere now; we’re so polarised. (Progressive versus conservative, sustainability versus jobs, Morris Dancers versus normal people. Which side are you on?!)
Although I am now a middle-aged male, I refuse to play the us-and-them game of that song contest organiser. I long ago stopped seeking a replacement for the inner circle experience of my youth, and changed my focus to moving slow and making things, to truth-telling, to shaking things up, and encouraging others to do the same. Wherever I am, that’s what I will be doing. Sometimes this is in the folk scene, so we might as well take a closer look inside that circle.
In the apocalyptic bushfire glow of modern times, one can understand the appeal of folk music. So much of it is about looking back, reviving an idealised pre-modern world.
Invented by European academics in the 19th century, the idea was that the music of the rural poor represented something unsullied, pure as a singalong circle ’neath the willows of Eden. Eventually the idea of folk music took root in 1940s America when educated white middle-class urbanites chose it as the soundtrack for a working-class uprising. By the 1960s, folk music had become synonymous with anti-modern, anti-commercial, acoustic authenticity. In Australia, folk became a mix of the first two; the poor rural swagman sticking it to the squatter.
Folk has always been the music of “the other” as chosen by “us”; middle-class consumers singing songs of freedom.
Unsurprisingly, nowadays the once solid idea of folk music has melted into air. Is it the monocultural stuff of a pre-modern utopia? Is it the racially integrated stuff of a communist revolution? Is it just authentic filters on your Instagram posts about your anti-modern music whilst trying to monetise your anti-commercial artform? The folk scene has distinct sub-groups, each of which doesn’t really make much sense to the other. Luckily - and I love this - it’s all “live and let live” here, so sing-song types like me can just walk on past the diddly fiddles, the commie songs, the lagerphone larrikins and the dreadlocked stomp-boy without saying a word.
But I am made of words. It’s literally my thing. Also, the creative community in which I was raised fell apart because, after the artists left, people chose to go quiet when they should have spoken up. And silence grows, like in that Simon and Garfunkel song; the one with the non-speaking, non-listening crowd that makes me squirm.
A big part of the reason nobody spoke up in my former community was because people needed the artists to sing the truth, to help them imagine a better way. That’s partly on me. I was there with my guitar, and it never crossed my mind to sing truth to my community. I thought somebody else would do that. It wasn't until after it all imploded, after my breakdown, after the pills and the therapy and the Art School and my brick-by-brick reconstruction that I learned my place as an artist. I learned to sing the truth. That’s part of why I think about stuff like this, then share it with people like you. It matters.
If you’re an artist, you have a responsibility. Your community needs you more than they or you know.
There is a book by Alex Hill called Centennials, which explores why some organisations have endured longer than a hundred years, when most fail in the first three years. Groups that endure need two things: A stable core and a disruptive edge. They need to know what they’re really about, and they need some creative thinkers getting crazy on the edge, pushing the thing forward and around, keeping it moving.
Folk music as an idea is about 100 years old and, as described above, it has multiple centres with differing values. Unfortunately, the creatives on the edge don’t tend to disrupt anything, lest they miss out on gigs, festivals and song contests.
Those artists on the edge? They’re my people. I sit with them all the time, I host them at song circles in my home, I chat with them at festivals and listen to where they’re at. They love creating and connecting, they constantly question their own worth, and they are all deeply concerned about the status quo. You might be surprised to know that almost none of them – none of us – identify as “folk.” We just call ourselves artists, and we’re happy to play to anyone who will listen. But artists are meant to be the voice of the disruptive edge; we are supposed to sing from our own stable core and shake things up, to bring movement to the community.
The folk scene is the only musical community that has welcomed me and my work. I love the festival organisers who book me, the locals who host me, the volunteers who make the thing run, and the punters who come out to see me play. You are my community. But it needs to be said: the folk status quo celebrates tradition over truth-telling, and artists are reluctant to start the conversation. Unless we have a stable core and a disruptive edge, the gig is up. I've seen it happen.
All over Australia and the world, within and without the folk scene, we need artists to sing the truth and to help us imagine a better way. A third way, beyond and between the binary.
If I have any influence at all, I use it to call on artists, to call on you to use your voice to sing the change you want to see. You are vital to keeping your community moving, to disrupting the edges of the thing, lest it turn into a revivalist, inward-looking museum that nobody wants to visit. If you’re in the folk scene, disrupt the edges of the folk scene. If you’re somewhere else, disrupt those edges. This is what you were made for. Don’t wait.
You are a modern person made of ancient dirt and yesterday’s rainclouds; and your time is now. Seek out the music makers and the dreamers of dreams. Seek out the agitators and the advocates, the poets, playwrights and painters. Nobody cares if you’re really folk; you are welcome and you are needed.
Be the third way.
Sing from the centre.
Disrupt the edges, wherever you are.
Move slow. Make things.
Love,
Daniel
(October 25, 2024)
I still feel uncomfortable around anything which feels like a club, a committee or a scene. Funny, I know, given I co-host a folk club, host a song circle in my home, volunteer on a folk festival committee, and am fairly embedded in the Australian folk scene. It's not about folk, though; I still squirm in these circles. I am involved because I care about artists. I loved those creatives from my youth, and I felt their absence like a ghost limb. I watched that movement become a machine and then a museum – a mausoleum, really – after they disappeared. We lost our music makers and our dreamers of dreams, then we lost everything.
Artists matter.
My first entry into a folk song contest was, after my performance, quietly derided by the white middle-aged male organiser as “not really folk.” He never told me what “folk” actually was, but as I shuffled back to my seat, it was clear I had been pushed to the edge of something.
This experience might be familiar to you, especially if you’re a musician standing patiently knocking on the door of the folk scene, getting one festival rejection letter after another. The folk world, much like the movement in which I was raised, can be a wonderfully fulfilling community if you’re “in.” But for most people on the edge, it can feel like a lot of bewildering secret rules designed to keep them at a distance.
In my experience, this us-and-them stuff is typical of both the community I grew up in – a religious one – and the music community in which I now find myself. Binary thinking. In fact, it’s pretty much the norm everywhere now; we’re so polarised. (Progressive versus conservative, sustainability versus jobs, Morris Dancers versus normal people. Which side are you on?!)
Although I am now a middle-aged male, I refuse to play the us-and-them game of that song contest organiser. I long ago stopped seeking a replacement for the inner circle experience of my youth, and changed my focus to moving slow and making things, to truth-telling, to shaking things up, and encouraging others to do the same. Wherever I am, that’s what I will be doing. Sometimes this is in the folk scene, so we might as well take a closer look inside that circle.
In the apocalyptic bushfire glow of modern times, one can understand the appeal of folk music. So much of it is about looking back, reviving an idealised pre-modern world.
Invented by European academics in the 19th century, the idea was that the music of the rural poor represented something unsullied, pure as a singalong circle ’neath the willows of Eden. Eventually the idea of folk music took root in 1940s America when educated white middle-class urbanites chose it as the soundtrack for a working-class uprising. By the 1960s, folk music had become synonymous with anti-modern, anti-commercial, acoustic authenticity. In Australia, folk became a mix of the first two; the poor rural swagman sticking it to the squatter.
Folk has always been the music of “the other” as chosen by “us”; middle-class consumers singing songs of freedom.
Unsurprisingly, nowadays the once solid idea of folk music has melted into air. Is it the monocultural stuff of a pre-modern utopia? Is it the racially integrated stuff of a communist revolution? Is it just authentic filters on your Instagram posts about your anti-modern music whilst trying to monetise your anti-commercial artform? The folk scene has distinct sub-groups, each of which doesn’t really make much sense to the other. Luckily - and I love this - it’s all “live and let live” here, so sing-song types like me can just walk on past the diddly fiddles, the commie songs, the lagerphone larrikins and the dreadlocked stomp-boy without saying a word.
But I am made of words. It’s literally my thing. Also, the creative community in which I was raised fell apart because, after the artists left, people chose to go quiet when they should have spoken up. And silence grows, like in that Simon and Garfunkel song; the one with the non-speaking, non-listening crowd that makes me squirm.
A big part of the reason nobody spoke up in my former community was because people needed the artists to sing the truth, to help them imagine a better way. That’s partly on me. I was there with my guitar, and it never crossed my mind to sing truth to my community. I thought somebody else would do that. It wasn't until after it all imploded, after my breakdown, after the pills and the therapy and the Art School and my brick-by-brick reconstruction that I learned my place as an artist. I learned to sing the truth. That’s part of why I think about stuff like this, then share it with people like you. It matters.
If you’re an artist, you have a responsibility. Your community needs you more than they or you know.
There is a book by Alex Hill called Centennials, which explores why some organisations have endured longer than a hundred years, when most fail in the first three years. Groups that endure need two things: A stable core and a disruptive edge. They need to know what they’re really about, and they need some creative thinkers getting crazy on the edge, pushing the thing forward and around, keeping it moving.
Folk music as an idea is about 100 years old and, as described above, it has multiple centres with differing values. Unfortunately, the creatives on the edge don’t tend to disrupt anything, lest they miss out on gigs, festivals and song contests.
Those artists on the edge? They’re my people. I sit with them all the time, I host them at song circles in my home, I chat with them at festivals and listen to where they’re at. They love creating and connecting, they constantly question their own worth, and they are all deeply concerned about the status quo. You might be surprised to know that almost none of them – none of us – identify as “folk.” We just call ourselves artists, and we’re happy to play to anyone who will listen. But artists are meant to be the voice of the disruptive edge; we are supposed to sing from our own stable core and shake things up, to bring movement to the community.
The folk scene is the only musical community that has welcomed me and my work. I love the festival organisers who book me, the locals who host me, the volunteers who make the thing run, and the punters who come out to see me play. You are my community. But it needs to be said: the folk status quo celebrates tradition over truth-telling, and artists are reluctant to start the conversation. Unless we have a stable core and a disruptive edge, the gig is up. I've seen it happen.
All over Australia and the world, within and without the folk scene, we need artists to sing the truth and to help us imagine a better way. A third way, beyond and between the binary.
If I have any influence at all, I use it to call on artists, to call on you to use your voice to sing the change you want to see. You are vital to keeping your community moving, to disrupting the edges of the thing, lest it turn into a revivalist, inward-looking museum that nobody wants to visit. If you’re in the folk scene, disrupt the edges of the folk scene. If you’re somewhere else, disrupt those edges. This is what you were made for. Don’t wait.
You are a modern person made of ancient dirt and yesterday’s rainclouds; and your time is now. Seek out the music makers and the dreamers of dreams. Seek out the agitators and the advocates, the poets, playwrights and painters. Nobody cares if you’re really folk; you are welcome and you are needed.
Be the third way.
Sing from the centre.
Disrupt the edges, wherever you are.
Move slow. Make things.
Love,
Daniel
(October 25, 2024)