Roots

The place shown right at the end of the video is Port Isaac in north Cornwall, where I was just on my hols. I wonder if they have any particular connection there?

I don’t think antirealist has a solid grasp of the range of English accents….there was nothing North American there to my (English) ears.

Changing the subject … I wonder if Harry has the same sense of ambivalence and discomfort that I have when I listen to “Roots”.

It isn’t as clear to me as it is to Harry that the song is a celebration of “our immigrants” . When SoH sing that whatever they’ve “got right” we’ve got wrong, “they” aren’t included in the “we”. Googling around it seems clear both that SoH have sort-of lefty-anarchist affiliations (and odd heroes – Napoleon and Nelson Mandela), but their _intentions_ hardly define the song’s meaning. It also seems to have been taken up by assorted “white nationalists”, “English nationalists” and the like. There is a really odd discussion on one particularly unpleasant website about whether it is ok for racists to like “Roots” despite the dodgy (by their lights) politics of the song’s author. The Daily Telegraph seemed to have liked the song because it celebrates “Englishness” when we are all, supposedly, under the thumb of the “Scottish” Labour government.

Thoughts Harry?

Hi Chris,

well that’s interesting. The first couple of times I heard it I did feel discomfort, yes, but it dissipated after the second time. Do you know their other work? Knowing it completely reassures me about their intentions, and remember that I am listening to it in the context of their work (and their roots — Carthy, Rosselson, et al) but NOT in the context of contemporary England, which may make a big difference. Its also the case that, as with Rosselson etc, I have a built-in ambivalence, seeing them as basically on the side of the angels but wrong abouot enoguh things that I don’t feel completely at ease.

I agree that their intentions don’t define the meaning (hence the reference to the context within which I’m listening). Did the DT like “Country Life?” (a song I feel more permanently ambivalent about, despite loving the way it skewers the shits in the country alliance).

AH — now I realise why the comments section on youtube was shut down!

Don’t know what the DT thought about that ….

Seem to me that something like the following is going on … (glib and oversimplistic summary follows)

SoH regret that the things they value about England are being squeezed out by a crass commercialism (partly of US origin, partly not). They also regret that English people are ignorant of their own folk traditions. This is also true though a good deal (though not all) of the loss happened with 19th C industrialization and a good deal (though not all) of the “folk tradition” is a manufactured response to the same. Lots of stuff that strikes a chord there – loss of authenticity, commodification etc etc.

Lots of people who also feel, with them, the loss of that sense of place and belonging also (unlike them) blame their own anomie, alienation, etc on immigrants, the EU and so on.

A rallying cry to defend English culture attracts a lot of the same people, unfortunately.

This kind of dialectic has been played out since the dawn of industrialization and, of course, it leads the market-utopians to want to tar all the particularists (for want of a better word) with the same brush. That’s a charge that should be rejected because William Morris ain’t the BNP (or even UKIP). But we’ll carry on squirming and feeling uncomfortable because the left and the right both share a discontent with modernity.

Skipped to the bottom too quickly.
CB got it

(As it happens, I quite like it too.)

guess the music is a matter of taste, but they definitely need a better video editor – that was like 57 or whatever cross-dissolves in three minutes and the blue-screen stuff was really rough too :)