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Artists > L - N > MacColl, Ewan

 
:: Black & White - The Definite Collection  Ref: COOKCD038
 
 
 
Black & White - The Definite Collection

Price:   £4.99

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Ewan MacColl was enthused with the unique spirit and dignity of Scottish music by his parents, both low landers, and became a superb ballad singer, devoting himself to his music with such zeal and political sense of purpose that it still colours people's thinking years later.

He is perhaps best remembered now as a gloriously evocative songwriter - with the ability to switch from tender love songs to crushing political venom without apparent change in demeanour. But it was his revolutionary championing of indigenous folk song that caused such a furore, and played such a fierce role in the preservation of folk song wherever it came from. Singers and musicians, decreed MacColl, should only play music of their own country: a rule he gained much notoriety for imposing at his own folk clubs. It seems an odd notion in hindsight, but with American music sweeping the world in the late 1950s, it may well have saved large swathes of traditional British Folk music.

Initially, MacColl made his mark in the theatre, and later moved to the BBC, where he allied his theatrical leanings with his love of folk music in a series of documentary dramas in which the lives of people in different industries were illustrated by the shrewd interspersal of his own songs, written in a folk idiom for the series. These eight radio ballads were major breakthroughs for folk music, and from that point on MacColl was a central figure in the evolution of British roots music. He continued to perform with his American wife, Peggy Seeger, almost to his death in 1989, his dislike of the Thatcher government inspiring him to ever greater heights of savagery in his songwriting.

Black And White, a posthumous compilation lovingly compiled by his family, showcases MacColl's superb technique as a singer, his gift for choruses, his colourful observation as a lyricist, and his raging sense of injustice. It is a deeply touching and fitting tribute to one of the all-time greats of British Folk music. 


 


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