An Italian friend recently said “I don’t like Folk music unless it’s contaminated”. I knew immediately what she meant as I share a loathing of the ‘fiddly-dee /’she moves through the fair’ school of Folk.
The verb ‘to contaminate’ in English has a negative connotation meaning “To make impure or unclean by contact or mixture”.
In Italian, the word can take on a more positive metaphorical sense when applied to the mixing of genres. It is similar to the way English speakers talk of the cross fertilisation of different ideas. Italy’s closest equivalent to The Wire magazine is Blow Up which has the tag line – “rock e altre contaminazioni” and I’ve seen ‘contaminated’ sections in record stores in Italy.
I like the way this label suggests something impure and infected. For me ‘contaminated’ music has a rougher quality than the sanitised sounds which infect and infest the mainstream. The net result is music with a freer and more spontaneous quality.
Since the 1990s a vibrant strand of the underground music scene has blended noise, improvisation, drone, acoustic and electronic elements from the past without in any way being in thrall to it.
The raw quality that links artists like Sunburned Hand of the Man, Charalambides or Pelt is sonically very different from 1960s rock but contains the same radical spirit that existed before the major labels packaged rebellion for mass consumption.
The DIY impulse also plays a big part in keeping the music fresh as well as giving the notion that it is more community based rather than being just another anonymous market driven product. This is never going to appeal to purists or be in contention for the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. Thank god!
