Some folk musicians provide minimal accompaniment and let the songs speak for themselves – and there is a lot to be said for that approach.
There are others who do a wonderful job reinterpreting the songs or creating something new using the wealth of traditional material as the revered source.
Ralph Vaughan Williams, for example, collected English folk songs and used the beautiful tunes he found to create splendid symphonies and hymns.
Jim Moray is a modern reinterpreter of folk songs.
In his concert at Exeter Phoenix Jim was at pains to show his debt to his sources, whether the source be a collection of ballads by the nineteenth century Francis James Child, a cylinder recording of Lincolnshire gamekeeper William Taylor from the late 19th or early 20th century or a song on a CD made by a modern singer like Nic Jones, who incidentally had come to this performance especially to see young Jim.
Jim’s performance relied heavily on ancient English ballads and indeed this could have led to a heavy experience for the audience.
In the hands of the young master, the ballads sprung to life and seemed amazingly relevant to modern living.
The ballads encompassed so much folk wisdom and strong imagery and simple yet sometimes intricate melodies.
Jim Moray sometimes sang them straight with little or no accompaniment.
His acapella rendition of William Hollander about a Bristol man involved in the slave trade was stark and beautiful.
The Rufford Road Poachers and Horkstow Grange, in contrast, were given a treatment which made use of modern electronic wizardly which worked a treat.
Jim’s interpretations of old themes were given innovative and often highly modern treatments and proved engaging and highly entertaining.
Gruesome ballads like Long Lankin (maybe, as Jim pointed out, no more gruesome than some nursery rhymes) and historical songs such as Child ballad Earl Brand, featuring love, malice, fights and death, proved in Jim’s skilled hands and with Jim’s moving singing, to be highly engaging.
Jim took these songs and made them his own, at times adding new tunes, original arrangements, even new words whilst remaining respectful of the original source.
The drama encompassed in the songs was displayed in both Jim’s singing and his playing.
His guitar style sounded to me reminiscent of Martin Carthy and Nic Jones, which I mean to be a strong compliment, and his keyboard playing showed the influences of various genres including classical music and rock.
I felt that we were priveleged to experience a strongly themed concert, dealing this time with ancient and new stories, and that another time Jim might give us an entirely different and equally skilled performance.
We got an inkling of Jim’s lighter side towards the end of the concert with Peg and Awl, a traditional song with a simple chorus about a machine supposedly setting workers free from drudgery, and the beautiful song Jim wrote for his sister Jackie Oates, The Wishfulness Waltz.
I will follow the career of singer and musician Jim Moray, a wise and clever man still in his early twenties, with great interest.
He left me – and others at the Phoenix, I suspect – spellbound and wanting more.
Jim Moray was in concert at Exeter Phoenix on 18th March, 2011. A Midnight Mango promotion. Jim Moray’s website: http://www.jimmoray.co.uk/