70 years of topic records

The great Ewan MacColl

One of the most exciting new pieces to hit the site this week is Steve Hochman’s appraisal of historic British folk label, Topic Records, who are celebrating their 70th anniversary this year. Incredible artists like A.L. Lloyd, Ewan MacColl and June Tabor called the label home for years. Hochman’s thorough and considered piece can do far more in explaining the importance — and excellence — of the label than I can, so listen to him:

“Music should be used as a tool of revolution, in a cultural and educational sense.” That’s the official stated mission of English folk-centric Topic Records, which stakes a claim on the title of “the oldest independent record label in the world,” with a 1939 gestation in the Socialist-leaning Workers Music Association. Despite these origins, the very first title released by Topic was not concerned with dry propaganda, but rather wet ale: Paddy Ryan’s “The Man the Waters the Worker’s Beer.”

Real people, real concerns. And real beer. Well, there’s a bit more to it than that, as rounded up in the wide-ranging Three Score and Ten anthology celebrating the venture’s new septuagenarian stature. Some indispensable highlights are here, but they serve as a starting point at best.

From the start, Topic proved the perfect home for the pioneering work in song collecting undertaken in the first part of the 20th century by such leading lights as composer Ralph Vaughan Williams and singer-scholar A.L. Lloyd. Once the bombs stopped falling in WWII, Topic proved a powerful presence at the intersection of Englands Olde and Newe. The catalog is nothing less than the history of modern British Isles folk — arguably the equivalent of America’s Folkways.

The ’50s saw the seminal forces of a first wave, with Lloyd and Ewan MacColl (among others) giving new voice to old songs. That inspired a folk boom, bringing forth a new generation including wondrous singer Anne Briggs (severely under-recorded and revered with folk hero status by the latest wave of folkies), Martin Carthy and unlikely stars the Watersons. The ’70s saw some exciting post-folk-rock experimentation, but the decade is mostly notable for the emergence of top new talent, including June Tabor and Dick Gaughan. Recent years have seen the extension of the Waterson/Carthy dynasty, with Eliza Carthy’s prolific, prodigious output.

But beneath the legacy lies the songs, bedrock tales of farmers, servants, factory workers, sagas of sex (you bet!) and sorrow — and of course, beer. How many versions of “John Barleycorn” do you need to hear? Maybe all of them.

In recent times, Topic has expanded its mission to include a fine series of world music anthologies, from the Balkans to Zanzibar, some in partnership with the British Library. Ethnomusicologist Michael Church’s recent expeditions to Chechnya and Georgia yielded entrancing collections that provide insight into the cultural tensions of the last few years. Of course, with Topic, Britannia still rules the soundwaves. Perhaps the label never quite achieved its goal of overturning the social order, but on a purely musical tack we can thank the label for keeping it clear that real folk isn’t about fairies and elves, and that fa-la-la-la is adult content.

To read more and hear some of these records, go explore now.