Those “weirdy, folky bagpipe people” are getting something right.
English folk music has been the ideal genre for Wren Music’s work in secure schools and schools for young people with social, emotional or behavioural difficulties (SEBD). Two of Wren’s music team - Dave (pictured) and Nick - explain the three key reasons for this success.
There’s no previous
Within these particular school groups, allegiances across and between young people form and change rapidly. It is useful for us not to add fuel to any of those divisions. In their own time, the young people tend towards two main genres: dance/electronic and rock. If we used dance music, the rock fans would probably walk out, and vice versa. “These kids haven’t got any experience of folk music, they’re not quite sure what to make of us. If they were older, or if this wasn’t this social demographic, then they probably would. But they haven’t, and that gives us a great and neutral way in.” (Nick)
Nick goes on to explain a situation that led the team to create a project ‘policy’ to use only traditional, folk music. “It was the afternoon. We were using the guitars, mostly, and someone started playing a riff that sounded like a well-known rock song. One young man reacted in a way we were not at all expecting... After she had settled him elsewhere, his key worker returned to let us know he had experienced parental suicide and his parent used to listen to Guns n Roses. We couldn’t have predicted his response, but it had been too much for him to bear.” (Nick)
Before this, the musicians would dip into any genre they wanted with the young people. We still use the guitars - we still use any instruments the young people show an interest in - but now we always stick with the more neutral English, traditional musical content that we as professional musicians know inside out.
Structures for Rapid Success
English folk music commonly follows a strict and regular structure. In the tunes there are usually two parts to the music, each of which repeats twice, and then repeats in this fashion throughout the performance of the tune. (i.e. AABB, AABB, AABB...). Of course there are tunes that don’t follow this format, but using this predictable structure is useful for these young people. The Youth Music quality framework has a criterion (S2) which calls for the young musician to ‘know what is expected of them’. This genre allows them to be able to predict what is expected musically as well as receiving spoken or non-spoken instruction. This is particularly important for groups who require rapid successes to maintain focus.
“You’ve got to get that first bit just right, exactly right, because, if it’s an obstacle [you can forget it]… the young people are used to failing, they have a mentality of failing, and of being challenging, and they don’t want to be put on the spot… so our job is to make sure that what they come into is going to allow them to succeed…” (David)
At Wren Music we take this idea a step further. Every instrumental tune that is arranged by our music team will have an ‘access line’ written on the score. We begin each tune by teaching the chords and access line by ear, while one music leader will play along on the tune as a kind of accompaniment. Using this approach, within minutes we have a group of people sounding like a band. From this early success then young musicians can go on to learn the tune - by ear and/or with the music - or they can perfect their performance of the access line, the chords or add percussion.
This firm musical structure is true of folk songs, where there also exists a strong and long tradition of people rewriting words to existing tune structures. We take a structure and work with the young people to write lyrics relevant to their lives. We can then compare and contrast their song with versions of the same song which may be over 100 years old, and together we learn about the lives of people in the past. By referring to this tradition of re-writing, we avoid the feeling that this method might have been created as a simplified task for this group. The young people see themselves - rightly so - as simply the next in a long line of every-day musicians.
Personally Relevant
The third reason we have found English folk music particularly successful in these situations is the unexpected links young people find with their own lives. Particularly in secure settings where young people may not have been home for a while. When we first take the instruments out of the cases, it is not uncommon for someone to comment that their grandparents ‘had one of them’. Be it fiddles, melodeons or mandolins, young people enjoy being able to touch and play with something that may be reminiscent of the past for them.
In one notable example we presented a song that had been collected in the late nineteenth century, from the area around the school. We showed a print out of the folk song collector’s manuscript, and talked through with the young people which details he wrote down. When we came to the name of the source singer, one young person called out ‘that’s my surname’, at which point everyone in the class became interested to try to work out if this ancient thing might have been written down about J’s great-great-great-granddad.
Summary
We present ourselves to the young people, with our music which is unfamiliar to them. By asking them to look outside their usual musical references, and by welcoming them into our art form, we have been able to move beyond some common barriers and achieve good musical, personal and social outcomes for these young people.
In one session, when a new young person entered the group, another young person endearingly described us to him as ‘the weirdy folky bagpipe people who are interested in us’. For this project in particular, we’ve found that the otherness of the music has allowed us to skirt around some of the young people’s usual social defences, and to quickly establish positive relationships.