On Monday, 20th March, 1967 I went to the Free Trade Hall in Manchester to see a folk duo who had just had their first taste of fame. The venue was almost empty with only about a quarter of the seats filled. On Friday, 17th October, 2025 I went to Howard Assembly Room in Leeds to see another folk duo, who have a tad more experience than the other pair but, again the venue was far from being a sell out. The thing which struck me on both occasions, was that those who were in attendance, seemed to be devotees of the acts concerned, rather than casual concert goers who had come to check them out. Although I fall into that category insofar as the first duo was concerned, I was unaware of the second, but my fellow audience members nodded sagely during the detailed introductions to each piece, suggesting that they were ‘in the know’.
Folk is probably the oldest form of music, being ‘written’ and performed by ordinary people, since time immemorial, to entertain their families, friends and even themselves. They obviously weren’t literally written because, not only was most of the population illiterate insofar as prose was concerned, there was no musical notation. They have survived by being learned by ear and passed through the generations until being discovered by collectors who travelled the world and transcribed them onto sheet music. There also would not have been any instruments, so the early songs will have been a cappella and morphed over the years due to the interpretation, and singing proficiency, of the listener who passed them on.
This concert included traditional and newly written works, both augmented by adding fiddles, banjo, autoharp, an electronic mixer, bass drum and a stomp box. I have no objection to rearranging works to move the genre along, but I found the way in which it was done in this case made a lot of the tunes sound very similar. It also over embellished the more basic traditional ones.
One particular feature was the demeanour of Mr Diver, whose body language and facial expressions conveyed a tortured, deep intensity in the several works inspired by dead poets and singers, whose names were dropped liberally throughout the performance during the detailed introductions. It seemed a little over the top, however, if not downright pretentious, when he played a jig, just about the most frivolous thing of the night, apart from a song consisting of the sea areas quoted on the Shipping Forecast.
To show that I am not putting the whole show down, I was very impressed by the way in which Mr Diver used samples of recorded speech from the Irish poet, Joe Cooley, in a couple of tracks; Old Time Musicians and When In New York, from his album, The Speech Project. He passed them through the mixer and played along producing something reminiscent of Paul Hardcastle’s 19 or The Art Of Noise.
Ms Knapp’s voice was beautiful and pure, ideally suited to this material. Her musicianship was also first class, as was Mr Diver’s.
I have to say that I admire their professionalism, in that the audience was the smallest I can ever remember at Howard Assembly Room, but they still performed as if it were the largest. It did seem odd at the end, when they went off and came back for the encore even though the applause from the depleted number seemed more appreciatively polite rather than ecstatic. It might have been preferable to do the second half straight through, with what one of their fellow folkies recently called, a noncore.
This was one of those gigs which was obviously not to my taste, but that is the chance you take when leaping into the unknown, and also the beauty of having a venue such as Howard Assembly Room which presents such an eclectic range of concerts.
Have a look at the following links to listen to some of their work and, should you like what you hear, book one of the remaining dates at the end of the month.
https://www.knappdivermusic.com/
To se what is coming up at Howard Assembly Room it is https://www.operanorth.co.uk/event-tag/har/
By the way, the other folk duo I referred to in my opening was Simon and Garfunkel, who returned to Manchester the following October, having released Mrs Robinson, the song that is, and performed to a packed Odeon.
Tyke It To The Limit 