Billy Bragg is someone I grew up with. He was always on the periphery of my musical radar. I was aware of him but never really gave much time to the bard of Barking.
Until I rediscovered him a few years ago and suddenly with the addition of nolstagia and more of a realisation of the political landscape in which I was growing up I got him. I understood why he had seemed so angry and why he had felt the need to spread the word. I was simply too young at the time he was in his ascendancy to fully appreciate what he was actually singing about.
Since my ‘Damascus’ moment I have actively sought out every opportunity to repay my former indifference towards him and have been gifted the opportunity to see him play live on three continents.
It was already a done deal I would see him in my new (but temporary) home in Edmonton. And although he wasn’t stellar, it was the weakest of the four performances I have personally seen, he was a welcome visitor to this incredibly homesick Brit.
It was a strange crowd and atmosphere though in the Winspear. A mixture of young and old as I would have expected as Billy is a well established performer and although they all applauded warmly throughout and gave him a standing ovation at the climax they were on the whole rather subdued. The one time that Billy actively sought audience participation (during the closing number ‘New England’) there was an absence of noise rather than the cacophony of a thousand out of tune voices there should have been. As a result I shouted louder in an attempt to embarrass everyone else into joining in but also to give Billy something back after he had entertained us all for the previous hour and a half.
I got the feeling that mixed in with the younger generation seeking to find out for themselves what the fuss what was about and the hardened fans who lived and breathed the same ideals Billy stood for there was another element present there last night. The elitist Edmontonian arts crowd. Those that pride themselves on the cities reputation as ‘festival city’. For whom the Folk Festival is the pinnacle of their calendar year, where they get the opportunity to parade and preen themselves as the cultural masters of all they survey. It is just such a shame that they have to share it with the rest of us proles. They weren’t there because they believed in Billy’s political stance, they weren’t even there because they truly love music. They were there because they were aware that Billy Bragg is now rightly a folk icon, because CKUA (their guiding musical hand) had told them that was so and because if they hadn’t been there it might have been noticed and how could they have lived that down.
There were a few ‘flat’ moments when it was unfortunately obvious that his politics weren’t perhaps shared by all, at least not when they intruded on Canadian misdemeanors anyway. The Canadian Japanese resettlement during the Second World War being one example when the crowd rather than clap was stunned into polite embarrassment as if Billy had farted at the dinner table. It’s one thing to talk about global issues like capitalism, racism, homophobia etc but to point the finger at us? How dare he?
Perhaps it is partly due to the venue. It is a beautiful space but in my mind far too formal for this kind of event.
Music, from Beethoven to Billy, is visceral, at times violent, at times beautiful, and it should be enjoyed not admired like a fine wine. Not studied coldly from a distance.
I certainly hope Billy received more of an energetic response from audiences elsewhere in Canada.
