Folklore Is Counterculture

It’s one of the coldest nights of the season so far and I’ve driven down to Porthleven to meet some friends who’ve just gotten out of the surf. It's dark but we sit and eat our fish and chips outside on a bench by the harbour. When we get up to walk back to the van, we hear music from the local brewery. There’s a band playing Cornish Blue Grass. Soon enough we’re skipping around the room arm in arm with everyone we don’t know like we’ve been friends forever at a barn dance. Stumbling and messing up the dosey doe, it wasn’t until this moment that I realised this was the sense of community that I had been missing.  

Folklore is undergoing revival. It is a term that we hear more and more. It has seeped its way into the trends and timelines of popular culture, and offers an alternate positioning against the fast-paced and short-lived mainstream. 

Lore is an old English word, and was a term used for knowledge, related to the verb ‘to learn’. In the 19^th century the term folklore was coined. It referred to the traditional customs and beliefs of people. The word is now used in slang, describing someone’s personal narrative or interests. The shift in the collective use of the word to the more singular mirrors this shift in wider society; the cult of individualism.

Folklore is in gossip and music, mythology and poetry. It tells us of the custom, ritual, belief and craft of the everyday through storytelling, structured or casual, past or present. In its roots, it is an oral tradition, not always documented and physically created, but sung or recited, a tale or a conversation. The revival of this culture, in its very essence, can be felt more than it can be seen. Folklore brings a sense of togetherness that has too often gone amiss in the whirlwind of hypermodernity and mass consumerism. It is the backbone of community and it is to be shared. There is plenty to go around. Take some and pass it on. 

In modern society, it seems we have become increasingly individual and isolated. People are busy. We worry about our productivity and our status and are consumed by how everyone sees us — but what is the point of worrying about being accepted when there is no community to be welcomed into? Social interaction feels practiced and forced, it's fleeting. We have come to live in a world where both headlines and hobbies last a day. Where every man for himself is acceptable and accepted, and where the rat race and social ladder have replaced community and support. 

Pop culture is screentime and image. It’s everybody wanting to be the DJ and nobody wanting to dance. It's performative, greedy and it’s a spiral. In the fast-paced constant change of now, maybe we have lost ourselves in the chaos– trying on new personas with every micro trend is tiring and unsustainable. Maximalisms and mores will not outweigh the security and stability to be found within simplicity. Simplicity is found within folklore and the culture surrounding it. Countering pop culture, it is slower, intentional and is held together through interconnected webs of context and meaning. Through folklore we learn more about people and our surroundings, through interaction with people and our surroundings. 

Folklore is in the bakery, the pottery studio and the pub. Story and place are inseparable. Folklore creates connection between us and the environment. The revival of Folklore has begun to echo throughout the entire UK, spreading from its more prominent centres of the South West, North West and across Scotland where folk nights are a plenty, and locally-sourced knitwear is a norm. In more localised areas, Folklore is reviving through continued and ever-popular historic ritual and procession. May Day, Flora Day, Mazy Day and Montol are huge events across Cornish communities, bringing together older and younger groups, locals and tourists alike. As does May Day and The Winter Droving in Penrith, the heart of Cumbria, or the fire festival of Beltane in Edinburgh. 

The countryside has become cool. “Touching grass” is internet speak for getting outside to reconnect with ourselves through the natural world. Florence and the Machine’s new album, Everybody Scream, draws inspiration from folk horror in both its aesthetic, sound and lyrics. McQueen’s Paris fashion week show incorporated mumming, an ancient Irish custom where groups would dress up in costume and go between houses, performing poetry and theatre. The set design showcased the tradition of straw craft in its hessian maypole toppers and hand-woven harvest knot invites.

Aesthetics linked to folklore, such as the rural romanticisation of 'cottagecore' and the 'tradwife', have both been trending online over recent years. This, again, highlights the urge to return to a slower-paced lifestyle. These social media representations however, create the sense that this is a polished lifestyle, and contradictorily, over complicate the attainability of a simpler way of living. With the rise in interest in folklore and the leaning towards tradition, comes a decline in the obsessive use of digital technology and media. Instead, we can see increases in returning to physical media, and analogue technology; The Southwester is a (surprise surprise) South West based newspaper which is only available to read in physical print. It’s a platform for locally based creatives to share stories, reflections and musings, a modern manifestation of folklore, away from the digital. Seedlings, another physical print publication, has recently sprung up. This one is London-based, and hand made. The sharing of stories, art and information, tied up together within a book made using traditional craft showcases a manifold resurgence of folklore. 

Folklore relies on connection and is rooted in a more traditional way of life. Slower, seasonal, connected to the landscape. The planet can often be disregarded and overlooked, through the exploitation of natural resources for modern technologies and across modern politics. A connection to the environment has too become counter-cultural. This perhaps comes easier in some regions over others. On the exposed peninsula of Cornwall for instance, we sit at the most very South Western point of the UK, and are at mercy to the weather and the elements. In the autumn season, 50mph winds are somewhat the usual and phone signal is never reliable. Power cuts are no thing of the past, and the storms will no doubt disrupt your weekend plans. There is less of a choice to find connection to the natural world down here, it still very much holds a power over us. However, it is still a choice to find respect for it, and live according to its rhythm. The return to the slower and the simpler is an act of resistance against the consumerism and individualistic capitalism of today. 

In broader contexts, folkloric story is woven into so much of what goes on around us, and is becoming more obvious everyday. The original counter-cultural medium of the 1960s and 70s may have been music, but today folk revival goes further than this; in fashion, art, daily life and across media, creatives are drawing more from the traditional. Folklore is, in part, a lifestyle, a way of living guided by more sustainable, community driven, or traditional choices. 

Folklore isn’t a trend, it’s a response. A response to how we’ve drifted from the natural world and each other. It offers freedom for creativity with no binaries or expectation. There is a quiet peace in the inbetween and not-knowing as stories are changed or altered, as they are shared. In tradition and ritual, slower pace and seasonality, there is resistance. Sing it loud or whisper it quietly.