With over one hundred people packed into the Vibe Bar to debate folk music, and not an accordion in sight, the first of the Time Out Battle of Ideas Satellite events kicked off with a lively and excited atmosphere. This was not a debate between different versions of folk. It was a debate about folk, its ideas, its relevance and its place in society.

The discussion ranged between topics as diverse as the authenticity of the idea of modern folk, its tradition and connection to the past, to its place in modern society and whether or not it still holds the exulted place as the music of the people and protest. With the panel introduced as critics, musicians and intellectuals, the debate started quickly and passionately. Any thought this was a light-hearted talk on music rapidly disappeared, along with Chris Wood’s assertion that he ‘was just a musician’, as the arguments began in earnest and opinions from the panel and the audience were explored.

The first part of the debate turned on the contentious question of modern folk’s authenticity, with the claim that the songs put forward as folk today are removed from the tradition of ‘popular songs rising out of community hopes, feelings and emotion’ that created the genre originally. Others quickly came to the defence of folk’s authentic nature: the pedigree, tradition and historical culture of the music, along with the emotion it creates in its audience, link the folk songs of today with the past, providing them with authenticity free from the irony and self-consciousness embodied in other music. Against this, spiked writer Neil Davenport claimed that authenticity was a ‘mythical idea’ projected onto situations. Folk was simply using events and ideas no longer relevant to modern society - songs about the plough give nothing to people who wouldn’t know one. This, he argued, was a return to a form of ‘peasant ideology’, and talking about music and its connection with the past was a defence against modernity.

With the debate opened up to the floor the question of authenticity was addressed again. It was asked if folk was still the music of human experience – has it become the stories of victims celebrating the struggles of yesterday and by extension the celebration of defeat? The rebuttal came that whilst the time is different the struggles remain the same; it is the role of folk to take people out of their own box and connect them not only to the people around them but the human experience and history of the struggle in which they are involved. It is from this tradition that it gains its authenticity and purpose.

The second part of the debate was opened around the notion of tradition and its role in folk music. The question asked by Cara Bleiman, a music graduate from Oxford and producer of the debate, was, ‘why does tradition make it good?’. The answer from the panel was that a tradition gives context to music, and the ideas it puts forwards. It gives people a sense of continuity and connection between past and present. However, does this mean it is obsessed with the past? Is folk relied on to provide a sense of cultural identity in the absence of any form of social cohesion in society? From the floor the question came that if there is a lack of political or ideological certainty, should one turn to folk and the history it provides to give a sense of identity in the ‘cultural crisis’?

From this, questions were asked about what Englishness really is, and from the many answers and identities available, which one do you go with? Finally the idea was raised that even in the form provided by Billy Bragg and the ‘Imagined Village’ concept, this is simply folk nationalism, watered down but still divisive. On the other hand, the thought that it is the role of folk to provide this, that it is the best source to create a sense of identity from, drew the accusation from the floor of ‘folk elitism’ – an idea that was never truly addressed.

As with many previous Battle of Ideas-related events, it was when the audience got involved that the debate came alive, and it was here the question of folk’s nature was raised. One audience member suggested that ‘folk, and the collective society that it claims to represent is dead, and is no longer present in the atomised culture that exists today’. Society is divorced from the past, and by simply singing about idealised concepts and images that are no longer relevant, folk has joined this atomisation, singing to its own group with its own images and ideas. This strand of the argument was expanded on by the suggestion that society it is no longer politically active, and that the past is used to revitalise the genre instead of associate with current problems, that it is not willing to address current situations on their own terms; rather it seeks to justify or condemn them through the ideas of the past in order to give itself legitimacy.

The second major point from the floor was whether or not folk is still the music of the people - does rap music, with its connection to the struggles of city life and poverty, better identify with the struggles of the people. Is it the music of now and the struggles of the underclass that folk originally was. Furthermore, is folk in trying to hold this position above other forms was guilty of the same elitism that it opposed. This notion was further explored with questions about how the different musical genres related to current news issues, most pointedly the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes. Some argued that the music and songs produced by various rap groups about this event were more in tune to the ideas and emotions that anything called ‘folk music’. Martha, a student from south London, raised the issue that if you look for songs on gang violence, CCTV inner city poverty, the issues of today, ‘you don’t find folk music’. Instead you find music that has risen out of those communities and mix of cultures, and it is this that is the new music of the ‘underclasses’.

To give the credit due to all the good ideas and theories that emerged over the course of the debate would require a truly mammoth effort, and the arguments a could have continued well into the night. Whilst folk may not be the most obvious topic for raucous political debate, for at least one night in East London a hundred people got together and truly did ‘Give a Folk’.