Robin & Barry Dransfield
The Rout of the Blues

For a long time, I've wanted to review something quite essential in folk music, and my choice fell on the English duo Robin & Barry Dransfield and their first album "The Rout of the Blues" from 1970. Why this choice? I've listened to a lot of folk music over the years, but when I came across the two brothers from Yorkshire, it was love at first listen.

Robin on acoustic guitar and Barry on violin formed a formidable duo as performers of a folk as immediate as it is evocative, as sparse as it is graceful. Their music is an expression of that folk culture rooted in Celtic tradition spread throughout Northern Europe (and beyond), which from the British Isles expanded and reached its expressive zenith in the High Middle Ages. There, the stylistic elements condensed and reached us through time, but in the case of the Dransfield brothers with a bluegrass twist, echoed as an identifying musical heritage. This folk culture has always been a source of pride for Anglo-Saxon musicians towards their origins, an indispensable background for a strongly rooted national and individual identity. Similarly, their folklore is an expression, testimony of those ancient people who came from afar, who told their stories handed down through the centuries orally and also played with few instruments by bard singers, the keepers of folk wisdom. Legends, deeds immersed in forests, among moors, steeped in myths and fantastic tales. The joyful "plundering" by the two Dransfield brothers, from any source of texts, ideas, is a venture that bears wonderful fruits and beautifully captures the spirit of the time. Stories recounted or harmonies and melodies taken from other minstrel composers, elaborated and interpreted by ear without the aid of sheet music (neither knew how to read music), result in a "restoration" painstakingly satisfying, of traditional classics accomplished with extraordinary freshness and immediacy of intent, wrapped in an exotic aura of natural candor and sparse beauty; they are a kind of Incredible String Band with a pronounced vocal and instrumental cohesiveness. The integrity of the counterpointed singing, accompanied by Robin's guitar arpeggios and rhythms and Barry's virtuosic violin played in the "off the chest" position, makes the ballads sincere expressions of indigenous music.

Their blend of folk and bluegrass harmonies (as a legitimate revival of the ancestors) takes us back to distant times of rural civilization, exempt from urban problems or bourgeois alienations, yet full of proud melancholy expressed with alienating naturalness. The album is essentially a collection of ballads and folk songs in traditional style gathered from street musicians; the first track "The Rout of the Blues" which gives the album its name is among the densest and fullest creations of their entire repertoire, sourced from a Yorkshire folk idiom. The non-counterpointed in singing, yet equally splendid "Scarborough Fair," is a reinterpretation of the ancient anonymous piece from the latter half of the '600s, conveying medieval plant symbolism in its text. "English Medley: St. Clement's Jim / The Huntsmen's Chorus / Nancy" is a composition of theirs extracted from sound citations of Tom Clough, one of the greatest pipers from Northumbria, as is "The Waters of Tyne." The melody of "The Earl Totnes" sung by Barry and simultaneously doubled by his violin was composed by John Pearse, and the words were drawn from a popular legend from Devon. "Tapestry" is a medieval-style piece again composed by the two Dransfield brothers. "The Trees They do Grow High" is a song captured on the fly from Irish musicians and faithfully reproduced, while "A Week Before Easter" was drawn from a manifesto produced by the EFDSS from a collection by Seamus Ennis, sung by Bob Copper from Sussex. The melody of "A Fair Maid Walking Hall in Her Garden" originates from a collection of songs from Lincolnshire, while the words were taken from the Hammond collection published in Marrow Bones. Lastly, "Who's the Fool Now?" is a Scottish song that Barry learned from Ernie Green, a founding member of the Harrogates Folk Club.

"The Rout of the Blues" was deemed the "album of the year" in 1970 by the prestigious English music weekly, today, we must listen to it again, re-educate ourselves with it and let ourselves be transported into that world so dear to our sensibilities, to still feel within us the melancholic tenderness that we are still capable of perceiving.