The first thing that emerges from the mockery is that it doesn’t really derive from tastes in music or from regard for the Mumfords’ musical talent. The former if not the latter comes up sometimes, but something else is happening. The main critique seems to be that they went to public (i.e. private) school, that they’re posh, that they must therefore owe their success to privilege above talent, and that they’re therefore not authentic (whatever authenticity is). Let me say first, I think I kind of get this animus. Music, like sports, is supposed to be one of society’s few level playing fields, where working-class people with talent get a rare fair shot, so it’s aggravating to see those who are over-privileged in other areas eating up the scraps as well as the lion’s share of life’s offerings. That’s perhaps more true now than ever. Twenty years ago our poshest of posh actors called themselves such relatively ordinary things as Hugh Grant, then along came someone who openly referred to himself as Rupert Everett, and now we’ve gone the full Benedict Cumberbatch. And of course, most fundamentally (and seriously), and not at all unrelatedly, our Blatcherite classless society has given us a government of Old Etonian, Bullingdon millionaires who are clearly intent on consigning the post-war experiment in (greater) social democracy and fairness to the history books they think it belongs in. It seems there is nothing we can do to stop the poshist take-over the world, so what we do is mock. Indeed in these days and times I’ve even indulged myself in some Mumford mickey-taking, calling them the Boden Bumpkins on previous occasions as well as here. But I still think it’s not right.
Let’s leave aside the economic inaccessibility and social exclusiveness of such sports as boating, golf, motor racing, tennis, etc., and let’s leave aside this and the previous governments’ selling off of sports fields and thereby profiteering from the destruction of ordinary people’s dreams, not to mention the nation’s health and all the other general benefits that come from universal accessibility to sport and exercise facilities, though the myth of the music industry as a field of fair play will come under attack shortly. Surely the real problem here is not that the Mumford boys went to public schools but that anyone does. Believe that private schools should be allowed to exist if you will, but let’s be honest about them. The entire point of public schools is to give the kids whose parents can afford them an unfair advantage over those whose parents can’t. Wealthy people do not fork out x-thousands of pounds a year for something they could have for free without expecting something back in return. Therefore no serious discussion of equal opportunity can begin without the proposition to abolish class segregation in education. So, ridiculing Mumford & Sons for being public schoolboys may be cathartic, but it doesn’t help us deal with poshism any more than mocking Hitler’s missing man-egg helped defeat Nazism. In any case, what would we prefer Mumford and his Sons to do? Go into the wildcat wing of the banking industry and aid and abet the economic ruination of the nation on its next tiresomely predictable occasion? In fact, rather than that, they’ve chosen to entertain people and enrich people’s lives with their music. Good for them, I say. And let’s hope the next Fred Goodwin wants to spend a bit more time fiddling with his banjo and a bit less time spunking the nation's money away.
You may or not like the Mumfords’ music. Personally, I do. I love bluegrass, folk, and rock & roll, and I think the Mumfordian fusion makes a fantastic sound. I find their song lyrics a bit obscure, being more of a “Because you’re mine, I walk the line” kind of guy. But that’s purely personal taste and, in any case, that line’s already taken and people need to try something new. But the resentment isn’t so much borne of taste as of a sense that poshos can’t be “authentic”. I leave it to people more expert than me to question the very notion of authenticity, but I admit again that Mumford & Sons are up against it on this count. Public schoolboys doing folk music? Not as obviously or as pathetically and dispiritingly fabricated as Gordon Brown pretending to listen to the Polar Baboons, but I see the point. And yet, John Lennon wasn’t the working-class hero he wanted to be, yet he generally gets more pleb-cred than the poorer Paul McCartney. Also, those regarded as unimpeachably authentic both by background and artistic integrity are rarely consistently so. In the 1970s and ’80s, though it pains me to admit it, Johnny Cash made more cheese than France. Anyway, perhaps the Mumfords’ undisguised poshness is a sort of unlikely gift; their literariness mixed with mandolins gives us something new and interesting, like an unexpectedly entertaining cameo by Laurence Olivier in an episode of the Dukes of Hazzard. And, in any case, perhaps the Mumfords actually do have a kind of “authenticity”. They were schoolmates who formed a band, whatever school their parents sent them to, and by all accounts they worked hard, touring endlessly to gain a diverse and highly appreciative fan-base. They write their own songs and they play their own instruments, which brings up what they’re importantly not. They’re not just another boyband/girlband rolling off the production line of Cowell Enterprises. And they’re not Justin Beiber, that monstrous pop goblin and corporate-sponsored totem of the industrialised, for-profit sexualisation of the under-age-female marketing opportunity. So, okay, Mumford & Sons may not be genuine good ol’ boys, but they’re really not the genuinely bad guys either.
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