kent folk

Your FREE Guide to Folk Events in Kent, Surrey, Sussex and beyond

Published by Tenterden Folk Festival, Charity No 1038663

Promoting folk song, music, dance, crafts and traditions.

Welcome to issue 115 February/March 2023 issue of Around Kent Folk

I’m writing this editorial in that period between Christmas and the New Year so I hope it is not too late to wish you all a happy and successful 2023. It is now five years since I took over as editor of AKF and issue 85 for February / March 2018 was the first full issue I compiled following the sad deaths of both Bob and Kathy Drage in 2017. Since then, a lot has changed on the local folk scene, mostly as a result of the loss of important local figures and of course the closure of pubs and folk clubs during the Covid pandemic and the financial crisis. Some degree of normality has return with most clubs reopened but many of these are still struggling with reduced audiences and higher costs. This of course also affects AKF with less advertisers and increased production and postage cost. Therefore I am hoping 2023 will be the year when the folk scene can return to normal and I can start publishing more good news. Sue Watson tells us that plans are in hand for Deal Folk Club to re-start soon. The website will be updated when arrangements are finalised so keep an eye on AKF and on www. dealfolkclub.org.uk. Tenterden Folk Festival celebrates it’s 30th anniversary this year so we hope to make it an extra special event if funding and support is forthcoming. Chippenham Folk Festival, which is popular with many people from our region, celebrates 50 years this year. I openly admit that Chippenham is my favourite festival (after Tenterden!) and I have managed to attend it most years since I stumbled on the original Lacock Folk Festival while staying with my grandparents in Marlborough in the 1970s. I believe Broadstairs Folk Week has reached its crowdfunding target and is already well advanced with plans for August. If you have got some good news about your folk song club, dance club, session, Morris side, venue, band, etc. please let us know at akf@tenterdenfolkfestival.org.uk.

Alan Castle (Editor)

PS: You can make a donation to Tenterden Folk Festival or this magazine via our websites or by post (see payment details on last page). Thank you. www.tenterdenfolkfestival.org.uk www.aroundkentfolk.org.uk

Find us online at www.aroundkentfolk.org.uk and on Twitter as @AroundKentFolk, where you can always find a link to the latest and past issues of AKF.

Please pass this link on to your mailing lists and place it on your social media so that as many as possible of our regular readers can find AKF online until we are able to get back to a full print run and physical distribution of the printed magazine.

Stay well and take care in these difficult times

Malcolm Ward

Malcolm Barrett Ward, or Malcolm, or plain Malc to his friends was born on 4th May 1942 and passed on 6th December 2022.

Hailing originally from the village of Kingsthorpe just outside of Northampton (the same village where close-contemporary comic actress Lesley Joseph grew up), he became an apprentice with the local East Midlands Electricity Board after he left school. This set him on a career path that would eventually see him move to the Oxted in Surrey in 1967 to join the SouthEast equivalent, SeeBoard where he was to meet with the late Pete Collins who was instrumental in introducing him to the worlds of folk music and the Morris.

Malc married Christine in September 1966 and children Andrew (1969) and Sarah (1972) soon followed. Throughout this time and indeed throughout childhood, he had been active in the Scouting movement, working his way from Wolf Cubs up through Scouts and Senior Scouts to pack leader before he and Christine founded a new group in Greens Norton and then eventually being appointed as Assistant District Commissioner in East Surrey. Only the demands of a young family and having to be on-call for his job saw him leave Scouting in 1975.

In addition to being a resident at the Tonbridge Folk Club since 2009, he had been involved with the Travelling Folk from at least the early-mid 90s and had been a staunch supporter of Broadstairs Folk Week from the early days. He was often to be seen and heard in the Neptune singaround and the shanties under the shelter at the end of the Jetty. He was one of those who stepped into the breach when the original committee resigned in 1995, and Pete Collins and Dave Hughesman took on the running. He acted as Chair until 1997 and then spent a further year on the committee.

Malc also had two other festivals close to his heart; Tenterden and the Harwich International Shanty festival where he had been involved from the beginning – or before then if you include his time with the pre-cursor at nearby Walton-On-The-Naze. In 2021, whilst sharing a drop of whisky after the Tenterden shanty session, and by then having accepted that the odds of beating the cancer that had already robbed him of one eye were minimal, he told me that as long as he could get through that weekend and the following one in Harwich, then he’d be content. We had the same conversation this year too but by then we both knew that he wasn’t going to be on any drug trial and he had, I felt, resolved to face the disease on his own terms, without debilitating treatment so he could maximise the remaining time he had with his family. Our chat took place in his caravan which also seemed to house an archive of songs he had learned, where he first came across them and anything else of related interest. One in particular that springs to mind was a newspaper cutting regarding the transportation of a baby Grand piano to an Amazonian tribe along the Essequibo River. Of course, this was only the latest incarnation of his caravan since, as he also told me, an earlier one had once been completely demolished in a traffic incident in Italy (not his fault!) resulting in the local police having to come to the rescue...

Following Tenterden, Malcolm only made it to a couple more practice sessions with the Ravensbourne Morris Men who he had joined in the Spring of 1992 having previously danced alongside Pete Collins with Royal Borough of Tunbridge Wells since 1976. As well as holding the office of Squire for a time, Malc also acted as our liaison point for our biannual trips to our twin town of Neuwied in Germany where we would perform at their Deichstadtfest and held the position of side Archivist keeping the records of Ravensbourne dating back to our founding in 1947.

He was very much a talented and key member of our group of musicians, and for about the last decade or so was our lead musician. He had a marvellous recollection of how dances had been performed by previous incarnations of the side which was immensely helpful when we came to resurrect dances after some years of abeyance, and more than one Foreman has had him to thank. We knew that practice had gone well if Malcolm declared that our efforts had been “distinctively average, gentlemen” but he didn’t suffer fools gladly and woe-betide anyone trying to race ahead of the music with their sticking on a dance like Constant Billy, Headington. Not only was he at the heart of the practice sessions, but also our weekly dance-outs and particularly our après-morris singing sessions. Ravensbourne are a keen singing side, and Malcolm could be relied upon to supply both rousing chorus songs and solo numbers often accompanying himself on the concertina. In the pub he often had a story to tell and would never knowingly turn down the offer of a pint especially if it was Harvey’s Best. As a relative newcomer to the folk world, I found him generous with his time in explaining some of the etiquette and helping me try songs I might not otherwise have attempted.

He leaves a Malcolm-shaped hole in many people’s lives and will be sorely missed by the friends and family who remain behind.

Christopher Bearfoot Fool, Ravensbourne Morris Men