Further notes of protest from the maestro of the chanson form, 50 years on

Published on Tuesday 20 October 2009 19:01

"THERE isn't an equivalent to chanson in the English-speaking songwriting world," laments Leon Rosselson. "What I like about France is that they have this genre, chanson, which is song taken seriously. It's not written for gain or fame; it's just that they treat the song form as a serious contribution to culture, which isn't the case here."

After 50 years of penning articulate and incisive songs which have entertained, provoked, occasionally scandalised but most of all made people think, Rosselson is well-placed to pronounce on an art form he feels is seriously undervalued in this country. "Here songs are just seen as throwaway things destined for the hit parade or the rubbish bin, or both."

Celebrating his 75th birthday this year, London-based Rosselson shows no signs of sitting back and can be heard on Friday at a special Edinburgh Folk Club gig, when he is joined by two other folk veterans and frequent collaborators, Sandra Kerr and Frankie Armstrong, as well as Scots singer Janet Russell, in Turning Silence Into Song: 50 Years of Rosselsongs.

Unlike his European heroes such as Jacques Brel and Georges Brassens, who became enshrined in popular culture, Rosselson remains best-known largely through the folk scene – although one of his most covered songs, The World Turned Upside Down, actually found its way into the pop charts in 1985, sung by Billy Bragg. Similarly Ballad of a Spycatcher, his reaction to the furore over the former intelligence officer Peter Wright's book, improbably found its way into the singles charts in a recording in which Rosselson was joined by Bragg and the Oyster Band.

Such anomalies apart, Rosselson's craft (which he maintains alongside a parallel existence as the writer of 17 books for children) is not one that brings fame and fortune – he once wrote a show pointedly titled How I Failed to Become Rich and Famous, but it is one he takes very seriously, although, he admits, after a half century it doesn't get any easier. "Because you understand more about the craft of songwriting … I'm much more strict with myself about the techniques than I used to be. When I first started, the songs just seemed to burst out, frequently and fluently but, of course, it gets more difficult."

He shies away from the term "protest singer", "because it's attached very much to the American songwriters of the 1960s, and I'm not really very keen on being called a political songwriter because it seems a very narrow definition. I've written songs for children, songs about relationships and all sorts of things, and I don't distinguish between those and the songs about political or social situations."

The current peccadilloes of bankers and parliamentarians, however, continue to provide song fodder, and as he writes in one recent offerings:

Robespierre is wagging his finger

Karl Marx is scratching his head

They ought to be shooting the bankers

But they're giving them money instead.

Many political songs inevitably have a limited shelf-life, but he recalls his early days as a songwriter in the 1960s, when his material was used on the pioneering TV satire show That Was the Week That Was. The show's producer, the late Ned Sherrin, phoned him to say that someone was anxious to record a song of his, The Battle Hymn of the New Socialist Party, which lampooned the Labour Party, with its line "And just to show we're still sincere, we sing The Red Flag once a year."

"I asked him who it was, and he said, 'Actually, it's the Conservative party.'" Sharp intake of breath, no doubt, but, he says, "the way the Labour Party has developed, that song can still be sung".

&#149 Turning Silence Into Song: 50 Years of Rosselsongs, is at the Pleasance, Edinburgh, on Friday at 8pm. For more details, see www.edinburghfolkclub.org.uk and www.leonrosselson.co.uk