English folk singer, songwriter, and activist Billy Bragg is no stranger to the Newport Folk Festival. He first played the annual gathering at Fort Adams State Park in 1993, returning most recently in 2017 as part of the “Speak Out” sessions, where he shared the stage with Jim James, Margo Price, and Nathaniel Rateliff.
Bragg returns to the Fort Stage on July 27 at 12:25 pm this year, an early set sure to inspire the Newport faithful. He recently logged on for a Zoom chat from across the pond, where he chimed in on music, politics, and the prominence of Newport Folk in the annals of popular music history.
The songwriter emerged in England in the early 1980s, wielding an aggressive punk-influenced approach to acoustic music. “I’m in a weird situation,” he laughed. “I get to play folk festivals, rock festivals, and Punk Rock Bowling in Las Vegas. I somehow qualify for all of them.”
Bragg appreciates the opportunity to play Newport and is entirely conscious of the Festival’s legacy. “The special thing about Newport is its profile above and beyond just a general festival,” he began. “It stands for something; it has a reputation that proceeds it and has a history behind it. Not just the history of Bob Dylan going electric, which we are all aware of, but also the strong tradition of protest music at the festival.”
“It’s in Fort Adams, you’re in a historical site, and you find yourself kind of wandering around in these rooms where there were big cannons, where someone might be doing a radio interview – I had a photo session last time I was there,” he said.
Bragg views folk music through a modern lens, as a continually evolving musical genre that throws a wide net. “Although the music you hear there isn’t always traditional, the festival has a very traditional vibe,” he said. “I like that.”
“The folk genre, it seems to me, has been superseded by Americana, which fits in a lot of things, a lot of roots, soul, basically a lot of African-American roots music comes through that way,” he explained. “If you look back at the festivals of the 1960s, that was very much part of it. It was always an Americana festival; it was never pure folk. The year Dylan went electric, Muddy Waters had already played an electric guitar there. It wasn’t as if Dylan was introducing something into this pure space where only acoustic instruments had played before. The festival had already begun moving in that Americana direction.”
It’s no secret that Bragg has always placed activism at the center of his art, focused on strengthening the influence of worker’s unions. It’s been a fundamental part of his mission since the 1980s when he came to international prominence protesting U.K. government policies of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. He continues to inspire workers around the world to this day. “In my set, I have a song that I wrote during the (1984 U.K.) miners’ strike called ‘Between the Wars.’ When I play it, it sometimes evokes a nostalgic feeling with my audience, going back to those days,” he remarked.
“Another song, ‘There is Power in the Union,’ I see people in the audience who weren’t even born when I wrote that song,” he continued. “They’ve got their fists in the air and are singing it at the top of their lungs because many have been on a picket line. In my country, some teachers have been on strike; there are nurses, paramedics, people who work on the railways, and people who work at Amazon. A new generation of people realize that there is power in the union. Last time I was in the US, I played at a picket line at Starbucks in Buffalo, and those kids knew more verses of (labor anthem) ‘Solidarity Forever’ than I did.”
Bragg believes the music is entirely relevant for our times. “We’re not looking back to a time that was… it’s not old timey music, the union music,” he said. For example, “our song that Woody (Guthrie) wrote, ‘All You Fascists Are Bound to Lose;’ I was told via email that the song was trending in France after the first round of elections there.”
Bragg recently penned a song in response to the controversial Oliver Anthony hit “Rich Men North of Richmond.” “I wrote a song (“Rich Men Earning North of a Million”), in response that said, if you don’t want rich men to have total control, then form a union. That’s the way to do it, not just complain about working people living on welfare.”
The Folk Festival is the final stop on Bragg’s mini-tour of the Northeast, which begins on July 18, before he returns to the U.S. and Canada in September. He plays the Fort Stage on Saturday, July 27, at 12:25.
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