Folk Baroque - Significance

Significance

As well as being a continuing influence in Britain the style had an impact elsewhere. Martin Carthy passed on his guitar style to French guitarist Pierre Bensusan who made it part of his own technique for playing French and Irish music. Perhaps from here it was taken up by in Scotland by Dick Gaughan, but particularly by Irish musicians like Paul Brady, Dónal Lunny and Mick Moloney. Carthy also influenced Paul Simon, particularly evident on ‘Scarborough Fair’, which he taught to Simon, and a recording of Graham’s Anji that appears on Sounds of Silence, and as a result was copied by many subsequent folk guitarists. By the 1970s Americans such as Duck Baker, Eric Schoenberg were arranging solo guitar versions of Celtic dance tunes, slow airs, bagpipe music, and harp pieces by Turlough O'Carolan and earlier harper-composers. Renbourn and Jansch’s complex sounds were also highly influential on Mike Oldfield’s early music. The style also had an impact within electric folk, where, particularly Richard Thompson used the DADGAD tuning, but with a hybrid picking style to produce a similar, but distinctive effect.