Michael Raven – The Jolly Machine – Songs of Industrial and Social Discontent

The songs in these pages have been selected from the great outpouring of popular verse that accompanied the Industrial Revolution in the West Midlands. 

Many of the songs first appeared on either broadsides or in local newspapers, but in most cases have been adapted and set to music by various of our contemporaries involved in the folk revival. 

This can be quite fairly thought of as being in the nature of the folk process. Indeed, if the great bulk of industrial material is ever to achieve the grandeur of our traditional rural folksong such development is a necessity. For this reason let no one feel that because a particular version and arrangement of a song is put into print that it thus becomes definitive. Includes Notes to the songs.