British record company. It specializes in British Folk Revival performers and field recordings of traditional singers and musicians. Its earliest records were issued around 1939 by the Workers' Music Association. Founded in 1936, the WMA was a cultural offshoot of the Communist Party of Great Britain, but with Alan Bush as president and Benjamin Britten and Sir Granville Bantock among its vice-presidents, it received funding from the Ministry of Education between 1945 and 1949 and provided musical resources for a range of left-leaning organizations. Through the Topic Record Club it produced small runs of politically orientated recordings.
Topic's disparate early releases included some folksong, but when Bill Leader became production manager in 1956 a policy of specializing in Folk Revival and traditional performance was instituted. Particularly through the influence of A.L. Lloyd, its first artistic director, Topic shaped the repertory and performance style of the burgeoning Folk Revival. With Lloyd guiding record content and lending intellectual weight with his disc notes, Topic championed regional voices and industrial folksong and pioneered uncensored versions of erotic folksongs, also linking song from calendar customs with the fresh and vigorous singing of the Watersons, creating a new approach to the performance of English traditional songs. The vocal styles of other Topic performers and their forms of guitar accompaniment were equally influential on solo performance within the Folk Revival; English Country Music (recorded 1965, released 1976) provided similar models for instrumental musicians.
Field recordings of traditional musicians from North America and Eastern Europe were a significant part of Topic's output from the 1950s to the 70s. But the label's outstanding contribution to musicology was its collection of songs and music in Britain, such as the travellers' songs recorded on The Roving Journeymen (1962). The Voice of the People, a 20-part series drawing on Topic's archive of recordings of British traditional singers and musicians, was released in 1998.
Topic became a separate company in 1958 and achieved a financial base capable of developing its artistic policy. The company produced relatively few records during the 1980s, but the 1990s saw a resurgence of activity associated with the rise of interest in British tradition as an element of roots music. In 1991, Topic founded Direct Distribution, making recordings of traditional music more widely available in Britain.
GEORGINA BOYES