Love Quote by Van Morrison

Skiffle is Van Morrison’s quiet rebuttal to the myth of the lone, mystical auteur. He’s pointing to something almost stubbornly unglamorous: a scrappy, communal style built on cheap instruments, American folk and blues hand-me-downs, and the pleasure of playing more than performing. In an era when legacy artists are expected to speak in grand arcs - reinvention, evolution, masterpiece albums - Morrison anchors his identity in the opposite direction: the informal jam, the room, the groove, the shared language.

The intent is protective. By naming skiffle as “defining,” he’s drawing a boundary around what counts as real music-making for him: not the polished product, not the brand, but the physical act of locking in with other players. That matters coming from someone whose catalog is often treated as quasi-spiritual literature. He’s demystifying himself, shifting attention from the frontman to the format that formed him.

The subtext is also generational and geographic. Skiffle was a British-Irish youth movement in the 1950s that let kids in places like Belfast build a bridge to Black American music before rock became an industry. Morrison is effectively tracing his artistry back to a DIY pipeline of influence and imitation, long before authenticity became a marketing word.

Contextually, it reads like a defense of feel in a modern music economy obsessed with control: click tracks, perfect takes, algorithm-friendly sheen. Skiffle, for him, is an argument for imperfection as truth - the kind you can only reach when you stop trying to “deliver” and start trying to play.