Though some may not think that the following comment relates to the subject of this thread, I wholeheartedly believe that it does.

thread.cfm?threadid=72978#6560

Subject: RE: This Forum & American Folk Music
From: GUEST,Frank Hamilton - PM
Date: 05 Sep 04 - 05:28 PM

I've been studying folk music for over fifty years and I've come to the conclusion that I really don't quite know what it is. So, it's the music, words. culture and history that are important to me.

I have tried to approach it from a musical standpoint. Tried to learn to play it, see what makes it tick from the standpoint of harmony, melody, modes, rhythm, counterpoint, vocal and instrumental.

I used to think that it was a form of expression that was somehow separate from other forms of music, and now I don't believe that anymore. I hear jazz in the blues, blues in the appalachian songs and bluegrass, country sounds in the blues, popular music in the ballads (even the trad ones), minstrel tunes in bluegrass and old timey, American banjo playing in Irish music, Irish keening in mountain ballads, minor singing against the major chords of the hymns, religious in the secular and secular in the religious. I hear folk in the rock music, African music in Motown and Hip Hop, and now Hip Hop is all over the world. I hear be bop in B.B. and down home blues in Bird. I hear the wailing of Indian shanai in Coltrane. Scott Joplin, Jelly Roll Morton, Fats Waller and James P. Johnson in Mississipi John Hurt, Rev. Gary Davis and Big Bill.
I hear thirteenth chords and diminished chords in Pete's banjo. I hear the "concert artists" such as Jean Ritchie and Redpath following a traditional classical music pattern of performing for paying audiences. Doc Watson plays "Over the Rainbow" and Rockabilly when he does his accoustic country counterpoint. I hear Jimmy Rodgers and Texas Gladden in his singing. Also Ernest Tubbs. I hear the Golden Gate Quartet and Dixie Hummingbirds in the Bluegrass gospel music. "It Is No Secret", a Gospel hymn by Stuart Hamblin, a Country/Western singer (when they had that category) was a staple of African-American gospel churches. I hear old English parlor songs in the Carter Family and some vaudeville numbers there too.

In short, I no longer believe that there is one clear path to American folk music. It's a big stew and the solution to the problem of learning it is to study how it's been used in the extraordinarilly various ways. Sometimes, a genre creeps in that seems definitive and then that is shown to be influenced by something else. A solution to it's study for me has been to learn how so and so does it and look to the background and history of the song or tune.

The person that tries to keep folk music pure is tilting at windmills. As human beings in geneology, we are all said to be descendents of Halfdan the Warty and Erik the Fart but I think we probably go back to preZinganthropus in the Oldavai Gorge in Africa. Music follows our species in the same way, a long river with myriad tributaries.

There is no pure English, Irish, American, Scottish or any other national or international music but there are elements that we recognize and honor. They can be studied, played, sung and enjoyed with the rigors of learning any musical discipline through notes or without notes. The artists that we admire have cultivated a craft through spending a lot of time at it and whatever it turns out to be reflects that sincerity, conviction and perspicacity that it takes to learn it.

Frank Hamilton

-snip-

Btw: this post was part of the Mudcat search engine's listing of posts on the topic of African music. I guess that's because the word "Africa" and "African" are used.

Be that as it may, I'm certainly glad I found this post.
And I very much agree with the comment which follows that one:

Subject: RE: This Forum & American Folk Music
From: Jerry Rasmussen - PM
Date: 05 Sep 04 - 05:32 PM

Wonderful posting, Frank!