"Is mushroom soup any less authentic if it's sold as consomme champignon"
No, but if I order mushroom soup and I am brought a plate of baked beans something has gone severely wrong with our communication system.
Nobody has yet told me what the erzatz product and the real thing have in common enough for them to fall under the same classification - please tell why they are both 'folk'.
As many times as people use the term Geaneology it will remain an 'alogy' until somebody makes a cease for it being otherwise.
As many times as somebody may repeat that the 1954 definition is irrelevant, I have yet to hear one challenge to it.
Cap'n
One more time,
The older music saw the kitchen and crossroads dances virtually decimated by a charge being levied (one shilling per head I think) on everybody attending. This was backed up by the priests who claimed they didn't approve of young people meeting at such events unsupervised, but who really wanted to drive the people into church-run dance-halls (1935). The music barely survived this particular period.
Commercial records by Coleman et al established a manner of playing which virtually destroyed regional styles.
In latter days, when people started to be paid fees for playing at local bars, in many cases the sessions disappeared, to be replaced by recitals by professional musicians. It happened here in two pubs that have hosted sessions throughout most of the 20th century. It is the practice of some of these musicians to treat their 'booking' as a job of work, to get there at the allotted time, play up to the time they are paid for, and go home.
The complaint of the older people is that the 'craic' has gone from the music. In the old days the session was where you could go to play, stop and chat if you felt like it. In many cases it has become formal.
I won't start to talk about wrangles over playing (and in some cases recording) 'other people's tunes' that have caused dissention, and in some cases caused rancour in the communities, and and occasionally within families.
The last time we were in Connemara we were asked to pay €5.00 per head to go into a pub to listen to sean nós singing. Five years earlier we were in the same pub and when we asked about local singers, the feller we spoke to sang us half a dozen songs.
Our local traditional music centre is running seminars on how to make money out of singing.
All this may make you very happy - it pisses me off.
As I said, the older singers and musicians were there - we were not. Listen to them and you might - just - learn something.
Jim Carroll