The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #131220   Message #2959954
Posted By: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
07-Aug-10 - 04:38 AM
Thread Name: What isn't folk
Subject: RE: What isn't folk
Thanks for that Happy Together, which wound up in conclusion of The Mothers' Groupie Routine via ex-Turtles Mark Volman & Howard Kaylan, AKA Flo & Eddie, two of the finest singers that e're walked the earth. Coincidentally, today I will be seeking out 200 Motels on DVD...

Otherwise, Michael, to explore your analogy a littke further if I may. Thing is here, they're all animals in precisely the same biological sense, mammals indeed, they're just different species. They evolve, eat, lactate, procreate in exactly the same way; they each have brains, lungs, hearts, liver, bladder, skeletons etc. and yet they remain quite different in behaviour, environment, morphology etc. Folk is just another species, or genus, of musical diversity governed by the precisely same principles that determine all other musical species which is, ironically perhaps, encapsulated in both Louis Armstrong's Equus Conundrum and Maud Karpeles' 1954 Definition: that all music is the consequence of human collective & individual creative genius and is determined entirely by its history, yet will change and be changed as it makes its way into its future. As with mammals, music is different with respect of its behaviour, morphology & environment - not it's biology. Animals evolve too; some species may even interbreed to produce new ones; some have been selectively bred to produce many of the domesatic varieties we know today, but diversity & natural selection is always they key to the thing.

Meanwhile, Richard, still waiting for that example of a music which can't be covered by the 1954 Definition - or a mammal that grows from trees perhaps?