The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #141147 Message #3254782
Posted By: Jim Carroll
11-Nov-11 - 02:59 AM
Thread Name: 'Occupy English Folk Music!'
Subject: RE: 'Occupy English Folk Music!'
Thank you all for making my point for me so perfectly - 305 classic (Child) ballads - all no longer viable because they are "too long" for modern audiences - PATRONISING CRAP - IT'S THE CLUB ORGANISERS WITH THE CONCENTRATION PROBLEMS, NOT THE AUDIENCES.
I watched Peggy Seeger singing 'Fair Annie' to an capacity Irish audience last month - a room crammed full of people totally transfixed by a 14 minute unnacompanied ballad - but to be fair, traditional music is thriving here - half-a-dozen-plus weekly music and song sessions in this one-street town alone, and radio and television programmes on traditional music nightly.
I spent most of my life listening to and enjoying "too long" ballads - in MacColl's and Lloyds' and Belle and Sheila Stewarts', and Jennie Robertsons' and Duncan Williamson's and Walter Pardon's..... and all the other great ballad singer's cases, along with capacity audiences enjoying them with me - stop blaming the audiences for your own shallowness.
So you would jettison "the Muckle Sangs" (as Hamish Henderson put it) or "the high-watermark of our tradition - (MacColl) because you have driven away those audiences and replaced your residents and organisers with goldfish!!
That's what you "THAT'S WHAT YOU "COULDN'T PUT PLAINER" - PRATT!! (you stop this childish ill-mannered aggressiveness that you're noted for and I will).
It really is time to exctracted your collective heads out of your arses and take a look at the damage you've done to traditional music with your crass claims and your crap standards- it's the end result that counts.
"Too many people are trying to stake a claim on the term "Tradition" or "Traditional."
There is only one documented claim to "traditional" - the rest are undefined wannabe pretenders - but feel free to provide another definition at any time.
Jim Carroll