Young Audiences - Trad Folk V Folk Rock

Subject: RE: Young Audiences - Trad Folk V Folk Rock
From: Jeri
Date: 09 Oct 00 - 09:49 AM

Sam, this is just an opinion, and I don't know if I'm even close to right.

The appeal in traditional music first comes from people wanting to do it, not just listen. That's always been the way the music's survived. People learn to love it because it's their music, then learn to love other people who do it well.

If you change the music to be more like pop, then you've got pop music. Please note, this isn't a value judgement - I quite like some of it. It's just that you won't have created an interest in traditional music by doing that.

I've seen other discussions on this, and there seems to be an opinion that young people don't get involved in folk because their image of a folkie is one of a mature, somewhat rotund bearded guy with his finger jammed in his ear. Kids place an awful lot of importance on image, and the current image (right or wrong) says "this is not your music." Maybe if the image changed, kids would be more interested. Of course, I have no idea how you would do that, other than with advertising and being seen with "cool" people and in "cool" places.

If you don't want to change the music, you have to change people's attitudes toward it.

Subject: Young Audiences - Trad Folk V Folk Rock
From: GUEST,Sam Pirt
Date: 09 Oct 00 - 09:24 AM

Last weekend I was at the semi-finals of the young folk award and a discussion was going on about bringing younger audiences in to folk music and the best way of doing this.

One thing seemed to be appearing in the discussion where there was an assumption that if you put drums and bass behind the music it will have a wider appeal, which is in essence what folk rock is at a basic level. This does seem to work to a point.

But

Why bother with drums and basses when the music can stand up for its self very well. It almost seems to me like you are trying to hide the true music with loud drums & bass so that people will hear less of the trad melodies etc and more of the standard drum and bass sounds they are aware of. Will this be then really 'converting' them as such or just giveing them most of what they know with a few added extras, therefore not making as bigger impact on the audience. Do folk musicians know that folk music has loads of energy, subtlety and drive and it can stand up to popular music.

422 (winners of last year's Young folk awards and also the band I play in) don't need drums or bass. Our line up is fiddles, guitar, whistle and accordion and I can tell you we drive the music along. Drums & bass if anything would flatten our arrangements. How then can we get this real music out to young audiences? without resorting to standard tactics of drum and bass?

OK so I realise I may have ruffled a few feathers, but I do like folk rock I just am asking what people think about this and how we can get the more trad folk music (or dance/celidh music) out to a wider audience. It does have an appeal, its not strange its just that people don't know about it.

Cheers, Sam