Are 'Folk Arts' Elitist?

Subject: RE: Are 'Folk Arts' Elitist?
From: Marje
Date: 25 May 09 - 07:29 AM

There are also quite a number of the rural songs that are implicity pro-establishment - they sing of accepting the daily duties with good will, enjoying the simple things of life (when that's all you can afford anyway,)thanking the farmer for his benificence at the harvest supper, etc.

I know that many of the old songs deal with a way of life that no longer exists in any class now. But the best of them have at their centre something that anyone can respond to, whether it's weariness at the end of a working day, celebrating high days and holidays, welcoming the spring or summer, being reunited with a lover who's had to be away (men still go off to fight and women at home still wait for them), despair at being abandoned by a lover, distress at an unwanted pregnancy - it all still happens, albeit in a somewhat different social setting. And the relevance of such universal themes is not limited to any one class.

Marje

Subject: RE: Are 'Folk Arts' Elitist?
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 25 May 09 - 07:14 AM

OK, forgetting opinions regarding its origins, how should it be now?

I suppose it might be difficult where political/protest songs are involved but I like to think of the music I enjoy as not knowing boundaries such as class, etc.

In sessions, I have played in the with a tax exile millionaire as well as unemployed. I have played with All Ireland Champions and professionals as well as (hopefully wanting to learn - joining in IMO does need people pulling together) beginners. I have played with phd research scientists as well as those possibly without any level formal qualification. I have played with people I'd guess aged between 14 and 70. (and except with age [I'm 48], I occupy "lower" positions in all this).

Isn't this how it should be?

Subject: RE: Are 'Folk Arts' Elitist?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 25 May 09 - 07:13 AM

I have read the words, 'glueman', and I've been singing some of these songs for many years. Kindly explain to me how any of them are "anti-establishment", "utopian" (if even just "a touch") or "nationalistic". If it's too difficult to analyse them all in these (absurd) terms, let's just pick one: how can 'The Outlandish Knight' (any version you like - but I suppose the version in the 'Penguin Book of English Folk Songs' is easily accessible) be described as, 'anti-establishment', 'utopian' or 'nationalistic'?

Subject: RE: Are 'Folk Arts' Elitist?
From: glueman
Date: 25 May 09 - 06:49 AM

Yep, anti-establishment by and large, ruralist, common, a touch utopian, nationalistic, romantic even in its realistic phases. Not ill-informed at all, reed the wordz.

Subject: RE: Are 'Folk Arts' Elitist?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 25 May 09 - 05:52 AM

"The subject matter of folk music is almost universally anti-establishment ..." 'glueman'

No it's not! What ill-informed rubbish!

How are 'Searching for Lambs', 'The Banks of the Sweet Primroses', 'John Barleycorn', 'Lisbon', 'The Manchester Angel', 'The Furze Field', 'The Outlandish Knight', 'Scarborough Fair' or 'Bushes and Briars' "anti-establishment", 'glueman'?

Subject: RE: Are 'Folk Arts' Elitist?
From: GUEST,Lord O'May
Date: 25 May 09 - 05:47 AM

Okay - so that worked. So what's up with the Doc Rowe thread I wonder?

Meanwhile - whilst I'm here... What I should have said, CS was that no matter how seriously you take yourself, and the music, no one in the real world will ever take you seriously again simply because in the real world Folk Music is a complete & rightful irrelevance. Folkies (like railway modellers & battle re-enactors) take themselves very seriously indeed, which is why we have a folk scene, with singers both great and small, clubs, festivals, labels, websites, fora. As I said on the other thread, whilst that passion which keeps it afloat, it also appears decidedly bonkers from the outside where folk is seen, at best, as quaintly anachronistic hobbyism (which of course it is) rather than culture per se.

Subject: RE: Are 'Folk Arts' Elitist?
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 25 May 09 - 05:44 AM

The subject matter of folk music is almost universally anti-establishment and from the point of view of non-landowning 'peasant' classes.

The largest chunk of "my" folk has no subject matter.

Subject: RE: Are 'Folk Arts' Elitist?
From: glueman
Date: 25 May 09 - 05:42 AM

The point isn't only where the music was collected from but who wrote it and who sung it, your sainted 'process'. The subject matter of folk music is almost universally anti-establishment and from the point of view of non-landowning 'peasant' classes. It may be an inconvenient truth for the centrally-heated, car owning, baby-booming meritocracy but a truth it nevertheless is.

Keep a bag full of wry for those choruses Shimrod. Or maybe the processes natural conclusion is God Speed the Volvo?

Subject: RE: Are 'Folk Arts' Elitist?
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 25 May 09 - 05:40 AM

I think that it is 'hard to find'

OK, might need to know you want "folk" but is "folk" in some form or other hard to find in the UK?

I wouldn't have thought it was difficult to find a folk club of some sort. It might be a touch harder (although having found the folk club, you are on route to getting some leads) to find more specific events but I'm not always convinced all events wish to be sort of published "everywhere"...

...Now this bit may sound elitist but... while trying to be open, a session for example might fear opening the floodgates to every out of time bodhran basher and egg shaker in the area.

Subject: RE: Are 'Folk Arts' Elitist?
From: GUEST,Lord O'May
Date: 25 May 09 - 05:26 AM

This is just a test as I don't seem to be able to post anything this morning...

Subject: RE: Are 'Folk Arts' Elitist?
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 25 May 09 - 04:42 AM

Ahh, so thoughtful of you Lo'May! Most affecting.
Does this initiation mean I will now grow a beard and sandles?

Subject: RE: Are 'Folk Arts' Elitist?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 25 May 09 - 04:38 AM

The picture that 'glueman' and his ilk like to paint of the middle classes 'appropriating' (benignly or otherwise)the music and culture of the working classes is never quite as simple as it appears, especially if you look at who some of the Victorian and Edwardian collectors were and who their informants were.

- Hammond and Gardiner collected from elderly workhouse inmates in the South West (people who had been reduced to abject wretchedness by their society).

- Sharp collected from Somerset garment workers as well as agricultural labourers and gypsies etc.

- Baring Gould collected some of his songs from relatively well off Devon farmers.

- Kidson got some of his best material from wealthy Yorkshire mill owners.

- Williams worked as a labourer in the Swindon railway yards.

- John Clare was an early folk song collector and was himself a labourer. He recorded how local farmers participated in the local folk culture until the Enclosure Acts made them wealthy and impoverished their workers.

Subject: RE: Are 'Folk Arts' Elitist?
From: Art Thieme
Date: 24 May 09 - 09:50 PM

I overspoke. Bad day. Clicked from the lip . Too easy to do before one ought.

Art

Subject: RE: Are 'Folk Arts' Elitist?
From: olddude
Date: 24 May 09 - 08:13 PM

I ain't never heard a Rock-E-Feller from the 1930's write a dust bowl song ...maybe wrote one about going to Paris or somethin

Subject: RE: Are 'Folk Arts' Elitist?
From: GUEST,lox
Date: 24 May 09 - 05:50 PM

Buzzer65,

You are right that folk music is available to all who want it, and I share your point of view that class is irrelevant in terms of who folk represents or who it can or should be associated with.

That is my opinion about what should be and how I approach it day to day.

However, it is also true that when you look at history, you can observe clearly that there have been class divides in just about every culture in just about every era.

The UK and the USA are not exceptions.

There are many folk songs which, as recorders of history, have recorded this fact.

As it is possible to observe that there has been a class divide, so it is also possible to observe what kind of trends different class divisions have followed over the ages.

I don't pretend for one second that my post above is remotely authoritative, but I do think it is a realistic and interesting hypothesis.

Subject: RE: Are 'Folk Arts' Elitist?
From: GUEST,Lord O'May (Sedayne Astray)
Date: 24 May 09 - 05:31 PM

still, he did keep that one about ancient pipe music for more than a week, I think.

It's a Guest name, WAV - technical reasons, as I say. Rest assured, unlike MacCrimmon, O'Piobaireachd will return...

Subject: RE: Are 'Folk Arts' Elitist?
From: GUEST,Lord O'May (Sedayne Astray)
Date: 24 May 09 - 05:02 PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBXyB7niEc0

Subject: RE: Are 'Folk Arts' Elitist?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 24 May 09 - 04:58 PM

What the Dickens?..GUEST,Lord O'May (Sedayne Astray)...a poet who doesn't know it?
It would be wrong to say he's called me every name under the Sun - he's used a multitude for himself!...still, he did keep that one about ancient pipe music for more than a week, I think.

Subject: RE: Are 'Folk Arts' Elitist?
From: glueman
Date: 24 May 09 - 04:46 PM

To continue Lord O'May's theme (best incarnation so far) there is no sin in being middle class or even a connoisseur, neither a British bluesy pub rocker, nor the type who go round in a BMW motorcycle and sidecar in WW2 German military clothing, or indeed a folk singer - the error is in seeing yourself as direct inheritor of The Real Thing. Make believe is a valuable commodity and one individuals and the world at large might benefit from but is best undertaken with both feet firmly on the ground.

To that end when we turn out Macbooks into ploughshares of an evening an arched eyebrow is our best friend, especially when 1954 is on the menu.

Subject: RE: Are 'Folk Arts' Elitist?
From: Art Thieme
Date: 24 May 09 - 04:31 PM

My post above was to Buzzer65.
Art

Subject: RE: Are 'Folk Arts' Elitist?
From: Art Thieme
Date: 24 May 09 - 04:25 PM

Class only seems to be irrelevant to you because you have overtly and for your own interests changed it's name to UPSCALE instead of upper class. If you call a turd "merde" -- we all know what it truly is.

Wake up and smell the reality of it.

Here, in the USA, Lower class is and always has been a heinous reality to all of us who have had to descend into it's grip in order to have absolutely necessary medications and procedures paid for by a horrendously mutated public health-care system.

You are correct in saying that folk music is a way of recording history. My life in folk music has been devoted to that fact since I began doing it 50 years back.

I, for one, am totally sick of fighting the system that cannot see, and remedy, what Capitalist upscale upper class interests have done to create and maintain the lower class.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: Are 'Folk Arts' Elitist?
From: GUEST,Lord O'May (Sedayne Astray)
Date: 24 May 09 - 04:12 PM

And infrequent Guest posts like your last look almost certainly like trolling to me. Though if you have something more a little more considered to add to the discussion, it would of course be most welcome.

For various technical reasons I am posting as Guest: Lord O'May right now as Suibhne has Left the Building - but he will, hopefully, be returning soon. In any case I would have thought my response to Richard's comment Folk arts are rooted in the historic experience of the masses was both considered and in every way respectful to the author's general tenor around these parts.

Otherwise...

I don't think it's a matter of social-class or elitism, more a matter of the bucolic fantasy that is Folk per se, which exists on a similar cultural level as railway modelling & medieval battle re-enactment. In my more cynical moments I would say the only difference is that your average railway modeller would at least recognise a real train if they saw one; likewise the most hearty medieval re-enactor isn't going to complain if the government don't include them as part of our national defences.

Half the battle is simply accepting this - being happy with what it is rather than unhappy at what it isn't. You're a Folky now, Crow Sister - no one in the real world is going to take you seriously ever again.

Subject: RE: Are 'Folk Arts' Elitist?
From: glueman
Date: 24 May 09 - 03:58 PM

"But, 'glueman', most British Bluesmen are not black sharecroppers picking cotton in the Mississippi Delta - but I bet you don't go on and on and on about it! Class is not so much an "elephant in folk's drawing room" but more like a 'red herring in folk's sea'."

I'll take that bet. British blues bands need some hefty inverted commas to pull it off. Maybe Dr Feelgood (the canvey island act) could pull it off in their pomp though it works when it's adapted and transformed through Prog or Metal for instance into a domestic sound.
I fail to see how you can remove class from the equation when folk emerged as the voice of an oppressed underclass and has been collated and redistributed by Victorian and Edwardian connoisseurs.

Subject: RE: Are 'Folk Arts' Elitist?
From: Buzzer65
Date: 24 May 09 - 03:41 PM

Eee Bye Gum!! Thanks for the information!! I stared singing and playing in folk clubs twenty years ago. I didn't realise that I had gone up in class. I could have packed in my job at the factory and opened a little shop somewhere.

Folk music in essence is a record in song of history.

It doesn't matter what class you are...CLASS IS IRRELEVANT!!!!!

Subject: RE: Are 'Folk Arts' Elitist?
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 24 May 09 - 03:14 PM

"The working class invents music and the middle class takes responsibility for making sure it doesn't slip into obscurity"

Yeah, I think that's fair comment Lox, except I'd replace 'takes' with 'took' (as in the collectors).

As I said earlier, I don't know what others ground floor experiences are, but mine suggest that there is a high percentage of working class folk engaged in the making of folk music - though there has been a generational drop off in *both* middle class and working class participation of ground floor folk music making.

Subject: RE: Are 'Folk Arts' Elitist?
From: GUEST,lox
Date: 24 May 09 - 03:01 PM

Hows this for a controversial angle:

The working class invents music and the middle class takes responsibility for making sure it doesn't slip into obscurity ...

I wonder what the original blues men and folk singers and jazzers and medieval monks would have thought of middle class connoisseurs of their music?

We can thank the middle classes for the continuaton of these traditions as well as opera and ballet.

Remember that by the end of the 18th century, the middle class had taken over from the aristocracy as the market for these artforms too.

I don't think relevance has anything to do with it.

Subject: RE: Are 'Folk Arts' Elitist?
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 24 May 09 - 02:41 PM

What's more, I feel there's something wrong with this picture, wrong enough to warrant efforts to right it. Hence the queries posted on Folk Activism! thread (which was the initial source of debate resulting in the creation of this thread), which while I'm sure some might consider somewhat hysterical or crusading, merely means I give a fuck. But then again I alway's have been kicking my heels waiting for a revolution - so this'll have to do I guess!

Subject: RE: Are 'Folk Arts' Elitist?
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 24 May 09 - 02:26 PM

"more to do with the fact that folk simply doesn't get a fair go these days [...], such that only a few manage to "find it." "

I totally agree with you there Walkabouts, I think that it is 'hard to find' - or at least it certainly was for ME.
And none of my 30's working class OR middle class peers for that matter had a clue that this tradition of English trad. song ever even existed (let alone is being continued) either - at least until I started banging on about it...! And they're mostly very musical people in one shape or form, from the classically trained violinist, the regular alt. fest goer, the drum & didge maker, the the self-taught pianist and so-on.
Wonder why the dramatic generational cut-off in awareness? I'm actually pretty bummed off that I didn't stumble into this hidden stash many years ago - alway's loved to sing, just never found the right thang for me till now. It's a frustration and perplexing.

Subject: RE: Are 'Folk Arts' Elitist?
From: Art Thieme
Date: 24 May 09 - 02:12 PM

Given: "In-groups" seem often to exist to promote and enjoy a like preference -- in our case, for a musical form. They also can exist for the recognition they get from the "out-groups"--and, therefore, might be observed to be "elitist" by those who might want to denigrate them by pointing out the preferences as a negative trait that is worthy of the derision the word elitist could, and sometimes does, project!

Art Thieme--

Subject: RE: Are 'Folk Arts' Elitist?
From: Leadfingers
Date: 24 May 09 - 12:30 PM

ANY Minority music is going to lose out in the Grants battle ! How many people who look in here are aware of the Calypso Movement in UK for example ?

Subject: RE: Are 'Folk Arts' Elitist?
From: GUEST,Hootenanny
Date: 24 May 09 - 12:20 PM

British bluesmen????

Never been such a thing. But, for a short time we did have Champion Jack Dupree by adoption.

Hoot

Subject: RE: Are 'Folk Arts' Elitist?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 24 May 09 - 12:09 PM

"That's the elephant in folk's drawing room and most of us live with the reality we're not horny handed sons of the soil but have the pleasure and leisure of pretending."

But, 'glueman', most British Bluesmen are not black sharecroppers picking cotton in the Mississippi Delta - but I bet you don't go on and on and on about it! Class is not so much an "elephant in folk's drawing room" but more like a 'red herring in folk's sea'.

Subject: RE: Are 'Folk Arts' Elitist?
From: glueman
Date: 24 May 09 - 08:48 AM

Ah Spleen but the West Midlands is a law enirely unto itself. My wife is a yam-yam who, because of the villages her family moved out to, knocked around with the kids of West Mids rock royalty and sometimes still does when er gows back. Anyone who has seen Reeves and Mortimer's 'Slade at Home' sketches will realise they are documentary of Humphrey Jennings' standards. Black Magic, impossible guitar solos and high comedy. You gotta love brummies.

Subject: RE: Are 'Folk Arts' Elitist?
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 24 May 09 - 08:18 AM

yet that's representative of those I've met at the sessions I've attended. I'd say the majority of participants - in my own admittedly limited experience - are actually working class.

I wouldn't suggest class in the sessions I've attended regularly but I might suggest education. I'd say the majority of people I know from these Irish sessions have at least a bachelors degree, I've not noticed this as much in folk clubs.

Subject: RE: Are 'Folk Arts' Elitist?
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 24 May 09 - 08:13 AM

As someone who grew up working class and whose aspirations are now undoubtedly middle class, the kids I remember who had access to instruments were of more elevated stock than myself and those instruments were always acoustic. People who had to wait for their own wages to pursue music usually did so on electic gear.

You should have tried growing up in the West Midlands in the seventies, G. All the working class kids wanted to play in heavy rock bands, whilst all the middle class kids wanted to, erm, play in heavy rock bands. Okay, bit of a generalisation, but I firmly believed at the time that the entire youth of Walsall were united in an abiding love of Purple, Zep, Sabbath and Heep. It was a moment of sheer truimph the day we got Gong/Here and Now's "Floating Anarchy" onto the school record player...

Sorry for the drift within a drift, CS. For the record I think folk arts are like everything else. They can be elitist but they don't have to be and they're not intrinsically so. I also think that elitism, for a whole host of reasons, is often in the eye of the beholder. There are many times I have felt as if I were on the outside looking in, but when I have come inside have been mystified I could ever have felt that way. There are other times I have headed, whimpering with gratitude, straight for the exit. Deep, me? You bet!

Subject: RE: Are 'Folk Arts' Elitist?
From: Will Fly
Date: 24 May 09 - 07:51 AM

As someone who grew up working class and whose aspirations are now undoubtedly middle class, the kids I remember who had access to instruments were of more elevated stock than myself and those instruments were always acoustic. People who had to wait for their own wages to pursue music usually did so on electic gear.

Perhaps it's a little more complex than that. I bought my first (acoustic) guitar age 20 in 1964. Cost me £5 from my student summer job wages and was complete crap. Father: technical director of a paper mill in Lancashire with company house and company car. He just wouldn't buy me a guitar - didn't like them - and also objected when I bought my first upright, s/h piano (for £4.50) and brought it home! I didn't get a proper solid electric guitar till many, many years later, but went electric by fitting a De Armond soundhole pickup to my old Epiphone Texan...

Subject: RE: Are 'Folk Arts' Elitist?
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 24 May 09 - 07:18 AM

"Posts like that one are certainly elitist, Crow Sister."

Bit more of a petulant foot stamping from me really. And infrequent Guest posts like your last look almost certainly like trolling to me. Though if you have something more a little more considered to add to the discussion, it would of course be most welcome.
Anyway's I really aughtn't get into online quibbling when there's such a glorious May day beckoning outside...!

Glueman - I'm not so sure about the acoustic V's electric division between middle classes and working classes? Admittedly I'm older now so I don't really know what happens now, but fifteen years ago all my mates were learning acoustic guitar or blues harp. And I'd guess that a cheap classical guitar, is still one of the first things that most working class kids pick up. I agree however many standard folk instruments, do cost dosh and require a dedicated interest (which due to the niche nature of folk) is possibly going to be more likely found with the middle classes. Though I'd guess with the tide changing and more folk artists getting seen and heard in the big wide world outside of folk clubs, and so forth, that we might see a gathering momentum of interest amongst working class kids for making the music themselves.

Subject: RE: Are 'Folk Arts' Elitist?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 24 May 09 - 05:50 AM

Not "elite," in my opinion, but, as I've suggested here, more to do with the fact that folk simply doesn't get a fair go these days (it's now swamped by American-pop in most countries), such that only a few manage to "find it." And glad you've brought this up, CS.

Subject: RE: Are 'Folk Arts' Elitist?
From: GUEST,Lord O'May
Date: 24 May 09 - 04:44 AM

Didn't bother with the last Guest post, as he seems to be largely a figment of his own imagination.

Posts like that one are certainly elitist, Crow Sister.

Subject: RE: Are 'Folk Arts' Elitist?
From: glueman
Date: 24 May 09 - 04:43 AM

As someone who grew up working class and whose aspirations are now undoubtedly middle class, the kids I remember who had access to instruments were of more elevated stock than myself and those instruments were always acoustic. People who had to wait for their own wages to pursue music usually did so on electic gear.

Times have changed but it's still largely true that trained musicians - those from the middle or aspirational working class - are more likely to play traditional instruments and self-taught types use electric guitars and keyboards.

Subject: RE: Are 'Folk Arts' Elitist?
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 24 May 09 - 04:29 AM

Ooops meant: "NOT representative of"
Dunno what other people's experiences of the ground floor are though?

Subject: RE: Are 'Folk Arts' Elitist?
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 24 May 09 - 04:27 AM

"I don't think folk arts are elitist, more middle class."

Hmm... yet that's representative of those I've met at the sessions I've attended. I'd say the majority of participants - in my own admittedly limited experience - are actually working class.

Subject: RE: Are 'Folk Arts' Elitist?
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 24 May 09 - 04:21 AM

Cross-posted there.

Subject: RE: Are 'Folk Arts' Elitist?
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 24 May 09 - 04:19 AM

If English Folk Arts are now 'elitist', I wonder why? Clearly socio-economic changes led to the working classes adopting alternate more 'consumable' and perhaps even 'aspirational' pass-times (based on the devaluation of traditional ones)? Not knowing much about social history perhaps someone else might take up those issues?

In terms of the elitism of Folk Arts in the present day, it reminds me of those rare bird egg collectors, the only reason they want that stuff is because the breed is dying out. They have little or no interest in the bird or it's well-fare - in fact quite the opposite. If the bird were to breed, those priceless egg objects, would suddenly become worthless, to the collector at least.

Subject: RE: Are 'Folk Arts' Elitist?
From: glueman
Date: 24 May 09 - 04:19 AM

I don't think folk arts are elitist, more middle class. That has become a perjorative term, indeed I'm happy to use it as such if it suits me but here it's plain fact. The 'working class' - or those who've inherited the tag have little time for the folk arts by and large and generally speaking the toffs have other interests so it's left to 'informed enthusiasts' with enough spare time and wonga to indulge themselves in hand crafted music and product in a mass produced age.

That's the elephant in folk's drawing room and most of us live with the reality we're not horny handed sons of the soil but have the pleasure and leisure of pretending. The game is up for the tradition as the immediate musical enterprise when kids can buy mixers and emulating software for their computers so folk has to work out what and who it's for without the hotline to the past it always presumed to.

I'd argue there's a contemporary folk sensibility, music and craft that needs to re-evaluate its direction in the light of William Morris, Rambling Syd Rumpo and the commodification of folk.

Subject: RE: Are 'Folk Arts' Elitist?
From: The Barden of England
Date: 24 May 09 - 03:34 AM

The Opera House at Covent Garden gets a grant of 16 million pounds a year from the Arts Council. Now I don't begrudge that, however - how much do the Folk Arts of this country get each year? I honestly don't know, but if somebody does I just wondered if they could let us all know.
John Barden

Subject: Are 'Folk Arts' Elitist?
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 24 May 09 - 03:13 AM

I hope the posters in question will not be put out too much by me cutting and pasting this tangential thread of comments debating the relevence or otherwise of Folk Arts to the masses (posted on Folk Activism! thread.). I thought this discussion pertinent to this board, and thus might warrant a thread of it's own?

From: Richard Bridge - PM
Date: 23 May 09 - 07:37 AM

In the main however I think we need someone like Joanna Lumley to ram it through to the powers that be and the ministry of Culture that THIS culture merits promotion - indeed far more so than things like opera and ballet which are of no relevance to most of the world, and for which there is no major tradition in the UK anyway

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From: glueman - PM
Date: 23 May 09 - 07:56 AM

"more so than things like opera and ballet which are of no relevance to most of the world"

You were doing so well till that point. I can hear Joe Public saying the same thing of Morris dancing and Maypoles. Never understood this high/low art snobbery. I'm happy to do Glyndebourne and football terraces - at least in the places terraces still remain. All art is mine, all mine!!!

From: glueman - PM
Date: 23 May 09 - 08:49 AM

The point is campaigns like these so often define themselves by what they are against, or name other genres they believe have unfair advantages. The idea of promoting folk is a valuable one without dissing other art forms.

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From: Crow Sister - PM
Date: 23 May 09 - 09:04 AM

Sure, I like early English music and contemporary dance too and I doubt either of these are particularly important to the majority of people.
I don't think RB was saying ballet and opera are 'crap', just that - very much like folk I guess - they are of little interest or consequence to the public at large.
Irrespective of this however, what they do have - unlike folk - is a whole lot more funding and promotion. While these arts may well be entirely worthy of receiving the recognition and support that they do, I personally see that *key disparity* as relevent and worthwhile to recognise and consider.

So long as we don't fall into err 'dissing' innit.

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From: Richard Bridge - PM
Date: 23 May 09 - 12:41 PM

Gg - I left the issue of "taste" right out of it. Opera is in the main not "relevant" (the word I actually used) because it is not rooted in the experience of the bulk of these isles - or indeed any other. It is a wholly elitist pursuit. Folk arts are rooted in the historic experience of the masses.

Further, those who in the main like opera have enough money to support it for themselves.

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From: glueman - PM
Date: 23 May 09 - 03:05 PM

Rooted in what experience? Elitist how? 'Folk arts' are as elevated as Billy Budd. Try buying a Shaker cabinet or some Staffordshire flat backs to see how down-home the folk arts are.

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From: Rifleman - PM
Date: 23 May 09 - 03:13 PM

"Folk arts are rooted in the historic experience of the masses."

sounds like one of those phrases"leftie" to me.
It's certainly rooted in the experiences of people; but the masses, nope

and folk arts are NOT elitist? If not elitist then they certainly are a special interest, every bit as much as opera, and classical music

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Didn't bother with the last Guest post, as he seems to be largely a figment of his own imagination. If anyone isn't happy about me pasting their comments here, I'll ask the Mod's to delete this thread.