Subject: RE: Is traditional song finished?
From:
GUEST,Spleen Cringe
Date: 27 Feb 10 - 01:21 PM
The shit idea that what they gave us is no different to T Rex, or Daniel O'Donnell, or Robbie Williams, or Frank Sinatra or Luciano Pavarotti....
Any music made with love, passion, commitment, joy etc has an intrinsic value, whether it is an elderly country man singing songs handed down to him; an Italian opera singer belting out the classics; a teenage girl in her bedroom with a guitar putting the finishing touches on the first original song she has written; a bunch of middle aged men belting their favourite songs from their younger days in the back room of a pub; a group of free jazz musicians experimenting with the outer limits of post-post-bop… To try and impose some sort of artificial hierarchy based on spurious and subjective notions of purity or authenticity does no-one any favours, least of all those who love traditional song. I totally accept that there is a difference between the sort of tin pan alley manufactured pop that is produced assembly-line style to shift units and sell newspaper column inches, but now more than ever that is a small minority of the totality of music being created. Traditional folk is different to manufactured pop product – but then again so is most music.
The music you appear to prefer was made, packaged and sold to us. We had no part in its making; it is a commodity, and not too long in the future it will be scrapped and we will be given something else to listen to; and so ad infinitum. WE HAD NO PART IN ITS MAKING. IT WILL NEVER BE OURS, THE ONLY CLAIM WE HAVE ON IT IS THE ONE WE PURCHASED, THE RIGHT TO LISTEN TO IT.
I had no part in making any, be it traditional folk, manufactured pop or the vast majority of music which is neither one nor the other of those two examples. I would go as far as to say that your position as expressed above is grossly insulting to those people who enjoy playing and listening to music of all sorts – and do so for no reason other than it brings them immense pleasure. I would also add that traditional folk is a type of music that I can only purchase. I do not live in a community that has a living folk tradition. Most of the traditional singers who were recorded are dead or inactive and their music is only available to me in terms of "purchasing the right to listen to it". Yes, I can sing a traditional song in a pub and listen to other hobbyists do the same – but that is true of all types of music as thousands up and down the country who regularly bring themselves and others pleasure at folk clubs, open mics, acoustic nights and so on will readily attest.
Folk music is ours, it is 'The Music of The People'; made by them/us to express our/their lives and experiences, then passed on to others who re-made it so it became theirs. It is our culture, our history, our experiences, our emotions..... made by working people: mill workers, miners, seamen, farm workers..... 'ordinary people' if there is such a thing.
Was, maybe, in some communities. Nowadays, the "music of the people" is the music that people enjoy listening to on their iPods and at concerts, playing at pubs and clubs and each others homes, creating in their home studios, sharing excitedly with their friends when they hear something that moves them. Yes, yes, yes, changes in technology has meant that people are more likely to pop a CD on than sing to themselves as they cook their tea or go about their job, but that's the world we live in. We may have been born into a world where, in many ways, many of us are "passive consumers" not active creators (or conduits or whatever) of music, but what right does that give you to sneer and look down your nose and attempt to undermine and invalidate the pleasure we do get from the music around us? The process is essentially the same. Some sing and play: others get pleasure from their singing and playing. That's how its been as long as I've been listening to music. Is there any thing intrinsically wrong with this? Is Jethro listening to Albert singing "Seeds of Love" in a 19th century field (or Peter listening to Martin attempting to reconstruct this in a present day folk club) intrinsically better than Emily listening to the Arctic Monkeys at the Manchester Academy or Chloe listening to Hannah strumming her songs of bedsit romance in the upstairs room of a café bar? Sure, Emily has to pay for her ticket, and so possibly does Chloe, but both are a willing participant in that transaction and both are presumably experiencing the same emotional responses to music as did Jethro.
Please try to understand that a passion for traditional song – especially when expressed in this sort of language - can sometimes spill over into a snide contempt for all the other music that people enjoy, and possibly enjoy for the same reasons that first drew you to folksong. Just because you can point to "the folk process" as a mechanism that made the transmission of traditional music different - in the pretechnological era - to modern music, doesn't give you the right to trash other stuff. As a child of the post-rock and roll era, I am more than comfortable with the concept of music as a smorgasbord, with tradtional folk as one of the many dishes available. A particularly tasty dish, true, but not the only one that can nourish and satisfy.
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sj
