Trad Music Comment from Bob Davenport

Subject: TRAD MUSIC COMMENT Bob Davenport
From: The Sandman
Date: 09 Nov 24 - 03:45 AM

"Traditional music is for entertaining it is not for a further education class" Bob Davenport.
Is there any reason why it cannot be for both?

Subject: RE: TRAD MUSIC COMMENT Bob Davenport
From: Johnny J
Date: 09 Nov 24 - 04:04 AM

It depends what you mean by "Further Education" as well?

Are we talking about music tuition(practical and theory) as in the Trad Music Courses or discussion and debate about the music in general?

Also, I'd disagree that Trad Music was specifically for entertaining although that's a very important aspect and the most common use.
There's also a tradition of "working songs" with fisher folk, miners, loom weavers, tweed "waulking" and so on.
Also, we all play music ourselves and often for our own benefits although, arguably, we could be entertaining ourselves.

Subject: RE: TRAD MUSIC COMMENT Bob Davenport
From: The Sandman
Date: 09 Nov 24 - 04:49 AM

JohnnyJ ,good points

Subject: RE: TRAD MUSIC COMMENT Bob Davenport
From: GUEST,Steve Shaw
Date: 09 Nov 24 - 04:59 AM

One hundred percent, Johnny. Also, I'm not sure that we need "trad" in this conversation - maybe just "music." In a book I have about Beethoven the author implicitly characterises music as song or dance, which I suppose is how music "started" thousands of years ago. When it comes to education, I'd be highly suspicious of anyone who tried to use music to "educate" me. Helping me to interpret music is a very different thing. What I like about seeing music as song and dance is the implication that we interact with music and don't just sit back and let it passively entertain us. That can be as basic as singing along with your favourite Beatles songs (even if you just do it inside your head, as Mrs Steve would far prefer that I did). Music can be inspiring, uplifting, edifying, life-affirming, or it may be just a way of relieving the tedium of everyday life, as in those working songs. Or a mixture of all that.

The great pianist and conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy one said words to the effect that music was a complete mystery to him. I like that. It's a humbling thought!

Subject: RE: TRAD MUSIC COMMENT Bob Davenport
From: The Sandman
Date: 09 Nov 24 - 12:55 PM

his statement is an interesting reflection of the man himself, a certain irony as the statement appears to me to be didactic.

Subject: RE: TRAD MUSIC COMMENT Bob Davenport
From: GUEST,RA
Date: 09 Nov 24 - 01:16 PM

Just as young children learn best through play...

Subject: RE: TRAD MUSIC COMMENT Bob Davenport
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Nov 24 - 05:49 AM

where exactly does this quote from BD come from? it does sound like him, but you can't just quote people without giving a bit of context, unless you just want to stir up trouble|?

Subject: RE: TRAD MUSIC COMMENT Bob Davenport
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Nov 24 - 07:32 AM

"a certain irony as the statement appears to me to be didactic. "??? No irony at all unless he sang that quote to a traditional tune.

Subject: RE: Trad Music Comment from Bob Davenport
From: FreddyHeadey
Date: 10 Nov 24 - 03:29 PM

^^ GUEST 10 Nov 24 - 05:49 AM

2014 Guardian
review by Rob Young
Singing from the Floor
by JP Bean
Schisms existed almost from the beginning – "It was like puritans and cavaliers," says singer Harvey Andrews – as MacColl ran Ballads and Blues at the Princess Louise pub in London's High Holborn (later the renowned Singers' Club) as a petty dictatorship, a microcosm of imagined musical purity and authenticity. "He laid this stuff down whereby you had to sing from where you came from," complains revival singer Bob Davenport. "Traditional music was for entertaining, it wasn't for a further education class." For MacColl and other hardliners, folk music was a revolutionary tonic to fortify the troops against the advancing pop-music hordes. Eventually he set up, with Seeger, his own politburo – the weekly study sessions known as the Critics Group, a ritual of essentialism that was taken up elsewhere. In one Nottingham club, a panel of frowning committee members sat on a windowsill behind the stage, and their disapproving faces could be observed by the audience while the poor singer strove to please. For younger performers such as guitarist John Renbourn, these folk assizes were "sheer hell".
www.theguardian.com/books/2014/feb/26/singing-floor-folk-review-jp-bean

more
www.google.com/search?q=%22Singing+from+the+Floor%22+%22JP+Bean%22
_________________________

Subject: RE: Trad Music Comment from Bob Davenport
From: The Sandman
Date: 10 Nov 24 - 03:52 PM

In one Nottingham club, a panel of frowning committee members sat on a windowsill behind the stage, quote

Frowning, really they sat there all night frowning? that is unlikely, there was a club in Nottingham with a reputation for a high standard of traditional singing, where the residents sat behind the stage, but to give the impression that they always sat there frowning is ridiculous, this club NTMC had a Policy and was very succesful for many years.
There was another club in south west london that had a blues policy, and it too was successful

Subject: RE: Trad Music Comment from Bob Davenport
From: meself
Date: 10 Nov 24 - 06:24 PM

If there's one thing I've learned from Mudcat, it's that there is not a consensus opinion regarding MacColl and his approach to folk-singing.

Subject: RE: Trad Music Comment from Bob Davenport
From: The Sandman
Date: 10 Nov 24 - 11:15 PM

in my opinion, and it is only an opinion, the best way to approach traditional music or any musical genre is to listen to it a lot and absorb and practice.
I did not like the policy of resident singers sitting behind performers ,i think it creates a them and us situation, it was not a policy of the singers club but of Nottingham traditional music club. But no one was ever forced to go to a particular club there were plenty of different clubs with different policies, people had plenty of choice. People should be free to learn the history of songs if they want to without being criticised for it, however presenting background to songs in performance requires avoiding being long winded and didactic .

Subject: RE: Trad Music Comment from Bob Davenport
From: The Sandman
Date: 11 Nov 24 - 12:12 AM

Music and Trad Music is also about connecting, expressing feeling, emotion, happiness sadness, stimulating thought, challenging the status quo?

A slow air, for example is about expressing' sadness,
so to say.
Traditional music is for entertaining is an over simplification

Subject: RE: Trad Music Comment from Bob Davenport
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 11 Nov 24 - 02:41 AM

There is more to folk singing than standing up and making a noise, but at the same time there is a world of difference between lecturing and informing the audience. Similarly there is no reason my part of the folk singer's craft should be to inform - but in an entertaining way, particularly where the context of fol song may be lost in the modern contemporary world.

At the same time, as singers we need to understand the context of what we are singing, out of respect for our material and that understanding should project itself through the performance. I often saw this at the Players Theatre where we could see the difference between seasoned performers and those new to the genre. Similarly I have heard people singing shanties because they have rousing choruses without fully understanding the context not just the lyrics but also the timing and stresses.(Though I think the group I belonged to did have a tendency to lecture a little bit - On the other hand Stan's (Hugill) intros were appropriate as he lived and worked in the genre).

Subject: RE: Trad Music Comment from Bob Davenport
From: GUEST,Sean O'Shea
Date: 11 Nov 24 - 02:45 AM

What a pointless and vacuously conceived thread.

---

You're stalking, Sean. It seems that the only time that you post, is when you're stalking Dick Miles. Stop it, or we will make you disappear.
Joe Offer, Mudcat Music Editor.

Subject: RE: Trad Music Comment from Bob Davenport
From: GUEST
Date: 11 Nov 24 - 06:00 AM

I'd say Bob would not regard himself as a 'performer' at all but rather as a part of the tradition of music, where he never lost his place in it- with not much time for the 'folk' aspect of the music.

Whether he as 'successful' or not is irrelevant- he did influence a lot of people, and has done festivals & folk clubs where asked, but his
heart has always been in a wider range of music, old and new, and his repertoire supports that view.

Subject: RE: Trad Music Comment from Bob Davenport
From: GUEST,Derrick
Date: 11 Nov 24 - 06:36 AM

The concept of "folk song" as an art form was invented by Victorian scholars who were amazed to find that the lower classes had songs and tunes of their own at a time when they were considered uneducated and uncultured.
The songs they sang were a mixture of self penned material and published songs which they enjoyed and had meaning to them.
They would be sung at social events or as a means of passing time at home, the equivalent of watching tv today.
If you find research and study of the history of songs interesting enjoy that aspect by all means do so,the problem comes when, as some people do, take their studies so seriously it becomes almost a religion and they criticise those those who merely treat it as entertainment.The bottom line is no one is right or wrong

Subject: RE: Trad Music Comment from Bob Davenport
From: Manitas_at_home
Date: 11 Nov 24 - 07:51 AM

The quote above mentioned a Nottingham club. We don't know if it was a folk club, although that was implied, and we don't know if it was Nottingham traditional music club. Is it possible there was more than one folk club in Nottingham?

Subject: RE: Trad Music Comment from Bob Davenport
From: The Sandman
Date: 11 Nov 24 - 08:53 AM

there were several ,but there was only one club where residents sat behind perfomers and that was NTMC, I lived in Nottingham in the late 1980s, it was definItely NTMC

Subject: RE: Trad Music Comment from Bob Davenport
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 11 Nov 24 - 09:10 AM

Sean, I beg to differ, leaving individual personalities to one side, this can lead to an interesting discussion about how we present ourselves when performing and being able to 'read the audience'.

Subject: RE: Trad Music Comment from Bob Davenport
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 11 Nov 24 - 09:13 AM

By knowing ones audience, whether thy are the cognoscenti or a wide audience who may not know as much about the music as the in crowd do.

Subject: RE: Trad Music Comment from Bob Davenport
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 11 Nov 24 - 09:32 AM

> amazed to find that the lower classes had
> songs and tunes of their own

It goes back further. If I remember my early/baroque music right, the English upper-class's music (think Henry Purcell et al) died out when it was displaced by music of Italian origin, specifically when Handel came to town. The music composed for one English monarch's coronation* exists only in sparse fragments, and the rest was lost; I've heard some of said fragments, and it's *dire*. No wonder Handel's happy tunes swept the board.

Skip on to the late 19th Century, and we find composers looking for inspiration that wasn't from the Continent. In England, and in the USA, they discovered the lower-classes' music. Cue the first folk revival, and such composed pastiche arrangements as Vaughan Williams's Fantasia on Greensleeves (which embeds Lovely Joan as its middle-eight).

* I forget which one. Enlightenment humbly requested.

Subject: RE: Trad Music Comment from Bob Davenport
From: GUEST,Sean O'Shea
Date: 11 Nov 24 - 02:00 PM

TO Joe Offer.
I am not stalking anyone.I never open a thread that negativises anyone's view or personal literary characteristics or their contribution to a post.I only respond to spurious views, as I see
them-as do other contributors in respect of this specific poster,as you well know.It is untrue to say that I only post about this specific contributor to inception of forums-as you well know.

---

Whatever. Typical troll horseshit. Nonetheless, in the future, you can expect me to delete your posts with wild abandon.
-Joe Offer, Mudcat Music Editor-

Subject: RE: Trad Music Comment from Bob Davenport
From: GUEST,Phil d'Conch
Date: 11 Nov 24 - 03:17 PM

"...He laid this stuff down whereby you had to sing from where you came from," complains revival singer Bob Davenport. "Traditional music was for entertaining, it wasn't for a further education class." For MacColl and other hardliners, folk music was a revolutionary tonic to fortify the troops against the advancing pop-music hordes....

I'm reading the above as neither Davenport's nor MacColl's perspective on folk music. It's Davenport's complaint about MacColl as 'folk' music producer/manager. MacColls own words on that subject are absent and, little doubt, not the same as Davenport's.

And said opinion would certainly include MacColl on political education/indoctrination's part in his so-called 'folk' process.

Hugill? First, forget about the 'history' and the 'science.' Second, ignore the frowners. Third, have all the fun you can squeeze out of those forebitters. They ain't shanties... no matter where the folk club singer is from.

Subject: RE: Trad Music Comment from Bob Davenport
From: The Sandman
Date: 12 Nov 24 - 03:27 AM

I like the idea of traditional music being performed in places of education, live and via recordings.I do not see any reason why traditional singing cannot be presented in an entertaining manner in schools

Subject: RE: Trad Music Comment from Bob Davenport
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 12 Nov 24 - 09:35 AM

Thought for the Day: If music as presented in schools has had all the fun boiled out of it, it ain't education either, as it won't "take".

I believe in education through humour. It helps the topic to stick in the mind, even if only by causing it to stick in the throat.

Subject: RE: Trad Music Comment from Bob Davenport
From: Jack Campin
Date: 13 Nov 24 - 04:22 AM

Davenport ignored the point of MacColl's club. It wasn't intended to entertain an audience, it was intended to train a generation of entertainers. So it WAS a further education class, more than anything else. It could be totally successful at that while also being boring as fuck to sit through.