Will trad music die when we do?

Subject: Folklore: Will trad music die when we do?
From: GUEST,999
Date: 14 Mar 11 - 08:08 PM

I expect the first reactions to the thread title will be scintillating. After that, perhaps we could address the issue.

When we drop dead, and fewer and fewer people are attracted to traditional music, what then will become of the music?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Will trad music die when we do?
From: GUEST,999
Date: 14 Mar 11 - 08:12 PM

I am NOT a traditional-music singer. Have neither the memory nor the skill. But it is a music I listen to interspersed with rock, blues, modern folk, bluegrass, country, singer-songwriter stuff (I've heard it before), classical, jazz, etc. So, this is a serious question.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Will trad music die when we do?
From: terrier
Date: 14 Mar 11 - 08:16 PM

Are fewer and fewer people being attracted to traditional music ?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Will trad music die when we do?
From: michaelr
Date: 14 Mar 11 - 08:36 PM

There are indications that the opposite is the case.

All that dies when we do will be us.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Will trad music die when we do?
From: GUEST,999
Date: 14 Mar 11 - 09:09 PM

Thank you both. That is exactly the information I seek. If a premiss/premis/premiss (I got it right. No red line. (Good idea for a song. (In the words of the Governor of California, I'll be back))) and sincere thanks to both of you.

Subject: RE: Will trad music die when we do?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 14 Mar 11 - 09:15 PM

I suppose, 999, that purists would say that you and I are not traditional singers, but I think it's true that we sing more-or-less in the traditional style - and that we know a fair amount about traditional songs. I guess I'd say maybe only twenty percent of the songs I sing are truly traditional. I do think that folk music will "die back" when those of us from the "folk scare" pass on. Our children and our children's children don't show a whole lot of interest in folk music.

HOWEVER, I predict that another "folk scare" will come, when the time is right. This music is too good to be lost forever.

-Joe-


P.S. I dropped the "folklore" tag from this thread. We use "folklore" for folklore stuff that is not music but is indirectly connected to music and that should be in the music section of the Forum. But this is certainly directly connected to music.

Subject: RE: Will trad music die when we do?
From: GUEST,999
Date: 14 Mar 11 - 09:29 PM

Thanks, Joe. I did't understand which category to choose on that page (where is Oscar Wilde when ya really need him?). Do I not choose a category?

---

Our blank category is "general music." -Joe-

Subject: RE: Will trad music die when we do?
From: GUEST,999
Date: 14 Mar 11 - 09:41 PM

I think you're right. A while back I did a song that went

I guess it's time for her to cross my mind again
She's dressed in midnight, and that's all

I was playing to mostly folks my age and the only person in the audience who smiled was a young bearded man.

Yes to the traditional links we have. You more than I, but that's not to say less revered.

Ya listen to "The Goodnight-Loving Trail", and it's a meeting of history, melody, lyric and genius. Older songs--the one's even YOU would call older (I think I may have a few years on you) have a way of enrapturing the mind. I worry that might all go away.

Subject: RE: Will trad music die when we do?
From: Jeri
Date: 14 Mar 11 - 09:50 PM

Yes you do not. Folklore definitions, per Merriam-Webster:

1: traditional customs, tales, sayings, dances, or art forms preserved among a people
2: a branch of knowledge that deals with folklore
3: an often unsupported notion, story, or saying that is widely circulated

Anyway...

I think the way the world works now, and has worked for a while, not many people in English speaking countries gets folk music in traditional ways. This IS a change, but centuries from now, the experts will probably see the people of this time passed music by way of books and recordings.

There is a lot of sneering about the whole "horses" don't sing quote, and some folks have that cute little "horse alert", but when you get down to it, the quote is accurate. What the guards of the tradition want is to separate what has gone before from what happens now. The old songs will be part of what gets passed on to future generations, but so will a lot of pop stuff that folkies may not care for. After all, this traditional music we love was the pop music of its day. In any case, it doesn't matter if people don't like something. It's easy to add music to the collective consciousness, to remember it, and impossible to make other people forget music.

I keep hearing an ad for a TV show - "Army Wives". The song is "Bright Morning Stars". If people can find it and it's good, it will get passed on.

Subject: RE: Will trad music die when we do?
From: Jeri
Date: 14 Mar 11 - 09:53 PM

Sorry--too slow for my pedanticism to make sense. Why does my spell-checker not like "pedanticism"?

Subject: RE: Will trad music die when we do?
From: Bill D
Date: 14 Mar 11 - 10:05 PM

A lot of 'traditional music' came from when there was a lot less canned, commercial music... thus, what was done then was a bit different from the sort of things done with some hope of selling it.
But stuff like "The Goodnight-Loving Trail" just 'feels' like some of the older music, so gradually the definition of trad gets expanded, and there will ALWAYS be those who delight in discovering the gems of yesteryear, and there are so many recordings & books available that nothing much will be 'lost'... the landscape will be different, but always interesting.

...and *I* ain't gonna die off real soon...

Subject: RE: Will trad music die when we do?
From: Jeri
Date: 14 Mar 11 - 10:09 PM

Speaking of the "gems of yesteryear", I think 999 is roughly 11 months older than Joe.

Subject: RE: Will trad music die when we do?
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Mar 11 - 10:13 PM

Poster is 999
So, he's a young yet distinguished man, then?

Subject: RE: Will trad music die when we do?
From: Bobert
Date: 14 Mar 11 - 10:17 PM

Yeah, trad is history... Unfortunately, there ain't no pun intended... Kids ain't playin' it...

B~

Subject: RE: Will trad music die when we do?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 14 Mar 11 - 10:26 PM

My sons are both musicians (age 30-something), and they know a lot about a wide variety of styles of music. They may know traditional blues better than I do. When it comes to folk music, I think they consider Woody Guthrie trad....

I think I do, too, even if Woody doesn't fit the 1954 definition. Woody is certainly part of MY tradition, and theirs.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: Will trad music die when we do?
From: Jeri
Date: 14 Mar 11 - 10:31 PM

Bobert, I don't think you've heard ALL kids. I know a bunch who DO play/sing traditional music. Nobody's likely to have a hit record with it, though.

Subject: RE: Will trad music die when we do?
From: GUEST,999
Date: 14 Mar 11 - 10:55 PM

My daughter (well both actually} have been my #1 "we like you dad" supporters in regard to everything, but mostly the music.

One likes rap type stuff with some rock, and the other cries at the beauty of melodies from the tradition.

I suppose I'm on some strange journey wherein the quest is an answer to, "What is it about that that I like so much?"

Subject: RE: Will trad music die when we do?
From: GUEST,Alan Whittle
Date: 14 Mar 11 - 11:29 PM

Isn't the word 'pedantry'.

Anyway, whats it got to do with your feet?

Subject: RE: Will trad music die when we do?
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Mar 11 - 12:10 AM

Poster appears to be Nancy King, who indeed has two thirty-something sons who sing traditional music. -Joe Offer-
Well, both of my sons sing traditional and trad-style music. There are undoubtedly fewer young people involved in folk music now than there were a few decades ago when WE were young, but there are some out there, and I'll bet the genre won't die out completely.

Subject: RE: Will trad music die when we do?
From: GUEST,999
Date: 15 Mar 11 - 12:16 AM

I have eleven toes. I counted: ten, nine, eight, seven, six plus five is eleven.

Subject: RE: Will trad music die when we do?
From: GUEST,999
Date: 15 Mar 11 - 12:54 AM

Sorry Guest if you think I was addressing you. That was for Al; he's an old friend. Heckuva song writer and singer, too, btw.

Subject: RE: Will trad music die when we do?
From: Bob Landry
Date: 15 Mar 11 - 01:20 AM

Saturday evening, I went to a kitchen party near Edmonton, Alberta. The participants included a 70+ish piano-accordian player, a nearly 64-year-old-guitar strummer/howler (me), a 20-something-year-old fiddle player, two 20-something-year-old ukulele players (school teachers) and three other 40-50ish-year olds on the guitar, banjo, bodhran, harmonica and African drum. We played a wide variety of music non-stop for over four hours. At 1:30 am, when I set off on the hour-long drive home, they were still going strong. When traditional/folk music was played (including strathspeys), all who could follow joined in enthusiastically, including the young-uns. Based on what I hear from the young people I know around here, folk/trad music will survive, perhaps not exactly in the same form we know it, but it will survive as it has survived through the generations that came before us. Every time I play or speak about traditional music to younger people, the ones who know music (those who are mesmerised by what the suits tell them is the flavour of the minute don't get it), I come away filled with hope for the future of trad/folk music.

Subject: RE: Will trad music die when we do?
From: meself
Date: 15 Mar 11 - 01:22 AM

I was at an event here in Calgary the other night at which there were about 70 or 80 kids aged perhaps 8 to 16 playing fiddle - and playing well. And square dancing. And: having all kinds of fun. (There were a bunch of us old coots, too).

Subject: RE: Will trad music die when we do?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 15 Mar 11 - 01:51 AM

My two pennorth.
As long as human beings exist on this planet, we will always make music, have traditions, hand down songs and tunes to the next generation, etc etc.
Music will die out when human beings die out....(and the way we are going, that might be sooner than we think!) Until then, enjoy the music that you play/sing.
Reality check here.
Dinosaurs...2 million plus years. Look what happened to them. Had obviously never heard a Child ballad!

Subject: RE: Will trad music die when we do?
From: michaelr
Date: 15 Mar 11 - 01:51 AM

The music is alive and well, with lots of youngsters joining in. Percentages may be higher in Britain and ireland, but even in the US the scene is healthy. I point to groups like Carolina Chocolate drops.

The surest way to kill of traditional music is to stick it in a museum.

Subject: RE: Will trad music die when we do?
From: GUEST,999
Date: 15 Mar 11 - 03:42 AM

". . . Had obviously never heard a Child ballad!"




Well, not all of it!

Subject: RE: Will trad music die when we do?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Mar 11 - 04:30 AM

"Are fewer and fewer people being attracted to traditional music ?"
Not in Ireland they're not. On Thursday (St Patrick's Day) there will be over 60 local youngster, mostly still at school, playing traditional music in the local parade in this one-street town on the west coast, most to a good standard and some to an exeptionally high one.
We won't be here - we're on our way to the Inishowen Singing Festival, where we expect to hear a number of the excellent young Sean Nós style singers who have fairly recently appeard on the scene. We will break our journey for a couple of nights at Carrick on Shannon in Roscommon, where we have just learned there is to be a three-day traditional music event planned to celebrate St Pat's.
All this has been made possible by the hard work of people who were sensible enough (twenty odd year ago) to realise that if you took your eye off the ball, the music would disappear with our generation. They also realised that, whatever you did with the music and however you played it, if you lost sight of it's roots and its significance, you would be contibuting to its disapperence. Not saying that you have to play it the way it's always been played, just that you recognise it for what it really is so that future generations are given the same choices we were to take it in any direction they wished, and to return back to base when and if they wish to do so.
"The surest way to kill of traditional music is to stick it in a museum."
And the surest way to make sure that it will die with us is not to preserve it and not to allow future generations to listen to Jeannie Robertson and Seamus Ennis and Joe Heaney and Sam Larner and Texas Gladden... an all those wonderful old singers and musicians who have contributed to our pleasure and knowledge.
Ireland's present success was established on the foundations of having two world-class 'museums' - the Irish Traditional Music Archive and that of the Folklore Society of Ireland at UCD - both still persuading Irish youth how enjoyable and how important Irish traditional music is (interesting to see how many fine young musicians have volunteered to help out at ITMA - in their holidays and full time.
Won't be here for much more of this discussion - will be tucked in a bar somewhere up north enjoying a Guinness and listening to beautiful singing and music, probably in the company of youngsters to young to be on the premises!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Will trad music die when we do?
From: Will Fly
Date: 15 Mar 11 - 04:57 AM

It's worth pausing and reflecting on what the folk music scene was like when we were young - in my case, well over 40 years ago (in the UK).

At the first club I ever went to - the "Lancaster Folk Stir" - around 1964, I was probably the youngest person there. The club was a sort of descendant of what had been the local folk dance society, and was run by a very middle class middle-aged lady called Gladys Parkinson and her equally middle-class, middle-aged friends. And very pleasant and welcoming people they were - even if they, perhaps, weren't too sure about the Bob Dylan imitators who started to come along to the club.

I wonder how they would have replied to the question "Will trad music die when we do?" at that point in time? I don't think they would have been able to answer it - and I don't think we can either. I see a mixture of ages at the sessions and singarounds I go to - from people in their 20s and 30s to old buggers like me, the latter-day Mrs. Parkinson...

Subject: RE: Will trad music die when we do?
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 15 Mar 11 - 05:19 AM

On the trad side of things there are buckets full of young people playing the music in the UK - either as professional performers or just whooping it up at festivals and sessions.

On the broader side of things, if a band like Mumford and Sons and artists like Laura Marling can be doing so well, there's plenty of hope for music made on acoustic instruments. They may not be my cup of tea, but plenty of people like 'em, buy their records and go to their gigs. Even if only a small percentage of these choose to dig deeper, as it were, that's pretty heartening.

Mine was the generation that abandoned folk music - me included. But that was 30-odd years ago and we've got over it.

Subject: RE: Will trad music die when we do?
From: Tim Chesterton
Date: 15 Mar 11 - 05:35 AM

I get involved in the open stage scene here in Edmonton, and in the folk clubs and a local songwriter circle, and everywhere I go, I sing traditional songs too, and lot of my friends seem to enjoy it when I do. A couple of weeks ago, just on a whim, I sent an email out asking if anyone would like to get together for a Saturday afternoon so I could teach them some traditional songs. Fifteen people have signed up, only one of whom has any previous knowledge of traditional songs. The youngest in the group is eighteen, the oldest in his early sixties.

I think if we don't want traditional music to die, it's up to us to make sure it doesn't.

Subject: RE: Will trad music die when we do?
From: GUEST,Alan Whittle
Date: 15 Mar 11 - 05:40 AM

I think the salient point that everyone's missing is the fact that we'll be dead.

1) with any luck, you'll be at rest with the dust of your ancestors.

2) Or you could be up on a cloud wearing a nightie and trying to remember if Bonnie Shaljean ever told you how to play C, F and G7

3) You could be in the other place with Margaret Thatcher or one of her cohorts shoving a red hot poker up your roozle (as she did to so many in life).

Either way.....music, scmhmusic....

Subject: RE: Will trad music die when we do?
From: Will Fly
Date: 15 Mar 11 - 05:48 AM

Speak for yourself, Whittle. I, for one, certainly don't intend to die. I may fade slightly, with the years, but death is not on the agenda.

Speak to me in, say, 2091 to check on progress...

Subject: RE: Will trad music die when we do?
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 15 Mar 11 - 06:05 AM

With the rise of digitized recording thousands of hours of old songs and tunes some recorded at the turn of the 19/20C will survive and be available for anybody who wants to go and look & listen.

Millions of hours of songs and tunes are available from the last 50 years and they will remain a source and an inspiration for anybody who wants to sing and play.

Rock music has a habit of returning to the blues for inspiration and popular music in the UK and Ireland can do the same with old songs and tunes.

The context is crucial. Old songs survived because they were mostly good and worked in small acoustic places. Social dance and its tunes survived for the same reason. Most people don't want to go to a folk song club every week as many of us did in the 60/70s, Matty Groves can only die so many times a year for most of us.

L in C#

Subject: RE: Will trad music die when we do?
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Mar 11 - 06:21 AM

I don't think tunes are in any danger of dying, there are tons of young people playing in sessions and bands. Tunes are still being passed down between generations in informal social gatherings.

Trad songs may be a bit more precarious. It's all well and good saying they were the songs of the people, but the very act of collecting, preserving and even performing the songs seems to have become an intellectual pursuit. I'd go further and say that some (not all) of the current young performers of trad songs on the UK folk scene are a bit too precious about it. Yes, some younger traditional singers sing from the heart with real love for the songs, but others perform as though they are practitioners of an obscure art form which must be revered.
I have a feeling that, in the UK at least, trad songs will survive in PhD theses rather than in people hearts, but young people are contributing to that situation as much as older ones.

Subject: RE: Will trad music die when we do?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Mar 11 - 06:22 AM

"I don't think they would have been able to answer it"
I think we can - barring the total anihilation of civilsation, it will survive in one form or another on the shelves of libraries, archives - and even museums. The question, the answer of which is entirely in our hands, is 'will it survive as a performing art?' - the jury's still very much out on that one.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Will trad music die when we do?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 15 Mar 11 - 06:26 AM

Well, all music is traditional, so as long as there's human beings there'll be traditional music. On another level Traditional Folk Music is already dead anyway, and it's The Folk Revival you have to worry about, or not, because it's doing just fine by my reckoning despite the generation gap.

When I die then that'll the end of everything as far as I'm concerned, but right now there'll be a kid being born who might pick up a fiddle in a few years time and come 2032* will be wowing audiences at Sidmouth with his or her unique handling of The Tradition, but who knows the myriad of musical developments & inspirations that will have become part of that Tradition in the next twenty-one years? I just hope I'm still around to find out really, aged 70... Folk, Hip Hop, Jazz, Pop, Classical; you bet it's going to be sublime.

However, if the question here is really Will people stop doing what the Spinners did in 1964 after the current Folk generation who think that that equates with Traditional Music have all died then the answer has to be Yes. Thank God. Whip Jamboree and all.

*2032 is also the year of the predicated Great Enlightment of Humanity consequent upon the manifestation of the Planet Gong. I think that's going to effect things greatly too, and it won't surprise me in the slightest if the 94-year-old Daevid Allen is still on hand to preside over the festivities with his glissando guitar...

Subject: RE: Will trad music die when we do?
From: Roger the Skiffler
Date: 15 Mar 11 - 06:40 AM

It's a question I sometimes ask myself when I go to the theatre and to jazz gigs, it seems it is we "Grey Panthers" or "Baby Boomers" who are keeping live music & performance alive. At blues gigs, though, I'm pleased to see more young people coming, both players and audience. I still see young folkies coming to open mics so I guess it isn't all bad news.

RtS
Old Fart

Subject: RE: Will trad music die when we do?
From: Roger the Skiffler
Date: 15 Mar 11 - 06:44 AM

...and if you are in that category- there's another open mic at Jagz, Ascot Uk tomorrow night. See www.jagz.co.uk for details.

RtS
I'll be the old bloke propping up the bar

Subject: RE: Will trad music die when we do?
From: SteveMansfield
Date: 15 Mar 11 - 07:05 AM

It's a question I sometimes ask myself when I go to the theatre and to jazz gigs, it seems it is we "Grey Panthers" or "Baby Boomers" who are keeping live music & performance alive. At blues gigs, though, I'm pleased to see more young people coming, both players and audience. I still see young folkies coming to open mics so I guess it isn't all bad news.

I'm part of the folk revival 'lost generation' and when I first got into the music at the end of the 70s my like-minded friends and I were quite often the youngest people in the audience or performing. That situation carried on until about ten or so years ago, but now there's a whole wave of people younger than me coming out to all manner of folk/trad gigs and sessions and morris and ceilidhs.

The really encouraging thing is that (as far as I can see anyway, I'm too busy enjoying the music to be going round checking dates of birth)
there *continues* to be an influx of young enthusiasts - what, for the sake of a ridiculously broad-brush generalisation, you might call the Spiers & Boden generation, are moving on through, and there's a whole new tranche coming in behind them. So like S Astray I'm very confident that something instantly recognisable as my kind of music will still be there all the time I need it and well beyond.

But then I went to a couple of South Manchester folk *clubs* recently to cheer on a friend - and (apart from the friend herself, who was the booked act and is younger than me) I was right back in being the youngest person in the room ....

Subject: RE: Will trad music die when we do?
From: Mick Woods
Date: 15 Mar 11 - 07:09 AM

Traditional? Thats an oxymoron in England as regards music. It seems to be load of obscure historical songs/tunes played by an ageing minority who like to pour scorn other types of popular folk music. There is no tradition amongst the main population.

Subject: RE: Will trad music die when we do?
From: Roger the Skiffler
Date: 15 Mar 11 - 07:17 AM

Just to prove I'm senile, the Open Mic at Jagz is tonight>/i> (Tuesday,) of course, and every Tuesday. Other talented young things on other evenings such as Tarkus the Henge (don't ask) on Wednesday. I'll also be in Reading on Thursday for Paul Lamb and the Kingsnakes.

RtS

Subject: RE: Will trad music die when we do?
From: GUEST,Folkiedave
Date: 15 Mar 11 - 07:18 AM

Perhaps this might give a clue

Subject: RE: Will trad music die when we do?
From: GUEST,Desi C
Date: 15 Mar 11 - 07:22 AM

Well, I guess it's largely up to the Musicians themselves. IT's certainly not in decline, a survey by the E.F.S.D.S last year showed Folk Music clubs are enjoying a revival on a par with the 60's Folk revival, and some very good young musicians are coming through. My club gave a Showcase to a 14 yr old girl 2 weeks ago and do look out for her, Lydia Jones, could be very big
So I don't see it dying out in the near future, unlike Pop music which has been in decline for a good decade

Subject: RE: Will trad music die when we do?
From: GUEST,Folkiedave
Date: 15 Mar 11 - 07:22 AM

Let me try that again.

thread.cfm?threadid=74401&messages=2

Subject: RE: Will trad music die when we do?
From: GUEST,Bob Coltman
Date: 15 Mar 11 - 07:23 AM

Great young singers like Elizabeth LaPrelle give me hope. Indeed I consider that the light has been passed and is shining brighly.

Now, whether LaPrelle's rock-bottom traditional singing style and songs can be considered traditional in terms of passing from one generation to another, I wouldn't presume to say. Obviously she is learned in the real stuff, but she has studied it academically and benefited from electronic recording as well. Does that make her non-traditional? Does it matter, as long as she does what she does so well?

But in my opinion, at least in a few places, the real songs, sung the real way, are in good young hands. And I'm hard to please.

Bob

Subject: RE: Will trad music die when we do?
From: GUEST,LDT
Date: 15 Mar 11 - 07:23 AM

I have to say I do enjoy the fact that despite being 25, I'm the youngest in the room most of the time.
And I do have eclectic tastes (in folk music like I had in pop) which includes trad stuff, 70's revival stuff (dance bands mainly-not fond of the pop-y singer-songwriter with a guitar stuff). Listening to bands like Bellowhead/Spiers & Boden are what have made me want to take up an instrument.

Subject: RE: Will trad music die when we do?
From: Tally Ho Man
Date: 15 Mar 11 - 07:30 AM

My daughter and her partner, both early 20s, are playing traditional music in Glasgow as are many like them all over Britain. They're not professional musicians and there are many young people doing the same, just for fun! I wonder if people in their 50s thought traditional music would die out 34 years ago when I was that age? I'm very optimistic about the future for traditional music, if it's fun then it will carry on!

Subject: RE: Will trad music die when we do?
From: Nick
Date: 15 Mar 11 - 08:03 AM

It's very hard to uninvent things so very unlikely that things disappear.

A bit like other sorts of music. Blues and Jazz are also things that go round in cycles of popularity. When I started listening to music outside of the top 10 in the latter 60's there was a blues revival going on and there have been two (perhaps three) since. Jazz still perplexes the same number of people as it did back then and I'm never sure whether it is in good shape or not - every Sunday lunchtime there was more jazz in pubs than there seems to be these days. There was a lot of folk influences around at that time too and I'm sure there will be in the future.

When I bought my first John Mayall album (Crusade) it opened up doors to more than Mayall and the guitarists.
When I saw and bought Pentangle albums there was a lot of trad folk referenced there as there was with Judy Collins, Fairport, Roy Harper and lots of other people I listened to.

My wife sings and really likes jazz/standards from the 20s-50s which predate us.

So much these days is preserved and available that never was so it makes it even more likely tht it will survive.

Back to working whether I can get away with a couple of jazz chords on Danny Boy for St Patricks night... (and I think I can!)

Subject: RE: Will trad music die when we do?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 15 Mar 11 - 08:28 AM

unlike Pop music which has been in decline for a good decade

Stick to your own, eh? Either that or listen to 1Xtra on a Saturday night from Trevor Nelson onwards and then tell me that's music in decline! I think not, and I also think it telling that there's invariably some olf Folky on Mudcat muttering on about rap music being vastly inferior to the sort of MOR easy-listening pop-shlock being served up on Folk on 2.

*

I see now musicians of all ages doing great music regardless; I also see a lot of respect across the board, with fans of hip-hop also buying Bellowhead albums. Hopefully Folk of the future will be an aspect of an increasingly diverse Popular Music as it once was when Traffic, Jethro Tull (up to & including Thick as a Brick) & Led Zeppelin etc. were openly celebrating their Folk Inspirations, just as Peter Bellamy was openly celebrating his Popular Music heritage too. I see The Unthanks have covered my favourite King Crimson song on their latest album. For those unfamiliar with the majesty of the original:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dWT2dKw4fk

Time was when a Folk act covered a non-folk song it started appearing in The Tradition - like the way Music for a Found Harmonium became a traditional tune not long after Patrick Street covered it. Might we look forward to hearing young floor singers singing Starless?

Subject: RE: Will trad music die when we do?
From: GUEST,999
Date: 15 Mar 11 - 12:46 PM

I certainly thank those of you who have posted. I am very happy this has not descended to a 'what is _________' thread.

I'm in a small town in Quebec. Two thirds of the population speaks French as a first language and most of the other third speaks English. The musical hub for folky type music is a cafe that has an open mic followed by a main guest on Friday nights. No music is refused, but the main acts are from the folk tradition. I am not exactly sure what that means, but think Celtic/blues/song writer/bluegrass/jazz/light rock/world/roots/gospel and even C and W, a music that is big amongst many in the French population.

There are more than a few young people who perform from time to time. Some have recently discovered Dylan (et.al.) and some others are presenting their own material. Well, I expect that with the experience of the people on this thread, most of us know what a mixed blessing that can be. But this is FRIDAY nights, and the kids are banging away on their guitars (mostly) and learning how to use mics, stop shaking from nerves and speak with audiences. The audience average age is about mid forties. AND, the audience is mixed English/French, and some nights French/English.

This vibrant 'scene' was the brain child of Mudcat's Beer and his partner in crime, Danny. There is seldom a sparse night, and all monies are by donation. The 'baskets' are usually pretty good, and the audiences also.

I initially made a false assumption which was quickly pointed out. Perhaps the music--live music--isn't gonna die when we do. Cool.

ADDA Music (ADrien and DAnny) raises money through donations from both musicians and 'listeners' to ensure that kids in the Chateauguay Valley who are stopped from taking guitar/piano/voice lessons due to financial restrictions get the opportunity to take lessons anyway. They have done a great community service, and it doesn't stop there. Kids--when I was a kid I spent most of my time trying to prevent my mother and grandparents from finding out what I was up to--are learning also that just maybe the older musicians and audience members may have something they could use, and so that aspect of a social barrier has been breaking down after a year and a bit of the cafe's operation. There are other more obvious benefits: if yer playing on stage yer not hot wiring a car or getting hammered and causing trouble (and that goes for the youngsters, too).

I thank those of you who have shared the experience where you live. Today, I'm a happy camper. And as Mark Ross is so fond of quoting, "Take it easy, but take it!"

Bruce