Educated folk? The folk degree

Subject: RE: Educated folk? The folk degree
From: Ian Stephenson
Date: 11 Nov 01 - 08:34 AM

As another participant on the folk degree course in question, let me be the first to correct "GUEST" and co. that we are certainly not being taught "the rights and wrongs of folk music".
In reality, we are being encouraged to be our own performer. Our instrument and voice tutors are there to provide us with other techniques and styles for us to absorb. I resent the notion that our tutors CONTROL us or even could if they tried -we are quite a stubborn bunch of kids y'know!

Of course we don't expect to walk out and be handed a 5 album deal or an arts admin job by default, but show me a place where you can be taught 5 days a week by brilliant and inspirational musicians and I'm there!
Please don't cheapen our experience -ask your so-called "experts in the field" if they ever learnt something worthwhile from another folkie -it's an AURAL tradition you know.

Ian s.

Subject: RE: Educated folk? The folk degree
From: GUEST
Date: 11 Nov 01 - 09:39 AM

Ian,

A gentle suggestion. Go back and read Fay's original post. Her questions weren't about the benefits of the programme to individual students like you and her. She was asking other people's opinions about what the effects would be on traditional music community, as well as on young musicians who don't learn the music through tuition programmes such as yours.

I would guess the majority of people in this forum aren't interested in the music to get an arts administration position, or a 5 album deal. Rather, many are more interested in the traditions and the music itself. Some contributors are bound to have strong opinions about what they see as academic encroachments on the music which, while it might benefit most of the students, it isn't perceived as helping the music, and some would say it can easily cause it harm.

And as to the tutors controlling students--it may be more subtle than you think. But my concern, again, isn't that graduates of such a programme will play a regimented style of the music, but that the "expert" label start to be applied to only certain graduates of such programs.

Subject: RE: Educated folk? The folk degree
From: John Routledge
Date: 11 Nov 01 - 08:24 PM

Inevitable I am afraid GUEST. Some experts are more equal than others and all we can hope is that they are all "judged" fairly. JR

Subject: RE: Educated folk? The folk degree
From: Mr Red
Date: 12 Nov 01 - 07:21 AM

OOOooooooooooH I have inadvertantly hit the someone's very tender button and without any such intent. Do I get a "Brownie" point ? (= Girl Scout's badge in some places) This is a first for me (I think). Does "Guest" status invalidate my gold stars?
Well Guest - I am assuming there is only one of you on this thread - my target is the "flickaswitch" society and the demise of the tradition of "Joe Public Entertaining Himself". If fashion culture and peer pressure driving the populous at large (and youth yet larger) are not a blinkers then they are manacles. Academe have more subtle constraints.
Would I mention "Ivory Towers" if I did not........ Oh I can't be arsed to be condescending
it's IRONY
On second thoughts I give my "brownie" points back it was not a fair fight.
(8^!)

Subject: RE: Educated folk? The folk degree
From: Mr Red
Date: 12 Nov 01 - 02:18 PM

SORRY everyone, I was too busy bitching to notice the Staff line-up.
With such talent on the staff as Karen (Twelve Fingers) Tweed and Sandra Kerr I have to declare MY opinion unequivocally that: this particular course will benefit Folk.
Excuse my personal favouritisms there, and no I haven't heard of them all. But wasn't it Sandra Kerr, siren of subtle subversion, who forced me to write a very worthwhile song instead of wearing my writers block like a gong....... in 15 minutes? Without any direct influence. OK I cheated a little - called it "the War Memorial" subtitled "the Old Barbed Why Here?" (sound familiar?) - but I am proud of it and Sandra's inspiration.
This was at that the well known University of "Folk Festival" on the course referred to as: songwriters workshop.
I would be at UNuC (sic) if it wasn't for the money, stamina, talent, geography, and a little bit of musicionship to start with.

It is a moot point but wasn't the humble graphaphone recording apparatus a staticiser, a fixer, constrainer, (pedants at the ready) singular datum, and one true pivot?
No?
YES YES YES. Only with tape machines and now CD burners can folk (& Folk) claim back the plasticity of evolution. Oral tradition, is alive again.
Digital tradition? or finger in the ear? **HoHoHO**

Subject: RE: Educated folk? The folk degree
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Nov 01 - 06:10 PM

Irish programs I'm familiar with have Liz Doherty, Fintan Vallely, Lillis O Laoire, and others as tutors. All very high caliber musicians, but I don't know how well any of them teaches.

I don't think the fact that the musicians doing the teaching are of high caliber has much to do with the tradition though, considering that so many musicians will learn without the benefit of these programs. Are we to suppose that, because the tutors are excellent musicians, that those who attend the programs will be superior musicians to those who don't?

And aside from the "who the tutors are" question, we still have that rather disturbing "who the experts are" question, which has gone unanswered in this thread.

What happens to the community experts, when academics gain higher status in regards to knowledge about the music than those who have taken the trouble to learn about the music the old fashioned way?

Subject: RE: Educated folk? The folk degree
From: John Routledge
Date: 12 Nov 01 - 06:25 PM

GUEST - Your argument pre-supposes that academic experts will automatically have higher status then traditionally trained musicians and singers.

This does not necessarily follow. Indeed I have no doubt that some of the newly created experts will be regarded as academic ******. Time will tell. Cheers John

Subject: RE: Educated folk? The folk degree
From: Art Thieme
Date: 12 Nov 01 - 08:34 PM

The psychology of this thread is fantastic in the true sense of that good term. We are all exhibiting so many of our sacred cow, heavily guarded fantasies that we should offer it to Penthouse Magazine for inclusion in their next issue's Forum section. Indeed, the word "folk" can, seemingly, now, be used interchangably with that other better known vernacular four letter f-word.

All homage to Peter And Lou Berryman--the folkies who first made hay out of that partucular palabra*.

* (I used the spanish there in deference to the trend lately toward World Music, inclusivity and watered-down definitions.)

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: Educated folk? The folk degree
From: Big Mick
Date: 12 Nov 01 - 08:53 PM

That is coming from the most esteemed expert of all.........our own Art Thieme.

Mick

Subject: RE: Educated folk? The folk degree
From: GUEST,Steve
Date: 13 Nov 01 - 02:40 AM

Guest is so hostile to the university as a concept one can only assume he or she had a traumatic experience. His (or her) description of a university bears no resemblance to any environment I've ever seen. I both study and teach at a university, as well as being a folk enthusiast, and this description sounds about as accurate to me as saying "folk music enthusiasts are stuffy old blighters with their heads up their arses." SOME are, just as some professors and some schools might match Guest's description. But it's a singularly uninformed approach to suggest they all are.

I would have to say, given the effects of similar folk music programmes in other countries (say, Sibelius Academe in Finland), that this will be good for the music. To put an enthusiastic group of young people into the hands of Aly Anderson and Karen Tweed et al for a few years and then turn them loose on the world seems to me to be a great idea. And, several of Finland's top folk bands were formed at Sibelius, which has proved to be a great place for young, talented folk musicians to interact with each other at length and create together.

How can this be bad?

Subject: RE: Educated folk? The folk degree
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Nov 01 - 07:16 AM

Terribly sorry to disappoint you Steve, but I had a great time doing my folklore degree. It was then that I learned just how badly academic bureaucrats wanted to control the teaching of traditional music. If there is a market for tutoring, regardless of the subject matter, they want a piece of it. They get their piece of the action by presenting themselves as more expert than others, to give added value to their programs.

Problem with that? Well, how many traditional musicians do you know who have university degrees? The cost and admission criteria to get into university can just as easily be a barrier (and it is well proven that it is a barrier for the working class and poor communities) as much as it can be a gateway to a great future.

Considering your obvious prejudices (both studying and teaching at a university), it doesn't surprise me at all to see that you are reading into my opinions what fits easily with your beliefs. But that isn't what I'm about here.

I stand by what I said about the majority of students who attend university to receive job training. There is nothing evil about that, unless you have romantic and/or notions about higher education and the academic life. If that be the case, then I'm sure the idea that university is job training will not fit easily with your beliefs. But that, in and of itself, doesn't necessarily make my assertions wrong and yours right.

I also said I thought anyone who can get a university degree should get one, as it will improve their earning power throughout their life. Hardly hostile. But I will admit to being pragmatic about it.

Subject: RE: Educated folk? The folk degree
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Nov 01 - 07:20 AM

Sorry, above should have read:

I stand by what I said about the majority of students who attend university expecting to receive job training. There is nothing evil about that, unless you have romantic and/or lofty notions about higher education and the academic life.

Subject: RE: Educated folk? The folk degree
From: Luke
Date: 13 Nov 01 - 08:46 AM

Probably many of us here work at summer music camps where folks come to be inriched by folkie types. Often times players and singers need to just watch another human doing it and poof just like that something happens and they are off on the road to music and life. In my humble opinion any college that offers these types of classes should be praised and held up as a beacon to the rest. Surely these classes offer more than job opportunities. I would call them life opportunities. This music is about a life. What other way to get that info but from people who are living it. This music is no mere toy or tool with which one simply earns a living. If that is the goal I think standard music school would be a smarter investment. As far as changing traditions. Can't stop it. Can't effect it. Traditional forms are like clay vessels. The ones that are used alot get broken. But they are the carriers of the much needed elixer of life so they are always being recreated with inovations that make them stronger, and sometimes more beautiful to the touch.

Luke

Subject: RE: Educated folk? The folk degree
From: GUEST,Steve
Date: 13 Nov 01 - 10:34 PM

Well, Guest, how about:

"Explore learning? Expand understanding?

Gimme a break. Universities, like all school which leads up to it, is a way to enforce institutionalized thinking, and training future middle management robots to enforce the hierarchy of the status quo."

Was that NOT intended to be hostile? Of course, there may be more than one GUEST posting...

At least in the US, where I am located, neither small colleges nor big State schools nor private research Universities resemble this description. Though I admit that many people who pass through them wish to enforce the status quo, many others don't. That's all I intended to convey.

Subject: RE: Educated folk? The folk degree
From: GUEST,Whoops I lost my cookie -IAN STEPHENSON
Date: 14 Nov 01 - 05:47 AM

I still want to get across that if we, as students of a degree course like this don't regard ourselves as being better than anyone else for having a degree.

why is it that we are being labelled that way? The best thing about this tradition is that ANYONE can do it as good as anyone else -provided they have had experience of the tradition in practice, and I'm sticking my neck out to say that what these degree programmes offer most importantly is folk in PRACTICE.
Of course we as individuals will be better musicians after 4 years of playing and interacting, but only as good as joe bloggs who practices every day for 4 years.
What this course offers us is a structure in which to better ourselves.

As students we have the time to put a considerable amount of work into researching trad music -alastair anderson said this to us just last week -"there is so much GREAT stuff out there just waiting to be found and brought to peoples attention". This is a strong argument for the benefit of the folk scene as a direct result of our degree course. And even if we fulfilled your fantasy of 'snobbish academics' (if you could only see us!) then do you also think the folk scene would be as strong if not for the work of REAL academics like Cecil Sharpe or Vaughan Williams? It is quite a popular opinion that hundreds of songs would be altogether lost if "the collectors" of Cecil Sharpes era hadn't done "their work" (even though large amounts of it were notated badly using inadequate classical methods).

talk about off on a tangent. you have to apreciate, GUEST, that this stuff is fairly close to home.

ian s.

Subject: RE: Educated folk? The folk degree
From: GUEST,Russ
Date: 14 Nov 01 - 10:15 AM

Ian,

Part of what you are hearing in this thread is not about you and your peers. It's about catters' experiences with other academics in other times and other places. Some of it is boomers saying "Yeah, been there, done that, wasn't impressed."

Traditional musicians have traditionally been meal tickets for academics. The relation between academics and tradition bearers has occasionally been exploitative. Discover somebody, publish a thesis or dissertation and maybe a recording, and move on. Traditional musicians traditionally haven't always gotten a piece of the pie created by such academic activity.

Things seem to be changing. I think that if a traditional musician can get a teaching gig and a steady paycheck at a university these days, more power to him/her. But if it were a traditional musician I cared about I would be at least a bit worried about the impact that gig would have on the musician, the music, and the tradition.

I would want to know what the real price of academic participation is. What's the catch?

What does s/he have to do to get the gig? Just be a wonderful bearer of the tradition? Have some sort of track record? A recording or two? Be a performer to some extent? Popular to some extent? Exhibit additional skills? Be able to play well with others? Know the right people? Be a good politician?

What must s/he do to keep the gig? Just play and teach? Or also engage in some or all the busywork that academics normally do? Committee work? Publications? Community service?

If traditional musicians are brought into the world of academe there must be some sort of selection process. As a student I would want to know exactly what that process is and what the criteria are. If there are hidden agendas, I would want them made public.

In my rather cryptic first contribution to this thread I responded to Fay's original question. The most important result of the program will be that some musicians will be selected and marketed and some won't. That is not a trivial result. That will change the tradition in fundamental, far-reaching, and long lasting ways. It won't be a process of "natural" selection. It will be a process driven by ordinary human beings with ordinary (not always noble) motivations.

If you are going to participate in that process, it behooves you to learn how such processes have actually worked in the past. It is one thing to read the mission statements and know the lofty intentions of various institutions. It is another to research the actual results of the activities of those institutions. A study of the history of the EFDSS might be very informative.

Sound like a great program. Just be sure to read the fine print in the prospectus.

Subject: RE: Educated folk? The folk degree
From: selby
Date: 14 Nov 01 - 01:15 PM

Having just re-read the thread I wonder after the degree course how many of those on the course will still be as enthusiastic about folk music as they are now. But also as trail blazers these youngsters are always going to be stuck between a rock and a hard place if any one of them becomes successful (more than one are already moderately successful)it will be the result of the course if they should turn out a bad cd or performance they will have had every oppotunity and done nothing with it. So instead of criticising them,support them at the begining of their life plan, trust to their families and friends to keep theit feet on the ground.To those on the course above all else ENJOY IT. Keith

Subject: RE: Educated folk? The folk degree
From: GUEST,Steve
Date: 14 Nov 01 - 02:46 PM

Yes, in fairness, the academe has not always been good for folk music and folk musicians. But academics have sometimes been meal tickets for musicians as well. Whatever you can say about Lomax's impact on musicians' lives, for example, in many cases they had more money for having met him and gotten the Lomax seal of approval. Cherish the Ladies, the Irish band, owe their existence to an Academic folklorist and an arts center who put together a series of concerts. This has certainly been good for them personally--Joanie Madden once told me she'd probably be an accountant somewhere (shades of GUEST's anonymous drone-robots) if it had not been for Mick Moloney, and hence for academic folklore.

As Ian cautions, this kind of intervention does change the tradition and we must be careful. Who's to say whether the existence of Cherish the Ladies is a good or bad thing overall? I think it's probably good, but an argument can be made that it's bad, and an argument can be made that it's irrelevant, to the actual folk tradition.

More generally, I would suggest that there never was a process of "natural" selection at work in folk music, and that some musicians were always selected and marketed at the expense of others, whether because their brothers-in-law owned the pubs or because they were just better at marketing themselves. The tradition, like all historical processes, has always been "a process driven by ordinary human beings with ordinary (not always noble) motivations." So I'm not sure whether changes to the tradition brought about by degree programs will really be something new, or whether they'll just be more of the same kind of process. If anything, I think that having musicians like Anderson, Tweed, et al involved in the process of selecting and nurturing certain musicians will be better than having other people do it. But there is cause to be cautious, certainly...

Steve

Subject: RE: Educated folk? The folk degree
From: dougboywonder
Date: 14 Nov 01 - 04:00 PM

I think people may have overlooked the point that the majority of students of all courses nowadays are simply stalling for time - I know I am. A four year course equates to four more years to decide your path in the world before you have to get a proper job. University courses have always had slightly ethereal merits - think of all the courses in subjects like 'classics' - I've never met anyone who was a 'classicist' for a job.

After three years at music college I'm just about ready to earn a living. Thats not because I've been taught the 'rights and wrongs' of music, it's because I'm older, more sensible, and more able to cope with having to earn a living.

Besides - if Mr. Stephenson needs intensive training in how to be a folk musician, what hope is there for anyone else of coming close?

Subject: RE: Educated folk? The folk degree
From: GUEST,Russ
Date: 14 Nov 01 - 04:45 PM

Steve,

Excellent points.

However, my main concern is not with the quality of the selectors or the musicians selected or the value of the results of the selection process. My problem is with the loss of variety and the homogenization of traditional music that results.

I've seen the homogenization problem in American old time music. Sometimes it feels like Tommy Jarrell's children, the disciples of the "Round Peak sound," will be all that's left in a few years.

At one time whatever process of selection was at work in folk music, at least it was more or less communal or perhaps at most regional. In the "old days" when the featured performer was the brother-in-law of the pub owner one could still theoretically walk to the pub in the next village where, chances are, the music would be completely different. These days the music in the next village pub will probably sound exactly the same.

Suppose, as Fay warns, we have 100 'experts' in a few years who have all been taught by the same group of practicing musicians. In traditional music 100 is a huge number, a veritable army. Seems to me that we can pretty well kiss whatever diversity there currently is goodbye.

To me it is sort of like the disappearance of a species. No matter how wonderful the remaining species are the net result is that the world is a poorer place for its loss.

Subject: RE: Educated folk? The folk degree
From: Mr Red
Date: 15 Nov 01 - 11:59 AM

well I have to say it, but look at the intensity and seriousness Universtity has engendered in this thread. Barely a snigger or a smilie.
I happen to think this effect is a good thing. On the spectrum of "comedy" to "tragedy" we sometimes need a pure stratum, and we have it here.

Subject: RE: Educated folk? The folk degree
From: GUEST,Russ
Date: 15 Nov 01 - 04:29 PM

I enjoy the occasional thread that doesn't get hijacked by our resident wits.

Subject: RE: Educated folk? The folk degree
From: Art Thieme
Date: 15 Nov 01 - 08:02 PM

;-)

Subject: RE: Educated folk? The folk degree
From: GUEST,Doctor Tom
Date: 16 Nov 01 - 03:50 PM

Dammit! I've been away from home since this thread started and have only just caught up with it. Interesting sets of opinions! I'll go back to the original query and, for what they're worth (which, as always,is only what value other people put on them) offer my opinions.

Like anything, you're only going to get out of it what you bring to it - tempered by your attitude (which itself may be mediated by what you learn). Education? - use it. Use the space it gives you. Use the improvement it offers you. Use the skill, knowledge and experience that its tutors are giving you. But don't expect it to do anything it can't!

It won't get you a job as a musician/singer though some people may be more willing to listen to you in the first place. It won't make you a better singer/musician than you have the potential to be though you may reach that potential quicker.

If you want to be a musician/singer use the course as best you can. If you want to be an academic use the fact that you're already within an academic institution. If you want to be in arts management you'd have been better off on an arts management degree course - and there's a lot more of them around than music degrees.

From the responses within the thread that have come back from people on the course, it doesn't sound as though the approach adopted will be narrowing. That would be my primary concern. Any academic adoption of a discipline will tend to institutionalise it, but as long as nobody thinks that what is taught is all there is, we're O.K. The fact of an academic interest, if properly used, offers the opportunity to expand understanding and knowledge.

As to whether it makes you an expert - an expert in what? A very wise tutor of mine once explained that a first degree stated "The cat sat on the mat", an M.A. asked "What kind of cat and what kind of mat?" and a doctorate asked "How do we know this is a cat and a mat?"

One thing fascinates me though. If this is a folk music course - rather than any other kind of music course - that rather indicates that somebody has managed to define 'folk' (surely that should be lesson 1). Please tell me what it is - so far I've found nothing better than the IFMC definition from the 1950s which, with only minor adaptation, still stands the test of time.