Authenticity Police

Subject: RE: Authenticity Police
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 20 Apr 09 - 01:16 PM

There does seem to be something of a contradiction in the position of the AP. If they accept the 1954 definition (which I would have thought axiomatic for them) then it follows that the songs and tunes in or coming into the class must have changed and continue to change, and simlarly the methods of performing them.

Subject: RE: Authenticity Police
From: Mooh
Date: 20 Apr 09 - 01:18 PM

We were advertised as a "celtic" group, but two patrons approached and insisted we should then dress as Celts, sing in some now practically unknown dialect, play the music that Celts played (is there any actually in existence I asked), use period authentic instruments, etc. All very tiresome. I think I yawned when trying to pretend to be politely listening to them...somehow they go the message.

Just a couple of gigs ago, a drunkard approached me during a break at a bar gig just to tell me that I don't sound at all like Hank Williams when I do Move It On Over, and HW would be rolling over in his grave. I responded with "If he rolled over in his grave then maybe there'll be room for you too." Twit.

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: Authenticity Police
From: Wesley S
Date: 20 Apr 09 - 01:58 PM

If Hank Williams were alive today he's be scratching at the lid of the casket trying to get out.....

Subject: RE: Authenticity Police
From: Art Thieme
Date: 20 Apr 09 - 02:46 PM

I have never had an experience like any of these you all have described in this thread. So, seeing that huge void, I decided to fill it myself. And I do think I've taken on that role admirably in a few of these discussions over the last dozen years.

;-)

Art

Subject: RE: Authenticity Police
From: Art Thieme
Date: 20 Apr 09 - 02:50 PM

BillD,

Alas, you are correct. For me it comes down to the fact that some people have tact, and others tell the truth! ;-)

Art

Subject: RE: Authenticity Police
From: John P
Date: 20 Apr 09 - 03:49 PM

There does seem to be something of a contradiction in the position of the AP. If they accept the 1954 definition (which I would have thought axiomatic for them) then it follows that the songs and tunes in or coming into the class must have changed and continue to change, and simlarly the methods of performing them.

I think some folks lose track of the difference between traditional and historical. I once was in a drum store and overheard another customer telling the owner that "traditional bodhrans don't have bars across the back". I decided not to get into it with him, but since I had been playing with very accomplished bodhran players for years and had only ever seen (at that time) one drum without bars across the back, it made me wonder at what point in history the tradition stopped for him.

The problem with using history as a cue to correctness is, of course, the cut-off date. If you go back far enough, you end up with nothing but voices and maybe crude drums. I was once told that my guitar wasn't a traditional instrument and that I should stick to playing my Irish bouzouki -- an instrument that was invented about 40 years ago.

Subject: RE: Authenticity Police
From: glueman
Date: 20 Apr 09 - 04:34 PM

Well I for one am glad the folk police are out there but it would be nice if they wore uniforms so you could spot them when you were in need of patronising. The correct response to any unsolicited musical advice is of course, 'ask me how much I care.'

Subject: RE: Authenticity Police
From: John P
Date: 20 Apr 09 - 07:27 PM

Ooh, uniforms! Great idea. I suppose they'd have to have badges as well, just to prove they were authorized to interrupt the music. We'd all have to keep our artistic licenses handy so we could prove that our inauthentic changes were approved.

Subject: RE: Authenticity Police
From: Ref
Date: 20 Apr 09 - 07:35 PM

Uniforms would make it a lot easier to know who to punch!

Subject: RE: Authenticity Police
From: Don Firth
Date: 20 Apr 09 - 08:23 PM

Once in 1959 when I was singing in a Seattle coffeehouse, a guy asked for "The Wreck of the Sloop John B.," which I had learned four or five years before from Carl Sandburg's American Songbag, so I sang it. He scowled all the way through it, and when I finished, he complained before the crowd, "You didn't sing it right!"

"Why?" sez I. "What's wrong with the way I sang it?"

"That's not the way the Kingston Trio sings it," he grumped.

"Of course not!" sez I, being quick of wit and noticing that the audience was following the exchange with interest. "There are three of them, and there's only one of me!"

Got a good laugh. But not from him

####

Right about that same time, I was standing in the Folklore Center in the University District listening with Big John, the proprietor, to a recording of Win Stracke, a classically trained bass, singing folk songs to the accompaniment of Richard Pick's classic guitar. A guy who had hitchhiked up from California walked in lugging his guitar case, and stood there for a few minutes listening with us. Then he went into wall-eyed fits, shouting that "That opera singer has absolutely no right to sing those songs! Those are folk songs! And he's an opera singer—" and blatatta blatatta blatatta. Then, with steam pouring out his ears, he stomped out of the shop and headed up the street.

Apparently he was unaware that the "opera singer" he objected to so strenuously was one of the co-founders of the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago.

Don Firth

P. S. By the way, Eve, did you hear that Rene Descartes stopped in at a McDonald's and ordered a Big Mac. The kid in the paper hat asked him, "Do you want fries with that?" Descartes answered, "I think not." And vanished!

Subject: RE: Authenticity Police
From: Eve Goldberg
Date: 20 Apr 09 - 09:56 PM

Oooh, good one! I'm picking up lots of good material...

Subject: RE: Authenticity Police
From: Seamus Kennedy
Date: 20 Apr 09 - 11:12 PM

Don - another variant on your Kingston Trio story:

I had just finished a Christy Moore song when a guy stood up and yelled "That's not how Christy does it!"

I said "I know. I do it right."

Don't mess with the guy with the mic.

Seamus

Subject: RE: Authenticity Police
From: glueman
Date: 21 Apr 09 - 02:35 AM

OT but the out-takes show on TV had a great egg on face incident. Hot summer weather sees TV weather girl sent out to do a story on sunburn. Down on the beach she finds chunky young man soaking up the rays.
In her best condescending TV babe manner she says Hello, can I ask you something? Young man grunts S'pose so.
"do you know that lying in the sun can be dangerous, yadda, science, yadda, more science."
"Er, yeah."
"Really? And why is that?" snorts babe to Mr Thicko.
Young man drops his shades and looks at her.
"I'm a particle physicist."

Subject: RE: Authenticity Police
From: John P
Date: 21 Apr 09 - 04:13 PM

That puts me in mind of another "idiot in public" story. Off topic, but it is interesting how often people say the damndest things. During a recent and rare snow storm here in Seattle a local TV news "personality" was out interviewing people on the street about the piles of snow everywhere. One shot showed a car trying and failing to get traction. Newswoman was saying, "Look at that, even with chains on the tires that car can't get going". The car, with chains on the back tires, was madly spinning its front tires on the ice . . .

Subject: RE: Authenticity Police
From: John P
Date: 21 Apr 09 - 04:27 PM

Back on topic, I think the Traditional Music Authenticity Police (TMAP) have a sister organization, the "You played it differntly" police (YPID). Most of YPID want it to be just like they first heard it, and aren't limited to traditional music topics. Any song is fair game. Someone once told me that I didn't do a Tom Lehrer song right because it was different than his version. He redording it with a piano and I was using a guitar. My explanation that it had already been done that way and didn't need to be done in that way again was met with an uncomprehending stare. How could anyone even consider doing it differently than Tom?? Some people even seem to think that it is disrespectful to the composer for a musician to do anything differently with a song at all.

The worst, of course, are the people that are both TMAP and YPID: "you didn't do it the way I first heard it, and here's all the reasons that the way you are doing aren't traditional, and here's all the ways that that the person I first heard do it is more traditional than you and he did the definitive version and there's no point in singing that song anymore."

Subject: RE: Authenticity Police
From: Don Firth
Date: 21 Apr 09 - 05:05 PM

Thereby locking the "folk process" in concrete.

Also not quite on topic, but maybe near it:

In the early Sixties I knew a fellow named Alex who said he was an actor. Maybe true, but I don't really know what he had ever acted in, and for an actor, he certainly had a lot of free time while most of the live theaters in town were presenting plays. But he talked a good line. And he was brimming over with unsolicited advice for various kinds of performers, including me. He had strong views about what he considered to be "professionalism."

Once, he had an absolute cat-fit after seeing a local presentation of the road show production of "The Music Man." It seems that Robert Preston had blown a line. He attempted to cover it, but the goof was obvious. The play went on, and within a few seconds, the audience had forgotten it and was back into the story. Except Alex. He raged for days about Preston's "lack of professionalism!" As if no actor ever before had boo-booed a line on stage.

Anyway, it was an article of faith with Alex that the performer had the obligation of catching his (Alex's) attention by presenting him with something that would capture his interest. Otherwise, it was his privilege to simply ignore them.

One evening, while I was singing in "The Corroboree," Alex came in and sat down with group of other people. Obviously, on that occasion, I failed to offer him something to capture his interest, because he started talking with (at) the other people at the table in a very loud voice. Without his actually saying so, it was almost as if he were sending me a personal message: "Firth, I find you boring this evening!" The people at the table were embarrassed, and people at nearby tables were trying to shush him up. He studiously ignored them and continued holding forth with his bullhorn voice.

The Corroboree had a PA system. Not really intrusive, but it gave the sound of whoever was on the small stage a little boost. The mic was about two feet in front of where I sat. When I finished my current song, I learned over with my mouth about two inches from the mic and called,

"Alex!"

My voice boomed through the place like The Voice Of God! Alex looked up, startled.

I continued. "Alex! Shut the hell up!!"

The whole place burst into applause! Alex sat there for a second or two, looking around like a frightened rabbit, then got up and walked out, to another surge of applause.

I guess I finally captured his interest.

I never saw him again. Somehow, I don't really miss him.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Authenticity Police
From: SteveMansfield
Date: 22 Apr 09 - 04:22 AM

I think the Traditional Music Authenticity Police (TMAP) have a sister organization, the "You played it differ[e]ntly" police (YPID).

The only way in which I would differ from John P's fine analysis is that the two organisations are actually one and the same. The two attitudes both spring from the unshakeable conviction that the AP member has a very fixed, rigid, Gold Standard idea of what is traditional & correct and what isn't, has a much better idea of what is traditional and what isn't than you or me, and also has a messianic drive to share that knowledge with us for our own benefit.

There was a virulent outbreak of APism on concertina.net recently, in which it emerged that the basic premise was that playing a tune on anything other than a solo fiddle was not proper Irish Traditional Music. Which makes you wonder what that particular high-ranking member of the AP was doing on concertina.net in the first place, since the clue's rather there in the URL ...

Martin Carthy, the man already outed as an AP offender for playing the guitar for Morris, makes a wise observation - I can't remember the exact quote but it paraphrases as 'the single worst thing you can do to these songs is not sing them. They will survive everything except neglect.'

There's a lot of stuff done to traditional music that I, personally, don't like or enjoy. But, unlike the AP, I always try to remember that my personal taste does not equate to the evolution and health of the living tradition.

Subject: RE: Authenticity Police
From: Will Fly
Date: 22 Apr 09 - 04:31 AM

I reserve the right to play anything I want to, in any style I want to, on any instrument I choose to. And it's the right of the audience to like it or not. That's the way it goes.

I think there's a subtle difference between "authentic" and "classic" versions of songs and tunes. You might say, for example, that Dion's "The Wanderer" is the classic - and original - version of that song. But you wouldn't dismiss Dave Edmund's version as "inauthentic" - I hope.

Subject: RE: Authenticity Police
From: GUEST
Date: 27 Apr 09 - 07:03 PM

Harvey, i remember where that gig was. It was in Bridgnorth at Theatre on the Steps. An old bloke jumped up and said "i think it will be better if you sung it like this..."
Brilliant!
dan

Subject: RE: Authenticity Police
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 28 Apr 09 - 03:12 AM

My wife used to do occasional tour for Nofolk traditional singer, Walter Pardon. We still have some of the replies somewhere saying something like "We don't do that sort of thing here - we only do folk music" - but that's probably not what you are looking for.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Authenticity Police
From: pavane
Date: 28 Apr 09 - 04:18 AM

Will,
And Dion played at a UK Folk Festival in Lincoln, 1971, alongside many of the best Folk acts of the time...

Subject: RE: Authenticity Police
From: Sean Mc
Date: 28 Apr 09 - 04:31 AM

I have already posted this story on the 'Queen of the May' thread but it seems relevant to post it again here. The song was written by my father some 27 years ago......

Dad & I were playing in Padstow one night and, inevitably, we did Queen of the May.
Afterwards, a women of middle years and a rich Cornish accent came up to us & said to Dad,
"'Ere boy, you got the words wrong".
"Oh really" dad replied, "But I wrote it".
"So youm the bugger" she replied. But her husband shouted across,
"'E didn't write that, I remember my father singing it". To which some else joined in with,
"You don't even know who your f..ing father was".
And such was a typical evening in Padstow……..

Subject: RE: Authenticity Police
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 28 Apr 09 - 06:29 AM

Sean... what a brilliant story.

I was mother to one of them there authenticity snobs. My daughter Andie was in the medieval SCA and took it all a bit seriously. "Mom, Did you research that headress?" "Mom, if you can't pronounce the Gaelic words correctly in this song, please don't sing it." Mom, your latin pronunciation is terrible."
The film Elizabeth was a travesty because "the costumer did not research Tudor textile design properly, the dance Lavolta was ridiculous and wrong and the film closed with Mozarts's Requeiem.... what's up with that? Didn't the film have a historian?"

She was still a delight if a bit OTT.

I guess I get some quality check looks now and then specially when I sing Summertime and Georgia On My Mind, because I do 'em different than the norm.

Subject: RE: Authenticity Police
From: jacqui.c
Date: 28 Apr 09 - 10:05 AM

But what is the 'norm'? It would be a dull old world if we all had to sing songs exactly as they were sung first time out. Everybody has their own interpretation, some you like, some not so much.

Subject: RE: Authenticity Police
From: Mr Happy
Date: 28 Apr 09 - 11:32 AM

At a venue I used to attend, another member of the World's Biggest Folk Bore fraternity would frequently chastise me & others, saying stuff like " that's not the original key/ words/ arrangement etc.

So & so [the writer] never did it like that, your version's not like the original"

I'd often challenge this opinionated manner, reminding him that just because he'd a record of some artiste doing what he termed the 'original' - even that artiste would never, ever be able to reproduce an exact copy of the record in live performance, & therefore there could be no original!

He'd always just huff & puff, insisting he was right, but was the only one of the assembly who thought so

Subject: RE: Authenticity Police
From: Mr Happy
Date: 29 Apr 09 - 09:55 AM

...........which raises a further question, what is the 'original' of any composition?

Subject: RE: Authenticity Police
From: Mitch2
Date: 29 Apr 09 - 10:38 AM

Can anyone explain why folkies accept concertinas (invented 1840) but don't like guitars and pianos, which have been around in some form or other for quite a bit longer? (Several centuries in the case of the guitar.)

Subject: RE: Authenticity Police
From: Marje
Date: 29 Apr 09 - 11:04 AM

There's a very mixed attitude to guitars. There are some clubs where the MAMWIG (middle-aged man with guitar) is the standard act, and an evening could easily consist of floor spots - and possibly a guest spot too - of nothing else. Anyone arriving without a guitar is deemed to be a non-performer and may not be offered a spot unless they explain themselves.

But the guitar is very recent in British society. On a recent TV documentary about the guitar, one musician said that when he bought his first one - I think it was in the late 1940s or early 1950s - and carried it home, people in the street genuinely didn't know what it was, as they'd never seen one. I think its association with US music, both folk and pop, is what has set some UK trad folkies against it, although other stringed intruments with a not dissimilar sound have been used in our native music for centuries.

And I can't begin to guess why it is that the concertina and the melodeon seem to sound as if they've always been there, even though they're both quite recent inventions. Maybe they remind us of older reed instruments like bagpipes? I don't know.

Piano with folk music I just don't like, personally, but I can't really explain why. It's much more common in Scottish music than in English or Irish.

Marje

Subject: RE: Authenticity Police
From: An Buachaill Caol Dubh
Date: 29 Apr 09 - 11:27 AM

Must, to some extent, disagree with your second paragraph above: in "The Scots Musical Museum", mainly published in the 1790s, the simple accompaniments made by Stephen Clarke (a "dropping bass", I think he called it) were said to be suitable for the guitar, though I can see that its form then might have been closer to those "other stringed instruments" you mention. I can't remember whether I got this from one of the volumes, or from one of Burns's letters about the collection.

Subject: RE: Authenticity Police
From: GUEST,sailor ron
Date: 29 Apr 09 - 11:29 AM

Tootle re: your post of 19th April asking if anyone remembered John Lawrenson. He came from Fleetwood in Lancashire and he was my father's apprentice [electrician].

Subject: RE: Authenticity Police
From: Musket
Date: 29 Apr 09 - 11:53 AM

I have been flattered to be told I got it wrong twice now when singing my own songs. Hey ho, and must have meant a better singer or guitarist than me has played with it and perhaps improved it?

About 30 years ago, I got up at a folk club where my friends were the guests and I was their transport. Just to fill in a floor spot as it were. I sang a song (can't remember what now) that wasn't traditional and was told (after a very good applause I may add) by the compere that this is a traditional only club. My friends, who were fairly big names in the traditional scene of the day, sadly not with us any more, refused to get up till he apologised. Rather embarrassing yet lovingly supportive all the same!

Around the same time, bands I was in, both folk and rock, were playing various venues in the Sheffield area. I can't remember how many times, countless, where a caretaker took pleasure afterwards when trying to get us packed up and out of his way, "We've had that Joe Cocker / Tony Christie / Lena Martell / Alvin Stardust or whoever here and compared to them, you're crap!"

Norton Village Hall being the one I remember most...