England's National Musical-Instrument?

Subject: ENGLAND'S NATIONAL MUSICAL-INSTRUMENT?
From: GUEST,Walkaboutsverse
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 05:09 AM

It's not difficult to find, e.g., the national instrument of, e.g., Wales or Scotland - triple-harp and highland-pipes, respectively - but I haven't been able to find that of England...although I have, however, compiled a list of "INSTRUMENTS OF (OR CLOSELY ASSOCIATED WITH) ENGLAND" (davidfranks.741.com).

Subject: RE: ENGLAND'S NATIONAL MUSICAL-INSTRUMENT?
From: Peace
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 05:15 AM

Here ya go.

Subject: RE: ENGLAND'S NATIONAL MUSICAL-INSTRUMENT?
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 05:17 AM

If you want to think about instruments most closely associated with England....what about the word 'Brass'

Subject: RE: ENGLAND'S NATIONAL MUSICAL-INSTRUMENT?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 05:23 AM

The English concertina, invented by Charles Wheatstone.

Subject: RE: ENGLAND'S NATIONAL MUSICAL-INSTRUMENT?
From: GUEST,WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 05:26 AM

Thanks a lot, Peace - and so sorry for the two "e.g."s in my (not DB's) header!!
And thanks, Georgiansilver - I'll consider adding brass-instruments to my list.
But I'm still non the wiser?...it (along with many of our fine Englsih traditions) must have been pushed well under the carpet by the pro-monarchists...

Subject: RE: ENGLAND'S NATIONAL MUSICAL-INSTRUMENT?
From: GUEST,WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 05:28 AM

Thanks, Diane...I was thinking that or the recorder/English flute...may I ask of your sources?

Subject: RE: ENGLAND'S NATIONAL MUSICAL-INSTRUMENT?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 05:31 AM

I still maintain that it's the Stylophone - invented in 1967 by Brian Jarvis.

Walkaboutsverse - I think Georgiansilver might have a point actually; be sure to get down to Durham for the Miners' Gala this year...

Subject: RE: ENGLAND'S NATIONAL MUSICAL-INSTRUMENT?
From: treewind
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 05:32 AM

The concertina has a claim, being the only instrument invented by an Englishman.

The instrument most commonly associated with English folk music and less with any other type of music was the Hohner pokerwork D/G melodeon for many years.

I reckon GS is on the money with his brass bands too.

Let's not forget that England has a church-based choral singing tradition that is the envy of other countries, and a bell-ringing tradition that is uniquely English, not only church bells but method ringing on handbells.

Anahata

Subject: RE: ENGLAND'S NATIONAL MUSICAL-INSTRUMENT?
From: Peace
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 05:32 AM

Ya know, WV, that's a heck of a question. I think Diane aced it, but the recorder might be a contender. The problem is that whatever instrument it is would likely have to be harmonic to provide chord structure as background for the song. The lute WAS popular, but not so much these days. I hope you find an answer.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,PMB
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 05:46 AM

The fiddle. Every soldier had one in his knapsack.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 05:48 AM

Thanks, again...for those who are wondering, I'd had this discussion with Sedayne, above, and am glad I've opened it up...
Also, my two mini-encyclopedias credit Charles Wheatstone with inventing the mouth organ/harmonica, as well as the English Concertina...but on the web, sites usually say Germany..?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 05:53 AM

Carl Uhlig invented the diatonic Anglo-German concertina in the 1830s, presumably after seeing Wheatstone's English instrument. But Wheatstone didn't patent his invention till later.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: greg stephens
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 05:58 AM

Well there is the English guitar, a different animal from the Spanish variety, with a different tuning (CEGCEG), but that has passed into history.Historically the pipes and the fiddle have been the dominant folk instrument, but that applies equally to all our neighbours.The concertina and the Northumbrian pipes are the nearest things we've got to specifically English instruments, though whether that makes them suitable to be the national instrument is another question.
Personally, I would nominate the spoons, enlivener of many a dull session when the old guy in the corner starts flailing away to the annoyance of the earnest folkies who have come to practise their polkas glumly.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 06:03 AM

"But I'm still non the wiser?...it (along with many of our fine Englsih traditions) must have been pushed well under the carpet by the pro-monarchists..."

What on earth does that sentence mean?


G

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 06:05 AM

I'd have thought the fiddle would have a fair claim. The factthat pther countries play it as well should signify - that goes for mkst instruments.

Or how about the clogs?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 06:24 AM

The bicycle

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,glueman
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 06:28 AM

The hunting horn. Alternatively the Telecaster. Not English by birth but naturalised by close association with the rock of ages known as Keef and every half decent garge band since.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 06:29 AM

The dividers?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 06:32 AM

The Man o war?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 06:33 AM

To PMB and McGrath -
"Playing THE Fiddle?
There are many different fiddles from many different lands – for example, the Chinese erhu fiddle, the Norwegian hardanger fiddle and, the one most in the West now play, the Italian fiddle/violin." (

To John - you don't think English culture is kept down by those wishing to keep the UK together/English nationalism down?

To Greg - I think you mean the English cittern/guitar, yes?, also on my above-mentioned list and, apparently, found in nearly every tavern and barber-shop in England during the 17th century...I've only seen Jez Lowe playing one, thus far...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 06:37 AM

Sorry - that quote was from me at the same place as above.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 06:39 AM

No mate, I don't think anybody is keeping English culture down, apathy on the part of the majority is what has/was/is destroying it. Even then it can never be totally destroyed, merely become even more of a specialised interest than it is now.
It is after all a minority culture, and rapidly becoming even more so.

G

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 06:50 AM

Charles Wheatstone with inventing the mouth organ/harmonica, as well as the English Concertina...but on the web, sites usually say Germany..?

Wikipedia says the first harmonicas were sold in Vienna before 1824.

Looking through the site, it seems there was a bit of an explosion in free reed designs in Europe in the early 19th C. See here, although the free reed concept is a lot older.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,LTS pretending to work
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 06:57 AM

Comb and paper?

LTS

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ernest
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 07:05 AM

Finger in the ear?

running for cover
Ernest

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 07:18 AM

I often dream about playing a cream coloured Fender Telecaster, complete with ashtray, even though I've never owned such a thing. Does this make it a Jungian Archetype or a Freudian Subliminal Phallus? Odd thing is - I can't play the guitar at all.

The free-reed concept is indeed a lot older, being invented by the Chinese & common in instruments played in the time of Confucius, being brought to Europe in 1777 by Amiot.

As for fiddles, as I pointed out in an earlier myspace correspondence with Walkaboutsverse:

When people say fiddle they're invariably referring to the violin. The word has an interesting (complex & by no means fully understood) etymology, but in terms of pragmatics & usage it would seem to derive from a verb rather than a noun - a verb which at last yields the noun violin, but it is interesting that in modern musical usage fiddle exists as both a noun and a verb.

That said, the earliest iconographical evidences would suggest the first bowed instruments were, in fact, lyres (i.e. crwth, juohikko, talharp etc.) rather than lutes (i.e. violin, viol, vielle, rebec etc.) - but no bowed lyre is ever called a fiddle!

Fiddle is an English word; it is only English speakers who would call an Erhu a Chinese Fiddle, likewise the Karandeniz Kemence a Black Sea Fiddle, or a Hardingfele a Hardanger Fiddle.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Peace
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 07:20 AM

"I often dream about playing a cream coloured Fender Telecaster, complete with ashtray, even though I've never owned such a thing."

I dream about it, too. I did own one. Traded it for a Framus acoustic back in 1964. That's how I broke my leg. I was kickin' me arse!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 07:24 AM

When did reeds get into bagpipes?

I think a good argument can be mounted, if you excuse the pun, for the important contribution made to the collection of songs by the bicycle, although clearly not with out a bicyclist. Probably more important than those free reed instruments although he Anglo-German Concertina would would fit well with the evolution of the monarchy.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,PMB
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 07:24 AM

Fiddle is an English word; it is only English speakers who would call...a Hardingfele a Hardanger Fiddle.

fele = fiddle, no?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 07:41 AM

The reeds came first; bags & bladders were added to reed-pipes & shawms to more easily facilitate circular breathing; then came drones, though not all bagpipes have them.

Fele=fiddle, yes - but then again so does violin, or so I'm told!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Mr Red
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 07:59 AM

As an Electronic Enginner I have to vote for Mr Wheatstone.

He had a shop in Gloucester you know.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 08:25 AM

Love his bridge Mr Red

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: r.padgett
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 08:41 AM

I would have thought the most popular with folkies is the D/G Melodeon, the 'tina, and the guitar with capo

Ray

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 08:41 AM

I've got a bridge but not a concertina

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Effsee
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 08:58 AM

It's obvious...the Trumpet! 'cos they're always blowing it!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 09:06 AM

Here's one - what's the International Musical Instrument?

I'd vote for the Jew's Harp, given its myriad ingenious & indigenous manifestations the world o'er.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Snuffy
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 09:09 AM

Posthorn

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 10:37 AM

I'm sure I posted this but t'iterweb monsters seem to have made off with it!

Raddle-drum(sp?) Alleged forerunner of the bodhran - Wasn't that an English rural thing.

Pipe and tabor? Used for Morris in 1600 as per Kemps nine daes wonder.

Or how about anything you can march into battle (or retreat!) with:-)

Little snippet about Wheatstone - I was told he invented the linkage system for the modern Stradella bass system on Piano Accordians. But someone could have been pulling my leg. Or pushing my buttons?

Cheers

Dave.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: George Papavgeris
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 11:04 AM

When England wants to play a tune of which she can be proud,
she needs an instrument to play that is both shrill and loud.
The concertina is no good, the fiddle is too frail
bodhran and harp are foreign, the melodeon's gone stale.
Guitars are ten a penny, the piano is too grand,
you need something that plays classic, folk, pop and brass band.
The answer is so obvious, on this I'll no more drone:
The English National Instrument is the Mobile Phone!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 11:28 AM

Harping on mobiles, George, I came across an interesting instrument the other day that relates to Treewind's (above) English bell-ringing tradition: I was, and still am, looking for a lap-top acoustic keyboard (I do have Argos's cheapest/smallest electrical one, which I do play on my lap whist watching TV), and came across the bell lyre - a portable glockenspiel, with a lyre-shpaed frame, strapped-on by some members of marching bands.
I'd heard, Dave, that the pipe and tabor were the original Morris instruments (seen a chap playing them at The Morpeth Gathering, a couple of times) but it was/is also well used for dance music on the continent.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 11:30 AM

LOL, George - Mine plays Stranger in Paradise, which is about right living here on the Fylde coast, basking beneath the palm-trees...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,John from Elsie`s Band
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 11:37 AM

Diane,
       Am I correct in believing that Wheatstone`s daughter had much to do with the inventing or development of the coffee percolator or caffatiere? I`m sure I saw something about it on Duff-"Whatsits" science programme.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 11:39 AM

Pipe and Taboring is pretty much universal, at least as far as planet earth is concerned, with the most developed traditions existing in France and South America.

For a little acoustic keyboard, try a melodica with a blow pipe...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,WalkaboutVerse
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 11:48 AM

...but for accompaniment, Sedayne.
Speaking of harping - also saw the English Dital Harp at Morpeth?...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 11:51 AM

Hi John, I don't know I wouldn't be at all surprised.
What a resourceful family!
As a sideline to inventing the most wonderful instrument, Charles made great strides in developing the telegraph, the telephone and making electricity go faster.
Would we have had an internet by now without him?
With him in charge of Virgin Media instead of Mr Branson I'm sure my broadband would run like greased lightning.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 12:06 PM

Fair point; there is a miniature Indian harmonium with a hand pump that often comes up from time to time on ebay, though they tend to get bid up pretty fast. I did a gig recently with Martin Archer who was playing one - sounded beautiful.

Note the provenance here - that this is very much an Indian adaptation of an European instrument (see Harmonium thread elsewhere).

Otherwise, those cheap Chinese 8-bass accordions are good inexpensive slightly-out-of-tune fun; I've got one myself & I've even played it in public to accompany 'The Fox Jumps Over the Parsons Gate'. A bit loud for watching the telly though, unless you've got really sympathetic neighbours. That said, when I'm watching TV I often practise muted scales on my pocket trumpet...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Nerd
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 12:09 PM

How about the English Horn (which is neither English nor a horn)!

Fiddle is not really an exclusively English word. There's Fiedel in German and Fiddel in Danish, for example--as close as one could reasonably expect. All of these words are technically cognate with viol, violin being a diminutive form from Italian violino. I don't think it's farfetched to think of people in other languages calling the erhu an example of a Chinese viol, using whatever their cognate term might be.

I don't think the word fiddle turns up in old English, but "fiddler" does, with an "edh" in place of the double d: fi{edh}elere. The medieval Latin cognate of fiddle was vitula, and no one is sure whether the word was imported independently into all the Scandinavian and Germanic languages from medieval Latin, borrowed into several and spread to others from those, or whether there was an Old Teutonic original from which the Germanic forms derive. In any case, it is the same word with different consonant and vowel changes leading to its different pronunciations throughout Europe.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: ard mhacha
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 12:11 PM

The war drum.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 12:15 PM

The English Horn, known in England as the Cor Anglais

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 12:28 PM

To Nerd - I agree, but the English horn and the rest of the oboe family have often been used by (Romantic) English composers, yes?
To Sedayne - yet another qualification: I play the piano-keys with two hands (I first played the computer keyboard using software called KB Piano, then transferred my "touch-typing technique"! to the piano keys). There are keyboard glockenspiels/celestas...but lap-top/for singarounds?...I wonder if anyone has ever hooked-up the Northumbrian bagpipe kit to a melodica...a strange harmonium, I guess..?!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 12:37 PM

Fiddle is and anciently ubiquitous word with many derivations as can be proven, but to call an Erhu a Chinese Fiddle is to miss the point rather, though ethnomusicolists would no doubt call it a category of spike-fiddle, this is by way of taxonomy rather than naming per-se.

But then again, I've seen the Sanxian described as a Chinese Banjo, and, more absurdly, the Sheng as a Chinese Mouthorgan.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: greg stephens
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 12:40 PM

Treewind/anahata mentioned bells, good suggestion. On a slightly different tack, surely the bells must be the oldest instruments still in use? I used to live in Claughton in Lunesdale, and the bell in the tiny little church there was made in 1296. There may be older ones in England, but I haven't heard of one. That's an impressive age for an instrument in regular use. Maybe it should be the national instrument?
Actually, though, surely things like national instruments and national constitutions and national values are only for foreigners?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 12:51 PM

The Sheng, of Chinese orchestras, with it's pipes, looks to me a lot more like a mouth/mini-organ than the harmonica.
A band of hand-held bell players (Peter Piper..!) made it onto the local news here in NE England, and they sounded great.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: treewind
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 01:02 PM

I wondered when somebody would come up with cor anglais.
The original name was cor anglé; this got corrupted to cor anglais and then innocently/ignorantly translated to English horn.

If you look at the mouthpiece end you'll soon see why it was anglé compared with its close relative the oboe which isn't.

Anahata

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 01:40 PM

Belatedly, here's Walkaboutsverse's list from the link (not obvious when clicked):

INSTRUMENTS OF (OR CLOSELY ASSOCIATED WITH) ENGLAND

Northumbrian Bagpipes (bellows blown), Leicestershire Bagpipes (mouth blown); English Concertina,

Anglo Concertina, Duet Concertina (and important developments to – if not inventions of – other key-

boards, such as piano and organ, have also occurred in England); Dital Harp/Harp-Lute, English Cittern;

English Flageolet, Penny Whistle, Recorder/English Flute

(Footnote: during the Athens Olympics ceremonies, the Greeks, pleasingly, presented their bouzoukis:

I wonder how-many of the above instruments - and dances - will be shown at the London Olympics..?)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Nerd
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 02:00 PM

Anahata, that's a widespread myth about the English Horn's name. It would be plausible if anglé meant "angled" in French, but it doesn't and never has.

Another theory, by the way, is that because the cor anglais resembled the horns played by putti and other angels in renaissance art, the word was originally German "engellisches Horn", meaning "angelic horn." This is more plausible, because "engellisch" was also a fairly common alternative spelling for the adjective "englisch," "English."

Historically, the name "english horn" first turns up in German and Austrian scores...but written in Italian as corno inglese, which can't plausibly mean either "angled" or "angelic." So anyone who posits either a French or a German etymology has a built-in challenge.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 02:04 PM

Would you like to be my secretary, DD?!...I could even give you (C) copy/paste rights!...and if you clog dance, well, we could go much further!! :-)
As for that list, given the words of wisdom here and a bit more thought, I do intend to add to it...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,The Mole catcher's unplugged Apprentice
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 02:14 PM

'The English concertina, invented by Charles Wheatstone."


In 1828, (Sir Charles)Wheatstone improved the German wind instrument, called the Mundharmonika, until it became the popular concertina, patented on June 19, 1829.

- sourced from Wikipedia

Sir Charles Wheatstone

Charlotte R

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 02:18 PM

It's called the ENGLISH concertina, and that's what it says he invented. The name sort of gives it away.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,The Mole catcher's unplugged Apprentice
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 02:28 PM

I'm not going to argue with you...

here's another source for information regarding Wheatstone

Charles Wheatstone also considered the action of the 'Mundharmonika', a recently developed German mouth organ made of an arrangement of various jew's harp tongues. Undoubtedly, this early work presaged the invention of the symphonium and the concertina, in which the steel 'tongues', 'springs' or free reeds were to be set into motion, and sustained in such motion by the breath and by bellows respectively.

Sourced from Here

Charlotte R

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 03:12 PM

One things for sure - both Germany and England have been significant players in the design, development and (in the case of the recorder, e.g.) resurrection of instruments.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: irishenglish
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 03:49 PM

I would vote for concertina as the instrument I would associate most with England. Someone mentioned every soldier carrying a fiddle, but what instrument comes to mind when one thinks of the Royal Navy-concertina of course! I think fiddle, pipes (Northumbrian and Leicester, etc) and melodeon as well, but concertina would be it for me.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 03:56 PM

Mundharmonika is just a harmonica, right? Not sure what that's got to do with Jew's Harps, although the Chinese have a lovely little instrument called to Kou-Xiang (or Ho-Ho) which consists of a fan of three to five tuned Jew's Harps. See HERE for details, sound clips & ordering info! Everyone should have one, though beardies beware of snags!

Certainly some cheap anglos I've seen demolished seem to be made up of harmonica reeds, but the English concertina is a different kettle of kippers altogether - even if it is based on 2,000 year old Chinese technology!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 04:00 PM

Speaking of the navy, is the pipe used to pipe the captain or dignitaries aboard the same or similar to the tabor-pipe used for Morris, and mentioned above?..both are played with just the left hand, yes?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,The Mole Catcher's unplugged Apprentice
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 04:00 PM

'Mundharmonika is just a harmonica, right? Not sure what that's got to do with Jew's Harps'


That would be the use of the arrangement of various jew's harp tongues used in the Mundharmonika.

Charlotte R

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: irishenglish
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 04:07 PM

The bo'sun's whistle is not similar to the pipe. I have a recreation of the whistle, and it is curved, almost like a french horn, and can really only be used to pipe warnings, as its tone is very shrill.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 04:15 PM

Charlotte - Not so much Jew's Harp tongues as free reeds; similar, but quite different! All searches for Mundharmonika come up with the instrument we variously know as harmonica, mouth-organ or moothie. If anyone can shed further light on this please do.

Walkaboutsverse - The Bosuns Whistle; a very different beast to the tabor pipe, being essentially a tiny globular vessel flute blown by means of the connecting pipe with the pitch regulated by opening & closing the hand.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,The Mole Catcher's unplugged Apprentice
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 04:20 PM

I realise the difference, but all the sources I've checked seem to say the same thing about the Mundharmonika, either way the end result is the instrument I would personally nominate as England's National Instrument.

Actually all this talk about the English concertina makes me want to learn how to play...see some of these threads are quite benificial *LOL*

Charlotte R

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ernest
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 04:21 PM

So the jaw harp is the least elaborate of free reed instruments having just 1 tongue/reed, while harmonica,sheng etc. have bigger numbers and a more elaborate frame too...

Regards
Ernest

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 04:28 PM

Maybe the Accordion page on Wikipedia will shed a little more light.

Whatever Wheatstone's base, his invention was not the first "squeezebox".

On the other hand, as far as I know, the EC fingering system is unique and invented by Weatstone. Then I suppose there are other bits, the way the reeds are set up in (at least most decent) concertinas? Even a small box?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,The Mole catcher's unplugged Apprentice
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 04:39 PM

that article seems to be mainly about the accordian, with, I might add, some unverified claims (ie no sources cited). it does however state, which I have seen cited elsewhere, that

The concertina, patented in two forms (perhaps independently): one by Carl Friedrich Uhlig, 1834 and the other by Sir Charles Wheatstone, of which examples were built after 1829, but no patent taken out until 1844.

Charlotte R

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 04:43 PM

Some Americans refer to the harmonica as the blues harp...and, apparently, some early players would dip it in their grog - I've seen Neil Young dipping one in some liquid? just before fitting it to his hands-free frame, to also play a guitar or organ or piano. For some unknown reason, I find dipping my ABS plastic tenor-recorder/English flute in water helps reduce the chances of clogging.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Herga Kitty
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 04:45 PM

Who was first to invent a reed instrument that plays the same note in both directions of air travel?

Kitty

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 04:46 PM

Only one was an ENGLISH Concertina, people are comparing apples and oranges here.
Or are we saying that all music ever written belongs to the person who invented the musical scale on which they are based?
After all, you only need to change about every fourth note of a song, to copyright it in your own name as a new composition.
Anyway once again a thread has been side tracked, another thread should be started to discuss the merits and demerits of concertinas.

G

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: irishenglish
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 04:47 PM

I think we refer to the harmonica as just a harp, not a blues harp, even though it is an instrument most associated with blues, or the hands free Guthrie, Dylan, etc. style.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 04:53 PM

Who was first to invent a reed instrument that plays the same note in both directions of air travel?

I don't know but it does appear the accordion came before the concertina.

Only one was an ENGLISH Concertina, people are comparing apples and oranges here.

Not really, all free reeded and mostly bellows blown. I don't think anyone here disputes that Wheatstone invented a distinctive enough instrument to be called the English Concertina but I for one am curious to know which parts of the whole machine were his inventions.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 04:58 PM

It's the Guitar surely???

Depends on how you wish to define things, obviously, but in terms of number of players, amount of music listened too etc...

Guitar 1 Rest 0

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,The Mole Catcher's unplugged Apprentice
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 05:00 PM

"people are comparing apples and oranges here"

seems I read this somewhere else when people were in disagreement.


the source of the said instrument is being discussed here, and free reed intruments do not begin and end with the English concertina. Once more, for some reason, the film A Canterbury Tale comes to mind.

'I for one am curious to know which parts of the whole machine were his inventions"

Same here, after all isn't that part of what folk music is all about, sources?

Charlotte R

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,WalkaboutsVers
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 05:03 PM

How about "English cittern 1," Ed - help kick-start the greatest muscical comeback since the recorder!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 05:04 PM

1) It is known as both. The term "blues harp" is the older.
2) The reason (aparently) for gob-iron (the preferred term - by me anyway!) dipping was to make the wood swell and stop splinters going into your lips. It also made sure that there were no air leaks. Not to be recommended for the D/G box!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 05:15 PM

Depends on how you wish to define things, obviously, but in terms of number of players, amount of music listened too etc...

The guitar would be the national instrument of a number of countries by that method.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Alan Day
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 05:34 PM

I agree with Diane regarding the concertina.It was lightweight portable and cheap compared with brass instruments in the mid 1850s. It was taken up by The Salvation Army and Concertina Bands became very popular playing a yearly competition at Bell Vue Manchester and Crystal Palace. it's popularity continued to The Music Halls,it became a popular instrument to take to sea,but I doubt if the salt water did the reeds any good. The Concertina is regaining it's early popularity and Workshops are pulling in large crowds.
My vote as always the Concertina.
Al

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 05:43 PM

...and the concertina really does have a beautiful timbre, Alan.
To Jon - that sounds a lot like the dreaded G-word: globalisation!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,guy wolff
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 08:16 PM

Just to add to the list the Viol known in Italy and France as Viola de Gamba was a very very popular instrument in England and the works of Gibbons Tallis and Bird show how strong a hold this instument had on the English ear .It was still being talked about by the likes of Thomas Hardy.. The luthiers of England were famous for the best instruments of the time. All the best . Guy wolff

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Mr Red
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 02:10 AM

Mobile Phone? sort of international though they only have cell phones in North Amreica.
Mine plays Horses Brawle (in the key of GG) and La Morresque (in baldricks)
Clever, what?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ernest
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 02:26 AM

The guitar is so popular internationally that it is difficult to call it some country`s national instrument at all (maybe with the exception of Spain).

And the mobile phone is not a musical instrument, but an instrument of torture.

So concertina seems a good choice.

Regards
Ernest (who is neither Anglo nor Saxon btw)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: George Papavgeris
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 02:26 AM

See my 15 Apr 08 - 11:04 AM post, Mr Red...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 02:40 AM

Woody Guthrie called the harmonica a ' French harp '

eric

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 03:19 AM

Out of interest the Sally Army concertinas wer all black - Bellows and ends. The Anlo ones played alongside the brass bands were also Eflat/Bflat.

D.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 03:54 AM

In my earlier thread I suggested >>>>>>>>>If you want to think about instruments most closely associated with England....what about the word 'Brass'<<<<<<<<<< and a few took me up on it. If you are looking for a 'current' instrument as Englands National instrument then 'brass' has to be in the answer. If you want something historical that is typically British there is something of a small choice. Concertinas and melodeons are much more 'French' than English I believe. If we are seeking a 'Folk' instrument then I guess we have to go with guitar in spite of its origins....it is the most used in Folk music.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: treewind
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 04:12 AM

The guitar may be widespread as a folk instrument but there's absolutely nothing distinctively English about it. I resisted suggesting the fiddle (violin) for similar reasons - it's too international - not only all over Ireland and Scotland (which aren't England...) but with strong North and East European representation too.

BTW, humble apologies for spreading misinformation about cor anglais. I never thought of checking on the fake French.

Anahata

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 04:55 AM

I like the idea of the lute having evolved in different lands into different guitar-like instruments - the Portuguese guitar (nearly always used to accompany fado songs), the Mexican guitar (with 9 strings, I think), the balalaika of Russia, the English cittern, the mandolin of Italy, the bouzouki (which we saw in the Athens Olympics), etc...
And, as suggested above, I also like the idea of their being many a fiddle-like instrument in many different lands...but, then, I do love our world being multicultural.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 05:18 AM

Just for the record, the Jew's Harp is a class of idiophonic Linguaphone, rather than a free reed instrument, which are in any case aerophones rather than idiophones. On certain Jew's Harps (the Indian heteroglottal moorsing for example, and certain of the dan moi type idioglots) it is possible to resonate the tongue by means of the breath alone, generally on the suck, but all this gives you is one sustained tone.

Other Linguaphones are the thumb-piano (mbira, sansa, kalimba etc.) and the Fender Rhodes.

Anhow, here's the Wikipedia list of National Instruments, which makes for a fascinating read, and enlightens us as to what England's National Musical Instrument actually is!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_instrument

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 05:51 AM

Thanks - 'tis an interesting/tad controversial read; also, for what it's worth, I've just added BELLS, brass, pipe and tabor, and stylophone to "INSTRUMENTS OF (OR CLOSELY ASSOCIATED WITH) ENGLAND" (as above or here).

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 06:44 AM

Doesn't surprise me any; change ringing being a uniquely English music, however so widespread in modern times, although perhaps to many it isn't music at all, much less folk music. In any case I love the sound of the bells myself & have a personal archive of many hours of field recordings which, given the extended durations, provide the perfect accompaniment to most indoor domestic activities. How I miss the plaintive minor-third of the Evensong Bells mournfully knelling the faithful to prayer at Durham Cathedral; or the full glories of the changes which were usually just kicking off on a Thursday night when we were parking up on Palace Green for the Durham City Folk Cub sing at The Shakespeare.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Change_ringing

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: greg stephens
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 07:48 AM

Why would anyone suppose there would be a uniquely "English" instrument, as opposed to a Scottish or Irish or Welsh one? Those national borders were laid down by bunches of Normans fighting each other basically.(Wallaces, Bruces and Stewarts north of the border v Planataganets south, for example). Musicians happily got on with music, irrespective of who briefly occupied the Big House.A Roman Wall can occasionally stop a large army of Picts and Scots. But it will always be porous to an itinerant harper who pootles into the fort from one side, earns a couple of denarii singing in the canteen in the evening, and departs the following morning on the other side. Having left a little music, and picked up a litle more.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 08:00 AM

The point is, the Welsh, Scots and Irish do have National Instruments, with quite clear cultural & folkloric connections, whereas in England there is no obvious equivalent.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: glueman
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 08:04 AM

Another fan of church bells, the BBC has Bells on Sunday at 00.45 if any one is still up. Nodding off to a peal from some secluded Norman tower is the perfect end to a day. Strange how different the bells sound in say, the Christianised Balkans, where the notes are often flat.
Not folk though.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Jonny Sunshine
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 08:05 AM

I never realised England actually had an Official Musical Instrument, I can't say that a bell seems as emblematic of England as a harp is of Ireland. Then again, Ireland is apparently unique in having a musical instrument as a recognised national symbol (as opposed to having a nominal "national instrument" for the sake of having one)

Personally I think the concertina's the best candidate as folk instruments go, but given that folk music is a minority interest in England I don't think it's a symbol many would relate to.

You want something that reflects England's industrial and manufacturing innovation- "made in England"- that is part of a living musical culture shared by many, something that has shaped the sound of music in England and beyond, something so iconic that people hire non-working versions purely for visual effect...


THE MARSHALL STACK!!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Dazbo at work
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 08:13 AM

Got to be a full set (170+ bells) of Whitechapel hand bells - only trouble is it takes 10 people to play it.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Dazbo at work
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 08:16 AM

cross posted with Jonny Sunshine. didn't the Germans class England as without music (Bach/Handl era?) but as the land of bells (or something similar)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: RTim
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 08:25 AM

Has anyone mentioned - The Serpent?
An essential part of West Galley Music.

Tim Radford

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 10:56 AM

No, Tim - just the brass family in general...I had a look in Wiki., etc., and the serpent was invented by a Frenchman in the 16th century, to be used by military and church orchestras.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Alan Day
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 12:00 PM

Georgian Silver ,I would be interested to know the link between Concertinas and France.First time I have heard it.
Al

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 12:12 PM

My understanding is that the piano-accordion is the French version of the squeeze box...hence, when we get travel programmes, ads, etc. on France it's nearly always used for background music.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 12:20 PM

Alan Day..well spotted..I apologise for putting concertinas for what should obviously have been piano accordians......
Best wishes, Mike.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 12:31 PM

But from whither the current crop of accordion buskers ubiquitous throughout the North of England? Whole families of them in Newcastle, also in Liverpool in duos with trumpets & clarinets; and damn fine they are too... Even a couple in Cleveleys!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 01:35 PM

Blimey - I just heard the present French Eurovision entry has caused a political stir for singing in English!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Mr Red
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 01:52 PM

- must have been a promoted by redezvous of entrpenuers in a cul de sac. deja vu?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ebbie
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 02:25 PM

Since the v in German is pronounced f, might it not imply that 'fiddle' originated in Germany?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ol' Smokey
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 02:33 PM

I nominate the Watkins Copycat. Thoroughbred English, and invented by an eccentric genius, namely Charlie Watkins.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 03:28 PM

Seconded, Ol' Smokey - in theory anyway, I had nowt but bother with mine & way too noisy for studio work, but times I've stood in awe watching Micky Jones using a Copycat to ascend into the heavens... Pure and perfect joy!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Alan Day
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 05:33 PM

Thanks Mike not meaning to pick you up on an error,my question came out of pure interest. when I played with Rosbif there were very few concertina players over there. A few turning up now Jean Megly being one of them on his duet.
Apart from the Piano Accordion they have some truly wonderful melodion players
Al

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Gurney
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 06:58 PM

I'm not an expert, but...

I've seen the 'mouth-organ' invented by Wheatstone. It is a box blown from a central hole, with buttons on the sides, arranged like the English, about one octave.

Guest Jon, what Wheatstone invented was the fingering system, the arrangement of the instrument. As I understand it.
The small metal reeds came from China.

Dave Polshaw, my ex-Sally-Army Lachenal isn't black. It has been re-bellowed in black, but has brown-stained varnished ends. Still in the original case marked 'Salvationist Publishing & Supplies Ltd, Musical Instrument Department.' At least, I think the box and the box go together.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Harmonium Hero
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 07:45 PM

Herga Kitty: the Chineses sheng has reeds which work in both directions.
Re: the argument about the origins of 'fiddle'; I read somewhere years ago that it derives from the Latin 'fidicula', which was an ancient Roman stinged instrument, but not bowed. Bowed instruments seem to have originated in (if memory serves) about the ninth century. There are variants on the name fiddle - fidel, fythele, vielle, etc., and from these we get viola, vihuela, viol, violin, violone, blah, blah, blah....
Going back to the original question, the English Guitar has been mentioned more than once; WV refers to it as 'English Cittern'. It was a new type of cittern which had a short period of popularity in the 18thC, and is supposed to have survivved in the form of the 'Portuguese Guitar', which has also been mentioned. A further variant is the German Waldzither, which is virtually an English Guitar minus the fifth course. The cittern now being used in folk music is, I think, an English development. Maybe somebody can confirm.... These, however were not the first new variants on the cittern to have been invented in England. The Orpharion, invented by John Rose in the late 16thC, was a cittern tuned like a lute, to give lutenists the chance to get in on the wire-strung sound without having to learn a new instrument.
And nobody has mentioned the Humstrum. I've never heard one played, and have only seen one, in a museum in Dorset, I think. It's a true 'folk' instrument, being cobbled together from a bit of wood, a cocoa tin, some fiddle pegs and some bits if wire. It can be strummed or bowed - hence the name.
John Kelly.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 07:54 PM

Guest Jon, what Wheatstone invented was the fingering system, the arrangement of the instrument. As I understand it.
The small metal reeds came from China.

OKish but there still may be other questions like the reed plates in Wheatsones innovations??? As far as I know, good concertinas have a way different to harmonicas and accordions/melodeons.

Ti's late at night but a google has found me

this

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Snuffy
Date: 17 Apr 08 - 04:09 AM

I reckon it has to be bells, because change-ringing is so uniquely English. And it is a tradition of the common folk, unspoilt by commercialism.

And just a wild hunch, unsuppoorted by any evidence - with bells rung in almost every town and village in the land I reckon there may be more bell-ringers than guitarists, box players and sundry assorted folkies combined.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Alan Day
Date: 17 Apr 08 - 04:19 AM

Well the Humstrum sounds right for our National Instrument,cobbled together from a bit of wood, a cocoa tin,some fiddle pegs and some bits of wire. Sums up the current situation rather nicely.
Al

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 17 Apr 08 - 08:59 AM

I made a similar thing a couple of years back from a length of copper pipe, a mouthpiece of a Generation Bb whistle, a length of guitar string (A?), a small Egyptian tambourine (riq), a bell, and a cockleshell. You blow the whistle as an overtone flute and bow the string for a drone. Sounds pretty cool actually.

Read all about it at: Troll Pipe

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Mr Happy
Date: 17 Apr 08 - 09:04 AM

According to Wikipedia, the national instrument of England is the Bell !!!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Mr Happy
Date: 17 Apr 08 - 09:04 AM

Sorry, forgot to include the link, here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_instruments

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 17 Apr 08 - 09:52 AM

Yes - we've already established that! Doesn't anyone bother to read these bloody things through first?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 17 Apr 08 - 10:01 AM

...that rings a bell! :-)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Harmonium Hero
Date: 17 Apr 08 - 10:03 AM

Sedayne: just had a listen to the Troll Pipe. Sounds great -better than I'd expected!
For anyone who hasn't come across the Humstrum, I'll try and describe it: It is carved from a piece of wood - the one I saw was, I think (it's decades ago), about 20" long - into a sort of broad bat shape. The narrow end was carved into a violin-type head, with four pegs. The neck continued down to the broad end, which was scooped out into a shallow convex shape, with a squared-off end. This end had a recess across it, which held the cocoa tin, at right- angles to the strings. The strings went over the tin, and were held by nails to the end of the instrument, the sting tension giving the necessary downward pressure to hold the tin in place. The tin acted as both bridge and resonator. The strings were obviously on a flat plane, so that when played with a bow, all strings sounded together. I don't know what the tuning is, or even if it's standard, but presume it would be a tonic/dominant drone, with either single or double melody stings. I think it's the nearest thing to an 'English fiddle'. The fiddle as we knw it -i.e. the violin - is not of English origin, and is very widely played as a traditional instrument. I think you could really only describe it as a traditional English instrument in terms of playing style, and I'm not convinced that there was a distinctive English style pre-Swarbrick, although I'm sure somebody will shoot me down in flames! Ireland and Scotland do have distinct styles, and so the fiddle is recognised as a traditional instrument in those societies. In Shetland, there is a tradition of fiddling which pre-dates the violin; it goes back to the Norse origins of that society, and their earlier fiddle was some form of 3-stringed (I think) nordic instrument. This was gradually superceded by the violin after Shetland became annexed to Scotland. But as there is an unbroken tradition of fiddling, there is still a distinct Shetland style. Gawd, I'm waffling 'ere.
John Kelly.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 17 Apr 08 - 11:20 AM

Hi John - Thanks for the kind words. BTW we were really looking forward to your Fleetwood gig the other week, but ill-health got in the way rather; great reports though, so hope to catch you next time!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Harmonium Hero
Date: 17 Apr 08 - 12:02 PM

Hi Sedayne. Sorry about the ill-health. I'd just about got over some odd virus or something myself, so my voice just about lasted the night. See you next time - and bring that Troll Pipe along!
Cheers. John Kelly.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: greg stephens
Date: 17 Apr 08 - 12:14 PM

Harmonium: are you sure there is a Scottish fiddle style, and an Irish fiddle style, but no English fiddle style(pre Swarbrick)? I suggest you have a listen to various traditional fiddle recordings. You will find there are many traditional styles in Scotland, many in Ireland, and many in England. You can't of course say how many distinct styles there are, as they merge into each other. SE Scotland merges into NE England and so on. But there certainly isn't(or wasn't) one style in Scotland that lasts from Lerwick to Berwick, and one in England, which miraculously changes at the border and lasts all the way down to Dover. Folk music doesn't work like that, though radio and arts funding are trying to make it happen!"
You notice I have left Wales off the list. To the best of my knowledge there are, surprisingly, no recordings of Welsh traditional fiddling.There are many theories why this should be!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 17 Apr 08 - 02:27 PM

From here, again: for centuries, English folk-music has been the repetition of relatively-simple topline melodies, for dancing &/or telling, yes?...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,The Mole Catcher's unplugged Apprentice
Date: 17 Apr 08 - 02:39 PM

You're point being what? I mean apart from a blatant ad (yet again) for your website. No I didn't bother reading. I believe the topic is the instrument, not the songs themselves.

Charlotte R

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 17 Apr 08 - 02:56 PM

Styles had been brought-up, Chorlotte, and it seems to me the same as above could be said for Scotland and Ireland - with the variation coming from tempo and rhythm (as well as choice of instrument!): Jigs more in Ireland, reels more in England, strasthspeys more in Scotland, yes?...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: kytrad (Jean Ritchie)
Date: 17 Apr 08 - 05:35 PM

I'm not a musical history expert. But, growing up in the sheltered mountains of Kentucky, we always thought of the lute as a very English instrument- you know, sort of proper, quiet and well-mannered. Could this feeling have been handed down in our memories,from back when we were English? (and Scottish, and Irish?)...I like that idea!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 17 Apr 08 - 05:44 PM

Just recently, Kytrad, on BBC4 there was a series on our sacred music, and when a lament by Byrd for his teacher/dear friend Tallis was performed it was, indeed, accompanied by a lute - beautifully.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,The Mole Catcher's unplugged Apprentice
Date: 17 Apr 08 - 05:48 PM

kytrad, on the wikipedia page for the lute it' states the the instrument is of European origin and that:

'The European lute and the Near-Eastern oud both descend from a common ancestor, with diverging evolutionary paths'

-sourced from Wikipedia

Some Further Lute History

From what I've seen so far, the lute definitely isn't English

Charlotte R

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 18 Apr 08 - 04:20 AM

We agree!, here, Charlotte and, from above -

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 04:55 AM

"I like the idea of the lute having evolved in different lands into different guitar-like instruments - the Portuguese guitar (nearly always used to accompany fado songs), the Mexican guitar (with 9 strings, I think), the balalaika of Russia, the English cittern, the mandolin of Italy, the bouzouki (which we saw in the Athens Olympics), etc...
And, as suggested above, I also like the idea of their being many a fiddle-like instrument in many different lands...but, then, I do love our world being multicultural."

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Chris P.
Date: 18 Apr 08 - 05:27 AM

OMG, what an exasperating and pointless discussion. Why should we want to represent several centuries of our varied and eclectic musical traditions by a single instrument, which, for some reason I cannot fathom, has to have been invented in situ? Most kids who start to play an instrument now buy a guitar. 70 years ago it may have been the harmonica, 200yrs ago it was undoubtedly the fiddle, and 400yrs ago probably the Jews Harp. All these were international phenomena, covering Ireland and Scotland too. Why do we have to draw national boundaries round them? And why do we assume that English fiddle music was somehow less competent, varied and interesting than anyone else's? There are vanishingly few recordings of English fiddle music upon which to base that presumption.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 18 Apr 08 - 08:15 AM

"Why...?" Chris P. - because, as I've said, whilst nationalism with conquest IS bad, nationalism with eco-travel and fair-trade (via the UN) is good for humanity...when people lose their own culture, society suffers, etc.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Joe
Date: 18 Apr 08 - 08:57 AM

riiiight ... Walkaboutsverse, your perception of cultures is somewhat odd to say the least. I totally agree that we should keep in touch with our local roots, but not to the point where cultural overlap should be limited to observation! there are no geographical cultural boundaries and culture is NOT defined by national identity.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,glueman
Date: 18 Apr 08 - 09:07 AM

'culture is NOT defined by national identity.'

You got that right. Anyway, is English music pictish, Saxon, regency rural, romantic Victorian? That way lies dead ends or propaganda.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 18 Apr 08 - 09:22 AM

"riiight", Joe? - I think I'm Left-wing, and that questioning economic-immigration/emigration (as a growing number in England, e.g., are doing) plus loving the world being multicultural, is actually a Left- NOT Right-wing attitude/policy.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST
Date: 18 Apr 08 - 09:53 AM

For a start, the left vs right thing is a complete over simplification of the world. There are so many different types of cultural groups, national identity plays a part but is not a definitive factor in what makes a culture and what divides different cultures. A 'culture' can consist of anything that draws a group of people together, whether it be a spiritual belief, a type of music, a career, a drug, sex, political leaning, anything that plays a significant part in people's lives.

In the past, geographical boundaries were more significant in the impact on cultural groups, but this does not mean that cultural influence stopped dead at international borders.

With regard to the topic, it is interesting to discuss which instruments are linked with which nations, but I believe that no single instrument could represent the English nation and its rich and varied past (and present!)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST
Date: 18 Apr 08 - 09:58 AM

Walkaboutsverse, Sounds to me that what you are wanting is some sort of Soviet Russian precisely defined view of cultural/folkloric national identity then? You don't sound very Left-wing to me.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Chris P.
Date: 18 Apr 08 - 10:00 AM

Sorry, that was me.
Chris.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Joe
Date: 18 Apr 08 - 10:04 AM

and the post previosu to that was me!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 18 Apr 08 - 10:15 AM

"I believe that no single instrument could represent the English nation and its rich and varied past (and present!)" - here we do agree, Joe (I think?!)...I genuinely did not know England's national musical-instrument, but did refer, at the very top, to my list of "INSTRUMENTS OF (OR CLOSELY ASSOCIATED WITH) ENGLAND"...to which I've added BELLS and a couple of others, via this discussion.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 18 Apr 08 - 10:42 AM

Still say that it has to be 'Brass'

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 18 Apr 08 - 10:46 AM

That's on the new list...and mind if I call you GeorgianBRASS, from now on?!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Joe
Date: 18 Apr 08 - 10:55 AM

I wouldnt say Brass can be linked with the English national culture as a whole - the tradition, as I understand it is linked strongly to the mining communities of the North which is a culture of its own which happens to be in England.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: manitas_at_work
Date: 18 Apr 08 - 11:23 AM

There are plenty of brass bands outside mining communities. In my youth one of the top bands was the GUS Footwear Band, then there were the CWS Band (a tobacco factory), Black Dyke Mills, Fairey Aviation and the Brighouse and Rastrick band was a temperance band. There are also Silver Bands which are brass bands that can afford more Duraglit. We had one in Bethnal Green (not in the North at all).
Oh, and then there's the Sally Ann..

Here's a link: http://www.harrogateband.org/ibew.htm

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 19 Apr 08 - 05:30 AM

A couple of years ago, there was a period "reality" TV series where a group of historians lived on a farm - as of the 17th century. And, on one episode, a period musician made a visit with, from memory, a crumhorn, pipe a tabor, mouth-blown Leistershire bagpipes, and an English cittern with 5 times 2 wire strings - plucked with a (plucked?!) feather-plectrum. So my hunch is that they were used, a lot apparently, in barber-shops and taverns, to accompany songs with just the top-line melody with, perhaps, some embellishment of it. But, if for centuries E. trads were sung unaccompanied, what were these songs?...early "barber-shop songs"?..folk-come-art songs?...and who is performing them now?...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Harmonium Hero
Date: 19 Apr 08 - 02:52 PM

Greg Stephens: I said there were Irish and Scottish styles (plural, -I wasn't meaning one of each, and that I wasn't convinced that there was an English style pre-Swarby. OK, I'm open to being convinced on this point. Re-reading the comment after your 'shooting me down in flames', as I predicted somebody would, I see how my use of the phrase 'an English style' was a bit misleading.
Were the English ever renowned for their playing of a particular instrument? The Irish harpers of the middle ages were. (And incidentally, regarding the harp, the ancient Egyptian (and other) harps did not have the front pillar. The 'triangular' harp - i.e. having the soundbox, wrest plank and front pillar - is reckoned to be a celtic - possibly Irish - development, just as the Highland pipes are a Scottish development.) England may be known for its Brass Band tradition, and for its Change-ringing, but that doesn't necessarily mean that individual brass players or bell ringers are particularay virtuosic. This does not necessarily rule out these traditions as being representative, of course. I was just ruminating. (All right - waffling).
John Kelly.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 27 Aug 08 - 02:49 PM

Just been revelling in Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger and the Trinity's uniquely Engish take on Wheel's On Fire prior to Batman on BBC4, and noticed, as I suppose I never have before, that the whole thing is drenches & dripping in delicious Mellotron. Well, if we're including the Stylophone (at my insistence I might add!) then the Mellotron has got to be in there too.

What would English music be without it? Wheel's On Fire notwithstanding, there's - The Moody Blues Nights in White Satin, King Crimson's Epitaph, Joy Division's Closer album, Matching Mole's eponymous first album and - countless, countless others, exploiting this uniquely sounding & most English sounding of all English musical instruments making some of the most uniquely English of all English Music, like - er - Hero & Heroine by Strawbs anyone?

That last one's the closest I think of a Mellotron in a folkish context by the way, but I'm not so well up on such things so if anyone's got any other examples, hoik 'em on.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Jim Martin
Date: 16 Sep 08 - 11:55 AM

Bagpipes (early 16th century):

http://www.goodbagpipes.co.uk/englishindex.htm

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Jim Martin
Date: 16 Sep 08 - 11:56 AM

http://www.goodbagpipes.co.uk/englishindex.htm

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 16 Sep 08 - 12:15 PM

Thanks, Jim - I'd heard of all but the last two double-pipes on your list.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 16 Sep 08 - 03:35 PM

As with the Leicestershire Bagpipes, all these bagpipes are Julian Acre's innovations based on various iconographical evidences and, as such, they are entirely non-traditional & hypothetical - but bloody excellent modern (Scottish?) bagpipes all the same.

In this respect I am presently working on The English (or Luttrell) Hurdy-Gurdy based on the hitherto called impossible hurdy-gurdy found in the margins of The Luttrell Psalter.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 16 Sep 08 - 04:25 PM

The Hexham Abbey Double Bagpipes

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 16 Sep 08 - 05:25 PM

Julian Acre? That should be Julian Goodacre of course!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Roger the Skiffler
Date: 17 Sep 08 - 10:06 AM

I'm sure many Englsih toddlers were playing on the linoleum as soon as they could crawl...


RtS
(I'll get me romper suit)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Jim Martin
Date: 17 Sep 08 - 10:56 AM

'Insane Beard' - I understand that Julian Goodacre's bagpipes are innovations, but the evidence is there that bagpipes were around in England at least 500 years ago.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 17 Sep 08 - 11:41 AM

the evidence is there that bagpipes were around in England at least 500 years ago.

I think you'll find they were around a lot earlier than that, Jim - hence my link to the Hexham Abbey double bagpiper which is 500 years old at least. There's bagpipers in The Luttrell Psalter, from 700 years ago, and earlier ones too. However, as to what sort of bagpipes they might have been, or what sort of music was being played on them, no one can say with any degree of certainty - which doesn't stop us making a few educated guesses and even having a bash at reconstruction.

My objection is to the Goodacre Leicestershire Bagpipe being included in a list of National and Indigenous Musical Instruments when it was only invented some 20 years ago. Likewise the other Goodacre innovations, however so based on whatever ancient iconography, they remain entirely hypothetical, but no less valid as the fine modern instruments they undoubtedly are.

One might draw a map of a Bagpipe Nation - one that stretches from North Africa to Scotland, and all points between & often beyond; one that transcends national boundaries, and one that flies in the face of any notion of Nationalism, despite the role that certain species of bagpipes have to that cause in certain countries. Bagpipes are essentially a migratory species; in the Morpeth Chantry Bagpipe Museum in Northumberland, there is a set of Indian bagpipes lovingly carved from ivory; and one hears of Indian classical musicians adopting the regimental Highland Pipes on which to play ragas.

I applaud Julian Goodacre's instruments, and I've got my eye on a set or two myself, but in the cause of a love of music, and humanity, and most certainly not the nationalist cause that began this thread.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 17 Sep 08 - 02:23 PM

The electric guitar.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 17 Sep 08 - 02:44 PM

"One might draw a map of a Bagpipe Nation - one that stretches from North Africa to Scotland, and all points between & often beyond; one that transcends national boundaries, and one that flies in the face of any notion of Nationalism, despite the role that certain species of bagpipes have to that cause in certain countries. Bagpipes are essentially a migratory species; in the Morpeth Chantry Bagpipe Museum in Northumberland, there is a set of Indian bagpipes lovingly carved from ivory" (IB)...they do have a map at that good museum, which shows the various bagpipes of the world, WITHIN their nation of origin.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 17 Sep 08 - 03:14 PM

So what is the nation of origin of the bagpipe, WAV? And should we perhaps send them all back there?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 18 Sep 08 - 06:39 AM

I don't know IB, but I do know that you yourself just referred to "Indian bagpipes"...surely it's a good thing that there are now different pipes/earthy sounds from different nations..?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 18 Sep 08 - 07:02 AM

I think he meant bagpipes made in India. There isn't THAT much difference between different pipes, regionally. The most significant differences are in pumps versus lungs.
Pipes are very popular among Arabs, both in in the Levant and Egypt. Pipes were used traditionally until the end of the 18th century, when they nearly died out. British influence brought in the Scottish greatpipes, which are now an integral part of village weddings in Egypt. I remember going to Nazareth for the Christmas parade as a child and hearing the Arab pipe bands playing local tunes and Christmas songs. Later, when I was in the army, I heard an Arab practising one late at night, not far from the base.
Primitive pipes, often made from sheep bladders, are still in use among Kurds, or were, until just recently.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Fidjit
Date: 18 Sep 08 - 07:08 AM

Cannons

The ones of war

Seem as if I can still hear them roaring.

Been popular all of my lifetime so far.

Chas

PS. But being also electrically connected (Whoops! Touch of sparks there)my vote also goes for Wheatstone,s concertina.

C.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 18 Sep 08 - 08:14 AM

I don't know IB, but I do know that you yourself just referred to "Indian bagpipes"...surely it's a good thing that there are now different pipes/earthy sounds from different nations..?

Just one nation, WAV - the Bagpipe Nation as I say, which stretches from North Africa to Scotland and all points in between & often beyond. Culturally diverse, but unified with respect to this particular innovation which originated, as with so many things, in the Arabic world with the reed-pipes and shawms that by some other route of organological evolution became the orchestral clarinet and oboe respectively. The shawms & pipes still exist in diverse & innumerable variations (please note this with respect to the last line of #96 of your poems) pretty much unchanged; my brother brings me idioglottal cane reed-pipes made and sold by children on the streets of Damascus. Part of the traditional way of playing them is circular breathing, which at some point 2000 years ago suggested the use of a bag.

How this then manifests itself into the various types of bagpipe is largely a matter of applied technology with respect to the cultural software of where such things at last fetch up. In Northumbria for example, where the aristocratic French Musette (itself derived, supposedly, from folk prototypes in Brittany) was adopted by certain the native musicians to become the Northumbrian Smallpipe, which further interfaces with the Highland Pipe to create the various Border hybrids, cauld-winds & half-longs we know today.

Different pipes & earthy sounds indeed, but inside the drones of the Scottish babpipe is the same idioglottal cane reed that could be found in Ancient Egyptian reed pipes 4000 years ago; which is identical to that being made by kids on the streets of Damascus today, with or without the bag, or balloon, or bladder, which in many cases is optional.

The facts are there to be enjoyed, WAV - studied & pondered over not to be bent out of shape to fit your cranky nationalistic conclusions.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 18 Sep 08 - 12:21 PM

Re: "cranky nationalistic conclusions" (IB)...as I've said here, and ad infinitum on mudcat, nationalism with conquest IS bad; but nationalism with eco-travel and fair-trade, via a stonger UN, is good for humanity.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 18 Sep 08 - 01:15 PM

So you say, WAV - and so you keep saying, yes, indeed, ad infinitum, along with all your other specious nonsensical and racist rhetoric no doubt in the rather fascistic hope that if you say something often enough it will eventually become true. True for you maybe, but not true for me or anyone else for that matter - so why bother? Just enjoy the music and enough of the bollocks ideology already.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 18 Sep 08 - 01:23 PM

You haven't <> (sorry, have no idea how to do italics) HOW nationalism with eco-travel and fair-trade is good for humanity.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 18 Sep 08 - 02:49 PM

IB - these days, you reduce almost anything I post to "racist rheroric", probably partly in hope that others will follow suit: there IS a difference between racism and questioning immigration/the kind of nationalism and regulationism I advocate/caring about one's own culture. Also, there's what we want and the tactics we are prepared to use...please mind yours.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 18 Sep 08 - 02:55 PM

You haven't explained HOW nationalism with eco-travel and fair-trade is good for humanity.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 18 Sep 08 - 04:27 PM

For me WAV the part of your rhetoric that smacks of racism is your bizarre belief in a purity of some imaginary English nation of some fifty years or so ago. Or perhaps even longer ago when buxom wenches served pints of English ale in flagons to the tune of the local barber playing he cittern (because of course serving ale is OK: serving tennis balls is not)

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 18 Sep 08 - 04:40 PM

Ooops, sweaty fingers. Should rally stop reading WAV's nonsense threads - I only do it to read the other people who join in.

Volgadon, you want < i > without the gaps at the start of the sentence and < / i > without the gaps at the end. Had to add the gaps or it would have been:

Volgadon, you want without the gaps at the start of the sentence and without the gaps at the end. Had to add the gaps or it would have been:

Which would have been neither arse nor feather nor hole in the ground.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 18 Sep 08 - 05:03 PM

SC - although it clearly wasn't for me, thanks: I've learned something this day.
Stu, apart from your ad nauseum use of the R-word, I quite like that "buxom" picture you paint.
Also for Volgadon - links are just: click on the "Make a link" link, then type in or copy/paste the full (with http://www.) URL to the top space, and the letters you wish as a link in the space below.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 18 Sep 08 - 05:23 PM

Links are just what?
I wasn't asking for help with links, but with italics.
Now, do answer. HOW is nationalism with eco-travel and fair-trade good for humanity.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 18 Sep 08 - 05:36 PM

Sorry, I thought I'd seen you struggle with links on another thread...but, either way, we're both apples with both links and italics now. "Now, do answer. HOW is nationalism with eco-travel and fair-trade good for humanity" (Volgadon)...good for humanity as alternatives to imperialism and economic/capitalist immigration/emigration...as ways of reducing the rotten inequality in the world and keeping it nice and multicultural, plus more peaceful, etc.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 18 Sep 08 - 05:45 PM

This thread is no longer about England's national musical instrument. In fact it's no longer about music, and should either stop or move below the line.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 18 Sep 08 - 06:36 PM

: Were the English ever renowned for their playing of a particular instrument?

Some were. Nicolson was the world's superstar on the flute in his time. John Bull was probably the best keyboard player of his time. Dowland was one of Europe's best lutenists.

> There isn't THAT much difference between different pipes, regionally.
> The most significant differences are in pumps versus lungs.

Nope. The choice of mouth or bellows power doesn't affect the sound, technique or design much. There are two basically different designs of bagpipe, which diverged very early on. Probably the older one is the type with two equal or very similar chanters and no drones, like the Black Sea tulum, Dalmatian bagpipe or North African mezaoued. The other type has one chanter and at least one drone, like the Scottish Highland pipe, Northumbrian pipes or Bulgarian gaida. The double-chanter one is for the most part geographically south of the single-chanter one. No culture has traditionally used both types.

There is one place where they converge, the Cornish pipe that Julian Goodacre has reconstructed - it's a twin-bore chanter but made as large as a typical single-chanter pipe.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 18 Sep 08 - 07:56 PM

IB - these days, you reduce almost anything I post to "racist rheroric", probably partly in hope that others will follow suit: there IS a difference between racism and questioning immigration/the kind of nationalism and regulationism I advocate/caring about one's own culture. Also, there's what we want and the tactics we are prepared to use...please mind yours.

Unlike you, WAV, my tactics do not involve the promotion & publication of an ideology with has been proven beyond any shadow of a doubt to amount to a retarded racist diatribe. I am not trying garner support here - people can, and people do, figure it out for themselves. There is no difference between racism and questioning immigration whilst simultaneously advocating nationalism and caring for one's own culture as a highly selective and grossly distorted version of same according to your racially exclusive maxims on what may, or may not, constitute Englishness. That you believe this Englishness is under threat as the consequence of immigration is but further proof of your racism; also, that you believe England was a more English place 50 years ago.

And what position are you in to advocate anything? Get things in perspective here, WAV; the most any of us can ever do is to simply get on with our lives in the hope that by doing so we might enable others to do likewise. Too many grand schemes, WAV - too many big notions which bypass any sort reality I'm familiar with. I don't know how you've managed it, but you've got your head stuck up your arse and in the clouds at the same time - your life's work indeed.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 18 Sep 08 - 08:36 PM

"good for humanity as alternatives to imperialism and economic/capitalist immigration/emigration...as ways of reducing the rotten inequality in the world and keeping it nice and multicultural, plus more peaceful, etc."

BUT HOW????? Please specify. The devil is the details.
Have you ever considered a carreer in the Communist party? They love slogans.


": Were the English ever renowned for their playing of a particular instrument?

Some were. Nicolson was the world's superstar on the flute in his time. John Bull was probably the best keyboard player of his time. Dowland was one of Europe's best lutenists."

Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page on electric guitar spring to mind (as do dozens upon dozens of others).....

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 19 Sep 08 - 03:01 AM

what the hell IS all this about?

Of course we haven't get a national instrument. Otherwise we'd all know about it.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Wolfhound person
Date: 19 Sep 08 - 04:06 AM

"In Northumbria for example, where the aristocratic French Musette (itself derived, supposedly, from folk prototypes in Brittany) was adopted by certain the native musicians to become the Northumbrian Smallpipe," (IB)

No, sorry. The likelihood is that hummelschen (a small quiet bagpipe)played in the low countries in the C16/17 were brought back by mercenary soldiers, and became the basic nsp. These were then developed over 200 years (with nods in the direction of the musette and lots over other influences) to become modern nsp.

They're not a national instrument. They're a regional one. I don't think there is a national one.

Paws

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 19 Sep 08 - 04:27 AM

Thanks, Paws - I appreciate the picture is always going to be more complicated than otherwise assumed, but, whatever the case, indigenous they certainly aren't.

And, for both Paws ad WLD - England's National Musical instrument is The Bell; not sure what sort of bell - cow-bell, door-bell, bicycle bell, church bell, ships bell, Lloyd's bell, dinner bell, desk bell, school bell, death bell, cat bell, falcon bell, Morris bell...

I'm off. Life's too short.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 19 Sep 08 - 04:37 AM

hummelschen (a small quiet bagpipe)

Whatever happened to that? Gone the way of the small quiet accordion, I suppose, along with the thunder of the contra-bass tabor and the mighty roar of the battle-flute. Eheu.

cow-bell, door-bell, bicycle bell, church bell, ships bell, Lloyd's bell, dinner bell, desk bell, school bell, death bell, cat bell, falcon bell, Morris bell...

I've probably quoted this before, but John Hegley's lines on Englishness sum it up quite nicely:

I like bells in church towers
And bells below the knee
I like Morris dancing
And I like Morrissey

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Manitas_at_home
Date: 19 Sep 08 - 05:46 AM

In the 17th Century the cornett (the treble version of the serpent)was considered to be the English speciality.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 19 Sep 08 - 08:10 AM

"And what position are you in to advocate anything?" (IB)...4 techinical certificates in manufacturing; a BA in Humanities, majoring in athropology; about 40 countries on a shoestring, etc....which led me to question all the exaggerated deregulation/laissez faire of the 90s onward, and promote REGULATIONISM in financial markets, immigration/emigration, club-football, etc. Yes - REGULATIONISM - a word suddenly in the headlines...and, of all the ISMS, the best way forward for humanity, along with the kind of nationalism I've defined on Mudcat and here.
But, if you just can't listen to me, here's William Shakespeare, from Measure for Measure: "Liberty, as surfeit, is the father of much fast."

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 19 Sep 08 - 08:55 AM

Maybe like the other WAV thread re 5000 Morris dancers, This one should be sent below the line.
Indeed probably all threads started by WAV should suffer the same fate.
A decision for the moderators, methinks

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 19 Sep 08 - 09:27 AM

IB: when I'm watching TV I often practise muted scales on my pocket trumpet

Never heard it called that before...

Ralphie - to be fair, there has been some good & knowledgeable discussion on this thread. However, WAV has posted five comments in the last 24 hours, none of which had any reference to music. Unless the thread gets back on track (perhaps by other posters ignoring WAV's endless provocations), I'd say it's heading for BS-land.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Joe P
Date: 19 Sep 08 - 09:43 AM

How about REGULATION of provocative posts on mudcat, such as those promoting racist immigration policies and cultural segregation?

Either that or we should regulate the folk music of today, all this creativity is just not on.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 19 Sep 08 - 09:56 AM

And what position are you in to advocate anything?" (IB)...4 techinical certificates in manufacturing; a BA in Humanities, majoring in athropology; about 40 countries on a shoestring, etc....which led me to question all the exaggerated deregulation/laissez faire of the 90s onward, and promote REGULATIONISM in financial markets, immigration/emigration, club-football, etc. Yes - REGULATIONISM - a word suddenly in the headlines...and, of all the ISMS, the best way forward for humanity, along with the kind of nationalism I've defined on Mudcat and here.
But, if you just can't listen to me, here's William Shakespeare, from Measure for Measure: "Liberty, as surfeit, is the father of much fast."

Please explain in greater detail what you mean by regulationism. Redefine nationalism, how you see it, please.
As someone with a degree, you oght to know that debate is only possible when terms have been defined.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Howard Jones
Date: 19 Sep 08 - 09:58 AM

WAV, I think we can concede that you may be qualified to pontificate on manufacturing, anthropology and possibly backpacking. Having tried to read your poetry and listen to your music, it is painfully obvious that you are unqualified to pontificate on either.

As for your other views, if you are not prepared to debate or justify them (constantly repeating them or referencing your poetry is not sufficient) then you shouldn't expect us to take them seriously. It is your repeated failure to enter into debate, despite having academic qualifications which should have equipped you to do so, that disqualifies you.

It is good that you, as a fairly recent migrant, should be so keen to rediscover your roots. However your perceptions of the country and culture you have returned to are so mistaken as to be comical. I am reminded of the sketch in Goodness Gracious Me of the the Indian family who try too hard to be British.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Joe
Date: 19 Sep 08 - 10:01 AM

If ye regulates everything, then who regulates the regulators? Who sets the rules?

The solution to worldwide famine? More food! See, its easy to come out with such ideas.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 19 Sep 08 - 12:26 PM

To Pip, Ralphie, etc. - this is surely a case of damned if I do/damned if I don't answer all manner of questions.
E.g:

And what position are you in to advocate anything?" (IB)..."4 techinical certificates in manufacturing; a BA in Humanities, majoring in athropology; about 40 countries on a shoestring, etc....which led me to question all the exaggerated deregulation/laissez faire of the 90s onward, and promote REGULATIONISM in financial markets, immigration/emigration, club-football, etc. Yes - REGULATIONISM - a word suddenly in the headlines...and, of all the ISMS, the best way forward for humanity, along with the kind of nationalism I've defined on Mudcat and here.
But, if you just can't listen to me, here's William Shakespeare, from Measure for Measure: "Liberty, as surfeit, is the father of much fast." (me)

"Please explain in greater detail what you mean by regulationism. Redefine nationalism, how you see it, please.
As someone with a degree, you oght to know that debate is only possible when terms have been defined." (Volgadon)...

By regultionism I mean accepting that humans will always be competitive, and having stong regulations to make that competition as fair as possible - with safety nets (from here).

And I mean nationalism WITHOUT imperialism and WITH eco-travel and fair-trade between nations, via a stronger UN (also from here).

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 19 Sep 08 - 12:56 PM

To Pip, Ralphie, etc. - this is surely a case of damned if I do/damned if I don't answer all manner of questions.

No, it's a case of damned if you insist on going on at great length about your weird and uninteresting political views ON A MUSIC THREAD. The correct response to your questioners - and that's 'correct' purely in terms of Mudcat etiquette - would be "This is a music thread, but I'll be happy to answer any specific questions about my weird and uninteresting political views on the thread I've just started below the line."

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 19 Sep 08 - 01:48 PM

WAV, what sort of regulations, what sort of safety nets. DETAILS, please.

"And I mean nationalism WITHOUT imperialism and WITH eco-travel and fair-trade between nations, via a stronger UN"

You must have repeated that nigh on one hundred times. DEFINE nationalism, please.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,EricTheOrange
Date: 19 Sep 08 - 02:53 PM

Oh my gawd -- not again!!!!!!!!!!!! No wonder the aussies sent him back!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 19 Sep 08 - 04:00 PM

By regultionism I mean accepting that humans will always be competitive, and having stong regulations to make that competition as fair as possible - with safety nets

And who's going to do the regulating, WAV? Not a human being surely, given that human competitiveness is the problem. So, here's my suggestion* - how about we create a race of pan-dimensional intergalactic all-powerful ultra-mega super robot-droids whose sole purpose is the policing of humanity least we ever get out of hand? That would be a sure way to keep that competition fair, to make sure no one stepped out of line or ever acted in least bit human again for fear of being zapped into nothingness with a ZX-4000 Super-Zarg Disintegrational Disrupterositter Beam.

Well - makes about as much sense as the drivel you spout, WAV - for all your swimming medals, eco-tourism, degrees, cycling proficiency certificates, merit awards and whatever fucking chufty badges you think qualifies you to evacuate your bowels on subjects you know absolutely nothing about.   

Meanwhile, for some real Traditional English Pop Music of the highest order, we're setting in for a night of ROXY MUSIC on BBC4.

* Admittedly this idea is derived, in part, from the plot of The Day the Earth Stood Still - but that's as much a part of my Cultural Heritage and Own Good Culture as anything else; those dark November nights we'd go Cob-a-Coaling, up the ladder, down the wall, guising round the dirty back lanes and no matter how well we were doing we'd always be back home in time for Star Trek...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 19 Sep 08 - 07:08 PM

Well, okay, but I don't want any robots or pointy-eared Vulcans living next door to me!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 20 Sep 08 - 04:14 AM

It's those Whinging Poms you've got to watch out for...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 20 Sep 08 - 06:38 AM

would a union jack on a nose flute settle the matter at this stage?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Tim Leaning
Date: 20 Sep 08 - 08:18 AM

Maybe that is the answer to the british Empire.
No instrument or culture of your own so why not go out and steal someone elses?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 20 Sep 08 - 08:30 AM

whatever, you do - don't steal anybody's nose flute who seems to have a heavy cold. Not even in the name of the Queen.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 20 Sep 08 - 09:58 AM

"Oh my gawd -- not again!!!!!!!!!!!! No wonder the aussies sent him back!" (Eric)...no, definitely of my own free will.

"By regultionism I mean accepting that humans will always be competitive, and having stong regulations to make that competition as fair as possible - with safety nets" (me, above)...
"And who's going to do the regulating, WAV? Not a human being surely, given that human competitiveness is the problem. So, here's my suggestion* - how about we create a race of pan-dimensional intergalactic all-powerful ultra-mega super robot-droids whose sole purpose is the policing of humanity least we ever get out of hand? That would be a sure way to keep that competition fair, to make sure no one stepped out of line or ever acted in least bit human again for fear of being zapped into nothingness with a ZX-4000 Super-Zarg Disintegrational Disrupterositter Beam" (IB)...the UN.

And to a-bit-harsh Pip: we do get back to instruments now and again - check our Weelittledrummer, e.g.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 20 Sep 08 - 01:12 PM

Sorry, wrong again. I repeat, the correct response to your questioners - and that's 'correct' purely in terms of Mudcat etiquette - would be "This is a music thread, but I'll be happy to answer any specific questions about my weird and uninteresting political views on the thread I've just started below the line." Either that or ignore the question and post something about music instead (I'd say you're halfway there).

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 20 Sep 08 - 01:46 PM

..."Jerusalem" which was just sung at the Twickenham charity rugby game, goes down to B below middle-C in the "Hymns Ancient and Modern"/"English Hymnal" version; hence, a tenor English flute player must transpose to a key other than D...and I think F is best..?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 20 Sep 08 - 03:43 PM

Oh, a collection of bickering nations, each with their own self-interest at stake?
"And who's going to do the regulating, WAV? Not a human being surely, given that human competitiveness is the problem. So, here's my suggestion* - how about we create a race of pan-dimensional intergalactic all-powerful ultra-mega super robot-droids whose sole purpose is the policing of humanity least we ever get out of hand? That would be a sure way to keep that competition fair, to make sure no one stepped out of line or ever acted in least bit human again for fear of being zapped into nothingness with a ZX-4000 Super-Zarg Disintegrational Disrupterositter Beam" (IB)

...the UN."

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 20 Sep 08 - 03:56 PM

Sorry Pip (makes me think of Dickens); yes, Volgadon, "GLOBAL REGULATIONISM" (see this week's WEEKLY WALKABOUT in the BS section), including fair-trade - via the UN, the nations within the UN, and local/county councils within nations.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 21 Sep 08 - 05:36 AM

"GLOBAL REGULATIONISM" (see this week's WEEKLY WALKABOUT in the BS section), including fair-trade - via the UN, the nations within the UN, and local/county councils within nations.

I think WAV's setting himself up for world presidency here; a nice multi-cultural world it'll be too, with all the nations ethnically cleansed and sorted and everyone put back where they belong and given strict instructions on what instruments they may or may not play and what songs they may or may not sing. And anyone who doesn't fit, or is just naturally recalcitrant to such a mind-numbing regime... well there'll be a special train for those no doubt; it'll have to be a bloody big one, and I'll be the first on it because I'm sure I'd rather be dead than live in such a world. Then WAV gets the third of his three-wishes - a smaller population!

We were out and about in Newcastle yesterday; first stop, the City Surplus Stores, an Asian-owned friendly family business which has clothed Tyneside's alternative scene for thirty years and more; second stop, the Laing Art Gallery to visit some dear old friends (though Isabella is away on her travels) and for a customary whinge about modern art. Afterwards, we tucked into Subways beneath the dribbling statue of Old Father Tyne nearby the monolith that commemorates the visit of President Jimmy Carter in May 1977 - the same month I saw The Damned supporting T Rex at the City Hall. Then it was off to visit some more old friends in The Museum of Antiquities only to find they've closed it down and are relocating the collection to the Great North Museum, that was once The Hancock. Things change, move on, and it's always the first time for someone. In Windows, I played a Chieftain D whistle (£130) that was so loud it hurt my ears; I also had a go on a Mexican guitarron - a fretless acoustic bass which sounded lovely. Also in Windows, I bought a banjo capo so as I might play my old fiddle in the manner of a kemence. Outside in the Central Arcade we applauded a couple of young lads who were busking pop songs with acoustic guitars to the beat of the Djembe player who was drumming up a storm 100 yards away on Gray's Monument. We stood in the crowds to watch the Native American couple busking in costume in Northumberland Street (dream catchers on the the PA - nice touch!) and further down a raggy delegation of Hare Krishnas had a nice groove going on outside of Marks & Spensers.

Newcastle-upon-Tyne - The Toon - business very much as usual. I didn't see any Morris Dancers, Folk Singers (though I did sing The Leg of the Mallard to the Civic Centre ducks) or any other evidence of WAV-type ersatz volkishness. I did see a lot of happy Geordies though, of all colours and ethnicities, and students, and freshers; and no indication of anyone losing their culture nor yet of society suffering as a result.

Let's just consider that again shall we?

"GLOBAL REGULATIONISM" (see this week's WEEKLY WALKABOUT in the BS section), including fair-trade - via the UN, the nations within the UN, and local/county councils within nations.

And he has the neck to say he's not racist. WAV - you're a disgrace to humanity.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 21 Sep 08 - 06:38 AM

Here is an interesting statement by a Maxim Goryachev, who may or may not be the same social activisit I know, need to check, but it's food for thought.

I don't like salo (pig lard, the national Ukrainian delicacy), I don't wear an embroidered shirt and don't know the words to the Ukrainian national anthem.

I haven't swam across the Dnepr and can't dance the hopak (best known of all Ukrainian dances, with lots of jumping). There is no copy of "Kobzar" (a poem by Taras Shevchenko, one of the foremost nationalists) on my desk and the walls are not lined with rushnyks (ritual, embroiedered towels). My blood is red, not blue and yellow.
The three most important words I said in Russian. Am I Ukrainian?

I'm a dedicated fan of "Dynamo" (footie club), a fan of Klichko and Klochkova (the former a boxer, the latter, a swimmer).

I saw this land from the window of a Boeing, but I returned. I don't need neon cities and silicone women. I don't want to live there where the streets are nameless and the people have no patronymics.
I'll remain here. Here the fires which swept the land have barely gone out and the names of our forefathers are still visible on the memorial plaques (I.E. WW2 wasn't too far back).
Here girls read in the subway and write verses in the margins of textbooks. On the money here are poets, not presidents.
Here people have a good sense of humour and smile openly, sincerely.
I'm Ukrainian.

I love the narrow streets of Lvov and the avenues in Kharkov. Easy-going Odessa, business-like Donetsk and the legendary Poltava, they have all become dear to me.

I don't trust patriots on podiums, I believe in the man in the trenches.
I believe in this land- I trust this air, these mountains, these people, who keep their word.
I love the sound my feet make against the tiles on Khreshatik st (the central street of Kiev), the creaking of the snow in the Carpathians and the rustling of the waves in the Crimea.
I will never forget the lullabies I've heard, or the kisses I received on Andreevsky st.

And what is more, I frequently dream about the vast blue skies and sunflower fields. My son will be born here. I'm Ukrainian!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 21 Sep 08 - 08:42 AM

"I also had a go on a Mexican guitarron - a fretless acoustic bass which sounded lovely. Also in Windows, I bought a banjo capo so as I might play my old fiddle in the manner of a kemence." (IB)...haven't been for a few weeks, do they stock English citterns now?

So you were happy to get a taste of all those other musical genres, in a city of England, without any "Morris Dancers, Folk Singers" (IB)...as I say, you are an extreme pro-immigrationist, and a lot of tradies, including me, would be bothered by the lack of English culture you describe, as would many foreign tourists, scraping through the haystack to try and find a needle of the English culture they intended to get a taste of.

However, "customary whinge about modern art." (IB)...we'd agree on that one!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 21 Sep 08 - 09:37 AM

Ummm, WAV, for most tourists, English culture seems to riding on a double-decker and poking faces at the sentries at Buckingham Palace.....
They don't really go searching for English culture, let alone your perception of it. Now, do find me a refference to there being morris dancers in city streets on a daily basis?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 21 Sep 08 - 09:43 AM

Please, please, please, please, take it somewhere else. This thread is currently getting far more prominence than it deserves - and giving WAV's political opinions far more prominence than they deserve. Mods?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 21 Sep 08 - 12:17 PM

haven't been for a few weeks, do they stock English citterns now?

No such thing as an English Cittern, WAV - at least not with the sort of continuous provenance you dream of; it's a reinvented beast along the lines of the Irish Bouzouki. Like the English Flute, it exists only in your fevered imagination.

So you were happy to get a taste of all those other musical genres, in a city of England, without any "Morris Dancers, Folk Singers" (IB)

Of course I was happy! These were all people out there, doing stuff for the love of it and very much a part of the very English cosmopolitan cultural ambience of this very cosmopolitan English city - my home town indeed, from which I now live some 130 miles distant. I was there with my wife, and my son and daughter - 21 & 27 respectively - who both still live there, and who both, though brought up in very folkie household, are avid fans of hip-hop and have no time for folk music in any shape or form! How cool's that? And, as proud as I am of them, I am proud too to be a Geordie, and never prouder than I was yesterday, soaking it all in and stocking up with Gregg's stotties and all. We also went along Stowell Street, aka China Town, the supermarkets & restaurants & buffets of which have been an integral aspect of the cultural landscape of Newcastle since my childhood - long before you fetched up with your grubby evil notions of Ersatz Englishness; likewise the Asian shops on the West Road, where back in the early 1980s we lived on Fazal's superlative samosas whilst freely mixing experimental industrial noise and Traditional English Folk Song, lazing summer days to the music of Billy Pigg or seeking out the wonders to be had on Thursday nights at The Bridge Folk Club.   

as I say, you are an extreme pro-immigrationist, and a lot of tradies, including me, would be bothered by the lack of English culture you describe,

How dare call yourself a Traddy or yet use the word to justify your racist bullshit? I am more of an English Traddy that you'll ever be, WAV - in the English Traddy stakes I could whip your sorry Aussie arse all around England and back again. You are a man who by his own proud boast has only 17 E Trads in his repertoire, and most of them sourced from an American website. Moreover, you have an expressed intention of never learning any more. What sort of Traddy is that? There are some 70 E trads in the PBOEFS; when I was fifteen I made a point of learning them all. I have been singing E trads for over thirty-three years and have forgotton more songs than you'll ever know. I'm still trying to research and learn 5 new songs at any one time; and, furthermore, I am still learning what it means to be a Traddy.

One thing I do know however, is that with the territory of being a true English Traddy goes an understanding of just what place Traditional English Folk Song, Dance and Folklore has within English Culture as a whole - that it's very much a revived minority hobbyist passion with no actual traditional currency whatsoever. For my feelings on this, please read my polemical blog The Liege, the Lief and the Traditional English Folk Song over at my Myspace page. Heavens, man - you seem to be labouring under the illusion that by learning 17 E trads you have become a Traditional English Folk Singer. In this respect I fear, you are, at best, at the beginning of a very long & fruitful journey (in which case I wish you God Speed) or, at worst, utterly & hopelessly deluded (in which case, sir, I bid you Good Riddance).

as would many foreign tourists, scraping through the haystack to try and find a needle of the English culture they intended to get a taste of.

Any tourist would find plenty of English Culture in Newcastle or any English town or city they visited; it's there at every turn. But if they wanted Trad. E. Folk Song, Dance (etc.) they'd have to adopt a more specialist approach for a more specialised taste, lurking as it does on the fringes and in the shadowy places which are its natural habitats. They'd find out about Joe Crane's first Saturday Come-All-Ye at The Cumberland Arms, and they'd be sure to find it thriving too, as the whole folk scene is; indeed doing rather better now than it ever has in any point since the revival began. But please note: it's just a revival, WAV - a minority hobby that in no way shape or form constitutes English Culture. And remember - only 0.028% of the English population are Morris Dancers, and most of them probably do Line Dancing too. I wonder what the percentage is for singers of E trads, unaccompanied or otherwise?

However, "customary whinge about modern art." (IB)...we'd agree on that one!

Don't be so sure, WAV - as well as being an extreme pro-immigrationist and extreme English Traddy, I am also an extreme modernist in respect of political philosophy, humanism and art. I whinge about modern art because it cow-tows to the simpering vacuities of the post-modern whilst maintaining its status as comfortable corporate gew-gaw on the cultural mantelpiece of the mediocre. That said, I liked Claire Morgan's Gone With the Wind exhibit at the Laing and would strongly recommend a visit next time you're passing.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Dave (Bridge)
Date: 21 Sep 08 - 02:41 PM

Wish you hadn't mentioned Joe Crane's Cum all ye. We don't want it spoilt

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Fidjit
Date: 21 Sep 08 - 02:58 PM

Pip Radish

I agree.

Perhaps it's time to get out my English National Musical Instrument suggestion and prove the point.

Chas










































Perhaps i

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 22 Sep 08 - 05:33 AM

Pip and Fidgit - we ARE discussing/arguing ON-THREAD a fair bit of the time here, so, if you don't like it, simply don't click on it, rather than whinging to the Mods.

IB - we agree on the stotties but "my son and daughter - 21 & 27 respectively - who both still live there, and who both, though brought up in very folkie household, are avid fans of hip-hop and have no time for folk music in any shape or form! How cool's that?"...as ice.
"I am still learning what it means to be a Traddy." (IB)...we agree on that too.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Working Radish
Date: 22 Sep 08 - 06:25 AM

Really? The last comment about the ostensible topic of this thread was 34 comments and three days ago. The fact that you seem entirely untroubled by this drift away from musical topics, WAV - and, in fact, seem to welcome it - makes me wonder, again, about your motives in posting here.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 22 Sep 08 - 08:29 AM

Rubbish, Radish...try, e.g., a handful of posts to IB's mention/questioning of the English cittern.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 22 Sep 08 - 09:28 AM

IB - we agree on the stotties but "my son and daughter - 21 & 27 respectively - who both still live there, and who both, though brought up in very folkie household, are avid fans of hip-hop and have no time for folk music in any shape or form! How cool's that?"...as ice.

My children are native born English people, WAV; and like all native born English people, they have the free will to choose what Englishness means to them. They too know more about Traditional English Folk Music than you ever will, but - and get this - they simply don't like it. And why the hell should they like it? It's not as if it was ever part of the wider cultural context of working-class Tyneside in which they grew up. It's just a remnant of something old, songs now sung by middle-aged middle-class enthusiasts in the museum of their own imaginings. A good place to be for some of us perhaps, but for most people it's complete and utter nonsense.

Culture is not the absolute commodity you seem to think it is - it's not something you can buy your way into, or yet wish yourself a part or even a practitioner of. Culture is that which life is lived by - in terms of experience, expression, communication, community and celebration - and, as such, it is the default reality of everything we are. As one who supposedly majored in anthropology, you really should understand this; just as you should also understand that what you have there isn't culture at all, English or otherwise, rather the misbegotten spoils of an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder for which I really do hope you eventually get the help you so obviously need.

"I am still learning what it means to be a Traddy." (IB)...we agree on that too.

I don't think we do agree on it though, WAV - because learning is the key to life; it's an ongoing process that begins at birth and only comes to an end when we die. Sadly, and very disappointingly, you've made it your Life's Work to be the single exception to this most glorious human rule. You're the poet who no longer writes poetry, the folk singer who no longer learns songs, the traveller who no longer travels; the hapless idealogue who assumes that all the nonsensical crap he wrote years ago is still somehow relevant, even unto himself. You reached the terminus of your life long ago; copyright 2003; at which point you stopped dead, whilst the world kept on moving, transfiguring itself with each new glorious dawn.

You've set yourself against humanity - in your thinking, your ideas, your dogma, your rhetoric; you've walled yourself in behind your own entrenched philosophy convinced that you've stumbled on an absolute truth. Truth is the very last thing it is; it doesn't even bear scrutiny on any level before people see it for the bilious racist totalitarian sexist misanthropic evil it actually is. You do this in the name of Traditional Music, you even do it in the name of Christianity, but at its heart is a big black devilish hole sucking the life from everything you claim to so love and cherish.

The solution is a simple one; de-clutter! Delete the lot and wake up to reality. Come out and play, join us in the real world before it really is too late.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 22 Sep 08 - 09:29 AM

Pip.

Isn't it obvious why WAV posts here???
By baiting the rest of us, he's hoping to be accepted.
A stranger in a foreign land, type of thing.
What he hasn't realised is that his way of getting to know us "foreigners" (for that is what we are in fact as far as he is concerned), will only alienate us.
What he has singularly failed to understand is that, if you beat us over the head with a stick, we will bite back.
As the rest of you well know, we all basically rub along reasonably well here in the UK. The occasional disagreement, but nothing that isn't normally dealt with with a shrug and a joke.
But a sustained attack from an interloper (For that is he) will provoke, at first, mild rebukes and mild jokes, and if the provoking continues (as is happening at the moment), downright ridicule, ending in very great anger....(we seem to be approaching that stage now).
Who wins? Well, certainly not WAV, that's for sure!
His agenda? Who really knows.
As a self-publicist (viz,) the interminable plugging of his, at first laughable, but with closer examination, subversive Website, at every opportunity, he is without equal. But ultimately pointless.
IMHO opinion his Poetry? is on a sub McGonagel level.
Seems to me, he is an Ex Pat, lost in the land of his forefathers, tryng to find where he fits after all those years down under, and failing with little self-respect left. Very sad.

So WAV, just stop trying. We are not impressed.

Hate to do comparisons, but, consider Martyn Whyndham-Read (a good friend, sorry Martyn to drag you into this)

Similar story.
Born in the UK.
Spent many years in Aus.
Came back, a talented singer, and musician, bringing his twist on Australian culture and it's links to its UKs origins.
(Check out his 2 double cds Songlinks 1 UK/Aus and Songlinks 2 UK/US)
All done with a gentle humour and a great deal of respect.

Maybe WAV, you should check these out, before we send you to Coventry.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphi
Date: 22 Sep 08 - 09:43 AM

NOTE TO MR BEARD (INSANE OF THIS PARISH)

You have been found guilty of referring to WAVs website as a link in your previous post, found guilty as charged (Shut up, I'm the judge here!), and have been sentenced to life imprisonment listening to some wonderful English (sic) Cittern, and English (sic) Recorder music, at a level only normally found at a Motorhead gig (you know them. That American Pop combo!),
Whilst watching (English) Woman with enourmous veined arms, Sumo Wrestling......with a dog. (English Setter obviously)
Second thoughts you can't have the last bit, you might enjoy it!!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 22 Sep 08 - 11:16 AM

Culture is that which life is lived by - in terms of experience, expression, communication, community and celebration - and, as such, it is the default reality of everything we are.

True wit is nature to advantage dressed:
What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed. (A. Pope)

Nice one, IB.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 22 Sep 08 - 11:34 AM

Neither discussion nor argument WAV. Think of Mudcat as a group of (mostly)kindly and (almost always) knowledgeable professors with a wish to correct a learner in the fields of their expertise

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 22 Sep 08 - 11:41 AM

In my defence, M'lud, let me say this - that the body of work in question is often referred to as such by its author, with the html link being very much part of the typographical rendering. To this end, I confess that I did toy with rendering it thus Life's Work, or even Life's Work, but when it comes to pure vileness there is no image I know of that can possibly convey the full horror of the actual work in question.

In any case, I snickeringly accept the sentence in the knowledge that no such English Citterns or English Flutes are presently extant, but will happily accept Gentle Giant who did similar things with a full consort of wooden recorders at volumes often surpassing even that of Motorhead. Yes - Gentle Giant playing one of those confounded American Genres best heard in - where was it again - Atlanta?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST
Date: 22 Sep 08 - 12:26 PM

Having sat through half of a Motorhead concert ... great stuff (but dire effects on the hearing ... being deaf for half a day did little for my equilibrium) my mind boggles at the thought of recorders played at volumes exceeding Motorhead's own .... now I could understand it if you had said bombardes .... but then they aren't English are they??

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 22 Sep 08 - 12:38 PM

IB - realistically, your lyrics and voice (which I quite like) are E. trad, but your accompaniment is not, and you delight in the fact that elements of foreign cultures are practised much more here now than our own English ones...so, if you are a trady, you're a strange one.

"Hate to do comparisons, but, consider Martyn Whyndham-Read (a good friend, sorry Martyn to drag you into this)
Similar story.
Born in the UK.
Spent many years in Aus.
Came back, a talented singer, and musician, bringing his twist on Australian culture and it's links to its UKs origins.
(Check out his 2 double cds Songlinks 1 UK/Aus and Songlinks 2 UK/US)
All done with a gentle humour and a great deal of respect.
Maybe WAV, you should check these out, before we send you to Coventry." (Ralphie)...there is a slight chance I may one day live in Coventry, as it's WITHIN the borders of England but, unlike MW-R, I will never live in France (although I've enjoyed a VISIT there), and, as an English repat, I only practise/perform English (no-longer Australian) material. (And this is NOT nearly as radical as you make out if you remember/realise that, not so long ago, many folk-clubs in England had a pefrorm-your-own-culture policy.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 22 Sep 08 - 12:54 PM

Ah Mr Beard.
I have consulted with the Bench.
And we have (on your appraisal) to commute your sentence, to a medley of ...

Gentle Giant.
National Health.
Gilgamesh.
Hugh Hopper.
Matching Mole.
Caravan.
Hatfield and the North.
And, The Oevre of Kevin Coyne.....

Would that be acceptable (In a very English way!!)??

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 22 Sep 08 - 01:11 PM

"IB - realistically, your lyrics and voice (which I quite like) are E. trad, but your accompaniment is not, and you delight in the fact that elements of foreign cultures are practised much more here now than our own English ones...so, if you are a trady, you're a strange one."

RALPH VAUGHN-WILLIAMS. He took English folk tunes and added accompaniement which was NOT E. trad in any way shape or form.

Not only that, but your use of recorder is NOT E. trad either, WAV.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 22 Sep 08 - 01:27 PM

RVW, Volgadon, collected/recorded E. trad tunes and added harmonies for his New English Hymnal.
The recorder/English flute was probably rarely used by folkies here until the turn of the 20th century - but it is one of the "instruments of (or closely associated with) England" (opening post, above or here) and, thus, could be called a traditional English instrument...it's certainly been played in this land for a long time; and, at the Rothbury TRADITIONAL Music Festival, there is a competition for whistles AND recorders.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 22 Sep 08 - 01:33 PM

Would that be Irish whistles?

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 22 Sep 08 - 01:42 PM

For your information:

The English guitar (or guittar) was a small cittern that was fashionable between 1750 and 1790, most notably in the British Isles, closely related to other citterns that were being made in western Europe at the time (such as the instrument the French called the guitarre allemande) but with several particular specifications introduced by the English luthiers. The English cittern was brought by the English to Portugal, possibly circa 1750, through the trading activity held between the two countries at the time. This fact is observed by António da Silva Leite in 1786, who remarks in his method for the instrument the following: "The guitar, of which they say has its origins in Great-Britain..."; "Of the guitars from England, Mr. Simpson is the best maker.". The local luthiers then proceed to imitate and copy the foreign instruments. Eventually, the instrument was subject to modifications and improvements through the years and it remained popular in Portugal long after the fad died in the remaining European countries. By as early as 1820 the English already referred to it as the "Portuguese guitar".

More HERE. Scroll down.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 22 Sep 08 - 01:48 PM

Aha, so traddies back in the day would perform their songs with a full orchestra using innovative arrangements which were quite modern for RVW's period?

I don't see how a symphony orchestra is any more trad than a guitar or eastern fiddle.

I see that the Rothbury TRADITIONAL Music Festival also has a competition for highland bagpipes, I guess those are E. trad instruments too.

Find me one shred of evidence that any traddy or folkie before the revival ever used a recorder to play E. trad.
Without that evidence, it is nothing more than WISHFUL THINKING to call it an E. trad instrument. The kemance is just as valid.
Especially when we consider that kemances are a purely folk instrument, whereas recorders were used for POP and ART music. What is more, the earliest depiction is found in MACEDONIA.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 22 Sep 08 - 02:05 PM

your lyrics and voice (which I quite like) are E. trad, but your accompaniment is not, and you delight in the fact that elements of foreign cultures are practised much more here now than our own English ones...so, if you are a trady, you're a strange one.

There's your error in a nutshell, WAV. IB may delight in eating Big Macs on Cecil Sharp's grave while listening to Britney Spears for all I care - what makes him a 'traddie' is that he learns and performs traditional material. Judge him - and yourself - on musical grounds and you may, perhaps, feel slightly less entitled to pass judgment.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 22 Sep 08 - 02:07 PM

"Aha, so traddies back in the day would perform their songs with a full orchestra using innovative arrangements which were quite modern for RVW's period?" (Volgadon in a dizzy spell?)...please read my last post again and note RVW collected and THEN harmonised TUNES (as in top-line melodies only).
And it was mainly Germans and English who brought the recorder back as a folk and student instrument early in the 20th century...and now we have both German and English fingering/holes.

"Would that be Irish whistles?" (Stu - also on a dizzy spell?)...Irish music is sometimes played on an ENGLISH whistle...which evolved from the English flageolet in England.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 22 Sep 08 - 02:53 PM

WAV, RE RVW, I tried to post, but the cat is allergic to the youtube links I had. Go to youtube, type in 'English folksong suite', 'fantasia on greensleeves' and 'five variations on Dives and Lazarus', that should be enough to start from.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 22 Sep 08 - 03:42 PM

: Find me one shred of evidence that any traddy or folkie before the revival ever
: used a recorder to play E. trad.

Look at English recorder tutors from the mid-18th century (e.g. Rutherford). They all include a mixture of Scottish, English and Irish folk tunes (but usually more Scottish than anything else). As well as Handel, Arne and the like.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 22 Sep 08 - 03:47 PM

Alright, Jack, valid point.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 22 Sep 08 - 04:25 PM

GUEST,Volgadon posts:

Alright, Jack, valid point

That's very gracious of Volgadon, and herein lies the problem: WAV will never admit that he's wrong. I fear that he's delusional. I hope that doesn't turn nasty.

Ed

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 22 Sep 08 - 05:49 PM

Alright, Jack, valid point

Or perhaps not... After all, these 18th century recorder tutors were aimed at bourgeois hobbyists - hardly the traditional folk musicians whose rustic repertoires were greedily plundered out of long standing fashionably for same. A crucial difference perhaps? Also - the recorder is in no way, shape or form a folk instrument - it's a dynamic classical flute developed for chromaticism and virtuosity reaching its apotheosis as a solo orchestral instrument of the high Baroque. Requiring a relatively simple embouchure made the recorder ideal as a parlour novelty, but is that really folk music? I would say perhaps not, no matter what tunes they were playing out of their tutor books; folk music is, after all, more than dots in a tutor book. I would further argue that because the recorder died out when it was superseded by the transverse flute, a fair case can be made against it ever being considered as anything else other than the early chromatic classical flute it undoubtedly is.

When the recorder was revived it was not as a folk instrument. I think this misconception is in part due it finding its way into education as a primer for proper woodwind instruments (entirely due it being easy to cheaply mass produce in Bakelite (Dolomite?) and latterly plastic) thus effectively ruining the experience of music making for millions of school children. Not so much a musical instrument, as an instrument of torture - a further case against the recorder as folk instrument!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 22 Sep 08 - 06:35 PM

thus effectively ruining the experience of music making for millions of school children

I dunno, it definitely got me started. I still remember the realisation that this thing will play whatever tune I tell it to, not just the ones I've been taught to play!: a feeling of limitless possibilities opening up, like few other experiences before or since. Yes, it was a mass-produced plastic recorder, and no, I didn't make a particularly beautiful sound with it (especially since the first tune I worked out was God Save the Queen) - but it opened the door.

Still naff all to do with the jolly old Eng. trad., of course.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: TheSnail
Date: 22 Sep 08 - 07:40 PM

Insane Beard

it's a dynamic classical flute developed for chromaticism and virtuosity reaching its apotheosis as a solo orchestral instrument of the high Baroque.

Bit like the violin then.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,caitlín
Date: 22 Sep 08 - 11:35 PM

> the recorder is in no way, shape or form a folk instrument - it's a dynamic classical flute developed for chromaticism and virtuosity reaching its apotheosis as a solo orchestral instrument of the high Baroque.

People in England (and everywhere else) were playing and dancing to recorders, informally and recreationally, for centuries. Look at the iconography for a start. This instrument goes back to long before they had such concepts as "classical".

> virtuosity

just means you're flash at playing your instrument, not that it has to be a concert stage performance. It can just as easily be done in the tavern yard.

> chromaticism

Because you can cross-finger it and get sharps & flats, it can't be a folk instrument?   

> Requiring a relatively simple embouchure made the recorder ideal as a parlour novelty, but is that really folk music?

Because it's easier to blow notes out of, it can't be a folk instrument?

> because the recorder died out when it was superseded by the transverse flute, a fair case can be made against it ever being considered as anything else other than the early chromatic classical flute it undoubtedly is.

Because it was eventually displaced by the transverse flute, this somehow invalidates its prior existence? Recorders were in use for hundreds of years, for a variety of purposes, before they died out. How does the eventual ascendancy of the German flute nullify that past history?

> no matter what tunes they were playing out of their tutor books; folk music is, after all, more than dots in a tutor book.

Yes - and where do you suppose the books got those tunes from???   From the folks playing them, dancing to them, singing them - some on fipple flutes. If that's not folk music, what is?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 23 Sep 08 - 04:21 AM

...and, along with the violin, the redorder/English flute is still one of the best chromatic instruments for mimicking the human voice, including folk singing, so using one for an intro to an English folk song can't be a bad thing to attempt (one of my own attempts, "The Water is Wide," is here); and neither can using one to accompany English dances. Further, due to the polymer technology that IB referred to, it's now one of the least expensive instruments.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Curious Scot
Date: 23 Sep 08 - 04:39 AM

The Water is Wide is Scottish

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 23 Sep 08 - 05:10 AM

Hi Curious Scot.
Exactly!
Hoist by his own petard, methinks.

This thread started in a fairly interesting way with a discussion on the history and origins of various instruments.
Apart from the Concertina family, which can be reliably traced to Charles Wheatstone. (I'm guessing here, but I'm sure he was well aware of the Chinese developments of Free Reed Instruments, and just adapted ancient technology to fit in with what could best be achieved in the early 19th Century)

As for the other instruments, the jury has to be out as to origins.
We could argue forever, to what end?

No, what this thread is really about, is WAVs theory of Monoculturalism.....(again)

With great trepidation I finally plucked up courage to visit WAVs MySpace page and sampled some of his recordings.
Just to say that it confirmed all my worst fears.

So, is this a first? A thread hi-jacked by its originator?
With a link to his own websites in every post, one has to come to the conclusion that this thread is the work of a delusional fantasist.
The rest of us got sucked in by its title.
Time to let it die now, please.
WAV. (No reply required, or indeed wanted)

Keep practicing. but, I'd leave it a few years before posting your recordings for the world to hear.
Also, you obviously didn't understand my reference to "being sent to Coventry"
Like others here. you've had your fun. I'm out of here.
(I'll read, but not post, and would advise all like minded people to do the same. The alternative.....well!)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 23 Sep 08 - 05:37 AM

Bit like the violin then.

No, nothing like the violin, which did find its way into folk music, where it found itself a fine home as the fiddle; the recorder, alas, did not.

People in England (and everywhere else) were playing and dancing to recorders, informally and recreationally, for centuries. Look at the iconography for a start. This instrument goes back to long before they had such concepts as "classical".

I think the instrument we're looking at here is the whistle flute, not the recorder which is a different beast altogether. Also most of that iconography is biased towards art music, or else a fanciful depiction of an unlikely folkish Arcadia in which aesthetic considerations outweigh those of ethnomusicology.

just means you're flash at playing your instrument, not that it has to be a concert stage performance. It can just as easily be done in the tavern yard.

The virtuosity I was referring to was that demanded of by the composers of the Baroque - Marcello, Telemann, Vivaldi etc., who were writing increasingly demanding scores for the instrument. See Here & elsewhere. I'm not talking about competent folkish musicianship, rather a technical virtuosity only possible in the various traditions of professional art music. It was for this that the recorder was developed.

Because you can cross-finger it and get sharps & flats, it can't be a folk instrument?   

I'm not saying it can't be, just that it isn't and never was. Latter day exceptions exist of course, such as celebrated Northumbrian Piper Neil Smith who plays as charmingly & as dexterously on his recorder as he does on his pipes, and Terry Wincott of the Amazing Blondel who gives us a flavour of how the recorder might have sounded had it ever been adopted as a folk instrument. Other examples abound, including our very own Walkaboutsverse who wields his plastic tenor in a manner that is most un-virtuosic, but hardly traditional, however so idiosyncratic such an approach might be (and however so philosophically loaded on the part of said practitioner). Otherwise, as a true traditional instrument of true traditional folk music, the recorder is nowhere to be found.

Because it's easier to blow notes out of, it can't be a folk instrument?

The fipple is not the issue here, a feature it has with other flutes and whistles, which are folk instruments, but which aren't recorders. My argument was that because it was easy to blow (unlike a clarinet, oboe or transverse flute) it was the ideal thing for the aristocratic dilettantes, just as it proved the ideal thing for school children before they graduated to a proper woodwind instrument.

Because it was eventually displaced by the transverse flute, this somehow invalidates its prior existence? Recorders were in use for hundreds of years, for a variety of purposes, before they died out. How does the eventual ascendancy of the German flute nullify that past history?

Things do die; in the case of the recorder it was killed off by the transverse flute. If it did have an autonomous existence as a folk instrument, it would have lived on, as other instruments did, but the recorder did not. The recorder was an instrument of art music from the medieval (at a stretch), through the Renaissance to the Baroque. It's 20th century revival by Dolmetsch (et al) was also as an instrument of art music, specifically for the recreation of sophisticated early music, not folk.

Yes - and where do you suppose the books got those tunes from???   From the folks playing them, dancing to them, singing them - some on fipple flutes. If that's not folk music, what is?

Again - fipple flutes are not recorders (though recorders are, of course, fipple flutes - an important distinction). The music might have come from folk traditions, as was the fashion, no doubt because along with the notion of faux-rusticity, such tunes were a lot less demanding for the aristocratic amateur dilettante than, say, a Marcello Sonata. As I said these 18th century recorder tutors were aimed at bourgeois hobbyists - hardly the traditional folk musicians whose rustic repertoires were greedily plundered out of long standing fashionably for same. Whatever the source of the tunes, the social context of the tune books is about as non-folk as you could wish to get, as, indeed, is the recorder.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 23 Sep 08 - 05:45 AM

PS - See here for an example of an orchestral instrument existing autonomously in a true folk context. Now what's what I call folk music!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: TheSnail
Date: 23 Sep 08 - 05:53 AM

developed for chromaticism and virtuosity reaching its apotheosis as a solo orchestral instrument of the high Baroque.

Nothing like the violin? Hmmmm.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 23 Sep 08 - 06:02 AM

Well, the violin didn't reach its apotheosis in the orchestra of the high Baroque anyway, neither did it ever die out; it thrives today in every corner of the world in most every conceivable genre of music with distinct repertoires to match - everything from classical Indian Ragas to Bluegrass to Jazz to... everything basically. So, nothing like the recorder at all.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Sailor Ron
Date: 23 Sep 08 - 06:14 AM

Without going into the 'ancient history' of English folk instruments, I would state that the traditional instument for English folk song is none. With very few exceptions, as far as I am aware,traditional singers sang unaccompanied. So England's National Musical-Instrument, as far as folk song goes is the voice! If 'folk song' is to accompanied does it matter then with what instrument? To my mind it does not;electric guitar, banjo,cello,concertina, church organ,Black Sea fiddle, aye and recorder are all as valid,or invalid depending on your personal view.My own view is, its not the instrument, but how it is used that matters.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: TheSnail
Date: 23 Sep 08 - 06:35 AM

NOTHING like the violin?

The violin wasn't developed for chromaticism and virtuosity? It's never been a solo orchestral instrument?

Don't take me too seriously, IB. I'm just amazed by the knots people tie themselves into and the tosh they talk in the totally unnecessary task of proving WAV wrong. He must be delighted at all the attention he receives.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Spleen Cringe
Date: 23 Sep 08 - 07:19 AM

Ron said:"My own view is, its not the instrument, but how it is used that matters"

Absolutely, Ron - agree with you 100%... mind you, I can think of a couple of excellent uses for the recorder!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 23 Sep 08 - 07:53 AM

I'm just amazed by the knots people tie themselves into

It's you that's tying the knots here, TheSnail - thus obfuscating a point that was simple enough - i.e. that, whatever other points of commonality the two instruments may or may not have, the violin became a folk instrument whereas the recorder did not. What the recorder is now of course is a different issue altogether, other instruments likewise; as SailorRon says above, all as valid,or invalid depending on your personal view... its not the instrument, but how it is used that matters.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 23 Sep 08 - 09:30 AM

"We could argue forever, to what end?" (Ralphie)...awareness...a very well known and respected English folkie, Martin Carthy, dared to say, on the BBC, "English don't know who they are any more."
"WAVs theory of Monoculturalism" (Ralphie)...ridiculous...I love our WORLD being multicultural.
Curious Scot - I've seen "The Water is Wide" given English origin in a few places, and, in Wiki., as you say, Scottish. Certainly, there is now a Scottish and an English version.

"Other examples abound, including our very own Walkaboutsverse who wields his plastic tenor in a manner that is most un-virtuosic, but hardly traditional," (IB)...whatever the quality, I play and then sing just the TUNE, which IS traditional...Baroque playing, however, certainly would involve much more ornamentation.
And, once more, at The Rothbury Traditional Music Festival, they have a competition for whistles AND recorders.
"Bit like the violin then." (IB perhaps in a rush)...I said in terms of their capabilities of mimicking the human voice.

Speaking of which, Sailor Ron, I agree with you in part - but you forgot all about the accompaniment of English folk dances.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 23 Sep 08 - 09:45 AM

Mea Maxima Culpa.
I know I shouldn't, but........
I Quote....WAV

"I play and sing, just the tune"

Don't make me laugh.

I have listened to your recordings.
You can't play to save your life.
You can't sing in any recognisible key known to man.
If your recordings are supposed to represent quintessential Englishness, I'm off to Australia.
WAV....JUST GO AWAY.
And learn some humility.

Spaw, when you read this. Please don't go to WAVs MySpace page.
I would worry for your health.

PS FYI WAV MWR lives in England, and is very welcome.
You live in England, and I don't think the same can be said for you.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 23 Sep 08 - 09:45 AM

"WAVs theory of Monoculturalism" (Ralphie)...ridiculous...I love our WORLD being multicultural.

You love the WORLD being multicultural, you just want our COUNTRY to be monocultural. Correct?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Joe
Date: 23 Sep 08 - 09:47 AM

'Speaking of which, Sailor Ron, I agree with you in part - but you forgot all about the accompaniment of English folk dances. ' as a response to:

'I would state that the traditional instument for English folk song is none. '

Analyse the sentence, notice the word 'song', playing a tune to accompany dance is a different matter altogether. Sometimes I doubt your academic credentials.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 23 Sep 08 - 09:59 AM

"Bit like the violin then." (IB perhaps in a rush)

That was actually TheSnail, WAV. Otherwise, I've said all I intend to say on these threads - life really is too short to be wasting time on an arrogant attention-seeking racist buffoon who has neither the humility to listen nor yet the nous to learn.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYlA4q1IcB0

Meanwhile, if anyone wants to discuss any of the matters above, please PM me - I won't be looking in here again.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Curious Scot
Date: 23 Sep 08 - 10:10 AM

Try reading your wiki again wav. - It says - It is doubtful that the ballad is English, although it is popularly considered so. The oldest lyrics which exist show the song to be of Scottish origin.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 23 Sep 08 - 11:13 AM

"And, once more, at The Rothbury Traditional Music Festival, they have a competition for whistles AND recorders."

They also include one for highland bagpipes, so I assume that is E. trad as well.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 23 Sep 08 - 12:25 PM

"'Speaking of which, Sailor Ron, I agree with you in part - but you forgot all about the accompaniment of English folk dances. ' as a response to:
'I would state that the traditional instument for English folk song is none. '
Analyse the sentence, notice the word 'song', playing a tune to accompany dance is a different matter altogether. Sometimes I doubt your academic credentials." (Joe)...what's the title of the thread we are on, Joe?

Volgadon - I do like the Scottish Highland Pipes but disagree with Rothbury, ENGLAND, on that one.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 23 Sep 08 - 12:31 PM

But you are saying that if they have an competition for a certain instrument, said instrument is part of the tradition. Merely following your own logic.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Sugwash
Date: 23 Sep 08 - 02:11 PM

Let's adopt the banjo as England's national instrument. That will give those of other countries a coherent focus for their dislike of the English. I post as a proud Englishman and unapologetic banjo player.

There is a distinct English style of banjo playing, Rob Murch is an admirable proponent of it.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 23 Sep 08 - 02:14 PM

Logically, Volgadon, the Rothbury Trad. Mus. Fest. board see both as trad. instruments - as do I...whether there should be a Scottish pipes comp within the borders of England is another matter.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 23 Sep 08 - 03:05 PM

Going back a bit to Insane Beard's comments about the recorder as a folk instrument. There is something in that position, but it suffers from the problem that it was mainly the bourgeoisie that documented what they were doing with them. Here are a few data points outwith the world of the English diarist.

- The recorder is listed in a chronicle of the reign of Mary Queen of Scots as one of the instruments played by a drunken rabble outside her window; she detested the whole lot of them (and in her customary Red Queen style, subsequently created a law imposing the death penalty for street festivities). Somehow I doubt they were playing Sermisy and Binchois.

- The Georgian salamuri is a type of recorder, and as far as we know it has always been used as both a folk and art music instrument.

- One of the oldest recorders extant is from a time and place which has no known art music: Rhodes under the Knighta of St John, around 1500. I noticed this thing a few years ago in a museum there (nobody before me had spotted the octaving thumbhole). It's rather crudely made from an animal bone, about the same proportions as my Susato G sopranino. (I told Anthony Rowland-Jones about it and he wrote a note in a recorder magazine; I left it to others to argue with the rather unhelpful museum about getting it properly measured and photographed). The Knights' sphere of influence extended from Portugal to Scotland to Egypt to the Caucasus, so this instrument could have come from anywhere in Europe, but it sure doesn't *look* like an art music instrument (no decoration at all, no sign of lathe work) and we know of no art music it could have played. What does that leave?

- Several different sizes of recorder are mentioned in the adverts at the back of one of the Gows' Scottish music collections of the early 19th century; you could buy them from the Gow & Shepherd shop. As far as I know, this is the last mention of it in print in Britain before the revival nearly 100 years later. You couldn't buy printed music for them at that point, so what would people have played on them? Not much option but music like that in the Gows' books, surely.

- The Scottish recorder manuscripts of the early 18th century seem not to be the work of the leisured elite, but of working musicians. They were *really serious* about getting these tunes right, John Dow in particular. These manuscripts are much like those the Village Music Project has documented. Not the sort of thing an illiterate ploughman could have produced, but quite likely made by a player he danced to. (Probably the recorder was a second instrument, though. Thomson seems to have been a trumpeter, and Dow focuses on very complex versions of song tunes for listening rather than dances, the dances would probably have been played on the fiddle).

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 23 Sep 08 - 04:50 PM

"Logically, Volgadon, the Rothbury Trad. Mus. Fest. board see both as trad. instruments - as do I...whether there should be a Scottish pipes comp within the borders of England is another matter."

Actually, logicaly, I think that they see them as SIMILAR instruments which can play the same sort of music, so why not.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Sugwash
Date: 23 Sep 08 - 05:50 PM

Oops, Rob Murch is an exponent of the English banjo style.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 24 Sep 08 - 02:25 AM

WAV
Just so that I understand.
Please define this wierd term for me.
I haven't come across it before.

E Trad.

(That should shut you up)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 24 Sep 08 - 03:29 AM

From: GUEST,Joe
...Sometimes I doubt your academic credentials.

Glad to see I'm not the only one that doubts the veracity of WAVs qualifications. If he does have a BA he must have forgotten pretty much all that he learned.

From what I've seen most of the things he says about himself don't fully stand up to scrutiny...

e.g.
He goes on about English culture but he's culturally Australian

He pontificates about music but from his recordings & opinions he hardly qualifies for the title 'amateur'.

He goes on about his 'technical certificates' but they turn out to be of no significance unless you work in a factory.Using his standards I've got 12 "technical certificates". Does that make me an academic or highly qualified - no it does not.


...Presumably in time we'll find out that "BA" stands for "burger arrangement".

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,banksie
Date: 24 Sep 08 - 04:18 AM

Sugwash wrote: Let's adopt the banjo as England's national instrument.

Well, there is a history. There were several English companies making banjos in the 19th century - Windsor was just one popular make.

My mother used to play in a banjo band in the early 20th century, playing dance tunes such as Polkas and Jigs, so it wasn't `art' music. I still have some of the sheet music, published by John Alvey Turner (Turner's Banjo Budget series). Titles include The Fusilade Polka for two banjos(by Harry Nicholls) , and the Skipping Rope Dance (another Polka, by Herbert Ellis). And I still have her banjo, though I'm damned if I can play it as well as she did, even late in life. One more thing to practice, I guess :-)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 24 Sep 08 - 04:30 AM

Thanks for those details, Jack.
Ralphie - "WAV
Just so that I understand.
Please define this wierd term for me.
I haven't come across it before.

E Trad.

(That should shut you up)"...not from answering:
E. for English; Trad. for traditional...used mainly to describe English traditional SONGS.

Woody - apart from the remnants of my Australian accent, I'm culturally English: my repertoire is English; I play the recorder/English flute; I keep fit with Lawn tennis; my staple is pottages; I've read widely from the canon of English verse; I grow hedera helix; and I think I know England's geography, history, etc., quite well. (Also, as said, I did Australianise during my 26 years there - but not that much: occasionally people there would note my English background, and they certainly would nowadays, if and when I make a VISIT to Aus.).
The formal courses I've mentioned (only when defending strong criticism of my character/abilities) are true; and a Bachelor of Arts Degree is meant to be relevant to lots of occupations (human resources, supervision, etc.), rather than just the arrangement of burgers.
Also, "no significance unless you work in a factory." (Woody)...one of the four is actually an Advanced Certificate in Manufacturing Technology (= a HNC, HR people here have told me), but some of its production-management modules were taken by people in other fields, such as from airlines.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Sep 08 - 04:35 AM

But practicing what you think is English culture does not make you culturally English.

And I have a Silver Swimming Certificate, a lot of Olympians probably earned this prestigious award at some point in their career.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Joe P at work somewhere else
Date: 24 Sep 08 - 04:42 AM

Sorry that was me, it seems that despite my various qualifications and experience working with a wide range of IT packages, as well as my Key Skills qualification(!) I forgot to put my name.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 24 Sep 08 - 06:08 AM

From: WalkaboutsVerse
Woody - apart from the remnants of my Australian accent, I'm culturally English

Hee hee hee. All together now - "Oh no you're not!" You're a fake. Delusional.


Regarding the BA. A degree is supposed to develop you're skills in study, analysis and reasoned argument. I see no evidence that you've achieved anything there given that your postings tend toward the unreasoned, ignorant and simplistic.

Regarding the anthropology bit... well surely the bedrock of Anthropology is the attempt to understand humanity objectively (as far as is possible) without imposing your own subjective prejudices and preconceptions. You've come to England, but rather than using your "qualification" to help you understand the culture, you've come with a set of preconceived ideas and prejudices that bear no relation to the reality, and then you seek to impose them on others. If you did ever attend Anthropology classes you must have slept through them.


Back to the original subject. As another poster said, if we had an English national instrument, we'd know about it. If we don't know about it, it's hardly a national instrument.

There is however one instrument which can be found in most English musical genres over a period of hundreds of years, as at home in modern English Folk, Classical, Jazz, Pop, Rock as it was in 18th century dance music. It's called the fiddle, but it's not specifically English.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 24 Sep 08 - 09:20 AM

You've ALL got it wrong!

England's National Musical-Instrument:


TA DA!


from the 50/60s to today - Transistor radio, morphing to Walkman, then CD Walkman, now iPod and Blackberry...


:-P

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 24 Sep 08 - 09:34 AM

BA = Bugger All

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: TheSnail
Date: 24 Sep 08 - 09:41 AM

On the banks of red roses my love and I sat down
And I took out my iPod to play my love a tune....

Hmmm. Not sure that the symbolism works.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 24 Sep 08 - 09:44 AM

"Hmmm. Not sure that the symbolism works."

Oh, yes, it will, just make sure you pack fresh batteries with the condoms...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 24 Sep 08 - 10:19 AM

Are you calling me a woody Englishman, Woody?! And as for, yawn, "If you did ever attend Anthropology classes you must have slept through them." (W)...and somehow got mostly distinctions for my essays! It was actually IB (above) who found that Wiki has England's nat. inst. as the bell, and quite a few agreed on that (above). Also, curiousity killed/muddied the cat, but are you the Woody I've seen/heard on the NE folk scene once or twice?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 24 Sep 08 - 10:52 AM

The shakey egg.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 24 Sep 08 - 02:47 PM

From: WalkaboutsVerse

and somehow got mostly distinctions for my essays!

You say that, but then you say a lot of things that are patently untrue. Judging by what and how you write, you're being economical with the truth.


It was actually IB (above) who found that Wiki has England's nat. inst. as the bell

Yep the streets round here are packed with kids playing their bells all day and all night. How could I have missed it?


are you the Woody I've seen/heard on the NE folk scene once or twice?

How should I know?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Terry
Date: 24 Sep 08 - 04:05 PM

and somehow got mostly distinctions for my essays!

WAV, is there any chance you could upload these essays to somewhere on the 'net? (There are loads of hosting places)

Lots of us would really like to read them, I'm sure.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 24 Sep 08 - 10:17 PM

"the streets round here are packed with kids playing their bells all day and all night"

Didn't you have a typo or two there?

The streets round here are packed with kids playing (with) their balls all day and all night...

:-P

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 24 Sep 08 - 11:25 PM

"Lots of us would really like to read them"

GUEST Terry.
WAV doesn't do irony. He really doesn't get it.
QED. WAV is not English!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 04:04 AM

I hope IB is still looking in. I really want to go for a drink with him sometime. So long as it's not feckin' mead. Mind you, mead is as scarce in the pubs round here as are bells in the streets, citterns in barber shops and 'pottage of the day.'

Newcastle sounds great. I'm going up soon for the first time. It sounds like a wonderfully vibrant city. I look forward to looking in on the folk degree and spending time with some great English singers and musicians who, like IB, have forgotten more than WAV will ever know about the English tradition.

Btw, wavey davey: Martin Carthy also said that the only harm you can do to a folk song is not to sing it. Given his participation in projects like the Imagined Village, I'd guess his vision of England, and of what is acceptable to do with English music, is a lot closer to IB's than to yours, and if I know the Carthys, no member of the family would want their words hijacked and misinterpreted to support the sort of xenophobia you espouse. Eliza has told you as much herself, and I don't think her dad would feel any differently.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,a still cookieless ruth
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 04:07 AM

guest above: me.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 04:48 AM

Message to the Snail.

"And I took out my IPod for to play my love a tune"

Brilliant!
(Should be added to the Bright but Dim Knight thread)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 04:50 AM

Sorry.
That should read "The Nice but Dim Knight"

As for WAV waxing lyrical re Concertinas.
I play the McCann Duet. If I only played the tune, what exactly would my left hand be doing?

(McCann Duet.....look it up)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Oldguit
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 04:55 AM

I don't know if this has been mentioned before, if so, apologies.

How about "spoons" I don't know if they are played anywhere else.

Oldguit Arr

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: TheSnail
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 05:01 AM

If I only played the tune, what exactly would my left hand be doing?

Playing with your iPod?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Surreysinger
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 05:09 AM

"I play the McCann Duet. If I only played the tune, what exactly would my left hand be doing?"

Waving ? Making obscure* gestures ? Being musically redundant ??

*spelling mistake ??

"(McCann Duet.....look it up)"

Here you go!

And just in case WAV should come back on your spelling of the name,Ralphie, perhaps it should be pointed out by a nerd like me that for years the name was spelled the way you do, whereas in recent years the more recognised spelling adopted is the one in the article - which it is now known is the way the revered Professor Maccann spelled his name. A rose by any other name, and all that ... still a great instrument however you spell it. Not England's National musical instrument ... but I suppose actually an English instrument (unless Maccann proves to have been Polish, Scottish or Irish ????)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 05:12 AM

Indeed. But then, looking back at WAV's list...

INSTRUMENTS OF (OR CLOSELY ASSOCIATED WITH) ENGLAND

Northumbrian Bagpipes (bellows blown), Leicestershire Bagpipes (mouth blown); English Concertina, Anglo Concertina, Duet Concertina (and important developments to – if not inventions of – other keyboards, such as piano and organ, have also occurred in England); Dital Harp/Harp-Lute, English Cittern; English Flageolet, Penny Whistle, Recorder/English Flute

...they're all chordal instruments apart from the whistles. Apparently 'English traditional' means what he says it does, except when it doesn't.

But we already know it's impossible to argue with this guy. A reminder for anyone still tempted...

WAV: [the recorder]'s certainly been played in this land for a long time; and, at the Rothbury TRADITIONAL Music Festival, there is a competition for whistles AND recorders.

Volgadon: I see that the Rothbury TRADITIONAL Music Festival also has a competition for highland bagpipes

WAV: Volgadon - I do like the Scottish Highland Pipes but disagree with Rothbury, ENGLAND, on that one.

It's all evidence for WAV's argument - unless the evidence doesn't support him, in which case he's right and the evidence is wrong.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: DaveM
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 05:14 AM

I nominate the Hohner Pokerwork as Englands national instrument.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Mr Beard's Inane Apprentice
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 06:06 AM

I hope IB is still looking in. I really want to go for a drink with him sometime.

Hi Ruth - I've been instructed to keep an eye on pertinent developments as and when they occur & am assured that a drink would be well in order. IB and the missus are often over in Newcastle, generally on the first Saturday, thus coinciding family visits with a trip to Joe Crane's Come-All-Ye at The Cumberland Arms in Byker - one of the finest sings in the North East, in one of the last remaining traditional pubs wherein singers young and old gladly celebrate in the traditional manner, accompanied, unaccompanied, or otherwise. And we're assured it's a WAV free zone on account of that particular personage preferring to listen to folk radio (whatever the hell that might be) than actually partake of a living, breathing singaround - so no fears there Dave (Bridge). Good beer, no mead, and the only sign of daft Davey is his pathetic promotional poster on the noticeboard bearing his Jack-boot stamp on the face of human freedom directing you to his FREE WEBSITE which openly promotes racial hatred and intolerance with such slogans as:

English culture is taking a hammering and, when people lose their own culture, society suffers.

And talking openly promoting racial hatred and intolerance (or is it just a case of puerile attention seeking at this stage? Either way it garners no sympathy in this camp), we have the following little piece of total(itarian) crap:

whether there should be a Scottish pipes comp within the borders of England is another matter.

Ominous stuff! No doubt WAV has plans to sort out that little aberration once his Glorious World Reich Dictatorship is in order (sorry, a stronger UN with greater powers of regulation) and all nations are ethnically & culturally cleansed of such noxious pollutants.

And for those caught up in the recorder hullabaloo a while back, our thanks to Jack Campin for his fascinating information, none of which, of course, supports WAVs insane idea of the recorder as a Traditional English Folk Flute. But as Pip points out a little way above unless the evidence doesn't support him, in which case he's right and the evidence is wrong.

To close, here's a picture taken by IB whilst out and about in Liverpool yesterday. These are young traditional English folk dancing their traditional English folk dance. Well, as traditional as Morris anyway, certainly as far as these guys are concerned.   

Liverpool Dancers, 24th September 2008

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 06:24 AM

"I play the McCann Duet. If I only played the tune, what exactly would my left hand be doing?"

I dread to think...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 07:00 AM

You're still calling me a woody Englishman, Woody, and, as for my essays, I've kept those papers in a folder, Terry, but, frankly, have other things to do before thinking about typing them onto the web; e.g, I'm still working out the tunes, using my tenor English-flute and keys, to my 17 "Chants from Walkabouts"; incidentally, for a while I was asking folks about "Finale" software to help with this but, although slow compared with some of the folkies I've met, I'm okay now - via mimicking my singing.
Then Ralphie went further than Woody - "WAV is not English!", even after my response to this matter, above.
Oldguit - for what it's worth, I think I'll add "spoons" to the list on my site, which has already changed slightly, due to this this discussion, from what Pip took the liberty of posting here at - Date: 25 Sep 08 - 05:12 AM. And to Pip - you forgot that folk is not the only English genre (how about our hymns and composer music) and/or didn't READ the titles properly, which don't have the word "traditional" in them; indeed, on the up-to-date list, you'll find the stylophone...
But not the Hohner Pokerwork, DaveM - the melodeon being of Viennese origin; although, like the Italian fiddle/violin, played a lot in England nowadays.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 07:45 AM

Hello Surrey(pedant)Singer.

I reserve my right (as an Englishman) to alter peoples names as often as I like, so there!
It's called the "Folk Tradition"

Back to your practising, wench.

To all others, what I do with my left hand is my own affair.
At least it's done behind closed doors with the curtains shut and the lights off.

What WAV does with his left hand, doesn't bear thinking about.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 08:08 AM

"What WAV does with his left hand, doesn't bear thinking about."

He calls it 'English Folk Traditional Music'...


"But not the Hohner Pokerwork, DaveM - the melodeon being of Viennese origin; although, like the Italian fiddle/violin, played a lot in England nowadays."

Ah So! WAV, being of English Origin, could never be called an "Aussie" while he was here, so he was forced to go back home...

In joyful strains then let us sing, "Advance Australia fair!"

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 08:09 AM

300!


:-P

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 08:15 AM

Look here Mr Troupe.

Our Australian friends had to suffer WAV for many years.
As he was born in the UK, we have to take our turn.
Lets call it, "Care in the Uncomformity."
It's a heavy burden I know, but, who are we to reject the rejected.

Let he who is without discernable talent, write the first poem.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 08:20 AM

"Let he who is without discernable talent, write the first poem."

I thought that was what... oh, sorry....

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Sandman
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 08:27 AM

I nominate the Pink Oboe.
an instrument that would suit our revered believer in solo melody,It requires a lot of wind,much jaw,and can play top line melody,and is an excellent instrument for those that wish to play solo[without chords].

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 08:38 AM

Ah Ha! Now we finally know just WHO is Pink Oboe

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 08:39 AM

Captain.
I doubt that our American friends would recognise the Peter Cook reference.
Far less our friend WAV, who was inexplicably out of the country at the time!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 08:45 AM

Not Peter Cook - but Spike Milligan...

For this episode, Sellars was ill, and they needed 4 other actors to do his voices...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Raphie
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 09:04 AM

Sorry to correct you Mr Troupe.

Twas Peter Cooke in his spoof summing up of the Jeremy Thorpe trial.
"That self confessed player of the Pink Oboe"
Followed by the marvellous line...
"Members of the Jury, you will now retire, (as I should have done some years ago) and carefully consider your verdict of.......Not Guilty.

It's alright though. Old Age comes to us all eventually!!

Salut! Ralphie

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 09:10 AM

You're both right - 'troupe was referring to an episode of THEGS, as the clicky will reveal.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: TheSnail
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 09:10 AM

Peter Cook

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 09:24 AM

Mr Snail

Thank You for the link. Haven't seen it in years.
Made my day. Required viewing methinks.
And I almost got the quotes right!
Does anyone think that WAV will get it?
Probably not. Ho Hum.
Answers on a postcard....

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 09:50 AM

The Spy or Who is Pink Oboe
Series 9, Episode 11
First broadcast on January 12, 1959.
Script by Spike Milligan.

Peter Cook Pinched it...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: TheSnail
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 09:55 AM

Foolestroupe

Peter Cook Pinched it...

An English joke passed down in the oral tradition.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 10:14 AM

HE SAID THE "T" WORD!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 10:53 AM

How about "spoons" I don't know if they are played anywhere else.

Russia.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Surreysinger
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 11:03 AM

Captain, far be it from me to descend to the depths which this conversation (diatribe?) now seems to have gloriously plumbed(particularly since it seems to have dragged me away from the practice that I have been condemned to in my role, apparently, as a wench ... what ???) ... what guarantee would there be that the instrument you have offered up for consideration (hmmm..I know I'm going to regret injudicious use of the English language there ... but hey!!) is generically English ?????

And Ralphie ... varlet (??) I was never suggesting that you were using an incorrect spelling of the name (though it apparently is) ... merely that when you took the instrument in question up within the mists of unrecorded time, when dragons flew the earth, and an Englishman's home was his castle, that was the way it was spelled, whereas pedants other than myself have now determined that EVERYBODY had it wrong for years. How it's spelled makes no difference to its position in the rankings of instruments of supreme quality and/or Englishness..... OK, I know, back to my practising ......

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 11:10 AM

Wench. (SS)

Why muse upon spellings?

What does it gain you?

Back to your practising.
Otherwise, You'll end up like WAV. And you wouldn't want that, would you?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Surreysinger
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 11:45 AM

Hmmmmm......... could there be any doubt about that last ???

Musing upon spellings can sometimes be an interesting pastime .. but probably not as interesting as practising. After all, I've got to get to grips with playing the thing with two hands, haven't I?? (No rude comments, please - in my case I'm probably waving and not quite drowning - sorry to Sylvia Plath for the misquote)

What does musing upon spelling gain me ??
An occasional argument or interesting debate on the vagaries of the English language, maybe.

All of which, of course, is vastly off topic...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 11:54 AM

"All of which, of course, is vastly off topic..."

With WAVs threads, no one is quite sure, IMHO, just what IS off topic, or on, for that matter either...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Surreysinger
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 11:59 AM

I bow my head in humble acknowledgement of the truth in that statement .. after all, I am but a wench, and know my place ... hah!!!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 02:07 PM

On keyboards (and the English flute, of course), WAV plays just the tune/top-line melody WITH BOTH HANDS.
Ralphie - you were almost the first one to say: "Welcome home WAV!", or suchlike.
Surreysinger - "Englishness" (you, above) or "Anglicises" (me, below)...

Poem 228 of 230: REPATRIATING

I only sunbathe in winter -
    Behind closed glass;
I may need extra quilts at night -
    Warm or sleepless;
But most of my other ways spell -
    Anglicises.

From walkaboutsverse.741.com

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Surreysinger
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 02:49 PM

To which the only response is "Eh??". Sorry WAV - your meaning, and the allusion to my reference to the country of origin of the Duet concertina, are lost on me. The nice thing about the English language when used properly is that one can at least understand it ... even poetry like that of Gerard Manley Hopkins with its sprung metre and inversion of words ,which I found rather hard going when studying it at university the first time round, but now rather relish. Regrettably that little bit of doggerel above loses any sense or accurate meaning with your incorrect use of the last word ... now had you used the word "anglicising" or "anglicisation" you might have been in with a very very slim chance (exceedingly slim). But sadly I think William McGonagall (if that's the way it's spelled) would probably win hands down in a contest on the grounds of being intelligible.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 03:03 PM

...I forgot the ? and you put two.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 03:10 PM

Re WAVs Repatriating.

"I only sunbathe in winter"
Whatever floats your boat.
"Behind close glass"
Probably a good idea.
"I may need extra quilts at night"
"Warm or sleepless"
Is that the quilts or yourself that is warm or sleepless?
"But most of my other ways spell....Anglicises"
Tried to make sense but now,I feel that I've lost the will to live.
Anglicisies? What planet are you on?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 05:52 PM

: waving and not quite drowning - sorry to Sylvia Plath for the misquote)

You mean Stevie Smith.

> the English flute

How common.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 06:14 PM

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

Here's a link to Stevie Smith reading it in 1965.

Now, WAV that's poetry.

Incidently, Vic Chesnutt put this to music rather nicely. He's American, so no oubt he should have chosen a poem from his own good culture. I'm rather glad he didn't...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Surreysinger
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 06:47 PM

Yes that certainly is poetry, and exceedingly memorable poetry ... the image in those last two lines has stuck in my brain since I first read them many years ago ... even if I did muddle myself up ... why did I think it was Sylvia Plath ? Sorry to Stevie Smith now ! I'm not sure, though, that I'd actually want to hear that to music .. it doesn't strike me as a poem that actually _needs_ any addition, being fairly stark in outline and content.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 07:24 PM

I thought you meant the Aussie Group Not Drowning, Waving ...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 25 Sep 08 - 07:39 PM

You're absolutely right, of course, SS. I wouldn't have chosen to hear it set to music... when I accidently did, I was hugely gratified that Vic, bless him, had done a rather good job.

Couldn't find him on t'internet doing this song, but here he is doing 'Strange Language' .. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ps8-dXpJFoE

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 26 Sep 08 - 02:28 AM

Here is more evidence in support of the banjo being one of Engalnd's national instruments, or at least one closely associated with it.
From Kipling's Cholera Camp.

Our Chaplain's got a banjo, an' a skinny mule 'e rides,
An' the stuff 'e says an' sings us, Lord, it makes us split our sides!
With 'is black coat-tails a-bobbin' to Ta-ra-ra Boom-der-ay!
'E's the proper kind o' padre for ten deaths a day.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 26 Sep 08 - 05:54 AM

Ralphie - "Anglicises" not your "Anglicisies"...did you check a dictionary before asking "which planet are you on?"...you may have found a kind of concertina there also.
And I wonder what would happen if Pip put his "feet" into the poem posted by SP..?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 26 Sep 08 - 06:06 AM

And from rather before that, the description of Harris playing the banjo in Jerome K. Jerome's "Three Men in a Boat".

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Surreysinger
Date: 26 Sep 08 - 06:54 AM

>>Ralphie - "Anglicises" not your "Anglicisies"...

Oh dear WAV .... I think all of us had probably realised that Ralphie had had a difficulty with his digital interface there .. more haste less speed when one finger typing ?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 26 Sep 08 - 06:58 AM

The difference is that 'Not waving but drowning' has a strong and immediately recognisable rhythmic pattern - and it doesn't claim to be in a regular metre.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 26 Sep 08 - 08:48 AM

No problem with reading and or writing, SS.
More a problem with lack of intelligence as far as WAV is concerned.
(Omigod, He's a Christian as well.....Be very afraid.. 7th day adventist maybe?)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 26 Sep 08 - 09:09 AM

One Finger Typing?
Is that the same as One Finger playing?
Admit it WAV.
You have no talent, either as a musician, or a poet.
As an embodiment of all things quintessentially English.
You have failed.
Godbye.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 26 Sep 08 - 12:31 PM

Pardon the poetry, Ralphie, but, C. of E., actually - although I don't accept the Anglican, Roman Catholic, nor any other such imperialistic movement...

Poem 219 of 230: FURTHER ANTI-IMPERIALISM

Let each Christian nation have its own Church -
Equal, before God, with the others' Search.

From walkaboutsverse.741.com

Back to the thread, do like the sound of the organ, too.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 26 Sep 08 - 12:38 PM

I don't think you go to church over matters of the soul as much as because you think it's a national institution.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 26 Sep 08 - 12:44 PM

I also think that you refuse to include the guitar and banjo on your list because you hold very strong prejudices against the USA, even though you've allowed other German instruments on there, just not guitar.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 26 Sep 08 - 01:05 PM

I dunno. England has a long tradition of elevating simple failures to the status of Heroic Failures.

Perhaps we should just consider WAV as the Eddie the Eagle of poetry, the Captain Bligh of song, or the Scott of the Antarctic of political argument.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,We Subvert Koalas
Date: 26 Sep 08 - 01:55 PM

Let each Christian nation have its own Church -
Equal, before God, with the others' Search.

Holy Deja Vu! The last time you quoted this drivel (see here - 9th Feruary 2008, 7.48am) I asked you: What about the non-Christian nations? And the non-Christian minorities living in the otherwise secular UK if it comes to that!

To which, in your wisdom, you answered:

Most people, We Subvert Koalas, in the world now, including me, are happy that the WORLD is multicultural...but whether each country should be multicultural is another matter. Sadly, events of the last decade have dramatically shown that trying to have a multiple number of cultures/faiths living under the one state law will always be problomatic

So, WAV - Given the nature of Jesuist teaching, how can you be both a Christian and an unrepentant believer in (and promoter of) such overtly racist bullshit?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 26 Sep 08 - 02:10 PM

Volgadon - the guitar is Spanish; the banjo African/American.
That's the questioning of immigration/emigration, WSK (and why?), NOT racism, thus your remark is false and defamatory.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 26 Sep 08 - 02:17 PM

And your beloved cittern is German. Neither does your recorder originate in England.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,We Subvert Koalas
Date: 26 Sep 08 - 02:26 PM

No, WAV - that's racism, no matter much you wrap it up in your banal euphemisms, the fact is you question immigration on grounds of culture (another banal euphemism; for which read ethnicity) and identify culture in terms of a racially exclusive bunch of risible clichés. Call it what you want, WAV - you are a racist, as is obvious to anyone who reads though these threads.

I ask you again, in respect of your poem:

1) What about the non-Christian nations? And the non-Christian minorities living in the otherwise secular UK if it comes to that!

2) Given the nature of Jesuist teaching, how can you be both a Christian and an unrepentant believer in (and promoter of) such overtly racist bullshit?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 26 Sep 08 - 05:23 PM

No, WAV, it's the questioning of having multiple cultures in a single country, on the grounds that a homogeneous culture is a really important value - more important than individual freedom of movement, for one thing.

When I say someone has racist views, I don't mean that they aggressively dislike people of other cultures or that they wish other countries would abandon their cultural traditions. I mean that they believe that a person's cultural background is a really important fact about that person, and that people from different cultural backgrounds should be kept apart. In short, believing that countries ought to be monocultural (as you clearly do, although you're too mealy-mouthed to say so outright) is racist. So this "how dare you call me a racist?" act isn't ever going to persuade me - or, I think, most other people here.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,We Subvert Koalas
Date: 27 Sep 08 - 06:08 AM

That WAV does aggressively dislike people of other other cultures and ethnicities is evident in every word he writes, right down to his euphemistic I love the WORLD being multi-cultural, for which read: I hate England being multi-racial and we should send them back to where they came from.

Remember, according to WAV, England was a more English place 50 years ago and, as a result English culture is taking a hammering and, when people lose their own culture, society suffers.

It doesn't get any more racist than that.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 27 Sep 08 - 09:24 AM

No - racism is where someone says, e.g., "they are ALL like that" or "I don't mind immigrants from there but not that part of the world", which I have never done. And I've heard people say they don't want to travel to some country as they don't like the people - again, that is certainly NOT well-travelled me. And why "Subvert Koalas"?...because they take eucalyptus?!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 27 Sep 08 - 09:58 AM

No - racism is where someone says, e.g., "they are ALL like that"

You've said this many times before, and it's still not true. To put it another way, your definition of racism is a lot narrower than the one that's currently in use (here in England).

If you don't want people to call you a racist, you need to avoid doing and saying things which those people believe are racist, not just things that you personally believe are racist.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 27 Sep 08 - 10:31 AM

Incidentally, your opening shot in this thread

It's not difficult to find, e.g., the national instrument of, e.g., Wales or Scotland - triple-harp and highland-pipes, respectively

is a statement of quite staggering ignorance. (There's no continuous tradition of triple-harp making or playing in Wales - and there's a lot more to Scotland than the Highlands.) You know next to nothing, WAV, and yet you insist on not learning.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 27 Sep 08 - 11:33 AM

National instrument of Wales?
Clwth perhaps?
National Instrument of Whales?
Plankton?

And WAV. just to correct your post (fictional)

"I don't mind immigrants from there, but, not part of the world"
Agreed you didn't say that, it doesn't even make sense.

But

You would probably say

"I don't mind immigrants from there, but, not part of MY world"
Yes?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 27 Sep 08 - 03:00 PM

Immigration/emigration the world over is, of course, regulated - I'm saying it should be more strongly regulated.

"Incidentally, your opening shot in this thread" (Pip)

"It's not difficult to find, e.g., the national instrument of, e.g., Wales or Scotland - triple-harp and highland-pipes, respectively" (me)

"is a statement of quite staggering ignorance. (There's no continuous tradition of triple-harp making or playing in Wales - and there's a lot more to Scotland than the Highlands.) You know next to nothing, WAV, and yet you insist on not learning." (Pip)...perhaps some Scots and Welsh may post as to who is showing "staggering ingnorance" (Pip) here...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,We Subvert Koalas
Date: 27 Sep 08 - 03:28 PM

No - racism is where someone says, e.g., "they are ALL like that" or "I don't mind immigrants from there but not that part of the world", which I have never done.

No, WAV - of course you haven't, because you're very careful to wrap everything up in banal rhetorical euphemisms which are your stock-in-trade, and of which the above is a classic example. This has been shown, time and time again, to be, in effect, a convenient semantic loophole through which you try to squirm like the vile worm you are. However, squirm as you might, your narrow cultural remit for the English is one that constantly laments that we are not, indeed, ALL like that you would wish us to be.

If you apply such noxious risible stereotyping to your own culture, how on earth must you view others?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 27 Sep 08 - 04:11 PM

According to illustrations and literature, the crwth appears to have been played widely across Europe, not just Wales. It's mentioned in Chaucer and players were designated by the surname Crowther in England and MacWhirter in Scotland. The crwth was probably most common in Finland and the Swedish-speaking coastal bit of Estonia where there is a substantial body of surviving music for the instrument. The "modern" Welsh crwth (which isn't really much like the traditional ancient lyre-like one) dates only to the late C16 or early C17 and was pretty much wiped out by two factors: the rise of rampant Welsh protestantism and the growth in popularity of that Italian import, the violin, by the end of C18. Revival crwths are built mainly by West country English luthiers. Ah, cultural diversity . . .

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 27 Sep 08 - 04:55 PM

"Squirm" (We Subvert Koalas)...I've asked twice now for you to explain your name - no answer being the stern reply. Drop the two of us somewhere in Africa or Asia and you'd probably find that I'd get on as well or better with the locals, frankly - it's the act of immigration/emigration itself that I keep questioning.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 27 Sep 08 - 05:41 PM

Wav, you might like to know that highland bagpipes only became a symbol of Scotland during the few years before Queen Vic's reign, when the fad was for all things Highland, an overly romantic pereception of the Scotland that never was, a Scotland full of kilted wildmen (wearing their clan tartan, naturally) with big claymores and bagpipes.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 28 Sep 08 - 03:59 AM

Oh well, were we to bring the even more ubiquitous origins of pipes into it we'd be here all day. They're no more exclusively "Scottish" than tins of shortbread. Again, they're mentioned by Chaucer and were widespread throughout Europe, North Africa, the Gulf and the Caucasus region. British colonialism took them to the furthest reaches of the former empire. Highland pipes (and tartan) became popular, and romanticised, in the Victorian era as a reaction to the ban on them and the Gaelic language imposed after Culloden being lifted.

Volgadon's post above reminds me of Brian McNeill's No gods and precious few heroes:

"Are you sitting in your council house dreaming of your clan?
Waiting for the Jacobites to come and free the land?
Try going down the broo with your claymore in your hand
And count all the princes in the queue."


Every time WAV opens his mouth his foot becomes further embedded. Enough. Go away and learn something before even thinking about coming back.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 28 Sep 08 - 04:34 AM

Minor note, bagpipes being banned is a myth.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 28 Sep 08 - 04:45 AM

Minor? Well maybe if you have enough add-on accidentals. Otherwise pipe intonation is "approximate", to say the least.
I'm sure I've said this before, but all my knowledge of Scottish history comes from the John Prebble trilogy, which I read at the behest of June Tabor. Any inaccuracies are therefore her fault!.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,We Subvert Koalas
Date: 28 Sep 08 - 05:01 AM

Yet another banal racist euphemism, WAV.

For: Drop the two of us somewhere in Africa or Asia and you'd probably find that I'd get on as well or better with the locals, frankly - it's the act of immigration/emigration itself that I keep questioning

Read: Whilst as an eco-tourist I have happily patronised the natives of Africa and Asia I am frankly appalled that African and Asian immigrants live in England, bringing their culture and spirituality with them. As I have said in verse, English culture is TAKING A HAMMERING, and when people lose their culture, society suffers.

As for the name, go figure, as they say, and as others indeed have. And when you've worked it out, answer the questions I've asked of you, specifically this: Given the nature of Jesuist teaching, how can you be both a Christian and an unrepentant believer in (and promoter of) such overtly racist bullshit?

The bottom line here, WAV, is that if you weren't a racist, none of this would be an issue at all. With a pure heart you'd be out there getting on with your life. As Woody said on the 5000 Morris Dancers thread Maybe you should get off your arse - stop moaning, watching TV & posting bollocks on Mudcat - and go out and learn something about the country you live in.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 28 Sep 08 - 06:16 AM

Gaelic was never banned either, and certainly suffered no suppression of any kind as a result of Culloden - it *was* later discouraged by the education system, but that didn't become an issue until after 1872.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Sandman
Date: 28 Sep 08 - 12:42 PM

it's the act of immigration/emigration itself that I keep questioning,quote Walkabout Verse.
so wav ,you would prevent me from moving to Ireland.
well WAV,presumably you should not have been allowed to emigrate to Australia,and to emigrate back
Immigration to England is controlled,so what is it you want?if we were to say that all people who have emigrated should not be allowed back then that excludes you.
why should you be given preference?,since you deserted your motherland.,are you now drawing unemployment benefit and draining the motherlands resources?,you were many years absent from England[presumably not paying taxes],but paying tax in australia,or were you claiming unemployment benefit in Australia.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 28 Sep 08 - 01:48 PM

On the contrary, Diane, you need to get clear in your mind about pipes and one of the variety of them, Highland pipes, before posting.
I was 3, CB, and I've stressed FROM NOW ON. And, in case you don't catch much news or programmes like the "Andrew Marr Show" this morning, more-and-more mainstream politicians (after all the pro-immigrationism of the Blair years) ARE openly questioning immigration and the multicultural state. Also, because I am actively trying to get back into manufacturing work and have little in the bank, yes I am receiving Job Seekers Allowance; everything I've done on the folk and poetry scene, thus far, is as an amateur.
To We Subvert Koalas (and we still don't know why) via Woody: I've learned quite a lot about my country both at home and while out-and-about - see the many such poems here.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 28 Sep 08 - 03:09 PM

more-and-more mainstream politicians (after all the pro-immigrationism of the Blair years) ARE openly questioning immigration and the multicultural state

I don't think you've thought this through. If I believe your views are racist (as I do), would they cease to be racist, or cease to be worth combatting, when adopted by mainstream politicians? On the contrary - they'd remain racist and combatting them would become even more important. (But not on-topic for Mudcat, at least not above the line.)

Diane, you need to get clear in your mind about pipes and one of the variety of them, Highland pipes, before posting

WAV, Diane was trying to help you. You really seem determined not to learn anything you don't already know.

Enough: I'm dropping this thread from Tracer and not coming back. I'm not going to waste any more time with you, and I advise other Catters to do likewise.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 28 Sep 08 - 03:38 PM

There is a lovely little Bagpipe museum in Morpeth somewhere between Alnwick and Newcastle. Where I learned of the varieties of pipes than I wanted to know and subsequently forgot more than I learned. (Don't ask me how... it is a gift).
So which came first the Northumbrian Small Pipes or the Highland pipes. If it was the North Umbrian pipes shouldn't pipes be considered more an instrument of England than of Scotland? Or do the border disputes complicate this?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 28 Sep 08 - 04:28 PM

Ah yes, Mr Radish, I meant to give up after invoking Cicero and/or St Augustine but came back with just a little extremely basic musical information in the hope of sending WAV off in quest for knowledge and enlightenment. Waste of time, obviously. Thought I'd point out the bleedin' obvious: that crwths are not exclusively Welsh any more than leeks and daffodils are and that the origins of pipes are as far from being exclusively Caledonian as oats and fried Mars bars are wholly tartan-clad.

The first time somebody wondered if they could get a tune out of a disembowelled goat sure as hell didn't happen in Inverness, It would have occurred many, many centuries (if not millennia) earlier in the Middle East, the Far East or North / sub-Saharan Africa where human development was infinitely more advanced than on these islands. I know WAV doesn't like this obvious logic, but . . . tough.

To revert to the original question, I cannot for the life of me see why England needs a "national" instrument. Smacks of particularly nasty chauvinism to me. I did nowever give an answer far too many column miles above that the only (chromatic) instrument wholly invented in England was the English concertina, an irrelevant fact in musical terms as it can and is (in common with many another) used to perform music from many another culture. This is what musicians do, WAV. It's one of the ways in which art, and international understanding, grows. But that is anathema to you, isn't it?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 28 Sep 08 - 05:23 PM

: So which came first the Northumbrian Small Pipes or the Highland pipes.

There are many books about the history of bagpipes. Hugh Cheape's might be a good start.

Highland pipes are older, evolved from an English pipe sometime before 1500 and taking their final form (with the bass drone) around 1750. Northumbrian pipes were developed in the late 18th century, based on smallpipes from both sides of the Border. The uilleann pipes were developed in the same place at the same time by the same makers, elaborating on the pastoral pipe, which was also found both sides of the Border. Neither the smallpipe nor the pastoral pipe was descended from the Highland pipe. The bellows was a French idea, adapted to all three types of pipe though it didn't catch on in a big way for Highland types (when so applied the result is known as a Border pipe).

The oldest pipes whose existence we know of from Scotland (and England) weren't like any of these; they were a common pan-European type best known these days in the early music scene. See Pete Stewart's book "The Day it Dawes" for a description and a repertoire. They were the least national instrument you could imagine, varying litle from Portugal to Bulgaria.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,We Subvert Koalas
Date: 28 Sep 08 - 06:09 PM

Granma McAlatia in her younger days (third from right).

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 28 Sep 08 - 06:16 PM

I'm pleased to see they're not playing tennis

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Tootler
Date: 28 Sep 08 - 07:05 PM

What a right bunch of idiots you all are.

Whether WAV is serious or is just on a windup, he is succeeding in the latter big time and you all fall for it.

The ONLY way to deal with WAV's ridiculous and inane postings is to ignore them. If no one else posted to any thread started by him, they would die the natural death they deserve.

I am away on a week's holiday tomorrow and I have more than a sneaking suspicion that by the time I come back this thread will still be going and have over 500 postings by that time because you all can't resist trying to have the last word.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Dad Van Frisk
Date: 29 Sep 08 - 04:39 AM

Can we have another link to Granma McAlatia in her younger days please, WSK? It's a bit of a grey Monday here at work this morning and after a sunny lovely weekend falling in love with my girlfriend's aunt in Formby I could do with some cheering up.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,We Subvert Koalas
Date: 29 Sep 08 - 05:01 AM

Anything to oblige, DVF! In fact, we have just the thing...

Granma McAlatia, Formby Point, 1921

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Surreysinger
Date: 29 Sep 08 - 05:44 AM

"What a right bunch of idiots you all are."
Tootler ... had you only just realised this?? I'm still trying to work out what relevance photos of Granma McAlatia have to anything, but have decided that it's not worth the effort !!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Dad Van Frisk
Date: 29 Sep 08 - 05:59 AM

Thanks for that, WSK! That's certainly brought the sun out - as without the office window then so in my pining heart!

Formby Point (he sighs!) - we used to have a caravan there until it was buried; current estimates of erosion are pretty severe, around 13 feet a year - you can see trees sticking out the sand, so quite a dynamic landscape. Before she left for Medjugorje, my girlfriend wrote this poem:


Bone-white hand clutching from
dry dune sand.

Kids, I said; Art, he said.
We pondered
which and in the age we
live where such
schemes are vague and on new
clothes we must
now gaze but - Sea, she said,

the woman
who told us of change and
caravans,
and other days, buried
days, happy
days, right here, beneath our
feet, which shift
now, awkward here, above,
for the thoughts
of what is lost, there, below.

(Formby Point, Sefton, July 2006)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 29 Sep 08 - 06:18 AM

'romantic pereception of the Scotland that never was, a Scotland full of kilted wildmen (wearing their clan tartan, naturally) with big claymores and bagpipes.'

I think it sounds quite fun.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 29 Sep 08 - 06:21 AM

JC, DE, and TM - as with the recorder's origin, we'll never know where bags were first attached to pipes...but it's great, yes?, that we now have all these different varieties in different nations (as a map at the good WHOLESOME Morpeth museum, you mentioned TM, shows).

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Oldguit
Date: 29 Sep 08 - 07:28 AM

At risk of calming troubled waters, I thought I'd get back on topic.

When I were a lad back in Sarf London, I was always rooting for a fine pair of instruments that surely should be adopted as England's faves, if not most traditional, Namely:

The Pink Oboe (as previously mentioned) along with the Squeeze Box (as in, Mamma's got one, Pappa plays it all night long)

They were made for each other.

Oldguit Arr

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: TheSnail
Date: 29 Sep 08 - 07:38 AM

As I remember it, "Mamma's got a brand new bag." which suggests that she'd had her pipes refurbished allowing her to do her finger exercises on Pappa's chanter.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,We Subvert Koalas
Date: 29 Sep 08 - 07:57 AM

More about bagpipe history Here and bagpipe technique Here.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,We Subvert Koalas
Date: 29 Sep 08 - 08:13 AM

Oh, and DVF - anything to oblige! The WSF archives are replete which such wholesome beauties, and it's so nice to read some real poetry on these WAV-type threads. What's your girlfriend doing in Medjugorje? We take a keen interest in the BVM's astute messages therefrom, the latest being:

Dear children! May your life, anew, be a decision for peace. Be joyful carriers of peace and do not forget that you live in a time of grace, in which God gives you great graces through my presence. Do not close yourselves, little children, but make good use of this time and seek the gift of peace and love for your life so that you may become witnesses to others. I bless you with my motherly blessing. Thank you for having responded to my call.

(September 25, 2008)

Meanwhile - Rusty Bagpipe anyone?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Dad Van Fisk
Date: 29 Sep 08 - 09:04 AM

Medjugorje! We were in Bosnia-Herzegovina on holiday in the summer of 2006, and, having lately read Randall Sullivan's The Miracle Detective, we were both keen to visit the village where my girlfriend experienced what can only be called a religious reawakening. A Bosnian Roman Catholic by birth, she'd lapsed as teenager when she'd moved to England (aged fourteen) with her aunt at the onset of the troubles. I met her some ten years later as a vague sort of eco-folky-pagan, but after her experience in Medjugorje, all that went out the window and within a month she astonished us all when she announced she was moving back out there. We do get the occasional postcard, assuring us of her continuing affections, but, as I hinted above, her departure has brought myself and her aunt (who is six years older than my girlfriend and six years younger than myself and bears more than a passing resemblance to the young Granma McAlatia...) onto the brink of an old fashioned sort of romance - bagpipes, rusty or otherwise, notwithstanding!

On that note, I play a set of very unrusty Goodacre Leicestershire Bagpipes in an amateur early music group where we play works by Walther von der Vogelweide once a month in each other's front rooms. I also play Moeck Renaissance alto and tenor recorders and a Moeck Baroque oboe, but only ever privately on account of my nervous constitution.   

Dad Van Fisk

PS - I remember there being a Northumbrian bagpipe museum in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in a castle near the old Bridge Hotel where I used to go to the folk club in the seventies. I couldn't find it last time I visited, so do I gather correctly that it's moved to Morpeth?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,We Subvert Koalas
Date: 29 Sep 08 - 09:27 AM

Oh, Granma McAlatia,
in your girlish tones of sepia,
Onychoheterotopia
is your only flaw.

But on account of my myopia
such irrelevant minutiae,
(likewise your macroprosopia)
Is why I gaze in awe!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,We Subvert Koalas
Date: 29 Sep 08 - 10:17 AM

Regarding one of the above linked sites, we find this image HERE, described thus:

The very earliest depiction of an object that might be a bagpipe is a terra cotta figure currently residing in Berlin's "Staatliche Museum." (See photo below) This much-discussed object is generally considered to be the earliest depiction of any sort of bagpipe. It is Hellenistic, probably (it is said) from Alexandria, and dates, supposedly, to the first century BC. It is controversial, and enigmatic. Is that a bellows under the "piper's" right foot or is it a time-keeping device? Is that a mouth-blown pan-pipe he's holding in his left hand, while, perhaps, the bag is providing air to a drone lying in his lap? Or is there a connection between the bag and the "pan-pipe" affair, which might operate like a Chinese Sheng (sounding a given pipe when a fingerhole is closed)? Might there be a bellows under the cloak on the figure's right side? All of these possibilities have been raised and argued.

This is very odd scholarship indeed, as the instrument depicted beneath the arm is unambiguously a friction drum latterly known as a rommelpot, and not any sort of bagpipe at all. Thus the ancient terracotta is a simple depiction of a one man band of pan-pipe and rommelpot.

We feel it is our public duty to point this sort of thing out, not just in the clarification of such wanton academic buffoonery (of which such examples are legion) but also with a view to getting back on thread, as they say. However, in respect of DVF's romantic angst, we can't resist another picture of Granma McAlatia relaxing at Formby Point in 1921. What a gal!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 29 Sep 08 - 12:57 PM

Yes, DVF, it's now at the Chantry in Morpeth; and, piping down, WSK, here's the newly amended list, as mentioned above...

INSTRUMENTS OF (OR CLOSELY ASSOCIATED WITH) ENGLAND
Northumbrian Bagpipes (bellows blown), Leicestershire Bagpipes (mouth blown); English Concertina, Anglo Concertina, Duet Concertina (and important developments to – if not inventions of – other key-boards, such as piano and organ, have also occurred in England); Dital Harp/Harp-Lute, English Cittern; English Flageolet, Penny Whistle, Recorder/English Flute, Pipe and Tabor (old Morris accompaniment, the Stylophone (a recent one), Brass, Bells (to some, England's national instrument), as well as Spoons (from here).

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,We Subvert Koalas
Date: 29 Sep 08 - 01:58 PM

Northumbrian Bagpipes (bellows blown) - Developed from German / French prototypes

Leicestershire Bagpipes (mouth blown) - Modern invention by Julian Goodacre based on ancient iconography.

English Concertina, Anglo Concertina, Duet Concertina - Victorian inventions based on ancient Chinese free reed technology

(and important developments to – if not inventions of – other key-boards, such as piano and organ, have also occurred in England) - likewise pop music, Indian & Chinese cuisine, etc. etc

Dital Harp/Harp-Lute - short-lived Victorian parlour novelty for short-lived Victorian parlour ladies.

English Cittern - Barbershop novelty, long since defunct as far as it ever existed at all; used as a name for modern mandola and bouzouki type instruments from 1960s onwards.

English Flageolet - European invention developed with respect to parlour / chamber musics. Most defuinately not precursor of penny whistle, no matter what it says on WIKI - a misconception owing to Generation calling their modern 6-hole whistle-flutes flageolets.

Penny Whistle - Internationally & historically ubiquitous 6-hole whistle-flute made with tin by Clarke in the mid 19th century & later developed by Dave Shaw in the late 20th. About as English as the penis.

Recorder/English Flute - see discussion above, Jack Campin et al.

Pipe and Tabor (old Morris accompaniment) - derived from medieval European traditions extant in French (Basque) traditions, Mexico etc. Also associated, iconographically, in England with dancing bears.

the Stylophone (a recent one) - commercial toy, circa 1960s, kitsch value, revived in early 21st century.

Brass - international instruments developed from ancient Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Oriental, Australasian & European instruments; also Medieval slide technology (surviving in trombone) replaced with piston & rotary valves invented in Europe early 1800s.

Bells (to some, England's national instrument) - But nevertheless found throughout the world with the most ancient examples being in the far east.

as well as Spoons - a variety of clapper percussion, likewise bones etc. - likewise internationally ubiquitous.

So - nothing here to support WAV's nationalist & monocultural ideals. On the contrary, all would indicate aeons of cross-cultural pollinations consequent on continuous historical immigrations & emigrations. Manifestations of a world in transience and long may it continue to be so! In fact, given the above, I'd be hard pushed to think of an instrument that wasn't OF (OR CLOSELY ASSOCIATED WITH) ENGLAND.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 29 Sep 08 - 05:25 PM

Jolly Good.
But, can someone please define the term "English" for me.
I'm abit confused.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 29 Sep 08 - 07:31 PM

Putting some back-spin on the cue-ball?

Just trying to be helpful. . . .

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Surreysinger
Date: 29 Sep 08 - 07:54 PM

OK ,Ralphie ... you wanted it, so here it is....
definitions of the word English

Should keep you occupied for a little while, methinks!! ENJOY ....

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 30 Sep 08 - 03:23 AM

Thanks Don.
We Brits know all about the cue ball definition.
So much so that we never refer to it.
It's so ingrained in our psyche, something that we are told about at a very early age.
A bit like potty training.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: TheSnail
Date: 30 Sep 08 - 03:30 AM

Here ya go, Ralphie - English.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 30 Sep 08 - 03:37 AM

The French refer to custard as crème anglaise. In fact, they call a lot of things they don't like English (c.f. Dick's thread on how to be offensive to the English in Ireland). When a guest at a relative's house as a child, I was told to make the custard during dinner preparations. It went down not at all well because I hadn't added sugar. Sugar? Why should I? I never put sugar in anything. If being English involves sweetening things, I am not English. However, I was never asked to help in the house again. Silver linings and fluffy things in the sky . . .

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 30 Sep 08 - 03:55 AM

This thread has become so surreal that I'm thinking of entering it for the Turner prize!
Come on WAV, Keep up!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 30 Sep 08 - 03:58 AM

Thanks Snail.
But I play the Duet......THE KING of tinas!
Regards Ralphie

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 30 Sep 08 - 04:08 AM

It's not strictly true that I'd never add sugar to anything. Sometimes a curry needs a little, and that's the English national dish, innit?
NOT WAV's assertion that it's stotty cake and chips although Andy Turner wrote a very nice English tune called The Stotty Cake Polka.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 30 Sep 08 - 04:23 AM

I play yellowfin - the King of Tunas.

(It's better than my melodeon playing.)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Dad Van Fisk
Date: 30 Sep 08 - 04:59 AM

It's raining today
and I'm just about to forget the train window girl
That wonderful day we met
She smiles through the smoke from my cigarette
It's raining today
But once there was summer and you
And dark little rooms
And sleep in late afternoons
Those moments descend on my windowpane

I've hung around here too long
Listenin' to the old landlady's hard-luck stories
You out of me me out of you
We go like lovers
To replace the empty space
Repeat our dreams to someone new

It's raining today
And I watch the cellophane streets
No hang-ups for me
'Cause hang-ups need company
The street corner girl's a cold trembling leaf
It's raining today
It's raining today

(Noel Engel, aka Scott Walker)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 30 Sep 08 - 05:10 AM

Thanks for that Mr Fisk.
We'll just have to wait for Mr WAVs view as to whether it's real poetry or not!
My breath is bated, awaiting confirmationion from his WAV-ness.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Surreysinger
Date: 30 Sep 08 - 05:30 AM

Ralphie ... the KING of tinas .... should that be QUEEN... how can you call an instrument a tina and then ascribe it masculine gender?? Go for MONARCH .... ok... yeah...back to practice wench, I know!!!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Surreysinger
Date: 30 Sep 08 - 05:31 AM

And that's 400, I reckon!!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Surreysinger
Date: 30 Sep 08 - 05:32 AM

In my haste I forgot to say... LOL at Ruth's interjection ... not a musical instrument I ever aspired to I have to say ... but is it English???

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 30 Sep 08 - 06:10 AM

"To We Subvert Koalas (and we still don't know why) via Woody: I've learned quite a lot about my country both at home and while out-and-about - see the many such poems here."

SO HAVE I, Wav. Doesn't make me English!!!!!!!

"'romantic pereception of the Scotland that never was, a Scotland full of kilted wildmen (wearing their clan tartan, naturally) with big claymores and bagpipes.'

I think it sounds quite fun. "

Fun, yes, real, no.

"The oldest pipes whose existence we know of from Scotland (and England) weren't like any of these; they were a common pan-European type best known these days in the early music scene."

Which remain in use in parts of Poland and the Balkans.

"INSTRUMENTS OF (OR CLOSELY ASSOCIATED WITH) ENGLAND
Northumbrian Bagpipes (bellows blown), Leicestershire Bagpipes (mouth blown); English Concertina, Anglo Concertina, Duet Concertina (and important developments to – if not inventions of – other key-boards, such as piano and organ, have also occurred in England); Dital Harp/Harp-Lute, English Cittern; English Flageolet, Penny Whistle, Recorder/English Flute, Pipe and Tabor (old Morris accompaniment, the Stylophone (a recent one), Brass, Bells (to some, England's national instrument), as well as Spoons (from here)."

Still no guitar and banjo? Nasty prejudice rears it's ugly head.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Joseph P
Date: 30 Sep 08 - 06:55 AM

I think my Hohner Pokerwork sounds mighty nice accompanying morris dance (others may disagree!), cant say we use a pipe and tabor anymore. Shame? No. Melodeon & fiddle are much better.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 30 Sep 08 - 07:37 AM

"To We Subvert Koalas (and we still don't know why)"

The answer should be obvious. He is part of the cell that recruited Blinky Bill, possibly even his handler.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Dad Van Fisk
Date: 30 Sep 08 - 10:48 AM

Northumbrian Bagpipes (bellows blown), Leicestershire Bagpipes (mouth blown)

Obviously on Planet Walkaboutsverse these instruments are equal in terms of cultural and historical significance. But if he'd bothered to do any research he'd find out that, as WSK says, the latter is a modern invention by Julian Goodacre, and a bloody good bagpipe it is too - see here. Please note, WAV - the Leicestershire is available as both in mouth blown AND bellows blown designs. The one I play is bellows blown, and is ideal for mostly European early and folk music, and even singing, though not many bagpipers sing with their instruments, even those of bellows blown instruments. Every English county once had its own bagpipe - for the Lyra-Viol there was given a bagpipe tuning and melodies alluding to the Lancashire Bagpipes, which are also mentioned in connection with the Preston Guild pageantry of the early 18th century, and as late as 1722 mention is made of a very merry wedding in Preston where there played seven bagpipers!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 30 Sep 08 - 12:47 PM

One that I thought may have been noted in its absence (or perhaps it was way back - B.A.) is the harmonica/mouth organ - I have two mini encyclopedias and both say Wheatstone invented it, as well as the concertina; however, all the websites I've checked say Germany.
...and, like a koala after a good dose of eucalyptus, I, frankly, have been a tad slow to fathom that WSK may be ex-Insane Beard/ex-etc.?..

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 30 Sep 08 - 01:18 PM

I used to know a bloke called Tina.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Surreysinger
Date: 30 Sep 08 - 01:44 PM

Now I'm intrigued ... what was his name derived from - or was he just confused?

Mind you, there are other examples I suppose ... Shirley Crabtree (otherwise known as Big Daddy in wrestling circles in the 60s and 70s), Marion Morrison (John Wayne... am I right in that one??) ... and the conductor of the choir I sang with for many years is named Hilary ......

Ok, Ruth ... I stand to be corrected ... strangely Ralphie hasn't made any observation on the matter at all... I await some verbal castigation in trepidation, whilst trying to practice the tina (with both hands) in a fearless manner!!!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 30 Sep 08 - 02:58 PM

"I like the idea of the lute having evolved in different lands into different guitar-like instruments - the Portuguese guitar (nearly always used to accompany fado songs), the Mexican guitar (with 9 strings, I think), the balalaika of Russia, the English cittern, the mandolin of Italy, the bouzouki (which we saw in the Athens Olympics), etc...
And, as suggested above, I also like the idea of their being many a fiddle-like instrument in many different lands...but, then, I do love our world being multicultural."

Wav, the balalaika is derived from primitive stringed instruments of Central Asia, not from the lute. The bouzouki too.
Do your research.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Surreysinger
Date: 30 Sep 08 - 03:19 PM

"Wav, .....Do your research"
Therein lies our problem ?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 30 Sep 08 - 04:30 PM

I don't think he was confused - he seemed quite certain that he wanted to wear frocks and sing country and western songs.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Surreysinger
Date: 30 Sep 08 - 05:13 PM

Aha ... I see!!! :-)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Surreysinger
Date: 30 Sep 08 - 05:14 PM

Sounds a bit like Tina C ... it isn't,I suppose?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 01 Oct 08 - 05:41 AM

...while we are on names, Ruth Archer, I have a bone to pick: given that you've tolk us it's a nickname, why not just put Ruth R., e.g., such that the real Ruth Archers, found in search engines etc., have no chance of being bothered by some of the Rubish you come up with?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 01 Oct 08 - 05:43 AM

R for Rubbish, i.e.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 01 Oct 08 - 06:16 AM

WAV.
I think you need to lie down and have a little nap.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Joseph P
Date: 01 Oct 08 - 06:40 AM

Some of us don't google Ruth Archer in a stalker-esque manner, or do we? (da-de-da-de-da-de-daa- da-de-da-de-daaa-daaa....)

Rubbish with a capital R? Must be special, mind you when it comes to rubbish, what about the racist crap that you publish, and what about your constant blabbering on about what our good tradition is. You have NO IDEA what makes up the cultures that exist in the geographical area that is England, let alone what would make the 'situation' better.

For those of us (such as myself) who do take an active part in continuing an unbroken and evolving tradition, your views are nothing but damaging. Ruth, on the other hand, seems to be taking an active part in developing and promoting folk music in England.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: TheSnail
Date: 01 Oct 08 - 06:44 AM

It seems that the fictional Ruth Archer is rather more famous than our very own real one.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 01 Oct 08 - 07:13 AM

WAV
When you have achieved what Ruth has achieved, then, start casting stones.
Are you the festival director for next years Sidmouth Festival?.... No, You're not.
So, shut up, and get a job.

Your biggest problem is that she might book some "foreign acts"
God Forfend such a heinous scenario....
The very thought that Englands Premier Festival might play host to those "Dusky Heathens"

Even if they are Scandinavian!!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Derby Ram
Date: 01 Oct 08 - 07:46 AM

I'm clearly a bit late with this thread - but surely The Concertina being the only English invented chromatic musical instrument - and I'm with Diane here - there is only one contender - and there are arguably more players now than there have ever been - it's popularity is definitely on the up. What more qualification are they looking for?

Nothing to debate as far as I'm concerned....:-)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 01 Oct 08 - 07:57 AM

Agreed Mr Ram.
But....does any of this really matter?
Ralphie

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: TheSnail
Date: 01 Oct 08 - 08:07 AM

I play the English concertina because it suits me to do so. I enjoy making music with it. I admire the playing of those who are for more expert than me. I do NOT play it in order to enhance my feeling of national pride or express my patriotism.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 01 Oct 08 - 09:20 AM

I like it that WAV is concerned that the "real" Ruth Archer might have her good character besmirched by being confused with me...Oooooh Noooooo!!!! But it sounds like WAV isn't actually aware that Ruth is a fictional character, and it's just possible that he doesn't even have a peripheral awareness of God's Own Radio Drama.

And he calls himself English!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 01 Oct 08 - 09:46 AM

And I dare say that radio drama is a far greater part of people's own good culture than morris dancing and tennis.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Will Fly
Date: 01 Oct 08 - 10:10 AM

Morris dancing AND tennis - at the same time? Sounds fab to me. Would they wear tennis kit or morris kit, do you think? A rapper outfit wouldn't even need rackets. Or should that be raquets?

Well...it's no dafter than anything else in this thread...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 01 Oct 08 - 10:24 AM

Ooh yes, tennis-playing morris dancers. Lovely idea, are they holding stotties and mead in the other hand and is it by the shade of a willow tree?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Will Fly
Date: 01 Oct 08 - 10:32 AM

Sounds good to me - and they'll be wearing clogs.

Sorry - must dash - off to video myself playing through the chords of "The Glory Of Love", with the sound turned off. Just demonstrating the notes and fingering silently, you understand.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Surreysinger
Date: 01 Oct 08 - 11:14 AM

"Ooh yes, tennis-playing morris dancers"
Would that be 5000 of them ... are we back on track for the topic again ... no nay never......

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Surreysinger
Date: 01 Oct 08 - 11:16 AM

"Just demonstrating the notes and fingering silently, you understand. "
Which instrument would that be on?? Concertina ? Recorder? Mongolian noseflute??

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: TheSnail
Date: 01 Oct 08 - 11:20 AM

Pink oboe?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 01 Oct 08 - 11:42 AM

Sousaphone?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 01 Oct 08 - 12:41 PM

To Ruth Archer and Joseph P!: let me put it another way - if one prefers to use a web nickname (and I've nothing against that) why use someone else's real name? One of the very few using a real name here is Don Firth, but I think that IS his...Don?
And the sousaphone is American, Volgadon.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 01 Oct 08 - 12:45 PM

The Melon Whistle?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 01 Oct 08 - 01:10 PM

And the recorder is of Continental origin, the cittern is German, the tabor possibly comes from North Africa via Spain, and the violin/fiddle is Italian.
The sousaphone and the tuba were widely used in trad jazz, which was very popular for many decades in Britain, and which your parents probably grew up listening to. It's probably as English as morris dancing.
To repeat-

Recorder- Continental Europe.
Cittern- German.
Fiddle- Italian.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 01 Oct 08 - 01:24 PM

"To Ruth Archer and Joseph P!: let me put it another way - if one prefers to use a web nickname (and I've nothing against that) why use someone else's real name?"

Just the same as if someone chose the nickname Jim Bergerac or Victor Meldrew.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 01 Oct 08 - 01:41 PM

WAV, I'll repeat this slowly: Ruth Archer is a FICTIONAL CHARACTER. If there are real Ruth Archers in the world, no doubt they've had their characters blackened far more comprehensively by the Ambridge Dairymaid herself and her adulterous meanderings with the cowman.

Anyweey, Deeeeeeyvid, I still think you're a reeeeeeeycist. OOOOOOOH NOOOOOO!!!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 01 Oct 08 - 02:38 PM

Correct, WAV.

The name on my birth certificate is Donald Richard Firth. My father's grandfather came from Scotland (actually, Orkney) and my mother's parents came from Sweden. I sign legal documents with my full name, but Don Firth is the name my friends and acquaintances know me by, the name I am known by as a singer, and the by-line I use for my writing.

I am willing to take the blame when and if I mess up, but when I do something dazzlingly brilliant, I want full credit. Therefore, I use my real name.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 01 Oct 08 - 02:39 PM

"Anyweey, Deeeeeeyvid, I still think you're a reeeeeeeycist. OOOOOOOH NOOOOOO!!!" (Ruth Archer)...is the one behind this nickname, and the poster of such rubbish, really the director of Sidmouth Festival, as Ralphie said here Date: 01 Oct 08 - 07:13 AM?
And Volgadon - I repeat, the sousaphone IS an American instrument, that I happen to like, for what it's worth.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 01 Oct 08 - 02:48 PM

And Wav - I repeat, the fiddle IS an Italian instrument, that I happen to like, for what it's worth.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 01 Oct 08 - 03:09 PM

And so said I, Volgadon - you even argue when we agree! If it's on the list here Date: 29 Sep 08 - 12:57 PM or here, I'll eat my English flute.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 01 Oct 08 - 03:15 PM

The Sousaphone is a "wearable" helicon or "Saxhorn" (a brass instrument very popular in central and eastern Europe) originally patented in Paris in 1845 by Adolph Sax. John Philip Sousa asked the C. G. Conn company to design a helicon or tuba that would be easier to hold and to march with.

So it's an American variation of a European instrument. To categorize the Sousaphone as an "American instrument" is rather like categorizing Lord Randal or Barbara Allen as "American ballads" because variants of them have been collected in the southern mountains in the United States. Both of these ballads came to the U. S. because they were carried here in the heads of immigrants from the British Isles, where they originated—as far as we know; variants of Lord Randal have been found all over continental Europe and the Scandinavian countries.

No, most things that exist today, both cultural and technological, are the result of evolution, which involves the mixing of cultures and the resultant cross-fertilization. Biologists have long since recognized the value of biological diversity and "hybrid vitality." Anthropologists also recognize a similar process in the meeting and blending of cultures. "Pure" strains, both biological and cultural, tend to weaken and fade away.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 01 Oct 08 - 03:39 PM

Noooo, Deeeyvid - I'm a character in an everyday story of countryfolk - as any good Englishman (and especially Northumbrian)well knooooooows.

Anyweeey, there's only one poster of rubbish on this forum, Deeeeyvid - and it's not the Prudhoe Pixie.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 01 Oct 08 - 03:42 PM

In that case you are an idiot. The fiddle is VERY closely associated with England.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 01 Oct 08 - 03:54 PM

". . . having enjoyed the guitar being played in an English style. . . ."   [from WAV's website]

WAV, I have been studying the guitar, its history and its various techniques, I have been playing the instrument since the early 1950s, and I have taught the guitar in both private lessons (classical and folk) and in classes (folk) since the late 1950s.   My life has been inextricably linked with the guitar all these years. I recognize that there are a few distinct regional styles of playing, such as flamenco in Andalusia, Mexican folk styles (making use of some flamenco techniques such as free use of the rasgueado), alternating bass or "finger-picking" styles that developed in the southern U. S. along with blues styles, and, of course, various jazz and pop styles. But I can't recall every hearing any style of guitar playing that I could identify as an "English style."

Can you direct me to any guitarists who play specifically "English style," or any CDs where I may hear this style?

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 01 Oct 08 - 04:29 PM

If someone were to say English style, I would immediately think of Davey Graham, Martin Carthy, Jansch and Renbourne and Nic Jones, who were all heavily influenced by American styles too.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 01 Oct 08 - 04:51 PM

Hmm. Having listened to a selection of the aforementioned on YouTube, I can't say that I hear anything beyond what sounds like each individual's variations on what are generally considered to be American folk guitar styles. Apparently heavily influenced, as you say, Volgandon.

"English style?" Hard to recognize anything that would distinctly characterize it as such.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,jm
Date: 01 Oct 08 - 05:22 PM

I think you'll find a lot of people on this thread are more well known than you suspect David... You are well out of your depth here amongst several members of the efdss national council, at least one major festival artistic director, at least one noted collector, many professional performers including a very big name indeed, and other posters who have spent entire lifetimes working at the coalface of traditional music. And that's just the people I know...

Listen to us all - everyone here has more knowledge about this than you and they (mostly) being polite and patient in the face of your refusal to listen. As Eliza suggested, learn more - wikipedia and "a programme you saw once" are not accurate sources, just as "pottages and lawn tennis" doesn't count as participating in English culture. Your pronouncements are mostly hilarious if not for the fact that there's so much conviction behind them. Go out and get involved - not lecture, or decide how things should be done based on the fact you'd prefer the world to nice a neat and tidy, or decide you already know enough from a single summers travelling to last a lifetime - but FIND OUT MORE.

Jim (go on... Work out which Jim...)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Surreysinger
Date: 01 Oct 08 - 06:49 PM

"here amongst several members of the efdss national council, at least one major festival artistic director, at least one noted collector, many professional performers including a very big name indeed, and other posters who have spent entire lifetimes working at the coalface of traditional music."

And some of them, of course, fit into more than one of those categories.

"go on... Work out which Jim"
Now I'm curious .... and speculating ... do any of us get a Mars bar if we get it right ... chuckle.

As to using real names or nicknames ... that's a matter of choice WAV, David or whatever you choose to be. Some of us, like Ralphie or Don choose to use their real names. Others like to use nicknames .. I only really use one because that's how I started on here some years ago ... but I think you'll find that over time most of us who are regulars have got to know who everybody else is in the real world, so even if we're posting under nickname/pseudonym/whatever you wish to call it, it isn't actually an anonymous posting as such. As to considering that Ruth could be maligning a REAL person, please don't tell me that you're one of those people who would have sent a wreath to the studios when one of the characters in the radio series died ... you wouldn't would you ????
(I personally am concerned in case any real Granma McAlatias are feeling maligned, or come to that any Koala Subverters....)

I see from your Myspace and website that you have been interested in traditional music since 2004(and I have to echo Ralphie in being surprised at the use of the term E Trad - never seen it used by anyone else ever before ... and hope never to see it again, as we already have too many problems in the use of definitions). Interest and enthusiasm are laudable, but with so little experience, and faced with a veritable army of people on here who know so much more than you, you really have been and are digging a very very large hole for yourself. As Jim said, you really should go and FIND OUT MORE before arguing the toss with people who in many cases have vast experience and knowledge at their fingertips.

And yes, just in case it wasn't clear to you one of the people you've been having a go at IS the newly appointed Artistic Director of the Sidmouth Folk Week. And most of us are well aware of that, whether she chooses to use her given name, or her Mudcat name...

Oh well, despite the hour back to practice on the duet,Monarch /King of the tinas ... possibly with both hands ... maybe just the left....definitely not in an English manner ... might confuse myself...

Surreysinger
(aka Irene Shettle who is hopefully not maligning any other Surreysingers ...)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 02 Oct 08 - 07:28 AM

Maybe Wav would have included the banjo on his list if it were known as the English banjo, or the Anjo.


Volgadon, who may or may not be maligning two rivers, as well as anyone called Don.....

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: TheSnail
Date: 02 Oct 08 - 10:14 AM

You are well out of your depth here amongst several members of the efdss national council, at least one major festival artistic director, at least one noted collector, many professional performers including a very big name indeed, and other posters who have spent entire lifetimes working at the coalface of traditional music.

You'd think they had better things to do with their time than argue the toss with WAV.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Surreysinger
Date: 02 Oct 08 - 10:16 AM

Hmm ... I thought that was a mix of VOLtarol and MoGADON ... a painkiller that puts you to sleep ... is that relevant to this thread ?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 02 Oct 08 - 10:43 AM

Snail, the only reason I do is because of the racism, which he hitches wholesale to the cart of English traditions, before peddling his wares to anyone who will take them (or be too polite to say no...)

it's important that people who see his bizarre polemics posted here, there and everywhere know that they do NOT represent the views of the majority of the English folk fraternity.

I'm not English, of course.

Anyway, everyone takes coffee breaks! :)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 02 Oct 08 - 10:57 AM

If it's the Jim I think it is, can I congratulate you on the Adam Ant song? It even won over my folk-averse partner... Now there's a man who was an English institution! (Adam, not Mrs Cringe).

Ridicule is nothing to be scared of... probably quite pertinent to this thread.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: TheSnail
Date: 02 Oct 08 - 11:50 AM

Somehow, Ruth, I don't think you're going to change WAVs mind about anything and he doesn't seem to be gathering much support.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 02 Oct 08 - 01:17 PM

"and I have to echo Ralphie in being surprised at the use of the term E Trad - never seen it used by anyone else ever before" (Surreysinger)...so, maybe my 4 years has been relatively intense, having eventually found folk music following a major in anthroplogy...could it be that I was indeed trained in what to look for? I was also fortunate to quickly come across a tape called "Voices", which had several good unaccompanied E trads (English traditional songs) on it.
But which him is "Jim", nor how much can a koala bear, I know not, frankly..?
"And yes, just in case it wasn't clear to you one of the people you've been having a go at IS the newly appointed Artistic Director of the Sidmouth Folk Week. And most of us are well aware of that, whether she chooses to use her given name, or her Mudcat name...Oh well, despite the hour back to practice on the duet,Monarch /King of the tinas ... possibly with both hands ... maybe just the left....definitely not in an English manner ... might confuse myself..."...it's all in great hands then!
"the only reason I do is because of the racism" (Ruth)...false and defamatory, again - I love the world being multicultural; you hate anyone questioning immigration.
"Somehow, Ruth, I don't think you're going to change WAVs mind about anything and he doesn't seem to be gathering much support." (The Snail)...yes my views are still radical but, if you do keep up-to-date somehow, Snail, you'd know that things have moved at least a tad more my way just lately.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,eliza c
Date: 02 Oct 08 - 01:26 PM

Here I go again, because I can't help myself...eyup j(i)m...you too eh...
David, I've spent twenty years in the research and promotion of English traditional music, and one of the things I have always had to contend with, in frustration and fury, is peoples' assertions that anyone interested in such things could only be a weirdo and/or a borderline racist/nationalist.
There have often been very good discussions on this messageboard about English traditional music despite the fact that it was not set up as a folky board, and I have often learned a lot just by lurking.
Not any more. You have hijacked this subject here and made it a laughing stock once again. Spoons for God's sake????!!!! Thanks a frigging bunch. Ignorant, ignorant man. Rubbish indeed.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 02 Oct 08 - 01:30 PM

Wav, you love the world being sorted into neat, tidy little boxes labelled French Culture, Russian Culture, Indian Culture, and so on. Woe be us if they were ever to mix, let along touch ENGLISH culture.

Wav, you havce done nothing whatsoever with anthropology. You only covered the basics, the general idea. You keep belitlling research for a masters, really a shame that you never did any, because you might have learned how to study an issue IN DEPTH.

Wav, I've been listening to folk songs since the age of three. Twenty one years later I am still learning, and I am sure that there are those here who would say the same even after 50 years.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: TheSnail
Date: 02 Oct 08 - 01:48 PM

if you do keep up-to-date somehow, Snail

What? You mean actually read your doggerel? AAAAARRRRRRGH!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 02 Oct 08 - 01:50 PM

Monsieur Mollusk, I believe the point that Ruth is making is summed up in the adage that silence in the face of nonsense, particularly malevolent nonsense, implies agreement. Someone should speak out in opposition, even if there is no hope that the author of the nonsense will be persuaded to change his thinking.

And I most definitely agree with GUEST, jim, that WAV is in way over his head when, with his four years of acquaintance with folk music, he is arrogant enough to try to lecture people who have spent their entire lives deeply involved in folk music as a profession and a serious study, some of whom are knowledgeable and talented performers who have been entertaining and educating audiences for many decades.

WAV is rather like a very green cabin boy on his first sea voyage who, having read a few Horatio Hornblower novels and rowed a small skiff on a pond, acts toward a thoroughly experienced crew of crusty old sea-dogs as if he were the bloody captain.

So what's the point of speaking out against what he says? Well, among other things, suppose some neophyte logs into Mudcat and reads some of WAV's misinformation and there is no one there to say, "That's wrong!" The neophyte may assume, since everyone else seems to agree (with their silence), that WAV knows what he's talking about.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 02 Oct 08 - 01:53 PM

Eliza.
Thank you.
You, me, and hundreds of other people have spent all our lives fighting this folkist crap.
Hope you are well...Hopefully see you soon.
(Co-incidentally, Have just purchased your new waxing this very afternoon.
After I've concocted a lovely meal, I propose to sit back, and enjoy the jobbie!!....Nice photos...You scrub up well!!)
Much Love Ralphie xx

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 02 Oct 08 - 02:03 PM

Hi WAV
You've pissed off Eliza Carthy now.....Makes you happy???
Go away, and try to find a life.
(Hint. It's under a stone somewhere)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 02 Oct 08 - 02:15 PM

WAV, if you want to persuade us you're not a racist, you'll have to address what we're actually saying. We all know you "love the world being multicultural". Please absorb this information: it is perfectly possible to "love the world being multicultural" and be a racist.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 02 Oct 08 - 02:22 PM

"Spoons for God's sake????!!!! Thanks a frigging bunch. Ignorant, ignorant man. Rubbish indeed."... The World Spoons Championship was held, in ENGLAND, at the Trimdon MUSIC Festival, this year Eliza - see http://www.countydurhamarts.org.uk/trimdon.html

Re. Don's second last post: an English style for guitar (and preferably English cittern) would be including the melody in one's picking, as Eliza's dad, e.g., does very well, as Vogadon hinted at above.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Will Fly
Date: 02 Oct 08 - 02:26 PM

D. Franks has been told quite reasonably and sensibly, by several experienced, distinguished and intelligent people on this forum that he is totally out of his depth. Many of the musicians I've played with, professionally and semi-professionally for over 40 years in genres such as folk, blues, jazz, rock'n roll, funk, etc., are not quite as reasonable and sensible as this, and would have simply told him to f*ck *ff a long time ago. But he just can't take the hint, can he?

The problem, IMHO, is that all the activity generated by every thread he starts ("5,000 Morris Dancers" etc.) is actually giving an ignorant nonentity a kind of prominence which he doesn't deserve. All he has to do is never answer a question directly, repeat the same trite phrases, and make references to his puerile website - and there you go: another half-dozen posts... quite subtle in a warped kind of way, though I'm sure he hadn't realised it.

I do agree it's important to challenge this mindless xenophobic crap and not let it dribble on, but perhaps the best way now is simply to ignore this and any other threads Franks posts, so that he will fade away, unnoticed in the overall Mudcat traffic.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: TheSnail
Date: 02 Oct 08 - 02:30 PM

Don Firth

Monsieur Mollusk, I believe the point that Ruth is making is summed up in the adage that silence in the face of nonsense, particularly malevolent nonsense, implies agreement.

Up to a point, Don, but if you follow that to the letter, you would be involved in an awful lot of arguments. You have to do a bit of filtering. I feel that WAV is getting far more attention than he deserves. The man is ridiculous and the appropriate response is ridicule. Logical argument is wasted on him.

There are genuine threats to the UK folk scene from the far right and I have done my bit to speak out against them. I took it on myself to let everyone who needed to know that a chap active on the local folk scene was a spokesman for this organisation http://www.steadfasttrust.org.uk/. We don't see a lot of him these days and I keep an eye out for him.

As far as I can tell, WAV only represents himself and having so many worthwhile people arguing with him probably makes him feel important.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 02 Oct 08 - 02:59 PM

Wav, the melody is usually played in fingerpicking!!!!!

Also, I find it really rich that you exclude the violin, an instrument with quite a past, present and future in England, on the grounds of it being foreign, yet you dote on the cittern, a German instrument brought over by Italian musicos and used to play Italianate style music which was popular in France, because it once had English in the title.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 02 Oct 08 - 03:01 PM

Will Fly - I see your 40 years experience involves willfully flying from the folk-coop into "blues, jazz, rock'n roll, funk"...sounds American?
Snail - for what it's worth, I'm Left Wing, and the questioning of economic/capitalist immigration/emigration is a Left NOT Right Wing attitude.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 02 Oct 08 - 03:05 PM

OOOH sounds AMERICAN, run for the hills, sound the alarms!!

You have a huge prejudice against anything American, don't you?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 02 Oct 08 - 03:10 PM

if you're left wing, Deeeyvid, I'm Linda Snell.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 02 Oct 08 - 03:14 PM

Maybe he can't tell directions, or maybe it's that he can't turn left... Oh well, at least he's still ridiculously good-looking....

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 02 Oct 08 - 03:21 PM

No Volgadon, there is a "huge" difference between being against Americanisation as in globalisation and having "a huge prejudice against anything American". I just said, I quite like the American sousaphone, e.g.; and, earlier, that I've enjoyed LISTENING TO some American rock, e.g.
Ruth - please read poems 74 and 75.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Surreysinger
Date: 02 Oct 08 - 03:43 PM

Four years experience ... introduced to the genre by a coup de foudre engendered by a CD ... its just occurred to me that that has a ring of familiarity... I'm getting a sense of deja vu here....

I was about to post a rather lengthy diatribe remarking upon the banality of suggesting that a degree based in anthropology had any relevance to "knowing what to look for" in our chosen field .. might just as well say that about my first class honours degree in geography or my hard won examinations in tax legislation which enabled me to qualify for promotion to HM Inspector of Taxes - those were the days! About as relevant as a degree in nuclear physics I would have said ... I could go on, but life is far too short.

WAV, I would not suggest like Ralphie that you crawl under a stone ... but I certainly would suggest that you keep your head down,go and learn a bit more (again); by all means learn to play your chosen instrument _properly_, and perhaps take some singing lessons - your MySpace recordings are woefully pitched... you can't even argue that you're singing a harmony, it's so out of tune. You've set yourself up as a performer with gigs ... but I can't help noticing that virtually all of the poetry ones are poetry slams ... which of course are not gigs at all , but competitions.(Have you ever been voted into first place by the appointed judges at any of them ?) It rather makes me think of the young man who turned up at a folk club session in Whitby this year that Doc Rowe was running. He and his guitar departed after he'd sung his one song, leaving a gig list behind as long as his arm, which was marvelled at - until it was noticed that the two days entered up for Whitby Folk Week referred to his appearances in the Folk Tent, and the Festival Tent ... which led to a deal of speculation about how "real" the rest of the entries on the gig list were ... to a great deal of laughter.... just a thought.

So, I get the feeling that you are a lost cause ...shame really, as although this can be an odd place, it can also be friendly and amusing -- but not if you're getting up the noses of the regulars in a big way ... but none so blind as those who will not see, eh?... I'm outta here.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 02 Oct 08 - 03:54 PM

"Ruth - please read poems 74 and 75."

Not in a month of Sundays, Crocodile Dundee.



I got a Girl Scout badge for my Barbie collection when I was 10. I think this qualifies me as an expert in post-feminist rhetoric. I'm going to go see if I can find Germaine Greer on an internet forum and harangue her with my superior knowledge...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 02 Oct 08 - 04:01 PM

E.g. what?

I have a certificate from a Holocaust museum, shall I go to the Wiesenthal Centre and tell them that they have no clue, this is how it should be done.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 02 Oct 08 - 04:18 PM

I don't get that poem. Do you mean that the left lets people in so they could commit terror through their hatred?
That the right wants people in so thy could make money to oppose heritage and shows? Which shows, circus or TV?
Please, please, please LEARN how to use English.


Letting people

Enter a state
For factors like

Terror through hate.



Rewarding those

Interested in

Gains which oppose

Heritage and

The state's own shows.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 02 Oct 08 - 04:39 PM

I can't really remember how many certificates I've got. A lot, but I'm sure as hell not going to go and count them. There's one for cycling proficiency when I was 9, I think. Yes, I've got a forklift truck driving one too, which I did in Germany while supporting myself at university. So I've had jolly old times on the shop floor too WAV. DON'T suggest we meet and compare notes. Lots for music grades too, but no-one round here thinks THEY mean much. However, if WAV were to take a crash course in sight reading he might sound a bit less painful.

What pisses me off even more than those who think performing trad music is easy and any old crap will do are the ones who try to hijack it for their own nefarious purposes. I will never tolerate the vaguest whiff of vile nationalism or Aryan superiority and have argued and written against such tainted ideology since 1969 when I first wrote a column. There are many musicians and activists who have contributed here who are far more qualified than I am to tell you where to get off. But when it comes to oppression of minorities on the grounds of race, or trivialisation of women on the grounds of gender, I claim first place in the queue to slap you very hard.

Just one last thought to encourage you to run away and hide for ever. I was the first woman to report from a National Union Of Mineworkers conference. I can handle Arthur Scargill. You're a doddle. AND I played Nkosi Sikele i Afrika from the platform (go on, tell me I shouldn't have done that in England, if you dare).

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 02 Oct 08 - 05:06 PM

Granted, o noble gastropod, one should indeed pick one's arguments. Being a Yank, I'm not totally familiar with what's going on in the U.K. folk scene, but I shall try to educate myself in that regard.

My objection to WAV's blather is his racist and exclusionary attitude, which I would speak out against in any case, and his patently asinine prescriptions and proscriptions about English folk music, enunciating principles that he obviously feels should be applied to all folk music, and to cultures in general. He seems to embrace the idea that one should only sing songs of one's own limited locality, and I cavil at this. I reserve the right to sing any song I damn well want to sing, regardless of what culture it comes from; and anyone who tells me—or others—what they should or should not, can or cannot sing is going to get an argument from me.

Any logical argument that I assert will, I'm sure (after all this), be lost on WAV. But as I said, it's for the benefit of any neophyte who may be misled by him

Just as a note:   one value of this thread (even if it involves giving a sadly ignorant self-appointed pundit far more attention than he deserves) is that, being somewhat less familiar with the U.K. folk scene and singers than I would want to be, it spurred me to look up Eliza Carthy (with whom I was not familiar) on YouTube and hear her sing. Excellent! It has led me to a pleasant discovery.

Now, WAV:

According to you, "English style" guitar playing ". . . would be including the melody in one's picking. . . ."

This still does not distinguish a unique "English style" guitar. Segovia played melodies on the guitar. So does Pepe Romero. Charlie Byrd (American jazz guitarist) did too. John Prine does. Elizabeth Cotton did. Grammy winning African guitarist Ali Farka Touré plays melody lines. My friend Bob Nelson does. So does local folk guitar virtuoso George Austin. So do I.

So—what distinguishes "English style" guitar playing? I have a fairly sophisticated ear. How do I recognize "English style" guitar playing when I hear it, as contrasted with, say, John Prine's or George Austin's playing?

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Dave (Bridge)
Date: 02 Oct 08 - 05:46 PM

To Say one has won singing competitions when there are only two entrants and one gets disqualified for not keeping to the rules, is not winning in my book. Neither is it fantastic to come third out of three

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,eliza c
Date: 02 Oct 08 - 05:57 PM

David,
    Spoons are just spoons. They can be played in any country as a form of percussion, as can tin cans, stones and glasses. And one memorable time when I was in Australia playing English music, possums...folk tend to play what they can get their hands on in the real world, that's folk music for you.
Not everyone has a recorder shop nearby...specialised folk music instruments are often very expensive. Are normal people supposed to save up until they can afford their culture? Or do they just make do with a plastic recorder from school...which I still have, but I stopped playing just the one line of melody as soon as I discovered there were other instruments that could do so much more with the English music that I love. Real people tend to do that, ordinary people, to the bafflement of higher authorities and stone-cold academics, love exploring the boundaries of music and poetry unless under the yoke of a proscriptive regime...and then you no longer have a natural, living culture: you have a dictatorship.
And by the way, Dad developed his signature guitar style by among other things listening to Big Bill Broonzy. It's the thumb. And the provenance, as most folk musics, including the Blues, are inextricably connected through hundreds of years of interaction and a struggling tradition such as ours can learn to communicate from another without shame. Or perish, as ours was close to doing for whatever reason. They can also still be unique, it doesn't necessarily follow that you end up with bland musical soup.
Spoons are not a musical instrument though the playing of them was as popular in Ireland as here, and surely anywhere where anyone wanted to join in by hitting something. As much as it really pains me to say this because "spoons" is also one of my favourite words, you cannot claim them for England whether you put it in bolshie capital letters or not.
Fool. Again you queer this cause with ignorance and intransigence. You play right into the hands of anyone that has ever questioned the worth of the English music debate.
Why do you still come here? If it was to spread your word I think by the weight and volume of the correspondence against you by now it should be clear that you have failed. Go away if you don't want to learn anything, stay if you do, be quiet for a bit and learn something man. You are not a radical. You're a steamroller and you're not even halfway informed. It won't work, I've tried it, all you will do is piss people off and eventually they will just laugh at you. And by association the cause that you promote.
eliza

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 02 Oct 08 - 06:36 PM

Well said, Missus. And you thought Cecil Sharp was a knobhead...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 02 Oct 08 - 07:00 PM

"The World Spoons Championship was held, in ENGLAND, at the Trimdon MUSIC Festival, this year Eliza"

I'm holding the World Gazing Up my Bum Competition at Ruth's Music Festival, to be held next week in my back garden. First prize: a plastic recorder and a bowl of pottage.

Does this mean my arse is in the running to be England's National Musical Instrument? God, I hope so...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 12:32 AM

Just a little thought.

Hands up anyone who agrees with WAVs views....
Surely there must be someone out there in Catland?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 04:13 AM

Tubby honest, Ralphie, right now I'm more worried that someone out there is going to take Ruth's suggestion for a competition seriously...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 04:43 AM

you're just afraid you might lose, Spleeny baby.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: TheSnail
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 05:03 AM

Or afraid he might win.

I'm a bit confused, do you gaze up your own bum or Ruth's?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 05:14 AM

Another excellent post from EC.

In a little Russian industrial town that fits Ewan Maccoll's song better than any, one of my best friends, whose parents were born in the countryside, taught me how to play the spoons. He explained that they were THE folk instrument, forget the kitschy balalaikas. Others have stated the reason, but it's worth repeating. It used to be that villages only had one, maybe two instruments, he said, yet nobody wanted to be left out of the fun, so people would grab whatever they had and join in. Everyone had at least a pair of wooden spoons at home. That's also why Russian music has a lout of whistling, hey's, clapping and boot-slapping. If you can't afford an instrument, you become creative.
That's what's missing in all your pontifications and poscriptions. JOY. FUN.
For you it's a dreary experiment in nationalism.
And that is also why EC sounds more like a Gypsy fiddler than anyone else outside of Eastern Europe, not because she plays that sort of music, but because of the mix of joy and plaintiveness in her playing.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 05:26 AM

Vol, old bean.
Couldn't agree more.
And Eliza. Still getting to grips with the CD. Lots going on there!
Well done.
Now...Back to Ms Archers arse competition.
(No real point in me entering, obviously!)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 05:37 AM

And one memorable time when I was in Australia playing English music, possums...

Yes? Don't keep us in suspense!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 05:42 AM

Definitely gazing up MY bum. It's my festival.

Volgadon makes a good point about participative percussion. I thereby nominate the shaky egg as England's national instrument.

In case the Snail thinks I ought to be doing something more productive right now, I'm actually sitting here at the hairdressers having my highlights done. The coffee is very good.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Surreysinger
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 05:56 AM

Oh shucks ... I know I said I was out of here, but it's getting fun again .... really not sure about the gazing up Ruth's bum competition, but I suppose it has to be better than a spoons competiion. Why should Ralphie declare himself out of the running - is it a heightist thing, do you suppose ? What are the rules for the competition ?

Now the shakey egg as England's national instrument ... why not? Is this where I declare in ashamed tones that I own two of those things (well the lime green one was so pretty), and have actually used one of them in public a couple of times. If it WAS the national instrument there would be so many people who could hold their heads up with pride again at sessions (mind you, it still wouldn't mean that most of them could play them with any degree of skill!)

And as to the scribing on the Cat while at the hairdressers, your hairdresser sounds more up to date than mine, Ruth! Coffee... mmm, now there's a thought .....

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 06:08 AM

I knew I shouldn't have stopped reading this thread - I've just been catching up, and I'm getting very confused. Apparently Ruth wants to put her bum on WAV's list and Diane is just as qualified as he is, although Eliza may or may not be as good at he is on the plastic recorder. I think that's everything. But why do people keep saying 'Volgadon'? It should be 'He who must not be named', surely?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Surreysinger
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 06:52 AM

That could be the answer to a lot of things round here...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: TheSnail
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 07:09 AM

Back to Ms Archers arse competition.
(No real point in me entering, obviously!)

No, Ralphie, you're just meant to GAZE up it.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 07:11 AM

Surreysinger - I've been quite frank about the fact that, thus far, I've only done mini free-drinks/entry type gigs/spots, as an amateur; so why are you trying to say I've suggested otherwise?
"Aryan superiority" (Diane)...I hate imperialism - be it Nazi, Victorian, or any other, and wish Aboriginal, and other, land rights would be covered in schools here.
"the idea that one should only sing songs of one's own limited locality" (Don)...several earlier folk clubs in England DID have a perform-your-own-national-culture policy.
Dave - if you attend folk festival comps and/or read the rules, you'll see that judges don't have to award places, and that the average number of participants is a few more than you say; also, at Morpeth, e.g., the last 2 or 3 years the hall HAS been pleasingly packed. This is a case of someone being so keen to get at me that they end up knocking things and people they would normally respect and support.
Eliza, Volgadon, Possums - can you accept that my title "Instruments of (or closely associated with) England" doesn't say that these instruments are not associated with any other nation?

Poem 76 of 230: LAND RIGHTS

If there is a good thing
    From the Second World War
It's that most peoples learnt
    To conquer lands no more.

In Africa, Asia,
    And the Pacific, too:
Post-war independence -
    Steps only bigots rue.

But for some indigenes,
    Outnumbered much-too-much,
It has all come too late
    For liberty, as such.

So 'tis in Australia,
    And America's sites,
Where the best now, I think,
    Is to respect land rights.

From walkaboutsverse.741.com

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 07:46 AM

Mr Snail.....Really....I've no idea what you mean!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: TheSnail
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 07:48 AM

496! Perfect!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,We Subvert Koalas
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 07:49 AM

can you accept that my title "Instruments of (or closely associated with) England" doesn't say that these instruments are not associated with any other nation?

Those of us who love folk music (call it what you will) generally do so with an appreciation of the inherent cultural diversity / continuity of such matters without paying too much heed to the sort of frontiers that are so much a part of The WAV Approach - the above aberration notwithstanding of course which would appear to give to the lie to most everything he's said on the matter hitherto. What gives, WAV?

Meanwhile, in an attempt to tie up the various strands of this thread thus far (London Derriere and all) here's Granma McAlatia posing with England's National Musical Instrument, though one suspects she might have been abroad at the time. Yes, WAV, other countries have bells too. Time, methinks, to ring the changes...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 07:50 AM

WAV
Nice to see you back, getting this thread under some sort of control.
It was all going to the dogs, quite frankly.
Shakey eggs, arses, etc, etc.
Lovely to see you posting one of your marvellous poems for our delectation.
(Woops sorry, you don't do irony, do you?)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 08:01 AM

Hey WSK.
Don't tell me that Ms McAlatia is a late entrant in Ruths competition?
Doesn't stand a chance IMHO.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 08:05 AM

M Snail.
I'm waiting for 668,
The Neighbour of the Beast.
Or even 667.
The bloke who lives across the road from the Beast, but keeps getting his post by mistake, and is thoroughly pissed off by it!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 08:30 AM

Eliza, Volgadon, Possums - can you accept that my title "Instruments of (or closely associated with) England" doesn't say that these instruments are not associated with any other nation?

Because your list is so unbelievably ridiculous. You refuse to include several instruments which really have had a folk currency in England, especially the fiddle, on grounds of their foreign origin, yet you ignore that rule if they ever had English in the title.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Howard Jones
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 08:32 AM

As part of the ongoing effort to educate WAV into English culture, can I explain to him that the word "gig" is generally used to mean a paid professional engagement. Floorspots, singarounds, busking in the street and singing in the bath don't count.

WAV, by referring to your "gigs" you're implying that you've been paid to perform. Perhaps you also imagine that masquerading as a gigging performer somehow gives your bizarre views greater authority. Having briefly endured some of your website offerings I find it hard to believe that anyone would pay you to perform, except perhaps as a malicious joke, but of course I may be wrong.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 08:36 AM

Come On Volga.
There is no point in continuing.
I'm as bad as you, but it's a bit like shooting fish in a barrel.
Let it (and him) go.
He won't be appearing at a gig near you anytime soon, will he?
See you on a more interesting thread sometime.
But, you strike me as an intelligent chap.
Hi! And thanks for your input.
Kind Regards Ralphie

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,eliza c
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 09:42 AM

hi Ralphie xxx
David, spoons are still not a musical instrument. My long lost aunt Lal wrote a four-line poem better than anything you have ever come up with about a homeless man who played "upon the laces of his shoes" because he had nothing else. It doesn't make shoes a musical instrument either, it means that the human being is the one that makes the music, because that's what it's all about.
And since your response to pleading you to help your cause and yourself by having some grace and being quiet for a bit in order to learn more and be useful to said cause was to post something you've written yourself from your almost barren in respect of this massive subject, closed mind...bye again. If you stick around and remain this way, I will be forced to try and help you again, because as I said I can't help myself. But I repeat, you're an ignorant weirdo and you are actively ruining the reputation of English folk and traditional music. I stand against you for that, it's unforgiveable.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 11:12 AM

Spoons people play are usually not also used to eat with, so I 'd say they ARE musical instruments. In Turkey you get specially-made musical wooden spoons - they deep-fry them in olive oil to improve the tone.

Regardless, David is still an ignorant weirdo and a disgrace to English culture.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 11:24 AM

Hi Eliza.
Thanks for the xxx
Have got into your new CD a bit more.
Lots of cool stuff in there.
Your take on "Hug You" is not as minimalist as the Frasers version, but, what the heck!

Have a great time in the House tomorrow.
Wish I could be there.
Say Hello to Shirley C et al.
Mr VW was a jolly nice chap.
Wrote a few good symphonies If I remember correctly.
(and...Lucy Broadwood was a jolly nice chap too!)
Hopefully bump into you soon.
Now....Back to WAV baiting.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 11:34 AM

"Spoons people play are usually not also used to eat with, so I 'd say they ARE musical instruments. In Turkey you get specially-made musical wooden spoons - they deep-fry them in olive oil to improve the tone."

That is true of today, but I would think that a modern phenomenon.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 11:45 AM

English spoons are deep-fried in chip fat, as any fule kno.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 12:14 PM

Can we leave spoons out of the equation?
Spoons are dull.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 12:14 PM

". . . several earlier folk clubs in England DID have a perform-your-own-national-culture policy."

I've heard about that, WAV. That may be a fact, but it certainly doesn't justify either your position or the restrictive position of such folk clubs. There are major problems with such a policy, not the least of which is that many songs and ballads that people tend to assume are indigenous are not, they're "immigrants." It would take a ballad-scholar-in-residence at each of these folk clubs to pass on which songs are acceptable and which are not.

Folk music is like the vagrant breeze, WAV. It is no respecter of political or cultural boundaries. It goes where it will.

You say "earlier folk clubs." Did it ever occur to you (before you came to your own conclusions) why these clubs abandoned this policy?

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 12:26 PM

Hi Don Firth.
The sound of the doffing of caps is sent in your direction!
You sound like a reasonable chap.
Nice to touch base with you.
The dreadful McColl "Singers Club" style of venue didn't last that long. thank (insert favourite Deity here).
Life in the UK is much more tolerant nowadays. (WAV permitting)
McColl was a clever chap, but some of his ideas on performance left a lot to be desired.
Never mind.....That was then, this is now.
Have a quiet evening. And keep playing!!
Regards Ralphie

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,We Subvert Koalas
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 12:28 PM

Fascinating article on RVW in the new Fortean Times in respect of folk songs, hymns and suchlike. Check it out - WAV especially! He might learn something about another level of Englishness which I suspect might have eluded him thus far in his efforts to Repatriate.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 12:34 PM

I see it's very old chestnut time (again).

This "policy", decided by the members of one club for that venue alone was to encourage performers to draw material firstly from their own background and experience and to sing it in their own voices in a language or dialect that they understood and used.

Martin Carthy (among others) has acknowledged the value and importance of this policy (whether instigated by Ewan MacColl, Peggy Seeger or A N Other) at that time because it encouraged the exploration of indigenous English music rather than tedious copying of the repertoires of the then prominent US artists.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 12:37 PM

"M Snail.
I'm waiting for 668,
The Neighbour of the Beast.
Or even 667." Ralphie who got 666 on the BS Weekly Walkabout, by the way.
And Howard's way is that there is no such thing as an amateur gig...?

"David, spoons are still not a musical instrument. My long lost aunt Lal wrote a four-line poem better than anything you have ever come up with about a homeless man who played "upon the laces of his shoes" because he had nothing else. It doesn't make shoes a musical instrument either, it means that the human being is the one that makes the music, because that's what it's all about.
And since your response to pleading you to help your cause and yourself by having some grace and being quiet for a bit in order to learn more and be useful to said cause was to post something you've written yourself from your almost barren in respect of this massive subject, closed mind...bye again. If you stick around and remain this way, I will be forced to try and help you again, because as I said I can't help myself. But I repeat, you're an ignorant weirdo and you are actively ruining the reputation of English folk and traditional music. I stand against you for that, it's unforgiveable." (Eliza)...I'm no spoons player, possum, but I think many may have a bone to pick (if not play) with you on this one...I've heard others say the bodhran is not a musical instrument - what's your stance on that?
Don - "FOLK MUSIC: Music deriving from, and expressive of, a particular national, ethnic or regional culture" (Philip's Essential Encyclopedia). (And I have checked others and found similar.)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Coojeebear's Spectral Residue
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 12:48 PM

The dreadful McColl "Singers Club" style of venue didn't last that long. And let's be thankful for that as you say, although one hears of Ewan McColl cribbing a lot of Islamic techniques for his authentic native folk mannerisms. Actually, just how many clubs had this perform-your-own policy I wonder? Do any have it now? Do any singers have it now? And what constitutes your own in this context, especially given that few of us were brought up with this stuff anyway? Does WAV think of it as his own? Actually, I think he probably does - even though he's only been singing for 200 weeks or so he seems to be of the impression that his singing is the benchmark of The Tradition. Whatever the case I hear his Cob a Coaling (currently playing on his myspace site) is the hippest thing for sampling - some cool mixes in the offing for bonfire night!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 01:01 PM

The Oxford English Dictionary is (unusually) more concise:

Folk music: music of popular origin.

Works for me.

"what constitutes your own in this context, especially given that few of us were brought up with this stuff anyway?"

I heard a headline act sing about how she had a row with her boyfriend and he won, so she went outside and snapped the wing mirror off his car. (Slight American accent, acoustic guitar, barre chords.) I think she was singing from her own culture. Give me the idiosyncratic antiquarianism of working from 30-year-old LPs and facsimile broadsides any day.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 01:06 PM

Is that Sean alias Sedayne alias Insane Beard alias (dropping the "d" soon) We Subvert Koalas alias Cojeebear's Spectral Redidue...what a spoonful of pseudonym!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 01:37 PM

Spoonful of Pseudonym is my copyright, thankee. I rather like 'He who must not be named' too.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 02:14 PM

If England 50 years ago was, culturaly, a much more English place, and if almost no one sang E. trad, then, following Wav's logic, E. trad really isn't part of England's own good culture........

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 02:20 PM

The deep-fried spoons are described by Picken in his 1975 book, with some theorizing about the physics behind it. He doesn't suggest it was a new idea at the time, so it looks like they go back a few decades at least, and since some of the ways they are used are rather elaborate, more likely a lot longer.

Julian Goodacre's workshop has an oil heater for treating pieces of bagpipe, and I asked him if he was using the deep-frying technique. He said no, but other makers of wind instruments did.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 02:36 PM

...in support of that, Jack, I've had a chin-wag with a chap called Bert, who has won the abovementioned World Spoons Championship, and I'm sure he also mentioned some kind of heat-treatment.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 03:26 PM

WAV
Hope that you are pleased that Eliza Carthy has lowered herself to give you a right bollocking.
So, Maybe you should refute her arguments with your extensive knowledge of Folk Music.
It is extensive, isn't it?
Four Years???
Must have misunderstood you then....Yes? No??
Oh...Not quite four?
Talent....Oh! You Haven't got any? Going to disagree??
I just hope that you are proud of yourself that you've managed to piss off one of the most important artists in "YOUR" England.
Now kindly (and with great respect)
FUCK OFF
The rest of us will carry on quite nicely without you.
And
Take that crap that you call poetry with you.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 03:26 PM

"FOLK MUSIC: Music deriving from, and expressive of, a particular national, ethnic or regional culture" (Philip's Essential Encyclopedia). (And I have checked others and found similar.)"

So—why should this dictate what I, or anyone else, should be allowed to sing? Or how we should be allowed to sing it?

If the idea that one should be allowed to sing only songs from one's own national, ethnic, or regional culture were some sort of "Universal Law," as you apparently wish it to be, I think folk music would have shriveled and died centuries ago. Many of the finest singers of folk songs extant now were urban-born and raised on a diet of whatever music (popular, classical, etc.) they happened to have been exposed to as they grew up. Most of them, like me, heard their first folk songs on the radio or on records (or, quite possibly live, from some singer who learned his or her songs from records and/or song books), and became interested in the songs per se.

The first folk songs I heard came from sources like this, and the songs themselves came from all over the Anglo-American folk song world:   from the rural south of the United States, from England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales (where, I regret, I have never been), from logging camps in upstate New York and the Pacific Northwest (I've never worked as a logger), fishing songs, whaling songs and other sea songs from all over the world's oceans (ship's crews were often muli-national, multi-cultural, although most of my maritime travel has been on car-carrying ferry boats between Seattle and Bainbridge Island or Bremerton, or sport fishing with my father), railroad songs (I've ridden on trains, but I've never been at the throttle during a train wreck, nor have I lined track on a chain gang), prison songs (being fairly law-abiding, I've never been to prison), and I even sing a few songs in French, though I've never been to France. Well, you get the point.

If I were allowed to sing only songs from my national, ethnic, and cultural background, I would have damned little in the way of folk songs to sing. And with the exception of singers such as Jean Ritchie, who grew up in Viper County, Kentucky and learned her songs from her family, the same holds for the vast majority of performers of folk songs and ballads, both those who are very well known through their concerts and recordings and those who sing only in folk clubs, with a few friends, or in the privacy of their own homes.

And that includes you, David!

Think about it.

Don Firth

P. S. Someone (Alan Lomax, I think--??) once characterized a folk song printed in a book or, for that matter, recorded or any single performance, as like a photograph of a bird in flight. You are seeing the bird for only one instant in its lifetime. It existed before this and it continues to exist afterward.

And folk songs are like birds in another way as well:   they, like the vagrant breezes that I mentioned above, are no respecters of political borders or cultural restrictions. They go anywhere they wish.

Why would anyone want them to be locked in cages?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 03:48 PM

You know, I don't think he has a single Northern English Australian repatriates' song in his repertoire, or North-Eastern forklifter songs, or Australian anthropology majors' songs...

Anyway, before Wav bangs on about his single degree and tech. certificates (which aren't that imposing an achievement anyway), here is a story my dad told me the other day.
Several years ago, he and mum went to a lecture by one of Israel's most prominent archaeologists, a man who had had over 40 years' experience. In the middle of his talk about one of the digs, he looked at the audience and stopped. "Why am I bothering, this man is the one to tell you about it." Who was the man? A simple kibbutz member, with no formal education beyond highschool, yet he was the expert on that site, living most of his life around it and carrying out most of the work and research!!!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 03:52 PM

Hey Don.
I apologise for my uncouth language.
I have great respect for music of all genres. UK, US, Europe,
And the rest...Africa, Asia, China.
My epithets (as directed at the Wanker WAV,) were mine, and mine alone.
I know that Ms Carthy, who has single mindedly championed the music of my island, both by talking and performing it for many years, is absolutely right when she says that the outpourings of people like WAV have an immense negative vibe attached.
He may mean well, who knows?
But, where are his supporters?
Have you seen one? I haven't...
If I were he. (and I thank the Lord that I'm not)
I would be feeling very small.
Ms Carthy takes no prisoners.
My very best to you and yours, and look forward to all your interesting points in the future.
I apologise for one of my compatriots.
It's called "Care in the Community" over here.
Why did it have to be this community?!
Ralph

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Spleen Cringe
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 04:09 PM

Oi Ralphie!

When you've finished swearing at idiot re-pats, are youi likely to have any time for a quick pint tommorrow?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 04:37 PM

And Ralphie - you've now told me not to come to your folk club as you dislike my music so much, and now to "F... OFF"...so, as I said before, you better tell me what folk club it is, as I AM a keen folkie.
And to Don, who prefers to analyse a tad more calmly - do you see any differences between folk in America and England? Would you call Amerindian chants and drums the true traditional music of America?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 05:46 PM

And to Don, who prefers to analyse a tad more calmly - do you see any differences between folk in America and England?

Oh no you don't. To David, who specifically said that there was an English style of guitar-playing: what distinguishes "English style" guitar playing? How do we recognise "English style" guitar playing when we hear it?

Anyway, back to those INSTRUMENTS OF (OR CLOSELY ASSOCIATED WITH) ENGLAND. Off hand I can think of these: electric guitar, electric bass, drumkit, trumpet, flugelhorn, hunting horn, tenor sax, soprano sax, alto sax, saxello, flute[s], recorder[s], oboe, clarinet, bassoon, violin, viola, cello, double bass, tuba, euphonium, trombone, harpsichord, piano accordion, melodeon, Anglo concertina, English concertina, duet concertina, harmonium, pipe organ, Hammond organ, Lowry organ, Moog synthesiser, Yamaha VCS-3, Roland TR-808, Fairlight sequencer, Mellotron, grand piano, upright piano, Fender Rhodes piano, pianola, harpsichord, spinet, virginals, clavinet, four-string banjo, five-string banjo, ukulele, banjolele, mandolin, mandola, charango, lute, hurdy-gurdy, pan-pipes, tabla, sitar, tambura, bongos, congas, cajon, mbira, steel drums, didgeridoo, guitar, cittern, cithera, zither, dulcimer, hammered dulcimer, harp, autoharp, blues harp, Jew's harp, ARP synthesiser, stylophone, ocarina, Wasp, washboard, triangle and spoons. But I've probably missed a lot out.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 07:14 PM

WAV you're not a folkie any more than you're a poet.

You're a wannabee.

That's not necessarily bad.

However, most wannabees seek advancement by study, discussion, research and a knowledge of their own shortcomings.

Your knowledge of folk music is very limited. Your arguments are irrelevant and racially divisive.

Listen and read the people who know about folk music, the world, anthropology, toilets, sharpening knives and all the other wonderful topics covered on this erudite and friendly forum. Listen to their music, read their comments Try to learn

Your posturing does my country a disservice.

I believe that you may be capable of learning.

It starts with humility.

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 07:39 PM

While you've all stayed in ranting at the pathetic virtual non-poet, I've just been at an Eliza & Saul gig. Infinitely more edifying and enough to restore my belief in exquisite English (Québecois & Swedish) music in this dismal world. And WAV wasn't mentioned at all (well, just once . . . ) You see, he represents nothing and nobody, yet I agree he does need countering and flattening at every turn, for the sake of those who might not know better, give him credence and believe that his nonsensical and potentially dangerous ramblings are what we're all about.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 08:07 PM

"And to Don, who prefers to analyse a tad more calmly - do you see any differences between folk in America and England? Would you call Amerindian chants and drums the true traditional music of America?"

####

Yes, I do see some differences—some distinct differences—between folk music in America and England. But as far as performance is concerned, other than tracing the provenance of a given song as a matter of historical interest, I don't see that these differences are particularly significant.

When it comes to singing a program of folk songs, such as a coffeehouse set or a concert, I see no problem with singing an English love song, followed by a Scottish ballad, followed by an American fo'c'sle chantey, followed by an Irish courting song, followed by an Ozark Mountain version of an English ballad—unless I decide to do a thematic program of some sort, such as all sea songs or all Scottish songs and ballads or all children's songs. Mixing and matching lends to the variety and interest a program, avoids a dulling "sameness" that can manifest itself, and it gives me an opportunity to inform my audiences through brief verbal "program notes" introducing some of the songs.

Since the vast majority of the early settlers of the North American continent were English, they naturally, brought their music with them. And this music passed down to their descendants. When some of these descendants moved westward, away from the urban centers that had sprung up on the east coast of what was to become the United States, for entertainment they had to call upon their own resources:   often only the contents of their memories. It is notable that the American cowboy—not the kind portrayed by Roy Rogers or John Wayne, but actual "cowboys" who were out working on cattle ranches herding cattle,—were quite literate and often had prodigious memories. Minding the herds (movie romanticism aside) was boring work, and to keep themselves entertained, they would often recite, to themselves or to each other, poems, passages from Shakespeare and other playwrights, and told stories. Since they couldn't pack books around in their saddlebags, they committed impressive quantities of material to memory and could call it up whenever they desired.

Among this material, of course, were many songs. It is no accident that many well-known folk songs associated with cowboys, such as "The Streets of Laredo," "St. James Infirmary," and others share many verses and often tell the same stories as pre-existing songs from the British Isles. The songs were remembered, and adapted to new circumstances—a common, classic aspect of the evolution of folk songs. On the trail, songs were sung without accompaniment, or sometimes accompanied by another cowboy playing the harmonica (small enough to carry in shirt pocket). When they were not out on the trail or otherwise working, many a bunkhouse had a guitar, usually Mexican-made, hanging on the wall to be used by anyone who could play it.

In the late nineteenth / early twentieth century, scholars discovered that in the somewhat isolated communities in the southern mountains of the United States, English, Irish, and Scottish songs and ballads were to be found, sometimes in almost pure form, but often also modified to new circumstances. This drew the attention of a number of song and ballad collectors, including Cecil J. Sharp, whose subsequent field trips produced the monumental collection, English Folk Songs in the Southern Appalachians.

This was reasonably well encapsulated in a movie (available on DVD) entitled "Songcatcher." The story is somewhat romanticized and the characters are fictional, but some of the fictional characters do have real-life counterparts. A few "folkies" are given to nit-pick about certain aspects of the film, but it is a well-made movie, and the broad outline on which the story is based happens to be true (the English song collector—obviously supposed to represent Sharp—is a bit too stereotypically "tally-ho, pip-pip" for my taste, but wotthehell?).

There is ample reason that when most people speak of "American folk music," they are referring to what might more properly be called "Anglo-American folk music," or a mixture of music from all over the British Isles, often somewhat adapted to new circumstances. But "American folk music" should also include Mexican, French, Italian, Scandinavian, and other music carried in in the memories of immigrants who have enriched American culture, and who have, likewise, adapted much of their music to new circumstances.

As I have mentioned to you before, David, although I have heard a bit of Amerindian or Native American music—chanting, drumming, flute—this is not my area of expertise and I would hesitate to try to comment on it with any authority. But here again, it's not as simple as you make it sound. When you refer to the music of Native Americans, you are talking about a wide variety to different cultures, ranging from the Iroquois and Algonquin in the northeast to the Seminoles in Florida on the east coast to the Ohlone peoples of California to the Pacific Northwest tribes such as the Suquamish and Duwamish (the city of Seattle, where I live, was named after the chief of these two tribes) or the Haida on the Queen Charlotte Islands of the coast of British Columbia.

So, although I am no expert on Native American music and culture, I do know that there is no single Native American culture, nor is there a single Native American body of music. To think so is a gross oversimplification.

Therefore, to call Amerindian chants and drums the "true traditional music of America" would be a bit like claiming that the "true traditional music of England" consists of Druid chants.

I do indeed hope that you are not suggesting that American singers of folk songs should be restricted to performing only Native American music.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 04 Oct 08 - 03:17 AM

Don - thank you for painting a picture of the cowboy that in a few words has told me more of the cowboy than I had ever considered.

This illustrates beautifully my point. This is a knowledgeable and thoughtful site.

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 04 Oct 08 - 03:48 AM

I second that. Incidentally, I read somewhere that some large proportion (half or more) of cowboys were Black - hence the 'boy' part of the word. I don't know if this is history or urban legend, though.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 04 Oct 08 - 04:48 AM

As in Blazing Saddles?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 04 Oct 08 - 04:56 AM

Pip gave spoons a guernsey.
Stu says - "WAV you're not a folkie any more than you're a poet.

You're a wannabee.

That's not necessarily bad.

However, most wannabees seek advancement by study, discussion, research and a knowledge of their own shortcomings.

Your knowledge of folk music is very limited. Your arguments are irrelevant and racially divisive.

Listen and read the people who know about folk music, the world, anthropology, toilets, sharpening knives and all the other wonderful topics covered on this erudite and friendly forum. Listen to their music, read their comments Try to learn

Your posturing does my country a disservice.

I believe that you may be capable of learning.

It starts with humility."...don't you think that a tad condescending, if not discriminatory, to someone who has passed all the practical and academic exams involved in achieving 4 technical certificates (from Advanced Cert. in Manufacturing Technology/HNC to THAT fork lift licence) and a BA in Humanities with distinctions?

However, I too thought that was an interesting read, Don, and I'll lookout for "Songcatcher", which I hadn't heard of. And, yes, I forgot native American flutes (even though they are represented among my myspace Top Friends).

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 04 Oct 08 - 05:24 AM

WAV BA and a few certificates show very little set against your constant demonstrations of non-comprehension of so much. You profess opinions in areas where your ignorance is obvious.

I repeat 'I believe you may be capable of learning'. You have interests in areas where there is much to learn. All you have to do to learn is allow the facts to modify your opinions; to question instead of pontificate; to edit instead of publish.

Most of Mudcat is better qualified than you are in terms of exams and certificates, but they recognize that letters after one's name lend no credence to an argument.

Almost all the posters to Mudcat are erudite 'real' folkies poets and musicians.

I believe you may be capable of learning from them, but you try very hard to convince me otherwise

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 04 Oct 08 - 05:37 AM

PS I think you'll find that the posters here would delight in helping you with your education in their various areas of expertise. Seriously and sincerely

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 04 Oct 08 - 06:07 AM

...I've read the "show don't tell" argument in writing manuals too, Stu; but when someone like you makes out that my mind remains some kind of tabula rasa, I will, in defence, mention all those exams that I HAVE come through.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 04 Oct 08 - 06:12 AM

With respect of Native American musics:

http://www.shlomomusic.com/O%27odham.htm

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 04 Oct 08 - 06:19 AM

It's not an argument WAV. It's not an attack. I'm an educator: I find it hard to do these two things

1. To not help someone who's trying.
2. To not correct errors and misconceptions.

I am not alone here I believe. The other posters to your threads have tried to persuade you to open your eyes; to think before you post; to recognise the prejudice that people see in your threads and to accept the help and corrections that are offered.

People will help you. Not just me.

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 04 Oct 08 - 06:35 AM

I've read the "show don't tell" argument in writing manuals too

That isn't strictly what is meant by show don't tell, WAV; have a look to see what WIKI has to say (Here) which is pretty much how the term is generally understood.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Surreysinger
Date: 04 Oct 08 - 07:09 AM

Good points,Stu.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 04 Oct 08 - 10:54 AM

"I second that. Incidentally, I read somewhere that some large proportion (half or more) of cowboys were Black - hence the 'boy' part of the word. I don't know if this is history or urban legend, though."
Urban legend, beyond any shadow of a doubt. The term perdates the American West by a good few centuries. I made that discovery at the age of 11, reading a collection of Irish myths and legends (can't remeber the title, but it was a reprint of a book from 1900 or so) where the term was used. More supporting evidence is the term cabin boy. Not too many black ones.

."...don't you think that a tad condescending, if not discriminatory, to someone who has passed all the practical and academic exams involved in achieving 4 technical certificates (from Advanced Cert. in Manufacturing Technology/HNC to THAT fork lift licence) and a BA in Humanities with distinctions?

Am I the only one here who apreciates a delicious bit of unintended irony? This serious is the funniest thing I have heard in days. POTS AND KETTLES!!!!!!

My grip with Songcathcer is that I don't think the acting is very good and some of the storylines were gratuitous, like the lesbian schoolteachers (though that probably isn't too far from the way things were) but the music is good and makes visualising the difficulties encountered by collecters a lot easier. The scene where she is trying to haul the recording device through the hills is impressive.

Wav, your fundamental ignorance is astounding. 'Show, don't tell' is one of the most basic concepts in writing. It's the difference between passive and active writing. Requires the reader to excersize their imagination.
Instead of writing that Sebastian Cleverbeak, your protagonist, is very smart, you come up with a situation which shows that.
One of the things that made me want to scream when I read O'Brien's Master and Commander (turgid!), was that whenever an action scene occured, O'Brien would fade out and then have one of the characters comment to the other over a glass of wine. 'Wasn't that a s ticky situation.' 'Oh, yes, a very hard fight.' 'Ensign Snottynose behaved himself most courageously.' etc., etc., WITHOUT ever showing the reader! I'm not saying he needed a Bernard Cornwell level of blood and guts to do so, but it's a lot funner to be PRESENT instead of hearing about it later.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 04 Oct 08 - 12:49 PM

That's about it IB and Volgadon - obviously, I've used it a tad more broadly (showing knowledge v telling CV/occupation)...And is it Stu the teacher who move to France?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 04 Oct 08 - 02:39 PM

You've used it TOO broadly. I've never seen Anchorman, but I have freinds who can recite it verbatim. Apparently he learns the saying 'when in Rome..' but uses it in the wrong situations. Not too different to what we have here!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 04 Oct 08 - 04:38 PM

". . . to someone who has passed all the practical and academic exams involved in achieving 4 technical certificates (from Advanced Cert. in Manufacturing Technology/HNC to THAT fork lift licence) and a BA in Humanities with distinctions?"

David, you seem to set great store by your four technical certificates and your Bachelor of Arts in Humanities. I congratulate you on these achievements. But—how does this degree and these technical certificates (one in driving a fork lift) qualify you to speak authoritatively on politics, economics, and ethnomusicology,? I don't see that they make you any more qualified in these areas than someone picked at random off the street.

But hear this:   the acquisition of certificates and degrees is only the beginning of one's education. A technical certificate shows you are qualified on one specialized area, but it does not give you any actual experience in that area. Only time using that skill does that. One does attain a bit of knowledge in studying for certificates and degrees, but the important thing one should learn in the process is learning how to learn. I am constantly amazed and appalled by the number of people who assume that now that they have a degree, their education is complete. Far from it. It's only beginning. Now, the real learning can begin!

I have a number of technical certificates that declare me qualified for specific occupations. I spent a good five years at the University of Washington, in English Literature and Music, and studying with Dr. David C. Fowler, a medieval scholar who was also a ballad scholar. I also took courses in Humanities and the Sciences. After this, I spent an additional two years at the Cornish School of the Arts, a conservatory, studying music performance and learning about the practical aspects of a career in music.

I did not take a degree at either school. I learned what they had to offer and I also learned how to continue learning on my own. I was interested in the knowledge I was acquiring, including how to continue acquiring the knowledge I sought. I was not particularly interested in a piece of parchment with calligraphy on it. About all this would be good for would be to hang on a wall in an office in hopes that it would impress people. But I had no intention of working in an office.

During the time I worked as an technical illustrator for the Boeing Airplane Company, I sat next to a young woman who had also been to the University of Washington. She was a bit haughty toward me and considered herself superior to me in terms of education. Why? She had a Bachelor of Arts degree and I did not. Hence, to her, this meant that she was educated and I was not. This, despite the fact that I had spent nearly twice as much time in higher education institutions than she had, and while there I had chosen my courses carefully (with the wise guidance of counsellors such as Dr. Fowler), whereas she had followed the standard curriculum for Arts History majors.

I was aware that her field of study was Art History, not greatly respected by many other university students because it was an easy course of study and generally the field that many young women fresh out of high school chose to major in when they really had no reason or interest in attending college, other than attempting to put themselves in the way of promising young college men whom they hope will confer upon them the "Mrs." degree they were really seeking.

One noontime, when we sat at our drawing tables eating lunch, I had my nose in a book—a fairly characteristic pose—while munching away at my sandwich and sipping my coffee. She noted that when I wasn't working, I spent much of my time reading. She remarked—bragged, in fact—that she hadn't "cracked a book" since she graduated from the university. She had no interest in reading. On any subject.

No. She may have had a piece of parchment rolled up and tied with a ribbon stuffed away in a drawer someplace, but was she educated? I don't think so.

####

Stu is right. There are plenty of knowledgeable people here on Mudcat, and since you are a newcomer to folk music, they—we—would be more than willing to assist you, answering any questions you have, and making suggestions as to how to proceed. But if you put people off by bragging about how much you already know (like the postulant, the lama, and the cup of tea), waving your certificates and degrees, constantly linking to your own web site in an effort to lend authority to some of your ideas, and keep telling us how it all should be, then about all you can really expect in return is hostility and put-downs.

Whether you like it or not, David, in folk music, you are a beginner. You should concentrate on learning, not trying to tell those with years, decades, of experience and knowledge what they should or should not be singing and how they should or should not be singing it.

####

As far as your ideas about a pure, unadulterated English culture are concerned, considering the fact that you left England for Australia at the age of three and returned to England at the age of thirty, is it not conceivable that the picture of "England as it used to be and should be again" that you have in your mind is actually just that—in your mind—and never did reflect the real England?

You might want to give that possibility some serious consideration.

Don Firth

The doorstep to the Temple of Wisdom is the knowledge of our own ignorance.
                                                                                        —Benjamin Franklin

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 04 Oct 08 - 04:45 PM

I tell you what is being used far "TOO broadly" (Volgadon)...an American accent by those living in the nations of these isles: as usual on Saturday nights, I'm flicking between folk radio programmes, via satellite, and, sadly, at least 70% of songs, thus far, must have been sung with this foreign accent; there's been no mention of it being such a theme night, but it is particularly heavy on this occasion, for some reason...we've even had Tom Jones singing a Lonnie Donegan song!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 04 Oct 08 - 04:50 PM

Uh--a Welshman singing a song previously sung by an Englishman?

It's the end of the bloody world, it is!!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 04 Oct 08 - 05:10 PM

...his son was also singing in a very broad American accent having done the interview in an English accent: not "the end of the bloody world" (Don) but very sad, as we in England do have our own good culture; too many here seem to have been taught that the height of culture is to be good at the performance (rather than just appreciation) of others' culture.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 04 Oct 08 - 06:27 PM

Most people consider cross-cultural influences to be an enrichment of both cultures. If this is the sort of thing that upsets you, then I'm afraid you're in for a pretty rough ride.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 04 Oct 08 - 06:38 PM

I have to say, I can't be doing with people deliberately adopting an accent, temporarily or permanently - but that goes for people trying to sound English as well as people trying not to. As I believe Frank Zappa said, you are what you is.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 05 Oct 08 - 02:26 AM

I tell you what is being used far "TOO broadly" (Volgadon)...an American accent by those living in the nations of these isles: as usual on Saturday nights, I'm flicking between folk radio programmes, via satellite, and, sadly, at least 70% of songs, thus far, must have been sung with this foreign accent; there's been no mention of it being such a theme night, but it is particularly heavy on this occasion, for some reason...we've even had Tom Jones singing a Lonnie Donegan song!

This foreign accent, which is a developement of English ones and in some cases is closer to English accents of 200 hundred years ago, closer than even that of your parents, is that the foreign accent you mean?
Is this better? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8QcrF1oBwg
Anyway, have you given thought to the matter that often, whilst singing, a person's natural accent isn't as pronounced as when singing? Phil Lynnot is a good example.

I've just had a listen to I'm Never Gonna Fall in Love Again. I can't say that it really sounds like Jones is putting on an American accent.

Oh, and one other thing, there is no 'American' accent, but many.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 05 Oct 08 - 02:51 AM

Lonnie Donegan English ? he must be spinning in his grave Don, he was a Scot.

eric

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 05 Oct 08 - 03:10 AM

Have just noticed that WAVs "5000 Morris Dancers" thread has dropped off the bottom of the BS pile, and it looks like "WAV Verse 2" is heading the same way.
If we can all resist baiting him, maybe this one will go the same way?
It's not easy, but WAV will never change.
Nothing we can say will alter that fact.
If we can resist the temptation to post anymore. Then we will see how he reacts.
If he revives any of his recent threads, (which he probably will), then the rest of us will be vindicated.
So, I'm out of here, and would ask, with respect, the rest of you to join me.
Thanks for some very interesting posts.
In spite of the reasons for them, I have learnt a lot.
Doubt if WAV has though!!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 05 Oct 08 - 04:40 AM

there is no 'American' accent, but many.

That's one of the reasons I don't like people putting on a generic American accent to sing.

But we'll continue this another time. Wise words, Ralphie, and TTFN.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 05 Oct 08 - 05:41 AM

Don - if you were English, e.g., would you sing in an American accent or your own?
Ralphie - you've made more comebacks than Nellie Melba; and, during this last one, you've just about agreed with me! on accents
(P.S: I have, as it happens, just come across something new for the BS "5000 Morris Dancers" thread.)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 05 Oct 08 - 05:57 PM

According to "Imagine: the story of the guitar" (BBC) that said above of the English cittern is indeed the case: the gittern (gut strung) of medieval times was replaced by the similar but wire-strung cittern in Elizabethan times, available for any man to play apon visiting a barber shop; or for travelling minstrels. Also, this chap played one, that he said was carved out of the one piece of wood, and it sounded, and looked, great.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Tootler
Date: 05 Oct 08 - 06:33 PM

Well said Ralphie! I said something similar a week ago. I come back from a week's holiday and I find this thread is still grinding on.

WAV, you say you have a BA in Humanities. Well, the people I knew who taught on Humanities degrees were at great pains to stress the importance of supporting one's assertions with credible evidence (as did those of us who taught the sciences). This means by reference to the acknowledged experts in the field. Citing your own poetry and Wikipedia is most definitely NOT making reference to credible evidence so why should we take any notice of what you say.

Also if you are truly interested in music of any form then the most important thing you can do is LISTEN, LISTEN, LISTEN. If you were to do that, you would very rapidly become dissatisfied with your material on your Myspace page and do something about it. Until you do, then I for one will not be able to take anything you say seriously at all because it will merely demonstrate to me that you are not willing to either learn or to improve.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 05 Oct 08 - 06:56 PM

Of course Tootler, if you're already an accepted expert in the field having written,e.g.,several hundred lines of, e.g., verse(sic), and, sung, and e.g, played E trad. music on e.g., English Nose flute...

It's hardly necessary to quote experts, e.g., after all, what do they know that isn't covered by e.g., a B.A. in Humanities majoring in e.g., Anthropology, and, e.g., Fork Lift (Advanced)

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 05 Oct 08 - 07:28 PM

My abject apologies to Mr. Donegan! Indeed!

I take a dim view of someone who adopts an accent or manner of speaking more or less permanently in an effort to create the impression that they are something they are not, such as the urban-born singer of folk songs who consciously "roughs up" the sound of an otherwise fairly smooth singing voice in order to sound "folkie." There are quite a number of those people running around (including a few quite well known singers), and the word that springs to mind is "phony."

However, the ability to adopt—temporarily—an accent or dialect for an acting role or to deliver a particular song is part of the well-rounded performer's art. But this demands that the performer do it well.

Hugh Laurie, probably best known (at least in the United States) for his work in television, portraying characters such as Bertie Wooster or various vacant-skulled characters in "Blackadder," assumes an American accent for his leading role as an idiosyncratic physician in "House." He does it so well that American viewers who are not familiar with his previous work (or where he's from) automatically assume that he is an American actor.

I don't see how I—or anyone—could sing a song such as "Bonnie Dundee," "McPherson's Farewell," or particularly, "The Braes of Killiecrankie" without adopting a Scots accent. The song would sound bizarre without it! And there are other songs that call for other accents in the same way.

I've done this ever since I first started singing, never assuming that there was anything wrong with it, because I had heard many well-known and respected singers doing it. But—I also made note of the fact that unless it is done well, it doesn't come off. Therefore, before singing a song that requires an accent or dialect, I listen to speakers of that accent or dialect until I can mimic it as exactly as humanly possible.

The ability to do this well and convincingly is an essential tool in the kit of any singer or actor who aspires to perform professionally and who does not wish to limit themselves to a single category of songs or roles.

Of course, there are people such as David, who maintain that one should not be allowed to sing songs other than those of their own "culture." But what is my culture, exactly? Urban-born and raised in California, moving to western Washington State at the age of nine where I have lived most of my life, descendant of Scots on my father's side and Swedes on my mother's side, exposed to a wide variety of cultural influences and hearing many different accents and dialects—so again, what is my culture?

David seems to imply that as an American, I should set my guitar aside, play a drum, and do native American chants.

I have heard some native American music, but nowhere near enough to grasp the broad, multicultural aspects of it, and I've seen one performance of Northwest Indian dancing in live performance. Although interesting, it is totally alien to me, and I don't know how anyone could consider this to be even a minuscule part of my culture.

I am not restricted to one single culture. I am a citizen of the world—nay, a citizen of the Cosmos. I reserve the right to sing any songs I chose, regardless of whatever culture they came from. I have always done this. People have paid good money to listen me do this, enough so that I've been able to make a living at it. And those who have heard me sing a song in a dialect not my own know perfectly well what I am doing, and I have never heard anyone object or comment negatively.

No one is holding a gun to anyone's head, so if anyone doesn't like what I do and the way I do it, they don't have to listen. There are plenty of others who do.

I am not particularly fond of Klingon opera, but if I found the songs of the inhabitants of the second planet orbiting Epsilon Eridani appealing to me, and if I could wrap my mouth around these songs, I would learn them and sing them.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 06 Oct 08 - 06:37 AM

"the most important thing you can do is LISTEN, LISTEN, LISTEN" (Tootler, BACK from holiday?)...why don't you READ READ READ what I posted just before this comment, e.g.
Stu - I don't know of any "Fork Lift (Advanced)" but I did achieve an Advanced Cert. in Manufacturing Technology."
'I take a dim view of someone who adopts an accent or manner of speaking more or less permanently in an effort to create the impression that they are something they are not, such as the urban-born singer of folk songs who consciously "roughs up" the sound of an otherwise fairly smooth singing voice in order to sound "folkie." There are quite a number of those people running around (including a few quite well known singers), and the word that springs to mind is "phony."' (Don)...I disagree - we should endeavour to sound more earthy when singling folk than when in church, e.g. (as I've said here).
"I don't see how I—or anyone—could sing a song such as "Bonnie Dundee," "McPherson's Farewell," or particularly, "The Braes of Killiecrankie" without adopting a Scots accent. The song would sound bizarre without it! And there are other songs that call for other accents in the same way." (Don)...so don't sing them - just enjoy listening to Scots sing them, and Scots and others can enjoy listening to your American songs, some of which are, as you've said, variations of songs from the nations of these isles. Again: "nationalism with conquest is bad; but nationalism with eco-travel and fair-trade is good for humanity" (above link).

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 06 Oct 08 - 06:52 AM

So Don, sorry mate. You've got to severely limit your repertoire FROM NOW ON. And reciting Hiawatha won't do I'm afraid.

For myself I seem to be stuck with 'Sumer is icumen in' but I don't have the earthy voice necessary.

By the way WAV 'Ye' is not olde Englishe for 'The'. The character is not 'Y' but thorn,and is best represented by 'The'.

And above I think you ran short of the double full stop e g e.g..

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 06 Oct 08 - 07:12 AM

And WAV if you want to know why you irritate people, just read this from your post to a guy who was a folkie when you were in nappies

'(Don)...so don't sing them - just enjoy listening to Scots sing them'

How incredibly rude. Think, edit, think again before you post

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: catspaw49
Date: 06 Oct 08 - 07:33 AM

For those who wish to hear whatever to hell it is that Wavylimpdick means when he speaks of proper earthy folk singing and the like, go listen to him do "Walkabout With My Pen"


If you're in need of a good laugh, that one is a must hear. I've been playing it for friends and have linked it to several by e-mail and they all think its really bad and really funny. If you haven't started chuckling right away, just wait til the whistling bit or the way he says "tropical." It is just the worst kind of crap you can imagine.

Enjoy


Spaw

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 06 Oct 08 - 07:46 AM

OK Chaps.

Just done an audit.
Nat Istrument thread...........563
Walkaboutverse2 thread.........703
5000 Morris Dancer thread......724

Grand total...................1990 posts
Has he changed his bizarre view on life?
Is he going to?
Are we wasting our time?

Thats enough publicity for this person. (I say person, not Singer, Musician, Poet, That would be too demeaning for those of us who attempt in whatever way we see fit, to further ALL of the Arts that we are involved with).

Who else on Mudcat has enjoyed this much oxygen of publicity?
We are all suckers.
Lets all go and talk to some of the many interesting and erudite people on other threads, and leave Wav to his weird world.

(you could say "Mudcat is WAV-ing goodbye"...with apologies to Sooty!)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Howard Jones
Date: 06 Oct 08 - 07:47 AM

WAV, I've read, read, read what you posted just before Tootler's post, and I can't fathom what it's got to do with his comment, which was about being self-critical of one's own performance - essential if you aspire to be a musician.

I too watched the BBC programme about the guitar, and I agree, the cittern/gittern sounded quite pleasant, although it did not appear to be capable of as much expression as the guitar, for example,and I suspect I would grow soon tired of the sound. Which is probably why it fell out of use.

No one has said you are factually wrong about the use of the cittern in barbershops, simply that it has not been part of English culture for several centuries. Culture, especially a traditional culture, is on onging stream - you can't pick a particular element of it from at a particular time and claim that it, and it alone, is truly representative.

If you want to focus on a particular period, as the cittern player in the programme does, that's fine, but by your own logic you should then drop all the later songs, including all those hymns, from your repertoire.

Most of us recognise an ongoing tradition which had rejected the cittern and recorder in favour of fiddle, melodeon and concertina, and which welcomed new material from any source. A great many tunes well-established in the English tradition, including many Morris dance tunes, came from the popular theatre, including the minstrel shows. I suppose you would say these cannot now be performed.

Your problem, WAV, is that you imagine that there was a time when a "pure" English culture existed, free from nasty foreign influences. It never did, whether you go back 50 years or 500.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 06 Oct 08 - 08:07 AM

so don't sing them - just enjoy listening to Scots sing them, and Scots and others can enjoy listening to your American songs, some of which are, as you've said, variations of songs from the nations of these isles. Again: "nationalism with conquest is bad; but nationalism with eco-travel and fair-trade is good for humanity" (above link).

How is singing a Scottish or American song IMPERIALISM?
ENOUGH WITH THE MINDLESS REPETITION OF POINTLESS PHRASES.


"Your problem, WAV, is that you imagine that there was a time when a "pure" English culture existed, free from nasty foreign influences. It never did, whether you go back 50 years or 500."
He has had it pointed out to him that morris dancing came from Northern Iberia, which in turn probably came from North Africa. It has also been pointed out that the recorder did not originate in England, and neither did the cittern, a GERMAN instrument, popular in France and probably brought to England by Italian musicians playing popular European music.
The reason he is so partial to these instruments is not really because he enjoys the sound, but because they had the term English in their names once.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 06 Oct 08 - 08:26 AM

you've made more comebacks than Nellie Melba

I had to look this one up, WAV; another example of your indelible cultural roots.

we should endeavour to sound more earthy when singling folk than when in church, e.g.

When singing in church (which I do two or three times a year) I'm not aware of singing any different to how I do when I'm singing in a singaround chorus, though of course I don't harmonise, and I'm careful of my dynamic too, not wishing to dominate the increasingly feeble congregations. Whatever happened to singing lustily and with good courage, I wonder? Even singing Gelineau Psalms and Latin Chants with the monks of Worth Abbey I was very conscious of singing in my own voice, though quietly studying the method of the unison devotional chorus in a particular acoustic space. Often, one just listened! I think it's a matter of not affecting any sort of voice one way or the other. Do people still put on the folk voice I wonder? I don't hear any evidence of it - certainly not as much as when watching the X-Factor (or some such show) and you hear kids putting on the pop voice because they think that's what singing is.   

...so don't sing them - just enjoy listening to Scots sing them

By the same token, WAV - you shouldn't be singing Cob a Coaling at all, let alone attempting to adopt (however so unsuccessfully by the way) any sort of faux-northern accent to do so, no matter how much I might enjoy your rendering of the song otherwise (I've even been moved to work up a version myself; expect to hear it on my Myspace page nearer the time). Anyhoo - THESE are the songs you should be singing; great songs one & all. If you really believed in this policy of singing your own, then put your cultural currency where your mealy-mouth is, dear boy - and lead by example.

Actually - how far should we take that policy? Should I, for example, only sing Northumbrian songs? It's a tempting notion - and one that would keep me busy for the rest of a very happy folk-life no doubt, but, as usual the overriding maxim must be I think you'll find it isn't quite as simple as that... No, I'll stick to singing from the English Speaking Tradition, which might just include a few Australian songs too, such as Jim Jones and Glass on the Bar though I don't attempt the accent, any more than I do when I sing The Santa Fe Trail or Up on the Roof. Be true to your own, WAV - but above all, be true to yourself, because whatever your race, your ethnicity, your country of birth, your country of adoption, your culture both actual and imagined, there's only ever going to be one you, a life too short at any rate (though I dare say many here would disagree) so just wind in your neck and enjoy yourself.

Again: "nationalism with conquest is bad; but nationalism with eco-travel and fair-trade is good for humanity"

I disagree; nationalism with conquest is the stuff of human history and has been good for humanity for thousands of years. Without it we would have turned to a passive lifeless hippy slop which would certainly NOT be good for humanity in the slightest. Eco-travel and fair-trade? These are choice oxymorons, WAV - trendy liberal middle-class platitudes with which you hope to curry favour with those trendy liberal middle-class folkies you mistakenly feel must be somehow sympathetic to your bizarre cause. High ideals that fall some way short of the mark...

Nellie Melba, though - great stuff, kidda; I'm still chuckling.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 06 Oct 08 - 09:21 AM

I sing hymns in my normal, sturdy voice. Don't sing raucously, as that's not appropriate, but what is is trying to put the same feeling into the words as you would during a prayer.

Wav, you are not English, you are not Australian, just a confused immigrant. If you are wondering where I, a stranger, get off telling you who you are, remember that that is what you are doing to every person alive.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,surreysinger at work
Date: 06 Oct 08 - 09:31 AM

Dear Dame Nellie

"Has he changed his bizarre view on life?"

Errmmm ... no
"Is he going to?"

I suspect the answer is definitely "No, a thousand times no!"

"Are we wasting our time?"

Decidedly "YES"

Dame Nellie the Second (since I notice that I too also said previously that I was out of here)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Dame Nellie (aka Ralphie)
Date: 06 Oct 08 - 09:48 AM

I think we'll just have to leave the Cats toying with the Mouse. (or is that Rat, Gerbil, Hamster - Insert Australian Marsupial here...Wav anyone? -
Come on Chaps.. Be generous, It wasn't his fault, just some malfunctioning gene.
Leave him alone. What has he ever done to you?
Can't you see he's injured?
Where is your humanity, guys?
Don't kick a bloke when he's down.
Leave the poor Possum alone.
(Have to admit, he's got a healthy kick on him. but, the inevitable will happen.)
Nurse....prepare the needle.......Ready??

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jeri
Date: 06 Oct 08 - 10:23 AM

Ralphie, do you know how you look when you keep responding to what you hate, constantly, reliably, repetitively?

Do you even have the ability to stop or are you completely helpless?

If the guy's threads get hundreds of posts from poor puppets, if you actually take the time to count the posts (many of which are yours) and then take the time to announce this research to the forum SEVERAL TIMES, don't you think that makes you look a bit dim, or at least fairly easy to control?

Are you like this in real life? Do people avoid you at parties because you don't know when to stop talking? This is the impression I'm getting.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 06 Oct 08 - 10:33 AM

Damn! I wish I would have noticed this 5 days earlier when it was posted - But at least no one else has commented yet so I cannot resist:-)

Ralphie to Eliza "Have just purchased your new waxing this very afternoon"

Eliza! Do the family know about this? Ralphie - You would be better thought of if you kept a ladies personal details to yourself.

Then Ruth started on bum gazing! We have a local haulier called R Swain (Say it aloud please) I always reckon it is the opposite to R Swacks.

As to poetry

An instrument I seek, as English as can be
Heard on the high streets, Why is it so off key?
'tis the screams as wax pulls hair from their bits
An instrument of torture, to get on everyones nerves...

WAV eat your heart out. Just of to a BNP meeting. See you later...

:D

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Tom Bland
Date: 06 Oct 08 - 10:37 AM

I was just about to say the same thing actually.

Next to this sanctimonious sycophant WAV seems almost reasonable.

WAV gets up people's noses because he's the perfect mirror of the folk world and they don't like what they see.

Fun to read the threads though. Mudcat wouldn't be any fun at all without WAV.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 06 Oct 08 - 10:43 AM

Point taken.
But. Am I alone?
I did ask the question a while ago.
Is Wavs version of reality in any way reciprocated by anyone else?
The answer...No!
Am I like this in real life?
Actually No. (surprisingly!! you might feel. I'm actually an OK guy)
My agenda, If you want to call it such, is to point out that this person has decided to tug all of our strings. And, I will admit that my strings have been pulled a bit more than others, Mea Culpa.
My Fondest Wish, is that all these threads should die, gently.
There is so much on the Cat that is of real interest.
My problem with Wav, is that he won't let it it all go.
You may think that my postings are unpleasant...
Try reading Catspaws input.
Nonetheless. point taken, but, I don't like to see my musical work put down in the way that Wav does. And, many others agree.
My point in the multiple postings was to alert everyone that we should get wise to what Wav is trying to achieve.

If we could all let the whole thing go, so will I, and I'll get back to the discussion about MiniDisc v DAT v whatever.

Far more interesting IMHO.
Regards Ralphie

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jeri
Date: 06 Oct 08 - 11:00 AM

Thanks Ralphie. I've heard you on the radio before and you didn't seem that weird.

Sometimes it seems to me that some people grew up thinking that it was alright to be a bully as long as you bullied the right people. There are those here I don't much care for, but if I spent all of my time going after them, I wouldn't much like myself. I'll have my say and move on as Eliza did earlier. I don't like bullies and I don't want to be one.

Even bullies who bully the wrong people, the innocents, think they have a good enough reason to do it.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: TheSnail
Date: 06 Oct 08 - 11:11 AM

Ralphie

My point in the multiple postings was to alert everyone that we should get wise to what Wav is trying to achieve.

What WAV is trying to achieve is to get lots and lots of attention. He is succeeding remarkably well.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Tom Bland
Date: 06 Oct 08 - 11:23 AM

Ralphie - You want the thread to die? So stop reading it. I actually enjoy it.

I find it very revealing on the folk world and folk attitudes as a whole.

Someone said how come for all their radical political posturing, they don't come any more culturally reactionary than folkies.

All WAV is doing is telling you this.

He's showing folk up fr what it is. But not what is has to be.

So what he believes in these things. People can believe anything they want. Even if WAV would have the whole world bend to his will, it's hardly likely to happen, is it?

Lots of racists out there. Talk to anyone on the street. People are concerned.

We see countries riven by ethnic conflict. Even countries where people have been there forever. Africa. Jugoslavia.

WAV fears for racial harmony at a time battle lines are being drawn in the housing estates of Bradford.

Perhaps he is not the only one. Does this make him evil? To say these things?
To write of his concern?

Or just aware that sooner or later there will be rivers of blood? We see the first springs already.

WAV is a guy out of step with reality who believes in his right to culture.

Outraged by the treatment of Aboriginals, he has had the courage of his convictions and repatriated himself to the country of his birth.

He has seen indigenous peoples suffering. Like alcoholic Inuits dancing to The Birdy Song because of their contact with the west.

He also believes humanity could do with a bit of regulation.

Maybe we could. I say it myself. In my young day even 50 years ago things were better. We knew who we were - and who each other was too.

Maybe people don't know that anymore.

In my day if we made a nuisance of ourselves an adult would tell us off. In our day, chances are they'd kick him to death.

This isn;t racial - its a country going down the pan for all sorts of reasons but mostly because it lacks the one thing WAV is always saying.

Regulation. And people caring for the things that matter instead of profit and greed.

WAV talks about safety nets so people don't fall through into the poverty trap and homelessness.

In London, I step over the homeless on the underground not knowing if they're alive or dead.

We all do.

It's the English way.

WAV is not the answer. But neither is the sanctimonious feeding frenzy you all indulge in whenever he dares dip his toe in the water.

Shame on you all.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 06 Oct 08 - 11:42 AM

Am I like this in real life?
Actually No. (surprisingly!! you might feel. I'm actually an OK guy) (Ralphie)

Can I just say that WAV isn't like that in real life either? He too is an okay guy; in fact, he's one of the most personable coves you could ever have the pleasure to meet. I may well be one of his fiercest ideological opponents, but hopefully my own personal ideology doesn't go so far as to overlook his essential humanity, not yet my admiration of the quiet dignity that typifies his contributions to these threads. So in the spirit of this present armistice, might I suggest we sing a verse or two of Kipling?

And when they bore me over much, I will not shake mine ears,
Recalling many thousand such whom I have bored to tears.
And when they labour to impress, I will not doubt nor scoff;
Since I myself have done no less and sometimes pulled it off.
Yea, as we are and we are not, and we pretend to be,
The people, Lord, Thy people, are good enough for me!

Deliver me from every pride - the Middle, High, and Low -
That bars me from a brother's side, whatever pride he show.
And purge me from all heresies of thought and speech and pen
That bid me judge him otherwise than I am judged. Amen!
That I may sing of Crowd or King or road-borne company,
That I may labour in my day, vocation and degree,
To prove the same in deed and name, and hold unshakenly
(Where'er I go, whate'er I know, whoe'er my neighbor be)
This single faith in Life and Death and to Eternity:
The people, Lord, Thy people, are good enough for me!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Howard Jones
Date: 06 Oct 08 - 12:28 PM

IB, I've not met him, but I'm perfectly happy to accept your statement that WAV is an OK guy. I'm also prepared to accept that he means well and that he's not intentionally racist. His concerns that English culture doesn't get the attention it merits are shared by many, of all political persuasions.

However his idea of what constitutes "good English culture" is quite simply mistaken. Many better-informed people have tried to put him straight, but he ignores them. His solution to the problem, that everyone should restrict themselves to their own culture (whatever that means), is cultural apartheid.

What you see as the "quiet dignity" of his replies, I see as a constant repetition of unsupported dogma. If WAV would only enter into a proper debate and discuss his arguments in reasoned manner, as one should expect from someone with a BA in Humanities, then we might still disagree with him but we might respect his arguments more. Instead we have heard no actual arguments fom him, simply bald and occasionally incomprehenible slogans.

I think it is frustration more than anything else that drives people to abuse and personal attacks - I may have been guilty of this myself on occasion, in which case I apologise.

The point has been made repeatedly to WAV, that as a relative novice in the world of folk he knows little about it and his conclusions are incorrect. His refusal to recognise this and accept well-meant advice from those with a lifetime's experience and knowledge to me suggests arrogance rather than quiet dignity.

WAV is an attention seeker. We should know better than to feed the trolls. But when someone puts forward views which are so utterly wrong and which might even bring folk music into disrepute, as Eliza has argued, it is difficult to remain silent

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 06 Oct 08 - 01:14 PM

Sean

I have no problem with WAV - I don't know him. The man I think I know is the one who posts on these threads which I find dubious in content scholarship and politics.

Quiet dignity seems absent to me in his posts. Overweening arrogance in a set of bizarre beliefs is what I see.

I toy with the idea sometimes that his posts are intended merely to aggravate, and think I'll not respond.

Then he posts something that's so off the wall I can't let it pass.

However my intention and I suspect that of many others is to attack the message not the man.

Regards

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 06 Oct 08 - 02:15 PM

IB: I hear you, but I still standby what I've said here - it's good that singers DO affect their voice for the genre (as part of out wonderful multicultural world).
I'll leave those Australian songs for Australians thanks, IB, dear adult - I'm an English repat.
This "a bit sweet for hymns/a bit gritty for folk songs" idea can be heard on myspace, if you like (e.g., "Cob a Coaling v When I survey the wondrous cross).
Speaking of Eliza and family, Dave and Howard, I wonder if she'd be so kind as to do a Nellie here and tell us if MC has ever played that very fine just-mentioned instrument - the English cittern.
Wanting a lot of people to read my life's work Ralphie and Snail?Guilty - becuase I'm sure it contains good ways forward for humanity.
"However his idea of what constitutes "good English culture" is quite simply mistaken." (Howard)..."enjoy yourself" (IB)...it is good and I do enjoy my participation in it.
"The point has been made repeatedly to WAV, that as a relative novice in the world of folk he knows little about it and his conclusions are incorrect. His refusal to recognise this and accept well-meant advice from those with a lifetime's experience and knowledge to me suggests arrogance rather than quiet dignity" (Howard)...I've probably watched just about every BBC TV folk-music broadcast since 2004, I've read quite a lot (including forum posts), and listened to a lot of folk radio, as well as attending many singarounds, and a few festivals and instrumental sessions - so I standby the idea of an "intense" 4 and a half years into folk, as well as the idea that anthropology helped with "what to look for".

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 06 Oct 08 - 02:42 PM

"...so don't sing them."

Up until this point, David, I thought there might be some hope for you. But that tears it!

I have made a career out of singing folk songs and ballads from England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and Canada, and American and Anglo-American songs and ballads from all over this country. This numbers several hundred songs altogether, and I'm still learning new ones. My repertoire also includes a few songs in French, one in Serbo-Croatian, and another in Czech. Not only do I sing these songs, I go to the effort of learning the backgrounds of them as well.

The material I choose to sing was found sufficiently suitable for me to be asked to do a television series on folk music on educational television (my local PBS affiliate, my series funded by the Seattle Public Library), which I did. They were apparently acceptable, because I was later asked to do further programs. And as aforementioned, my singing—including songs for which I assumed an appropriate accent or dialect—was apparently sufficiently enjoyable by general audiences for me to have made a living at singing.

David, you say you learn about folk music by watching television. How shall I break this to you?

I DO the kind of folk music programs that you just watch!

By the way, two of my most requested songs have been "Bonnie Dundee" and "McPherson's Farewell." I have just recently learned "The Braes of Killiecrankie" and I have not yet sung it for a paying audience. I am currently learning a number of songs from The Corries' two song books. Accent and all!

No one! NO bloody person on the face of this earth is going to tell me what I should and should not sing. If I like a song well enough to want to learn it and sing it, the only thing that would stop me from singing it in public would be if the song does not get a good response from my audience.

So as far as you are concerned, David, I will give your remarks all the consideration they deserve. I'll let you work that out for yourself.

Don Firth

P. S. Having listened to you on MySpace, I'm quite sure that you have no idea of the amount of work and thought that goes into learning a song, studying it in all its aspects and deciding how best to present it, and then working out a guitar accompaniment—not just plunking chords, but developing an arrangement that supports the song without distracting from it). And having gone to this effort, and having been gratified by the audience response when I do these songs, you are now telling me that I should abandon them on the basis of your narrow-minded ideas of "cultural purity?"

For your own efforts at singing, you might consider the words of a prominent singer whose repertoire consists largely of folk songs:

"The value lies inherent in the song, not in the regional mannerisms or colloquialisms. No song is ever harmed by being articulated clearly, on pitch, with sufficient control of phrase and dynamics to make the most of the poetry and melody, and with an instrumental accompaniment designed to enrich the whole effect."

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 06 Oct 08 - 02:56 PM

I would like to hear your performance of American songs, Don, with or without guitar, and I have in the past put you into Google...anything on the web..?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 06 Oct 08 - 02:57 PM

'I've probably watched just about every BBC TV folk-music broadcast since 2004, I've read quite a lot (including forum posts), and listened to a lot of folk radio, as well as attending many singarounds, and a few festivals and instrumental sessions - so I standby the idea of an "intense" 4 and a half years into folk, as well as the idea that anthropology helped with "what to look for".'


Let's face it - the bloke is so delusional, and with such delusions of grandeur, that I suspect some dsort of fundamental personality disorder.

It would be sad if it weren't so frigging annoying.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 06 Oct 08 - 04:13 PM

"I would like to hear your performance of American songs, Don, with or without guitar, and I have in the past put you into Google...anything on the web..?"

Nothing on the web so far, save by googling you can find some of the articles on folk music that I have written, particularly for "Victory Review" magazine—and of course, being led back to Mudcat posts. So far, no songs. But I have recently acquired some studio-quality recording equipment which I am in the process of learning to use, and when I get my studio set up, I intend to record a number of CDs. I will undoubtedly put some of the songs on the internet, possibly through MySpace, or more probably, a web site of my own. But that will be awhile.

But be forewarned! I will not limit my CDs or what I put on the web to only American songs. I will present samplings of the full run of my repertoire. Also, whether I accompany a song or ballad with my guitar depends on whether or not I think an accompaniment (as the quotation above says) enriches the whole effect.

Once I have these up on the web (and as I say, it will be awhile yet), if you don't want to hear me sing anything other than American songs, be careful what you click on.

Don Firth (one who finds pleasure and enlightenment in cultural diversity)

P. S. By the way, David, I first became actively interested in folk music, to the point of learning songs and study the subject, in 1952. I think that works out to about fourteen times as long as you've been at it. And as I say, you've watched folk music on television;   I've done folk music on television.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 06 Oct 08 - 05:30 PM

The sad thing is that Wav has potential. He is enthusiastic, his voice could be quite pleasent IF he would take the effort to learn and train it. Same goes for his playing. Unfortunately, he has convinced himself that there is little left to learn, that he is at the pinnacle of his art.

If you'll recall the story I told about the archaeologist, Wav would be the guy arguing with him and the old codger, because he (Wav) has been to Stonehedge, and has watched Michael Woods' Troy series and a couple of Timewatch seasons!


Anyway, I am quite certain that Tom Bland is none other than the 'Cat's own resident nazi/fascist- David Hannam. Come on Dave, don't be shy, Woody's guitar is long gone, but we are still here....

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 06 Oct 08 - 05:41 PM

Actually, in the current exhibition at Cecil Sharp House by the anarchic folk visual artist David Owen , Woody's guitar has become a ukelele. But the sentiment hasn't changed.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 06 Oct 08 - 06:14 PM

So WAV what you're saying is that in England we should only perform good English music?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 06 Oct 08 - 07:09 PM

I believe that's what he's saying, Woody. But how about bad English music, I wonder?

####

"…it's good that singers DO affect their voice for the genre (as part of out wonderful multicultural world)."

Traditional singers—not "singers of traditional songs," urban-born singers such as myself and most other singers who post here who learn the majority of their songs from records and song books, but singers who were born and grew up in the tradition and learned the songs they sing from family, friends, and those in their immediate surroundings—do not "affect their voice for the genre." They just sing. They sing as best they know how, in their own natural voices.

For a singer of traditional songs (see distinction above) to "roughen up" his or her voice or "affect their voice for the genre," rather than sing in their own natural voice in an attempt to sound "folksy" or "ethnic," is to be patronizing and disrespectful, not just to the traditional singers of these songs, but to the songs themselves. If these songs are worthy of being sung at all, they are worthy of being sung in a clear, natural voice, as well as one knows how. Again, I call attention to the quote I posted above.

This does not mean that one should try to sing these songs as if they were operatic arias or lieder. Definitely not! In fact, most people couldn't anyway. But out if respect to the song itself, you should sing it to the best of your vocal ability. I have no respect for the person who says, or indicates by the way he acts, that he thinks, "This is good enough. It's only a folk song, so I don't have to try to sing it well." That includes singing through your nose, putting a rasp in your voice if it isn't there naturally, or being indifferent to accuracy of pitch, just because you want to sound "like a folk singer." The nasality, the rasp, or singing off-pitch are not inherent in the song itself.

But a regional accent or dialect (and certainly a foreign language) often IS an inherent part of a song. So it should be sung with your best effort to sing in that accent, dialect, or language. If you have no talent for this sort of thing, then perhaps you shouldn't sing the song (at least for a paying audience, for whom you should do your best performances), but if you do, there is no good reason not to.

And as long as you understand what you are doing, and respect the material, there is no good reason NOT to sing songs from a culture which is not your own. To insist that one should not be allowed to sing any song that appeals to one is, at best, arbitrary, capricious, and ill-informed, and at worst, displays the attitude of a would-be tyrant.

Don Firth

P. S.   Of course, if a person has a singing voice that sounds like a plate of beans negotiating it's way out of the digestive system of a warthog, then perhaps one should not attempt to sing at all.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: catspaw49
Date: 07 Oct 08 - 03:03 AM

"P. S.   Of course, if a person has a singing voice that sounds like a plate of beans negotiating it's way out of the digestive system of a warthog, then perhaps one should not attempt to sing at all."

MYGAWD! What a perfect description of WaveyDavey doing that tripe about going walkabout with his pen. That one is just the worst...........

Spaw

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 07 Oct 08 - 05:05 AM

"The sad thing is that Wav has potential. He is enthusiastic, his voice could be quite pleasent IF he would take the effort to learn and train it. Same goes for his playing. Unfortunately, he has convinced himself that there is little left to learn, that he is at the pinnacle of his art." (Volgadon)...I keep listening to plenty of other folk singers, and to myself as I play a line, sing a line, play a line...in practise, with both English flute and keys.
I hear you Don, but still disagree on this matter, and stand by what I've said above, as well as on my site.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 07 Oct 08 - 01:30 PM

Okay, David. Live on in ignorance.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 07 Oct 08 - 02:53 PM

The perform your own national culture/they show us theirs; we show them ours way of English folk clubs of old, Don, was a good one, that should be brought back in England and beyond.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 07 Oct 08 - 02:59 PM

Wav, you've lost me with that grammar.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 07 Oct 08 - 02:59 PM

David, having just read what you've written above, I figure you must have made a few typos or left out some punctuation (basic skills of the writer and poet), and I can't figure out what in blazes you are trying to say. Could you please re-state it?

In (ahem) English?

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Howard Jones
Date: 07 Oct 08 - 03:13 PM

I suspect that WAV was attempting to refer to Ewan McColl's policy of allowing people to sing only songs from their own culture - he has referred to this on other occasions in support of his case. However, as has been pointed out to him, the reasons for that policy were quite different (to encourage people to investigate their own traditions at a time when most were attempting to reproduce American material), was limited to only a few clubs, and was fairly soon abandoned.

These days most of us are fully aware of our own tradition, rather more than WAV appears to be in fact, but do not agree that we should exclude other material. A good song is worth singing, wherever it is from.

"I've probably watched just about every BBC TV folk-music broadcast since 2004, I've read quite a lot (including forum posts), and listened to a lot of folk radio, as well as attending many singarounds, and a few festivals and instrumental sessions - so I standby the idea of an "intense" 4 and a half years into folk"

ROFPML!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 07 Oct 08 - 03:19 PM

The perform your own national culture/they show us theirs; we show them ours way of English folk clubs of old, Don, was a good one, that should be brought back in England and beyond

Grammatical eccentricity notwithstanding, just how on earth do you envisage this perform-your-own policy being implemented? And if you, as a naturalised Australian with as much understanding of English culture as I have of ancient Egyptian mathematical theorems feels himself somehow justified in performing E. Trads, then how on earth can you possibly object to anyone singing anything?

I stuck my neck a while back in the face of the various levels of flack you were getting, but as Stu points out, I was sorely mistaken with respect to your quiet dignity. Overweening arrogance in a set of bizarre beliefs sums it up perfectly.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 07 Oct 08 - 04:11 PM

For someone who claims to have studied anthropology, he has a damned poor grasp of the subject.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 07 Oct 08 - 04:29 PM

The Phonofiddle

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 07 Oct 08 - 04:33 PM

From the evidence, I'd be surprised if he knew what it meant, Don. This is definitely a one-man ride on an imaginary forklift truck.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 07 Oct 08 - 04:39 PM

Maybe he's a bit confused, and it was actually anthropomorphism he studied.

Does the forklift talk to you, Waveydavey?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 07 Oct 08 - 04:55 PM

This draconian restricting of what people should be allowed to sing (!!) that seems to be David's hobby horse has been discussed many times before. I would suggest that David read a bit in previous threads, for example HERE, and try to bring himself up to speed.

Someone posted an article previously on one of these threads in which Peggy Seeger gives some background on the "sing from your own culture only" controversy. Rather that try to hunt down the previous posting, I'll link to the article HERE.

If you haven't already read the article, David, I suggest you read it now. If you have already read it, I'd suggest that you read it again.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 07 Oct 08 - 05:07 PM

I posted the Peggy Seeger piece at 12.34 p.m. on 3 October. Only a few miles above. My comment was:

This "policy", decided by the members of one club for that venue alone was to encourage performers to draw material firstly from their own background and experience and to sing it in their own voices in a language or dialect that they understood and used.

Martin Carthy (among others) has acknowledged the value and importance of this policy (whether instigated by Ewan MacColl, Peggy Seeger or A N Other) at that time because it encouraged the exploration of indigenous English music rather than tedious copying of the repertoires of the then prominent US artists.

Has WAV read it? What do you think?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 07 Oct 08 - 05:32 PM

As this thread is not going anywhere I thought I'd take the chance to explore WAVs beliefs instead.

WAV - as I asked before, but did not receive an answer, I'm asking again for some clarification if you can spare the time.

(1) - what you're saying is that in England we should only perform "good English music"?

(2) - If the answer to (1) is yes, does that mean that you think we should take some kind of action to preserve the purity of the English music that exists - as alluded to in your perform your own rule?

(3) - If the answer to both 1 & 2 is yes, what methods would you propose would be used to achieve and enforce this?

(4) - Given your documented attempts to live a more "authentic" English existence (pottage etc) do you think that there should be a wider effort to revive this English culture?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 07 Oct 08 - 05:42 PM

Thanks, Diane, for posting that in the first place. I found the article quite enlightening, and I thought it cleared up a lot of the muddle. I also thought that it gave a good object lesson in how a basically good idea gets taken up by self-appointed "folk police" who haven't grasped the reasons for and limitations of the idea, and try to impose it in all cases and on all occasions.

May the gods preserve us from shallow-thinking fanatics!!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Derby Ram
Date: 07 Oct 08 - 08:23 PM

Late reply to Ralphie to your message of 1st Oct 7.57am in which you ask:

Does any of this really matter?

Not really...does anything that you can't control? I just meant to assert that if there was going to be such a thing as a National Instrument - why not the concertina? It's more appropriate than say - a thumb piano for instance?

If you mean should I lose any sleep over it, then - no....but yes - I think it matters some....it depends how deep you want to go with it...:-)

I'm glad you agree with me however...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 08 Oct 08 - 05:39 AM

IB - I'm an English repat, who hasn't sung "Waltzing Matilda" or "I love to have a beer with Duncan" for years...I'd rather have a mead with you, mate!
It's pretty much as Howard said, although I, in turn, am baffled by his "ROFPML!"?
The "perform-your-own-national-culture", or "they show us theirs/we show them ours", way of English folk-clubs of olde, Don, was a good'n, that should be brought back in England and beyond...how's that?...does it lift YOUR forks? (And, having read further comments here, I think you all did get my somewhat off-beat drift, anyway.)

"I posted the Peggy Seeger piece at 12.34 p.m. on 3 October. Only a few miles above. My comment was:

This "policy", decided by the members of one club for that venue alone was to encourage performers to draw material firstly from their own background and experience and to sing it in their own voices in a language or dialect that they understood and used.

Martin Carthy (among others) has acknowledged the value and importance of this policy (whether instigated by Ewan MacColl, Peggy Seeger or A N Other) at that time because it encouraged the exploration of indigenous English music rather than tedious copying of the repertoires of the then prominent US artists.

Has WAV read it? What do you think?" (Diane)...whatever Martin may think of me, I agree with him entirely on this, and many other things he has been brave enough to say on the BBC.

And, Woody, what to do about it FROM NOW ON - re-education on many levels; the linking of English folk to English nationalism (as many Scots have unashamedly linked Scottish folk to Scottish nationalism); etc.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 08 Oct 08 - 05:54 AM

Howard was "rolling on the floor pissing himself laughing" at the thought of yourt "intensive" 4 year folk education of radio and BBC television programmes.

I doubt Martin Carthy ever spares a thought for you, Wavey. And certainly his point that "the only damage you can do to a folk song is not to sing it", as well as his involvement with projects such as Imagined Village, would indicate that his views are very much at odds with yours.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 08 Oct 08 - 06:15 AM

MC has adopted (and adapted) many of of the technics and quirks of 'American' genres, including rock and blues, dear boy. If I am not mistaken, he usually doesn't SING American songs, because when he does they don't carry the same conviction as English ones. He has on ocassion recorded some, though! He also doesn't have any problems with taking songs from elsewhere and anglicising them! Even performed Australian and NZ songs! Add to that the Basque and Breton tunes he uses for ballads and songs!

Wav, not everyone wants to be a nationalist. You can be patriotic and proud of your nation without being a nationalist of the kind you are suggesting, what's more, you propose to CREATE new English national culture, so if you can, why can't others?
Linking those things to nationalism eventually KILLS them.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 08 Oct 08 - 06:18 AM

Linking those things to nationalism eventually KILLS them.

Ain't that the truth.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: TheSnail
Date: 08 Oct 08 - 06:33 AM

the linking of English folk to English nationalism

NO!

I try not to take WAV seriously but I have to make it clear that, as someone involved in the running of a traditional Olde Englische Folke Clubbe, I will do everything I can (and as I reported above, already have) to keep English nationalism out of English folk music.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Joseph P
Date: 08 Oct 08 - 06:34 AM

On A CD I recently purchased, Rogues Gallery, by far one of my current favourite tracks is 'Hog Eye Man' performed by Waterson:Carthy. I wonder how that fits with the policy of performing English music? Oh and the drum and multi instrument accompaniament is great!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 08 Oct 08 - 06:37 AM

I have some recordings (from the 80s?) of Martin Carthy singing African songs.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 08 Oct 08 - 06:56 AM

So WAV, you'll agree with Martin's comment that:

"It is neither possible nor desirable to set up musical border checkpoints anywhere"

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 08 Oct 08 - 07:19 AM

'Hog Eye Man' . . . I wonder how that fits with the policy of performing English music?

It has nothing whatsoever to do with a policy adopted briefly by the membership of ONE club in the 60s. Martin C was merely remarking that AT THE TIME it was a wake up call for many (including himself) that there WAS English material there for the exploration. Waterson:Carthy, obviously, perform music from many different cultures with respect, as long as it is appropriate and can be adapted to their style. Martin's guitar style, for example, is derived principally from Big Bill Broonzy who is not, unless I'm badly mistaken, an English player. Norma Waterson includes much material of US origin in her repertoire and their daughter is renowned for collaborations with musicians from many and varied provenances. Possibly WAV is about to tell W:C they should be confining themselves to pipe and tabor and eating pottage sandwiches fashioned from stotty cake. I'd like to be a fly on the wall when this conversation takes place . . .

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Joseph P
Date: 08 Oct 08 - 07:24 AM

Exactly my point!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 08 Oct 08 - 12:36 PM

"the linking of English folk to English nationalism" (me)

NO!

I try not to take WAV seriously but I have to make it clear that, as someone involved in the running of a traditional Olde Englische Folke Clubbe, I will do everything I can (and as I reported above, already have) to keep English nationalism out of English folk music." (Snail)...as you must know, in Scotland and Wales it IS at least acceptable to be a nationalist, and many Scots have indeed unashamedly, and successfully, linked Scottish folk to Scottish nationalism - God's speed to them, and even more to English (non-imperialistic) nationalists, because in England it is still very much a dirty word (as your response shows), largely due to ignorance and mis-education. "Nationalism with conquest IS bad; but nationalism with eco-travel and fair-trade (via the UN) is good for humanity" (me). And, for those of you have read my life's work (from same link), you surely can't deny that, the last few weeks, things have moved a bit closer to my way:
Poem # 75, 82, 98, 153, e.g.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: TheSnail
Date: 08 Oct 08 - 12:51 PM

largely due to ignorance and mis-education.

I've got the RYA Competent Crew Certificate. Does that count?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 08 Oct 08 - 12:56 PM

I have a Tufty card.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 08 Oct 08 - 12:58 PM

I have a Blue Peter badge.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: KB in Iowa
Date: 08 Oct 08 - 01:34 PM

I was Charter Member of the Bat Boat club. I even got a ribbon.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 08 Oct 08 - 02:49 PM

I have a TV that tells me regulationism is replacing free-market capitalism. :-)>

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 08 Oct 08 - 02:54 PM

You have a TV, but that doesn't mean you know how to listen or to figure out what is going on.
Regulationism (stupid made up term) isn't replace free-market capitalism, what is happening is that gvts are having to step in to pay for mistakes and failures of certain large businesses. Merely replacing the owner, and not even that in many cases.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,eliza c
Date: 08 Oct 08 - 03:50 PM

Folk clubs restricting themselves in any way is a fairly new invention. The Watersons' early incarnation at the Bluebell booked, among other people, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee. It was only when they left that people starting talking about their "legacy", and booking only folkie acts. They were dismayed.
The point of the snake should not be that it eats its own tail. Some of the best folk clubs I've ever been to have had a lovely, varied bill of music from all cultures, poetry and performance. Folk clubs do not a tradition make. Proper folk and traditional music should be out and proud in the wider community, readily influenced and influential in turn. Be an expert in your own field by all means (please try it!!!!), but don't shut yourself away from the world. To freeze English music where you have it marked would be to base a tradition on only forty years of recording and a load of unsubstantiated guesswork, and to exclude the other people that have lived here alongside us for hundreds of years now. Surely that isn't right. Nobody knows what folk music sounded like two hundred years ago. I love that, it means we can make a new, informed sound now.
Personally, I have always had a problem with people singing in any other accent than their own, trying to mimic someone else's culture in the absence/ignorance of one of their own. But I recognise that the only way to get them to understand what they potentially have, fulfill the thing they may be missing in their lives, is simply to be as good as possible, win them round with kindness and excellence rather than proscription and lecturing.
David, have you ever investigated the music that Greg makes in his community? That is truly the way to do it. And if you want to cook old English food and offer it round as well, that's cool, it really is. But I'll have some Indian chutney on the side of mine, ta. Pork pie and Patak's garlic chutney go really well together, and neither ruins the other's taste, provenance or importance.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 08 Oct 08 - 04:07 PM

Mate...Melton Mowbray pork pie and Thai sweet chilli sauce. I swear, you'll thank me.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 08 Oct 08 - 04:16 PM

Melton Mowbray pork pie and Thai sweet chilli sauce

Sounds lovely Ruth, must try it.

Sadly WAV won't. He'll be (as Diane amusingly noted)

eating pottage sandwiches fashioned from stotty cake

Ed

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 08 Oct 08 - 04:40 PM

I can also recommend Thai sweet chilli sauce as an accompaniment for cold chicken or white Stilton (to go up against blue Stilton you need something a bit less delicate, like mango chutney). Haven't tried the garlic chutney - I'll look out for it.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 08 Oct 08 - 05:25 PM

Wav has a very shallow conception of culture.
For him, Greek culture is an Evzone sitting in a taverna playing Zorba the Greek on a bouzouki, maybe with a slice of feta on the side.
German culture is a boozy old Teuton in liederhosen playing oompa-oompa-ommpapa music.
Russian culture is a fur hat, boots and balalaikas.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 08 Oct 08 - 05:28 PM

"I have a TV that tells me regulationism is replacing free-market capitalism."

It is true that television news worldwide is talking about an increase in regulation. But apparently David doesn't quite grasp what his telly is telling him.

It is hardly "regulationism" as an ideology.

I heard a news commentator remark yesterday that the current world-wide economic crisis was not the result of capitalism per se, but because there is a current dearth of capitalistic entrepreneurs (people who invent new things, produce new products, and offer new services) and a surplus of capitalistic speculators—people buying "futures" in products and services that may or may not ever exist. Later in the commentary, he referred to this as "a capitalist casino mentality."

Capitalism, with it's inherent profit motive and competition, functions quite well when it results in new and better products and services at lower prices, but experience has shown that without certain "rules of the road," it can degenerate into dog-eat-dog competition and speculation on profits from products and services that don't yet exist. When this reaches a critical point (as it did in 1929 and again currently), the balloon explodes and the economy collapses.

Government regulation, like those instituted during the Roosevelt administration in the 1930s, provides the needed "rules of the road" and watchdog agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission and others, also initiated in the 1930s, police those rules to prevent the economy from reaching such a point. Unscrupulous businessmen bridled at the restrictions imposed by these regulations and the agencies that enforced them, and during the Reagan administration, through a combination of Reagan's "voodoo economics" policies and lobbying (bribing elected officials), they got many of these regulations rescinded. And by various means, they got the regulatory agencies staffed with their own people, who saw to it that the regulations that remained were not enforced.

The result is the current economic mess.

There is a strong move afoot, especially among the American people and some candidates for office (and people and governments of other countries also affect by the monetary crisis) for the reinstatement (or institution, if not already in place) of the kind of regulations, imposed by the Roosevelt administration in the 1930s, that were the major factor in ending the Great Depression.

THAT, David, is the kind of regulation you are currently hearing about on your telly. And it has nothing to do with immigration/emigration.

Nor who can sing which songs.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 08 Oct 08 - 05:30 PM

Woody, what to do about it FROM NOW ON - re-education on many levels; the linking of English folk to English nationalism

WAV I was disappointed with your response. As I'm taking the time to try to understand the extent of what you're trying to say, perhaps you'll please do me the courtesy of actually answering my questions properly, with some of the attention and level of detail you must have shown to acquire your degree.

(1) - what you're saying is that in England we should only perform "good English music"?

(2) - If the answer to (1) is yes, does that mean that you think we should take some kind of action to preserve the purity of the English music that exists - as alluded to in your perform your own rule?

(3) - If the answer to both 1 & 2 is yes, what methods would you propose would be used to achieve and enforce this?

(4) - Given your documented attempts to live a more "authentic" English existence (pottage etc) do you think that there should be a wider effort to revive this English culture?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 08 Oct 08 - 07:46 PM

I doubt if anyone's actually interested, but it is possible to get a tune out of a fork-lift truck - although the use of accompaniment is, I gather, strongly deprecated in some circles.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 08 Oct 08 - 09:47 PM

Here's how your immigrant/emigrant regulations work, David:

My sister, Patricia Firth (now Pat Hansen) was an avid figure skater when she was a little girl. She took to it with enthusiasm, took lessons, and practiced very hard. She gained experience early on skating in local skating club ice shows and became very good as a competitive skater. In time, she won two Pacific Coast Senior Ladies' figure skating championships, then in 1953 she won the United States Junior Ladies' Championship (CLICK and scroll down to 1953). This qualified her to compete for the United States in the 1955 World Championships in Vienna, Austria. There, she placed seventh overall, not bad for a young newcomer, especially against such powerhouses as Tenley Albright and Carol Heiss (CLICK and scroll down to 1953, right-hand column, 7th place).

A tour of Europe followed, sponsored by various European skating clubs. Pat skated exhibitions in Switzerland, Germany, France, and England.

In England, she received an offer: if she would drop competitive skating and turn professional, the ice show in residence at Empress Hall wanted to hire her as its featured attraction. Pat was young and beautiful, and an elegant figure skater. And she would be working with a number of notable performers, including comic Richard Hearn, aka "Mister Pastry." They told her (in confidence) that they wanted her to replace their current featured skater, a former English champion and occasional movie star, Belita, who had been skating with the show for nearly a decade, and even though she was still very good, as far as the audiences were concerned, she had passed her "sell-by" date. She was no longer the draw that she used to be.

My sister thought it over very carefully, decided that it was a marvelous opportunity, and accepted the offer.

Since it would be a few months before rehearsals for the new show were due to start, she returned to Seattle. At the appointed time, she was packed, had her plane ticket to London, and was about to depart when she received a telegram.

The British government had denied her a work permit. Their reasoning was that since there was an English woman who was not only capable of doing the job, but she was currently doing it. No consideration was given to the needs and wishes of the sponsors of the shows, nor to the wishes of the shows' audiences. Nor, for that matter, the wishes of Belita herself. An arbitrary, thoughtless decision.

So that ended that. Since Pat had signed a contract (pending the granting of a work permit) with Empress Hall, she was deemed by the United States Figure Skating Association as a "professional" and hence, could no longer skate competitively. She considered entering other ice shows such as the "Ice Capades" or the "Ice Follies," but decided to turn to teaching instead. It was while teaching at the Great Falls, Montana figure skating club, she met her future husband.

Everything worked out for my sister. She and her husband have three children, a couple of grandchildren, and currently live part of the year near Seattle and another part on Flathead Lake in Montana.

But British labor laws denied her the opportunity to become an international figure skating star. And deprived English audiences of an opportunity to see a very talented and elegant young performer.

Irony:

It turned out Belita was perfectly amenable to leaving the show to be replace by a new young American skater. Since the American girl had been denied a work permit, Belita agreed to stay on for another year. But—the powers that be at Empress Hall had merely anticipated Belita's announcement of her own decision.

The following year (1956), Gladys Lyne Jepson-Turner (born in Nether Wallop [I beg your pardon!!], Hampshire, England, known professionally as "Belita"), announced that she was retiring from show business. She went on to say that she had always hated show business in general and figure skating in particular and she had done it only because when she was a little girl, her mother had forced her into it.

Later, the former Belita opened a garden center in west London, then retired to the south of France, where she passed away in 2005 at the age of 82.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 08 Oct 08 - 10:05 PM

I might point out, David, the the regulations that you love so much did not protect English workers, it merely thwarted the needs and wishes of all parties concerned.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 08 Oct 08 - 11:22 PM

Except the person who actually got the job.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 08 Oct 08 - 11:58 PM

Perhaps so, Smokey. But it prevented my sister engaging in further competitive skating. She had already established herself as a world-class figure skater, first by being there at all, and then by placing in the top ten her first time out. She could have gone on to other world championships or possibly the Olympics. Because she had accepted the offer of a professional job in good faith, the rules of the USFSA required reclassifying her as "professional," whether she got the job came through or not, and that put a stop to the possibility of any further championships.

I repeat, she accepted the job in good faith, and essentially, got screwed. By English regulations that no one told her about before she made her decision to accept the offer. And since the folks at Empress Hall didn't think of this as an ordinary job, like clerking in a store or working in a factory, but a job that required extraordinary attributes, it never occured to them that a work permit might be denied.

This sort of thing was not just a "job." It takes a unique combination of talent and charisma which my sister had, and the folks at Empress Hall recognized, which is why they approached her in the first place. I don't know who they got in my sister's place, but the folks at Empress Hall were not happy at having to "settle" for a lesser talent, just because she was English.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 09 Oct 08 - 12:00 AM

So how do I know she was a lesser talent? If she hadn't been, she would have been offered tha job instead of Pat.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 09 Oct 08 - 12:50 AM

But the regulation was beneficial to someone, all the same. The end result was one less unemployed skater. We really have no idea how good she was.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 09 Oct 08 - 01:19 AM

Beneficial to someone, but a net loss for a whole bunch of other people, all but one of whom were English. And as I said, if she was that talented, they would have offered the job to her.

You agree with David, I take it?

Don Firth

P. S. Late for me. I'm going to bed. . . .

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 09 Oct 08 - 01:45 AM

I was just illustrating the flaw in your argument Don, not necessarily agreeing with David. Unlike David, I don't assume anyone here would be remotely interested in my 'political' opinions, and I certainly wouldn't seek to promote them either. No offence.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 09 Oct 08 - 02:41 AM

No point in that argument Don. Wav would have to
1. Read it
2. Understand it
3. Consider it.

Glad it worked out OK for your sister.

I had a similar experience in Jersey which has similar rules.

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 09 Oct 08 - 03:13 AM

Don - the mistake was in how the company looking to employ your sister approached the issue. Even in those days the work permit regulations were clearly defined and lots of non-UK performers worked over here, particularly in entertainment.

You place the blame at the wrong door. The company looking to employ your sister obviously did not fully understand the UK rules and it is they that failed her in not doing their research and following the correct procedures before they offered her the job.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 09 Oct 08 - 06:03 AM

I agree with some of that Eliza - but sorry I can't fathom which Greg you mean (although I'm gradually matching some of the nicknames to real names that some others seem to already know). Also, I think we do know that for centuries English folkies did sing the lyrics of E. trads mostly unaccompanied, via the simple repetition of a tune. Thus, the EFDSS recording of Joseph Taylor singing "Creeping Jane" or yourself singing "The Grey Cock" unaccompanied ARE pretty much what our folkier English forebears did for centuries (without recording/amplifying devices, for the most part, of course).
And, as for grey matters, curiousity killed the cat, but I'd still like to know if Martin has ever had the chance to try an English cittern, which looks and sounds a great instrument to me, as above.

For Ed:

Poem 206 of 230: MY DIET

Chasing breads, nuts, bananas,
    Red sauce, apples, sultanas,
Crackers, conserves, cucumbers,
    Pickles, porridge, pottages -

Lemon barley,
    Cocoa, coffee,
Or cups of tea.

From walkaboutsverse.741.com

Don - if you had read my poems (same above link), you'd know that I've looked, with a regulationist's eys, far beyond "immigration/emigration...who can sing which songs" (you) and "cups of tea" (me)!
To Woody via Smokey - I'd certainly tilt my forks that way.
Don, again - I'm glad things worked out okay for your ice-skating cum teaching sister...have you noticed that the ISU have recently brought in competition regulations whereby skaters, in some categories, must choose folk music - preferably, but not strictly, from their own nation; I do follow it, and did my bit to campaign for suchlike, via Eurosport; also, before these regulations came in, the Scottish dancers, the Kerrs, did this very enjoyably with Scottish folk tunes...have you seen them?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 09 Oct 08 - 06:21 AM

"Thus, the EFDSS recording of Joseph Taylor singing "Creeping Jane" "

You refer to this recording repeatedly. What other traditional recordings are you basing your argument on?

I'm not disputing it, actually - I just want to know whether, as with so many aspects of your flawed ideology, you don't actually have a body of evidence but rather the odd scrap or example you've picked up somewhere.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 09 Oct 08 - 06:36 AM

When people sang unaccompanied, they usually did so when working. You can't really play an instrument when working a loom, or driving a forklift, for that matter. Not only that, but it's hard to sing parts BY ONE'S SELF. They would also sing musical hall songs UNACCOMPANIED, melody only, despite these songs usually being performed WITH accompaniment and parts.
There is a good body of evidence (such as west gallery music and pub pianos) suggesting that they could and would accompany songs when possible.

The guitar is far more versatile than the cittern, so why would MC drop an instrument which has been an extension of his being in favour of an inferior one just because it once had English in the title?

Don, superb post. I've run into a similar problem in my personal life, which has just created immense problems for me and someone else. This, in a category of immigration which Wav supposedly approves of.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 09 Oct 08 - 06:52 AM

West gallery singing also includes harmonies. Once you learn to make harmonies in church, why would you not use them when singing secular songs?

The collectors often went round and collected individuals. With someone like Vaughan Williams, for instance, he was specifically interested in captering and preserving folk melodies, and not necessarily preserving the ways in which those songs were sung. He didn't often collect people in the natural environment of the pub, for instance, but alone, in their own homes, and he didn't record very much, but largely notated tunes. He did used to go to pubs and hear singers, but I don't think he really talks about whether there was any collective or harmony singing in these cases, or whether the singing was ever accompanied.

Yes, there is a strong tradition of solo, unaccompanied singing in England, but that doesn't mean that it was the ONLY tradition. Some of the living traditions we still have, for instance, would suggest otherwise. The Copper family sing harmonies, and their tradition goes back at least eight generations. Sheffield Carols, still sung each year in the village pubs, contain strong, spontaneous harmonies. And though I've never been to any shepherd's or hunt meets to hear any singing, I'd be interested to know whether people sing in harmony - I know that Will Noble and John Cocking, for instance, do.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 09 Oct 08 - 06:58 AM

To Woody via Smokey - I'd certainly tilt my forks that way.

I have no idea what you are talking about.

I repeat once again my questions...

perhaps you'll please do me the courtesy of actually answering my questions properly, with some of the attention and level of detail you must have shown to acquire your degree.

(1) - what you're saying is that in England we should only perform "good English music"?

(2) - If the answer to (1) is yes, does that mean that you think we should take some kind of action to preserve the purity of the English music that exists - as alluded to in your perform your own rule?

(3) - If the answer to both 1 & 2 is yes, what methods would you propose would be used to achieve and enforce this?

(4) - Given your documented attempts to live a more "authentic" English existence (pottage etc) do you think that there should be a wider effort to revive this English culture?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 09 Oct 08 - 07:34 AM

Whilst waiting for the page to load, came across this old comment of Wav's.
I'd heard, that the pipe and tabor were the original Morris instruments (seen a chap playing them at The Morpeth Gathering, a couple of times) but it was/is also well used for dance music on the continent.
That's because they are CONTINENTAL instruments with clear Middle-Eastern and North-African ancestors which were brought over too England. Not much different to the banjo or guitar.

Ruth, I posted an interesting link recently about west galleries which Wav has ignored, as he does with most of my posts, they do seem to unsettle him. That link talked about how the west galleries had rather complicated arrangements, lots of parts and harmonies and what was done to the melody was anything BUT top-line only. Hardy's father seems to have been known as a particularly daring arranger.
My question is, if you could sing hymns in church with harmony and chords, church music being far more important to them than folk songs, why wouldn't they sing the latter in a similar fashion?
Oh, one more thing, they didn't sing hymns in 'sweet' voices either.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 09 Oct 08 - 08:27 AM

WAVs problem is one of assumption based on presumption compounded by a very squalid ignorance further bolstered by selective reading (and a very minimal selective reading at that) and, at last, promoted by overweening arrogance. His idiot approach to life would have us mired in an enforced (sorry regulated) mediaevalism that would give Pol Pot a run for his money simply for the sake of his extremely idiosyncratic take on what is, or is not, traditional. Tradition is as tradition does; it changes, evolves, transfiguring itself with each new dawn, as we all must, awakening to the challenges of today, rather than the triumphs (and failures) of yesterday. In short, whilst we reference and revere the sources of our respective crafts, we do so to empower the creativity of the present, which will always be informed by a broader and more dynamic cultural reality that anything ever known by our forebears.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 09 Oct 08 - 09:24 AM

"Tradition is as tradition does"

There was a saying when I was in the SCA (part of why I left, too I suppose...)

Do it once, it's new:
do it twice, it's fun:
do it three times, it's "Tradition".

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 09 Oct 08 - 09:42 AM

Here are some words by Jabotinsky which I rather like. They are equally aprropriate for Wav's grand scheme of a world-regulationism.

For me, as for all lovers of freedom, an ant-heap or a colony of bees cannot serve as an example for humanity. A collectivist* regime, which subjugates the individual personality, is no better than a regime of feudalism or autocracy. The 'equality' and 'justice' of such a regime will be based on organized production, distribution and consumption - all to be coordinated by the government; and if somebody does not conform to this organization, the heavy hand of that government will come down on him, or he may be hanged from a tree - in the name of equality and justice. No: Bakunin was a thousand times right when he told Marx that if the workers succeed in establishing the new regime that Marx preached, it would be no less tyrannical than it's predecessor...
All individuals are equal; and if, in the march towards prgress, some falter by the way, society must help raise them up...
I am not an anarchist: I admit the need for state power. But the difference between me and you is that to me that power is in the nature of a supreme court, standing above parties, groups and personlaities, and not interefering in the economic, public and private life of the citizen's as long as nobody's freedom is infringed - while to you that power is the stick of the policemen, and that stick differs from other sticks in that it will be yielded by you...
To you the end justifies the means, and so everything is permitted."

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 09 Oct 08 - 09:55 AM

Volgadon is dead clever.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 09 Oct 08 - 10:22 AM

I am not an anarchist: I admit the need for state power.

Nice one, Volgadon. Actually I've been reading my old Bakunin and Malatesta pamphlets recently. I think at heart I'll always be an Anarchist, both in the faith that one day humanity will get there, and that in the meantime our moral duty must be the equality of corporeal objective other even as we seek to improve subjective self. One thing's for sure, we won't get anywhere miring ourselves in the rancid feudal past where the only reason people sang unaccompanied was because they were subjugated in ignorance and poverty, indentured in servile drudgery to a heartless aristocracy who no doubt thought it was all such jolly good traditional fun.

And talking of fun, do have a listen to my new recording of Wife of Usher's Well made this just morning and currently playing at http://www.myspace.com/sedayne. Traditional balladry? Oh yes, given that the vocabularies of free-improv are just as traditional to me as anything else! Of course I'd be flayed alive if I tried this down at The Steamer, but it's nice to dream...

Why do Anarchists drink herbal tea?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 09 Oct 08 - 10:32 AM

Thanks. I have more to draw from than just the shakespeare liberty quote. Came across it the other day when I was doing research for a book. Probably a foreign concept for Wav.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 09 Oct 08 - 10:52 AM

because all proper tea is theft?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Will Fly
Date: 09 Oct 08 - 10:58 AM

Oh Ruth!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Joseph P
Date: 09 Oct 08 - 10:59 AM

There is a lot to be learnt from the Anarchist school of thought, from 'property is theft' to deep ecology, thhere are many ideas to explore in such an infinitely complex area.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 09 Oct 08 - 11:06 AM

But do Anarchists morris dance?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Joseph P
Date: 09 Oct 08 - 11:16 AM

Badly. They cant agree on the moves and all want to do their own thing. Good jigs though.

Mind you swapping a few veggies for beer at the pub sort of counts. Maybe?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Paul Burke
Date: 09 Oct 08 - 11:18 AM

Morris was a Socialist, not an anarchist. And I though all property was the FT.

I lost touch with this threat early on; has anyone mentioned that England's national instrument is obviously the anglophone?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Sailor Ron
Date: 09 Oct 08 - 11:53 AM

IB, I challenge you, The Steamer tonight sing it!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 09 Oct 08 - 12:07 PM

Hey, let's leave WAVworld behind and start a new thread on anarchism. Much more fun...

The changing of the lightbulb is the task of the lightbulb itself.

Anyone remember top Welwyn Garden City based anarcho-popsters the Astronauts? At their best - songs like 'Typical English Day' - they did cracking, very English sounding folk-rock. And, just for The Beard, free jazz polymath Lol Coxhill guested on one of their albums.

And don't get me started on anarcho-locomotive enthusiasts, Blyth Power...

Building the new thread in the shell of the old...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 09 Oct 08 - 12:11 PM

When you talk on an anglophone, do you say different words on the push and the pull?
And how do you know which?
Diatonically confused, as ever . . .

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Sandman
Date: 09 Oct 08 - 12:21 PM

when you talk on the dog and bone you are barking.
when you talk on the anglo phone your parping.
when you blow on the sousaphone your farting.
and when you play on the concertina you must always play single line melody,and never play non traditional english harmony.[last line quote from WAV expert on english concertinas]

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 09 Oct 08 - 01:06 PM

...what the Dickens!...excuse me, but I'll read all this tomorrow; I'm off for the singing at Durham City Folk Club which, by the way IB (whatever you just had to say), has just moved to the Big Jug.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 09 Oct 08 - 01:22 PM

Last I heard it was back in The Shakespeare on a Tuesday; that was back at the Folk Party mind, so they might be back at the The Big Jug by now... Still, there's the session at The Dun Cow if you get stuck.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 09 Oct 08 - 04:16 PM

True, Woody. The folks at Empress Hall (Claude Langdon, if I remember correctly) should have explained this possibility to my sister so she could factor it into her decision to accept or not.

I believe the skater who may have been hired in place of Pat was named Sonja (or Sonya) Kaye, but I'm not sure. Nor have I been able to find anything about her record as a skater, competitive or otherwise. The only possibility I've found is that there was a skater named Sonya Klopfer (changed to "Kaye" as a stage-name?) who won a national championship in 1951 and has a fairly substantial record competing in the World Championships. However—this was a United States national championship and in World's, she skated for the United States. Sonya Klopfer was an American. So. . . .

####

Did I read WAV correctly? That he's advocating that when figure skaters chose the music to which they choreograph their programs, they should chose the folk music of their own countries?

Most figure skaters select the music they skate to from the vast range of classical music. For obvious reasons, ballet music (Tchaikovsky, Adolphe Adam, Minkus, Ravel, Glière, etc.) tends to predominate. Sometimes opera overtures are used. Rossini overtures are particularly favored for their tendency to start moderato and build up speed. Very exciting for a skating program. One of my sister's programs, which was well-received by audiences and skating judges alike, was choreographed to an orchestral (no singing) medley of music from Verdi's opera, La Traviata.

I can't wait to see some skater (English, of course) try to do a program to WAV singing "Cob a Coaling."

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 09 Oct 08 - 04:36 PM

Thinking about the last paragraph in my post just above, what can I say but CLICKY?

See? HE agrees!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 09 Oct 08 - 04:48 PM

cob a Caulkin...

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 09 Oct 08 - 04:52 PM

(IB - yes, there was a sign on The Big Jug saying Tuesday now...oh, well, some other time :-(> and, for what it's worth, I'm still going to catch up on these posts tomorrow.)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 02:55 AM

I'll look forward to you answering my questions properly then

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 04:21 AM

Don, there really is a requirement that one of the dances be to a folk song. The downside is that Katyusha gets REALLY old after the first 8 couples....

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,eliza c
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 05:06 AM

Greg Stephens, of the Boat Band and other bands. Bloody fine bloke and all-round local English international traditionalist progressive.
Thomas Hardy wrote about church bands, the ones that got fired when the organs came in because they were invariably still drunk on the Sunday morning from the previous Saturday night's dancing. If whole bands were employed to accompany the hymn-singing in church one can assume safely that some harmony would be involved, if only because all instruments do not play in the same register (the Watersons' harmony technique:"sing the tune until you can't. What you sing after that qualifies as a harmony").
e

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 05:37 AM

Ah yes, I thought I'd answered WAV's odd question about what was "Greg" a pseudonym for, but I was clearly so gobsmacked that I didn't. I've no reason to suppose that "Greg Stephens" isn't his real name, he's certainly had it long enough. I echo Eliza's words that he is a jolly fine chap and his music is even better. Last time I saw him was in Musical Traditions with the Boat Band, an excellent venue which Ms Carthy and Saul Rose played only last week. An artist who gets a gig there is worth knowing about.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Will Fly
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 05:46 AM

I knew Greg when he was doing a PhD at Lancaster University - back in the 60s - and we had several blues'n guitars sessions together. Eventually I started to dodge playing with him - and eventually he cornered me and asked why I was fobbing him off. I had to admit to him that his musical knowledge was so all-embracing and so expert that I didn't feel up to his skill. (I HAD only been playing about 3 or 4 years...). I'd do better now, I hope, but back then? - nah!

Mind you, I did take the piss out of the first beard he was growing... Apologies, Greg, if you catch this.

Oh - and he is indeed "Greg Stephens".

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 06:07 AM

And Cobbler's Hornpipe is a great tune.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 06:44 AM

Ruth - may I refer you to the "Pop Goes the Folk Singer" thread for a "body of evidence", and I agree with your later post, reposted below, but add that I've put "mostly" NOT "ONLY" on my website.
"Yes, there is a strong tradition of solo, unaccompanied singing in England, but that doesn't mean that it was the ONLY tradition. Some of the living traditions we still have, for instance, would suggest otherwise. The Copper family sing harmonies, and their tradition goes back at least eight generations. Sheffield Carols, still sung each year in the village pubs, contain strong, spontaneous harmonies. And though I've never been to any shepherd's or hunt meets to hear any singing, I'd be interested to know whether people sing in harmony - I know that Will Noble and John Cocking, for instance, do."

Woody - I repeat once again my questions...

perhaps you'll please do me the courtesy of actually answering my questions properly, with some of the attention and level of detail you must have shown to acquire your degree.

(1) - what you're saying is that in England we should only perform "good English music"? (AND ENJOY LISTENIG TO VISITORS PERFORM THEIRS)

(2) - If the answer to (1) is yes, does that mean that you think we should take some kind of action to preserve the purity of the English music that exists - as alluded to in your perform your own rule?

(3) - If the answer to both 1 & 2 is yes, what methods would you propose would be used to achieve and enforce this? (I HAVE ANSWERED 2 & 3 ABOVE)

(4) - Given your documented attempts to live a more "authentic" English existence (pottage etc) do you think that there should be a wider effort to revive this English culture? (YES)

Volgadon - traditionally congregations in England generally sing just the tune; while the organist (nowadays) will generally play all four lines on the score (and, yes, Eliza, other instruments have been involved in this); and, occasionally, trained boy (and nowadays girl) sopranos sing some bits above it all - descant lines, I think they are called. RVW - collected folk TUNES and ADDED these extra lines/harmonies HIMSELF. (Having said all that, I think just the tune sung and/or played well sounds great - with BOTH our hymns and our folk songs.) Oh, and we do try and sing hymns a bit more sweet/Sunday best voice.

Volgadon again - "Here are some words by Jabotinsky which I rather like. They are equally aprropriate for Wav's grand scheme of a world-regulationism.

For me, as for all lovers of freedom, an ant-heap or a colony of bees cannot serve as an example for humanity. A collectivist* regime, which subjugates the individual personality, is no better than a regime of feudalism or autocracy. The 'equality' and 'justice' of such a regime will be based on organized production, distribution and consumption - all to be coordinated by the government; and if somebody does not conform to this organization, the heavy hand of that government will come down on him, or he may be hanged from a tree - in the name of equality and justice. No: Bakunin was a thousand times right when he told Marx that if the workers succeed in establishing the new regime that Marx preached, it would be no less tyrannical than it's predecessor...
All individuals are equal; and if, in the march towards prgress, some falter by the way, society must help raise them up...
I am not an anarchist: I admit the need for state power. But the difference between me and you is that to me that power is in the nature of a supreme court, standing above parties, groups and personlaities, and not interefering in the economic, public and private life of the citizen's as long as nobody's freedom is infringed - while to you that power is the stick of the policemen, and that stick differs from other sticks in that it will be yielded by you...
To you the end justifies the means, and so everything is permitted."

Me, from the above link -

"Within the broader music industry, and beyond, what some get for their hour's work, compared with others, is ridiculous and inhumane; hence, many relatively competent musicians within the folk-scene are really struggling to make ends meet; so, if we like fair competition, we don't like capitalism. A better way, as I've suggested in verse, is to accept that humans are competitive, and have strong regulations (partly via nationalisation) to make that competition as fair as possible – whilst also providing "safety-net" support."

"the only reason people sang unaccompanied was because they were subjugated in ignorance and poverty, indentured in servile drudgery to a heartless aristocracy who no doubt thought it was all such jolly good traditional fun." (IB)...or, like me, they genuinely enjoyed a good voice singing an E. trad unaccompanied, as nearly everyone did at the Durham Folk Party singaround, where we last met.

Joseph and Paul - "Business is glorified theft" (Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath).

Ironic that CB should be the one to remember our National Poetry Day.

Did I read WAV correctly? That he's advocating that when figure skaters chose the music to which they choreograph their programs, they should chose the folk music of their own countries?

"Most figure skaters select the music they skate to from the vast range of classical music. For obvious reasons, ballet music (Tchaikovsky, Adolphe Adam, Minkus, Ravel, Glière, etc.) tends to predominate. Sometimes opera overtures are used. Rossini overtures are particularly favored for their tendency to start moderato and build up speed. Very exciting for a skating program. One of my sister's programs, which was well-received by audiences and skating judges alike, was choreographed to an orchestral (no singing) medley of music from Verdi's opera, La Traviata.
I can't wait to see some skater (English, of course) try to do a program to WAV singing "Cob a Coaling." (Don Firth)...if you don't believe my above post on this, Don, please check the ISU website (as Volgadon seems to have done).

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 07:08 AM

God....(select one of your own choice)
Is Wav still here?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 07:16 AM

"Volgadon - traditionally congregations in England generally sing just the tune"

Which tradition is this? If you mean that this is the way congregations sing NOW, how is that more traditional than the older, West Gallery style of church singing which is full of harmonies?

The fact that RVW only notated the tune does not mean that this is all he ever heard. I believe there is evidence that some of the tunes he collected were, in fact, originally sung with harmonies; because of his own bias, perhaps, he chose only to note the tune, and then, when orchestrating the music later, sometimes added harmonies of his own.

There has been speculation (notably, I believe, by Karl Dallas) that it was often the bias of the collectors themselves - Sharp in particular possibly setting the precident - which caused the songs to be collected largely unaccompanied and without harmonies. Later collectors find a significant amount of musical accompaniment, and later recordings of singers in pubs (not revival singers) definitely contain spontaneous harmonisation on the choruses.

You still haven't answered Woody's questions 2 and 3: HOW would you enforce your cultural apartheid?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 08:32 AM

or, like me, they genuinely enjoyed a good voice singing an E. trad unaccompanied, as nearly everyone did at the Durham Folk Party singaround, where we last met.

And a bloody good sing it was too but hardly in anyway traditional as it is preferential with respect a tradition thus perceived. This is a very recent phenomenon - and despite the general hoary demographic a lot of these singers are quite new even to the revival; they're still-game camper-van second-lifers from non-musical backgrounds and making a canny fist out of it too. But in no way shape or form should this be taken for anything else other than it is, and certainly not as a manifestation of Our Own Good Traditional Cultural Heritage. It's just a bunch of people having a drink and a sing; enjoying themselves through commonality and sharing, which I dare say is traditional, but no more so than karoake or line-dancing or any other community based recreation. The anthropologist would understand this - culture contextualised according to human function and need, as oppose to its random content or else some ghastly ersatz provenance however so contrived or justified.

You have a taste for a good voice singing an E. trad unaccompanied - as indeed do I, but unlike you I do not think this is the proper or indeed the only way to do things, or even the traditional way. As far as I'm concerned, the only traditional way to sing a song is with the human voice; the rest is up to the singer. This is the way it is with Folk Music, or any other sort of music, it's about people doing what's right for them, and others, without having some fecking nerd* telling them what is and is not traditional according to some insane set of regulations. Folk Music isn't traditional; it's an academic construct circa 1903 that has over the last fifty years garnered an army of educated enthusiasts who thrive on the cut and thrust of a cultural pedantry such as you've barely begun to scratch the surface of. It's a rich a bewildering realm to be sure; in fact, it's a fucking ocean out there, fraught with dangers, replete with wonders, seductive with deadly beauty, rich with legend, hearsay and scientific** bafflement of the highest order. But you haven't even made it to the beach yet, WAV - let along the rock pools. In fact, you're still in the toilet block - looking in the pan, wondering where all the piss goes.   

* Nerds are traditional too, but they are as unaware of that tradition as a fish is unaware of the water through which it swims.

** In the current number of Radio Times, Stephen Fry defines sciences as humility in the face of facts, which I think is a good maxim to live by.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 11:28 AM

Give it up, IB. David knows better than all of us - he takes criticism and challenges from you, me, Ruth, Diane, Dick, Greg, Don and Eliza fecking Carthy, and he shrugs it off without a second thought. He's never going to acknowledge that he doesn't know what he's talking about, any more than he'll ever admit that his views are racist. He won't acknowledge it because he doesn't respect our arguments, and he doesn't respect our arguments because he knows that he already knows better than any of us. We should either buy into the myth of WAV and bow down to the wisdom he's accumulated in those four long years, or just ignore him and have a sensible conversation among ourselves, leaving him to rant away to anyone who will listen.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,eliza c
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 11:51 AM

Well before the introduction of the church organ, along with "Hymns Ancient and Modern" which homogenised the repertoire of congregations in Britain, church music on Sundays was played nationwide by the village bands, who played whatever instruments they had.
Earlier church music than that we sing now was considerably more fun to sing and much of it sprung directly from the living tradition. No singing in a church voice, and no choirboys or girls to be seen in the villages.
Sorry. That's a genuine historical gap in your knowledge. That's also some truly rocking religious songs to learn if you fancy being enriched at all.
x e "f" c (thanks pip! best middle name i ever had!)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 12:15 PM

if you don't believe my above post on this, Don, please check the ISU website (as Volgadon seems to have done).

No need, mum's an enthusiast and the house is small, so I get exposed to figure skating whether I like it or not. As I have pointed out, the downside is that it gets bogged down in musical cliches.

Joseph and Paul - "Business is glorified theft" (Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath). Wav, Wav, Wav. It is so easy to isolate a snappy cath phrase, ignore the original context and try to fit square pegs into round holes.
Some business is glorified theft, other , just business. In any case, try living withouth it. Even the fools in the newly-formed Soviet Union realised that.

Volgadon - traditionally congregations in England generally sing just the tune; while the organist (nowadays) will generally play all four lines on the score (and, yes, Eliza, other instruments have been involved in this); and, occasionally, trained boy (and nowadays girl) sopranos sing some bits above it all - descant lines, I think they are called. RVW - collected folk TUNES and ADDED these extra lines/harmonies HIMSELF. (Having said all that, I think just the tune sung and/or played well sounds great - with BOTH our hymns and our folk songs.)

Occasionally? How about all of the time since hymns were introduced, until that tradition was deliberately replaced by one of organ playing.

Oh, and we do try and sing hymns a bit more sweet/Sunday best voice.

I don't. I try to sing sincerely, but it is the same voice I would sing anything else in.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 12:17 PM

I was just thinking in respect to my rather clumsy maritime metaphor above there that I'm more than happy to poke around the rock-pools, seeing what the tide has brought in, but each time afresh with respect to the experience, but never losing sight of the ocean beyond. Singarounds as rock pools? Or else just kicking along the shore at low tide raking through the flotsam and jetsam, seeing what's what and pondering the possible source thereof, much the less the journey it's had in getting there - or yet the journey I've had myself in getting there, or by what process I might find something appealing, or moving, however so removed from its original context, like this piece of funereal flotsam we found at Knott End on Sunday.

As for WAV, I think he's got to realise his life's work is only just beginning; that one can only think of oneself as being a traddy when one has forgotten more songs than one knows, and if one is still singing the same songs as one was a year ago, then maybe it's time one learnt some new ones.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 01:14 PM

IB - you talk as if traditional English music is, and has always been, as free as American jazz...but, if true, we wouldn't have that body of songs/tunes that you just recommended I again dip into. And, accordingly, if you'll pardon the pun, surely the idea is to remember, NOT forget, them. Thus, for a while, I think I'll sit on the 50 or so song and hymn tunes that I've just about memorized (and worked out) the recorder and keyboard fingerings for.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 01:53 PM

The body of songs only exists because it was collected as such; in its natural environment (i.e. before it was collected & defined as such) I'd say traditional English folk was just as free as jazz, American or otherwise.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 02:07 PM

So the International Skating Union has such a rule? Whose cockamamie idea was that and what is its purpose? What are they trying to accomplish by this?

Volgadon, I don't doubt your word at all, but where is this rule? I went to the ISU web site, pulled up the rulebook (.pdf format), and did a key word search on "folk," and the word was not even used, anywhere in the ISU rulebook. There were many instances of the word "music," but they all had to do with matters of sound quality, media (CD, mp3, etc.), and the skater's coordination with and interpretation of the music.

For the ice dancing competitions (couples, no spins, no jumps, pre-set steps dictated by the dance itself, not unlike the rules for ballroom dancing), the music is pre-selected, and it includes such things as the Viennese Waltz, the Argentine Tango, the Paso Doble, and so on. But this is not, strictly speaking, folk music. It specifies the type of dance, and the music must, of course, conform to the rhythm and style of that dance. The waltz as a formal dance came originally from Vienna and the tango is associated with Argentina, but the music that accompanies these dances (best known examples, Johann Strauss, Astor Piazzolla respectively) can hardly be regarded as "folk songs." And this music is selected by the committee or the judges, not by the skaters themselves.

Nor does it apply to solo free-style programs, such as those my sister did. She knew all of the dances and could do them, with a partner of course, as they are intended to be done, but she was primarily a solo skater.

Incidentally, there may be some sort of "nationalistic" movement on the part of the ISU because their actions within recent years have not exactly been met with universal acclaim:

The International Skating Union has demonstrated in their judging of the pairs competition at the Salt Lake City Olympics that they cannot adhere to the ethical standards of Olympic Charter and should be expelled from the Olympic Movement.

There have been complaints within recent years that many ISU judges have demonstrated blatant nationalistic bias in judging competitions.

Several articles HERE.

I turned up all kinds of interesting stuff. My sister, Pat, follows this much more closely and more knowledgeably than I do. She and her husband, John, are at their place at Flathead Lake right now, but when they return to Seattle, I'll ask Pat about this.

Don Firth

P. S. By the way, while googling, I ran across this: Pat in action, circa 1952.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 02:16 PM

As for WAV, I think he's got to realise his life's work is only just beginning

I think he thinks his life's work is done - and he's done so little! According to my geekily maintained records, I've sung forty-something traditional songs in public, as well as seventy-odd written by other people and around 30 of my own. I've hardly scratched the surface.

and if one is still singing the same songs as one was a year ago, then maybe it's time one learnt some new ones

Amen to that. I can't imagine not wanting to keep learning new songs. And I do say 'new' - at the moment I've got a strong preference for songs that have marinaded in the oral tradition for a century or so, but every song I learn for the first time is new to me - and with any luck I can make them new for other people.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 03:19 PM

We don't get the Americans on Eurosport, Don, but I'm quite sure that they had the same, fairly new, abovementioned rules as the last Worlds and Europeans - part of the ice dancing definitely did require the music to be folk and preferably, but not strictly, from the dancers' nation. the myspace of Tanith Belbin may be helpful on this, and of general interest to you and yours.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 03:27 PM

Woody - I repeat once again my questions...

perhaps you'll please do me the courtesy of actually answering my questions properly, with some of the attention and level of detail you must have shown to acquire your degree.

(1) - what you're saying is that in England we should only perform "good English music"? (AND ENJOY LISTENIG TO VISITORS PERFORM THEIRS)

(2) - If the answer to (1) is yes, does that mean that you think we should take some kind of action to preserve the purity of the English music that exists - as alluded to in your perform your own rule?

(3) - If the answer to both 1 & 2 is yes, what methods would you propose would be used to achieve and enforce this? (I HAVE ANSWERED 2 & 3 ABOVE)

(4) - Given your documented attempts to live a more "authentic" English existence (pottage etc) do you think that there should be a wider effort to revive this English culture? (YES)

WAV. In good faith I've taken the time to attempt to explore what you are trying to say & to give you a chance to expand on how you think the situation as you see it can be improved. You say you've got a degree, but the kind of answers you've given me would not be considered acceptable in Primary School. From the your reluctance to reply and the lack of detail when you do I can only assume what most people here already think is true - i.e. you don't really have anything of substance to say and the opinions you spout have no depth of thought behind them.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 03:54 PM

I tried the link you posted just above, David, and perhaps I don't know where to look, but I saw nothing there about folk music at all. Can you "fine tune" what it is you're talking about?

In their most recent competitive season, Tanith Belbin and her partner Ben Agosto (and note, they are ice dancers, not free skaters) they selected the following music:

Compulsory Dance: Austrian Waltz
Argentine Tango

Original Dance: Appalachian Hoedown/Bluegrass mix*

Free Dance: Chopin custom mix by Joseph LoDuca

Exhibitions: Latin mix/Let's Get Loud by Jennifer Lopez
Justin Timberlake's SexyBack/My Love mix by JT Horenstein

*note that this is related to American (United States) folk music. Tanith Belbin was born in Canada. In Kingston, Ontario, to be precise.

I believe this was their selection, not specified in the rules. If I am wrong about this, then please indicate where this is stated in the International Skating Union, World Skating Federation, and/or United States Figure Skating Association rules.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 04:47 PM

Okay, sports fans, I found the following in the ISU rules:

The rhythm for the Original Dance [one of several different dances the competitors must show proficiency in--DF] is the "Folk / Country Dance".

Any type of folk/country dance music can be used. For the chosen type, there are no restrictions on the number of musical selections. Although the dance may consist of different musical selections – fast and/or slow- there must be a consist theme based on a specific country or region. [Nowhere does it say this music nust be from the country of origin of the skaters; it merely says they don't want you doing such things as mixing a Balinese dance with an Israel hora; pick a country and keep it consistent--DF]

The folk/country dance character and style must be translated to the ice by flow and use of edges. [translation: correct use of skate blade edges during steps and turns—DF]

Variations of tempo within one selection of music are permitted. Each selection of music may have different tempo.

Vocal music is permitted.

Duration: 2 minutes and 30 seconds (plus or minus 10 seconds)

Two points:   1) This applies to ice dancing only.   Couples. This form of competition is a translation of ballroom dancing competitions to ice skating. See such television programs as "Dancing with the Stars." Nowhere do I find that it says it applies to music selected for solo skater's programs. And 2) Nowhere do I find that the "folk/country dance" music section must be music from the competitors' country of origin.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,eliza c
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 05:58 PM

David, are you really going to ignore my last post? What you've said is historically inaccurate, and I was nice about it too. I keep thinking that you do want to learn, that that's why you're here. Please tell me it is.
efc

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 07:19 PM

: Well before the introduction of the church organ, along with "Hymns Ancient and Modern"
: which homogenised the repertoire of congregations in Britain, church music on Sunday
: was played nationwide by the village bands, who played whatever instruments they had.
: Earlier church music than that we sing now was considerably more fun to sing and much of
: it sprung directly from the living tradition. No singing in a church voice, and no choirboys
: or girls to be seen in the villages

There was that, but Calvinism predates it, and in its more extreme forms it didn't permit any music in church other than psalms sung to a single melodic line, with the psalm tunes taken from a very short list, none of them folky in any respect. People often think of it as a Scottish thing, but England had it first and it never went away.

I'd guess somebody's mapped where and when church bands existed? if not somebody ought to.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: TheSnail
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 08:36 PM

Jack Campin

I'd guess somebody's mapped where and when church bands existed? if not somebody ought to.

This book is a good read and has some lovely stories in it.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Surreysinger
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 09:12 PM

Interestingly enough Lucy Broadwood conducted some correspondence with the Rev McDermott (see The Snail's link) in which she recorded that the vicar at her local church in Surrey in her childhood days (ie mid 1800's - around 1880) was a bit of a throwback to the 18th century and insisted on the congregation singing in unison ... no bands or harmony involved. The result was a fairly raucous shouting (I presume some musicality must have been involved, as she records that this singing was what gave her her love of modal tunes). At the same time she also stated that her parents (mother born in East Anglia in the early 1800's, and father - from Rusper area) had been used to church bands ... but these were recorded as being, again, raucous, and fairly poor in musical terms. Both versions of church music were effectively knocked on the head with the general introduction of the American organ in the late 1800's - leading presumably to the style of hymn singing we became more accustomed to in the 20th century .. ie tune lines which speaking personally seem to have been designed only for first sopranos (far too high) or real tenors, and rather more sedate than what had gone before.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 10:29 PM

"American organ?"

Not quibbling, just curious. Considering that the organ has been an integral part of the architecture of churches and cathedrals throughout continental Europe for centuries, I would find it most odd if I were to suddenly, in my advanced years, to learn that the organ was not a part of church services in the British Isles. Especially in the light of THIS.

And was there not quite a large number of composers, English and otherwise living in England (Handel, composer of The Messiah, for example: German born but lived most of his life in England), who wrote reams and stacks of liturgical music? I can't believe that this music was never performed until recently. . . .

What distinguishes an American organ from the organs that, say, Bach, Buxtehude, and others played and composed for? Indeed, what is an American organ? The Estey reed pump organ, often used in camp meetings on the American frontier? The Hammond electric, sometimes found in cocktail lounges and/or used by rock bands?

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 10:35 PM

American organs suck, harmoniums blow. (honest!)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 01:06 AM

The question remains: What is an "American organ?"

I am an American and I've never heard of an "American organ."

Don Firth

P. S. At least not one of the musical variety. . . .

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 01:08 AM

Oh, hell! As long as I'm here, why not?

700!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 02:17 AM

American organs are a kind of small harmonium, but as Smokey says they work differently internally. They were popular in the UK at the end of the 19th century and there are a lot of tunebooks for them. It seems to have been rather limited in its capabilities.

TheSnail: thanks, that book looks fascinating. The guy on the cover is playing what looks very like my metal Turkish G clarinet, only with less keys. It's a very good instrument for accompanying singing and is not at all raucous. It originated in France, as the "clarinette d'amour", and some of them must have made it to England.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 06:05 AM

Pipe organs have been used for accompaniment in our English cathedrals for centuries; smallish country churches used to have much unaccompanied singing before the church bands that you mention, Eliza, and relatively inexpensive harmoniums - the most portable of which came to be used by travelling preachers.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 06:18 AM

You got a metal Turkish G, Jack? I play one in my dreams! I use a nice old Eb alto (for the bottom end) and two old simple systems in C and Bb, albeit miltary pitch which seems work out around 39 cents sharp of concert, same as my Indian pocket trumpet. These latter have very wide bores, so nice for getting those Albanian kaba brays in the bottom end, though given the chops on those guys I doubt it would bother them what they play - like this guy Here, who looks like he's playing a full Boehm and sounding like a dream.

Here's a nice Turkish wooden G...

Otherwise, here's my C clarinet (and citera, doromb, bendir etc.) and some fruit lovely bats I filmed in the dark at Chester Zoo's free flying bat exhibit a couple of years back: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Z53_paumPlo.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 07:58 AM

Just got back from hols, logged in to find all and sundry still trying to persuade WAV he needs to accept some advice from people that know, including Eliza F. Carthy and still he persists, despite overwhelming evidence and well-intentioned direction from numerous individuals in this and other threads to ignore all of it.

For the real deal, check out Sugarfoot Jack, whose instinctive understanding of song and harmony is deeply rooted in the traditions of these islands.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 08:48 AM

WAV I could have accepted your last post except for your patronizing Eliza, a young woman of great talent wide knowledge and impeccable credentials in folk music. Perhaps you don't know you do it.

Read, edit, consider, before you post. Unless you wish to be rude



Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 11:38 AM

IB - you talk as if traditional English music is, and has always been, as free as American jazz...but, if true, we wouldn't have that body of songs/tunes that you just recommended I again dip into.

Ignorance rears it's ugly head again. Jazz has a large body of songs/tunes in it's tradition, much like folk music.
Mere playing of random notes does not jazz make, just like sticking fingers in ears and singing tunelessly is not folk music.
http://www.jazzstandards.com/

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 12:56 PM

I have heard of the harmonium. As described in an article I found on the internet, this is essentially what my wife owns. It's a reed organ. It stands upright like a small piano, and the air to operate the reeds is produced by pumping pedals. It's portable and can be collapsed into a box about the size of a foot locker. Similar to, but not exactly like, THIS. These instruments were very popular in small frontier churches and at traveling tent meetings. Barbara says she has never heard it referred to as anything but a "portable reed organ" or a "camp organ."

Genealogy:

The harmonium was invented in Paris in 1842 by Alexandre Debain, though there was concurrent development of similar instruments. Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein (1723-1795), Professor of Physiology at Copenhagen, was credited with the first free reed to be made in the western world after winning the annual prize in 1780 from the Imperial Academy of St.Petersburg.

I've never heard of it referred to as an "American reed organ." Maybe it's an English thing. . . .

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 01:25 PM

Here's a nice one on eBay. Makes a change from all the Indian ones anyway.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 02:00 PM

(Ebay link) That's an American Organ, not a harmonium - they can look very similar but it has a 'Vox Humana' stop on it, and that can only be achieved on a sucking, rather than a blowing 'system'. I don't think I could adequately describe how that work in words.. sorry. The sucking system was invented in America I think, but American Organs were sometimes manufactured outside America. I had a harmonium for years before I discovered it was an American Organ. I wasn't bitter.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Traddies Against Racism
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 02:06 PM

Makes a change from all the Indian ones anyway

Methinks WAVs odious influence is rubbing off here.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 02:21 PM

For the information of the ridiculously monickered "traddies against racism", eBay is flooded with modern Indian subcontinent-manufactured organ thingies, as you'd see immediately if you cared to take a look. I have one myself because getting hold of an original is like hunting for hen's teeth. This one is on at £50 but minutes before closure, the site will go bonkers as bidding goes higher and higher.

Obtaining an Indian one is far simpler.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 02:29 PM

Lovely, Diane!

Actually, Barbara has two reed organs, the portable that I previously described and another larger console that sits in our living room. Looks quite a bit like THIS.

Barbara's quite an accomplished pianist (Bach, Chopin, Debussy) and despite having the two reed organs, we don't have a piano, and she misses having one. I'd love to see her have something like a baby grand, and although we live in a fairly large apartment, unfortunately the rooms are such that we don't really have room for one. I'm encouraging her to look into electronic keyboards (something that can be folded up and put away, sort of like THIS), but she wants one with the standard eighty-eight full-sized keys and one that sounds as much as possible like a piano, without all the expensive features like drum machines and gizmos that make it possible to sound like a kazoo on steroids or Jimi Hendrix's electric guitar on overload, merely at the flip of a switch. Just piano is fine.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 02:30 PM

As far as I know, the 'Indian' ones were originally introduced there by missionaries from here, and by happy coincidence were very suitable for playing their music.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 02:47 PM

I've got a Yamaha electric piano that sounds just like a piano, really. At least I haven't yet discovered how to make it sound like Jimi Hendrix . . .

The only problem was getting used to the lightness of the keys, a bit like swapping an old manual typewriter for a modern computer keyboard. I once had a baby grand piano, a Broadwood someone gave me. It was just so vulgar. White with candlesticks. Yeuk. Had to go.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 03:51 PM

I know Yamaha makes a darn good regular piano, and I've heard that their electronic keyboards are pretty good. There are dozens of piano stores around Seattle and many of them also sell electronic keyboards.

I'd like to surprise Barbara (she has a birthday coming up), but that could be a bad way to go. I know she's kinda picky about what she wants as far as sound is concerned, and I know touch is most important (as a classic guitarist, I can understand that). So I'd better not try to surprise her. Just encourage her to pick out one that works for her.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 03:53 PM

Don - take a look at Roland keyboards; excellent feel and sound.

http://www.rolandus.com/products/productlist.aspx?ParentId=87

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 04:41 PM

"but she wants one with the standard eighty-eight full-sized keys and one that sounds as much as possible like a piano, without all the expensive features like drum machines and gizmos that make it possible to sound like a kazoo on steroids or Jimi Hendrix's electric guitar on overload, merely at the flip of a switch. Just piano is fine" (Don)...I looked in vain for one with the voice of a concertina, but the inexpensive Yamaha I chose does have the accordion and many other sounds that are fun to try occasionally as I practise my repertoire - although it's mostly on organ for hymns, and piano for folk.
"As far as I know, the 'Indian' ones were originally introduced there by missionaries from here, and by happy coincidence were very suitable for playing their music." (Smokey)...yes, Indian musicians like the hand-pumped ones - playing just the tune with the other; for what it's worth, I play just the tune with 2 hands, and would like to try a foot-pumped one, one day...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 05:09 PM

Insane Beard: your YouTube links don't communicate much to me at the moment ad the only computer in the house capable of playing them is terminally bust. But for this one

: Here's a nice Turkish wooden G...

I would guess the player you have in mind is either Selim Sesler or Husnu Seslendirici, who are both stunningly good. I've tried a wooden G in an Istanbul shop and was tempted, but not quite enough considering the price

Look for a duet on YouTube between Husnu Seslendirici and the violinist Canan Leslie Anderson. There are substantial non-musical reasons for watching it...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 05:17 PM

Thanks, Smokey. I'll check them out.

(I think I'm in way over my head. . . .)

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Will Fly
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 05:49 PM

Here's a YouTube vid of my Edwardian, English-made harmonium. Vox Humana on the stops is, unfortunately, not working. The video's a guitar & harmonium duet...
Love's Old Sweet Song

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 07:00 PM

Will - If it's got a Vox Humana, it's an American Organ - wherever it was made. (As in French horns which have been made in China) Vox Humana isn't a sound of its own though, it's a sort of shimmering effect brought about by the air-blown rotation of a thing on a long spindle that I can't quite describe. The VH stop won't make a sound on its own.

Don - You won't go far wrong with Roland or Yamaha, not much to choose between them price or quality-wise. The Roland tone tends to be fuller/richer than Yamaha, who score when it comes to brightness/top-end. They both do a full range from minimal looking studio keyboards up to front-parlour instruments that are more like furniture.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Tootler
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 11:23 PM

Yamaha call their electric pianos "Clavinova" The have a full range 7.5 octave full size keyboard and the keys are weighted to simulate the feel of piano keys. Not being a pianist, I do not know exactly how they feel, though I have known know people who have them. I have also heard them played - they sound pretty good.

Google "Yamaha Clavinova" for more info and you will get plenty of relevant hits. I am UK based, so Google brings up UK based sites for me. So it is better if you Google yourself rather than I post links.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 12:20 AM

Great! Thank you, Tootler.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Will Fly
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 04:57 AM

Hi Smokey - the "thing" on a spindle, as you say, is a little paddle which spins round to create the shimmering sound. The metal label on the harmonium gives a firm in North London - but that could equally be a distributor as much as a maker. I'll check further. The beast was a chapel harmonium in Birmingham (UK, not Alabama!).

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 05:47 AM

I don't play, but I've been around Rolands and Yamahas, the keys indeed are weighted. Couldn't tell the diference myself.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 06:04 AM

...either way, I just enjoyed hearing "the beast", Will Fly; going back to some earlier beasts, it's interesting to note, as Shakespeare did in Hamlet, the similarities in the workings of the pipe organ and the recorder/"little organ": one has many fippled pipes of varied length, the other is one - with an effective-length varied via covering holes..."Govern these ventages with your fingers and thumb, give it breath with your mouth, and it will discourse most eloquent music...?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 06:40 AM

WAV - you talk about the linking of English folk to English nationalism

First you attempt to construct a fantasy of national identity, then you attempt to link it with rigidly constrained definitions of existing cultural expression, harking back to a "purer" past. This serves both to bolster the legitimacy of the fantasy and to define parameters which mean that a large number of people belong, and a smaller group do not. Moving on you then use the newly defined cultural aspects to make the smaller group seem more different and increasingly less sympathetic, identifying them as the cause of the "weakening" of national identity and the reason why these days the nation is less "English" than in the past.

These are exactly the methods the Nazis employed. They had their definition of good German music and identified "foreign" artistic elements as corrupting and non-German. Step-by-step these seemingly small efforts helped to lead to the unthinkable becoming thinkable.

Isolation, whether cultural or physical, breeds mistrust and stagnation, and eventually leads to inbreeding which would mean an end to the nation you say you want to preserve. The world you describe is limited, dull, uninspired and hateful - a world in your image perhaps? Certainly it seems to have little in common with the richly diverse & vibrant culture of England which was founded on migration, interaction and cultural exchange.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 06:41 AM

Sorry - last post was me

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 06:52 AM

Watching EC and the Ratccatchers on youtube, I think that singing a song like The Good Old Way in one's sweet/sunday best voice would rob it of it's urgency and driving force.

Here is an interesting article on 'regulationism', from one of your favourite sources.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulative_principle_of_worship
You wouldn't be singing anything from Hymns Ancient and Modern if they had their way!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 07:03 AM

Don Firth:
: I've never heard of it referred to as an "American reed organ."
: Maybe it's an English thing. . . .

You mean nobody's yet told you IT'S YOUR NATIONAL INSTRUMENT and you ought to be playing one, with a repertoire comprising "America the Beautiful", "American Patrol", "American Pie" and "Born in the USA"?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 12:09 PM

I hate imperialism (be it Nazi, Victorian, or any other) and love our world being multicultural, Woody.
Volgadon: that "regulative principle" is NOT among the proposed regulationsim in my life's work - however, some of the nationalisation and regulations that we are suddenly hearing from "world leaders" is.
Don: I look forward to HEARING your recordings of those American songs - if you can get the (c) i.e.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 12:37 PM

By gum, this thread gets boring sometimes. I could listen to the likes of Jack and Sedayne and EFC all day, but what's anyone supposed to make of all this?


16/4/08: "I do love our world being multicultural"
23/9/08: "I love our WORLD being multicultural."
2/10/08: "I love the world being multicultural"
12/10/08: "I hate imperialism (be it Nazi, Victorian, or any other) and love our world being multicultural"


18/4/08: "whilst nationalism with conquest IS bad, nationalism with eco-travel and fair-trade (via the UN) is good for humanity"
18/9/08: "nationalism with conquest IS bad; but nationalism with eco-travel and fair-trade, via a stonger UN, is good for humanity"
19/9/08: "I mean nationalism WITHOUT imperialism and WITH eco-travel and fair-trade between nations, via a stronger UN"
6/10/08: "Again: 'nationalism with conquest is bad; but nationalism with eco-travel and fair-trade is good for humanity'"
8/10/08: "'Nationalism with conquest IS bad; but nationalism with eco-travel and fair-trade (via the UN) is good for humanity' (me)"


18/4/08: "I think I'm Left-wing, and that questioning economic-immigration/emigration ... plus loving the world being multicultural, is actually a Left- NOT Right-wing attitude/policy."
18/9/08: "there IS a difference between racism and questioning immigration"
26/9/08: "That's the questioning of immigration/emigration ... NOT racism"
27/9/08: "it's the act of immigration/emigration itself that I keep questioning"
2/10/08: "I love the world being multicultural; you hate anyone questioning immigration"
2/10/08: "I'm Left Wing, and the questioning of economic/capitalist immigration/emigration is a Left NOT Right Wing attitude"


That's from this thread alone. I think I'll find another thread to talk about music on.

Subject: RE: Yorkshire's National Musical-Instrument?
From: peregrina
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 01:01 PM

If the banjo is God's banjo (see the recent thread)


and Yorkshire is God's own country


then

the banjo must be the national instrument of Yorkshire

(please excuse all logical fallacies, not just the undistributed middle!)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 01:11 PM

I hate imperialism (be it Nazi, Victorian, or any other) and love our world being multicultural, Woody.

Would you consider imperialism as the imposing of a set of ideas or culture?

Volgadon: that "regulative principle" is NOT among the proposed regulationsim in my life's work

But where do you stop once you start regulating everything?

- however, some of the nationalisation and regulations that we are suddenly hearing from "world leaders" is.

Please be SPECIFIC. I want to know which world leaders, which nationalisation and which regulations.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 01:12 PM

Pip - it's because the likes of you and Woody keep going off-topic and leaving me no choice but to respond.
Here's my, on-thread, post just before Woody's re-accusation:
...either way, I just enjoyed hearing "the beast", Will Fly; going back to some earlier beasts, it's interesting to note, as Shakespeare did in Hamlet, the similarities in the workings of the pipe organ and the recorder/"little organ": one has many fippled pipes of varied length, the other is one - with an effective-length varied via covering holes..."Govern these ventages with your fingers and thumb, give it breath with your mouth, and it will discourse most eloquent music...?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 01:39 PM

I hate imperialism (be it Nazi, Victorian, or any other) and love our world being multicultural, Woody.

Would you consider imperialism as the imposing of a set of ideas or culture?

Volgadon: that "regulative principle" is NOT among the proposed regulationsim in my life's work

But where do you stop once you start regulating everything?

- however, some of the nationalisation and regulations that we are suddenly hearing from "world leaders" is.

Please be SPECIFIC. I want to know which world leaders, which nationalisation and which regulations.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: peregrina
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 01:39 PM

No sense of humour!? I thought the idea of a national instrument was a joke.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 01:42 PM

OOPS, forgot italics.

I hate imperialism (be it Nazi, Victorian, or any other) and love our world being multicultural, Woody.

Would you consider imperialism as the imposing of a set of ideas or culture?

Volgadon: that "regulative principle" is NOT among the proposed regulationsim in my life's work

But where do you stop once you start regulating everything?

- however, some of the nationalisation and regulations that we are suddenly hearing from "world leaders" is.

Please be SPECIFIC. I want to know which world leaders, which nationalisation and which regulations.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: peregrina
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 01:54 PM

What is the point of arguing here seriously? You --now, I too, so, we-- just add the oxygen of publicity.

One of the most sinister organizations in US history was discredited by satire (see the index of Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point for the story of the KKK being undermined by a cartoonist)

In the interests of deflating the bad odour of this thread, I challenge readers to answer this: of what polity is the 'national musical instrument' a fart cushion?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 03:06 PM

Yeah, Jack, here I am, well into the august state of geezerhood, and nobody ever told me! I've been living in abject ignorance all my life and transgressing horribly on the limits of cultural boundaries with my singing of songs and ballads other than what I heard in my immediated surroundings on Oak Knoll Avenue in Pasadena back before I was ten years old. Mea culpa! Mea maxima culpa! Oh, woe! Oh, remose! Oh, guilt! Sack cloth! Ashes!

But one of the things I did hear back then was a radio program called "The American School of the Air," and one of the programs was Alan Lomax's program on American folk music (I had no idea who Alan Lomax was until ten or fifteen years later). They had other music programs as well, featuring the folk music of all lands, particularly English-speaking countries (I heard a lot of Irish songs sung by John McCormack, Scottish comic songs sung by Harry Lauder, and various somgs by many other singers). So this undoubtedly how my education became muddled and I was led into the sin and transgression of singing songs like Jock o'Braidesley, Dick Darby the Cobbler, and David of the White Rock. But how was I to know??

Well, David, I guess you'd rather not hear me sing any of the songs that audiences have been expecting and requesting of me since I first began singing for audiences back in the mid-1950s, such as the aforementioned, or standard, classic songs and ballads such as Greensleeves, Barbara Allen, Lord Randal, Early One Morning, The Braes of Yarrow, or any of the others that I have been singing for years in coffeehouses, clubs, in concert, and on television and radio.

You see, David, a large part of the problem with the American songs that you want me to sing exclusively is that—well, take The Streets of Laredo for example:   it, like many Americans such as myself, have Old World forebears. It is an English song, The Dying Soldier's Lament, modified slightly to fit new circumstances. And this is only one of a huge list of such songs. The vast majority of "American" folk songs have a similar genealogy.

And I think you will find, should you be motivated to look, that many of the folk songs of your "good English culture" can be traced back in a similar manner to immigrant songs—songs that originally came from other cultures. I had a friend who did a term paper on English folk ballads, and he found in his wide-ranging research that many of the same songs he encountered in Francis James Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads had counterparts all over Europe—particularly in the Scandinavian countries.

So if I should be limited to singing only the songs of my own culture, then the question arises:   What is my culture?

True, I am an American. But what does that mean? Am I Californian? That's where I was born. Am I a Washingtonian? I have lived most of my life in Seattle, Washington. But my father's grandfather was Scottish and my mother's parents were Swedish. Living in a city as I do, and have most of my life, I don't hear much indigeonous folk music unless I deliberately seek it out on recordings and specific radio stations--or go to places where folk music, specifically, is performed.

You see, unless I actively seek it out, folk music itself is not an integral part of the culture in which I live.

And what of the matter of regional accents? There are many regional accents in the United States. In two boroughs of New York City, one can distinguish between the accents of someone who grew up in Brooklyn and someone who grew up in The Bronx. In the South, the accent you hear in Louisiana is not the same as the accent you hear in Georgia. Texas, Kansas, North Dakota, Montana, all have different accents to someone whose ear is tuned to regional accents.

And what about me? I took broadcasting training and worked many years as a radio announcer and newscaster. My broadcast training included the purging of regional accents to be replaced by a sort of "standard English" (which is to say, standard American English). The result is that I'm quite sure that neither Professor Henry Higgins nor Zoltan Karpathy could tell what part of the United States I live—or lived—in.

Add to this that, if I do say so myself, I am a talented mimic, and by listening carefully and doing a bit of practice, I can do accents quite well. I consider this a part of my art. After all, in addition to being a ballad scholar, I am an entertainer.

If you don't want to listen to me do anything but American songs, I guess I can come up with a few "Possum up a gum stump" ditties for you. But to do those, I would have to adopt an accent which comes, perhaps, even less naturally to me than adopting a Scottish accent.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 04:42 PM

Re. weighted keys: Roland tend to have a heavier action than Yamaha - more like what is known as a 'German action' in a real piano. I'd recommend your wife tries them both at some length to be sure of getting what she wants. The difference is far more significant to an experienced pianist than to a beginner, obviously.

Will - I'd be interested to know what you find out about your organ, it looks and sounds rather nice. I was going to suggest de-fluffing its innards to try and get you Vox Humana going but it sounds as if you already had it to bits. It's a little known fact that, like carrots in vomit, harmonium (ahem, reed-organ) fluff always contains a small quantity of pubic hair.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 05:10 PM

Thank you ever so much for that bit of trivia, Smokey. If I thought that nothing on this thread could be more revolting than Wav's ideology, then I was wrong.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 05:11 PM

I hate to be outdone :-)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,eliza f c
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 06:22 PM

What I am trying to get across to you D, is that there are naturally many, many ways of doing things both in the wider world and in the smaller sphere of one nation, or the even smaller sphere of different regions.
People will and always have used whatever is around them to play music, and they will always take up a new technology, a new idea, when it comes along, be it polyphony or an organ. That's how people work. To seek to restrict a nation to one style, that may have been around two hundred years ago but probably wasn't widespread is folly. How far back do you want to go? Banging rocks together? Likewise to restrict the music to a single line is historically wrong in a lot of geographical and social instances if you want to be accurate.
If you just want to sing a single line then go ahead, but leave off telling everyone else your perceived "right" way to do it. It's just your way, because of your own predilections. It's good to have a cause. Serve it better.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 06:25 PM

Peregrina - of course you're correct. Hence I'm off to live in WAV's England....

Everybody here drinks mead, eats pottage, believes in Jesus & sings in aussie accents. Nobody ever goes anywhere, learns anything, or ever changes. We all look the same, with reassuringly white skin and play all the latest tunes on our pipes & recorders. Anybody attempting any new or different music is either re-programmed, or stripped of their nationality and shipped out of the country never to return.

We have a fine education system which produces university graduates with no sign of any analytical reasoning skills but they can drive a forklift and write really bad poetry. All non-local issues are dealt with by the UN who also forcibly evict anybody attempting to live anywhere other than where they were born.

I've got my pig's bladder, clogs, jags and bubonic plague and with a bit of luck somebody will play the cittern while the barber cuts my leg off.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 06:29 PM

Eliza FC - that's got a good ring to it! Name of the next album perhaps? Should lead to some interesting interviews as you explain the name.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 06:32 AM

"in my immediated surroundings on Oak Knoll Avenue in Pasadena" (Don)...

Poem 38 of 230: THE TOURNAMENT OF ROSES

During my last morning in L.A.,
    I watched on a hotel-room T.V.,
Live from the town of Pasadena,
    The Tournament of Roses display.

Perfectionism was on the go,
    And it seemed little expense was spared,
As floats covered in flowers went by -
    Giving a neat but fleeting show.

Yet, catching the bus to the airport,
    I saw the homeless dragging their sacks,
Or begging for cash on street corners,
    And thought: "Housing could have been bought."

From walkaboutsverse.741.com

"If you don't want to listen to me do anything but American songs, I guess I can come up with a few "Possum up a gum stump" ditties for you" (Don)...I know, from the above visit, there are, sadly (see "Green Godly Gardening" thread; or myspace blog, via above link), many such exotic trees in California - but I didn't know you had possums nor songs about their whereabouts?!

Speaking of "possums", Eliza f c (p being interchangeable with f in some lands): as I write, I have Mire ri Moir, BBC Gaelic radio, on - it's mostly unaccompanied singing, some instrumentals, and the occasional combination of the two, and the quality is as good as anything I've heard. This is how I'd like folk radio to be in our country; and we should remember that at some folk clubs and festivals in England it is indeed like this - i.e., singing sessions, instrumental sessions (mostly folks playing just the tune), and occasionally combinging them; suchlike on a far larger scale and I'll stop at least some of my whinging.

Not so much of the Aussie accent, Woody - I've spent hours listening to Brendan Foster and Steve Cram calling athletics; "Nobody ever goes anywhere, learns anything, or ever changes"...for the rest of my travels and studies, please use above link; and I've never mentioned skin colour - in anthropology, we were taught NOT to refer to people in terms of colour (in agreement, in this case, with the American way of "African American", e.g.).

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 06:59 AM

"and occasionally combinging (sic) them; suchlike on a far larger scale and I'll stop at least some of my whinging."

Cease thy whinging my antipodean pal as they are already doing it.

I know any advice offered is often ignored but take some and go and see Bellowhead. Then realise the error of your ways and come and join the party.*

*Then go and see Michael McGoldrick and see the best player of Irish flute (amongst other things . . .) in the world who was born in Manchester.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,baz parkes
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 07:36 AM

I've got a bit lost now...what was the bit about figure skaters about?

And any congregation i've ever sat in has never sang one tune. Not intentionally, anyway

Just out of interest, has the 5000 morris dancers post reached 5000?

and Greg Stephens is still a great bloke. That Eliza Carthy,what does she know,eh? I've stood next to Ralph Jordan at loads of parties

That should cover it for a bit. Isn't it time someone entioned Seth Lakeman or Show of Hands...

I really must get a job...

Baz

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 07:50 AM

Not so much of the Aussie accent, Woody - I've spent hours listening to Brendan Foster and Steve Cram calling athletics

WAV, trust me - you sound as Australian now as you ever have. In this respect in attempting to delude everyone else you are only deluding yourself. Most people can at least sing beyond their own accents, not so yourself however. In trying to be anything else other than what you are you will, at last, end up being nothing at all - nothing real anyway. You are sacrificing your essential human and cultural Australian-English uniqueness for the sake of a bogus version of an Englishness that is neither one thing nor the other. At least the transexual has something aim for; but one is increasingly reminded of the barely human mask that is Michael Jackson.

American's can't do English either; just listen to Dick Van Dyke, or more recently the actors who play the members of Seattle's English community on Frasier.

and I've never mentioned skin colour - in anthropology, we were taught NOT to refer to people in terms of colour (in agreement, in this case, with the American way of "African American", e.g.).

In other words, WAV - you are very careful in your choice of banal euphemism, but in saying things like England was a more English place 50 years ago and English culture is taking a hammering and even I love the WORLD being multicultural etc. it's obvious to everyone what your true feelings are on the matter. When asked to account for such statements, you refuse to answer or elaborate, simply because if you weren't racist, none of it would be an issue in the first place.

Instead of wasting time in the risible pursuit of trying to effect an accent which is not your own, you really should be doing some serious soul searching about the your racism and taking steps to curb such wretched enthusiasms before it gets you into serious bother.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 10:05 AM

WAV, having been exposed to British and Aussie accents since childhood (the world truly being multicultural) I must say that had you not LOUDLY proclaimed your Englishness, then I would never have guessed it from your accent.

I've listened to hours upon hours of various british accents, more than you, probably, often just to LEARN about the various accents, but my accent is not English. Just isn't.

In speaking a foreign language I try to mimic the sounds as closely as possible, but I still don't sound Russian. Polish, Ukrainian, Odessan and son of Russian immigrants is closest I've got.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 11:11 AM

Stigweard - Further to my last post, "I have Mire ri Moir, BBC Gaelic radio, on - it's mostly unaccompanied singing, some instrumentals, and the occasional combination of the two, and the quality is as good as anything I've heard. This is how I'd like folk radio to be in our country; and we should remember that at some folk clubs and festivals in England it is indeed like this - i.e., singing sessions, instrumental sessions (mostly folks playing just the tune), and occasionally combinging them"...one problem is that so many English folkies now prefer to perform other nations songs and tunes, at such events.
"Not so much of the Aussie accent, Woody - I've spent hours listening to Brendan Foster and Steve Cram calling athletics" (me)..."WAV, trust me - you sound as Australian now as you ever have." (IB)...I was being somewhat lighthearted there, but to be precise, I think I now have the mixed accent of an English repat; we seem to agree on Dick Van Dyke's "Cockney"; however, some American actors can do an English accent well, and vice verse...ever been to the Peoples' Theatre in Newcastle?
The rest of what you said is false and defamatory, again - you are confusing the questioning of immigration with racism; and I must therefore repeat that I do love the world being multicultural. Further, your constant insistence that I am Australian rather than English borders on the very thing you accuse me of...as well as being born here, I have lived here a total of 15 years now.
And to Volgadon as well - as suggested, I accept that some are better at accents than I, but it's good that, as a repatriate rather than a visitor, I've made an effort. Also, it's a fact that I started life with a northern English accent, having learnt to walk and talk in Manchester - see here if you wish.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Joseph P
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 11:27 AM

I dont think its a case of being better at an accent, or indeed being better at performing your national culture. Maybe you are being over-competitive in this area, part of the Australian in you, perhaps?

There are plently of mainly 'English' sessions going on where I live, as well as mainly Irish & Northumbrian, mainly Acoustic and other sessions. It is not the case that the Irish session is threatening to take over the English one, or anything like that, they co-exist happily. Can you see a problem with this? If all the sessions became 'English only' then would you be happier, and if so would you be happy with the loss of variation? Why?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 11:42 AM

Why is it good that you are trying to sound fake? At least when the Beatles put on accents they did so for fun.
You don't like the world being multicultural, you like the world being a lot of different MONOcultures. France only does French things, Germany only German, quaint African and Indian natives only doing native things.
There are Pakistanis who are more English tna you ever will be, as they have lived in England for 40 years, wheareas you have only been there for a decade. Only following your logic.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 12:01 PM

Go and see Bellowhead WAV - you won't regret it.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 12:14 PM

The rest of what you said is false and defamatory, again - you are confusing the questioning of immigration with racism; and I must therefore repeat that I do love the world being multicultural

House!

No, wait, he didn't say "nationalism with eco-travel and fair trade". My mistake.

Seriously, David, if somebody disagrees with what you've said, making EXACTLY THE SAME POINT in EXACTLY THE SAME WORDS is not likely to persuade them to come round to your point of view. Besides, it gets very boring when someone keeps making EXACTLY THE SAME POINT in EXACTLY THE SAME WORDS. Not only that, it gets very boring when someone keeps making EXACTLY THE SAME POINT in EXACTLY THE SAME WORDS. And if you don't agree with me, let me just point out that it gets very boring when someone keeps making EXACTLY THE SAME POINT in EXACTLY THE SAME WORDS.

(That's three. You're up to five "love the world being multicultural"s on this thread alone.)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 12:31 PM

"I dont think its a case of being better at an accent, or indeed being better at performing your national culture. Maybe you are being over-competitive in this area, part of the Australian in you, perhaps?" (Joseph)...who?...I just said: "as suggested, I accept that some are better at accents than I, but it's good that, as a repatriate rather than a visitor, I've made an effort". And, as said here, while some Scots and Irish are, of course, performing the music of other nations, the percentages are nowhere near that of English folkies - whether or not you think that's a bad thing.
Stigweard - what I've heard from Bellowhead on radio is too heavy for me: I prefer the accompaniment of English folk songs to be light or non-existent; thus, I have, rather, enjoyed some of the "Songs" and "Tunes" of Spiers and Boden - despite having had cyber-arguments with one of them, also, on some of the above matters.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 12:35 PM

one problem is that so many English folkies now prefer to perform other nations songs and tunes, at such events.

If it is the preference of English folkies to do so, then just how exactly is it a problem?

but to be precise, I think I now have the mixed accent of an English repat

You can think it all you like but you sound as Australian as your speech idioms. And the corks dangling around your hat are a bit of a giveaway too...

ever been to the Peoples' Theatre in Newcastle?

Let me see - a concert of Indian Classical Music in 1979, also saw Schoenberg's Pierriot Lunaire round about the same time, which was amazing - Gemini was the ensemble though I forget the name of the soprano. Saw Anthony Braxton there once, and best of all - Don Cherry's Nu around 1988.

The rest of what you said is false and defamatory, again

Answer me this - in what way is saying England was a more English place 50 years ago coupled with such choice phrases as English culture is taking a hammering and I love the WORLD being multicultural not racist?

you are confusing the questioning of immigration with racism

Not at all. You are questioning immigration because you are a racist. If you weren't a racist, you'd be happily getting on with your life and enjoying culture as and where and in whatever form you found it instead of perpetuating your absurdly idiosyncratic and extremely xenophobic myths about Our Own Good Culture.

and I must therefore repeat that I do love the world being multicultural

You usually capitalise WORLD, WAV, to emphasise the implication that you hate other cultures and ethnicities living in England. Why? Because English culture is taking a hammering and when people lose their culture, society suffers. As many times as I ask you account for this, but you never have. Examples!!! Facts!!! Figures!!! How is it taking a hammering? How is society suffering?

Further, your constant insistence that I am Australian rather than English borders on the very thing you accuse me of...

Bollocks, WAV - you were raised in Australia from the age of three for fuck's sake. You grew up in Australia - a land of colonial culture and immigration; there you were naturalised, there you were educated, and there you became a man. That's where you became what you are - you can't undo that, much less be in any way convincing by pretending to be English.

as well as being born here, I have lived here a total of 15 years now.

So by that logic you believe you are as English as an average 18-year-old I suppose? 15 adult years doesn't mean too much in terms of personal growth and development, especially to someone so resolutely stuck in the past as you are - no longer writing, no longer learning new songs, still pushing the same old shit your wrote years ago. You're hardly Mr Growth and Flexibility are you, WAV?

as a repatriate rather than a visitor, I've made an effort.

Sometimes people lose their natural accents as a matter of course; other times they might become stronger when they move away. I knew a Geordie who lived 20 years in the Philippines and came back sounding stronger than ever he did, despite being fluent in Tagalog for the sake of his kids.

Also, it's a fact that I started life with a northern English accent, having learnt to walk and talk in Manchester

What is this Northern English Accent you speak of? You think they talk the same in Manchester as they do in Newcastle? What about Preston and Liverpool? Or Sunderland and Hartlepool? Or Chorley and Burnley? Seghill and Delaval? Blyth and Bebside? Shiremoor and Backworth? I think they walk different in Manchester too, but that's another issue, perhaps...

Why try to be what you're so obviously not? Why can't you embrace the idea that being English does not preclude you having an Australian accent or yet being a naturalised Australian? At times it seems you're so xenophobic you even hate yourself, which really isn't a good thing.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 01:20 PM

"I have, rather, enjoyed some of the "Songs" and "Tunes" of Spiers and Boden - despite having had cyber-arguments with one of them, also, on some of the above matters."

There's a shocker. Bet I can guess which one. And, seeing the intelligent and erudite way in which he has responded to bullshit criticism in the past from people a lot cleverer than you, I bet he whupped yo ass.

(That was me being American, by the way.)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 01:34 PM

Most of that's another R-word, ridiculous, IB...so, going with the flow, I'll just address this bit "And the corks dangling around your hat are a bit of a giveaway too..." crikey/blimey mate/pal...I've only got one thing a-dangling off my hat - a strap, attached by a chap on that West-End Newcastle road where they have all the motorbike shops, designed with stong westerly winds in mind.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 01:35 PM

I think they walk different in Manchester too, but that's another issue, perhaps...

But not as different as they do t'other side of the Irwell. Some men doing the Salford Shuffle...:

Who's Gonna Step On Who Again?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 01:39 PM

Seeing that WAV has argued his case with the finest English trad musicians ever but still insist that he's correct about the whole top-line thing, it's possible he's right and we're all wrong?*

Right, I'm off to play my Irish bouzouki.


*I specifically mean about the music - I'm avoid the rest of the debate in this case.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 01:48 PM

And, as said here (the obligatory link to the life's work), while some Scots and Irish are, of course, performing the music of other nations, the percentages are nowhere near that of English folkies - whether or not you think that's a bad thing.


At randomn, I picked Planxty, an Irish group. Let's analyze their track list.

The Black Album.
1)"Raggle Taggle Gypsy/Tabhair Dom Do Lámh" (traditional)
The tune is Irish, but the song is Scottish.
2)"Arthur McBride" (traditional)
Printed in an English broadside, IIRC, with probable Scottish antecedents.
3)"Planxty Irwin" (Turlough O'Carolan)
Irish, but with old Italian pop influences.
4)"Sweet Thames Flow Softly" (Ewan MacColl)
A modern song by a Scott from England.
5)"Junior Crehan's Favourite/Corney is Coming" (traditional reels)
6)"The West Coast of Clare" (Andy Irvine)
A modern song written by a man born in England to irish and Scottish parents.
7)"The Jolly Beggar" (traditional reel)
A Scottish song.
8)"Only Our Rivers" (Mickey McConnell)
Modern Irish song.
9)"Sí Bheag, Sí Mhór" (Turlough O'Carolan)
See #3.
10)"Follow Me Up to Carlow" (traditional)
Irish, but written in the early 1900s.
11)"Merrily Kissed the Quaker" (traditional slide)
Is it Irish?
12)"The Blacksmith" (traditional)
English!!!!!

The Well in the Valley
1)"Cúnla"
Irish.
2)"Pat Reilly"
A northern Irish song.
3)"The Kid on the Mountain"/"An Phis Fhliuch" (slip jigs)
Irish.
4)"As I Roved Out"
Irish.
5)"The Dogs Among the Bushes"/"Jenny's Wedding" (reels)
Irish.
6)"The Well Below the Valley"
An old Child ballad from England based on a very popular European storyline.
7)"Hewlett"
Irish.
8)"Bean Pháidin"
Irish.
9)"The Fisherman's Lilt"/"Cronin's Hornpipe" (hornpipes)
Irish.
10)"As I Roved Out"
An English song, but also found in Northern Ireland.
11)"Humours of Baliloughlin"
Irish.
12)"Time Will Cure Me"
Written by Andy Irvine.

Cold Blow and the Haily Night
1)"Johnny Cope"
A Scottish song.
2)"Dennis Murphy's Polka"/"The 42 Pound Cheque"/"John Ryan's Polka" (polkas)
Irish, but modern, IIRC.
3)"Cold Blow And The Rainy Night"
English, from the West Country.
4)"'P' Stands For Paddy, I Suppose"
Found all over Britain and Ireland.
5)"The Old Torn Petticoat"/"The Dublin Reel"/"The Wind That Shakes The Barley" (reels)
6)"Baneasa's Green Glade"
Written by Andy Irvine about his Balkan experiences.
7)"Mominsko Horo"
Folk dance from the Balkans.
8)"The Lakes Of Pontchartrain"
An American song learned by an Irish capitalistic immigrant in 1905. Christy Moore learned it from the Mike Waterson.
9)"The Hare In The Corn"/"The Frost Is All Over"/"The Gander In The Pratie Hole" (jigs)
10)"The Green Fields of Canada"
Irish.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 02:01 PM

I would go so far as to suggest that someone like Luke Daniels, an English musician whose work is largely rooted in Irish music, might have a much higher profile and get more bookings if he played English music and was part of the young English folk scene.

He does some great outreach work, too:

Gael Music

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 02:21 PM

I agree with most of what you say, IB, but you did miss something.

"American's can't do English either; just listen to Dick Van Dyke, or more recently the actors who play the members of Seattle's English community on Frasier."

Just because Dick Van Dyke can't do an English accent for sour owl jowls doesn't mean that lots of other Americans can't. And as far as Frasier is concerned, if you are under the impression that Daphne had a phony English accent, then let me point out that the role of Daphne was played by Jane Leeves who is English. She came from Essex, to be exact.

Daphne was supposed to have been from Manchester. On an episode or two, Daphne's mother did appear. She was played by British actress Millicent Martin, who was from Manchester. There were occasional appearances by Daphne's bar fly father, played by Brian Cox, a British actor born in Scotland, and her three brothers, played by Anthony LaPaglia from Australia, Richard E. Grant from Swaziland, and Robbie Coltrane from Scotland. Not an American actor in the whole family.

There may have been a few American actors in the "English pub in the U. S." episode, the place where Daphne liked to hang out in her off hours (the one in which Frasier butted in and was doing his damnedest to fit in and "act English," much to Daphne's irritation, and generally made an ass of himself), but as I recall, other than Jane Leeves and Kelsey Grammer, the rest consisted of bit-parts. And that was only one episode out of a program that ran for some eleven seasons.

By the way, I have seen English actors on dramas that the American Public Broadcasting System gets from the BBC and other British sources for such series' as Masterpiece Theatre playing Americans, but who can't do an American accent worth a damn (and again I say, there are many different American accents). Some do it quite well. But unfortunately, many of them think that all they need to do is talk through their noses and say "Aw reckon" a lot.

The ability to do accents other than one's own convincingly is an individual talent. Some people have it, some don't.

You are right about David though. He sounds like an Aussie.

No, David, I'm not saying that there were (are) possums in Pasadena (Hmm! There's a possible song there! "Possums in Pasadena"). Nor was I aware of any gum trees in my neighborhood, but that was many decades ago. I left the area before I was ten years old.

But David, you certainly do have an amazing knack for dodging the main issue raised by someone's post and fixating on the inconsequential. A rather transparent tactic of evasion.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 02:35 PM

...when I do answer the repeats, Don, I do repeatedly get accused of repetition.
Also, while Stigweard is off playing his Greek bouzouki, may I ask, other than Michael Tyack, who is playing the wire-strung, 5 times 2 course, elusive English cittern?...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 02:56 PM

My name is Dave & you may think me depraved
but I'm a Mancunian Geordie from Aus
Lived here 15 years
Didn't notice the English drink beer
but I'll tell you how to live now because

You're all suitably cowed when I read my mighty poems out loud
& when I tell of my impressive credentials
My life's work is done
Shakespeare 0 Dave 1
(though it's possible I've gone a bit mental)

Forget Beatles, forget Rock, forget Punk, forget Trance
forget any music that made your heart dance
forget that Folk's about people having a good time
we'll do it my way now, right down the line

No skill, no talent, no creative new ground
Just the same song in the same way every time it comes round
Yes it may become boring
Yes I'm anal & sad
But at least my singing can't become any more bad

So pack up those guitars, those fiddles, that box
popular music's now out of order
you can all sit around
and bathe in the sound
of my grade 1 skill on recorder

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 03:13 PM

David, do you evade the point deliberately, or do you just don't get it?

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 03:21 PM

Richard E. Grant in Frasier? Must have missed that one!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 03:53 PM

I assume that Stigweard is playing the Irish bouzouki, which bears little resemblence to the Greek one and which is pretty much the same as the cittern you loove so well?

IB, I think you must have ment the Americans who tried to put on English airs, like the other radio guy.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Gervase
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 04:31 PM

Why are we still having our strings pulled by some fake Englishman who's ashamed of his own birthright?
The man's an attention-seeking dullard with absolutely nothing intelligent or original to add to the sum of human knowledge - just let the thread die, for Pete's sake.
If this poodle-faker were mildly autistic I'd be sympathetic, but I fear he's just very arrogant; an arrogance matched only by his ignorance.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 04:56 PM

I'm trying to imagine a 5 x 2 course instrument. It's a five course instrument. with 2 strings per course. Or if you like a 2 x 5 course instrument which sounds like a ceiling joist

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 05:01 PM

[Sigh...] Just call me Radish Melba.

when I do answer the repeats, Don, I do repeatedly get accused of repetition.

This is either dishonest or stupid. You've been accused of repetition because, when you're challenged to justify or explain a statement you've made, you reply by repeating the same statement. It's a bit like this (entirely imaginary) dialogue between Mr A and Mr B:

A: "I say, B, your views are jolly well racist, that's what they are."
B: "That's false and defamatory, I love the world being multicultural."
A: "So what? Whether you love the world being multicultural has nothing to do with whether you've got racist views."
B: "But my views aren't racist - I'm just questioning immigration."
A: "The point is, you're questioning immigration on racist grounds."
B: "That's false and defamatory. I'm no racist - after all, I love the world being multicultural."

(At this point Mr A had the good sense to give up.)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 05:06 PM

Some claim Gervase.

I doubt anybody could summon enough arrogance to match WAV's ignorance. After all he was born in Manchester so he thinks he should put on a fake geordie accent because he's "a northerner!" That's ignorance of olympian proportions. Like me saying "I was born in London so I'll put on a French accent because they're both in Europe". Well Calais is a closer to London than Manchester is to Newcastle! What a tosser.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 05:34 PM

When I sing a Scottish song with a Scottish accent or an Irish song with an Irish accent (I find that for most English songs, I don't need to adopt any accent at all, I just sing them), I know I am not Scottish or Irish, and I'm not trying to convince anyone that I am. And my audiences know that and accept it.

No one is deluded by this bit of theatricality. It's quite a normal practice among singers and actors the world over—except, of course, for people who get all tied up in acid indigestion inducing knots over matters of ethnic or cultural "purity" (which, itself, is a fiction).

But what can one say about someone who grew up in Australia who is trying to convince himself that he is English—not just English, but English as of fifty years ago—yet still talks like an Aussie (absolutely nothing wrong with that) because he can't quite wrap his mouth around an English accent?

If one should sing songs of one's own culture—and only one's own culture—there are lots of really great Australian songs you might investigate, David.

I can post a list for you. I sing some of them myself. But, of course, there are others here who could post a far more comprehensive list than I could.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 05:38 PM

...if I was as arrogant and ignorant as you Laissez Fairies just claimed, surely I'd be talking in a broad Australian accent, akin to Les Patterson, and trying to Australianise not just England but the whole, pardon my French, bloody island, promoting a British didg., etc.

"FOLK MUSIC: Music deriving from, and expressive of, a particular national, ethnic or regional culture."! (Philip's Essential Encyclopedia)...and, yes, I've checked others that say similar. Who's deluding themself?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 05:50 PM

If you WEREN'T both arrogant and ignorant as so many people here have said, you wouldn't be telling other people how they should live and what music they should play.

Who's deluding himself? You, Waveydavey. You, you, you.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 05:54 PM

Encyclopedia Britannica:

"Folk music: type of traditional and generally rural music that originally was passed down through families and other small social groups. Typically, folk music, like folk literature, lives in oral tradition; it is learned through hearing rather than reading. It is functional in the sense that it is associated with other activities, and it is primarily rural in origin. The usefulness of the concept varies from culture to culture, but it is most convenient as a designation of a type of music of Europe and the Americas.

"The term folk music and its equivalents in other languages denote many different kinds of music; the meaning of the term varies according to the part of the world, social class, and period of history. In determining whether a song or piece of music is folk music, most performers, participants, and enthusiasts would probably agree on certain criteria derived from patterns of transmission, social function, origins, and performance.

"The central traditions of folk music are transmitted orally or aurally, that is, they are learned through hearing rather than the reading of words or music, ordinarily in informal, small social networks of relatives or friends rather than in institutions such as school or church. In the 20th century, transmission through recordings and mass media began to replace much of the face-to-face learning. In comparison with art music, which brings aesthetic enjoyment, and popular music, which (often along with social dancing) functions as entertainment, folk music is more often associated with other activities, such as calendric or life-cycle rituals, work, games, enculturation, and folk religion; folk music is also more likely to be participatory than presentational."

There's a lot more, but there's nothing (as far as I can see) about deriving from or expressing a particular national, ethnic or regional culture. Who's deluded? Anyone who thinks they can rely on a one-volume paperback 'encyclopedia' published in 1997, I'd suggest.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 06:02 PM

WaV - A couple of serious questions:

On what grounds are you actually questioning immigration?
Do you consider 'English culture' to be superior to any other?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 06:44 PM

I'd be talking in a broad Australian accent, akin to Les Patterson, and trying to Australianise not just England but the whole, pardon my French, bloody island, promoting a British didg.,

That's more like the old Walkaboutsverse! Fighting talk! In fact, it moves me to reveal a little about our friend's early days in England. The first time I met WAV, he rolled into a singaround at The Cumberland Arms in Byker waving a machete round his head crying 'YOU WANT A KNIFE? THIS IS AN EFFING KNIFE, YOU POM FAIRIES!' then proceeded to lob it at the darkboard scoring bullseye from twenty paces. Impressed? You bet, even if he did proceed to accompany every song on his didgeridoo and no, not one of us dared say anything, largely on account of aforementioned machete. Thereafter I would see him around, wrestling crocodiles on the streets of Newcastle, trading platypus pelts in the Grainger Market, or whoring around Sandgate and the Bigg Market, brawling and boozing his way into the lasting affections of Canny Newcastle. I have fond memories of The Walkaboutsverse Bush Tucker Mess Tent - a sort of free-form al-fresco tabernacle he'd pitch up on Northumberland Street to give McDonald's a run for its money. It gave me a taste for the Wattle Seed, Quandon, Lemon Myrtle, Kurrajong Flour, Macadamia Nuts, Warrigal Greens and Illawarra Plums that still form an essential part of my cooking today, not to mention the Kangaroo steaks, Kangaroo Tail Soup, Wallaby Stew, Emu eggs, Emu, Witchetty Grubs, Bugs and Yabbies. I tell you - WAV brought that real Outback Vibe to Tyneside; and he had it, he had us, right there in the palm of his hand. But he blew it, by getting into folk music and thus did this once proud and heroic repatriate lose his naturalised Australian culture and humanity and, as we all know, when a man loses his culture, society suffers. It breaks my heart to see him like this, a once proud Bush Man, who could recite Henry Lawson with the best of them, and here he is growing ever softer on pottages, stottie, chips and mead.

By the way, WAV - I've still got that picture you gave me all those years ago; I might look at it from time to time to remind myself of the sort of man you used to be. I hope you don't mind me sharing it with my fellow Mudcatters so they might get a flavour of just what has been lost here. WAV as he was in his pre-folk glory.

They thought of the far-away grave on the plain,
They thought of the comrade who came not again,
They lifted their glasses, and sadly they said:
`We drink to the name of the mate who is dead.'
And the sunlight streamed in, and a light like a star
Seemed to glow in the depth of the glass on the bar.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 07:13 PM

Candid shot in his local, enjoying a flagon of mead. . . .

Clicky

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 08:03 PM

To answer your cittern question WAV
I have been playing a hand made Stefan Sobell Cittern since the day I brought it in 1972.
Yes, made in Northumberland, but it's provenance is NOT ENGLISH!!
Have you ever seen one, they're jolly nice. and they play Swedish tunes really well.
In fact mine rarely plays anything else. Mind you, lots of Swedish tunes came from England, and lots of English tunes came from Sweden.
And English tunes also come from France, Belgium, Spain, Italy, and lots of other places...In Fact...Oh My, I've just realised I play tunes from all over the world.
I will immediately drop into Basil Fawlty mode, smack my own bottom shouting "Who's a Naughty Boy Then"
Now do the rest of us a favour, and slink off back under the stone from whence you came.
You are now officially a dullard (Go on. Look it up)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,julia
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 09:10 PM

Regarding the word "fiddle", my understanding is that the word is derived from the Gaelic word for violin, being "fidhle". This would mean that the word is not "English" at all.

And the harmonica is a "fringe" harp, not "French", so named for the fringe-like arrangement of the metal reeds.

I would vote for the English concertina

best- Julia

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 10:13 PM

No, English 'fiddle' isn't derived from Gaelic, though both languages (and most other European languages, come to that) have similar words meaning much the same thing. 'Violin' (a late coinage) is one of them.

Ultimately, though, the etymologies of words relating to musical instruments, and the origins (real, putative or imagined) of those instruments are completely irrelevant when it comes to the business of 'national' instruments which, like other 'national' emblems, are merely symbolic. Countries like Scotland, Wales, Finland and so on had a big stake in the Romantic Nationalist movements of the 18th and 19th centuries, and felt a great need for such symbols to assert their individualities in the face of the growing power and influence of larger neighbours.

Demonstrating at great length that such-and-such an instrument isn't originally English is pointless, as virtually none of the 'national' instruments originated in the countries that adopted them as emblems, though some were refined there into the forms we know today. The only European 'national instrument' I can think of that is actually played by a significant proportion of the population of the country concerned is the Finnish Kantele, which is taught in schools. Doubtless there are others, but the point is that it really doesn't matter.

The whole concept of 'national identity' is largely an artificial construct; a useful tool through which powerful people manipulate the masses. Ultimately all such things are an extension of basic tribal instinct, which seems to be built into humanity (and probably all social species) at a genetic level; and which is in itself neither good nor bad, though it can be the agent of both.

As has already been remarked, it's often the case that what we might call 'culturally displaced' people seek to compensate for their lack of tangible roots by imagining an historic identity as a model to aspire to. Hence all those 'New Age Celts' with their fantasies of woad, shamanistic ritual and ancient pre-Christian bodhrans; and the 'Merrie England' folk, too; all madrigals, codpieces and recorders (I'm baffled by the pottage, though). You'd think that anybody who actually knew anything about folk music would have seen through all that long ago, but unfortunately the fantasists have always had a strong influence; and for as long as people think they can become well-informed by reading a couple of out-of-date books and a few wikipedia articles, we will continue to suffer all manner of nonsense.

A national instrument for England? Too late for that by a couple of centuries, I think; but since such things are symbolic, they need only to evoke a suitably 'national' image for a large enough number of people. That being the case, bells or brass would serve well enough; and it wouldn't matter if they were invented on Mars.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 03:00 AM

WAV - ...if I was as arrogant and ignorant as you Laissez Fairies just claimed, surely I'd be talking in a broad Australian accent, akin to Les Patterson, and trying to Australianise not just England but the whole, pardon my French, bloody island, promoting a British didg., etc.

Ooooh! Get her! Somebody's touched a nerve. I can see the steam coming out his ears from here.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 03:30 AM

For WAV: Malcolm Douglas is regarded as one of the genuine (in all senses) experts on matters folk and one or two other things.

You could learn a lot from his knowledgeable and well researched posts. I'm not an expert. You're not an expert (!) - Malcolm is.

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 04:30 AM

No, English 'fiddle' isn't derived from Gaelic, though both languages (and most other European languages, come to that) have similar words meaning much the same thing. 'Violin' (a late coinage) is one of them.

I'm doing the decent thing here. As my informants tell me that WAV put away four bottles of Mead last night and effectively OD'd on stottie, chips and tomato sauce (not a pretty sight as you might imagine, he just can't hold it the way he used to*) I'm going to save him the bother.

PLAYING THE FIDDLE?
There are many different fiddles from many different lands – for example, the Chinese erhu fiddle, the Norwegian hardanger fiddle and, the one most in the West now play, the Italian fiddle/violin. (from Here)

________________________

* Mead is one of the causes of WAV's downfall. All great men have a weakness. Viewers of the celebrated Scottish sit-com Still Game will be familiar with Big Innes and his fondness for Midori**, so it is with WAV and Lindisfarne Mead. It is because of the mead he got into folk in the first place, and it was all downhill from there.

** The entire episode can be seen in three parts Here.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 04:40 AM

Smokey - WaV - A couple of serious questions:

On what grounds are you actually questioning immigration?
Do you consider 'English culture' to be superior to any other?

I'd save your breath if I were you. The average spotty BNP supporting school reject could come up with a better reasoned, more thought out justification for their views than WAV has ever managed, despite his much vaunted "degree" and "technical certificates".

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: TheSnail
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 04:45 AM

chips and tomato sauce

Foreign muck!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 05:36 AM

"folk music is more often associated with other activities, such as calendric or life-cycle rituals, work, games, enculturation, and folk religion" (EB from Pip, above)..DOES fit with..."FOLK MUSIC: Music deriving from, and expressive of, a particular national, ethnic or regional culture." (Philip's Essential Encyclopedia from me, above).

"WaV - A couple of serious questions:

On what grounds are you actually questioning immigration?
Do you consider 'English culture' to be superior to any other?" (Smokey)...I've answered these several times but can't blame anyone for not reading everything on such never-dead threads:
I don't think economic/capitalist immigration/emigration (which makes up the majority of mass immigration) is a good thing; and I do think trying to have a multiple number of cultures living under the one state law will always cause problems - the most extreme of which is a current court case regarding terrorism and doctors. And NO - I hate the imperialistic idea of white supremacy, and genuinely love the world being multicultural...it's those such as Ruth Archer/Joan Crumb who have tried to paint me this way as they hate immigration being questioned.
IB - "or whoring around Sandgate and the Bigg Market"...I've only been there for "Newcastle Poetry Society" nights and keep tyring, rather, for a permanent partner, who need not be a clog dancer! Speaking of which, I really do think you and yours should try and manage a trip to Aus. and get it all out of your system - and don't forget to take in some Aboriginal culture as well...

Poem 123 of 230: FONDLY AND VIVIDLY/AN OLYMPICS-SPARKED MEMORY SONG - AUT. 2000

From way up high in Sydney Tower,
You can see it all:
East there's coastline, west there's ranges -
Blue Mountains standing tall;
There's national parks and gardens,
Sailboards on Botany Bay;
And, out among the people,
You'll soon get that term "G'day."

Yes, I remember Sydney -
Fondly and vividly:
The eucalypts and wattles;
The sun, the sand, the sea.
Yeah, I still picture Sydney -
Fondly and vividly.

And, way up high in Sydney Tower,
You can see it all:
Southern Beaches, Northern Beaches,
A skyline standing tall;
There's the Opera House and Harbour Bridge -
Ferries sail from bay to bay;
And, around Darling Harbour,
You can party the night away.
Yes...

And, way up high in Sydney Tower,
You can see it all:
Olympic grounds toward the west,
The Rocks, too, is worth a call;
Plus Aboriginal culture -
The foremost of a lot to say.
So, if you visit Sydney,
I'm sure you'll enjoy your stay.

Yes...

From walkaboutsverse.741.com

And speaking of Aus., I see Ralphie/Nellie/Chief Laissez Fairy has made yet another comeback to call me a "dullard".

"The only European 'national instrument' I can think of that is actually played by a significant proportion of the population of the country concerned is the Finnish Kantele." (Malcolm)...which I think is a positive thing other nations can learn from.

Neither steam nor smoke, Woody - I just enjoyed a bowl of boiled oatmeal.

Yes, Stu, MD does seem knowledgable to me, too, for what it's worth.

IB - I intend to have A quiet glass of the good stuff at tonight's singaround.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 05:41 AM

Foreign muck!

Even Newcastle-upon-Tyne's celebrated Stotty Cake is an import from South America. It goes back to the Indian Summer of 1902 when the circus of the celebrated Irish showman O'Carrageen fetched up on Newcastle's Town Moor. One of O'Carageen's performers was a native South American who went by the name of Apu the Aztec, who dazzled on an array of flutes, panpipes and suchlike exotica. The story goes that he fell in love with a local lass in nearby Gosforth and the two were soon married, thus did he introduce, amongst other things, the recipe for his native Metztli into the locality and it soon caught on. Traditionally the bread was only baked at the time of the full moon (Metztli being the Aztec word for the moon, the bread being round, white and baked in such a way that gave a pattern of lights and darks resembling nothing so much as the lunar surface). No such nonsense with the Geordies however, who took the recipe to their hearts and it soon spread around the provinces of Tyneside, the name changing as it went. These names are still found today, such as flatty and yestie (or yeastie), all of which, I am told, derive from the original. Indeed, in Gosforth they are known to this day as Measties or Mezzies. Stotty is but one of these derivations, the name favoured by Greggs of Gosforth, who still hold the original secret recipe of Apu the Aztec from more than a century ago. Locals might still remember the centenary celebrations of 2002 when at the time of the Hunter's Moon the loaves were baked in traditional clay ovens specially constructed on the Town Moor with music provided by the descendants of Apu the Aztec, who might still be seen performing their native chants and dirges on the streets of Newcastle to this day, as proud of their Aztec roots as the good people of Tyneside are proud of them.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Gervase
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 05:53 AM

And speaking of Aus., I see Ralphie/Nellie/Chief Laissez Fairy has made yet another comeback to call me a "dullard".

I'm afraid you are, old fruit.

Your 'poetry' is execrable tripe that would make William Topaz McGonagall blush to his roots, your political ideas are juvenile and your views on folk music (albeit coloured by your political views) are risible. I've not heard you sing but, judging by your form, I imagine you to be a poor shadow of Florence Foster Jenkins.

I have idea what a technical certificate might be when it's at home - I imagine it to be like a GNVQ - but I would advise you to try a little higher education. The Open University is a wonderful British institution, and you may well benefit from one of the foundation courses on the humanities.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 06:00 AM

IB - I intend to have A quiet glass of the good stuff at tonight's singaround.

A hair of the dog, eh? But we all know where these things lead, WAV. God alone knows your writings are not those of a sober, or indeed sane, man - i.e.

I don't think economic/capitalist immigration/emigration (which makes up the majority of mass immigration) is a good thing; and I do think trying to have a multiple number of cultures living under the one state law will always cause problems - the most extreme of which is a current court case regarding terrorism and doctors. And NO - I hate the imperialistic idea of white supremacy, and genuinely love the world being multicultural...it's those such as Ruth Archer/Joan Crumb who have tried to paint me this way as they hate immigration being questioned.

It reads like the ravings of a mad horse - an endless string of thinly veiled racist euphemisms that doesn't fool anyone, at least no one here. We all know what you are, and now we all know why too; you are bitter because you have lost your once proud Native Australian Culture to a blurred mead-soaked illusion of English Folk. Sober up, WAV - before it's too late!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Gervase
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 06:09 AM

I stand corrected. I've just listened to the embedded tracks at http://www.myspace.com/walkaboutsverse .
I don't think I've heard 'When I survey the Wondrous Cross' quite so mangled. A monotonous and flat rendition brightened only the the Stylophone accompaniment. To misquote the great Rolf Harris, "Can you hear what it is yet?".
Then there's what sounds like a pisspoor pastiche of Henry Lawson (complete with whistling and humming!). Then some poetry, which I quickly passed over.
I did catch a snatch of 'Cob-a-Coaling', which sounds bizarre when sung in an Aussie accent trying sound like a Yorkshireman! Priceless - the best track of the lot for laughs.
I'm afraid I didn't listen to all of it, however, as I was losing the will to live...
Suffice to say, I don't think Eliza C (or her mum) has anything to worry about.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Working Radish
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 06:28 AM

The Britannica definition clearly doesn't say that folk music is music "deriving from, and expressive of, a particular national, ethnic or regional culture". It does include some things that are compatible with that definition - but if you don't already believe in that definition, the Britannica will never lead you to it. It's a bit like arguing that the definition of 'quadrilateral' is 'square', and then claiming to be vindicated when someone quote a better definition. "See? Straight sides, and four of them - squares have those!"

And one of the points of my 'repetition' comment was that we know you "genuinely love the world being multicultural". How could we not? The reason we think you're a racist is that you quite clearly dislike England being multicultural:

trying to have a multiple number of cultures living under the one state law will always cause problems

Since cultures don't float around on their own but are carried and lived and reproduced by actual people, this leads us to suppose that you dislike the presence of people with (what you see as) non-English cultures in England. Which leads us to call your views racist.

(WAV bingo, part 94: "FROM NOW ON" (e.g. 28th Sept, 6th Oct).)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 06:35 AM

"Foreign muck!

Even Newcastle-upon-Tyne's celebrated Stotty Cake is an import from South America. It goes back to the Indian Summer of 1902 when the circus of the celebrated Irish showman O'Carrageen fetched up on Newcastle's Town Moor. One of O'Carageen's performers was a native South American who went by the name of Apu the Aztec, who dazzled on an array of flutes, panpipes and suchlike exotica. The story goes that he fell in love with a local lass in nearby Gosforth and the two were soon married, thus did he introduce, amongst other things, the recipe for his native Metztli into the locality and it soon caught on. Traditionally the bread was only baked at the time of the full moon (Metztli being the Aztec word for the moon, the bread being round, white and baked in such a way that gave a pattern of lights and darks resembling nothing so much as the lunar surface). No such nonsense with the Geordies however, who took the recipe to their hearts and it soon spread around the provinces of Tyneside, the name changing as it went. These names are still found today, such as flatty and yestie (or yeastie), all of which, I am told, derive from the original. Indeed, in Gosforth they are known to this day as Measties or Mezzies. Stotty is but one of these derivations, the name favoured by Greggs of Gosforth, who still hold the original secret recipe of Apu the Aztec from more than a century ago. Locals might still remember the centenary celebrations of 2002 when at the time of the Hunter's Moon the loaves were baked in traditional clay ovens specially constructed on the Town Moor with music provided by the descendants of Apu the Aztec, who might still be seen performing their native chants and dirges on the streets of Newcastle to this day, as proud of their Aztec roots as the good people of Tyneside are proud of them." (IB)...and I thought they were just plain old oven-bottem buns...either way, do like the gritty folky texture.

'And speaking of Aus., I see Ralphie/Nellie/Chief Laissez Fairy has made yet another comeback to call me a "dullard".'(me)...
"I'm afraid you are, old fruit.

Your 'poetry' is execrable tripe that would make William Topaz McGonagall blush to his roots, your political ideas are juvenile and your views on folk music (albeit coloured by your political views) are risible. I've not heard you sing but, judging by your form, I imagine you to be a poor shadow of Florence Foster Jenkins.

I have idea what a technical certificate might be when it's at home - I imagine it to be like a GNVQ - but I would advise you to try a little higher education. The Open University is a wonderful British institution, and you may well benefit from one of the foundation courses on the humanities." (Gervase)...I studied humanities, before repatriating, in Adelaide and Sydney, above link.; and with that behind me, IB, I yet again have to say that it's the questioning of immigration that you just re-posted.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 06:41 AM

It could be worse, Gervase : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eggE7K2j_uo

Or even http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-mKnY2HMXg - in which we hear it sung to the melody of The Water is Wide.

And here's one just for WAV:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFaWjnr9C7o

Your territory's calling!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 06:44 AM

"I do think trying to have a multiple number of cultures living under the one state law will always cause problems - the most extreme of which is a current court case regarding terrorism and doctors."

Of course, pointing out cases of terrorism as a reason why cultures should live seperately is in no way culturally or racially stereotyping great swathes of people; nor is it writing off all of the many cultures which have managed to peacefully co-exist in England for centuries (long before that big, scary non-white migration of the 50s which basically equates to WAV's Ground Zero...)



"Ruth Archer/Joan Crumb"

Honestly, Wavey - if wit were shit you'd be constipated.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 06:47 AM

"Also, while Stigweard is off playing his Greek bouzouki, may I ask, other than Michael Tyack, who is playing the wire-strung, 5 times 2 course, elusive English cittern?..."

It certainly isn't a greek bouzouki - that's a three-course round-backed instrument (although the mighty Alec Finn plays one to great effect in De Dannan).

It's an Irish Bouzouki, made in Norfolk by John Hullah, of the sort used for accompanying Irish, English, Breton, Scottish, Welsh and Asturian traditional music. It's up for sale if you want it as I've got one on order from Joe Foley in Dublin.

My friend Flanny plays a Sobell Cittern, not that elusive if you get out of the house and mix with traditional musicians, who tend to understand the subtleties of the culture they live in, especially when the influence excerpted by them and from their neighbours make the traditions so very interesting. There are exceptions of course, and some people who claim insight and understanding don't have a fecking clue what they're talking about.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 06:58 AM

other than Michael Tyack, who is playing the wire-strung, 5 times 2 course, elusive English cittern?

John McCusker plays one, but wait a minute, damn he's Scottish!

Simon Emmerson plays one and he's English! But wait, shock horror, he's in bands with Asians! and Africans! This will never do....

Oh yes, 800

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 08:50 AM

Wav, tell me what I should sing and play.
I was born in Israel, but my parents are from the USA. Dad's family is Jewish, from Bukovina and Galicia mostly, while mum's family are not Jewish and are of Anglo-Scottish extraction with several Scandinavians thrown in. Mum's grandmother was born in Mexico, Dad's grandparents in what is currently Ukraine.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,eliza c
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 09:09 AM

David, I hope that by mentioning me in the same post as saying that English folkies by and large perform music from other cultures you weren't suggesting I do that thing, because I'll remind you that out of 19 albums to date only two of them have been material other than traditional English material, and those two were self-penned. The contents of the latest self-penned out of those two contains 50% trad material in melody even. I have always been and remain committed to the playing and promulgation of English traditions, songs and music, more than most, and certainly more than you.
And Eliza PC? Now you can fuck off.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 09:38 AM

"And, as said here, while some Scots and Irish are, of course, performing the music of other nations, the percentages are nowhere near that of English folkies"

Prove it. Do you want to supply refs to back up this statement? No tradition exists in isolation, and the traditions of these Islands exist in a state of close co-existence and long may it remain so.

i hate sprouts, so imagine my surprise when I tried one raw, and it worked.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Surreysinger
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 09:53 AM

>> And speaking of Aus., I see Ralphie/Nellie/Chief Laissez Fairy has made yet another comeback to call me a "dullard".

No WAV ... if you care to read Ralphie's posting properly, you will see that he actually came back onto this thread as you asked who other than the one name you mentioned played the cittern. I pointed this out to him, as I know that he does .... hence his return. Out of the 12 line posting the first 11 are solely related to the cittern, the type of music that he uses it for (ie generally not English) etc. Only the very last short sentence, as an afterthought expresses his opinioni that you are a dullard ...I looked that up. I wonder if you did - it's an opinion which I think more than one person on this thread has expressed... and quite often more than once. But whatever the rights and wrongs of that... that was NOT ,as far as I know, the principle reason for Ralphie's return.

As to your rather condescending statement that Malcolm Douglas "seems" (!) to know what he's talking about, I'm afraid that it does suggest yet again that you are _still_ not aware, despite having it more than once pointed out to you, that many of the people posting to this thread are actually authorities in their area, and have studied the subject area that you have dabbled your toes in for most of their lives.(I would hardly call four years acquaintance with the subject an intense study ... particularly not if based on just a few CD's, an encyclopedia entry (what do they usually know?), and the very occasional TV programme, of which there have been scarcely any of relevance)

Oh well, back to trying to perfect my performance of an Irish broadside ballad,collected by an English Victorian folksong collector (oh no, sorry, she was born in Scotland, though she lived most of her life in London), and performed to a duet concertina accompaniment (wonder if that's allowed?)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 10:29 AM

"And Eliza PC? Now you can fuck off."

Glorious.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: catspaw49
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 11:02 AM

If for some reason there was anyone on Mudcat who held any residual respect for you Wavybrokedick, you lost it all with that disrespectful comment about Malcolm Douglas. He "seems to be"???????? You dumbass........HE IS!!!!!! He's the REAL THING that you so longingly aspire to be and yet prove through remarks like that one that you will NEVER BE.

You really ARE pathetic.......

Spaw

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 11:26 AM

I got this chap to come and replace some bits of floorboards where someone had helpfully poured cement to fill up gaps. Getting him to use seasoned timber was a tad fraught. Endowed as he was with the aesthetic tastes and design skills of a dung beetle, he completely missed in the point with his puzzled whinge of "It'll be all right with carpet over it",

At the height of the economic boycott of goods from the South African apartheid regime, I asked a market trader where his fruit had come from. He reassured me that his oranges were not from there. "It's not nice to think of all those black hands all over them", he sympathised.

WAV is both these people. Dim and nasty. He's been around for four years (wow!) yet has failed to realise that Malcolm Douglas is the bees' knees when it comes to knowing stuff and that Eliza C is the dogs' bollocks in versatility and excellence.

May I join the queue in exhorting you to fuck off.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 11:48 AM

"And, as said here, while some Scots and Irish are, of course, performing the music of other nations, the percentages are nowhere near that of English folkies"

Prove it. Do you want to supply refs to back up this statement? No tradition exists in isolation, and the traditions of these Islands exist in a state of close co-existence and long may it remain so.

I showed an example, of just 3 Planxty CDs, which show Wav to be wrong. He hasn't commented on it.

Now Wav, do you think that just anybody would be asked to edit the revised edition of the Penguin book of English Folksongs?
And guess who is on the cover.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 12:40 PM

I asked a market trader where his fruit had come from. He reassured me that his oranges were not from there. "It's not nice to think of all those black hands all over them", he sympathised.

I've heard this same story from so many sources over the years that I've always assumed it to be an Urban Myth. I'm not doubting your word, Diane - after all, this is the first time I've heard it in the first person - but it's an oft told tale, a classic of Foaf-lore indeed, as it was back then too as I recall.

do you think that just anybody would be asked to edit the revised edition of the Penguin book of English Folksongs?

What follows is from the introduction to the 1959 edition. The fact that it remained as part of such an important part of the English Folk Song revival has always made me feel at a tad uneasy about the whole business.

A search for the roots of jazz leads to American folk song, and a search for the origins of American folk song leads the astonished enthusiast back home to his own traditional music. (RWV & ALL)

Astonished indeed! Is it in the revised edition I wonder? Let's hope not, no matter who's on the cover... Who is on the cover anyway? The cover of my 1969 paperback shows The Dancing Bear by W F Witherington which I chanced upon recently in a visit to the Walker Gallery in Liverpool, having no idea it was there. Certainly put a smile on my face, which was wiped when I realised in my haste to get to to Medieval Manuscripts I'd walked past Waterhouse's Echo and Narcissus without noticing it.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 01:01 PM

"David, I hope that by mentioning me in the same post as saying that English folkies by and large perform music from other cultures you weren't suggesting I do that thing, because I'll remind you that out of 19 albums to date only two of them have been material other than traditional English material, and those two were self-penned. The contents of the latest self-penned out of those two contains 50% trad material in melody even. I have always been and remain committed to the playing and promulgation of English traditions, songs and music, more than most, and certainly more than you." (Eliza)...no I wasn't, believe it or not - I was going by the singing and instrumental sessions I've attended: NOT the competitions which usually REQUIRE local material and sometimes unaccompanied singing. (And I think that answers Stigweard and Volgadon as well - but I'll add that the Folk-degree Scots students I've seen at the Sage Gateshead perform mostly Scottish music, whilst the English students I've seen perform mostly non-English music.)
Surreysinger - I didn't have to look up "dullard," and I think only a dullard or a bigot would call someone with 4 technical certificates and a degree in humanities a dullard.
Volgadon - SINCE YOU ASKED, if you were born and live in Israel, I think you should practise and perform Israeli music, whilst appreciating the music of other lands.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 01:14 PM

I think that answers Stigweard and Volgadon as well
How does that answer this:
"Now Wav, do you think that just anybody would be asked to edit the revised edition of the Penguin book of English Folksongs?
And guess who is on the cover."
Take a good look at the picture.
http://www.mustrad.org.uk/reviews/cefs.htm



But what is Israeli music, Wav, and doesn't that come into conflict with your statement that goes along the lines of the tradition is people doing things the way their ancestors did? Mine aren't from Israel.
Is this Israeli?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08lKGzOGRKE

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 01:23 PM

It answers it the best I can, Volgadon - I don't have statistics; the only other thing I can add is that the competitions I just referred to can be found by following the links, and from there you could find some of their good REGULATIONS regarding local material, unaccompanied singing, etc.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 01:30 PM

"whilst the English students I've seen perform mostly non-English music.)"

I don't believe you.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 01:47 PM

Here's a direct question for you, David. Which of these statements is inaccurate, if any?

1. England is currently a multi-cultural country.

2. You believe that trying to have a multiple number of cultures living under the one state law will always cause problems.

3. You therefore believe that England should not be a multi-cultural country.

4. Cultures are carried, lived and perpetuated by people.

5. You therefore believe that people who don't have an English culture should not come to England

5. You also believe that it would have been preferable if people who don't have an English culture had not come to England in the past.

6. Specifically, you believe that England would have been a better place if there had not been large-scale immigration of non-Europeans over the last 50 years.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Will Fly
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 01:51 PM

It's not worth it, Pip R - you won't get a straight answer. I said about 3,000 posts ago that DF simply stalls, postures evasively, and makes back-references to his crappy, half-arsed website - all in "answer" to the many questions posed here. Pointless.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Gervase
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 02:02 PM

whilst the English students I've seen perform mostly non-English music.
Indeed Ruth, I think he's talking through his fundament (yet again). By the time they graduate, most of the students seem to perform English music, so there must be something going on there...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 02:16 PM

That's exactly what i was thinking. Considering how many of the students I've observed populating festival sessions, and the ones who, post-degree, perform in bands and ensembles, and the material I've heard them playing and singing, I reckon the majority of their repertoires is English.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 02:32 PM

"Surreysinger - I didn't have to look up 'dullard,' and I think only a dullard or a bigot would call someone with 4 technical certificates and a degree in humanities a dullard."

This is really pretty limp, David. Your technical certificates and degree do not qualify you to speak on matters of ethnomusicology, which is the field you are trying to lay down rules and laws for. When you are wrong, you are wrong, no matter how many degrees and certificates you can wave about. Even if you had a Ph.D in Ethnomusicology, you would still be wrong if you kept on saying what you're saying.

And whether you like it or not, whether you believe it or not, the person who says "I have nothing against (insert ethnic or national group). In fact, I like them very much. But I just don't want them living next door to me," is a bigot, no matter how vociferously they try to deny it.

Volgadon, sing whatever you want to sing. And enjoy!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 02:40 PM

I asked a market trader where his fruit had come from . . . etc

It was said to me, as were the blatantly racist remarks of a London Co-op shopkeeper when, as a district committee member, I was examining the stock for what shouldn't have been there. He was in business to make profit and not to observe "political" boycotts.

The point I was making was that these are exactly the attitudes of "separate development" WAV would applaud.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 03:17 PM

Answer me, please.

"But what is Israeli music, Wav, and doesn't that come into conflict with your statement that goes along the lines of the tradition is people doing things the way their ancestors did? Mine aren't from Israel.
Is this Israeli?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08lKGzOGRKE"

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 03:21 PM

WaV - Good answers to my questions might have been "economic" and "no". Think about it.
That said, cultural diversity isn't going to have any negative effect on the preservation of any perceived 'English culture'; quite the opposite I reckon. Anyone throwing the odd Tibetan goat-milking shanty into their act is going to be fairly careful to point out its non-English origins for the benefit of the less informed members of their audience, lest they mistake it for a Derbyshire love song, for example. Oh dear, I appear to have started rambling..

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 03:45 PM

You know, I really get kind of disgusted with myself when I think of the inordinate amount of time I've wasted on this nincompoop.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Darowyn
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 03:48 PM

There are some forums which have an "ignore" facility, so that if one should choose to ignore a contributor, their posts will never sully your monitor screen.
I cannot imagine how anyone could put up with the lambasting that WAV has had and still think himself welcome in the company of Mudcatters.
Perhaps he should move from the North to the Midlands- to a town associated with that well known English legend, Lady Godiva.
Cheers
Dave

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 03:48 PM

Answer Pip's questions.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 05:30 PM

WAV - why don't you answer Pip's questions?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Sandman
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 05:41 PM

WAV,I dont like your viewpoint on English traditional music.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 06:22 PM

I'm not that bothered if he answers Pip's questions or not. I think of idiots like that on web forums as acting like human yarrow sticks in an I Ching divination - a bundle of sticks doesn't actually need any brains to spark off connections you might not have thought of. You certainly don't think of yourself as communicating with the sticks when you reflect on the commentary.

So, two directions this goes in. Firstly, the comment about how Israeli musicians ought to perform "Israeli music". A rather extraordinary degree of igniorance about the whole culture of Israel there. In fact Israeli musicians are doing an EXCELLENT job of making music relevant to the society they live in, by combining music brought from wherever in the world Jewish immigrants have come from with the whole range of music that was there before they arrived. The heterogeneity of the result is the whole POINT. It's one of the major areas of the culture where Jews (of whatever regional origin) and Palestinians (of whatever ideology) can cooperate in a serious, productive and often exhilarating way.

Secondly: let's look at the result of the one attempt there has been to implement Franks's programme in a thoroughgoing way, i.e. the cultural policy of the Third Reich. It turned out to be catastrophically destructive to German traditional music *more than any other* - Jews and Gypsies may have been slaughtered wholesale but culturally they got the last laugh: their music came out of WW2 largely intact. I remember asking a German singer around 1980 why he didn't do any traditional German material - he said "there is blood on those songs", and his attitude was that of the two generations that came after the war. Nothing could undo the damage done by having it used as a training tool in making children into robot killers for the Hitler state. Even now it has nowhere near recovered the status of something you can just play in public for fun, without making a political statement about why you're doing it. It's hardly surprising that almost all German folkies do Irish music instead.

The greatest favour Franks could now do for English music is to shut the fuck up about it, refrain from associating his pustulent Daily Mail ideology with it, and take his asinine website off the air for good. I don't expect he will, but we can still use a steady supply of random verbal hexagrams.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 06:51 PM

Wav

When someone as illustrious as Ms Carthy tells you to Fuck Off, (along with the rest of us).
Maybe you should just do it.
Having read through all of your many threads, I have not read 1 message that supports your wierd views.
God Almighty, you must have the hide of a Rhino to keep coming back here just to get slapped again.
Maybe thats how you get your kicks?
The one upside to this particularly sad thread is that I've encountered many erudite and funny people. So, trying to be positive, Thank you Oh Wavy one for allowing sensible posters to converse with each other.
Without you, the rest of us might never have met.
Thanks Guys and Gals. Will meet again on other threads no doubt!

As for you Wav....Go Forth and Multiply, (but not in a multiracial way)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Sue Allan
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 07:08 PM

At the risk of sounding like Victor Meldrew: I don't believe it!
I haven't been on Mudcat for weeks and now I do I see WAV's insane thread is STILL on the go. Reading through it (only because it's a displacement activity: I'm supposed to be writing something else)Malcolm Douglas' post stands out as the embodiment of both erudition and common sense. Heed him WAV, heed him. And just shut up.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 07:16 PM

Sue. Well said..
But you and I know that he won't...
(Shuffles off to bed shaking his head in bewilderment......)
Regards Ralph

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 07:51 PM

"In fact Israeli musicians are doing an EXCELLENT job of making music relevant to the society they live in, by combining music brought from wherever in the world Jewish immigrants have come from with the whole range of music that was there before they arrived. The heterogeneity of the result is the whole POINT. It's one of the major areas of the culture where Jews (of whatever regional origin) and Palestinians (of whatever ideology) can cooperate in a serious, productive and often exhilarating way."

Amen. I love the music of Palestinian and Jewish fusion music, and find it holds out some dim ray of hope in an otherwise hopelessly intransigent situation.

I think WAV would HATE the artistic policy we launched on Saturday at Sidmouth which, while celebrating English tradition, deliberately acknowledges the wonderful blends and diverse mixes which result from Britain's many non-indigenous cultures being here. One of the things that gives me great joy: a young musician of Cypriot extraction who plays both the music of his heritage and English trad - he's currently doing the degree at Newcatle, and is bloody talented. Another is a traditional Zimbabwean singer and dancer who has lived for many years in Kent, and in addition to providing wonderful workshops and performances in his native traditions, has gone out of his way to learn morris dancing.

When WAV fills me with despair, I think of people like these and I smile, because in the end, we have won. Let Waveydavey stew and fume in his backward little backwater; wonderful things are happening in the real world, and I will do all I can to make sure they get the attention and platform they deserve.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 15 Oct 08 - 02:24 AM

The boy's winding us all up, and we're falling for it. Surely.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: peregrina
Date: 15 Oct 08 - 02:51 AM

What Stigweard said. Precisely.

There is even another thread for musical melting pot discussion

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 15 Oct 08 - 07:45 AM

Granma's post exemplifies how Eliza can set the mood here - after what WAS a misunderstanding, she tells me to F-off, and then follows a stream of childish, false and defamatory, kick-him-while-he's down attacks, from most of the rest of you.
Meanwhile, my accurate post about good REGULTIONS at NE folk festival competitions (follow the links for the list), regarding local material and unaccompanied singing, has been completely ignored.
And to somewhat petulant Volgadon and Woody - I was out at a singaround last night, and will now address Pip, AGAIN: I've said, as part of my regulationism, that economic/capitalist (NOT all) immigration/emigration should be stopped, the world over, from now on.
And again to Ralphie - since my myspace music (use above link, if you wish) is so bad that you don't want me attending your folk club, you'd better tell me which one it is - as, despite all the above remarks, I remain a keen English folkie (whose performances some HAVE apparently enjoyed).

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 15 Oct 08 - 08:02 AM

I was out at a singaround last night, and will now address Pip, AGAIN: I've said, as part of my regulationism, that economic/capitalist (NOT all) immigration/emigration should be stopped, the world over, from now on.

Sorry, you seem to be answering someone or something else. Here's the question I asked. Which of these statements is inaccurate, if any?

1. England is currently a multi-cultural country.

2. You believe that trying to have a multiple number of cultures living under the one state law will always cause problems.

3. You therefore believe that England should not be a multi-cultural country.

4. Cultures are carried, lived and perpetuated by people.

5. You therefore believe that people who don't have an English culture should not come to England.

6. You also believe that it would have been preferable if people who don't have an English culture had not come to England in the past.

7. Specifically, you believe that England would have been a better place if there had not been large-scale immigration of non-Europeans over the last 50 years.

(Just spotted I had two number 5s in the original comment, but the renumbering is the only change I've made.)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 15 Oct 08 - 08:45 AM

I'm puzzled as to what a "good REGULTION| is at the moment.
Come on Wav, answer Pips questions, theres a good chap

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 15 Oct 08 - 09:00 AM

...By focusing on what's best FROM NOW ON, I did adequately answer Pip's, Ralphie - it's you who hasn't answered mine...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 15 Oct 08 - 09:15 AM

No, David, you haven't so much as addressed my questions, let alone answered them 'adequately'.

Are all of those statements true? If not, which of them is untrue?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 15 Oct 08 - 09:23 AM

I'm strangely reminded of one of my favourite scenes from Citizen Smith. In the local pub, Wolfie's just had an altercation with a blazer-clad posh boy and had to back down. Wolfie turns away.

WOLFIE [sotto voce]: "Ponce."
POSH BOY [in tones of offended dignity]: "I didn't hear that!"
WOLFIE: "Oh." [sotto voce] "Deaf ponce."

All you're doing at the moment, David, is promoting yourself from the 'racist' category into the one marked 'dishonest racist'.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 15 Oct 08 - 10:04 AM

WAV
Pip doesn't think that you've answered anything.
Along with the rest of us!
Go On.
It's easy. Start at Question 1 and then continue until you finish.
Surely a man of your undoubted talents can do that?
What with a degree in fork lifting under your belt!(Have you no Humanity? Whoops, sorry I forgot that you have)
Slight lack of mentions for youe website recently. How come? Ashamed of it?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 15 Oct 08 - 12:55 PM

I've read them again and have covered them - however, having just watched the news, I'll add this: Labour have recently claimed that they fixed the roof during the good economic weather of the last decade or so; on the contrary, what they did was allow record amounts of economic/capitalist immigration and, the news is, we are now, sadly, moving toward record amounts of unemployment.
Cheeky Ralphie - it's you that is dodging (see just above).

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 15 Oct 08 - 01:06 PM

So, two directions this goes in. Firstly, the comment about how Israeli musicians ought to perform "Israeli music". A rather extraordinary degree of igniorance about the whole culture of Israel there. In fact Israeli musicians are doing an EXCELLENT job of making music relevant to the society they live in, by combining music brought from wherever in the world Jewish immigrants have come from with the whole range of music that was there before they arrived. The heterogeneity of the result is the whole POINT. It's one of the major areas of the culture where Jews (of whatever regional origin) and Palestinians (of whatever ideology) can cooperate in a serious, productive and often exhilarating way.

Excellent point, Jack. Just the one I was going to make with Wav, thanks for putting it into words so well.

My Arab coworkers all have Israeli songs on their phones, as well as Arab music. I once talked through Skype with a SYRIAN, who wanted me to translate the words of an Israeli song. The song I linked to, Jerusalem of Gold, is considered one of our folksongs, everyone knows it, but the melody is a modification of a Basque tune, brought over by Paco Ibanez. One of my favourite bands is Habrera Hativit, which combined North African and Indian music with Hasidic music too. Ehud Banai, a folk-rocker (can't think of a better term) combines Persian music with Arab, Yemenite, American, Irish and other genres. Nothing sounds more Israeli. Even our folk music is a fusion of four main genres: Eastern European, Ladino (music of the Mediteranean Jews) Yemenite, and Arab. Emanuel Zamir, in an atempt to create a new, Israeli sound which would be closer to our historic roots, seriously studied Bedouin music. When as chief-of-staff, Rafael Eitan reformed the army bands into choirs, he was asked what sort of songs they should sing. Traditional Israeli songs. When pressed for details, he replied: Russian songs, of course.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 15 Oct 08 - 01:17 PM

I've read them again and have covered them

David, let me put it like this. Is it true that England is currently a multi-cultural country?

Do you believe that trying to have a multiple number of cultures living under the one state law will always cause problems?

Do you therefore believe that England should not be a multi-cultural country?

Is it true to say that cultures are carried, lived and perpetuated by people?

Do you therefore believe that people who don't have an English culture should not come to England?

Do you also believe that it would have been preferable if people who don't have an English culture had not come to England in the past?

Do you specifically believe that England would have been a better place if there had not been large-scale immigration of non-Europeans over the last 50 years?

Seven questions, mostly quite straightforward. You haven't answered them already, so don't tell me you have.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon (still awaiting straight answers)
Date: 15 Oct 08 - 01:26 PM

I've read them again and have covered them

But refuse to give a straight answer. What are you trying to hide?

And to somewhat petulant Volgadon and Woody - I was out at a singaround last night, and will now address Pip, AGAIN: I've said, as part of my regulationism, that economic/capitalist (NOT all) immigration/emigration should be stopped, the world over, from now on.

That is not what pip asked.

Granma's post exemplifies how Eliza can set the mood here - after what WAS a misunderstanding, she tells me to F-off, and then follows a stream of childish, false and defamatory, kick-him-while-he's down attacks, from most of the rest of you.

WHAT misunderstanding?

PLEASE ANSWER THIS, WITHOUT EVADING AND IGNORING IT.

"Now Wav, do you think that just anybody would be asked to edit the revised edition of the Penguin book of English Folksongs?
And guess who is on the cover.
Take a good look at the picture.
http://www.mustrad.org.uk/reviews/cefs.htm

But what is Israeli music, Wav, and doesn't that come into conflict with your statement that goes along the lines of the tradition is people doing things the way their ancestors did? Mine aren't from Israel.
Is this Israeli?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08lKGzOGRKE"

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 15 Oct 08 - 01:45 PM

the news is, we are now, sadly, moving toward record amounts of unemployment

Just goes to show you know fuck all about the history of the country you're living in.


Pip has asked you a series of questions which you repeatedly avoid answering which demonstrates that you're not only a racist but also a coward.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: catspaw49
Date: 15 Oct 08 - 01:48 PM

HEY!!! DICKLESS SLIMETURNIP!!! Yeah, Wavy, that's you....

Answer the questions that Pip asked. There are SEVEN questions. Write a number 1....Now write your answer to her first question. Next write a number 2 and then the answer to THAT question.

Its simple and only a total nabob and simpleshit would not be able to do it. What with all your fine education and technical prowess it should be a snap. Just do it the way I said, no dumbfuck references to your pathetic life's lack of work.....Just the answers to 7 easy questions. Any other answers not in that for mat will be strtuck down as non-responsive.

Spaw

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 15 Oct 08 - 02:09 PM

Um, Pip's a he.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 15 Oct 08 - 02:48 PM

Removed as Non-Responsive

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 15 Oct 08 - 03:05 PM

What larks!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 15 Oct 08 - 03:12 PM

Look, David, I'm asking you a straight question. I know that this is stuff that you've talked about before, but I want to get you to state what your beliefs actually are. Ideally I'd like you to think about what your beliefs actually are, although I realise that may be a bit much to ask.

Never mind the UN. Never mind 'from now on'. Just answer the questions.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 15 Oct 08 - 03:22 PM

More false and defamatory remarks

More avoidance!

I'm not clear on what you answers are. Pip's not clear what you answers are. Why don't you just answer the bloody questions properly or are you afraid???

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 15 Oct 08 - 03:24 PM

missing an 'r' on a couple of those words aren't I?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 15 Oct 08 - 03:45 PM

There are lessons for us all here:

Wavey the racist dragon...?

*Nods sagely*

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 15 Oct 08 - 03:47 PM

And this also applies to Volgadon - who once got annoyed when I, without any one-up-manship, politely told him how to make a link here.

Stop the this also applies nonsense and answer my questions or is it because you are afraid that you avoid answering.
I didn't get annoyed, but it wass totally irellevant, I asked about italics. Blickies don't work for me on this computer, even though I knew how to make them years before you joined. All this is smokescreen. Answer Pip's questions and mine, please.

PLEASE ANSWER THIS, WITHOUT EVADING AND IGNORING IT.

"Now Wav, do you think that just anybody would be asked to edit the revised edition of the Penguin book of English Folksongs?
And guess who is on the cover.
Take a good look at the picture.
http://www.mustrad.org.uk/reviews/cefs.htm

But what is Israeli music, Wav, and doesn't that come into conflict with your statement that goes along the lines of the tradition is people doing things the way their ancestors did? Mine aren't from Israel.

Do you consider imperialism to be forcing a set of ideas or a way of life on someone? Don't you dare answer with I hate all imperialism be it Victorian or Nazi, we've heard that, but it doesn't tell us what you consider imperialism to be.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: catspaw49
Date: 15 Oct 08 - 04:51 PM

Once again, Granny this time, you have been given CLEAR instructions. For any discussion to continue, you must answer the 7 questions asked by Pip in the simple format as described. Granny and I have each given the same instruction. Follow it. Posts in any other format will be considered non-responsive and struck as such.

Spaw

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 15 Oct 08 - 05:00 PM

Like the cat who ate the cheese and breathed into the mouse hole, I, too, wait with baited breath.

Are you there, David, or are you cowering under your bed?

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon Says Answer Pip!!!!
Date: 15 Oct 08 - 05:13 PM

Wav, are you going to answer Pip, or are you afraid to do so? If so, why.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 15 Oct 08 - 05:26 PM

WaV - What exactly is "economic/capitalist immigration"?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 15 Oct 08 - 06:44 PM

Does the green writing refer to WAV or the post.

Anyway I think it may be counterproductive as he will doubtless claim that his full and frank response was removed by some mudelf with malicious intent.

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Tootler
Date: 15 Oct 08 - 07:09 PM

I wish said mudelf would remove him from this forum altogether, with or without malicious intent.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: catspaw49
Date: 15 Oct 08 - 08:48 PM

We're waiting Wavylass......Just seven answers in order.

I suggest that until Wavy answers and proves otherwise or owns up we all respond with:

WAV=RACIST-BIGOT

and nothing else.....Two words til we get 7 answers. And this on ANY THREAD Wavy posts to until he answers and proves he can actually carry on discussion.

Spaw

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 16 Oct 08 - 04:02 AM

I was certain I posted this last night; wonder what happened? I think it holds some pretty profound lessons for us all...I just haven't figured out what they are yet. :D


Albi the Racist Dragon

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 16 Oct 08 - 04:18 AM

I'm guessing because this thread is beginning to look rather ugly in intent - more like a lynch mob than a debate.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 16 Oct 08 - 04:21 AM

How can you conduct a debate when the racist dragon is incapable of doing so because he cannot see the need?
Yes, there are lessons for all.
Jelly beans are worth a try.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 16 Oct 08 - 04:22 AM

Well, as my post was intended precisely as a response to the ever-increasing ugliness, I'm still at a loss to understand why it was removed. Unless, of course, the gnome did so without following the link to find out what it was actually about...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 16 Oct 08 - 04:51 AM

you're right - I misssed it. Apologies to gnomes and such.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 16 Oct 08 - 06:11 AM

"There are lessons for us all here:

Wavey the racist dragon...?"...false and defamatory language from Ruth Archer/Joan Crumb who works for the National Council - who, in my opinion, should have words with her.

Volgadon (who somehow reposted what has been deleted?!): I'm no expert on Israeli music (although Inbal Dor has been on my myspace Top Friends for ages)...but am surprised that you seem to be suggesting there is no such thing?...

Granma of the "saggy old tits" - "Not sure what you Australians call it" (Granma)...so I have to repeat repeat that I'm an English repat - actually born in Manchester the day Alf Ramsey's English team won the world cup of football.

Don - "Are you there, David, or are you cowering under your bed?"...so I'm not allowed any kip nor to attend a folk club or a "Bare Knuckle Poetry Slam"!

Catspaw - more false and defamatory language from one who has both whinged about being deleted and almost pleaded for Mudcat to host my website.

Diane - more false and defamatory language: I'VE ONLY QUESTIONED THE ACT OF IMMIGRATION ITSELF - NOT WHERE IMMIGRANTS COME FROM/NOT ANY PARTICULAR CULTURE OR RACE!

"Look, David, I'm asking you a straight question. I know that this is stuff that you've talked about before, but I want to get you to state what your beliefs actually are. Ideally I'd like you to think about what your beliefs actually are, although I realise that may be a bit much to ask.

Never mind the UN. Never mind 'from now on'. Just answer the questions" (Pip)...yes it IS stuff I've talked about before!...and this is not a bit rich but very rich from the one who, I'm almost certain, earlier told me not to answer off-thread questions and asked for the "5000 Morris Dancers" thread to be placed in the BS section, for that very reasong...can you confirm it was you Pip - to save hours of trawling.

Now for those who cannot fathom -

David, let me put it like this. Is it true that England is currently a multi-cultural country? YES - THERE HAS BEEN NOW 50 YEARS OF MASS IMMIGRATION (MOSTLY ECONOMIC WHICH, SMOKEY, IS INTERCHANGEABLE WITH CAPITALIST IMMIGRATION - PEOPLE LEAVING THEIR LAND FOR A BETTER LIFE/TO GET RICH, ETC.).

Do you believe that trying to have a multiple number of cultures living under the one state law will always cause problems? YES - AS YOU DO KNOW.

Do you therefore believe that England should not be a multi-cultural country? ECONOMIC/CAPITALIST (NOT ALL) IMMIGRATION SHOULD STOP, AND THERE SHOULD BE ASSIMILATION INTO ENGLISH CULTURE AND VALUES - WHY COME TO ENGLAND IF AGAINST SUCH WAYS?

Is it true to say that cultures are carried, lived and perpetuated by people? YES

Do you therefore believe that people who don't have an English culture should not come to England? NO - BUT THOSE WHO DO (AS GENUINE ASSYLUM SEEKERS TO WHOM ENLAND IS THEIR NEAREST/ONE OF THEIR NEAREST SAFE COUNTRIES, E.G.,) SHOULD MAKE AN EFFORT TO LEARN THE LANGUAGE AND ASSIMILATE, AS ABOVE. (AND THIS IS HARDLY RADICAL - AFTER ALMOST A DECADE OF PRO-IMMIGRATIONISM AND PRO-DIVERSITY, EVEN NEW LABOUR ARE LEANING THIS WAY, WITH ENGLISH TESTS, ETC.)

Do you also believe that it would have been preferable if people who don't have an English culture had not come to England in the past? I BELIEVE IT WOULD BE BETTER IF THE ABOVE HAD COME INTO PRACTISE EARLIER.

Do you specifically believe that England would have been a better place if there had not been large-scale immigration of non-Europeans over the last 50 years? LARGE-SCALE IMMMIGRATION PER SE.

Now - what about Ralphie refusing to answer my reasonable request - NOT a threat and repeated 3 times above?! I.e.: my myspace music is so bad that he doesn't want me to attend his folk club - so, since I remain a keen English folkie, he better tell me which folk club it is...

Now, back on thread: at that above site, you may see and hear my beloved tenor recorder/English flute/"little organ" (William Shakespeare, Hamlet), which, to drop a clanger, is, in my opinion, a definite rival to the bell as Englands national musical instrument...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 16 Oct 08 - 06:52 AM

Wow.
A Response.
Blimey!
Will have to take a few minutes to try and work out what on earth he's talking about.
But a Response.....Praise the Lord!
My answer to Wav's poke at me.....
All Folk Clubs are my club. And I doubt that you would be welcome at any of them.
There is not one specific club (Mind You the Rising Sun in Catford might do, but it shut down in the late 70's.....Whops forgot, you hadn't discovered music then, had you?)

OK Mr Radish.
Over to you for your response.
Looking forward to it!!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 16 Oct 08 - 07:05 AM

From BNP website in section About Us: Policies & Manifesto

we call for an immediate halt to all further immigration...
We will also clamp down on the flood of 'asylum seekers', all of whom are either bogus or can find refuge much nearer their home countries.


British People's Party...

The dismantling of our enforced multi-racial society...
The replacement of all multi-cultural and alien art with natural, traditional British art forms


English Independence Party...


...restore a SINGLE, EXCLUSIVE ENGLISH CULTURE...
...positively RESTRICT THE INFLUENCE of American culture...
We believe the traditional role of men and women...
We will allow NO MORE IMMIGRATION into England...
We will apply our belief in the principle of monoculture by actively reestablishing English culture as the only basis for our arts and sports...


If it walks like a duck & if it quacks like a duck......

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Joseph P
Date: 16 Oct 08 - 07:13 AM

Everyone and everything is getting rather tetchy
so lets gett back to enjoying some rather nice poetry!

Who is to say
that I cant stay
In England, with my foreign paraphenalia
they said anyone who
plays the didgeridoo
should be sent to far-off Australia

At a session
I played it in
I thought it fitted rather well
Those tribal sounds
They travelled round
But I was told to play a bell! (more culturally suitable apparently)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 16 Oct 08 - 07:50 AM

Asylum and immigration are not the same thing. From your responses above, what you want is severe restrictions on asylum and an end to immigration. Why be afraid to be transparent about this? Is it because you know it equates all too well with the ideologies of far-right parties, such as those quorted by Woody?

For what it's worth, I pointed out the similarities between WAV's philosophy and that spelled out on the BNP website many months ago.

They, too, claim not to be racist. No matter how many times they (or WAV) repeat it, it doesn't become any more true.

They, too, love the world being multicultural, just as long as everyone stays in their own country and doesn't come here to dilute and undermine English culture.

They, too, believe that "English culture has taken a hammering" thanks to the malign influence of the mass immigration of the past 50 years.


There you are WAV. If you're not racist, neither is the BNP. Personally, I don't believe either of you. NOTHING I have ever said to you is false or indeed defamitory - all I have ever sought to do where you are concerned is defend the folk culture I love from being harnessed to your twisted, insular, right-wing ideology. The fact that you are so blind that you cannot see your own dogma for what it is is not my problem, nor does it make it any less malignant.

If anyone wants to sack me from the folk police for this, they can have my bloody badge with pleasure.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: TheSnail
Date: 16 Oct 08 - 08:08 AM

People, you have to decide whether you are making a heroic stand for all that's right and good in the world or just hitting out at someone you find very annoying. He's like one of those knock down dolls that, no matter how hard you hit them, they always bounce back with a silly grin on their face.

I've been as guilty of WAV bashing as any but this has turned into bullying. Those who claimed that it is imperative to speak out against racism wherever it is found were conspicuously absent from the not bad for an englishman thread.

This is beginning to look like an undiciplined mob of adolescents haranguing the one kid who's a bit strange and different and they won't stop till they've reduced him to tears.

If you really want to oppose racism, Woody has given you a few pointers to the real thing above. WAV really isn't that important. If you stop responding, his threads will disappear below the horizon and be forgotten.

Grow up and walk away or admit that your real motivation is that you enjoy bashing WAV.

And WAV... listen and learn.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: catspaw49
Date: 16 Oct 08 - 08:19 AM

LOL......Hell Snail, I admitted that long ago. Yeah, he's racist and bigoted and its been fun having him admit it but I was enjoying it long before. See, Wavy enjoys it and has had great fun posting his "Life's Work" repeatedly ad nauseum so the tat for his tit is screwing around with him.

I'm just playing the dozens with an unarmed kid and having a great time. He's posting his crap and acting insulted and doing the same!   I just love that he thinks some of my early sarcastic posts were real. Not too hard to understand.   But for Wavy, its not easy......although his mother is.

Spaw

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 16 Oct 08 - 08:19 AM

I don't read every thread on Mudcat, and was unaware of the other thread you've pointed out. I was making this exact point with the Youtube link i posted earlier, actually - if you have a look at it, Snail, you'll see that.

My last post was a response to WAV's most recent points, and I believe it was perfectly valid as an attack on the beliefs, rather than the person.


From experience, and FWIW, his threads do not simply disappear below the horizon; he continually resurrects them or starts new ones, and fills them with the same poisonous dogma.

While those who have posted here need to be conscious of their motives, WAV is as responsible as anyone for keeping these arguments alive.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: TheSnail
Date: 16 Oct 08 - 08:51 AM

Not getting at you in particular, Ruth. Your link did make more or less the same point. Curiously, a GUEST with a silly name had their post quoting the relevant lines deleted.

From experience, and FWIW, his threads do not simply disappear below the horizon; he continually resurrects them or starts new ones, and fills them with the same poisonous dogma.

WAV generally starts his threads with something fairly uncontroversial and people rub their hands with glee - "Another WAV bashing opportunity" - giving him a platform to spout his views on. Does anyone believe that he has converted anybody to his point of view?

Ignore him. He probably won't go away but nobody will take any notice. There are more important fights to fight.

Oh dear, here's me helping to keep this thread alive.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Working Radish
Date: 16 Oct 08 - 08:55 AM

Thanks, I guess, for that.

this is not a bit rich but very rich from the one who, I'm almost certain, earlier told me not to answer off-thread questions

Don't be silly. Yes, I think this thread should come with a BS tag, as it's mostly political rather than musical. Yes, I think that if you want to talk about music you should take the political discussion somewhere else. But no, that doesn't mean ignoring questions - it means responding somewhere else (you could start a new BS thread - it's not hard). But I've given up that particular battle for now.

Do you therefore believe that England should not be a multi-cultural country? ECONOMIC/CAPITALIST (NOT ALL) IMMIGRATION SHOULD STOP, AND THERE SHOULD BE ASSIMILATION INTO ENGLISH CULTURE AND VALUES - WHY COME TO ENGLAND IF AGAINST SUCH WAYS?

That's a 'Yes', then. England should be mono-cultural, nobody should come here except asylum seekers from a nearby country, and those who do come here should assimilate to 'English culture'.

Do you also believe that it would have been preferable if people who don't have an English culture had not come to England in the past? I BELIEVE IT WOULD BE BETTER IF THE ABOVE HAD COME INTO PRACTISE EARLIER.

In other words, you believe it would have been preferable if far fewer people who don't have an English culture had come to England in the past, and those who had done had assimilated to 'English culture'. No Indian takeaways in this green and pleasant land, then. No pizza, come to think of it. I suppose we could still have burgers, but we'd have to call them rissoles. (Sorry, lunch break.)

Do you specifically believe that England would have been a better place if there had not been large-scale immigration of non-Europeans over the last 50 years? LARGE-SCALE IMMMIGRATION PER SE.

Since all the large-scale immigration which has actually happened has been of non-Europeans - at least, up until the recent Polish influx - this is a distinction that makes no difference. I appreciate you're trying to clear yourself of the imputation of hating brown-skinned people personally - as you say in response to Ruth,

I'VE ONLY QUESTIONED THE ACT OF IMMIGRATION ITSELF - NOT WHERE IMMIGRANTS COME FROM/NOT ANY PARTICULAR CULTURE OR RACE!

But really, that's not what racism means. You want to preserve English culture by excluding foreign influences. In other words, you want to exclude foreign people from England, because you see them as a threat to the purity of English culture. That is racism.

One final question, about assimilation. You've said earlier that it's a bad thing when people lose their culture; in many ways I tend to agree. But doesn't that mean that it's a good thing when immigrants keep their culture alive?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 16 Oct 08 - 09:22 AM

Working radish: no ice cream either. I'd hate that.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 16 Oct 08 - 09:56 AM

"WHY COME TO ENGLAND IF AGAINST SUCH WAYS"

Because of this, or this, or perhaps this.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 16 Oct 08 - 10:13 AM

Spot on, Stigweard. Your examples throw up another question: do you really believe, WAV, that being born in a particular country gives you more entitlement - some sort of god-given right - to comfort, wealth and privilege? Why do you deserve the benefits and opportunities of living in a wealthy western country more than someone from Africa, or the Caribbean, or Southeast Asia? Just because of an accident of birth?

I can't imagine the courage it must take to come from nothing, and to work very hard in order to be able to leave everything you know, all of your friends, family, culture - your home - purely because you have the guts and the drive to make a better life for yourself and your kids. It's what my great-grandparents on both sides did when they emigrated to America. Perhaps it's not a million miles from what your parents did when they emigrated to Australia.

People like this enrich ANY culture. They deserve respect, not intolerance.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: KB in Iowa
Date: 16 Oct 08 - 10:31 AM

doesn't that mean that it's a good thing when immigrants keep their culture alive?

I live in a small town (approx 3,600 people) in the middle of the USA in a culturally rather homogenous state. My town however is about 50% Hispanic. There being such a concentration of Hispanics has made it possible for them to maintain many traditional ways. There are four Mexican restaurants, three grocery stores (small ones) and a bakery. There is a traditional dance troupe that marches in the annual fair parade. There are, of course, many smaller more personal ways in which their culture is kept alive. Our school district has a bilingual program (optional, not required) so both of my sons are taught the normal curriculum in Spanish for part of the day. I think my town is much the richer for all this.

In Cedar Rapids, a city about 45 minutes from where I live, there are a large number of people of Czech descent (the National Czech and Slovak Museum is located there). Years ago they were ridiculed and discriminated against. They were not allowed to speak their native tongue in public. Many living traditions were lost. There has lately been a move to revive many of these traditions. There is no intention to remove themselves from mainstream American culture (such as it is) but rather to reclaim something of their heritage. The Hispanics in my town won't have to reclaim anything because they will not have given it up in the first place. I say again that my town is much the richer for this.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: catspaw49
Date: 16 Oct 08 - 10:39 AM

The way he keeps bringing it up, I think Wavy believes he has some special entitlement because he was born on the day Alf Ramsey played a sillyass game. I wonder how he'd feel if he was born on the day Christine Keeler posed for the Morley photo................

Spaw

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 16 Oct 08 - 11:07 AM

AND THERE SHOULD BE ASSIMILATION INTO ENGLISH CULTURE AND VALUES - WHY COME TO ENGLAND IF AGAINST SUCH WAYS?

WAV - I was born in England and I'm against the ways you speak of. Most of us are, which is why we welcomed the immigration which swamped the reactionary mono-cultural shit-hole of pre-1960s England with something meaningful. Immigration gave doddering grey depressed old post-war England hope in the form of diversity, life, music, flavour, colour, pattern, dance, humanity, richness, and all level of joyous wonder. Without immigration, England had no culture worth a shit. In the 1950s English Traditional Music was a seriously endangered species; no one wanted to know. Now, it's doing rather better - never better in fact, never better in the whole of English history - not that I give a flying fuck about English history because my life is right here, right now, in October 2008. I personally thank immigration for this; I thank the influx of pure colour in every sense of the word that illuminated this grey monochrome flavourless bland as boiled fucking cabbage country and let people see that they too had something worth singing and playing, something to be proud of, something truly amazing in terms of Their Own Good Culture which is what we've got now. No going back. Not now. Not ever. We're long past that - and getting further away from it with each death and each new birth, with each new bright-eyed arrival that looks only to the future, not the past.

To pinch a phrase from the Native Americans. We have not inherited this England of ours from our mono-cultural monochrome forebears; we have borrowed it from our multi-cultural rainbow children. And whilst my children may hate folk music (and I hate it too as much as I love it) they love life, and they love hip-hop, and The Mighty Boosh and all the other stuff I'll never understand, but I'll accept and love it with an open heart because it's theirs - OURS - and there's nothing you can do about it for all your drab and dreary mealy-mouthed euphemistic propagandising other than mire yourself ever deeper in the personal misery which is, after all, your choice.

So, in the light of the above, let's look that that above quote again, shall we?

AND THERE SHOULD BE ASSIMILATION INTO ENGLISH CULTURE AND VALUES - WHY COME TO ENGLAND IF AGAINST SUCH WAYS?

Because this is precisely what you've done, WAV. You've come to Our Good England, and you're totally against the ways of OUR own good multi-cultural society into which you've so steadfastly refused to assimilate, actively promoting your specious lies and discord, filled as you are with the bitter and determined hatred that underwrites your every word. But as you promote such vile reactionary anachronistic bullshit, then so people will oppose it, and they will do so with increasing and entirely justified vehemence until either you fuck off back to Australia, or else learn the error of your ways. Maybe then you might find your efforts at repatriation will, at last, yield some fruits.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 16 Oct 08 - 11:19 AM

Our New National Athem? Certainly one of mine!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 16 Oct 08 - 12:14 PM

Hey Mr Beard
Great clip!!!
Ralphie
Oh, and great points as well. He won't read them though. (sigh)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 16 Oct 08 - 01:16 PM

Why not just disable all his links?
That's not a euphemism, by the way..

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: KB in Iowa
Date: 16 Oct 08 - 01:25 PM

Spaw, did you catch this?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse - PM
Date: 16 Oct 08 - 06:11 AM

...at that above site, you may see ... my ... "little organ"

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 16 Oct 08 - 01:58 PM

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 16 Oct 08 - 02:02 PM

Amen to all that IB.

And the Notting Hill Carnival! I used to live in NH - late August was always the best time as the whole place started buzzing in anticipation. Truly wonderful.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: peregrina
Date: 16 Oct 08 - 02:18 PM

Perhaps the national instrument is the sound of those who love to bang their heads against the wall...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 16 Oct 08 - 02:18 PM

KB - that reminds me of a scene in the film Dim Sum. An old man, a Chinese immigrant to the US, is lamenting the loss of Chinese culture as the younger generations become Westernised. He finishes by listing a whole series of obscure or elaborate dishes that, he fears, aren't being handed down any more -
"[Chinese name] - all gone! [Chinese name] - all gone!"
Except that his English isn't very good, so it sounds like "aw goh!" There's a silly comic quality to that "aw goh!", coupled with a terrible pathos at watching this old man seeing his world slip away. (The lead character is his niece, and at the very end of the film she helps him make the most beautiful, elaborate and time-consuming dim sum you have ever seen. Happy ending.)

I cried when I saw that scene, although my background's quite different; I think the most exotic thing my Mum used to make was the Kartoffelpüffer she picked up when they lived in Germany after the war. (She's gone now, mind you, and most of her recipes are aw goh too.) Traditions, customs, inheritances are valuable things - culturally valuable, that is - and the more this country can accommodate, the merrier.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: peregrina
Date: 16 Oct 08 - 02:19 PM

hark, I hear it now, emanating from this very thread...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 16 Oct 08 - 02:21 PM

Wavey the racist dragon...?"...false and defamatory language from Ruth Archer/Joan Crumb who works for the National Council - who, in my opinion, should have words with her.

Shouldn't the UN get involved?

Volgadon (who somehow reposted what has been deleted?!): I'm no expert on Israeli music (although Inbal Dor has been on my myspace Top Friends for ages)...but am surprised that you seem to be suggesting there is no such thing?...

Deleted? Not that I'm aware of.
I couldn't care less about Inbal Dor, have no idea who she is and don't see what a myspace friend has to do with anything. I could be top friends with Charles Dickens on that thing!
You missed the point. Israeli music IS multicultural, it has a bit of everything.

Granma of the "saggy old tits" - "Not sure what you Australians call it" (Granma)...so I have to repeat repeat that I'm an English repat - actually born in Manchester the day Alf Ramsey's English team won the world cup of football.

So, should being born on that day give you special priviledges, or ensure your Englishness? I'm sure plenty of Pakistans and West Indians were born on that day, in England.

Catspaw - more false and defamatory language from one who has both whinged about being deleted and almost pleaded for Mudcat to host my website.

-Baldrick, do you know what irony is?
-Yes, it's like bronzy and goldy.

Diane - more false and defamatory language: I'VE ONLY QUESTIONED THE ACT OF IMMIGRATION ITSELF - NOT WHERE IMMIGRANTS COME FROM/NOT ANY PARTICULAR CULTURE OR RACE!

Nobody accused you of being a racist according to your own narrow, shallow and inaccurate definition, although you do seem to hammer on AMERICAN culture, which puts a lie to your statement.

Now, back on thread: at that above site, you may see and hear my beloved tenor recorder/English flute/"little organ" (William Shakespeare, Hamlet), which, to drop a clanger, is, in my opinion, a definite rival to the bell as Englands national musical instrument...

You mean a continental instrument used in a continental court setting? Hamlet Prince of...?
Were Shakespeare to write a play about the Grand Mogul and include a line about the sitar, calling it that wondrous instrument of joy, could we consider it an English instrument?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 16 Oct 08 - 02:41 PM

Here's one of Our Own Good English musicians interpreting one of our Own good English songs...with a little help.

I hope it gets nominated for Traditional Track of the Year at the folk awards, because it's stonking.


Lucy Wan - Jim Moray

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 16 Oct 08 - 02:42 PM

-Baldrick, do you know what irony is?
-Yes, it's like bronzy and goldy.

It's only recently that I realized how good a joke this was - i.e. "irony" used as an adjective means "like Iron"

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Sandman
Date: 16 Oct 08 - 02:56 PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_PoPY-mDpA&feature=relateand here is another one,Dick Miles with the melody being played on the English Concertina

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 17 Oct 08 - 06:03 AM

Sorry for dredging this up again...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 17 Oct 08 - 06:04 AM

...but I just wanted to give someone the chance to say...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 17 Oct 08 - 06:05 AM

...900!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Will Fly
Date: 17 Oct 08 - 06:07 AM

to say...Good Morning, Sean! It's a beautiful day down here in Sussex. I can see the sea shining blue in the sunlight, and the downs rising up to the west. The autumn colours are at their best. Aah - but would it all have been better 50 years ago? That's the question...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Darowyn
Date: 17 Oct 08 - 06:23 AM

Oh it was, we had proper English sun in those days. We all doffed our caps to the village squire as we sat outside the pub with our pints of mead, singing the old folk songs of the day, all without harmonies of course, just like these ones here:-
All UK number ones from 1958!

Jerry Lee Lewis               Great Balls Of Fire        07/01/1958
Elvis Presley               Jailhouse Rock               21/01/1958
Michael Holliday       The Story Of My Life        11/02/1958
Perry Como               Magic Moments               25/02/1958
Marvin Rainwater       Whole Lotta Woman        22/04/1958
Connie Francis               Who's Sorry Now               13/05/1958
Vic Damone               On The Street Where You Live        24/06/1958
The Everly Brothers    All I Have To Do Is Dream        01/07/1958
The Kalin Twins               When                     19/08/1958
Connie Francis               Carolina Moon               23/09/1958
Tommy Edwards               It's All In The Game        04/11/1958
Lord Rockingham's XI   Hoots Mon               25/11/1958
Conway Twitty               It's Only Make Believe        16/12/1958

Cheers
Dave

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Will Fly
Date: 17 Oct 08 - 06:28 AM

Oh Dave, Dave - how you brought it all back for me! I was tainted at the age of 12, of course, by raving over "Heartbreak Hotel" and "Bye Bye Love". And now I'm too late for saving. The ice cream man, by the way, used to come around with van and horse - and rang a handbell to advertise his presence (I kid you not). Those WERE the days!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 17 Oct 08 - 07:01 AM

Hey, I wasn't even born 50 years ago... And how good it feels to still be able to say that, which I will do, at every availably opportunity, for the next three years. Even so, I still remember the stench of those malodorous monochrome years - the coal smoke, the dank body odours, the smog, the leaded petrol & diesel fumes, and the cigarettes! Everyone, it seemed, smoked everywhere, all the time, casting all to the dirty smelly stain that was suddenly brightened up by the first Pakistani owned corner shop opening in our village when suddenly the sun seemed to come out and my infant nostrils sang to other more exotic fragrances. And as for Folk Music, we had to make do with This, which I still love by the way... just watching it now I am washed over by waves of comforting nostalgia. Seminal stuff!

Thanks for the land & seascape, Will - more English nostalgia anyone? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=re0ASyzKnIM

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Sandman
Date: 17 Oct 08 - 07:06 AM

WAV wasnt born then,however I remember the fifties ,how exotic it was to have bananas after the war,the only kind of spaghetti was in tins,now look at the influence of mediterranean/european/indian cuisine on our culture,a definite improvement.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Will Fly
Date: 17 Oct 08 - 07:13 AM

The Amazing Blondel - I thought they'd vanished years ago - thanks for the link, IB. Is it just my ears, which have been recently punctured by Bellowhead's "Matachin", or are they just a teensy-weensy bit - you know, just a weensy bit Olde Englande...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Will Fly
Date: 17 Oct 08 - 07:19 AM

... and, I should add, that my own memories of the early 50s were of living in what was then a dirty little mill town on the edge of the Pennines. It seemed to rain all the time and there was a haze of dirty smoke that hung permanenently over the place - easily visible from Rivington Pike, the nearest spot to walk out to get away from it. My worst memory is of my dentist, who put the fear of God into me when he started to foot-treadle his drill.

I went back to the village - more like a small town now - a year or two ago and it was immensely cleaner and brighter, if more built-upon than I remembered. Good old days? Bu99er them.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 17 Oct 08 - 08:02 AM

'WAV generally starts his threads with something fairly uncontroversial and people rub their hands with glee - "Another WAV bashing opportunity" ' - The Snail

This concept intrigued me, and I wanted to see if it were true. This thread started with a musical question and received a number of good-natured musical answers from many of the continuing respondents here.

So who was the first person to introduce the political argument about English culture being "kept down"? 3 guesses. And it still took some time before people got pissed off with his combination of ignorance, arrogance and persistent reactionary sloganeering.

I reiterate: WAV is not an innocent here. He's not a victim. He's an agent provocateur. If he doesn't like the responses he provokes, perhaps he should re-think his ideology and his methods of engagement.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 17 Oct 08 - 08:22 AM

you know, just a weensy bit Olde Englande

Exactly. Wistful, twee, seen through a haze of... something anyway. I first heard that back in 1973 when I was twelve, so it sort of takes me back, as some music does. Been thinking about that a lot recently, the associations of music that might resurface from time to time, reminding one of something perhaps best forgotten... or not... but either way it never quite goes away...

And talking about Nostalgia, and Bananas - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kA6ShRmUgCE

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 17 Oct 08 - 08:54 AM

I left England for New Zealand at the age of 18 in 1957, and the England I remember was not exactly monocultural even then. The first song I can remember was Irish - "McTavish is dead and his brother don't know it" from my Glasgow-Irish grandma - next after that was my mother singing "Bobby Shaftoe", and from then on it was mostly tunes and songs from the radio, which was mostly set to the Home Service. My father was a Jimmy Shand fan, and the one from his band I remember was Mickie Ainsworth's version of "The March Hare" (Irish), and versions by players I couldn't name of "The Minstrel Boy" (Irish again) and "The Girl I Left Behind Me".

And the three songs that stuck in my head from that time more than any others were: Charles Trenet's "La Mer" (in French; Bobby Darin's English one was later); Eartha Kitt's version of the Turkish song "Uskudar'a gider iken"; and my father singing "Bhair mi o" very badly in the bath - he'd probably learned it off a Glasgow Orpheus Choir record.

Probably my dad's best friend at the time was a Polish emigre. We had one of his watercolours (of Skye) at home but never got to hear any Polish songs. We had a few bits of Indian and Egyptian paraphernalia around the house from my father's war service, some African things from his uncle's work as a diplomat in Zanzibar, and with his aunts being involved in supporting Methodist missionary work as well, we could never really dismiss the wider world as something not worth knowing about.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: TheSnail
Date: 17 Oct 08 - 09:38 AM

Ruth Archer

Well maybe "Another WAV bashing opportunity" was a bit of hyperbole but WAV's been around long enough for people to know how it's going to go. He starts a thread, people respond and he's got his platform.

I reiterate: WAV is not an innocent here.

Did I say he was?

He's not a victim.

But people are making him look like one.

He's an agent provocateur.

Yes. Good at it isn't he. He pulls the strings and everybody dances.

If he doesn't like the responses he provokes, perhaps he should re-think his ideology and his methods of engagement.

Perhaps he should but, somehow I don't think he's going to. He's enjoying himself too much the way things are.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 17 Oct 08 - 10:47 AM

"Asylum and immigration are not the same thing. From your responses above, what you want is severe restrictions on asylum and an end to immigration. Why be afraid to be transparent about this? Is it because you know it equates all too well with the ideologies of far-right parties, such as those quorted by Woody?" (Ruth)...on the contrary, I am transparent/frank and then you go and twist things/put words in my mouth. And how on earth can I be "right-wing" when I've criticised capitalism so often throughout my collection? But, yes, as I've also tried to clarify there, this is where some left-wing people get confused - they are against greed, like me, but end up supporting economic/capitalist immigration, unlike me.
And then - "WAV is as responsible as anyone for keeping these arguments alive."...so having been hammered for not answering Pip's questions, above, as I thought I'd covered those issues, now I'm guilty of participation in a thread as well!
To Snail - it's true that some here could not agree with me that snails have shells, although I, myself, always at least try to play each ball on it's merrits and DO keep listening to people.
Radish - "That's a 'Yes', then. England should be mono-cultural, nobody should come here except asylum seekers from a nearby country, and those who do come here should assimilate to 'English culture'."...I've said economic/capitalist (NOT ALL)immigration/emigration should stop, the world over, from now on...and I've also given examples of other kinds of immigration/emigration above. Can you begin to comprehend that I genuinely don't like well-heeled people from nations other than Spain, including mine, pricing young Spanish couples out of the property market?
"the imputation of hating brown-skinned people personally" and that IS false and defamatory and disgusting tactics! I have only questioned the act of immigration itself and never any particular race or culture. What I have done, is found my way on a shoe-string through about 40 countries getting on well enough with people. Then, you again confuse the questioning of immigration with racism, even though more and more people are beginning to understand the differnce these days.
(And, for what it's worth, I'll have to read and respond to the rest later, as I'd like to go through my repertoire on my English flute, as usual, before attending a folk club tonight...lyrics I find less forgettable.)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Surreysinger at work
Date: 17 Oct 08 - 11:13 AM

WAV ... I'm not making any comment on what you have to say, as it's been quite obvious that there is generally little point in that ... but if you DO have anything to say, and want to quote other people, could you at least make sure that you follow normal conventions ... ie keep the quote and your response separate! At the moment it's well night impossible to see where the quote finishes and your reply starts ... which makes it all very difficult to follow, if one actually wants to

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 17 Oct 08 - 11:29 AM

"I have only questioned the act of immigration itself and never any particular race or culture."

No, what you have said is that foreigners are fine, as long as they don't come here and undermine "good English culture". You have said that English culture is taking a hammering, and implied that immigration is to blame. You have said that England was a "more English" place 50 years ago before mass, non-European immigration began, and you would have preferred it if things had remained so. You have said that different cultures cannot live under one state law, and have cited (extremely rare) examples of terrorosm as one of the reasons for this.

These things do not equate to questioning the ACT of immigration - they question immigration on cultural grounds. This is xenophobic at best, and racist at worst, and as has been demonstrated, they are pretty much aligned with several of the key policies of the BNP. You feel culturally and economically threatened by immigration, so you want it to stop, regardless of what this might mean for the human rights of those involved - and don't start giving out about the UN: that's a pipe dream. in the HERE and NOW, if immigration were to stop, you'd be condemning great swathes of people to a lif of poverty and struggle. Why? What right have you, because of an accident of birth, to benefit from the wealth and privilege of a life in Britain while others are denied those privileges? From your own admission, it isn't because you are contributing more than the average immigrant - indeed, you are on the dole, and lots of immigrants are out there doing cleaning and manual labour and whatever crappy jiob they can get their hands on, just to provide for themselves and their families.

So it's not the act of immigration you question, IMHO - it's the effect; and more specifically, how that effect might impact on YOU, and your fantasy of a pure English culture and your employment prospects.

Again, at least have the grace to be honest with us, as well as yourself.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Sandman
Date: 17 Oct 08 - 12:58 PM

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=HY-EuyEsYTE
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=HY-EuyEsYTE

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Sandman
Date: 17 Oct 08 - 01:01 PM

they will probably bring a f;;;;;;;;banjo with them.
hey the banjo an african instrument.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 17 Oct 08 - 01:02 PM

on the contrary, I am transparent/frank and then you go and twist things/put words in my mouth. And how on earth can I be "right-wing" when I've criticised capitalism so often throughout my collection?

That is pathetic. Like the rest of your ideas it is very shallow, childish even. What is more, you obviously have no idea what capitalism means, otherwise you wouldn't call someone moving for a job a capitalist immigrant. Capitalism does not mean making mon ey and socialism does not mean that you are against money.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 17 Oct 08 - 01:45 PM

"Capitalist immigration."

Somehow I don't think someone living in a poverty-stricken third world country who decides to move to a richer, more industrialized country in search of work in order to feed his family is really thinking in terms of capitalist ideology.

On the other hand, a corporate head who closes down a factory and "outsources" the jobs to a poor country in order to maximize profits is.

David, I'd say that for a person with a degree in Humanities, the door you are complaining about swings the wrong way.

(Of course, one's self-interest often colors one's outlook).

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 17 Oct 08 - 02:48 PM

From your own admission, it isn't because you are contributing more than the average immigrant - indeed, you are on the dole, and lots of immigrants are out there doing cleaning and manual labour and whatever crappy jiob they can get their hands on, just to provide for themselves and their families.


And of course paying their taxes which go on to pay WAV's dole.


There is of course an extra irony. WAV's surname of "Franks" owes its origins to the people responsible for the most destructive act of economic migration the English ever experienced.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 17 Oct 08 - 02:57 PM

BTW, my point about Israeli music IS that different cultures can live peacebly together.

I love the way that he thinks if criticising capitalism is a left-wing thing to do, and I criticize CAPITALISTIC immigration (a term of Wav's own concocting) then questioning the act of immigration is a left-wing thing. In reality, questioning immigration is VERY right-wing, and reactionary, xenophobic right-wing at that. They come here to steal our jobs.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 17 Oct 08 - 03:39 PM

WAV: if you want to decline to answer any more questions ON THIS THREAD and start a BS thread to discuss political issues, that's absolutely fine by me.

For now:

Radish - "That's a 'Yes', then. England should be mono-cultural, nobody should come here except asylum seekers from a nearby country, and those who do come here should assimilate to 'English culture'."...I've said economic/capitalist (NOT ALL)immigration/emigration should stop, the world over, from now on...and I've also given examples of other kinds of immigration/emigration above.

Exactly. The immigrants you approve of are asylum seekers, and the asylum seekers you approve of are asylum seekers for whom England is the nearest available safe country. In short, "nobody should come here except asylum seekers from a nearby country" - and those who do come here should assimilate, so that England remains mono-cultural.

"the imputation of hating brown-skinned people personally" and that IS false and defamatory and disgusting tactics!

Try reading to the end of the sentence before replying. What I said is that I realise you don't hate brown-skinned people personally. You don't have to hate brown-skinned people personally to be a racist. Any clearer?

Get back to me on the assimilation question some time, could you? As I said, it doesn't have to be on this thread - I'd much rather it was on a BS thread. Up to you.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 17 Oct 08 - 08:57 PM

"In reality, questioning immigration is VERY right-wing, and reactionary, xenophobic right-wing at that."

Whose reality is that?

No disrespect intended, but I think you're grossly over-simplifying the issue.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 18 Oct 08 - 12:51 AM

When the stated reason for curtailing immigration is that it's to protect the "purity" of one's own "culture," well, yeah. Sure looks like it to me.

Do Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 18 Oct 08 - 01:51 AM

Yes, you're right, but as a generalisation it's not true. Everything should be questioned. Free speech should be the priority, even if we don't agree with what's being said. The original statement said 'questioning', not 'curtailing'.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 18 Oct 08 - 04:41 AM

WAV - how on earth can I be "right-wing" when I've criticised capitalism so often

The Nazis & fascists in general were anti-capitalist. Hitler talked about it in Mein Kampf.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 18 Oct 08 - 07:46 AM

IB - "mono-cultural shit-hole of pre-1960s England"...so all the talk from our elders of better community spirit, being able to leave their front door open without fear, etc., is nonsense?
And "Without immigration, England had no culture worth a shit."?!
And "grey monochrome flavourless bland as boiled fucking cabbage"?!...I think these are the views of an extreme pro-immigrationist which, if I wasn't around, a lot of the people here would oppose; and one of the reasons I won't permanently "fuck off back to Australia" is because I genuinely DO like our English cultural heritage.
And a reminder that I too have enjoyed the other cultures a few of you mentioned, and more, on my travels .

"These things do not equate to questioning the ACT of immigration - they question immigration on cultural grounds. This is xenophobic at best, and racist at worst, and as has been demonstrated, they are pretty much aligned with several of the key policies of the BNP. You feel culturally and economically threatened by immigration, so you want it to stop, regardless of what this might mean for the human rights of those involved - and don't start giving out about the UN: that's a pipe dream. in the HERE and NOW, if immigration were to stop, you'd be condemning great swathes of people to a lif of poverty and struggle. Why? What right have you, because of an accident of birth, to benefit from the wealth and privilege of a life in Britain while others are denied those privileges? From your own admission, it isn't because you are contributing more than the average immigrant - indeed, you are on the dole, and lots of immigrants are out there doing cleaning and manual labour and whatever crappy jiob they can get their hands on, just to provide for themselves and their families." (Ruth)...Sorry I can't remember who, but someone pointed out that, of course, nations already do regulate immigration - I'm arguing regulations should be stronger, the world over - because I don't think economic/capitalist immigration/emigrations is the solution to reducing the terrible inequality in the world, and I do see definite problems, beyond terrorism, in trying to have a multiple number of cultures living under the one state law (which we have already been through). In other words, the solution is to leave, or to stay and be part of the solution? And these are neither "xenophobic" nor "racist" words - I really DO love the world being multicultural...this, on the other hand goes very close - "There is of course an extra irony. WAV's surname of "Franks" owes its origins to the people responsible for the most destructive act of economic migration the English ever experienced." (Woody)...and then "The Nazis & fascists in general were anti-capitalist. Hitler talked about it in Mein Kampf." (Woody)...again, I hate imprialism/white supremecy, etc. - be it Nazi, Victorian, or any other.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 18 Oct 08 - 10:25 AM

WAV - I was pointing out that, while you may protest otherwise, all the points you argue are the same as those argued by far right groups. Most of them are also anti-imperialist. Some of them are white supremacist, some not.

Which is better for the country? An immigrant that comes here, retains their own culture, but is economically productive and pays taxes, or a native-born returnee who is not productive and is a consumer of tax money?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 18 Oct 08 - 12:26 PM

Volgadon: The "native-born returnee" may be fully qualified and willing to do the job of the immigrant; the "native-born returnee" may have a better chance of work if attitudes toward immigration, repatriation, land rights, etc., changed.
There's a programme on TV here called "Wanted Down Under" and, at the end of it, a couple have to decide between Australia or staying here - I haven't watched all the episodes (there's jobsearching to be done, etc.) but not once have I heard any consideration given to Aborigines and land rights...so, more than 2 centuries on, for some or many here, they still don't enter the equation when it comes to leaving here for there, which I find revolting.
Back on thread, recorder may come from the olde English word "recorden" which means to warble or sing and I, for one, at least try to play it like I sing and sing like I play.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 18 Oct 08 - 12:31 PM

Wav - your playing and singing are very like each other, so well done

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 18 Oct 08 - 03:14 PM

WAV: if you want to decline to answer any more questions ON THIS THREAD and start a BS thread to discuss political issues, that's absolutely fine by me.

these are neither "xenophobic" nor "racist" words - I really DO love the world being multicultural

Please get this into your head: there is absolutely no contradiction between being racist and really, truly, genuinely loving the world being multicultural. When we say your views are racist, we emphatically don't mean that you don't love the world being multicultural. We know you love the world being multicultural. We also believe you're a racist. Think about it.

In the mean time, what about answering my earlier question about assimilation?

You've said earlier that it's a bad thing when people lose their culture; in many ways I tend to agree. But doesn't that mean that it's a good thing when immigrants keep their culture alive?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 18 Oct 08 - 04:27 PM

WaV - Go and see Johnny Silvo, preferably at a folk club; he is living proof of how misguided some of your beliefs are.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 18 Oct 08 - 04:45 PM

Something for WAV - Our Own Good Folk Culture With Authentic Northern Accents

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 18 Oct 08 - 04:55 PM

'Volgadon: The "native-born returnee" may be fully qualified and willing to do the job of the immigrant; the "native-born returnee" may have a better chance of work if attitudes toward immigration, repatriation, land rights, etc., changed.'

Well at least we're getting closer to the truth: WAV wants immigration policy changed to give him a beeter chance of getting a job. He hasn't explained why he has more right to that job than an immigrant, save an accident of birth; nor has he explained why it is fair or right that thousands of people from non-western countries should be condemned to a life of grinding poverty and despair for themselves and their children, just to help his employment prospects.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 18 Oct 08 - 04:58 PM

IB - "mono-cultural shit-hole of pre-1960s England"...so all the talk from our elders of better community spirit, being able to leave their front door open without fear, etc., is nonsense?

I keep my front door open (or at least I did until we got 3 large dogs that like to bark at the neighbours and will get out unless the door is locked) in multicultural Israel, in the year 2008. It helps that I live in a small community where we all know each other. Were I to live in the city, I would lock my doors, certainly.
You'll find that this was the case even centuries ago, when England supposedly was a far more English place, just look at some Hogarth or read about the Fielding brothers.

Volgadon: The "native-born returnee" may be fully qualified and willing to do the job of the immigrant; the "native-born returnee" may have a better chance of work if attitudes toward immigration, repatriation, land rights, etc., changed.

Wav, how many of the positions you applied for were given to immigrants? Come on, be honest. Don't you think the problem might be that you don't interview well?

There's a programme on TV here called "Wanted Down Under" and, at the end of it, a couple have to decide between Australia or staying here - I haven't watched all the episodes (there's jobsearching to be done, etc.) but not once have I heard any consideration given to Aborigines and land rights...so, more than 2 centuries on, for some or many here, they still don't enter the equation when it comes to leaving here for there, which I find revolting.

As far as I'm aware of, it is about families moving to big cities, such as Adelaide. I'm pretty sure they aren't taking up more land, unless you are proposing that the entire city be uprooted, the inhabitants transferred, the land returned to the Kaurna. In the which case, in avoidance of hypocrisy, are you also a proponent of being uprooted yourself so the land can be given back to the ancient Britons? Might I remind you that your surname is Franks, not Caratacus.

Back on thread, recorder may come from the olde English word "recorden" which means to warble or sing and I, for one, at least try to play it like I sing and sing like I play.

Wav, that is cobblers. Shows that you don't do credible research, but rely on websites such as this one. http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A471359

Try this on for size.

"It has long been suggested that the earliest reference to the recorder is provided by the household accounts of the Earl of Derby (later King Henry IV) for 1388 which mention i. fistula in nomine Ricordo, a flute called a Ricordo. Trowell (1957) remarks that ricordo is Italian for a "remembrance, souvenir, keepsake, memento, sign of friend-ship, token", derived from the Latin recordari (to remember), and notes further that during the Middle Ages, the gift of a musical instrument was a recognised custom of civility and a means to obtaining a reward, and indeed an excellent 'memento' of favours received or expected. Although the Italian origin of ricordo itself has been questioned (Bornstein 1987: 45-56; Griscom & Lasocki 1994: 19), Higbee (1965: 128) supports Trowell's derivation of 'recorder' from a form of the Latin recordari. Wright (1965: 341) suggests an origin from the English 'to record', meaning to memorise, to recall, to practice and to recite, to sing or to play and thus the Earl of Derby's ricordo may represent no more than an attempt to render a pre-existing English word 'recorder' in a Latin document." (http://www.recorderhomepage.net/medieval.html)

The rest of the page is interesting, it suggests that recorders were a fad from Europe.

again, I hate imprialism/white supremecy, etc. - be it Nazi, Victorian, or any other.

Imperialism and white supremacy (I don't know where you got supremecy from, is it an American, or perhaps Australian variant?) are hardly synonymous, so why the back slash? I have asked you this, I think, three times. Do you consider imperialism to be imposing one's culture and or set of ideas on someone else?

And "Without immigration, England had no culture worth a shit."?!
And "grey monochrome flavourless bland as boiled fucking cabbage"?!...I think these are the views of an extreme pro-immigrationist which, if I wasn't around, a lot of the people here would oppose; and one of the reasons I won't permanently "fuck off back to Australia" is because I genuinely DO like our English cultural heritage.

He is absolutely right, Wav. Without immigration, indeed, without imperialism, the English culture that you profess to love, even that 'far more English' England of 50 years ago, would not be around. As I pointed out, your own surname is not an ancient Briton one. Not even Anglo-Saxon. The Normans, your ancestors, were some of the biggest imperialists and capitalist immigrants the world has known.

Radish - "That's a 'Yes', then. England should be mono-cultural, nobody should come here except asylum seekers from a nearby country, and those who do come here should assimilate to 'English culture'."...I've said economic/capitalist (NOT ALL)immigration/emigration should stop, the world over, from now on...and I've also given examples of other kinds of immigration/emigration above.

The beauty in this is that there AREN'T any neighbouring countries with this sort of refugee problem, so England won't have to be soiled by any asylum seekers! That is, unless there are some from Iceland, as I assume he would guide the French to Spain or Germany.

Wav, do you consider yourself a Christian? If the answer be yes, do you believe in the New Testament?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 18 Oct 08 - 05:07 PM

"In reality, questioning immigration is VERY right-wing, and reactionary, xenophobic right-wing at that."

Whose reality is that?

No disrespect intended, but I think you're grossly over-simplifying the issue.

As a generalisation it's not true. Everything should be questioned. Free speech should be the priority, even if we don't agree with what's being said. The original statement said 'questioning', not 'curtailing'."

Where did I suggest preventing free speech? He has a right to say it, but it is still a nasty, reactionary, right-wing whinge about how they come here to steal our jobs and ruin our culture.
The difference, in this case, between curtailing and questioning is that he would curtail immigration IF HE COULD.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 18 Oct 08 - 05:21 PM

You didn't suggest preventing free speech and I wasn't accusing you of it. That post was answering Don Firth and I wasn't accusing him of it either. Sorry if you were misled.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: melodeonboy
Date: 18 Oct 08 - 05:30 PM

I did comment on this in the "5,000 Morris Dancers" thread. I had no direct response to my posting, probably because it added fuel to neither side of the debate.

To paraphrase my earlier comments, I'm not aware of any country in the world that does not question immigration, and, with reference to the previous posting, I'm not aware of any country that doesn't curtail immigration to a lesser or greater extent. It's not rocket science to work out why this is the case. Why are you lot still banging on about it?

Too much axe-grinding, not enough common sense!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 18 Oct 08 - 05:34 PM

melodeonboy:

Spot on mate.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: catspaw49
Date: 18 Oct 08 - 07:54 PM

You need to realize Wavynutless that your failure to gain employment is your fault. For any number of obvious reasons such as your conceited and abrasive personality, racist attitude, bigoted and xenophobic utterings, and some I'm sure are less obvious to interviewers, you don't get hired! Because Alf Ramsey won a soccer game on your day of birth and got his hat blown by your Mum as a reward later the next week does not entitle you to employment.

Spaw

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 19 Oct 08 - 05:38 AM

Ruth - as usual you avoid and cut and twist things because you don't like immigration being questioned; I repeat, is the solution to leave, or to stay and be part of the solution?; has all the mass economic/capitalist immigration/emigration of the last century ended the rotten inequality in the world? No - the solution is, rather...

Poem 105 of 230: GLOBAL REGULATIONISM

No income-scale would be unjust -
    It's a matter of degree;
And, to have less inequality,
    Regulations are a must.

For, in Millennium's status quo,
    The pay-gaps for human work,
And what's gotten simply as a perk,
    Are wrong - inhumanely so.

From walkaboutsverse.741.com

"The Normans, your ancestors, were some of the biggest imperialists and capitalist immigrants the world has known." (Volgadon)...you are so, almost imperialistically, sure of yourself, Volgadon - I'm only sure that all my known forebears were born here; I've heard about the crusading Franks, of course; I've heard that my great grandfather may have practised the jewish religion; I've heard about a famous Jewish family of spectacle makers in Manchester's past; and I've heard something about Franks coming here as translators during Bede's day..."The Normans, your ancestors"...wow, such confidence!
And again - "there AREN'T any neighbouring countries with this sort of refugee problem, so England won't have to be soiled by any asylum seekers! That is, unless there are some from Iceland, as I assume he would guide the French to Spain or Germany." (Volgadon)
"Wav, do you consider yourself a Christian? If the answer be yes, do you believe in the New Testament?" (Volgadon)...yes, "When I survey the wondrous" cross is atop my myspace playlist (I used to move it back down on Mondays but can't at the moment...anyone else still having this trouble since the changes?).
Catspaw: because I have been prepared to take temporary, whilst prefering permanent, contracts, I've actually worked for several companies here/got through several interviews where, of course, I keep my political mouth shut - even when faced with comments such as "Why ON EARTH did you come back?" or "You must be mad", partly because there was so much pro-immigrationism here during the Blair years, which New Labour have only just begun to question (introducing English tests, etc.).

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 19 Oct 08 - 07:26 AM

"The Normans, your ancestors, were some of the biggest imperialists and capitalist immigrants the world has known." (Volgadon)...you are so, almost imperialistically, sure of yourself, Volgadon - I'm only sure that all my known forebears were born here; I've heard about the crusading Franks, of course; I've heard that my great grandfather may have practised the jewish religion; I've heard about a famous Jewish family of spectacle makers in Manchester's past; and I've heard something about Franks coming here as translators during Bede's day..."The Normans, your ancestors"...wow, such confidence!

How is that IMPERIALISTICALLY sure of myself? You make no sense.
Out of curiosity, how far back do your known forebearers go? I bet it's not 1066, in which case my point holds up.
Oho, so if Jewish, then your ancestors were definitely immigrants, and quite probably CAPITALISTIC ones to boot. Who have you heard from about that, it wasn't that comment on the weekly walkabout was it? Franks is also a Jewish surname, but do you have any reason to think that your ancestors were Jewish? Just the turn of phrase, practised the Jewish religion tells me that they weren't.
Franks came over in Bede's day, but they didn't carry that surname (simply didn't exist), which is a later, Norman one! Even if they were those ones, they still IMMIGRATED!

The crusading Franks??? Frank was just a generic term back then, which in the Muslim world came to mean ANY Christian, even Armenians.


And again - "there AREN'T any neighbouring countries with this sort of refugee problem, so England won't have to be soiled by any asylum seekers! That is, unless there are some from Iceland, as I assume he would guide the French to Spain or Germany." (Volgadon)

Was there any point you were trying to make by quoting me?



What do you think of this verse, from the New Testament, which you profess to believe:
1st Timothy 5:8- But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 19 Oct 08 - 07:47 AM

has all the mass economic/capitalist immigration/emigration of the last century ended the rotten inequality in the world? No - the solution is, rather...

What you are proposing is a totalitarian world presided over by an absolute power, wherein everything last damn thing is regulated - policed by a higher authrority. Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely. It couldn't work without the death camps for dissidents and undesirables of whom, I dare say, there would be millions, myself included. But no doubt that's all part of your plan. Read some history books, WAV - or look at some websites - see how absurd and unworkable such ideas have been proved to be. With every word you write you conform your self-obsessed reactionary right-wing racist agenda.

so all the talk from our elders of better community spirit, being able to leave their front door open without fear, etc., is nonsense?

Yes it is. Utter and absolute nonsense. The locks on our doors are the price we pay for freedoms inconceivable to our grandparents generation.

and one of the reasons I won't permanently "fuck off back to Australia" is because I genuinely DO like our English cultural heritage.

Which is why in the fifteen years you have been here, you have shown no effort to learn our music, our songs, our ways, our history, our culture. So why on earth did you come back anyway? If you can't assimilate yourself into our own good multi-ethnic culture of the United Kingdom as it is today, then, as I suggest, please go home and take your right-wing racist propagandising with you.

Just as you moved to the North-East because it has the lowest percentage of ethnic minorities in the UK (just 3.6% of a national average of 13.1% - as oppose to an obviously intolerable 7.9% in your native North West - see Here) you came to Mudcat because you mistakenly assumed Folkies would by predisposed to your nauseating vision of a mono-cultural England. Trouble is, at the heart of Folk Music is the very soul of Humanity, of an enlightenment the nature of which is evidently inconceivable to you.

As with England, so in Mudcat and the Folk Scene as a whole. You're in the wrong place, Wavy.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 19 Oct 08 - 08:21 AM

My last post didn't post, but I was going to say that the open door thing is not only utter nonsense, but very rose-tinted nonsense at that. I provided a lot of good links from Regency and Victorian records of why people WOULDN'T leave doors open!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 19 Oct 08 - 09:48 AM

PS.

Just as you moved to the North-East because it has the lowest percentage of ethnic minorities in the UK

You've already stated that England was a more English place 50 years ago; no doubt you feel, at 3%, the North East is a more English place than London at 40%. Perhaps you feel this somehow isn't racist, in which case you are deluding yourself.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Will Fly
Date: 19 Oct 08 - 09:52 AM

There was a fascinating programme on Channel 4 some months ago, in which the art critic Andrew Graham-Dixon interviewed 10 people, "Little Englander" types, who believed - for example - that anyone who couldn't trace their origins back several generations in England didn't deserve to be called English. You know the sort of stuff: anti-immigration, anti-anyone not 100% English, etc. They all agreed to take a full DNA test to see where their antecedents lay. What was wonderful about the programme was that, not only did they all have ancestry from all over the world - including, by the way, Carol Thatcher (Middle East!) - but that the most recalcitrant and virulent "Little Englander" of the lot had 90% of his ancestry from Russia, the Middle East, the Mediterranean area, etc.

I've traced my family tree back to the 16th century on both father's and mother's side and discovered mainly "English" parentage, with some "Irish" and "Scottish" thrown in. But so what? How the hell do I know where my ancient roots were? And does it matter a f*ck? Of course it doesn't! It's as much nonsense as Hitler's concept of "Aryanism" - and that from someone (Hitler) with Jewish roots.

To think of a line of culture and nationality as pure is childish and idiotic.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 19 Oct 08 - 10:03 AM

When will you all catch on ? WalkaboutsVerse threads are to discuss WalkaboutsVerse, nothing else, the man is a self obsessed imbecile.

eric, [ just in from the pub ]

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Will Fly
Date: 19 Oct 08 - 10:07 AM

Hi eric - yes, we all know that, but we just can't resist a punt t him, can we?

Will (also just back from imbibing Harveys Bitter and Glenmorangie in the local).

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 19 Oct 08 - 12:03 PM

It's all about WAV?

Even if that were true and he really is just a delusional romantic and doesn't even know what Gobineau's poisonous ideology consists of and leads to, he still needs to be countered at every turn. Probably someone said this earlier (and if they didn't they should . . . I should have done): if just one casual visitor to this site sees this sort of racist filth (OK, I'll stretch to be charitable, even if unintentional) lying unchallenged, it's a greater threat to the credibility of our music than anything else. Did anyone mention the parlous state of German trad music still, even 60 years on from the fall of Hitler fascism? (If they didn't they should . . . I should have done). It exists only in university libraries, so tainted is it still. I spent two years trying to persuade them to do something - anything - other than Irish. OK, they'll do urban people's music (and very good some of it is) but nothing from the past. They just . . . can't.

I've been told by 'da management' not to talk about WAV's Master Plan anywhere but on this thread. So the struggle continues HERE. It's one tbing that trad music and dance is ridiculed. Ultimately that won't hurt it. But Martin Carthy wasn't quite right in saying that the ony harm you can do is NOT to play it. It also needs to be protected and kept from the hands of monoculturalist wreckers.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 19 Oct 08 - 12:55 PM

In among all the other rubbish he just posted because he hates not me but immigration being questioned, I must respond to these words in my mouth: "Just as you moved to the North-East because it has the lowest percentage of ethnic minorities in the UK" (IB)...I've NEVER said this, and it was NOT the reason: I was UE in Manchester, and spent a weekend checking out the NE - another good place for the kind of manufacturing I've long been in and out of for years - via trains...

Poem 162 of 230: TEES TO TYNE: FIRST IMPRESSIONS - SUMMER 2001

Where traditions are not so rare;
    Sea, country and works scent the air;
A multitude of monuments,
    Planted tubs and patterned pavements.

The longish pedestrian malls;
    The remnants of defensive walls;
"Broken-roofed buildings" are a gauge
    Of the respect for heritage.

Wheat, rape and pines in the fields;
    Estuaries guarded by shields;
Long sandy beaches and wide scenes;
    Romantic-ruin go-betweens.

Rivers in parts licked by trees,
    Or fringed by boat clubs, wharfs, gantries,
And crossed by practical delights -
    Varied spans, forming pleasing sights.

Fine churches headed at Durham;
    Football kits ad infinitum;
Kept castles - one for study;
    Masonry behind masonry.

And, with moulding-works out that way,
It's somewhere for a longer stay..?

From walkaboutsverse.741.com

(IB - as I have, rather, said to you before, there's what we want, and there's the tactics we are prepared to use.)

Will - given/accepting all that, as I keep stressing, what is best FROM NOW ON...

Diane Easby: "racist filth" is false and defamatory filth (I've only questioned the act of immigration itself - NOT criticised any particular culture or race); and then "I spent two years trying to persuade them to do something - anything - other than Irish."...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 19 Oct 08 - 01:09 PM

I've only questioned the act of immigration itself - NOT criticised any particular culture or race

To say that you're racist doesn't mean that you've criticised any particular culture or race. (While I'm about it, we're well aware that you love the world being multicultural.) You want to preserve English culture by excluding foreign influences. In other words, you want to exclude foreign people from England (from now on, if you insist), because you see them as a threat to the purity of English culture. That is racism.

Any chance of giving some thought to my question about assimilation, by the way? You've said earlier that it's a bad thing when people lose their culture; in many ways I tend to agree. But doesn't that mean that it's a good thing when immigrants keep their culture alive?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 19 Oct 08 - 01:17 PM

"I've only questioned the act of immigration itself - NOT criticised any particular culture or race."

That's disingenuous, David. If you can get "immigration itself" banned, then you wouldn't have to be bothered by the presence of any other race or culture.

One law to keep all the wogs out.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 19 Oct 08 - 01:26 PM

I didn't say you were, consciously and wittingly, a storm-trooping racist. I indicated (giving the example of those pursuing the doctrines of Gobineau) that the pattern of discrimation, inequality and ultimately, extermination first of culture and then of those members of "inferior" races as taken to its ultimate conclusion in the Third Reich, leads down that path. That is the tragedy of those like you unable to think logically. "I'm not a racist but . . . ". There's always a "justifying" but. You say it will stop after the elimination of vestiges of "alien" culture, your particular bee in bonnet being musical instruments that did not originate in England. The reality is otherwise. Go figure.

German musicians will not play their own traditional music, they play Irish instead. Their culture is a shameful thing to them, because it was hijacked for the "Aryan Cause". Yes, they're ashamed of their own songs and tunes, as all of us would be if we survived a parallel event here. Is that what you want?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 19 Oct 08 - 02:15 PM

I've NEVER said this

Wavy, if you were hell-bent of absolute purity of your repatriation you'd be living in the place you were born rather than floundering round as an economic migrant in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. One must ask why, and when one looks at the facts and figures over at the Commission for Racial Equality site and looks at such Wavisms as England was a more English place 50 years ago, then it's not so much a matter as putting words into your mouth as it is doing the math.

as I have, rather, said to you before, there's what we want, and there's the tactics we are prepared to use

What I want is an unregulated world of freely evolving organic culture and humanity much as we've enjoyed for the last 35,000 years or so, give or take the occasional hiccough. What you want, on the other hand, is a Fourth Reich Totalitarian World Order based on absolute racial and cultural segregation and a complete reactionary suppression of anything that doesn't fit into your insane notion of what constitutes Englishness. Tactics? First look at our desires, Wavy - only then think about tactics.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 19 Oct 08 - 02:19 PM

- We humans all blend into the one bland culture..OR..
- A multicultural world including nations with a multiple number of cultures trying to live peacefully under the one state law, or having different laws for different cultures withing the one nation..OR..
- As is my myspace header "a multicultural WORLD" with eco-travel and fair-trade between nations, via a stronger more-democratic UN - rather than yet more conquest and ecnonomic/capitalist immigration/emigration (which has NOT solved the rotten inequality in our world).

Back on thread, the tenor recorder/English flute is chromatic for about 2 octaves from middle C, so, when one does get the fingering correct, it sings what's on the score.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 19 Oct 08 - 04:31 PM

When you say multicultural WORLD, you mean a world comprised of different MONOCULTURES which do not mix. One can enjoy watching the different cultures, much as one does animals in their cages in the zoo.

What do you think of this verse, from the New Testament, which you profess to believe:
1st Timothy 5:8- But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.

"The Normans, your ancestors, were some of the biggest imperialists and capitalist immigrants the world has known." (Volgadon)...you are so, almost imperialistically, sure of yourself, Volgadon - I'm only sure that all my known forebears were born here; I've heard about the crusading Franks, of course; I've heard that my great grandfather may have practised the jewish religion; I've heard about a famous Jewish family of spectacle makers in Manchester's past; and I've heard something about Franks coming here as translators during Bede's day..."The Normans, your ancestors"...wow, such confidence!

How is that IMPERIALISTICALLY sure of myself? You make no sense.
Out of curiosity, how far back do your known forebearers go? I bet it's not 1066, in which case my point holds up.
Oho, so if Jewish, then your ancestors were definitely immigrants, and quite probably CAPITALISTIC ones to boot. Who have you heard from about that, it wasn't that comment on the weekly walkabout was it? Franks is also a Jewish surname, but do you have any reason to think that your ancestors were Jewish? Just the turn of phrase, practised the Jewish religion tells me that they weren't.
Franks came over in Bede's day, but they didn't carry that surname (simply didn't exist), which is a later, Norman one! Even if they were those ones, they still IMMIGRATED! I repeat, no Franks went by the surname Franks, so I can say with confidence that they were probably Norman.

The crusading Franks??? Frank was just a generic term back then, which in the Muslim world came to mean ANY Christian, even Armenians.


And again - "there AREN'T any neighbouring countries with this sort of refugee problem, so England won't have to be soiled by any asylum seekers! That is, unless there are some from Iceland, as I assume he would guide the French to Spain or Germany." (Volgadon)

Was there any point you were trying to make by quoting me?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 19 Oct 08 - 04:37 PM

"- A multicultural world including nations with a multiple number of cultures trying to live peacefully under the one state law, or having different laws for different cultures withing the one nation.."

That sounds just fine.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 19 Oct 08 - 05:35 PM

Will Fly - "and that from someone (Hitler) with Jewish roots."

Please Will - not only is that utter bollocks, it's also highly offensive to a great number of people. Not unlike racism, in fact, and possibly worse. I respectfully suggest that you retract the statement.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Will Fly
Date: 19 Oct 08 - 05:55 PM

Smokey: As far as I'm aware - and I retract my assertion completely if proved wrong - Hitler had some Jewish origins to his ancestry. The point I was trying to make, perhaps not very well, was the irony and stupidity of anyone being overtly racist when one can often be ignorant of one's own origins. And one's race, origins, religion, nationality, etc., should have no place in how we are treated or how we treat others.

If the analogy is wrong and/or offensive to some, then I apologise unreservedly to those people.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Tootler
Date: 19 Oct 08 - 06:02 PM

Quote WAV:

Back on thread, the tenor recorder/English flute is chromatic for about 2 octaves from middle C, so, when one does get the fingering correct, it sings what's on the score.

I first played recorder over 50 years ago and I have been playing it regularly for more than 25 years and I have never heard it called the "English Flute". The Germans call the recorder "Blockflöte" (Block Flute - referring to its construction) and the Italians "Flauto Dolce" (Sweet Flute). Other European nations use their own versions of these names.

There was a time in the 17th/Early 18th century when the transverse flute was sometimes referred to as a "German Flute", purely to distinguish it from simply "Flute" which at that time generally meant what we now call a recorder.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 19 Oct 08 - 06:10 PM

I personally remain unconvinced of Hitler's supposed Jewish ancestry. IIRC, the strongest case that can be made is that Hitler's grandmother got pregnant by someone, nobody knows by whom, and that Geobels was worried by some of the rumours.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 19 Oct 08 - 06:12 PM

Will - it's a myth. Hitler's father was born out of wedlock, & *his* mother never said who the father was - but there's no reason to imagine that the unknown grandfather was Jewish. A story went round after the war that Hitler's mother had been a maid to a rich Jewish family & that when he came to power Hitler had ordered that family's house razed to the ground, but this story seems to be complete invention.

WAV:

- A multicultural world including nations with a multiple number of cultures trying to live peacefully under the one state law, or having different laws for different cultures withing the one nation..OR..
- As is my myspace header "a multicultural WORLD" with eco-travel and fair-trade between nations, via a stronger more-democratic UN

But these aren't alternatives. A stronger UN, green travel & fair trade are all good things, and they're all perfectly compatible with individual nations being multi-cultural. Or did you mean to say "a multicultural WORLD consisting of mono-cultural NATIONS"?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Will Fly
Date: 19 Oct 08 - 06:15 PM

Smokey: A colleague of mine (a historian) assures me that the question of Hitler's supposedly part-Jewish ancestry has now been soundly demolished - particularly in a book by Ian Kershaw, and that it falls into the category of urban myth.

On that basis - my colleague is a trusted friend I would ask for that part of my post to be retracted, with due apologies.

Will

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 19 Oct 08 - 06:35 PM

No apology necessary Will, I just felt obliged to put the record straight. If anything, I apologise for my pedantry. I hope your organ's stopped wheezing.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: TheSnail
Date: 19 Oct 08 - 08:57 PM

In years to come, it may be called WalkaboutsVerse Syndrome. The symptoms being that sane, intelligent, thoughtful, liberal minded people completely lose the plot when faced with an intransigent, reactionary git.

FOR CRIES ACHE FOLKS, you are making WAV look rational.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 20 Oct 08 - 05:31 AM

"I repeat, is the solution to leave, or to stay and be part of the solution?"

Can you explain why you are "part of the solution" by staying here?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 20 Oct 08 - 06:26 AM

"What do you think of this verse, from the New Testament, which you profess to believe:
1st Timothy 5:8- But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel." (Vogadon)...it's okay - but I'd add "try to"; as I've said in both verse and prose , safety nets are a good thing.

Tootler - yes, indeed: as the transverse flute has also been known as the German flute for centuries, so too the recorder as the English flute; and, although we very rarely see them in orchestras, apparently classical musicians still tend to use the latter name.

Ruth - the grass is always greener?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 20 Oct 08 - 06:39 AM

WAV I mix with classical musicians. They call the recorder the recorder

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: catspaw49
Date: 20 Oct 08 - 07:06 AM

Wav: "......apparently classical musicians still tend to use the latter name.".......

What complete horseshit! Unlike your sorryass self, I actually do have both A) friends and B) friends who are classically trained and practicing classical musicians. Two of them also play RECORDER and I can tell you for a fact that neither refers to a recorder as an English Flute......ever. They have each been deeply involved in music since their early years (both are 60 now) and both have doctorates----One in Performance and the other in Music Education. So don't even try to pretend you piddling experience or pathetic degree somehow qualifies your limpdick self.

If and when a classical musician DOES refer to anything English about the flute, they refer to THESE transverse blown flutes of the period.

Note again they are transverse blown and not susceptible to the "WavyBlowBoy's Blow-Job Technique" which is the most ridiculous looking playing style for recorder I have ever seen!   Did you learn that from watching your dear, sweet, Mum at work? Or is it something you picked up on your own along with a case of clap?

Spaw

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 20 Oct 08 - 07:29 AM

I have a few hundred scores of classical recorder music and quite a few CDs. None of them call the instrument an "English flute" in the title, and I very much doubt whether any publication ever used the phrase in its main title. It was only used for a fairly short time, from 1725 to about 1750, to distinguish it from the traversiere or German flute, but "common flute" was a far more frequently used term. "English flute" was simply a marketing phrase used to convey "you don't need to buy an expensive new transverse flute to play the music in this book, you can use what you've already got".

BTW, one kind of flute I had thought was specifically English was the bamboo pipe, as used in the 20th century make-your-own bamboo pipe consort music movement, which is still just about in existence. But on googling I see the movement started in the US.at around the same time (not an easy thing to search for, you keep getting sidetracked into opium and drains).

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 20 Oct 08 - 07:40 AM

We humans all blend into the one bland culture

Which is precisely what you are proposing for England.

A multicultural world including nations with a multiple number of cultures trying to live peacefully under the one state law, or having different laws for different cultures withing the one nation

We're doing just fine, Wavy. Once again you're confusing the facts and looking for trouble where there is none - although there is is, of course, the Motor-Cycle Crash Helmets (Religious Exemption) Act 1976, Section 2A which exempts any follower of the Sikh religion while he is wearing a turban from having to wear a crash helmet.

By the way, Wavy, you've yet to explain how English culture is taking a hammering, or yet how people are suffering as a result.

As is my myspace header "a multicultural WORLD" with eco-travel and fair-trade between nations, via a stronger more-democratic UN - rather than yet more conquest and ecnonomic/capitalist immigration/emigration (which has NOT solved the rotten inequality in our world).

In other words, a Forth Reich Totalitarian Militarist World Order which enforces Ethnic Cleansing and Cultural Purity resulting in the Deaths of Billions.

Otherwise...

as the transverse flute has also been known as the German flute for centuries, so too the recorder as the English flute; and, although we very rarely see them in orchestras, apparently classical musicians still tend to use the latter name

The recorder was not known as the English flute for centuries, rather it was but one of the names used for it for a brief period in the early 18th century - see above (somewhere). Is it really true that classical musicians call recorders English Flutes? First I've heard of it and I've worked with a fair few classically trained virtuoso recorder players in my time. Google English Flute and see what you come up with; you'll discover the recorder was called the English flute simply to distinguish it from the German Flute, not because of a particular association with England. You've been told this a million times but, as ever, your way is the correct one! Like that other Wavyism Capitalist Immigration, the term English Flute exists mostly in your imagination. But this is the Wavy approach to culture - if the facts don't fit your racist agenda of an ethnically cleansed and culturally pure England, then make it up until they do!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 20 Oct 08 - 07:50 AM

one kind of flute I had thought was specifically English was the bamboo pipe

That rings a bell! Somewhere I've got a wee book about the making and the playing (and decorating!) of these chromatic instruments, but it hasn't showed up since the move. Here's the link to The Pipers' Guild.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 20 Oct 08 - 08:56 AM

Apparently Vaughan Williams composed music for these home-made bamboo pipes. Here's an example: Finale Jig. Curiouser and curiouser...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 20 Oct 08 - 10:54 AM

"What do you think of this verse, from the New Testament which you profess to believe:
1st Timothy 5:8- But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel." (Vogadon)...it's okay - but I'd add "try to"; as I've said in both verse and prose , safety nets are a good thing.

Then why is it wrong for someone to emigrate in search of a job to support his family?


The Normans, your ancestors, were some of the biggest imperialists and capitalist immigrants the world has known." (Volgadon)...you are so, almost imperialistically, sure of yourself, Volgadon - I'm only sure that all my known forebears were born here; I've heard about the crusading Franks, of course; I've heard that my great grandfather may have practised the jewish religion; I've heard about a famous Jewish family of spectacle makers in Manchester's past; and I've heard something about Franks coming here as translators during Bede's day..."The Normans, your ancestors"...wow, such confidence!

How is that IMPERIALISTICALLY sure of myself? You make no sense.
Out of curiosity, how far back do your known forebearers go? I bet it's not 1066, in which case my point holds up.
Oho, so if Jewish, then your ancestors were definitely immigrants, and quite probably CAPITALISTIC ones to boot. Who have you heard from about that, it wasn't that comment on the weekly walkabout was it? Franks is also a Jewish surname, but do you have any reason to think that your ancestors were Jewish? Just the turn of phrase, practised the Jewish religion tells me that they weren't.
Franks came over in Bede's day, but they didn't carry that surname (simply didn't exist), which is a later, Norman one! Even if they were those ones, they still IMMIGRATED! I repeat, no Franks went by the surname Franks, so I can say with confidence that they were probably Norman.

The crusading Franks??? Frank was just a generic term back then, which in the Muslim world came to mean ANY Christian, even Armenians.


And again - "there AREN'T any neighbouring countries with this sort of refugee problem, so England won't have to be soiled by any asylum seekers! That is, unless there are some from Iceland, as I assume he would guide the French to Spain or Germany." (Volgadon)

Was there any point you were trying to make by quoting me?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 20 Oct 08 - 11:29 AM

: why is it wrong for someone to emigrate in search of a job to support his family?

It often goes much further than that. About 30% of the national income of Moldova is remittances from emigres. I was in the Romanian part of Moldavia this summer and it obviously worked the same way there - there were hardly any men of working age, they were all away in Hungary or Western Europe sending money back. One woman we met had not lived with her husband for 17 years, her children hardly knew who he was. She was an emotional wreck, it was a horrible situation.

Now multiply that Moldavian village a million times. The amount of money sent back home by Third World workers in First World countries is vastly greater than the amount of aid money given by governments (and on the whole it's probably better spent).

It isn't just your family, it's your whole community.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 20 Oct 08 - 01:00 PM

"although there is is, of course, the Motor-Cycle Crash Helmets (Religious Exemption) Act 1976, Section 2A which exempts any follower of the Sikh religion while he is wearing a turban from having to wear a crash helmet." (IB)...then that's one relatively minor example of the problems of multicultural states...I wonder if any non-Sikh bikers here who'd rather take the risk have complained? And here's one present regulation, for what it's worth, that I'm actually against - the way I see it, not wearing a helmet is only increasing the chance of injury to the biker not others, so it should be up to the individual. (The rest from you I've answered so many times before.)

"Then why is it wrong for someone to emigrate in search of a job to support his family?" (Volgadon)...I just gave one reason - all the capitalist/economic immigration/emigration of the last century hasn't solved the rotten inequality in the world - WE NEED "GLOBAL REGULATIONISM" (poem above or directly here) for that.
"And again - "there AREN'T any neighbouring countries with this sort of refugee problem, so England won't have to be soiled by any asylum seekers! That is, unless there are some from Iceland, as I assume he would guide the French to Spain or Germany."
Was there any point you were trying to make by quoting me?" (Volgadon)...there has been and there could be, yes?


"The Normans, your ancestors, were some of the biggest imperialists and capitalist immigrants the world has known." (Volgadon) whether or not I have Norman ancestry, I've said I hate imperialism - be it Nazi, Victorian, OR ANY OTHER.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 20 Oct 08 - 01:09 PM

The best thing about your rebuttals WAV is their total incoherence followed by their tedious and meaningless repetition

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 20 Oct 08 - 01:28 PM

There is a recorder consort that meets at a local church every week. They all call recorders "recorders," and oddly enough, David, the fellow who plays the tenor recorder calls his tenor recorder a "tenor recorder."

They are all thoroughly schooled classical musicians. The tenor recorder player also plays organ in that church for Sunday services. Bach, Handel, Buxtehude, etc.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 20 Oct 08 - 01:40 PM

"tedious and meaningless repetition" (Stu) just after "(The rest from you I've answered so many times before.)" (Me to IB)...damned if I do, damned if I don't.

I just put "recorder English flute" into Google for the sites I'd read years ago about this and found, for me, a NEW ONE! (just below yours truly): http://www.jstor.org/pss/727829

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 20 Oct 08 - 01:55 PM

(The rest from you I've answered so many times before.)

You've never once explained how English culture is taking a hammering, or yet how people are suffering as a result.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 20 Oct 08 - 03:02 PM

Then why is it wrong for someone to emigrate in search of a job to support his family?" (Volgadon)...I just gave one reason - all the capitalist/economic immigration/emigration of the last century hasn't solved the rotten inequality in the world - WE NEED "GLOBAL REGULATIONISM"

Let me rephrase that, in the light of Paul's words, from the New Testament, which as a Christian you said you believe, why is it wrong to emigrate in search of a job to feed your family?

Here's another question you have avoided answering NUMEROUS times, something to hide? I asked you if you would consider imperialism as imposing a set of ideas or culture on someone.

"tedious and meaningless repetition" (Stu) just after "(The rest from you I've answered so many times before.)" (Me to IB)...damned if I do, damned if I don't.

No, Wav. It is not a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. The problem is that you don't debate, discuss, explain or elaborate your position, you merely repeat dogma OVER AND OVER AGAIN ad nauseum (Latin tags, I love multiculturalism).

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 20 Oct 08 - 04:07 PM

Under Wav's nationalism and global regulationism, French kissing will be banned and replaced with the English vice.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: catspaw49
Date: 20 Oct 08 - 04:18 PM

The crappola article which you found to make your English flute shinola is from 1941. All of us have given you literally hundreds of current sources and you hold to THAT piece of shit?

This simply shows your ignorance and overall stupidity. My guess is you are the same way on the job (in those rare times that you've had one) and is a probable reason you are rarely employed and have so much time to walkabout and learn flatass nothing. All this makes your crapass "Life's Work" completely worthless as you have learned less than nothing.

Spaw

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 20 Oct 08 - 04:28 PM

"tedious and meaningless repetition" (Stu) just after "(The rest from you I've answered so many times before.)" (Me to IB)...damned if I do, damned if I don't.

No, David - the same people who are frustrated with your "tedious and meaningless repetition" are also frustrated with your failure to answer direct questions. Such as this one, which I've put to you three times already:

You've said earlier that it's a bad thing when people lose their culture; in many ways I tend to agree. But doesn't that mean that it's a good thing when immigrants keep their culture alive?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: melodeonboy
Date: 20 Oct 08 - 04:30 PM

"In other words, a Forth Reich Totalitarian Militarist World Order which enforces Ethnic Cleansing and Cultural Purity resulting in the Deaths of Billions."

Blimey; we're all going to end up being murdered in our beds by the Scots!!!!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 20 Oct 08 - 04:32 PM

Spaw - indeed. Also, if you read the article Dolmetsch refers to the instrument throughout as the recorder, & simply throws in an "or English flute" near the start for pedantic completeness.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Tootler
Date: 20 Oct 08 - 05:39 PM

WAV:

Take a look here and tell me if you see any reference to "English Flute" that is more than a suggestion that it might have been an alternative name for a brief period?

Also: how many people do you see/hear calling the transverse flute a "German Flute" these days?

Neither was really the formal name of the instrument. Composers in the 17th and early 18th century when they specified "flauto" on a score usually (but not invariably) meant a recorder. If they specifically wanted a transverse flute they would specify "transverso" on the score. The latter term died out during the 18th century as the recorder fell out of use as an orchestral instrument and "flauto" became the normal term for a transverse flute. When the recorder was revived in the late 19th century, then another name was found for it and so it has been called since.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 20 Oct 08 - 06:20 PM

Certain little-known baroque composers used to mark their scores 'flauto plastico' to ensure the use of the correct instrument, as the subtle differences in tonal quality and temperament were considered more important than they are today. I believe there was also a 'transverso flauto plastico' in use at the time but these were not so popular. They were originally invented in the 15th century by the eccentric 6th Earl of Clacton for playing underwater - however, rumours persist that the Earl had a Japanese grandfather, which casts some doubt on the question of whether the instrument can be considered correctly as being 'traditional English'. To this day, scholars tend to think of them as 'cheap Japanese shite'.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 20 Oct 08 - 08:04 PM

Well, I dunno there, Smokey. You might want to check your sources on that. The flauto plastico was indeed first developed in the 15th century by the sixth Earl of Clacton (whose name, by the way, happened to be Earl Earl, which tended to make for a certain aura of redundancy about him). He was walking one day in his formal garden, admiring his roses, when he happened to notice a pool of black goo oozing out of the ground over by his begonias. His gardener was off somewhere, but the resident alchemist happened to be wandering by.

"What is that stuff?" asked the Earl (Earl Earl). Since the Earl tended to mumble, the alchemist didn't quite hear the question, so he asked, "Earl?'

But the alchemist was from one of the Channel Isles, the Isle of Joisey to be precise, and of course he had a Joisey accent, and it came out, "Oil?"

And that black, oozy goo has been called that ever since.

Well, anyway. . . .

The alchemist took some samples of the stuff and played with it for awhile. He knew nothing about polymers or long chain molecules or any of that esoteric stuff, but be found that by mixing it with other types of goo he had laying around and with the proper spells and incantations, he found that it had a certain plastic quality. He could mold it into various shapes and it would harden into that shape.

The Earl (Earl Earl), being an eccentric, used to combine both exercise and meditation by treading water in the castle moat while playing an Azerbaijani nose-flute (snouto flauto), which had come into the family when it was brought back by one of his ancestors who had gone on the Crusades, but had gotten horribly lost.

The Earl (Earl Earl) had long been interested in finding a different instrument. He wasn't all that happy playing the snouto flauto because he was plagued with sinusitus, and after a long session of treading water and meditating, the snouto flauto was a real bitch to clean. So he and the alchemist designed a sort of whistle with finger-holes made of the plastico material, which had shown signs of being pretty impervious to water.

This heralded in the era of plastico flauto. The plastico flauto became highly valued, not because of its tone quality (God knows!), but because of its durability. You could stomp on them repeatedly and more often than not, they could still be played. However, since the goo from which they were made was not readily available until relatively modern times when they found they could drill for the stuff, plastico instruments were exceedingly expensive, hence, rare. Many composers and musicians, not to mention audiences, regarded this as something of a blessing.

The Earl (Earl Earl) did, indeed, have a Japanese relative, but the actual nature of that relationship has never been clarified. Legend has it that the Japanese relative possessed an instrument very like a modern transverse flute made of bamboo.

This instrument had a beautiful tone, and many musicians wanted to buy it from him, offering him huge amounts of money for it. Seeing an opportunity here (he was a capitalist immigrant), he got the Earl's alchemist to make up a batch of plastico copies, which he tricked up and tried to sell as the original bamboo flute, but the sham was spotted right away, and the epithet, "cheap Japanese shite" came into existence. He tried to claim that because the plastico copy was developed in England, it should be regarded as an "Engrish frute."

By the way, trying to pass plastic off as genuine bamboo was the origin of the term "bamboozle."

Glad to help clarify these matters.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 20 Oct 08 - 09:16 PM

I can tell you've studied this at great length Don, not to mention immense depth and not inconsiderable breadth. It's an honour to be corrected by such an erudite scholar as yourself, and I bow, nay, humbly prostrate myself to your superior knowledge. May God bless you sir.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 21 Oct 08 - 02:58 AM

Blimey! Who would have thought that WAV's ignorance could be contagious?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 21 Oct 08 - 03:48 AM

I love Mudcat. You learn so much.

I miss my Granma. I wonder if she's slipped off to to Weston Super Mare with her fancy man again? I swear, a box of fondant fancies and a tube of Polydent and that woman is anybody's...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Manitas_at_home
Date: 21 Oct 08 - 05:29 AM

http://www.dolmetsch.com/recorder_brochure.pdf

Well, whatever Carl Dolmetsch wrote in 1941 he clearly didn't intend for the term 'English flute' to continue in usage or he would have included them in his product range.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 21 Oct 08 - 05:53 AM

I bought a plastic Aulos recorder of the alto (or treble) variety in Lancaster on Saturday. It did not cost very much, and came in an unattractive zip-up pouch complete with fingering chart, cleaning rod, and a charming little tin o' grease*, with which, presumably, to lubricate the joints. The thought did cross my mind of calling it the Japanese Flute, or Flauto Japonica, but Don's Engrish Frute is more than adequate as an affectionate handle with which to refer to this instrument, and for this I thank him.

My reason for buying this instrument is manifold; first, I wanted something to play with on dark autumn nights whilst my wife is otherwise employed about the business of her post-graduate researches (she also works full-time). Secondly, having recently picked up a first edition of Edgar Hunt's The Recorder and its Music (Jenkins 1962) (which, I might add, cost a good deal more that the Engrish Frute in question) I found myself desirous of a more corporeal communion with the topic of his study - yea, even with fond memories of my beloved Moeck Renaissance Alto from which I parted company back in 1982. Thirdly, there are times when chromaticism comes in very handy indeed, even in an entirely monophonic modal music such as my own, and being a dynamic instrument designed for chromaticism, it is entirely possible to use extended fingerings to discover more experimental or avant garde vocabularies than are available on simple whistle flutes. To this end I used to play my old brown plastic Dolmetsch tenor back in 1977, until I swapped it for the wooden Baroque alto in 1979 which went in 1981 in part exchange for the aforementioned Moeck Renaissance Alto, which, the following year, I traded in against a Camac hurdy-gurdy kit from which I made the instrument which I would eventually sell, in 1991, to fund the purchase of an alto Eb clarinet. This hurdy-gurdy is now back in my keeping, albeit temporarily; I have used it extensively throughout Naked Season, my new album of Dark Folk Songs for Sloow Tapes in Belgium, a track from which, The Leg of a Mallard, is currently playing on my myspace page.   

Anyhoo, with reference to Mr Hunt's book, it seems Arnold Dolmetsch was content with his original Bressan recorder until he left it in a bag on the platform of Waterloo Station in 1919, thus his hand was forced to manufacture a replacement, and so it was The making of recorders had begun (Hunt, 1962, p 132) - and with it the revival proper. Pre-war it seems we were entirely dependent on supplies from Germany; the author rather passively reports: The recorder was acquiring political associations and soon became the instrument of the Hitler-Youth, for which all kinds of marches, including the Horst Wessel-Lied, were to be arranged (ibid. p 139). Elsewhere he makes the significant confession that When I first imagined recorders being played in schools, I thought of well-balanced consorts in public, grammar and high schools, and some in private schools - I did not think 'council schools' would be interested. (ibid. p 137). It was only with the advent of WW2 that the recorder as we know it today comes into being - mass-produced, plastic, affordable, ubiquitous, and, sadly, as misunderstood (and often as unpalatable) as Dr Pepper.

Should my amateur endeavours on the Engrish Frute prove fruitful in any way, I will set up a Smoking Fund** for the purchase of a semi-serious instrument for public performance. Nothing too fancy you understand - in fact one of the new Moeck Rondo Altos in plain maple would do quite nicely, and, at a mere £142, isn't going to break the bank. Chances are however, I'll be making do with my Aulos alto Engrish Frute and put the bigger money to better use, such as one of Nadishana's new 5-in-one Futujaras which is a good deal more me somehow. Singarounds beware!            

* From Hip Priest by The Fall (Hexenduction Hour, 1982) comes one time feast was a tray o' grease. Interestingly most on-line transcriptions of this song see fit to omit this crucial line.

** A Smoking Fund is putting the money I would have once spent on snout to far better use.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 21 Oct 08 - 05:55 AM

Pleasingly, some on-thread posts "on" the recorder/English flute - my tenor is moulded in ABS polymer, by the way. I've never tried a wooden one, but hear they are generally harder to maintain but easier to play.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 21 Oct 08 - 06:02 AM

"my tenor is moulded in ABS polymer, by the way."

Plastic by any other name would smell...well, how would it smell? Plastic doesn't really smell of anything, does it?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Paul Burke
Date: 21 Oct 08 - 06:10 AM

"In other words, a Forth Reich Totalitarian Militarist World Order which enforces Ethnic Cleansing and Cultural Purity resulting in the Deaths of Billions."

FOREIGN BLACK OR IF HOME @ GO IF STILL_HERE MURDER THEN ELSE GEORDIE SONG AND @ SING THEN

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 21 Oct 08 - 06:41 AM

Insane Beard: that Moeck instrument is a baroque type, and for what you do I'd think a Renaissance style one would be better. The Mollenhauer Dream Alto is probably the best at mid-price - I haven't got one but I've tried one and I'd have got it if I didn't already have something comparable (a Hopf Renaissance Praetorius, now sold as "Kobliczek"). I use a Dream soprano a lot, mine is in the Chistmassy red-and-gold colour scheme.

Anyone here got one of the Nadishana instruments? I'm tempted by the convertible A/G "futuristic fujara", but I'd rather like to hear what it does on the traditional Slovak fujara tunes first - the demos on his website are of his own material, whereas the Slovak tunes are meant for the traditional tuning and must sound different in ET.

Extended techniques: the book you need for that is Walter von Hauwe's "The Modern Recorder Player", which costs a LOT more than a basic recorder. One trick I've been using a lot lately is vocalization, which I learned in Moldavia this summer from listening to Andras Hodorog and Istvan Laszlo Legedi - it's standard in Csango furulya and kaval playing. You can hear Hodorog doing it on some of his YouTube clips. It gives an aggressive buzz to the sound which makes the recorder sound very unlike its normal self. I use it either just to make myself heard over fiddles and accordions, or to make a sound which is obviously distinct from that of a whistle - I sometimes play in a session with a very-out-of-tune whistle player, and if she joins in with something I'm doing on the descant recorder, my vocalized buzz makes it obvious which of us is which.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 21 Oct 08 - 06:44 AM

Pleasingly, some on-thread posts "on" the recorder/English flute - my tenor is moulded in ABS polymer, by the way. I've never tried a wooden one, but hear they are generally harder to maintain but easier to play.

All refuting your position or haven't you noticed?

Are you going to adress any of my points or have you something to hide.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: mandotim
Date: 21 Oct 08 - 09:04 AM

Ruth; Granma appears to have 'gone walkabout', as they say Down Under. I saw her just before she left; she said she was going up to the North East of England 'to sort out a little problem'. I don't know what she meant, but she was carrying a tenor recorder and a large tub of vaseline...
Tim

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 21 Oct 08 - 09:10 AM

Are you sure it wasn't Swarfiga? I hear she has a bit of a weakness for it...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 21 Oct 08 - 10:07 AM

I am reminded reminded of the infamous scene in Trainspotting (the novel) where in her enthusiasm to lose her arse virginity one young lady confuses the Vic with the Vaseline. One can only hope...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: mandotim
Date: 21 Oct 08 - 10:36 AM

Ruth; Granma's weakness was for men who use Swarfega as a shaving lotion, not the Swarfega itself. She's more of a Halls Linament fan these days, I'm afraid.
Incidentally, I did ask her why she was carrying the Tenor Recorder, and she just muttered 'Couldn't afford a f***ing Bassoon'.
Tim

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 21 Oct 08 - 11:02 AM

Bland musical soup, or is it????

All Because of Love (a Greek song)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10pOFr4PMV8

The Star of Gush Dan (Star of the County Down meets the Middle East!!).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGnA6oKC6is&feature=related

Everybody Knows.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9cmmmxHIPM

Tip-Tipa.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBP5k9_sv64

Canaanite Blues.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=1so5QfEkRag&feature=related

Birdman.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-ucK_yw5pg

Today.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pfi7gF2DAOI

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 21 Oct 08 - 11:52 AM

Great stuff all round...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 21 Oct 08 - 11:53 AM

1000!!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 21 Oct 08 - 01:37 PM

Congratulations, IB!! Not too many chances to nail 1000! Good timing!

And thank you, Smokey, for you homage to my knowledge and researches. I am duly humbled. It's amazing what one can learn in freshman level courses like "Remedial Music History."

On another subject:

I was in a class once with a fellow who mentioned that he had just recently had an operation for hemorrhoids. A major aggravation is trying to "stay regular" while the area heals up. Most painful. But, he said, the doctor had given him a tube of anesthetic ointment to ease his distress on these occasions.

He described how one night while in bed, he woke up and had to answer the call of nature. After finishing his business and cleaning up, he was painfully sore in the affected area. Still half-asleep, he fished around on the back of the toilet until he found what he thought was the tube of anesthetic ointment.

"I got the Ben-Gay by mistake," he said. "Lemme tell ya! I woke up a lot!!"

Don Firth

P. S. By the way, does anyone know the country of origin of the whoopie cushion?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 21 Oct 08 - 02:03 PM

I think you'll find, Don, that the whoopie cushion is a traditional English instrument, and the real fore-runner of the bagpipes. I'm surprised you didn't already know that.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 21 Oct 08 - 02:36 PM

To Jack and IB: my tenor is also an Aulos - complete with a self-cut groove at the thumb-hole, as my technique involves tilting, rather than lifting, off the holes.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 21 Oct 08 - 02:45 PM

A self-cut groove at the thumb-hole... That's genius, WaV - it takes years to wear one in manually, even on a wooden one. Little wonder you have such a unique sound.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 21 Oct 08 - 02:46 PM

That is, you can't be bothered to learn to play one properly.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 21 Oct 08 - 03:06 PM

They said Galileo was wrong, and he had qualifications.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 21 Oct 08 - 03:46 PM

my technique

Wavy, you have no technique, nor yet do you have any musicality to speak of, which this absurd and grotesque video makes abundantly clear. That you posted it on You Tube in response to This underlines the full extent of your bewildering delusions.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 21 Oct 08 - 04:06 PM

". . . the real fore-runner of the bagpipes. I'm surprised you didn't already know that."

Gad, sir, you are right!   Obvious when you think about it!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 21 Oct 08 - 05:45 PM

I think most whoopie cushions are now made in China. Woolworths had one of the more remarkable product recalls I've seen about a year ago, for the orange ones. Apparently the orange colour was lead pigment.

Recorder stuff:

Usually a groove in the thumbhole means you need to get it fixed, that's what bushings are for. The green recorder featured in the pictures on my website has started to wear that way and I really need a new one. It seriously degrades your accuracy at the very top end of the range.

Aulos tenors are pretty loud in the lower register, slow-responding and with poor intonation at the top end, and much too heavy. I have one and don't use it any more (tried to give it away but she gave it back).

The best playing position for a heavy recorder is near-horizontal. That way your playing fingers don't have to perform double duty holding the thing steady. See any period illustration. This also looks a lot cooler than most more upright positions, *especially* one where it looks like some oil company drew up the demon Ah-Krill-Ik out of some chthonic inferno under Iraq and sold him in feedstock to an unsuspecting Japanese plastics manufacturer so he could bind a recorder newbie in sexual slavery to perform on his reincarnate phallus and gag on his boiling hydrocarbon sperm. Even being able to turn your head 360 degrees at the breathmarks doesn't compensate.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 21 Oct 08 - 07:52 PM

Don - Most wind instruments, or at least their 'forebears' were originally played anally. The technique diminished in popularity over the centuries as diet changed, but far fewer instruments were stolen in the 'good olde days', and it was relatively safe for the average sackbut...er.. ist to leave his back door unguarded. This, obviously, is the origin of the well-known expression "bum note", and the oft-heard cry from the audience: "Why don't you try sticking it up your arse mate, it might sound better."

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 21 Oct 08 - 08:42 PM

So I guess it's generally wise to keep the ointment handy and put the tube of Ben-Gay somewhere else. . . .

Why did I suddenly think of "Flight of the Bumblebee" played on a tuba?

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 21 Oct 08 - 08:51 PM

"Why did I suddenly think of "Flight of the Bumblebee" played on a tuba?"

I'm truly glad you did, Don, it goes a long way in restoring my faith in humanity. I suspect Gerard Hoffnung may have tried it, but I'm not sure.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 21 Oct 08 - 08:53 PM

Fipple Fipple!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: catspaw49
Date: 21 Oct 08 - 10:39 PM

I think Hoffnung may have done his best work with the Hoovers in E flat and the Floor Polisher in C.

Considering all we've heard from Walksaboutwithaloadinhispants, I can see how his best instrument is his ass. Perhaps his farts have some musicality. God knows he shows no other ability..........

But Walkyturd, I hear your Mum is an expert on Skin Flute. Word is she plays yours pretty well even though you have a Sopranino.

Spaw

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 21 Oct 08 - 11:06 PM

I have a Garklein, but I only use it now and again as a novelty. The ladies tend to think it's rather cute.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 22 Oct 08 - 03:52 AM

If anyone is sick of the arrogant, ignorant atittude of top-line melody only, check out this oud piece. It's amazing! Playing melody only would lose so much of the feel.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzGNcYnVUIE&feature=related

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 22 Oct 08 - 04:19 AM

Here is the daily dose of bland, musical soup!
The perfect antidote to the Life's Work.
Featuring Shlomo Bar and Habrera Hativit. Shlomo Bar, vocalist and percussionist, is a Moroccan immigrant, the fiddler and sitar player (now deceased, sadly) immigrated from India, after a very succesful career playing both classical and Bolywood scores, the bassist Israeli born, of Ashkenazi extraction and the guitarist is a jazz player from South America. He plays banjo too.

Shecharchoret (Dark Girl). A traditional Ladino romance. Absolutely stunning.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SuavwikBrQ

The Market Song (Shir Hashuk). Insane banjo!!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_YB3N0kSk4

Children Are a Joy (Yeladim Ze Simcha). Wonderful sitar and fiddle, on a Moroccan tune. The song itself is a biting protest song.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=4P5b4PBYeSI

In the Village of Todera (Etzlenu Bikfar Todera). A poem about one of the traditions of the Berber Jews, set to a Hassidic tune.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cqy35eMC__Q

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 22 Oct 08 - 04:46 AM

Here's a curio to be sure - a Homemade Recorder Bagpipe. Makes me think, might there be a historical precedent for such a thing? Think bagpipe, think reeds; but whistle flutes??? It obviously works, so why not?

As for the Whoopee Cushion. These were invented for the sake of pride in Victorian England when those aristocratic gentlemen of the hunt found themselves, for whatever reason, no longer able to let rip. Essentially a prosthetic anus in that respect (however so remote) a chap would maintain his dignity by still being able to oblige with some choice trouser hoorahs.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 22 Oct 08 - 04:51 AM

Wrong link! That was Volgadons Oud...

Here's the bagpipe:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Jf7FIXmSVos

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 22 Oct 08 - 05:20 AM

That bagpipe is great!! Might have to try that someday.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 22 Oct 08 - 05:53 AM

I don't have any recordings of it, but here is the latest thing in Scottish bagpipes, with a little Turkish influence:

http://www.campin.me.uk/Music/Sipsi/ (last picture)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 22 Oct 08 - 06:10 AM

I'd say that picture deserved a clicky all of its own, Jack!

Jack's Sipsi

Lots of scope for drones there I'm thinking.

And let's have a link to that Sipsi video too shall we?

[Calgi Atölyesi] Sipsi

I must investigate.

My brother used to bring me home similar little idioglottal cane clarinets when he was working in Damascus, made and sold on the streets by kids, the reed being part of the body of the instrument. Similar things were made and played in England at harvest time from oat & cornstalks; they last about five minutes (as long as an average inebriated seduction) & sound lovely.

Ever made Dandelion Oboes? Amazing sound, but a fierce diuretic...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 22 Oct 08 - 06:34 AM

"A self-cut groove at the thumb-hole" (me)..."That's genius, WaV - it takes years to wear one in manually, even on a wooden one. Little wonder you have such a unique sound." (Smokey)...hacksaw blade; and it's just above (Jack C.) the hole so I can tilt, rather than lift, off my thumb.

"Wavy, you have no technique, nor yet do you have any musicality to speak of, which this absurd and grotesque video makes abundantly clear. That you posted it on You Tube in response to This underlines the full extent of your bewildering delusions." (IB)...subjective..as are opinions of your exotic accompaniment of E trads - I, for one (aesthetically as well as politically), much prefer it when you sing UA.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 22 Oct 08 - 06:48 AM

I love exotic accompaniment. Listen to the oud vid, the possibilities are tremendous.

Wav, nobody would have any objections if you disliked that sort of accompaniment on aesthetic grounds, but POLITICAL is plainly ridiculous and bigotted.

You have no love for the music on any grounds other than political.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 22 Oct 08 - 07:00 AM

That's Lindsay Porteous with the bagsipsi, not me - I got him a couple of sipsis on a visit to Istanbul.

I don't know what the trick is to getting them to keep going. I've seen a busker at the Galata Bridge playing one for hours at a stretch. When I try, they just stop after about ten minutes and I have to wait for them to dry out.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 22 Oct 08 - 09:14 AM

Wav, I wonder how the Jewish music known as Nigunei Meron, would fit into your grand monocultural schemes of ethnical musical purity?
Not a clue what I'm on about, even with your 40+ countries you've walked about in?
Meron is in Northern Israel, a site of several of the tombs of the great Jewish sages, such as the Rashbi. It has been customary for over 150 to make pilgrimage to his tomb on the anniversary of his death and celebrate with singing and dancing. A hilula.
Jews from all over the world, from Poland, from the Balkans, from Tunisia and from everywhere in between would attend. The fascinating thing is that not only would Jews join in, but also local Druze, Moslem and Christian villagers!
People would play, sing and dance at the foothill. People would sing and play as they marched up to the tomb, and would sing and dance at the bonfire by the tomb. Unlike Wav's ridiculous notions that we can enjoy listening to other cultures but on no account join in and participate, people did join in and have fun. It was not at all unlikely for a Polish clarinetist improvising on a traditional nigun to be joined in by an Arab percussionist adding a dabka beat, with the North-Africans dancing and ululating. Musical forms from all over the world were combined, thus creating the Meron style of Jewish music!!!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST
Date: 22 Oct 08 - 09:58 AM

Volgadon, I've just been listening to the Star of Gush Dan. Great stuff. I'd book them.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 22 Oct 08 - 10:32 AM

...subjective..

Subjective you say? Subjective?! Maybe we should put this one to the vote - and don't bring your Myspace friends into it, because mass sycophancy doesn't count. Try putting up a film (with sound) on You Tube, they tend to give more honest appraisals there. To paraphrase Oor Wullie*, ye canna play for nuts, and I'm not alone in thinking that. Don offered you some sound advice back there, Wavy - I suggest you listen to it, and listen to yourself, as objectively and as humanly (and humanely) as is possible up there in your Narcissistic cuckooland of self-glorification. Whilst I allow that your rendering of Cob a Coaling somehow manages to mimic the same quaintly ironic charm you occasionally manage to bring off in a singaround (that is when you're not performing your execrable self-penned self-indulgent drivel), your rendering of When I Survey the Wondrous Cross is a cultural vandalism bordering on desecration. Listening to that I was plunged into the darkness of a culture well and truly lost; and believe you me, I took on the sufferings of our society as a result.

as are opinions of your exotic accompaniment of E trads

Having long studied & obsessed over monophonic musical practise of the Mother Cultures, extant or otherwise - which is to say the Arabic & Indo-European traditional music & the secular & sacred music of the Middle Ages - I have come to favour a peculiarly monophonic and essentially improvised accompaniment to folk song which is entirely in keeping with the melismatic modal nature of both the songs themselves and their traditional performance. To this end I have adopted certain folk instruments from the same general modal mother cultures as our own, all of which have proved themselves ideally suited to the accompaniment of Traditional English Folk Song and Balladry, such as the Turkish Kemence and Hungarian Citera, the dynamics of which are more suited to my voice than the violin or reconstructed E. Cittern. It's also a matter of pragmatics - I find an instrument that works and no matter what it is, I'll use it.

Whilst I allow that in this respect what I do is perhaps a little idiosyncratic, let me assure you that idiosyncrasy is the heart and soul of traditional music, English or otherwise. Traditional Folk Song from the English (speaking) Tradition is but one part of what I do. Other aspects involve Mediaeval Music and Song as well as Free-Improvisation and Experimental music. In my own compositional work (as featured on BBC Radio 3 I might add) I bring these three aspects together, not out of exoticism or cross-cultural fusion, rather because this is my personal and cultural vocabulary which sees a lap-top as valid a tool for accompanying a traditional ballad as a concertina, or a Tibetan Singing Bowl, or dropping stones into a river, or whatever. Currently playing on my myspace page is a wholly improvised rendering of The Wife of Usher's Well in the which the voice is accompanied in real time by playing a vintage fretless guitar with a Tibetan singing bowl, thus creating some very filthy resonances indeed. I don't see this is as being in any way weird or different, it's just what I do - what I've been doing now since 1976 - thirty-two years. No one's asking you to like it, Wavy, but I know how good it is in terms of music and the craft thereof. God knows it's been long enough in the making.      

- I, for one (aesthetically as well as politically), much prefer it when you sing UA.

No one cares what you prefer, Wavy. Your aesthetics are determined by your politics, which are inhuman, right-wing, quasi-religious, vile & reactionary, founded as they are on a nauseating racism which is the consequence of a pig-headed and quite wilful ignorance. We live in a world of glorious possibility which you would have us debase to the catalogue of risible clichés that constitute your vision of Our Own Good English Culture. English Culture is anything that happens in England by way of cultural experience - anything less than that is UA (unacceptable).   

* If this reference is lost on you - which I suspect it might be - then check out this site: http://www.thatsbraw.co.uk/. If this upsets your Nationalist Puritanism, then bear in mind the artist, the late great Dudley Dexter Watkins, was an Englishman, and also responsible for such iconic comic creations as Lord Snooty, Desperate Dan, Biffo the Bear and innumerable others. Growing up in working-class Northumbria such works, though voiced in the Scots vernacular, were part of our everyday culture, along with so much else from North of the Border.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 22 Oct 08 - 12:36 PM

http://www.ehudbanai.co.il/english.htm
This is Ehud Banai's homepage. His ex was Irish, so hence the Star of the County Down.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 22 Oct 08 - 12:58 PM

Volgadon - "Wav, nobody would have any objections if you disliked that sort of accompaniment on aesthetic grounds, but POLITICAL is plainly ridiculous and bigotted."...prefering E trads to be perfmormed traditionally is not bigoted.
"Try putting up a film (with sound) on You Tube" (IB)...I got the cheapest Agos camera, which doesn't have sound recording capability - thinking it would do for a few pics and a silent video while, if they wish, folks listen to my mysapce tracks. I may buy a more expensive sound-recording camera one day, and check whether it's possible to plug a mic into it..? An alternative may be to run my camera as I record, via Audacity, on my computer, and then somehow fit them together - but, frankly, I haven't looked into this yet...I've been learning/working out the 50 or so tunes in my repertoire on both recorder and keys.
I summary: I quite like you unaccompanied singing but not the exotic accompaniment you just described, and you don't mind my attempt at "Cob a Coaling" but strongly dislike some of my other attempts - as I said above, it's "subjective".
Then you again confuse the questioning of mass immigration, and trying to have a multiple number of cultures living under the one state law, with "racism" (IB).

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 22 Oct 08 - 01:04 PM

Wav, you are racist. One needs look no further than your idea that only Greeks should play the bouzouki.

Are you going to give me an answer? Do you consider imperialism as imposing culture or a set of ideas on someone?

Also, what do you think about the Nigunei Meron info?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 22 Oct 08 - 01:05 PM

"prefering E trads to be perfmormed traditionally is not bigoted."

No, but your reasons for the preference are.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Howard Jones
Date: 22 Oct 08 - 02:12 PM

"prefering E trads to be perfmormed traditionally is not bigoted."

and your idead of what "performed traditionally" means is bizarre.

WAV, I strongly urge you to listen to Maggie Holland's song "A Place Called England", which champions the old-fashioned values and spirit of England you seem to yearn for, "sore abused but not yet dead ... hanging in there like a thread" but contains these lines:

"Come all you at home with freedom, whatever the country of your birth
There's room for you, both root and branch, as long as you love the English earth"

That's the real England, WAV, and has been for centuries, absorbing Normans, Jews, Huguenots, Chinese, West Indians, Irish, Asians and even wandering Australians. That's not to say that assimilation has always been easy, but immigration is an essential element of what makes England. To deny immigration, even with all its problems, is to deny England itself.

Listen to that song, WAV, and you might understand your adopted country better.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 22 Oct 08 - 02:20 PM

so all the talk from our elders of better community spirit, being able to leave their front door open without fear, etc., is nonsense?

Take a look at this!!
www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/~zierke/martin.carthy/songs/johnblunt.html

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 22 Oct 08 - 02:22 PM

It's easy to modify the tuning of a recorder or a whistle by not removing the fingers far enough from the hole. I suspect this may be the reason for many of the flat notes which you play, since you admit to not removing your fingers.

In turn if you learn the vocals from your recorder that could go part way towards explaining your flat vocals


Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 22 Oct 08 - 02:28 PM

Wav, if you are part of the Manchester family, which I highly doubt, then your ancestors definitely WERE capitalist immigrants.
http://209.85.135.104/search?q=cache:Vew1m9flbfcJ:www.msim.org.uk/media/33871455/thefranksfamily.pdf+jewish+franks+manchester&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=7

In the which case, shouldn't you lead the way (leading by example is the best way forward) and repatriate yourself to the Netherlands?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 22 Oct 08 - 02:30 PM

Then you again confuse the questioning of mass immigration, and trying to have a multiple number of cultures living under the one state law, with "racism" (IB).

There's a simple reason for this 'confusion', which is that the belief that people with multiple cultures ought not to mix is racism.

Since you're back on the thread, how about having a go at answering the question about assimilation that I've asked you three times? I won't post it yet again; just look for the phrase 'about assimilation' and you'll find it. Although it may not be obvious, I'm trying to help: I genuinely think you'll benefit from engaging with these questions & testing some of your preconceptions to destruction.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 22 Oct 08 - 04:48 PM

Volgadon and Pip - more false and defamatory language - I love the world being multicultural and, Ruth, my enjoyment of English tradional music is part of that.

Howard - for what it's worth, I agree with some/perhaps most of Maggie Holland's song "A Place Called England"...although last I heard, she's moved to that soon to be independent republic: Scotland.

"It's easy to modify the tuning of a recorder or a whistle by not removing the fingers far enough from the hole. I suspect this may be the reason for many of the flat notes which you play, since you admit to not removing your fingers. In turn if you learn the vocals from your recorder that could go part way towards explaining your flat vocals" (Stu)...I checked for that early on, thanks - and I seem to recall "shading" is the correct term.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 22 Oct 08 - 05:20 PM

I seem to recall "shading" is the correct term

"Shading" is a subtle technique used sparingly to enhance music. Doing it on every note is called "ineptness."

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 22 Oct 08 - 05:25 PM

more false and defamatory language - I love the world being multicultural

David, please pay attention. If you're intelligent enough to play a tune on the recorder, you're intelligent enough to understand what I'm about to say.

YOU CAN LOVE THE WORLD BEING MULTICULTURAL AND STILL BE A RACIST.

WHEN I SAY YOU'RE A RACIST, I'M NOT SAYING YOU DON'T LOVE THE WORLD BEING MULTICULTURAL.

I KNOW PERFECTLY WELL THAT YOU LOVE THE WORLD BEING MULTICULTURAL.

I STILL THINK YOU'RE A RACIST.

The reason I think this is that you seem to believe that cultures should be kept pure (whatever that means) and that countries should be kept mono-cultural. Which is racism, whether your Collins Little Gem Encyclopedia says so or not.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 22 Oct 08 - 05:37 PM

'Shading' is indeed the correct term WaV, what is happening is that you are intuitively adjusting to what proper musicologists call "pre-classical random temperament" - a skill which is to be revered rather than ridiculed. Some of us spend years trying to perfect those micro-tonal effects which you seem to have an innate talent for. What kind of a saw would you recommend for using on ebony?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Tootler
Date: 22 Oct 08 - 05:59 PM

I had a brief listen to one of WAV's myspace tracks and all I can say is that I wouldn't have the nerve to post a performance of mine of that standard on any internet site.

Also:
Cutting a groove in (by?) the thumb hole of your recorder demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of recorder technique.

It might work for you now, but if you have any real desire to improve, you will soon find it is holding you up.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 22 Oct 08 - 06:40 PM

So do you aim for Pythagorean, or Just, or even tempered scales? Or perhaps as Smokey suggests PCRT?.

Which notes do you shade and why?

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 22 Oct 08 - 06:54 PM

This may help

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 23 Oct 08 - 02:47 AM

How is declaring that certain music should only be played by certain races NOT racist?

Are you going to give me an answer? Do you consider imperialism as imposing culture or a set of ideas on someone?

Also, what do you think about the Nigunei Meron info?

Wav, if you are part of the Manchester family, which I highly doubt, then your ancestors definitely WERE capitalist immigrants.
http://209.85.135.104/search?q=cache:Vew1m9flbfcJ:www.msim.org.uk/media/33871455/thefranksfamily.pdf+jewish+franks+manchester&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=7

In the which case, shouldn't you lead the way (leading by example is the best way forward) and repatriate yourself to the Netherlands?

so all the talk from our elders of better community spirit, being able to leave their front door open without fear, etc., is nonsense?

Take a look at this!!
www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/~zierke/martin.carthy/songs/johnblunt.html

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 23 Oct 08 - 05:27 AM

Posted this on the wrong thread last night:

soon to be independent republic: Scotland.

I think Wavy believes that Scottish independence will result the expulsion of all non-Scottish nationals and a mass exodus of Scots from England back to their motherland. The extent to which Scotland and England interface on a cultural level will never change; most of my friends in Scotland are English, and most of my Scottish friends live in England. No doubt you're hoping for a rise of fevered nationalism leading to a blood-bath of civil war and ethnic cleansing, but people will be too busy getting on with their lives to even notice.

Otherwise...

prefering E trads to be perfmormed traditionally is not bigoted

That entire statement is bigoted, Wavy. Traditional in this context is an academic construct which exists on the same level of retentive pedantry as does the concept of Authenticity in model railways. Mr Mytholmroyd's scratch-built P4-gauge layout depicting Battersby Junction in the summer of 1939 may be exact in every detail, but it remains, nevertheless, just a model in the attic of his 2004 semi in Todmorden. However, Mr Mytholmroyd knows this, and, to give him his due, he would at least recognise a real train should he ever see one.

You performing E trads traditionally, i.e. UE, e.g., is a farcical pedantry derived entirely from your specious reasons for being into folk music in the first place. Specious Reason #1: it fits your Nationalistic Racist vision of English Culture. Specious Reason #2: you think you can do it with a negative amount of ability, commitment, musicality, effort and understanding. All that matters is that it serves a political purpose which would prohibit me from accompanying the ballad of Long Lankin on a Black Sea Fiddle (as I do Here), whilst allowing you to promote your execrable renditions as being somehow the more traditional.

If English Folk Song is taking a hammering, it is taking it single handedly off you, Wavy - not only in your terrible & unmusical singing and the arrogance that would promote it as being traditional, but, as Ruth says, in having you hitch it to the Nationalist & Racist Cause which is, in any case, your Life's Work.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 23 Oct 08 - 05:42 AM

Many of the source singers do sing terribly, but they had an excuse- being old, ailing and in a workhouse. I'm sure most of them had fine voices in their prime.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 23 Oct 08 - 05:52 AM

Here is another interesting story.
I guess society suffered because those poor, benighted villagers stopped practising their own good culture.

"The following, perhaps related story, was told to me 40 years ago by a famous musicologist whose son was a musico-ethnologist. The son attended a conference where one of the more exciting papers was given by a man who had succeeded in reaching an isolated South American Indian tribe, never before visited by white men with a battery operated tape recorder and recorded their music. When he played the tape, one of the audience caused a disturbance by jumping up and shouting, 'Those are Polish Jewish Hassidic melodies.'

The story becomes more interesting when the researcher presented a paper a few years later in apology. The new story, prompted by the reference to Hassidic melodies, was as follows. One of the older Indians remembered that some 60 years earlier a peddler had come to the village and was trapped there for a long time, more than a month, perhaps even as long as two. At that time, as they warmed themselves, taking shelter from the rain, he would sing to them and teach them his songs."
Robert Werman,

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 23 Oct 08 - 06:53 AM

Pip - I disagree with your definition above.

Smokey, Stu, Tootler and Woody - I WAS being frank when I said earlier that I, as most would, realized early on that I had to check how close one can have their fingers to the holes before the sound is affected by "shading". I'm also aware that my intonation can be improved by playing a line, singing a line, playing a line...with both recorder and keys. In NE festival comp's (see here for the list, if you wish) we have the option of picking up feedback forms, and I always do - but surely you can understand that I'm more wary of what those who post on here have say by way of "feedback"; e.g., if I'd repeadedly described a recorder made in Japan as an "Engrish frute" (IB - who just called me "racist" and "bigoted" again) what would have happened? I.e., some of you clearly DON'T play each ball on its merrits, sadly.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 23 Oct 08 - 07:36 AM

if I'd repeadedly described a recorder made in Japan as an "Engrish frute" (IB - who just called me "racist" and "bigoted" again) what would have happened?

We would have known you have a sense of humour, and laughed.

How is declaring that certain music should only be played by certain races NOT racist?

Are you going to give me an answer? Do you consider imperialism as imposing culture or a set of ideas on someone?

Also, what do you think about the Nigunei Meron info?

Wav, if you are part of the Manchester family, which I highly doubt, then your ancestors definitely WERE capitalist immigrants.
http://209.85.135.104/search?q=cache:Vew1m9flbfcJ:www.msim.org.uk/media/33871455/thefranksfamily.pdf+jewish+franks+manchester&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=7

In the which case, shouldn't you lead the way (leading by example is the best way forward) and repatriate yourself to the Netherlands?

so all the talk from our elders of better community spirit, being able to leave their front door open without fear, etc., is nonsense?

Take a look at this!!
www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/~zierke/martin.carthy/songs/johnblunt.html

Here is another interesting story.
I guess society suffered because those poor, benighted villagers stopped practising their own good culture.

"The following, perhaps related story, was told to me 40 years ago by a famous musicologist whose son was a musico-ethnologist. The son attended a conference where one of the more exciting papers was given by a man who had succeeded in reaching an isolated South American Indian tribe, never before visited by white men with a battery operated tape recorder and recorded their music. When he played the tape, one of the audience caused a disturbance by jumping up and shouting, 'Those are Polish Jewish Hassidic melodies.'

The story becomes more interesting when the researcher presented a paper a few years later in apology. The new story, prompted by the reference to Hassidic melodies, was as follows. One of the older Indians remembered that some 60 years earlier a peddler had come to the village and was trapped there for a long time, more than a month, perhaps even as long as two. At that time, as they warmed themselves, taking shelter from the rain, he would sing to them and teach them his songs."
Robert Werman,

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Howard Jones
Date: 23 Oct 08 - 07:48 AM

"but surely you can understand that I'm more wary of what those who post on here have say by way of "feedback" "

That [u]is[/u] understandable, due to the nature of the internet, except that many of those offering feedback on here have years of experience of performing, singing and playing instruments, including in some cases the recorder. Many post under their real names, others are easily identifiable. Some are highly-respected professionals, others are well-respected semi-pros or amateurs, but most have a reputation, either nationally or locally, on the folk scene.

In other words, they know what they are talking about, and when they tell you that your singing and recorder-playing techniques are rubbish, you would do well to listen.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 23 Oct 08 - 08:05 AM

Pip - I disagree with your definition above

Evidently, because it nails you as the racist you undoubtedly are. Thus, the only place you are not a racist is in your head, and what a place that must be! Remember, it was you who said England was a more English place 50 years ago - only a racist would believe that, Wavy.

if I'd repeadedly described a recorder made in Japan as an "Engrish frute" (IB - who just called me "racist" and "bigoted" again) what would have happened? I.e., some of you clearly DON'T play each ball on its merrits, sadly.

Engrish is a cultural & linguistic phenomenon with various books & websites (and even a WIKI page) devoted to it. It is the incongruity of you calling your Japanese plastic recorder an English Flute which gave rise to Don's choice piece of twisting. Given that you Love the world Being Multi-Cultural it is supremely ironic you would choose to play such an instrument in the first place, being mass-manufactured in a country whose own indigenous and traditional musics are about as far from the strictures of Western Art Music embodied in the recorder as you could wish to get. It is also hypocritical in the extreme when for the same price (or a little more) you could have bought yourself an English penny-whistle of exquisite craftsmanship (one by Dave Shaw of Durham for example) more suited to your professed aims and interests in English folk music which is a complete anathema to the recorder and the music for which it was invented, and, indeed, revived.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST
Date: 23 Oct 08 - 08:06 AM

More multicutltural music!

David Broza is an Israeli musician who grew up as a teenager in Spain. He performs Spanish music, singer/songwriter stuff, folk songs and even jazz and blues. He sings in Hebrew, Spanish, English and Arabic!
One of my favourite performers. His concerts are always affordable and he gives all he's got. I was at one where he played for 3 consecutive hours, giving 4 encores.
Not only is his music great, David Broza is also a dedicated social activist. He doesn't merely walkabout with his pen, but goes out and does things.


Sigaliot (Un Ramito de Violetas).
www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcYJgNl1Mc8

Yihiye Tov (Things Will Be Alright aka Peace Song #539/a).
www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTXMPbeLZjM&feature=related

Bedouin Love Song.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TFos2UX_Qo&feature=related

Mitachat Lashamaim (Under the Skies).
www.youtube.com/watch?v=WV0RZIRdDmA&feature=related

Matchil Linshom (Starting to Breathe).
www.youtube.com/watch?v=2P2DA1saVyA

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: mandotim
Date: 23 Oct 08 - 08:13 AM

WAV; you have been told authoritatively, repeatedly and with references that your definition of racism and the term 'racist' is unacceptably narrow in any sense, and does not meet any academically acceptable definition. We know that you love the world being multicultural, and that you have visited a number of countries; you just don't want the other cultures to influence the purity of your self-proclaimed 'own good English culture'. Correct? If so, you are seeking cultural apartheid, and this falls easily within the boundaries of a racist act, i.e. you deny access to your culture to those of a different culture, in that you insist they perform only their own culture. You therefore act and write in a racist way, and do not retract from that position when challenged, indeed you repeat it verbatim. The only logical conclusion to draw is that you are a committed and irretrievable racist. This is not some abstract argument, it's an academically sound, logical progression using your writings compared to accepted definitions. You are a racist, and a particularly unpleasant kind; one who believes he has a cause that needs defending. It is this kind of racism that characterises organisations like the BNP, the Verwoerts government in South Africa, the rule of Idi Amin in Uganda and the ethnic cleansing policies of Serbia in the Balkans.
Your chosen cause appears to be the cleansing of the folk music culture in this country to fit your self-generated idea of what English folk music should be. Once again, your definition has been challenged and utterly refuted, with chapter and verse being provided by some of the best and most authoritive voices in the field. This refutation renders your defence of the cause redundant, due to the false construct upon which it was based.
Finally; you attempt to set rules about how folk music should be performed, both vocally and instrumentally. I would respectfully suggest that this would carry greater weight if you were able to offer both lengthy experience of performing and some verifiable ability as a musician. Generally those who create rules in their field do so from a basis of a high level of skill, knowledge and experience, not to mention academic qualifications. While I accept you do have some qualifications, none of them relate directly to the field in which you seem determined to prescribe some fairly draconian limits to what can or cannot be played, and the methods by which permitted music should be performed. Can you explain your reasoning why the many professional musicians on this board should change their established performing practice to suit the ideas of someone who barely qualifies as an amateur?

Your normal approach when and if you reply to a post is to claim that the person posting is attacking you in some way; please don't pull that tactic this time; I am not attacking you as a person, I am attacking your published, repeated and self-defended ideas. In saying that you are racist; this isn't an attack, it is an attempt to show you that this is an inescapable conclusion reached by reading your work and applying accepted definitions of 'racist'. If you were prepared to modify your position in any way, then I and (I suspect) many others would be prepared to reconsider that conclusion, but so far you have not budged an inch.

Please read this post carefully, and attempt to reply without referring to your websites or repeating any of the redundant arguments you have applied so far (by which I mean 'all of them').
Tim

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 23 Oct 08 - 08:28 AM

The above was me.

Here are some more.

Stav Mesukan (Dangerous Autumn). The translation isn't very good, so ignore it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iudUvBu6UsI&feature=related

Ha'isha She'iti (La Mujer Que Yo Quiero, a Serrat song).
www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmBSJ2bsCDo&feature=related

Bikur Moledet (Homecoming).
www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8TsfEkhCVA&feature=related

Me Voy. Entirely in Spanish.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKomBBuxh2I&feature=related

Isla Mujeres. Another one in Spanish.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmMba2Ipy3M&feature=related

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 23 Oct 08 - 12:20 PM

What's the best sort of glue for sticking ebony?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 23 Oct 08 - 01:52 PM

Volgadon - where I've used imperialism I mean acquiring empire by conquest. And, as for the rest, I've said before - given all that imperialism and economic/capitalist immigration/emigration obviously has occured, WHAT IS BEST FROM NOW ON...
"if I'd repeadedly described a recorder made in Japan as an "Engrish frute" (IB - who just called me "racist" and "bigoted" again) what would have happened? (me)...We would have known you have a sense of humour, and laughed (Volgadon)...and do you think Japanese people would also laugh?
IB - what if Don tells you to put your hand in the fire?
Tim - what's your stance on "Engrish frute" (IB, above)?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Jack Campin
Date: 23 Oct 08 - 01:53 PM

: it is supremely ironic you would choose to play such an instrument
: in the first place, being mass-manufactured in a country whose own
: indigenous and traditional musics are about as far from the
: strictures of Western Art Music embodied in the recorder as you
: could wish to get

In fact there is a good arrangement of some Japanese music for the Engrish Frute:

Eight Japanese Pieces for Tenor Recorder

They are not that easy to play and call for some unusual techniques to emulate the shakuhachi. ("Shakuhachi" apparently means "blowjob" in modern colloquial Japanese but that doesn't mean Wavy's technique is called for). I haven't tried to play them for years but I think I only got two or three of them down really well.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 23 Oct 08 - 02:32 PM

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=kDx8U9Qhku0

I'll get my coat..

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 23 Oct 08 - 03:45 PM

WAV please recognise one or two things:

No-one knows you except by your posts and web presence. When people disagree vehemently with you it's because they find your ideas wrong/mistaken/offensive. The discussion becomes one of frustration because you never read a post (think about that simple word read).

Criticism of you on the web is usually honest, usually correct, sometimes vituperative and sarcastic. Many criticisms are well argued (academically) and thoughtfully offered.

Criticisms and appraisals of your entries at a competition are unlikely to be honest; more likely to be kind. People who run competitions want to encourage entries - kind words and selective praise will do that.
Find an honest singer or musician and ask them how you can improve.

I don't know a way for you to improve your political and social understanding. I think you suffer from cognitive dissonance.

No-one wants to dislike you except for your antisocial beliefs.

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 23 Oct 08 - 03:46 PM

and do you think Japanese people would also laugh?

Yes. If they had a sense of humour and don't take themselves too seriously.
Of course, if it were ment to offend or was done obnoxiously, that's a different matter, but it's all in the intent.

Volgadon - where I've used imperialism I mean acquiring empire by conquest. And, as for the rest, I've said before - given all that imperialism and economic/capitalist immigration/emigration obviously has occured, WHAT IS BEST FROM NOW ON...

It's just that you use it so randomnly, one is never quite sure. Wav is the Ron Burgundy of political philosophy.

How is declaring that certain music should only be played by certain races NOT racist?

What do you think about the Nigunei Meron info?

Wav, if you are part of the Manchester family, which I highly doubt, then your ancestors definitely WERE capitalist immigrants.
http://209.85.135.104/search?q=cache:Vew1m9flbfcJ:www.msim.org.uk/media/33871455/thefranksfamily.pdf+jewish+franks+manchester&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=7
In the which case, shouldn't you lead the way (leading by example is the best way forward) and repatriate yourself to the Netherlands?

so all the talk from our elders of better community spirit, being able to leave their front door open without fear, etc., is nonsense?

Take a look at this!!
www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/~zierke/martin.carthy/songs/johnblunt.html

Here is another interesting story.
I guess society suffered because those poor, benighted villagers stopped practising their own good culture.

"The following, perhaps related story, was told to me 40 years ago by a famous musicologist whose son was a musico-ethnologist. The son attended a conference where one of the more exciting papers was given by a man who had succeeded in reaching an isolated South American Indian tribe, never before visited by white men with a battery operated tape recorder and recorded their music. When he played the tape, one of the audience caused a disturbance by jumping up and shouting, 'Those are Polish Jewish Hassidic melodies.'

The story becomes more interesting when the researcher presented a paper a few years later in apology. The new story, prompted by the reference to Hassidic melodies, was as follows. One of the older Indians remembered that some 60 years earlier a peddler had come to the village and was trapped there for a long time, more than a month, perhaps even as long as two. At that time, as they warmed themselves, taking shelter from the rain, he would sing to them and teach them his songs."
Robert Werman,

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 23 Oct 08 - 04:18 PM

"IB - what if Don tells you to put your hand in the fire?"

David, both Mr. Beard and I are guilty of telling you the truth and I guess you just aren't up to handling it. Your indulging in this kind of snotty remark pretty well indicates that you are on political, cultural, and ethnomusicological thin ice and you know it.

". . . and do you think Japanese people would also laugh?"

I think so. A good friend of mine when I was in college, John Matsumoto (American-born of Japanese ancestry and, of course, spoke accentless American English), told a couple of Japanese dialect jokes that were hilarious. Some of the best renditions of Jewish dialect jokes I have ever heard were told to me by people of the Jewish persuasion. I imagine that there are a few who might be offended, but these would be people who are hypersensitive pure-culture freaks whose perspective of the world is limited (no matter how extensively they may have traveled) and whose sense of humor had been amputated.

####

Speaking of penny-whistles, I have a whole quiver-full in various keys. I have never looked into the history of the penny-whistle and where it originated. That doesn't seem particularly important to me; what is important is that one can play music with them. But I do associated them with the British Isles, because it was on recordings of music from the British Isles that I first heard one.

It is not important to me to label the penny-whistle with a country of origin, such as "Irish penny-whistle" or "English penny-whistle." It's just not that important.

I've messed around with them from time to time, but I don't really know how to play them. So I most certainly would not post my fumbling attempts on MySpace and inflict my inept squawks and fweeps on poor, unsuspecting web surfers. I am a humanitarian, after all (even if I don't have a BA in Humanities).

Some years ago, I walked into a music store and asked the clerk if he had any penny-whistles. He did have them. Generation brand (officially a "flageolet"). In addition to various pitches, Generation makes them in both brass and nickel-plate. The nickel-plated ones cost a bit more. I was not aware of this at the time.

He answered my question by saying, "Yes, but all I have are the nickel ones."

The answer had me completely flummoxed. I thought about it for a moment, then asked him, "Do you have any for a dime?" Then it was his turn to be flummoxed.

Suddenly we both realized the miscommunication and burst out laughing.

We drew a few quizzical glances from other customers in the store.

Don Firth

(For those who may not be familiar with American coinage:    Penny = coin of lowest value.   Nickel = worth five pennies.   Dime = worth ten pennies. As I recall, the actually price of the nickel-plated penny-whistle was about $4.95 plus sales tax.)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 23 Oct 08 - 04:40 PM

I love Jewish dialect jokes, in fact, I love good dialect jokes of any kind.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 23 Oct 08 - 04:44 PM

Wav, what if the UN decreed that you put your hand in the fire?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 23 Oct 08 - 04:57 PM

Tim: Please read this post carefully, and attempt to reply without referring to your websites or repeating any of the redundant arguments you have applied so far (by which I mean 'all of them').

And here's WAV's reply, in full:

Tim - what's your stance on "Engrish frute" (IB, above)?

Dishonest racist.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: TheSnail
Date: 23 Oct 08 - 05:16 PM

Don Firth

I have never looked into the history of the penny-whistle and where it originated.

Perhaps this would help -http://www.flickr.com/photos/king76/580821163/

But then again, it might not.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 23 Oct 08 - 05:32 PM

Maybe Wav was right.
Here are some of the problems associated with a multiple number of cultures trying to live peacefully under one state law.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0n88tZQc4Q&feature=related

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 23 Oct 08 - 05:44 PM

England WAS a more English place 50 years ago, things have sadly changed. Look at the influence this has had on the language.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rc15l-fbXoI&NR=1

Also, here is an interesting theological debate, settled by Fry and Laurie.

"Is God an Englishman? Well, that's a tricky one. Theologians are pretty much undecided, but I think it is universally accepted that he isn't Welsh."

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 23 Oct 08 - 05:56 PM

Ah, the values of the 1950s.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FGf_KWFbcU

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: mandotim
Date: 23 Oct 08 - 06:50 PM

WAV; unlike you, I'll answer the question; my stance on 'Engrish Frute' is that I have no 'stance' as such; I recognise it for what it is, a humorous remark, not meant to harm or disadvantage others. Now, having had a direct reply to your question, perhaps you would do me the courtesy of responding in full to my earlier post? So far, I note that you have not been able to muster any sort of counter argument to the logical sequence posited, merely reverting to questions with little or no relevance to the central point. Once again, this seems to be a common tactic amongst racists; when challenged effectively about their central belief system, they always talk about something else. It's usually economics, or law, or religion; anything to avoid making the key admission that they simply don't like or understand foreigners, and don't want them polluting their country/street/culture. I still think you are the worst kind of racist, and until you make a reasoned argument to the contrary, without using your utterly discredited websites as evidence I shall continue to think so. I'm not alone here; there are many better minds than mine engaged in discussion with you, and almost all have reached the same conclusion. Come on WAV; convince me you aren't a racist. I for one would be glad to hear a sound argument that you aren't; but I repeat, nothing on your websites, or posted by you on the Mudcat so far even comes close to being that argument. On the contrary; almost every utterance has the opposite effect, reinforcing the impression that you are irredeemably racist.
I look forward to a considered and comprehensive reply, not another inane and irrelevant question.
Tim

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 23 Oct 08 - 06:51 PM

Jack Campin: I'm afraid your link wouldn't work here, but much thanks for the information regarding the book of Japanese music for the E-frute. This is a link by which UK readers can purchase it, should they wish, like me, to lower themselves and indulge in foreign experimentation from time to time:
http://www.musicroom.com/se/ID_No/023344/details.html

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 24 Oct 08 - 05:58 AM

mandotim - I feel sorry for you my friend. You remain entrapped in your ignorance. Let me help you see the light...

WAV is that rare thing, a reasonable man beset on all sides by the foolish, ignorant and simple, or by those with their own evil agendas.

We are fortunate that by virtue of him being brought up in a foreign land he can see the lies and deceit which have blinded those of us that grew up in England. By not having been indoctrinated he can see the tragedy of a country brought to its knees by immigration and the domination of foreign cultures. Woe unto us if he had not returned to be our saviour, our proud nation could have sunk beneath the waves.

His adept musical talents and extensive research watching the BBC will lead to a renaissance of old England and strip away the indulgent foreign influences that incompetent charlatans like the Carthys, Spiers, Bodens et al. have foisted upon us. Rejoice because with his guidance we're about to enter the holy land of pure English music and song.

His courage is to be admired in that despite the hordes of posters telling him he is wrong, he sticks to the true way and resists any doubt, because only he knows what is right and proper. He knows that experience, education, skill, talent, sensitivity, knowledge and a reputation built over a lifetime of performing at the highest level are of no worth compared to his own attributes, and we should respect the fact that he lets nobody possessing them cause him a moments self-doubt.   

His views on immigration are the only reasonable views and, although they only seem to be shared by right-wing extremists at the moment, it's surely only a matter of time before all reasonable Englishmen subscribe to them. Soon we will be back to the happy happy land that was England in 1958.

mandotim, WAV is nothing else but the messiah of the English and you should be ashamed of yourself that you haven't already realised this. I hope you now see the errors of your ways.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 24 Oct 08 - 06:17 AM

Stu - "Criticisms and appraisals of your entries at a competition are unlikely to be honest; more likely to be kind. People who run competitions want to encourage entries - kind words and selective praise will do that."...this is another sad case of knocking those you may normally respect in desperation to get at me. And what's your stance on a recorder made in Japan being repeatedly reffered to as an "Engrish frute" (IB)? Would you have ignored it if I had posted it?
Do you try and play each ball on it's merrits?

Pip - who just called me a "dishonest racist"...please answer what I just ased of Stu.

Don - the penny-whistle evolved from the English flageolet in England. And are you sure Japanes people would not be offended by the term "Engrish frute"?

Tim - another who doesn't seem to think "Engrish frute" (as used by IB above) is offensive to Japanese people - what you just posted about me is false and defamatory because there IS a difference between questioning immigration and racism. Racism is where someone attacks or mocks a person or people from a particular culture or race, which is something I have never done.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Working Radish
Date: 24 Oct 08 - 08:29 AM

I think "Engrish frute" is rather witty, and that taken in context it wasn't racist. (Note to WAV: this is called answering a question. Try it some time.)

Racism is where someone attacks or mocks a person or people from a particular culture or race, which is something I have never done

No, that's attacking or mocking people on racist grounds. I'm glad to hear you've never done that, but that's not by any means the only form of racism.

I could argue that I'm an Italian opera singer by redefining the words in my own special way, but the rest of the world is going to carry on thinking I'm an English folkie. If you don't want me to call you a racist, you'll have to take account of why I call you a racist, not just tell me that you're not a racist by your personal definition. And if you don't want to be considered dishonest, stop bouncing back with the same old slogans and the same old links, and ANSWER THE QUESTIONS THAT PEOPLE ASK YOU.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 24 Oct 08 - 08:41 AM

Your beloved UN defines Racial Discrimination as:

the term "racial discrimination" shall mean any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.

These distinctions are what you believe in, aren't they?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: catspaw49
Date: 24 Oct 08 - 08:50 AM

LOL.....Well Ed, you seem to have cut to the chase with a sharp blade!

Wavy, the proper terminology in this case is "Gotcha!" Ed has "gotcha" from any and all angles in a way you can't deny.

GOTCHA!!!!!!

Spaw

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 24 Oct 08 - 08:58 AM

Our local kebab shop had its windows put in last weekend by people shouting "go back home" and telling the owners to leave England to the English or they'll burn their shop & home down. This of course is where WAV's line of thinking ends up, whether he recognises it or not. Personally I know who I'd like to keep and who I'd want to kick out.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: mandotim
Date: 24 Oct 08 - 09:38 AM

WAV; I asked you to do me the courtesy of replying without resorting to your discredited websites or repeating any of the arguments you have used already. You have used both your website and an old argument, and nothing else. No new thinking, no learning in the light of reasoned arguments contrary to your own entrenched views. I'm not sure whether this trait of yours is intransigence, malice, illiteracy or just pure stupidity (in the true sense of stupidity, an inability to learn or to reason).
Guest Ed has given you a definition of racism used by a body you quote as useful in your own manifesto for humanity. It has academic as well as institutional weight, and is considerably broader than your self generated definition which appears to have been invented and refined to suit your own rather specious arguments about immigration and culture. Under the UN definition, your views on excluding other cultures and restrictions on freedom of movement for whatever purpose clearly and unequivocally amount to rascism. You continue to stand by those views and to advocate them personally, therefore QED you are a racist.
Once again; please do me the courtesy of coming up with an argument as to why I and others shouldn't consider you to be a racist, without using your discredited websites or your previously refuted arguments. Lets see if you can think and learn, as opposed to simply repeating old news. Perhaps you could base the argument on a line-by-line comparison between your views and the UN definition of racism?
Tim
PS Guest Woody; I recognise the error of my ways. The sackcloth and ashes are on order from ebay, and I intend to flagellate myself daily until they are delivered. Granma McAlatia has offered to help with the flagellating, but I'm not sure I trust her.
PPS WAV; flagellation has nothing to do with playing the pennywhistle.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 24 Oct 08 - 09:43 AM

the penny-whistle evolved from the English flageolet in England.

No it didn't. You've been told this any amount of times before, Wavy - so please pay attention. The classic tin, or penny, whistle, was invented by Robert Clarke in 1843 as a way of manufacturing the internationally & historically ubiquitous 6-hole whistle flute out of tin plate. Clarke's whistles (traditionally in C but latterly in D also) are still made in this way, and I have a vintage (1930s?) instrument in E, similarly decorated in distinctive black and gold with the name Calura, possibly made by Clarke for export. Superior whistles in keys both high & low are made in this way in County Durham by celebrated pipe maker Dave Shaw.

The Flageolet, on the other hand, was a short lived aristocratic parlour novelty, derived, in part from the declining recorder (or common flute), whose name was much later used by Generation for their 6-hole whistles, hence the present confusion sourced no doubt, as with so much else, from WIKI.

Meanwhile, here's a nice whistle site from Australia you might enjoy:

http://www.ozwhistles.com/

Otherwise:

And what's your stance on a recorder made in Japan being repeatedly reffered to as an "Engrish frute"

Yet another of Wavy's beloved smokescreen tactics; if he's not ridiculing my academic record, or my opinion of the New Labour, then I'm being condemned for joining in a bit of larking in the light of his more serious racist propagandising with respect of his English Fecking Flute. I answered this below, but, for those who missed it, like Wavy obviously, here it is again, albeit revised:

Engrish is a cultural & linguistic phenomenon with various books & websites (and even a WIKI page) devoted to it. It exists on a similar level of incongruity to Wavy calling his Japanese plastic recorder an English Flute, which is what gave rise to Don's choice piece of twisting. Given that Wavy so Loves the world Being Multi-Cultural it is supremely ironic he would choose to play such an instrument in the first place, being industrially mass-produced in a country whose own indigenous and traditional musics are about as far from the strictures of Western Art Music embodied in the recorder as one could wish to get. It is also hypocritical in the extreme when for the same price (or a little more) he could have bought himself an English penny-whistle of exquisite craftsmanship more suited to his professed aims and interests in English folk music which is a complete anathema to the recorder and the music for which it was invented, and, indeed, revived.

Also, this is what a Shakuhachi sounds like (all 14 hours of it apparently) http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=hP6_OkUFznY, in case you were wondering...

Remember, Wavy - no one is concerned with your personal beliefs; rather it is that you should publish and promote them that gives us the right of criticism. Such criticism, however, does not give you the right of retaliation, and certainly not repeated retaliation when your retaliatory points have been satisfactorily dealt with. Anything you hurl at me, Wavy, however so personal it might be - I answer, in detail. Now, maybe you ought to try doing that with some of the questions that have been asked of you.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,David Burland
Date: 24 Oct 08 - 09:58 AM

Maybe the hammered dulcimer?There are similar instruments in Europe too.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Sailor Ron
Date: 24 Oct 08 - 11:48 AM

"Maybe the hammered dulcimer?" It is also known, made & played in China!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 24 Oct 08 - 12:00 PM

The hammered dulcimer is the national instrument of IRAN.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 24 Oct 08 - 12:00 PM

Interestingly in China the hammer dulcimer is known as Yang Chin or Yan Qin which means - foreign zither instrument! But it's true what Ron says - the hammer dulcimer is about as international as the Jew's Harp, which the Chinese also have in various forms, but of especial interest is the Ho-Ho, or Kou-Xiang, consisting three to six tuned instruments in one. As with most things he turns his hand to, Nadishana's is one the finest expondents of this instrument - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjZKDqcKLyg. He also sells them... Not for beardies though, insane or otherwise!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 24 Oct 08 - 12:18 PM

The santour.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEWGtIzZARc&feature=related

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 24 Oct 08 - 12:30 PM

WAV it is not secret that judges look for encouraging ways to say 'that was pretty awful'. Normal entrants accept the 'praise' for what it is - encouragement to keep trying.

I'll translate for you 'Keep trying; you may improve with time and experience'.

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 24 Oct 08 - 01:22 PM

Ed and Spaw and Tim - to say that that UN definition is referring to regulations on immigration/emigration, which I'm merely saying should be stonger than the status quo, would be silly.

IB - as well as repeatedly referring to a recorder made in Japan as an "Engrish frute" you have also told as of your friends at the pub making racist jokes. I never do that - what I do, rather, is question the act of immigration itself, which is NOT racism.

DB - sorry I can't recall his name, but I enjoyed a chap from somewhere south playing a hammered dulcimer very well at the Rothbury Trad. Mus. Festival this year.

"WAV it is not secret that judges look for encouraging ways to say 'that was pretty awful'. Normal entrants accept the 'praise' for what it is - encouragement to keep trying. I'll translate for you 'Keep trying; you may improve with time and experience'" (Stu)...I stand by what I said above: you are knocking folks you may normally respect to have another go at me, sadly - i.e., some well-respected folkies both compete and judge at these events and, without suchlike, maybe we wouldn't have some of the earliest folkie recordings, such as Joseph Taylor's unaccompanied singing.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: mandotim
Date: 24 Oct 08 - 01:45 PM

Silly in what way, WAV? By the way, to answer a carefully reasoned and thoughtful argument with an ill-tempered, poorly written and insulting one-line reply is a little disrespectful, don't you think? Please explain your reasoning behind that remark. The UN definition refers to many things, but immigration is not among them. Go back and read it again, particularly the part about culture. Remember, you are not being attacked here; you are being offered an opportunity to withdraw from your racist positions, or at least explain them in the light of the overwhelming eveidence ranged against you. As we stand, I still think you are a racist, for the reasons outlined in my post above, which so far you have not made an attempt to refute. Are you prepared to convince me (and many others) that you are not racist, without repeating the same tired arguments from your discredited websites?
Tim

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 24 Oct 08 - 01:45 PM

Wav, Stu was not knocking anyone. Were I running a competition, I would consider that a compliment. The point of these is not to brake the person down, but to encourage them to participate and create.
The sort of competition Taylor took part in wasn't there to judge their singing, but to find new songs.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 24 Oct 08 - 01:54 PM

Thank you, Ed, for posting the United Nations' definition of racial discrimination. That is quite clear, while at the same time being both complete and concise. And on that basis, I am afraid that the charge that David is a racist, based on his own assertions, is irrefutable.

Regarding my attempt at humorous whimsy with "Engrish frute" (My God! He just did it again!), if this has offended anyone of the Japanese persuasion, then I humbly apologize. It was certainly not my intent.

However, it looks to me as if someone is fastening on it in an effort to level a counter-charge against one of his critics and thereby divert attention from his own bigoted viewpoint.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 24 Oct 08 - 02:22 PM

what I do, rather, is question the act of immigration itself, which is NOT racism.

Questioning immigration is not racism, unless you question immigration for racist reasons - which is what you do. That's why I call you a racist. You refuse even to acknowledge this very simple point, despite it being made to you several times. That's why I call you dishonest.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 24 Oct 08 - 02:33 PM

IB - as well as repeatedly referring to a recorder made in Japan as an "Engrish frute" you have also told as of your friends at the pub making racist jokes. I never do that - what I do, rather, is question the act of immigration itself, which is NOT racism.

More repeated personal retaliation, Wavy - all of which has been answered in good faith, as far as you were justified in bringing it up in the first place. Lots of people say silly things in their cups - God knows they're only human - but only you, it would seen, would write it up and publish it as your Life's Work and promote it as the Best Way Forward for Humanity. As Don says above it looks to me as if someone is fastening on it in an effort to level a counter-charge against one of his critics and thereby divert attention from his own bigoted viewpoint. So, nice to see you're so rattled as to resort to such grossly underhand tactics but please, stop throwing up smokescreens and just answer the points.

Let's go back to the UN definition of racial discrimination shall we?

The term "racial discrimination" shall mean any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.

Now, without reference to my education, drunken friends, Engrish Frute, or opinions of New Labour, justify how, in the light of the above, your ideas aren't racist.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 24 Oct 08 - 04:18 PM

"Questioning immigration is not racism, unless you question immigration for racist reasons - which is what you do. That's why I call you a racist. You refuse even to acknowledge this very simple point, despite it being made to you several times. That's why I call you dishonest." (Pip) WRONG: I have, rather, questioned immigration/emigration on several grounds in my collection - NONE of them racist. I've also suggested that, whatever their "origin" (UN definition above), accepting that all that imperialism and economic immigration has occured, people now in England, e.g., should be into our own good English culture and values much more than present. And, as said above, even New Labour, after about a decade of pro-immigration and diversity, must have noticed some problem here just recently as they have now intoduced regulatory English tests.

"More repeated personal retaliation" (IB)...if you think that's the case, don't attack with false and defamatory language, then. And, if you are so heavily against racism, why would you post "Engrish frute" or have friends who make racist jokes?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 24 Oct 08 - 04:47 PM

David, you keep saying things like "our own good English culture and values." I would like to hear you offer some specifics as to what you regard as the essential characteristics of "our own good English culture and values." I'm quite sure that some of your countrymen would also like to have you delineate what you mean.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: mandotim
Date: 24 Oct 08 - 04:50 PM

Still no answer to my posts above, WAV. Still no satisfactory explanation of the relationship between your views and the UN definition of racism posted above either. You're nailed completely by that one aren't you? No wriggle room at all. All you can do is keep spouting the same inanities, but you can't tackle the basic truth; when judged against a robust definition of racism, you are a racist, as evidenced by your own writings and arguments here. Ignore immigration for now WAV, the UN definition doesn't mention it at all, so there is no reason why you should; your other main argument is about the arbitrary segregation of cultures. This means you would deny people access to participation in cultures other than their own,restricting them to observer status only. The indigenous population, on the other hand, would have full access to participation in that culture. Read this again, from the UN;

The term "racial discrimination" shall mean any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.

You propose and persist in defending such a restriction in the cultural field of public life, based on national origin. Once again, based on the above definition, you are proposing a racist act, refusing to explain or recant, and you are therefore quite fairly condemned as an unrepentant racist. I would have thought someone with your professed views would glory in being called a racist, since it accurately describes what you stand for.

Once again WAV; a graduate level student should be able to argue this case convincingly, or adapt their thinking to deal with overwhelming evidence. What you choose to do is indulge in trivialisation, reductionism, personal attacks (especially on Insane Beard) and unthinking and uncritical recitation of the same discredited points. I have heard a better level of intellectual discourse among young people in their early teens, and if you were one of my undergraduates you would probably fail every course; time to shape up and come up with an adult level of discussion. Once more; I believe you are a racist when compared to the UN definition. Using the same definition, produced by an organisation you have great faith in, can you convince me that this is not true?
I look forward to a properly argued response.
Tim

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 24 Oct 08 - 04:55 PM

I have, rather, questioned immigration/emigration on several grounds in my collection - NONE of them racist

I have no idea whether this is true or not, and I've no intention of wading through your collection to find out. I'm taking issue with your comments on immigration here on Mudcat, and almost all of them have been racist. But prove me wrong: what are your grounds for "questioning immigration"?

people now in England, e.g., should be into our own good English culture and values much more than present

Do you mean that immigrants should abandon their own culture? But "when people lose their culture society suffers", or so you've said. Doesn't this imply that we'll all be better off if immigrants maintain their own culture, and contribute it to the hybrid cultural life of England?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 24 Oct 08 - 05:20 PM

I did read and respond to that definition, Tim, and Pip just reposted part of it; and as for "we'll all be better off if immigrants maintain their own culture" (Pip) I (and as just said, apparently, New Labour with their new English tests) question this on many grounds - the most extreme problem of course being terrorism.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 24 Oct 08 - 05:37 PM

I did read and respond to that definition, Tim, and Pip just reposted part of it

Not that I noticed. (Nor, of course, did you answer my direct question. I suppose I should be used to that by now.)

Look, here's the UN definition again:

The term "racial discrimination" shall mean any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.

In other words, deciding on the basis of race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin that one group or another should not enjoy fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life on an equal footing with all other groups. Such as, for example, the fundamental freedom to move to another country if that's where the work is, or the fundamental freedom to choose what you wear, how you worship and what kind of music you listen to. You are self-evidently committed to restricting these freedoms on racial grounds; hearing you deny it would be laughable if it wasn't so sad.

as for "we'll all be better off if immigrants maintain their own culture" (Pip) I (and as just said, apparently, New Labour with their new English tests) question this on many grounds

But WAV, "when people lose their culture society suffers" (your own words). Are immigrants not people?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 24 Oct 08 - 05:56 PM

'to have another go at me' WAV above. This is paranoia. No-one is out to get you. No-one knows anything about you save what you publish. When you publish you lay your publications open to critical comment and rebuttal. This is part of the norm in the scientific world and is known as peer review.

Your views are rejected by your peers and betters

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 24 Oct 08 - 05:57 PM

It's obvious Pip - immigrants are terrorists, and they want to destroy our folk music.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 24 Oct 08 - 06:00 PM

1100

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 24 Oct 08 - 06:27 PM

it is a complete waste of time debating with racists. Just ignore them, they have nothing worth saying. Just start a new thread on the subject and let them stew in their self-gratification.

End of thread!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 24 Oct 08 - 07:45 PM

Jesus...
Is this bloody thread still going on??
Leave it. Drop it. Let it die....
The final score..
WAV Nil
Everybody else 100000000
Enough.
Let the poor bugger get therapy.
There is no point in poking someone when he's down.
We are better than that surely?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 24 Oct 08 - 09:05 PM

people now in England, e.g., should be into our own good English culture and values much more than present

Wavy - what, in your considered & erudite opinion, constitutes our own good English culture and values? And in what way should we be into them?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 24 Oct 08 - 10:10 PM

Economic/capitalist immigration...
You appear to have already done that twice WaV, and yet you say it's wrong - or are you excused from your own rules?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: mandotim
Date: 25 Oct 08 - 04:01 AM

WAV. Re your post of 5.20 and my previous post of 4.50. I asked you to analyse your views on cultural segregation against the UN definition of racial discrimination and produce a clear argument about why I should not regard you as a racist. You claim to have answered this point. Where?
As things stand you are a racist, in that you advocate a different access to particular cultural activities and values, based solely on national origin. (The UN definition refers.) I am giving you repeated opportunities to either justify or modify your racist arguments, and so far you have not been able to come up with a single academically of morally valid point to do so. Insulting others, reducing the central point to nit-picking detail, repeating the drivel from your utterly discredited websites and re-hashing the meaningless arguments you have used so far do not count in this case. The UN definition has nailed you as the racist that you are, and you don't seem to have any answer worth the name. Perhaps it's time for you to go away for a while, take a break and reconsider your 'manifesto' in the light of evidence and truth, as opposed to just your own unsupported, academically bankrupt views?
Tim

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: mandotim
Date: 25 Oct 08 - 04:41 AM

Line 5, 'of' should read 'or'
Tim

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 25 Oct 08 - 07:47 AM

I HAVE covered all the last few queries and been accused of repitition in the process - but Smokey seems genuinely unaware that, born here, I AM a repatriate, who sees himself as English rather than British; and, in line with this, IB, where (here, e.g., to save lots of typing and/or copy/pasting) I detailed our folk songs and dances, our hymns, our meals, etc: that's what I mean by practising "our own good English culture and values".

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: mandotim
Date: 25 Oct 08 - 08:15 AM

WAV; you have emphatically NOT covered the queries relating to the UN definition, nor have you made any effort to do so. You are still a particularly nasty sort of racist in my book. Read my last post again. Then have a think. Then reply, giving a detailed explanation of why your views on cultural segregation do not fall under the UN definition of racial discrimination. Kindly do not refer to your utterly discredited websites, nor to the completely specious and irrelevant arguments you have used so far.
Tim

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Jack Campin
Date: 25 Oct 08 - 08:44 AM

You're only English in your head. By any external measure you're Australian.

And if being English in your head is what counts, then the entire post-Empire-Windrush generation of Commonwealth immigrants were English too. They certainly saw themselves that way - subjects of the same Queen. And they got here years before the English folk revival took off, with their own folk traditions that substantially influenced it.

So show them some goddamn respect.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 25 Oct 08 - 08:52 AM

I'm out of here, seriously. I've got much more interesting stuff to do.

SPB-Cooperator is right - there's absolutely no point attempting to debate with a dishonest racist. Someone remind me of that if I ever start attempting to get a new idea into WAV's head again.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 25 Oct 08 - 09:26 AM

In the words of Sue Lawley....

Tell us about your fifth record Lady Mosley

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Howard Jones
Date: 25 Oct 08 - 11:36 AM

WAV, clearly in your own mind you don't believe you are racist. Perhaps you show respect to those of different races and cultures. But it has been clearly demonstrated that, by most accepted definitions, the views you are putting forward are racist.

From your defensiveness on the matter, it appears that you think that racism is bad. Indeed somewhere on this post (so far back I can't be bothered to look for it) you admitted that you keep quiet about your political views in job interviews, so you clearly recognise that they are not generally acceptable. So perhaps you should re-examine your opinions.

If, after doing so, you still hold to them, well it's still a free country and you're entitled to them. Just have the honesty to admit that they're racist.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 25 Oct 08 - 12:49 PM

WITH SOME QUALIFICATIONS, I could be called an anti-immigrationist but calling me a racist IS false and defamatory - you won't find any racist jokes from me, any antagonism or discrimination toward a particular race, etc. I have, however, at least tried to support the land rights of Aborigines, Masai, etc; enjoyed being among other cultures on my travels, etc. - and I say this, hopefully for the last time, in all "honesty" (HJ).

Back on-thread: dipping a polymer recorder/English flute into clean water is not only a good cleanliness-is-next-to-Godliness habit but, for some reason, seems to help avoid condensation blockages.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 25 Oct 08 - 01:00 PM

How many times do we have to explain that by your own very narrow definition of racism you aren't one, but it's easy to redefine things to soothe your guilty conscience.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 25 Oct 08 - 01:26 PM

"Smokey seems genuinely unaware that, born here, I AM a repatriate, who sees himself as English rather than British"

I'm not unaware of that WaV, I seem to have read it quite a lot. My point was that you emigrated from here to Australia, presumably because of some perceived advantage in doing that, and then moved back here again, also because you saw some benefit in doing so. It doesn't matter a chicken's nipple what you call yourself or how you see yourself - it doesn't change what you did. We have a saying round here: 'What's good for the goose is good for the gander'. Or are you saying it's ok for foreigners to emigrate here for fifteen years and then emigrate back to their countries of origin? (Perhaps even with a messianic intent to rescue their beloved culture from the evils of impure influences?)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: mandotim
Date: 25 Oct 08 - 02:21 PM

WAV; by yur own admission, against a reputable definition from the UN, you are without doubt a racist. If that is so false and defamatory, sue me. PM me if you want my details. Lets watch the courts laugh at you as well.
Tim

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 25 Oct 08 - 02:22 PM

I apologise for the glut of poultry in that last post, it was without foul intent.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Insane Beard
Date: 25 Oct 08 - 03:01 PM

Wavy - I see there's a documentary about Ten Pound Poms on BBC2 tonight (starts in about 20 minutes after Stephen Fry in America). I tell you, if you could still emigrate to Australia for a tenner I'd be on the first boat to Darwin, especially after the weather here today. Oh to bask in some Northern Territorial Sunshine singing some genuine A. Trads like The Derby Ram. UE of course - or is that UA?

Otherwise, answer me this - how do you square your earlier subjectivism (regarding your musical ability) with your general absolutism (concerning your political convictions)?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 25 Oct 08 - 03:19 PM

Tell me WaV, and pardon my ignorance - is the State's support of the unemployed immigrant/repatriate better or worse here than it is in Australia?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 25 Oct 08 - 03:36 PM

(snicker snicker)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Oct 08 - 03:48 PM

See me in my ofice after class, Firth; I will not tolerate levity during my lectures.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 25 Oct 08 - 03:50 PM

Tell you what - I'll do that properly:

See me in my office after class, Firth; I will not tolerate levity during my lectures.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 25 Oct 08 - 04:25 PM

"Sorry . . . " he said, hands behind back and head down while peering up sheepishly through his forelock.

(Actually, I haven't had a forelock since I was in my early twenties; I have the same barber as Yul Brynner and Capt. Jean-Luc Picard).

(but still having great difficulty suppressing a chortle)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 25 Oct 08 - 04:33 PM

I've got my eye on you Firth, and if that's chewing gum you're eating, I hope you brought enough for everyone.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 25 Oct 08 - 04:47 PM

No, sir, I'm not chewing gum.

(I'm just wobbling my jaw around and snorting through my nose as I try to keep from busting out laughing)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 25 Oct 08 - 05:35 PM

Wipe that smirk off your face, boy. I want a four page essay on the subject of Traditional Antipodean marsupial bondage shanties on my desk first thing in the mornibg.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 25 Oct 08 - 05:50 PM

'Monibg' is an old Saxon word meaning 'sparrow-fart', for the avoidance of any confusion with the Icelandic pop-star.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Oct 08 - 06:04 PM

Spoons!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: mandotim
Date: 26 Oct 08 - 02:35 AM

Arse! Girls! Feck!
Tim

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 26 Oct 08 - 05:14 AM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3x-AUEvwLk

I must say, this sounds soooo American.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Stu sans cookie
Date: 26 Oct 08 - 05:41 AM

'Otherwise, answer me this - how do you square your earlier subjectivism (regarding your musical ability) with your general absolutism (concerning your political convictions)? '

Love it Sean

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 26 Oct 08 - 09:53 AM

Wav, here is some youtube of an Israeli musician playing Greek songs on the bouzouki, according to you, should he be playing them?
www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_cb6c5nFLY
www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCPh9xeERfg&feature=related

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 26 Oct 08 - 02:16 PM

"Smokey seems genuinely unaware that, born here, I AM a repatriate, who sees himself as English rather than British" (me)...I'm not unaware of that WaV, I seem to have read it quite a lot. My point was that you emigrated from here to Australia, presumably because of some perceived advantage in doing that, and then moved back here again, also because you saw some benefit in doing so. It doesn't matter a chicken's nipple what you call yourself or how you see yourself - it doesn't change what you did. We have a saying round here: 'What's good for the goose is good for the gander'.(Smokey)...as is detailed in my life's work, I was 3 in 1970 when my family left England for Aus., 21 when I visited in 1988, and 30 in 1997 when I came home.

"Wavy - I see there's a documentary about Ten Pound Poms on BBC2 tonight (starts in about 20 minutes after Stephen Fry in America). I tell you, if you could still emigrate to Australia for a tenner I'd be on the first boat to Darwin, especially after the weather here today. Oh to bask in some Northern Territorial Sunshine singing some genuine A. Trads like The Derby Ram. UE of course - or is that UA?
Otherwise, answer me this - how do you square your earlier subjectivism (regarding your musical ability) with your general absolutism (concerning your political convictions)?" (IB - no need for IBy)...like those on the "Wanted Down Under" TV programmes I've watched, you, too, failed to mention Aborigines and land rights. And I don't think my proposals are "absolutism" - e.g., I haven't said ALL immigration/emigration should stop; I have said all economic/capitalist immigration/emigration should stop the world over, from now on.
Smokey - I haven't been in Aus. for 11 years, but I think the benefits for unemployed job seekers is about the same as here.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: catspaw49
Date: 26 Oct 08 - 02:31 PM

So when do you think you can stop your racial discrimination? (My guess would be as soon as your Mommy gives up fellatio with yaks or 24 hour gang bangs.)

Try it Wavylimptool......As a racist and bigot, you're missing out on much of what life has to offer.

Spaw

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 26 Oct 08 - 02:50 PM

Catspaw - given that such rubbish is not being deleted, instead of trying to out-crude yourself, get off your catnip and READ this...

Poem 76 of 230: LAND RIGHTS

If there is a good thing
    From the Second World War
It's that most peoples learnt
    To conquer lands no more.

In Africa, Asia,
    And the Pacific, too:
Post-war independence -
    Steps only bigots rue.

But for some indigenes,
    Outnumbered much-too-much,
It has all come too late
    For liberty, as such.

So 'tis in Australia,
    And America's sites,
Where the best now, I think,
    Is to respect land rights.

From walkaboutsverse.741.com

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 26 Oct 08 - 03:06 PM

If there is a good thing
    From the Second World War
It's that most peoples learnt
    To conquer lands no more.


Well, blow me down! I didn't know that!!

Lemme see, now . . . how many wars have we not had since the end of WW II, then?

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 26 Oct 08 - 05:10 PM

And I don't think my proposals are "absolutism" - e.g., I haven't said ALL immigration/emigration should stop; I have said all economic/capitalist immigration/emigration should stop the world over, from now on.

Beautiful, Wavy - IMHO this is the closest you've come to real poetry in any of your threads.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 26 Oct 08 - 05:28 PM

WaV:

"I was 3 in 1970 when my family left England for Aus., 21 when I visited in 1988, and 30 in 1997 when I came home."

I already know that, and it isn't what I asked you. My question was: "Are you saying it's ok for foreigners to emigrate here for fifteen years and then emigrate back to their countries of origin?"

"Smokey - I haven't been in Aus. for 11 years, but I think the benefits for unemployed job seekers is about the same as here. "

That isn't what I asked either, I specifically said: "the unemployed immigrant/repatriate."

There is no point in answering questions that haven't been asked, it is a waste of your valuable time. If you feel you cannot answer my questions, just say so. Remember though; evading the question or not answering is usually an answer in itself from which conclusions may be drawn.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: catspaw49
Date: 26 Oct 08 - 05:36 PM

I read it Wavy.....Your turn:

David Franks believes in racial discrimination.
Franks is a racist and a bigot as his words here prove.
I'd rhyme this but why bother?
David Franks is a bigot and a racist..........period.


I think I can get the vast majority of readers to agree.

Have a nice day.

Spaw

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 26 Oct 08 - 06:02 PM

I think I'm inclined to agree in principle Spaw, but:
a/ Could you post a link to that yak-gobbling site?
b/ Do you have any spare catnip?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 26 Oct 08 - 06:37 PM

Mister Professor Smokey, sir, this assignment took a monumental amount of research into Traditional Antipodean marsupial bondage shanties, but I believe I have managed to get this in to you before sparrow-fart, I hope.

Lemme see, now; since one can estimate a typewritten page, double-spaced (standard manuscript format) at approximately 250 words per page, a four page essay would run about 1,000 words. And since, as the adage has it, "a picture is worth a thousand words," here, then, is my essay:

CLICKY.

A little further research turned up further information on the aftermath of the corroboree:    CLICKY #2.

And it's lonely in the Outback, so you take whatever you can get:    Strange sexual practices. Or, "Don't just stand there! Kiss me!"

Might this be good for extra credit?

Don Firth

(chortle chortle)   Oops! Sorry!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 26 Oct 08 - 11:49 PM

Hmm.. Ten out of ten for effort lad, but something tells me you still aren't taking this entirely seriously.

I shall go and pwactise my frute, and then perhaps frail my mandarin for a bit.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 27 Oct 08 - 06:51 PM

Oh dear.. Gone a bit quiet I see.. Have you run out of answers WaV?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 27 Oct 08 - 09:45 PM

Ah well.........

WaV:

"I was 3 in 1970 when my family left England for Aus., 21 when I visited in 1988, and 30 in 1997 when I came home."

So you became Australian for 27 formative years, and then emigrated to Britain aged 30. If it was alright for you to do that, surely you can't have a problem with others doing the same thing?

What is the difference between what you have done and, say, a Jamaican 3 year old being brought here by his parents, growing up with whatever culture we have here, reaching the age of thirty and then moving back to Jamaica because he feels it might be better in some way?

You seem to be saying that it was fine and justified for you to do it, but now it should be completely banned, globally. I can't help thinking that might be a teensy bit hypocritical.

Here's some real poetry - my advice is to take particular note of the last verse:

Ha! whaur ye gaun, ye crowlin ferlie?
Your impudence protects you sairly;
I canna say but ye strunt rarely,
Owre gauze and lace;
Tho', faith! I fear ye dine but sparely
On sic a place.

Ye ugly, creepin, blastit wonner,
Detested, shunn'd by saunt an' sinner,
How daur ye set your fit upon her-
Sae fine a lady?
Gae somewhere else and seek your dinner
On some poor body.

Swith! in some beggar's haffet squattle;
There ye may creep, and sprawl, and sprattle,
Wi' ither kindred, jumping cattle,
In shoals and nations;
Whaur horn nor bane ne'er daur unsettle
Your thick plantations.

Now haud you there, ye're out o' sight,
Below the fatt'rels, snug and tight;
Na, faith ye yet! ye'll no be right,
Till ye've got on it-
The verra tapmost, tow'rin height
O' Miss' bonnet.

My sooth! right bauld ye set your nose out,
As plump an' grey as ony groset:
O for some rank, mercurial rozet,
Or fell, red smeddum,
I'd gie you sic a hearty dose o't,
Wad dress your droddum.

I wad na been surpris'd to spy
You on an auld wife's flainen toy;
Or aiblins some bit dubbie boy,
On's wyliecoat;
But Miss' fine Lunardi! fye!
How daur ye do't?

O Jeany, dinna toss your head,
An' set your beauties a' abread!
Ye little ken what cursed speed
The blastie's makin:
Thae winks an' finger-ends, I dread,
Are notice takin.

O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion:
What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us,
An' ev'n devotion!

(Burns)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 05:44 AM

I saw nothing to answer until this - "emigrated to Britain aged 30" (somewhat silly sometimes Smokey)...can't we at least agree that, whether good or bad at it and the the like of the English flute, I am an English REPATRIATE; not to compare myself in any other way, but would you have Gandhi, in his later years, as an immigrant from South Africa.
And how about A L Lloyd - he repatriated or emigrated from Aus. back to here? Where do you draw the line?
And I've read a fair bit of Burns and tend to prefer his songs, for what it's worth.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: TheSnail
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 05:50 AM

Hmmm.

A L Lloyd and WalkaboutsVerse - compare and contrast.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Joseph P
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 06:13 AM

So I have been away a while and this silly thread is still going, surely it should be below the line by now! And surely you should be working by now WAV?

http://www.agencycentral.co.uk/agencysearch/bytown/tyneandwear-newcastleupontyne.htm

Sign up to hays and if they dont find you something within a week then I'll eat my hat.

I was up your way on Friday - at the lovely Sage, I saw two young folk groups, Mawkin:Causley and The Shee. They were both great, but sadly the crowd was a bit lacking in numbers, where were you?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 07:30 AM

Wav, do you think that all immigrants currently residing in other countries should assimilate?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 11:17 AM

www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxRHQb1JSDE&feature=related
This is one of the most Israelisongs out there. Wav would disagree, because it has rock and pop elements, but what does he know. The lyrics, the mood, Israeli, pure and simple, not bland, musical soup.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 01:41 PM

WaV -

"I saw nothing to answer until this - "emigrated to Britain aged 30" (somewhat silly sometimes Smokey)...can't we at least agree that, whether good or bad at it and the the like of the English flute, I am an English REPATRIATE; not to compare myself in any other way, but would you have Gandhi, in his later years, as an immigrant from South Africa.
And how about A L Lloyd - he repatriated or emigrated from Aus. back to here? Where do you draw the line?"

Firstly, I'm not drawing any lines - you are; it isn't me who wants to ban immigration. Nor was I being 'silly' when I said you emigrated to Britain aged 30. I am fully aware of when I'm being silly, thank you. That is what happened, you said so yourself. You may well choose to call yourself an 'English REPATRIATE', (although shouting doesn't really add much weight..) but that does not change any of what I have said or asked you. I don't really think Gandhi or A.L.Lloyd need be mentioned, save to say that under your rules things may have been different. I didn't expect you to answer my questions; we both know you can't, and why. As for the Burns - understand it, and you will be a richer man.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Stu sans cookie
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 01:49 PM

As I read it WAV you left Australia for the UK as a protest against the policy towards the Australian Aboriginal and the loss of their land rights. Why didn't you stay and attempt to address the issue? Did you have the vote in Australia? Do you still have the vote in Australia? Do you have the vote in the United Kingdom?

Will you leave the UK as a protest against the governments immigration policies?

Just curious

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 01:59 PM

Volgadon - see above, we've covered that.

Joseph - thanks, I had a look and put it on my favourites, but my best chance remains manufacturing; I haven't seen either of those groups you saw on "Friday - at the lovely Sage.. Mawkin:Causley and The Shee", but I have seen members through the Newcastle folk degree etc, and know Jim C. quite well. "where were you?" (J)...I've probably paid to see about 20 gigs the last 4 years, but only occasionally nowadays to avoid going broke.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 02:02 PM

What about the land rights of the Ancient Britons? Oh. I'm forgetting - it's from tomorrow we're calling immigration a bad thing, isn't it?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 02:21 PM

"Volgadon - see above, we've covered that."

David, I do not find where you have covered that at all. If you indeed did—and if you wish to add a measure of credibility to such statements—it would help if you would reference the date and time of your post in which you covered the matter.

When you stated that you had covered the matter of banning the practice of ballerinas dancing en pointe (on their toes) because of potential lower-leg injuries, you referred me to one of your poems, in which you mentioned having actually seen Swan Lake and The Nutcracker, which doesn't exactly make you an authority on classical ballet. This was hardly what I would call "covering" the matter.

Just saying that you "covered that" doesn't wash. So let's see an answer to Volgadon's question just above.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: KB in Iowa
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 02:28 PM

WAV, I have read all (or nearly so) of this thread and also the weekly walkabout and the 5000 morris dancers thread. I don't recall you specifically saying why your parents (and you) moved to Australia when you were three or why you moved back to England at age 30. I would like you to explain even if you have done so already. Thank you.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,VOlgadon
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 03:15 PM

Volgadon - see above, we've covered that.

See WHAT above? Please go into detail. Which point of mine are you reffering to?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 28 Oct 08 - 04:49 PM

WaV, you just aren't English mate, you're not even good at pretending to be, and you certainly have no right to tell us how to be. To me you will always be an Australian immigrant, obviously intent on not actually 'being English' and in a state of denial about it. However, I should make it clear that I would never discriminate against you for being an Australian or an immigrant.

Do you honestly believe you are right and everyone else is wrong? Haven't you ever wondered why people disagree with you so much? Has anyone ever actually agreed with you about this stuff? Why is your forum name so blatantly Australian? Why do you emphasise the fact that you are from Australia so much?

Answers in fluent gibberish, please.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 29 Oct 08 - 07:15 AM

Smokey - of course I'm aware that my views are heavily against the status quo (but not quite as heavily as they were a few months ago, with so called "world leaders" now talking of global regulations, etc.; and even New Labour finally questioning diversity with English tests, etc.). But why you don't think it's good that I've made an effort with English songs, hymns, etc. baffles me, and I can only hope those who have repatriated to the Celtic Tiger recently are being better appreciated. Perhaps the term "walkabout" does derive from Aboriginal Australia, but nowadays it's used widely here to describe someone out and about to visit a place and meet folks, yes? Finally, calling me an Australian or an immigrant, rather than an English repat., IS wrong as I WAS born here.

The other queries have been covered already when I stressed, given that all that conquest and economic/capialist immigration/emigration has occured, which included me as a 3 year old, "what's best from now on"...I've said regulations should be greatly increased, assimilation, a stronger more-democratic UN, etc.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 29 Oct 08 - 08:14 AM

I've said regulations should be greatly increased, assimilation, a stronger more-democratic UN

So why have you made no such efforts to assimilate yourself, Wavy? You decry or hard-won multi-ethnic, multi-cultural society and the freedoms thereof; you decry our beloved monarchy; you decry our age-long traditions of accompanying folk songs with anything we see fit to do so; you decry our cultural, historical, musical & linguistic affinities with our neighbouring countries; you decry the presence of Scotsmen in England and Englishmen in Ireland and Irishmen in Lancashire. In fact, you come to our England and have the bare faced cheek to to tell us that it isn't as English it was some seventeen years before you were even born!

As Jack Campin so rightly pointed out:

You're only English in your head. By any external measure you're Australian.

And if being English in your head is what counts, then the entire post-Empire-Windrush generation of Commonwealth immigrants were English too. They certainly saw themselves that way - subjects of the same Queen. And they got here years before the English folk revival took off, with their own folk traditions that substantially influenced it.

So show them some goddamn respect.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 29 Oct 08 - 08:57 AM

"you decry our beloved monarchy"

Not my beloved monarchy. Bollocks to the lot of them. I'm a republican.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: KB in Iowa
Date: 29 Oct 08 - 10:03 AM

WAV, I have read all (or nearly so) of this thread and also the weekly walkabout and the 5000 morris dancers thread. I don't recall you specifically saying why your parents (and you) moved to Australia when you were three or why you moved back to England at age 30. I would like you to explain even if you have done so already. Thank you.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 29 Oct 08 - 11:16 AM

ANSWER MY POINTS PLEASE, including the ones Don and I asked you to answer.


Smokey - of course I'm aware that my views are heavily against the status quo (but not quite as heavily as they were a few months ago, with so called "world leaders" now talking of global regulations, etc.; and even New Labour finally questioning diversity with English tests, etc.).

Please elaborate. You know, DETAILS.

As for his England being more English in 1958 point, there is a Russian saying which I find really appropriate. "Where we aren't is always better."

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Stu sans cookie
Date: 29 Oct 08 - 12:54 PM

So are you entitled to vote in Australia?

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Sandman
Date: 29 Oct 08 - 02:19 PM

for petes sake is this still going on,1163 post featuring and promoting walkabouts verse,this thread willreach 3000,before wav answers questions,he reminds me of TrevorBailey,or JWHT[Johnny wont hit today] DOUGLAS,two of the most stonewalling batsmen who you would die of boredom watching,Ihave died of boredom listening to wavs drivel.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 29 Oct 08 - 02:35 PM

"You're only English in your head. By any external measure you're Australian."

By whose external measure? Define the criteria that makes someone English. Where is this scale of external measure? Yours?

In the same way WAV shouldn't decide who stays and who goes why should anyone else decide who is English or not? He was born here so that gives him some claim to be English. In fact, if both his parents are English he might be more English than me, as my Mum's Welsh. So where I am on both yours and WAV's tick-box list of criteria for being English?

I was born in Hampshire, moved to when I was 18 months odd and raised in Brum until I was 16 and have lived 26 years in the north - what does that make me then? I know where I feel I come from, but you tell me where I fit in.

Jesus.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 29 Oct 08 - 03:10 PM

stigweard - remember Jack's next sentence:

"And if being English in your head is what counts, then the entire post-Empire-Windrush generation of Commonwealth immigrants were English too."

Let WAV be English if he wants to. But what he really wants to be is more English than other residents of this country, and that he surely isn't.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 29 Oct 08 - 03:22 PM

"stigweard - remember Jack's next sentence"

I'm not defending WAV's viewpoint, believe me. I concur with the rest of Jack's post and get your point, but does that excuse the first statement? If WAV had said that about someone on this board then he would have been roasted even more than he already is being.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 29 Oct 08 - 03:41 PM

'As for his England being more English in 1958 point, there is a Russian saying which I find really appropriate. "Where we aren't is always better."' (Volgadon)...sounds similar to "the grass is always greener"?...or "the solution is to leave, or stay and be part of the solution?

"So are you entitled to vote in Australia?" (Stu)...No, as I don't reside there - I found this out when I turned up at the consulate in Manchester a few years ago to try and vote for Australian independence.

"he reminds me of TrevorBailey,or JWHT[Johnny wont hit today] DOUGLAS,two of the most stonewalling batsmen who you would die of boredom watching,Ihave died of boredom listening to wavs drivel." (BC)...or Redpath or Boycott!...in a low junior grade, I carried my bat once (intro. poem 0-19).

And to a few: I'm still baffled as to why you would be so bothered by the fact that, whatever my ability, I've made an effort, as a repat., with English folk songs and hymns - which I genuinely do like hearing and practising/performing.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 29 Oct 08 - 03:47 PM

"I'm still baffled as to why you would be so bothered by the fact that, whatever my ability, I've made an effort, as a repat., with English folk songs and hymns - which I genuinely do like hearing and practising/performing."

Re-read all of Eliza's, Malcolm's and the others who know what they are talking about and you might just get it.

You're a wind-up merchant WAV!

Twll dy din di!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Surreysinger
Date: 29 Oct 08 - 04:36 PM

Would have helped if you'd put that in English for WAV's sake Stig... not all of us on this board are Welsh speakers... although that is one dubious phrase that I was quickly taught (but never used) in the three years I lived there....

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 29 Oct 08 - 04:36 PM

You're only English in your head. By any external measure you're Australian.

WAV is a naturalised Australian who has demonstrated a complete and deliberate ignorance of the richness and complexity of English culture and a total unwillingness to engage with it on any level whatsoever. Instead, he advises on how he thinks it ought to be according to his highly suspect and severely limited criteria. He remains, therefore, only English in his head, and if the external measure is actuality (as it must be) then because of his unwillingness to become a part of that actuality, he remains the naturalised Australian he was when he returned here 11 years ago, aged 30, after 27 years away.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 29 Oct 08 - 05:24 PM

Isn't that one of the few really bad Welsh phrases?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 29 Oct 08 - 06:08 PM

Try this:

Useful Welsh Phrases - Swearing

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 29 Oct 08 - 06:29 PM

That is a very interesting link, says something about Welsh culture. Swearing I think offers tremendous insights into various cultures.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 29 Oct 08 - 07:33 PM

WaV -

"Smokey - of course I'm aware that my views are heavily against the status quo"

I didn't ask you that though.

"But why you don't think it's good that I've made an effort with English songs, hymns, etc. baffles me"

I never said it wasn't good, but I'm afraid I don't call that making an effort. Nor does it make you any more English. For what it's worth, I think everybody should be allowed to play whatever music they choose - even you.

"Perhaps the term "walkabout" does derive from Aboriginal Australia, but nowadays it's used widely here to describe someone out and about to visit a place and meet folks, yes?"

No, only by morons who watch Australian soap operas. (apologies to all morons)

"calling me an Australian or an immigrant, rather than an English repat., IS wrong as I WAS born here."

I really don't care what your opinion is WaV, it makes no difference to anything I've said. You grew up as an Australian, in Australia, surrounded by Australian culture. I'd guess your passport said you were Australian, and you had to get through immigration controls to live here. You also failed to answer when someone asked you about passports.. Yes, you may well be an English repatriate, but to me you are also an Australian immigrant. I wonder what the Authorities would call you?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 29 Oct 08 - 07:44 PM

"Perhaps the term "walkabout" does derive from Aboriginal Australia"

In my arrogance I always assumed they learned English from us..

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 29 Oct 08 - 08:22 PM

Good grief, Welsh has its own independent-etymology word for "G-spot"?

Has the Welsh tourist board considered pushing the place as a destination for women looking for a good time?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 29 Oct 08 - 11:19 PM

No point Jack - not with the attractions that Newcastle has to offer.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 30 Oct 08 - 04:22 AM

Thanks for the list IB, I don't really speak very much Welsh at all although my Mum did when she was growing up, as did many of my family on the maternal side. This will certainly add to my vocabulary though.

I'm going to earn Irish I think.

As for WAV, he's a wind-up merchant who plays this board like a fiddle . . . at least he's entertaining.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Howard Jones
Date: 30 Oct 08 - 05:25 AM

This discussion is about culture, not passports. Whatever passport WAV holds, he grew up and spent his formative years in Australia and his cultural influences are Australian. WAV, do you have any memories of the first three years of your life you spent in England?

On his return he has attempted to assimilate and become English, but keeps getting this wrong, sometimes comically. WAV, we applaud your efforts to discover your English roots, but please be guided by us natives when you get it wrong.

"Perhaps the term "walkabout" does derive from Aboriginal Australia, but nowadays it's used widely here to describe someone out and about to visit a place and meet folks, yes?"

In UK usage, if we say someone's "gone walkabout" it usually means he's gone missing from somewhere he's supposed to be, for example his place of work. We don't usually use it simply to say that someone's gone travelling.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 30 Oct 08 - 06:10 AM

But isn't that the original Australian usage too? Aboriginies dropping work and vanishing for a while?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 30 Oct 08 - 06:40 AM

"Perhaps the term "walkabout" does derive from Aboriginal Australia, but nowadays it's used widely here to describe someone out and about to visit a place and meet folks, yes?" (me)..."No, only by morons who watch Australian soap operas. (apologies to all morons)" (Smokey) and Howard...I'm no monarchist but when the Queen, e.g., goes out to meet people the media here nowadays nearly always describe it as a "walkabout".
And as for "I wonder what the Authorities would call you?"...officially I'm a dual national with two passports.

Stigweard - which fiddle?...

"PLAYING THE FIDDLE?

There are many different fiddles from many different lands – for example, the Chinese erhu fiddle, the Norwegian hardanger fiddle and, the one most in the West now play, the Italian fiddle/violin" (here).

Volgadon - that's roughly my understanding and also the one in the 1970s movie "Walkabout".

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: catspaw49
Date: 30 Oct 08 - 06:50 AM

Thanks for the "walkabout" definition. I now understand more about its usage as in:

Wavy's talent has gone walkabout.
Wavy's voice has gone walkabout.
Wavy's dick has gone walkabout.

Very useful and accurately descriptive.


Spaw

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 30 Oct 08 - 07:03 AM

Face it Catspaw - the below tune is in your head and - no matter how many hours at the catnip or scratching at the bark, no matter how many licks of your paws or Great Tits or Bull Finches consumed - you're never going to get it out: you ARE a WAVaholic, pal!

Poem cum song 2 of 230: WALKABOUT WITH MY PEN

Once drove an old sedan, up north,
From a place in Sydney to Cairns;
Then to Kuranda I went forth,
By train, to look without set plans.

I browsed through the trendy market,
With fresh fruits of tropical kind;
Walked to the creek through lush thicket -
Nature's hand giving peace of mind.

I dined in a scenic cafe;
Then, outside, as I wrote for yen,
Some passing Kooris called-out: "Hey,
You go walkabout with your pen."

Request or question, I don't know -
Assured voices, elderly men.
That's now several years ago,
And I've seen the world - with my pen.

From walkaboutsverse.741.com (use above link to, like Catspaw, have a listen, if you wish/dare).

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 30 Oct 08 - 07:11 AM

Stigweard - which fiddle?...

sigh . . .

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Paul Burke
Date: 30 Oct 08 - 07:44 AM

corris (n)        c**t

You can get a train up the Corris!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 30 Oct 08 - 07:46 AM

There are many different fiddles from many different lands – for example, the Chinese erhu fiddle, the Norwegian hardanger fiddle and, the one most in the West now play, the Italian fiddle/violin

Another classic example of Wavy's refusal to take on board anything that contradicts his deeply entrenched erroneous viewpoints!

To quote myself from way back:

When people say fiddle they're referring to the violin. The word has an interesting (complex & by no means fully understood) etymology, but in terms of pragmatics it would seem to derive from a verb rather than a noun - a verb which at last yields the noun violin, but it is interesting that in modern musical usage fiddle exists as both a noun and a verb. That said, the iconographical evidence would suggest the earliest bowed instruments in the West were, in fact, lyres (i.e. crwth, juohikko, talharp etc.) rather than lutes (i.e. violin, viol, vielle, rebec etc.) - but, oddly enough, no bowed-lyre was ever called a fiddle.

So - fiddles are thus called by English speakers simply to denote that the instruments in question are played with a bow. It is only English speakers who would call an Erhu a Chinese Fiddle, likewise the Karandeniz Kemence a Black Sea Fiddle, or a Hardingfele a Hardanger Fiddle. The Hardingfele is a specific development of the violin about as far away from the erhu in terms of organological taxonomy as one could wish to get. In terms of classification they're not even in the same family and yet both get called fiddles by English speakers, which only makes them fiddles in the sense of convenient, but not accurate, nomenclature.

For someone who supposedly loves the world being multicultural this counts as an alarming line of colonial thinking on your part, Wavy. It amounts to a disrespectful ignorance in which you wilfully persist no matter how many times you are told. Or is Stigweard right, and you are just doing it to wind people up?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 30 Oct 08 - 12:25 PM

As you have not answered, I must conclude that you agree that immigrants should assimilate. Why then did your parents and yourself not assimilate? Why do you still consider yourself English? Or if you don't consider yourself Australian, why do you have dual citizenship and why did you wait 30 years before repatriating, instead of at the first available opportunity?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: KB in Iowa
Date: 30 Oct 08 - 12:42 PM

I'm still wondering why your parents (and you) moved to Australia when you were three and why you moved back to England at age thirty.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 30 Oct 08 - 02:11 PM

WaV - When was the last time you paid your way? Who pays your rent? Who pays for your food? Have you ever contributed anything useful, financial or otherwise, to society since you came here? Society doesn't owe you a living - you are sponging off the very people you are insulting. Indeed, you appear to be wanting to deprive us of human rights which, not so long ago, people were willing to give their lives to preserve. Show some respect.

You are a waste of time and space, and you are seeking attention in this way simply to justify your worthless existence to yourself. Perhaps you should consider a career as an organ donor.

I feel better now :-)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Jack Campin
Date: 30 Oct 08 - 03:18 PM

: Perhaps you should consider a career as an organ donor.

God. Think of the risks in that...

Gary Gilmore's Eyes

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: KB in Iowa
Date: 30 Oct 08 - 03:25 PM

Would that be a Pipe Organ, a Harmonium or what? As long as it is a good English Organ I guess it wouldn't matter.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 30 Oct 08 - 04:11 PM

Well I was going to say sperm donor... and then I thought about it...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: KB in Iowa
Date: 30 Oct 08 - 04:14 PM

Where's Spaw when you need him?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 30 Oct 08 - 04:37 PM

Sorry folks, I get twitchy around poppy time.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: catspaw49
Date: 30 Oct 08 - 10:08 PM

If Wavyblowboy thinks that his is a fine example of an English organ, every Englishman for miles around will drop by to beat his ass. Personally I dunno' what kind of organ he has but I have heard it desribed as a half eaten cocktail wiener flanked by two dessicated peanuts. I'm sure its never been played in church................

When Wavyass was in the hospital, the nurse was filling out the proper forms and asked if he wanted to be an organ donor. Then she caught sight of his tiny tool and said, "Oh, I'm sorry. I see you've already donated." Just a matter of genetics though. David inherited his penis size from his mother.

Spaw

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 30 Oct 08 - 10:35 PM

Talent courtesy of the yak, although that might be seen as yakist by some.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 31 Oct 08 - 05:26 AM

Some more multiculturalism.
Yuval Banai (it's a lrage family) playing an accoustic ballad "In Elinor's Yard".
One of the foremost Israeli rockers, he moved to the countryside and just released an album of acoustic ballads inspired by the new environment.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=btBXgrslsb8&feature=related

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 31 Oct 08 - 05:33 AM

How could I forget this one:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlcvVC9P39o&feature=related
This is an upbeat tune, rockabilly-ish, with some country fiddle thrown in. Gasp, shock, horrors, look at all the people who aren't practising their Own Good Ersatz Culture, but having fun.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 31 Oct 08 - 05:38 AM

Sorry,

*1200*

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 31 Oct 08 - 05:41 AM

Crap, I barely missed bagging that.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Sailor Ron
Date: 31 Oct 08 - 07:44 AM

Ross Campbell played his [Fylde] cittern at Fleetwood Folk Club last night. Now Fyldes are built in England, Ross is Scotts, should he be allowed to play it? Discuss

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 31 Oct 08 - 07:52 AM

No, he is a traitor to the Scottish nationalists and should be exiled by the UN.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 31 Oct 08 - 07:56 AM

Ross is Scotts, should he be allowed to play it?

Of course he shouldn't! Have you learned nothing??? He should only ever play Highland Pipes from his own good culture!

I'm sure WAV will confirm that I am on message...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 31 Oct 08 - 01:39 PM

Oh dear - I do hope he isn't offended and in a huff.

Here's a poem to cheer you up WaV:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=vS5QMT-JUt4

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 31 Oct 08 - 05:02 PM

My collection and previous posts DO cover the queries posted since my last post, but perhaps an experience this Halloween may help - again, I was called "mad" for leaving sunny Australia, by a middle-aged lady, who quickly added that her daughter and partner are soon going for 5 weeks with a view to emigrating, and that she'd love to emigrate there herself. I didn't ask whether she also thought all the immigrants here from just as sunny lands were also "mad", but I did of course stress that I hope they enjoy their VISIT, and tried, in vain, for some consideration of Aborigines and land rights, and the point that most Australian citizens probably have their air-conditioning on as much as most here have the central-heating on. It reminded me again of the TV show "Wanted Down Under" where, whenever I've watched, the couples never mention land rights when they make their final decision between Australia and here; it's now more than 2 centuries since Captain Cook declared Australia "terra nullius" - there IS a pressing need for re-education .

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 31 Oct 08 - 05:08 PM

NO THEY DON'T COVER THESE POINTS:

As you have not answered, I must conclude that you agree that immigrants should assimilate. Why then did your parents and yourself not assimilate? Why do you still consider yourself English? Or if you don't consider yourself Australian, why do you have dual citizenship and why did you wait 30 years before repatriating, instead of at the first available opportunity?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 31 Oct 08 - 05:50 PM

Why don't you go back to Australia and fight for Aboriginal land rights if you're so bothered about it? I think that's a red herring to avoid answering awkward questions. You did manage to plant another link to your website though I see.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: catspaw49
Date: 31 Oct 08 - 07:15 PM

You're full of shit Wavydickless. That ain't just a red herring in your case, its a giantass, bloated, smelly, carp. Aboriginal land rights my ass...........Like you'd give two shits. What a limp loser bigot you are............

Spaw

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 31 Oct 08 - 07:36 PM

You have to admit, it's a shrewd move - choosing Newcastle to find a job and fight for Aboriginal land rights. Not many people would have the intelligence to do that.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 01 Nov 08 - 06:22 AM

Yes - Newcastle upon Tyne, Smokey, is the place within England, the county of my birth, where I have, as a repatriate, chosen to try and settle; but it's not just Aboriginal land rights that I've at least tried to support...

Poem 52 of 230: OUT OF PLACE

As I paid my bus fee
    To leave Nairobi,
A woman caught my eye:
    From what I could see
(Red garb, bead jewellery),
    She was a Masai.

From anthropology,
    I'd heard how stubbornly
They try to defy
    Factors tending to be
Against them culturally -
    I like the Masai.

Now, from my T.V.,
    News has reminded me
That space tourists buy,
    In order to see
Big-game roaming free,
    Belonged to Masai.

They live nomadically:
    With cows, they go-look-see
To get enough supply
    Of grass - whose energy,
Converted, comes to be
    The life-keep of Masai.

From walkaboutsverse.741.com

Back a bit more on-thread, way back, Jack, I think, mentioned the tenor recorder/English flute being a tad too heavy - but there are thumb rests that also help as orientation guides for the fingers to cover what can be quite tricky and large holes (if not quite as large as one or two on the low-whistle).

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 01 Nov 08 - 06:32 AM

"They live nomadically:
    With cows, they go-look-see
To get enough supply
    Of grass - whose energy,
Converted, comes to be
    The life-keep of Masa"

Pure crap.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: catspaw49
Date: 01 Nov 08 - 06:56 AM

Well to be fair, its not only pure crap but does a wonderful job of showing his complete ignorance. Also, am I the only one who thinks the tone of that one is like a plantation master saying he likes his slaves?

I suggest Franks that you remove your head from your ass and go "look-see" without bias at what the world really offers. Then get a real fuckin' job so your "life-keep" (that one is priceless shit!) comes from your own labors and not living off the backs of your betters you miserable, sniffling, pissant.

Spaw

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 01 Nov 08 - 01:05 PM

Tonight we're going to Brook known as Mellor.
We're playing some folk stuff for a feller
One of our instruments is a recorder
Most of them aren't and I'll put them in order

One is a flute that is silver and shiny
One is a fiddle that's stringy and whiny
One is a cajon that from cuba comes
And on it, e.g., some of the players sit on their bums
One is a mouth organ well played by rose
We haven't got a flute played by nose
One is a bass that is resonant and low
One's a bouzouki from Ireland you know
Our caller plays a mandolin
tear drop shape like a terrapin
One is a concertina made by Lachenal
Who could be a Frenchman or perhaps e.g., a French gal
One's a melodeon made in Italy
We call it a banf but would you call it folk?

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 01 Nov 08 - 03:37 PM

Thanks Stu, but...

Poem 213 of 230: MORE AMOR PATRIAE

There is Tai Chi AND there is tennis,
    Line is fine BUT so is Morris,
There is curry AND there is the roast,
    And, when England is playing host,
It is the rest-of-the-world's good wish
    To sense culture that is English.

From walkaboutsverse.741.com

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: MaineDog
Date: 01 Nov 08 - 04:15 PM

Being somewhat into choral music, I just bought a double CD of modern English choral music. Hearing it was wonderful, and has caused me to decide that the English national instrument is -- the boy.

MD

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 01 Nov 08 - 04:30 PM

Salisbury Cathedral Choir, established since the 13th century, nowadays has equal numbers of girls and boys.
Possibly they all play tennis too.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 01 Nov 08 - 06:44 PM

"Yes - Newcastle upon Tyne, Smokey, is the place within England, the county of my birth, where I have, as a repatriate, chosen to try and settle; but it's not just Aboriginal land rights that I've at least tried to support..."

Newcastle upon Tyne is, or has been, nationally famed for its unemployment, particularly in the manufacturing industry. I think you went there to avoid having to get a job. You haven't done anything to support Aboriginal land rights other than pointing out to a few folkies that they don't mention it on some stupid TV program. Try supporting yourself, and actually contributing to the society for whom you are prescribing your ridiculous and offensive politics.

Speaking of choral music, have a listen to 'Spem in alium' by Thomas Tallis, and look when it was written. If that doesn't prove you wrong about polyphony, nothing will.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Joe P
Date: 01 Nov 08 - 07:02 PM

He added Hays Recruitment to his internet favourites, what more do you want?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 01 Nov 08 - 07:22 PM

Who pays for his internet?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 01 Nov 08 - 07:24 PM

Here we go, Smokey:    Clicky.

Gorgeous! Sounds like some pretty complex polyphony to me. Composed circa 1570.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 01 Nov 08 - 08:16 PM

Beautiful Don, thank you. 40 part polyphony - as far as I'm aware that's as complicated as it's ever got. If the human mind could come up with that in 1570, I reckon the 'peasants' would have been able to stick three chords behind a simple ditty. To assume otherwise is plain daft.

There was actually a German bloke much later who wrote another part to it, but he was probably just showing off..

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 01 Nov 08 - 09:50 PM

Sorry, meant to say 'complex' there, not 'complicated'.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 02 Nov 08 - 04:21 AM

I am watching a fascinating documentary about the Jews of Spain. It was made by Yitzhak Navon, former president of Israel, a man steeped in the traditions and lore of Spanish Jewry. He was one of the leading experts. Wonderful stuff, he shares stories about the places and people, and talks to the local. Navon was a gentleman and a scholar, who knew how to relate to people almost instantly.
Anyway, in Granada he met a troupe of Gypsies and decided to conduct a little experiment. He sang la serena, an old Ladino romance which his mother and her friends would sing. After the applaudisments were over, he asked them if they knew the song. Oh, of course we know la Serrana. They then proceeded to sing a very similar song, but in their own inimitable style. Neither the Israeli nor the Gypsies Own Good Culture were harmed by their singing what must have been a Spanish song.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 02 Nov 08 - 05:10 AM

Love this. A Ladino roamce with a flamenco arrangement, accompanied by an electric upright-bass, darbuka, and Armenian duduk as well as guitar. Long live multiculturalism! www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kFhqS1yMuI&NR=1

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 02 Nov 08 - 06:41 AM

Wav, play close attention to this clip. It's of a bunch of young people having fun, playing music (not pop but folk), having fun!!!!
As far as I can tell the guys are native Israelis, the girl an immigrant from South America.
Percussion box, guitar and oud, playing a ladino song. Magic.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJXSHWjUzb8&feature=related

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 02 Nov 08 - 08:40 AM

"Salisbury Cathedral Choir, established since the 13th century, nowadays has equal numbers of girls and boys.
Possibly they all play tennis too." (Diane)...add "table" for the females and WAV, for one, would be quite happy with all that.

"Speaking of choral music, have a listen to 'Spem in alium' by Thomas Tallis, and look when it was written. If that doesn't prove you wrong about polyphony, nothing will." (Smokey)...but that is not an E. trad. - it is "BY THOMAS TALLIS".

And as for WORLD MUSIC, Volgadon...

"World-music stalls and stages should be places where folkies of different nationality present different unfused music to each other" (here).

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 02 Nov 08 - 08:53 AM

You're a wind-up merchant.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 02 Nov 08 - 09:46 AM

Stigweard - well noticed.

It's occurred to me recently that when someone strikes you as dishonest and evasive, challenging that person repeatedly to admit to being dishonest and evasive probably isn't the best use of one's time. I've spent some time away from WAV's threads recently, and let me tell you, it's nice when it stops.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 02 Nov 08 - 09:52 AM

I think world music is a ridiculous term, it basically means non-English speaking music.

I profoundly disagree with you. People should feel free to share and interact as they feel like. I shared an example with you, a traditional, folk example from Israel, the nigunei meron, which you have ignored.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 02 Nov 08 - 10:14 AM

Here is a personal expereince of mine. What do you have to say to it, Wav?

A few years ago I was at some youth thing. A Ukrainian girl sang Katyusha in Russian. A Mexican girl joined in, in Spanish. I sang a verse in Hebrew and someone added English. Did society suffer because we 'lost' Our Own Good Culture? No, but we were all better friends for finding something in common.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 02 Nov 08 - 10:49 AM

He's winding you up V!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Gervase
Date: 02 Nov 08 - 10:55 AM

As I paid my bus fee
    To leave Nairobi,
A woman caught my eye:
    From what I could see
(Red garb, bead jewellery),
    She was a Masai.

Is it just me, or is that one of the most jaw-droppingly, arse-clenchingly, adjective-beggaringly bad pieces of pseudo-poetic drivel that even this whinging wannabe Pom has ever posted.
There must be the poetic equivalent of the Bulwer Lytton prize that he could chase?
I have a vision of some jobless, benefit-scrounging, narrow-minded little parasite mopping his brow in a florid fashion with a dirty nylon handkerchief and imagining himself to be Chatterton. Shame he doesn't go the whole bloody hog...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Melissa
Date: 02 Nov 08 - 11:02 AM

I wish that said

'a woman caught my eye
and dragged it down the street'

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 02 Nov 08 - 02:07 PM

"Salisbury Cathedral Choir, established since the 13th century, nowadays has equal numbers of girls and boys. Possibly they all play tennis too." (Diane)...add 'table' for the females and WAV, for one, would be quite happy with all that.

Head like a ROCK!!    Despite all evidence, he will consider no opinion but his own. (I hear vast choruses of "SEXIST PIG!!!" out there. . . .)

"Speaking of choral music, have a listen to 'Spem in alium' by Thomas Tallis, and look when it was written. If that doesn't prove you wrong about polyphony, nothing will." (Smokey)...but that is not an E. trad. - it is 'BY THOMAS TALLIS.'"

That "Spem in alium" by Thomas Tallis is composed and not traditional is well-spotted, David, but the fact that you either don't recognized or refuse to acknowledge that what people heard being sung in church had a powerful effect on the way they sang demonstrates that you either do not understand ethnomusicology, or refuse to accept its findings.

Your head's made up. I guess you would prefer that the world shouldn't be trying to confuse you with such upsetting things as reality.

Sorry about that. . . .

####

Notes on Music History:

Plainsong (also plainchant) is a body of traditional songs used in the liturgies of the Roman Catholic Church. The liturgies of the Eastern Orthodox Church, though similar in many ways and probably older than the Roman tradition, are generally not classified as plainsong. Plainsong is also commonly used in the Anglican churches.

Plainsong is monophonic -- consisting of a single, unaccompanied melodic line. It is in free, rather than measured, rhythm. Plainsong often uses the lengthy reverberations and resonant modes of cathedrals to create harmonies.

In the late 9th century, plainsong began to evolve into organum, which led to the development of polyphony. The term "harmony" didn't come into common usage until the early 1700s, but it (the simultaneous sounding of two or more notes) was common practice as early as the Middle Ages.

Among other things, part-singing was necessary to accommodate different vocal ranges. Initially, though plainsong consisted of one line, the lower voices would sing a "drone" or "pedal point" note, putting a bass under the melody line.

Further reading.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 02 Nov 08 - 05:19 PM

".but that is not an E. trad. - it is 'BY THOMAS TALLIS.'"

All 'E trad' music (I think I now despise that term) had to be composed by somebody. The product of human imagination. I was referring to the level of complexity of which the human mind was capable at that time, as you well know. (I'm with Louis Armstrong on the definition of folk music) Listen and be amazed; it is a positive, enlightening and pleasurable experience that I would recommend to anyone. I was trying to do you a favour. If you don't like it, fair enough - I think I made my point - you are only pretending not to understand it in order to continue getting attention. Maybe you have no real friends - I don't know - but unlike some of the good and patient people on this forum, I don't really care.

You'd do well to listen to Don, WaV, he knows his stuff. Really. And he has a great deal more patience than I have.

Stop exploiting the good nature of these people, WaV; you are simply advertising the fact that you are either an ignorant fool or a malicious time waster.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Gervase
Date: 02 Nov 08 - 05:33 PM

But it's a very effective advertising campaign, don't you agree? Over one thousand posts, and still he excites debate. Remarkable, really. Would that Obama could elicit such passion!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 02 Nov 08 - 05:37 PM

Not debate so much as rebuttal and correction Gervase

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 02 Nov 08 - 05:38 PM

Not even a mass-debate?
(Sorry)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 03 Nov 08 - 02:45 AM

And what good has this exposure done him? Antagonised nearly every single person who has posted to the thread, that's what it has done.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 03 Nov 08 - 03:13 AM

Yes, but he's not doing it for us. We're giving him a platform to broadcast his racist views, his dishonest arguments and his bloody awful poetry to Mudcat readers - he's using this thread as his personal open mike. And as long as we keep responding, it'll keep bobbing up to the top of the list.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 03 Nov 08 - 03:26 AM

And the less people will listen.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 03 Nov 08 - 03:35 AM

You mean you hope that FEWER people will listen.
But don't you believe it.
There's always another benighted sucker that'll come along and say WAV has as much right to his 'opinion' as anyone else.
No he hasn't.
Time to bring back NO PLATFORM FOR RACISTS AND FASCISTS.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 03 Nov 08 - 03:40 AM

Strangely and sadly I think WAV believes what he says. It's not a belief system based on normal reasoning and education, but closer to the type of belief system of the brainwashed members of the various religious and political cults that crop up from time to time. I think he may be a sincere person somewhere in the muddled thinking.

Perhaps a lot of us want to rescue him.

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 03 Nov 08 - 03:52 AM

Rescue him?
Well, I've tried. A lot of us have.
You can close your front door on weird and earnest any-god sellers but WAV (and one or two others I could mention but won't) just insinuate themselves again and again and again to spout dangerous drivel and there's always someone new who swallows it.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 03 Nov 08 - 04:15 AM

It's a wind up.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 03 Nov 08 - 05:59 AM

Don and Smokey (which could also be a description for most of the posts that followed): while the changes/developments you post were going on in churches and courts, folk in England and other countries did persist, over the centuries, with their oral tradition of unaccompanied singing and dance tunes - a tradition which, as an English repat., I GENUINELY like.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: catspaw49
Date: 03 Nov 08 - 06:12 AM

WOW........And just think if you had been a part of that back then Wavybigot. All the songs would have been off-key and barely recognizable by the time YOU trashed them. Then today, there would be no decent English folksong tradition.

Now go back to the mirror and look at yourself and repeat, "I am a bigot and a racist with no talent. I am a worthless piece of crap and my Mummy blows hogs."

The truth shall set you free!!!

Spaw

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 03 Nov 08 - 06:13 AM

...e.g....

Poem 193 of 230: THE 35TH MORPETH NORTHUMBRIAN GATHERING – SPRING 2002

Toward Morpeth's Gathering,
    Either side of Great North Road,
Daffodils gleefully showed
    Their stalk-dressing flowering.

And then, at the Gathering,
    Another great flowering
Of English heritage, showed
    Through competitions that glowed
With compitent folk-singing,
    Storytelling, bag-piping
(The small-pipes rapidly rode
    By hands, in staccato mode),
Clogdancing and stick-dressing:
    Things that are worth addressing.

From walkaboutsverse.741.com

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 03 Nov 08 - 06:21 AM

Perhaps you're beyond redemption WAV. Repeating numerous erroneous claims doesn't make them true - it makes them repetitive.

Probably Diane's right with her charge of 'dangerous drivel'. I don't go along with Stigweard - I think wind-ups demand a certain level of humour and intelligence (however misdirected) Neither seem evident in your posts.

In my wild moments I believe you're a computer program caught in an endless loop.

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 03 Nov 08 - 06:22 AM

You keep on ignoring my points, dear Wav. Something to hide?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 03 Nov 08 - 06:56 AM

Do at least run a spellcheck on your incompitent(sic) verse WAV

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 03 Nov 08 - 07:00 AM

In my wild moments I believe you're a computer program caught in an endless loop.

Maybe it's a failed entry for a program trying to pass the Turing Test

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 03 Nov 08 - 07:01 AM

Two years before you studied to become an expert on folk, and you're already judging thr competence of others. Why am I not surprised.


Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 03 Nov 08 - 08:27 AM

WAV's revelling in the attention he's getting and enjoying the fact he's stringing so many along.

He never answers any questions directly, his views and opinions are to right-wing to be genuinely folk, and his non-existent deference to those who know what they're talking about reeks of someone pulling the proverbial pissers of all who attempt to educate him.

"I think wind-ups demand a certain level of humour"

This one qualifies then; he's got to be having a right larf posting those bleedin' poems.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 03 Nov 08 - 08:55 AM

Against Wav's assertions that Irish and Scottish musician tend to perform mostly their own music, here are some names he might find interesting.

Rory Gallagher, Phil Lynnot, Gary Moore, Van Morrison, Boomtown Rats, Stiff Fingers, U2, Sinead O'Connor, need I go on?

Wasn't Dublin called the city of 1000 bands?

Anyone care to bring up the dire topic of showbands?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,eliza c
Date: 03 Nov 08 - 11:32 AM

Northumberland isn't England.
x e

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 03 Nov 08 - 11:55 AM

Neither's Clun.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 03 Nov 08 - 12:41 PM

A few years ago I did a crash course in English history from Julius Caesar to James I (and VI), and for an awful lot of that period Northumbria was different. I seem to remember that Northumbria was the last bit of Anglo-Saxon England to unite with the rest - and even after the Conquest it was something of a kingdom-within-a-kingdom for quite some time, reporting to London but only as often as absolutely necessary. I thought that explained a lot.

Pip
who once played Elsie Marley at quite a reasonable speed
(but only once)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 03 Nov 08 - 12:51 PM

Dick Gaughan once explained how he finally realised what it is that makes Northumberland different. He asked a small boy who he would be supporting in a forthcoming football tournament. The boy thought for a moment then said: "England, because they're a bit nearer to us".

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 03 Nov 08 - 12:56 PM

Nor the Isle of Wight.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 03 Nov 08 - 01:02 PM

"Don and Smokey (which could also be a description for most of the posts that followed): while the changes/developments you post were going on in churches and courts, folk in England and other countries did persist, over the centuries, with their oral tradition of unaccompanied singing and dance tunes……."

You know, because you were there, David? I don't think so.

Where did you pick up this notion? GIVE DOCUMENTATION TO BACK UP YOUR CONTENTION.

And DON'T just link to something on your web-site!!

If you actually do have a BA in Humanities, then you should know how to cite independent references.

Let's see some.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 03 Nov 08 - 01:17 PM

You'll be waiting a long time. He's taking the piss.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 03 Nov 08 - 02:21 PM

I wonder if David also belongs the THIS organization?

"Eric Hoffer in his book The True Believer made a good case for a certain kind of personality (which we might call a fanatic) who will continue to believe something even after there is overwhelming evidence that it is a falsehood or, even more dangerous, a half-truth. Believing fulfills a need with them, and in their minds attacking a false belief is the same as attacking them personally. I'm sure you know someone like this. 'Don't confuse me with the facts!'
               —Bill Warner, author.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: catspaw49
Date: 03 Nov 08 - 02:30 PM

Wavydorkusbigot,

Follow my advice and go stare into a mirror and say, "I am a racist bigot with no talent and my Mummy blows hogs."


Spaw

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 03 Nov 08 - 02:35 PM

Thanks Stu - I shall fix that mistake shortly.

"his views and opinions are to right-wing to be genuinely folk" (Stigweard)...how can this be so when I've repeatedly criticized capitalism - and, as I've said, questioning economic/capitalist immigtation/emigration is also a LEFT-wing attitude...if you're still confused, please see poems 74 and 75.

And we don't want Northumbrian nor Cornish nationalism; and "On Ilkley Moor Ba' Tat" is a county NOT national anthem, isn't it Eliza?!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,mispa
Date: 03 Nov 08 - 02:49 PM

I'm not English, so I hope you don't mind a little American intrusion here ..... I would think the Rummel Pot and the Gridiron should get some honorable mention, as well as the tongs and key ...... actually, I've built several Rummel Pots and used them in a family band many years back ..... got lots of attention ..... and laughs.

Maybe this would help your search: Old English Instruments of Music
By Francis William Galpin - (a readable book online)
http://books.google.com/books?id=0dwPAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA259&lpg=PA259&dq=%22gridiron%22+%2B+Old+English+music&source=web&ots=YVOUjH8Mq0&sig=SS_1fidxZMQ0Fa8d3FqcV2XLdyM&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPP1,M1

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 03 Nov 08 - 02:50 PM

WHY don't we want that?

NO IT ISN'T. Being anti-capitalist might be a left-wing attitude, but let's translate your phrase into plain English. Capitalist immigration=foreigners come here to steal our jobs. That is a solidly right-wing attitude, but it is a great credit that not all rightwingers display that attitude.

Why are you ignoring the rest of my points, have something to hide?

As you have not answered, I must conclude that you agree that immigrants should assimilate. Why then did your parents and yourself not assimilate? Why do you still consider yourself English? Or if you don't consider yourself Australian, why do you have dual citizenship and why did you wait 30 years before repatriating, instead of at the first available opportunity?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 03 Nov 08 - 03:00 PM

No answer and no citations.

He lives in a dream world.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 03 Nov 08 - 03:33 PM

And we don't want Northumbrian nor Cornish nationalism

"We"? Who's this other person on whose behalf WAV is speaking, I wonder.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 03 Nov 08 - 03:49 PM

His alter-ego, les Voyages-au-Pied (pardon the miserable French).

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 03 Nov 08 - 07:40 PM

"Don and Smokey (which could also be a description for most of the posts that followed): while the changes/developments you post were going on in churches and courts, folk in England and other countries did persist, over the centuries, with their oral tradition of unaccompanied singing and dance tunes"

Twat. I've already told you the point of what I said, and I'll wager you're the only person here who didn't understand it. Or so you claim. The only real, unbroken, indisputable tradition (in my umble opinion) is that humans have always made music, any way they could, and using whatever resources were available to them.


"how can this be so when I've repeatedly criticized capitalism"

No you haven't, you've just said you don't like it. Under the (your) circumstances I would call that 'biting the hand that feeds you'. Like it or not, the world runs on capitalism, and you are a mere parasite feeding on its generosity. Under socialism/communism, you'd be working, pal, and it wouldn't be in the entertainment business I assure you.


"And we don't want Northumbrian nor Cornish nationalism; and "On Ilkley Moor Ba' Tat" is a county NOT national anthem, isn't it Eliza?!"

Actually WaV, I don't think we want any nationalism at all - especially yours. Patriotism's one thing, in its place, but nationalism is the mother of intolerance.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: catspaw49
Date: 03 Nov 08 - 10:41 PM

Wavydorkusbigot,

Follow my advice and go stare into a mirror and say, "I am a racist bigot with no talent and my Mummy blows hogs."


Spaw

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 04 Nov 08 - 06:12 AM

"No answer and no citations. He lives in a dream world."..after.."Don and Smokey (which could also be a description for most of the posts that followed): while the changes/developments you post were going on in churches and courts, folk in England and other countries did persist, over the centuries, with their oral tradition of unaccompanied singing and dance tunes……." (me)..You know, because you were there, David? I don't think so. Where did you pick up this notion? GIVE DOCUMENTATION TO BACK UP YOUR CONTENTION." (Don)...short memory, Don, because you were well involved in the "Chords in Folk?" thread, which has plenty of links/documentation; but I'll briefly mention others who you may respect: Lomax, Sharp, RVW...

Volgadon - I have covered those questions on mudcat and in my life's work; obviously my family, like so many more, chose to leave seeing a better life for us, and, as an adult, I gradually began to question capitalist/ecomomic immigration/emigration more-and-more...travel, anthropology, etc (use link below).

To Stu and the Mudcat moderators - I went to fix the abovementioned spelling on my master copy and found that it's correct there and on my website where I copy/pasted it from; and, before a string of fibber/mad type posts, hacking has happened here before, I did get an email from a mod. about it, and paperbacks of the very same collection have been in libraries since 2003, if you wished to check.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,eliza c
Date: 04 Nov 08 - 06:52 AM

Northumberland isn't England. Yorkshire was once a part of the ancient kingdom of Northumbria though. Can Yorkshire opt out of your brave new world and have as many chords as it likes please? The immigrants can come here too.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 04 Nov 08 - 07:33 AM

I didn't ask why your parents emigrated, I asked why they didn't assimilate, when you have stated that immigrants should.
Why do you still have an Australian passport and dual citizenship?


"Don and Smokey (which could also be a description for most of the posts that followed): while the changes/developments you post were going on in churches and courts, folk in England and other countries did persist, over the centuries, with their oral tradition of unaccompanied singing and dance tunes"

Do people today not follow fashions and trends set by the rich and powerful? People have done so throughout history, I can provide some examples if you wish. As for churches, they exerted a TREMENDOUS influence. Not only was Sunday attendance obligatory, the church (as well as fairs) was also THE source for news and gossip. On top of all that, you would often hear the most avant-garde music being played there.


short memory, Don, because you were well involved in the "Chords in Folk?" thread, which has plenty of links/documentation; but I'll briefly mention others who you may respect: Lomax, Sharp, RVW...

Following the same logic, I conclude that music hall songs were performed without accompaniment, because collectors found them being sung unnacompanied.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 04 Nov 08 - 08:31 AM

Listen to, or better still take part in, a sing of Come Write Me Down, Pleasant and Delightful, Thousands or More... If you can't hear the influence of church choral music on the tradition after that, you weren't listening properly.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: KB in Iowa
Date: 04 Nov 08 - 09:53 AM

WAV, I am the one who asked why your parents (and you) moved to Australia when you were three and why you moved back to England at age 30. You imply (04 Nov 08 - 06:12 AM), without actually saying so, that your parents moved to Australia for capitalist/ecomomic reasons. Is that why? You do not say anything substantive about why you moved back.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 04 Nov 08 - 10:28 AM

"Can Yorkshire opt out of your brave new world and have as many chords as it likes please? The immigrants can come here too."

Er, well can we all opt out then too please? I don't see why Yorkshire should be allowed out and the rest of have to stay in WAV's world. As my old Nan never said, bollocks to that.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 04 Nov 08 - 12:29 PM

Melodeonboy may disagree with me on other things, but earlier he made a point that shoud be obvious to even the most ardent pro-immigrationist - there are throughout the nations already regulations on immigration...I'm saying they should be stonger than the status quo. And, KB in Iowa and Volgadon, I genuinely prefer to live in England and, hopefully, visit Australia again as a respectful tourists - for several reasons which, if you are really interseted, you can find in verse.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: KB in Iowa
Date: 04 Nov 08 - 12:41 PM

WAV, I understand that you prefer to live in England and some of the reasons for this preference but that does not explain why you moved back to England. Please explain why you moved back to England.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 04 Nov 08 - 01:52 PM

He loves sausages? Rain? Real beer? Fish 'n' Chips? Curries? Falafel? Kebabs? Donky's dicks in batter?

Or perhaps he wants to be part of a healthy, tolerant multi-racial society that rejoices in the diversity of the cultures that call these islands home?

Because the Aussies threw him out for crymes against rhymes?

Because the didgeridoo requires circular breathing rather than one breath every 16.5 notes?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 04 Nov 08 - 01:54 PM

"Can Yorkshire opt out of your brave new world and have as many chords as it likes please? The immigrants can come here too." (EC)

In Derbyshire we intend to campaign for full rights of polyphony - complete freedom of interweaving counter-melodies, and even the use of 'jazz' chords in a responsible and restrained manner. (possibly with prior warning to those of a sensitive disposition)

Take note, WaV, we are prepared to play Gershwin in the street if necessary. On foreign instruments. We will sing rounds until you foam at the mouth, and sea shanties to electric guitars. A statue of Ashley Hutchings will be erected in every market-square. The national headlines will proclaim: "Derbyshire people are revolting!".

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 04 Nov 08 - 02:13 PM

You haven't addressed the issue of why you still hold an Australian passport and citizenship.

Wav, every nation does have regulations, which is only natural. There is a bit in the Holy Grail where the French reply to Arthur's query about what they were doing in England by saying mind your own business. Governments naturally need to know who it's inhabitants are, but I see absolutely no reason to further complicate things. It affects lives, lives of ordinary people. I speak from personal experience.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 04 Nov 08 - 03:42 PM

David, when I said "Where did you pick up this notion? GIVE DOCUMENTATION TO BACK UP YOUR CONTENTION," you responded ". . . short memory, Don, because you were well involved in the 'Chords in Folk?' thread, which has plenty of links/documentation; but I'll briefly mention others who you may respect: Lomax, Sharp, RVW. . . ."

I did indeed participate in the "Chords in Folk?" and there is nothing wrong with my memory. I remember quite vividly that I disagreed with your assertions then and I disagree with your assertions on this thread as well.   I also remember quite well that the "links/documentation" to which you refer were links to your own web site! NOT ACCEPTABLE! NOT AUTHORITATIVE! Only your own half-baked ideas!

Regarding shortness of memory, I'd say that you are the one who doesn't remember that thread very well. Your edicts and proclamations on that thread met with considerable well-deserved derision from many very knowledgeable people.

And as to the reading you recommend for me, I have read (and own) all of the works of John and Alan Lomax and Cecil J. Sharp. In addition, I own and have read books by MacEdward Leach, Evelyn Kendrick Wells, and a host of others—I could give you a complete bibliography of the books on folk songs and balladry that now reside on the shelves of a bookcase in my music room that stands six feet high and is four feet wide (all of which I have read, by the way), but I don't care to take the time right now, although YOU could most certainly benefit by reading them—provided you did so with an open mind and in the spirit of trying to learn. I have also studied with the late Prof. David C. Fowler, medieval scholar and author of several books on balladry, including A Literary History of the Popular Ballad.

I have read the comments on folk music by Ralph Vaughan Williams and A. L. Lloyd in the Introduction of The Penguin Book of English Folk Songs (from which I have learned many songs that I sing to a guitar accompaniment of my own devising, except for "Benjamin Bowmaneer" which I do sing without accompanied). You might note that they make recommendations, but in no way do they claim that their comments are Holy Writ. If you reread it, you may also note that they do make recommendations as to how to accompany the songs in the collection.

Do you even know who Bishop Thomas Percy was and what he did? How about Francis James Child?

David, you are a beginner. A neophyte. A tyro. You know very little about folk music and balladry. You should be listening and learning, not trying to tell others who have been dedicated to the study and performance of these songs all their lives how they should be doing it.

This forum is a good resource from which you could learn much. So shut up and read!!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 04 Nov 08 - 09:52 PM

Don, I've spent nearly 40 years in the music business, 30 of those playing folk music of one description or another, amongst other things. From what I've read here, of and about you, I seem to be a neophyte - where that leaves WaV, I don't know.. Be sure of one thing though - that you have my sincere respect and appreciation for sharing your knowledge and experience, not to mention tolerating my oft warped sense of humour.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 05 Nov 08 - 06:39 AM

"WAV, I understand that you prefer to live in England and some of the reasons for this preference but that does not explain why you moved back to England. Please explain why you moved back to England." (KB)...in summary, because I prefer to live in England...the only thing I could add to that said here and in my collection is that I don't have a criminal record in any country and could live in Australia if I wanted to; and, Volgadon, I still have an Aus. passport because I intend to VISIT Australia again...but, for what it's worth, if I had to chose it, and my Aus. citizenship, would be the one I'd give up.

For Smokey of Derbyshire...

Poem 157 of 230: THE MANY ELEMENTS OF BUXTON - SUMMER 2001

Mineral water,
    Foliage-dressed wells,
Green-grass on the Slopes,
    Limestone dales,
Clay-tiled arcades,
    Plain-glass awnings,
Shaped-iron columns,
    Stained-glass ceilings,
Earthen garden-urns,
    Wooden inlays,
Soil in a cross,
    Pebble pathways,
And, had between walks,
    Combating the
Weather element,
    Plenty of tea.

From walkaboutsverse.741.com

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 05 Nov 08 - 06:58 AM

"in summary, because I prefer to live in England..."

Just like Dick Miles prefers to live in Ireland. And I prefer to live in England. Hurrah.

So let's just agree to let other people do what makes them happy, and we'll do what makes us happy, and there needn't be any more manifestos about the way forward for humanity. It's called "live and let live." Make up whatever idiosyncratic cod-English rules for yourself that you want to. Take, or leave, the many lessons which have been offered you here in good faith. Whatever. Just stop telling others what they ought to be doing. Because it's when you start judging the choices that others make that they start judging you back. And from what I've seen, you don't really take criticism all that well.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,eliza c
Date: 05 Nov 08 - 10:13 AM

Oh Smokey, I'm so sorry...proud Buxton falls under the pen...we will remember!
xe

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Sandman
Date: 05 Nov 08 - 10:31 AM

Poem 157 of 230: THE MANY ELEMENTS OF BUXTON - SUMMER 2001

Mineral water,
    Foliage-dressed wells,
Green-grass on the Slopes,
    Limestone dales,
Clay-tiled arcades,
    Plain-glass awnings,
Shaped-iron columns,
    Stained-glass ceilings,
Earthen garden-urns,
    Wooden inlays,
Soil in a cross,
    Pebble pathways,
And, had between walks,
    Combating the
Weather element,
    Plenty of tea.
let this be a warning to all tea drinkers,you will end up inspired,you could produce such poetic gems.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 05 Nov 08 - 11:49 AM

Something about those very short lines suggested to me that Wavy's poems might be best set to reggae tunes - subconsciously he's probably been influenced by reggae all along. For the tea one, "No Woman No Cry" doesn't fit too well, "Burnin' an' Lootin'" is a bit better. Other suggestions?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 05 Nov 08 - 12:38 PM

Don't let WAV's poem put you off Buxton - it really is a luverly place; we played a gig there last month in an excellent cafe bar called Beltane. Highly recommended.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 05 Nov 08 - 02:00 PM

You can't visit Australia on a British passport?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 05 Nov 08 - 03:08 PM

Volgadon - hopefully for the last time, no: as a dual national, I must VISIT Aus. with an Aus. passport.
Traditionally, by the way, when a Lancastrian was in disbelief, they may say "Go to Buxton!"
Also, for only a few more days, you may hear a seasonal song from thereabouts (Lancashire/Yorkshire) on myspace: "Cob a Coaling", which I learnt from the family of a just-above critic, but for which I can't find the dots and have only just worked them out myself, via mimicking my voice with my English flute.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 05 Nov 08 - 03:24 PM

Got it.

The tune Wavy had in mind for his Buxton song was Peter Tosh's "Get Up, Stand Up".

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 05 Nov 08 - 03:29 PM

". . . via mimicking my voice with my English flute."

I don't follow this. You mean you took your "English flute" and drilled new holes between the holes it came with?

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 05 Nov 08 - 03:43 PM

But why don't you give up your dual citizenship? That is what you have yet to answer.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 05 Nov 08 - 04:16 PM

Cob a Coaling? In the bush? A fascinating prospect, Wavy - but I doubt whinging pom-brats blacking-up would have gone down at all well with the Aborigines, but the Aussie Tradition is full of such traditional transferences, such as The Derby Ram, so who knows?

We used to sing many of these verses round the streets as nippers, and I've tried to get some of that wildness into recording I made for my forthcoming Naked Season album (Sloow Tapes, Belgium) an edited version of which has been playing on my Myspace page these past few days (and will be removed tomorrow morning, along with the squibs that fell in our backyard through the night). This is accompanied in the Traditional Manner by appropriate Rough Music, in respect of hurdy-gurdy, drum, bells, goat (sic), and suchlike mayhem & hullaballoo which is entirely consistent with the English Ceremonial Tradition; as was, as is, as will be...

Not a patch on the version sung in The Cumberland Arms on Saturday Night though, a masterful performance by Lancastrian Keith Blackburn in fine old style - ten verses at least; a calling-on song with any amount of unsavoury characters. This was at Joe Crane's legendary Come-All-Ye; ten singers and twenty students crammed into a backroom with a constant through-put of lively punters heading to the upstairs venue. A real testing ground for singers and songs alike, but when one of those singers is the truly Godlike Louis Killen, you know you're in good company!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: mandotim
Date: 05 Nov 08 - 05:09 PM

Go to Buxton? I'm a Lancastrian. I've never heard this expression anywhere. Your sources, please.
Tim

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 05 Nov 08 - 05:17 PM

It's occasionally used by people who're going to, e.g., Buxton.

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: mandotim
Date: 05 Nov 08 - 05:18 PM

While we're at it; I've known the song 'Cob Coaling' since I was three years old, when I learned it from my Great Aunt Agnes. It sounded nothing like your version. It was in English, for a start, it had a recognizable melody, it was in 3/4 time, and it sounded quite pleasant. You claim to have worked the song out for yourself; try again.
Tim

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 05 Nov 08 - 05:20 PM

Maybe he misheard go boil your head.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 05 Nov 08 - 05:28 PM

In the interests of intelligibility I translated the above'verse' into Dutch and out again (Double Dutch)

Mineral water, Gebladerte-geklede wells, groen-Gras on the slopes, the valleys of limestone, Klei-betegelde arcades, the afbaarden of duidelijk-glas, the columns of vormen-Ijzer, Stained-glass ceilings, earth garden urns, wooden inlegsels, ground in a cross, the ways of the pebble, and, had between paces, fight the element of, abundance of tea.

Makes more sense and scans better

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 05 Nov 08 - 05:33 PM

I think they're confusing my Cob-a-Coaling with yours, Wavy - which I still reckon has a certain naive charm by the way. See this thread for the additional verses by the way. Next year's version...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 05 Nov 08 - 05:49 PM

Fun with on-line translators, eh? Well, here's English to Dutch, Dutch to French, French to Italian, and Italian back to English, just about...

L' water of mineral, Gebladerte-geklede sink, groen-Gras on the slopes, goes them of the limestone, Klei-betegelde to them arcades, l' afbaarden of duidelijk-glas, of the columns vormen-Ijzer, Stained-glass of the maximal ones, puts to the earth the tuin-urnen of garden, in wood inlegsels, the ground in a crossing, the roads of the stone, and, has had between the corridors, to fight l' element, d' abundance of the.

Removing the non-English words we get:

water of mineral,
on the slopes,
goes them of the limestone,
to them arcades of the columns
Stained-glass of the maximal ones,
puts to the earth the of garden,
in wood the ground in a crossing,
the roads of the stone, and has had
between the corridors, to fight of the

Which reads like a wonky translation of an Oxyrhynchus Papyrus fragment, but embodies random imagery a good deal more potent than the orginal. I particularly like Stained-glass of the maximal ones. Boroughs would have loved on-line translation engines...

Forgive me, but the obligatory Bonfire Night merlot is rather moreish..

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 05 Nov 08 - 06:31 PM

Boroughs? Jesus, am I the merry one... That should, of course, be Burroughs. Never Mudcat when you're pissed!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 05 Nov 08 - 07:13 PM

as a dual national, I must VISIT Aus. with an Aus. passport.

And, as a British national, you could visit Australia with a British passport. What's the problem? (And what is this thread STILL doing above the line?)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 05 Nov 08 - 07:31 PM

IB, your Cob-a-Coaling is genuinely unsettling (in a good way). Comparing it with WAV's wouldn't be fair.

when one of those singers is the truly Godlike Louis Killen, you know you're in good company!

Louis Killen? Bloody hellWell, I'll go to Buxton!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 05 Nov 08 - 10:18 PM

WaV, your Buxton poem is just a list of stuff... but I have to admire the sentiment of the last line. Mind you, just how 'English' tea is is a moot point, isn't it? I hope you don't mean that herbal muck... Incidentally, just to be unnecessarily pedantic, I think the majority of Derbyshire is gritstone, not limestone, but there is limestone near Buxton. I don't know how good it is for making statues.

EC - "Oh Smokey, I'm so sorry...proud Buxton falls under the pen...we will remember!"

Don't thee worry, we can look after us sens. I've often wondered about some sort of culturally defensive alliance between Derbys, Yorks and Lancs though.. I suppose we could include Northumbria if they promise to try and talk English :-)

Capt, Birdseye - "let this be a warning to all tea drinkers,you will end up inspired,you could produce such poetic gems. "

It's never happened to me, and I've drunk enough to rehydrate the Sahara.. I think the use of the word 'tea' in this context is probably just poetic licence - after all, 'beer' doesn't rhyme, any fool can see that. No, the whole intrinsic structure of the piece, not to mention the underlying metaphor, is dependent on that last syllable; it would be sheer nonsense without it.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 06 Nov 08 - 03:28 AM

"think the majority of Derbyshire is gritstone, not limestone, but there is limestone near Buxton"

There's a large amount of limestone in the southern Peak District ( the White Peak), and to the south of Buxton are a number of large aggregate quarries still busy extracting it. The wagons loaded with limestone are frequently encountered on the roads around the town. Try taking the A6 from Buxton to Bakewell to see the dramatic effects of this industry.

Arbor Low stone circle is made up of limestone, and the reefs make the distinctive hill scenery.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 06 Nov 08 - 04:14 AM

That's not funny, Don - whether I'm good or bad at it, the tenor-recorder/English flute (along with the violin/Italian fiddle) certainly is one of the best intruments for mimicking the human voice.

Jack - I, too, have enjoyed LISTENING to, but never performing/practising, some reggae over the years.

Volgadon - did you ever get tennis-elbow in class, during your school years?!..if I were that pedantic, I wouldn't have a British passport either, because I'm an ENGLISH nationalist...I at least try, rather, to be a realist. And Pip, hopefully for the last time, I checked and was told anyone who is an Aus. cit. has to enter/re-enter on an Aus. passport, even if only VISITING.

Believe it or not Mandotim of Lancashire, I have heard it from a few elderly folk from thereabouts...besides, our Pip just used it!

Thanks Stu...but there's no Dutch/double Dutch for "tea"?

Thanks IB - I'll check both those links shortly (and why not leave yours on a few more days?).

Smokey - on the day trip in question, I did indeed escape some wet weather by wetting my palette with tea, rather than beer or mead - which I've only ever found at the above-mentioned Cumberland Arms.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 06 Nov 08 - 04:49 AM

I checked and was told anyone who is an Aus. cit. has to enter/re-enter on an Aus. passport, even if only VISITING.

Hopefully for the last time, why don't you give up your dual nationality?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 06 Nov 08 - 05:00 AM

Last time I checked they don't issue an ENGLISH passport, so you wouldn't be pedantic, only delusional. Why do you keep your Australian citizenship? I've asked you this question several times, and you have avoided it. I actually do know several immigrants to Israel who have given up their previous citizenship as a matter of choice and principle.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 06 Nov 08 - 05:04 AM

(and why not leave yours on a few more days?)

The traditional way is to forget about these things the following day; Myspace is good for this because you can do just that. So my Cob a Coaling was up between Hallowe'en and Bonfire Night, and right now I'm in the process of uploading my version of Peter Bellamy's setting of Kipling's Ford o' Kabul River, which I'll take down after the 11th of November.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 06 Nov 08 - 05:35 AM

Ooh, that is one of my favourite poems. Look forward to hearing that.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: mandotim
Date: 06 Nov 08 - 05:56 AM

Dear WalkaboutsVerse of Australia; regarding the comment 'I'll go to Buxton'. You state 'Believe it or not Mandotim of Lancashire, I have heard it from a few elderly folk from thereabouts...besides, our Pip just used it!'
Well, since you're giving me the option, no, I don't believe it, I think you've just made it up. It doesn't correspond with my observation of life in Lancashire over the past fifty years or so. How long did you live in Lancashire, exactly? I would need an authoritative source, preferably an academic study, before even considering your assertion. I'd also like to know which Lancashire dialect you are referring to, as there are many, each with their own idioms.
The reason for this distrust is your long and undistinguished track record of unsubstantiated assertions, almost all of which have been conclusively demonstrated to be both academically worthless and just plain wrong. Try building some credibility, then people might just listen to what you have to say.
I'm beginning to wonder whether you are an Australian; most Australians (and English people) are ok with irony. Pip was being ironic. Are you sure you're not American? You're certainly not English.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 06 Nov 08 - 06:16 AM

I have spent a good deal of my life in Lancashire too (and now live 5 miles from Buxton), and have never come across this curious turn of phrase.

Indeed if you google "I'll go to Buxton" lancashire the only 2 hits are from this thread!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 06 Nov 08 - 06:32 AM

Sadly mandotim... Guardian Oct 2007

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 06 Nov 08 - 06:37 AM

As for the tennis-elbow remark, I actually spent most of my time in class reading various history books, novels and other stuff. Of course this bugged quite a few teachers, but I was lucky with several of them, who were happy that I was expanding my mind on my own account, just as long as I passed exams.
Still don't have a formal degree and not sure when I will, would be nice, but other, more important things popped up.
What I said had nothing to do with pedantry, as you are purposefully avoiding my question. Why do you still have dual citizenship.

Irony is a very significant English character. You can find it in most books, songs, TV and movies!!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Will Fly
Date: 06 Nov 08 - 07:07 AM

David - let me take this "poem" of yours and demonstrate, if I can, why it just doesn't work as poetry or anything else. Here it is:

Mineral water,
    Foliage-dressed wells,
Green-grass on the Slopes,
    Limestone dales,
Clay-tiled arcades,
    Plain-glass awnings,
Shaped-iron columns,
    Stained-glass ceilings,
Earthen garden-urns,
    Wooden inlays,
Soil in a cross,
    Pebble pathways,
And, had between walks,
    Combating the
Weather element,
    Plenty of tea.

(a) What's the point of all this, other than a list of things that make up Buxton? You might as well have put it all in one sentence and be done with it. Surely any poetic vision has a point. If you've listing these things - and "Mineral water" must surely be the most hackneyed and predictable thing with which to start a poem about Buxton - then why not follow that up with a conceit, a metaphor, a diagonal path, a call and response section which makes a point based on the description - for example?

(b) The first 12 lines are short descriptors waiting for a linkage. Then, for no reason whatever, comes the phrase "And, had between walks". But who or what is the "And" linking back to? Nothing and nobody. For sheer clunkiness the phrase "combating the weather element" is hard to beat - wooden and prosaic. Not poetic at all. You could have put the idea in all sorts of lyrical ways. Your way is lumpen and tone-deaf.

(c) "Plenty of tea". Just about sums it up the whole experience.

I say all this to make the points, which I doubt that you'll take, that: (1) You are not a poet and, on this showing, never will be as you have no ear, no imagination and no recognisable poetic expression (2) It follows, therefore, that to constantly refer back to this rubbish as an answer to, or as a defence of criticisms of your particular views, is pointless.

But why am I taking the trouble to write this - you won't listen anyway...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: mandotim
Date: 06 Nov 08 - 07:07 AM

Sadly Woody; 'northerner' is not synonymous with 'Lancastrian'!
Tim

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Paul Burke
Date: 06 Nov 08 - 07:11 AM

Expressions of surprise or disbelief used in Irlam's o'th' Height included "I'll go to our house" and "Well, I'll go to th' bottom of our stairs", and "Bugger me".

Maximal is of course not English, but Latin, as are mineral, arcade, column and corridor. So the poem becomes even more minimalist, and much better:

water of on the slopes,
goes them of the limestone,
to them of the Stained-glass of the ones,
puts to the earth the of garden,
in wood the ground in a crossing,
the roads of the stone, and has had
between the to fight of the

Woody, that only proves that Lancashire isn't the right north, and that mandotim isn't of a certain vintage!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 06 Nov 08 - 07:26 AM

You know, I've lived in M'cr for 25 years and been married to a Prestonian for most of that time, and I still don't know how to pronounced Irlam's o'th' Height (or the similar placename involving Besses and a Barn). Is it:

Irlams ut Height

Irlams uh' Height (same thing with a glo'al stop)

Irlams uth Ight

or what?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: catspaw49
Date: 06 Nov 08 - 08:04 AM

Here's an expression I like to use when encountered by complete jack-offs like Wavylimpdick................"Go fuck yourself you worthless, racist, piece of shit."

Works for me anyway.

Spaw

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Paul Burke
Date: 06 Nov 08 - 08:17 AM

There's a certain latitude in the pronunciation. Some people elide it to Ullamzuthite, others separate it a bit more, say Ullam Zut Thite. But my knowledge of it is from over thirty years ago:

Didn't I come from Lancasheer,
It's great to come from Lancasheer,
Where women all wear clogs and shawl
And men are really men,
Myself I come from Lancasheer,
I'm proud to come from Lancasheer,
And once you've come from Lancasheer
You'll never go there again!

Ask el Gnomo for currently favoured pronunciation (if it's not been renamed Westview or something like that).

The newspaper article Woody referred to would probably have continued that Lancashire folk say by eck and ecky thump and weers me cap, theer's trouble at t't't't'mill.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Gervase
Date: 06 Nov 08 - 09:15 AM

But why am I taking the trouble to write this - you won't listen anyway...
Very true Will - they say that self-abuse makes one blind, but in WAV's case it's made him deaf.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: KB in Iowa
Date: 06 Nov 08 - 10:41 AM

WAV, why do you have dual citizenship? I don't see how you can justify that within the framework of your world view. It seems completely contrary to everything you claim to stand for.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: mandotim
Date: 06 Nov 08 - 10:47 AM

Eyup Paul lad! I'd like to admit that I'm of a very uncertain vintage! Any road up, t'Guardian hasn't bin t'same since it stopped being t'Manchester Guardian! Paper for southern softies now, tha knows...
Never mind Irlams o'Th'Height; how about Top o' Hebers?
Tim

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,eliza c
Date: 06 Nov 08 - 01:01 PM

May my parents and I never hear your version of Cob-a-Coaling. We worked on that for ages, it is very much a family song now, and it stretches to breaking point our long-held belief that traditional music is for everyone to think that someone of your agenda could feel welcome taking it from us and singing it. Speaking as immigrants, as Travellers, as human beings, no. You do not have our blessing.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 06 Nov 08 - 01:36 PM

That's about as authorititive as it gets WaV, - don't give up the day job..

"English nationalist" - Gordon Bennett, I'm lost for words.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 06 Nov 08 - 01:38 PM

Pardon my spelling..

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 06 Nov 08 - 02:21 PM

My post:

". . . via mimicking my voice with my English flute."

I don't follow this. You mean you took your "English flute" and drilled new holes between the holes it came with?

David's response:

That's not funny, Don - whether I'm good or bad at it, the tenor-recorder/English flute (along with the violin/Italian fiddle) certainly is one of the best intruments for mimicking the human voice.

Okay. First of all, as smart remarks go, I thought it was pretty funny. David's sense of pitch is so precarious that about the only way he could mimic his voice with the "English flute" would be to have a whole lot of extra holes.

Actually, though, that would not really solve the problem. What he really needs on his "English flute" is something like a trombone slide.

And as to mimicking the human voice with an instrument, I have never heard of the tenor recorder (pardon me, "English flute") spoken of in this context. And just to refresh your memory, David, I spent three years in a university school of music and another two years in a music conservatory, and I've been around musicians all my life. Most of then would have considered my wisecrack pretty funny. Not particularly kind, perhaps, but pretty funny.

What you need to do, as I keep telling you, is to practice vocal exercises with a keyboard instrument (since you said you play one). Play the note on the instrument, then try to sing the note. Then, play and sing the note at the same time. Practice scales and arpeggios (broken chords), paying close attention to accurately singing the notes you are playing. Record your practice, then listen to it critically. Near misses are still misses. In short, develop your ear, then work on ear-voice coordination.

Can you do that? Of course you can. Will you do it? Of course not!

You see, David, in the real world, people learn how to do something themselves before they try to tell other people how to do it.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 06 Nov 08 - 03:08 PM

What he really needs on his "English flute" is something like a trombone slide.

I've got the perfect thing!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Will Fly
Date: 06 Nov 08 - 03:14 PM

Hah! Just bought one of those - a 1920 swanee whistle made from bakelite and bone. Not a toy - and actually quite difficult to play, not just well, but at all.

I wonder what "he" would make of it... I look forward to a soundless video of him playing it on his website.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 06 Nov 08 - 04:29 PM

Well it made me laugh Dan. He's already sawn a groove in the back of his recorder, a few more holes could only improve things. If I sang like that though, I'd be looking for another voice to imitate. Not that I ever sing, but Im the world's foremost authority on what I like listening to, and complete faith in my sense of pitch.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 06 Nov 08 - 06:19 PM

From: mandotim

Sadly Woody; 'northerner' is not synonymous with 'Lancastrian'!
Tim

True but as this is, to the best of my knowledge, the first case of WAV's drivel that has any corroboration outside of his own website, I thought it needed highlighting.


From: GUEST,eliza c

May my parents and I never hear your version of Cob-a-Coaling.

I hope you'll never be tempted. Save yourself while you still can!

I did listen to it and every now and again it resurfaces in my mind. Such is the horror of it that I think I've got post traumatic stress disorder. I could "go postal" any day now.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 07 Nov 08 - 03:58 AM

Woody - whatever you do, don't listen to the one about how he WENT walk-A-bout WITH his PEN. (He knows where the stresses are supposed to go, you've got to give him that.)

Ironically, it just goes to prove WAV right - when people lose their culture, society suffers. He's lost, or rather discarded, his own good true Australian culture - the one that he grew up in; the one in which he learned to talk and learned to read; the one that goes with the accent that he's still got and the vocabulary that he still uses. And society is suffering for it.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: mandotim
Date: 07 Nov 08 - 04:00 AM

Fair enough Woody! Perhaps this is progress into the dark depths of WAV's mind?
I don't know if anyone has watched 'Little Britain' on the gogglebox; there are two obvious transvestites who constantly proclaim, in forced and false voices, that they are 'Ladies'. WAV's constant claims that he is 'English' strike me as similarly comedic, especially when done in a strong Australian accent.
Tim

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Paul Burke
Date: 07 Nov 08 - 04:16 AM

Never mind Irlams o'Th'Height; how about Top o' Hebers?

Not forgetting Bessie Zut Barn.

I'd guess at topperebbers, but you'd have to go there to find out, there are no first principles. Within a walk of my place, there's a hamlet called Gotham. Even people native to within a mile of the place can't be sure whether it's really Goth- am, got-ham, goath-am or goat-ham, or even Golgafrincham.

I was once staying with a friend who used to live at Ince, just by Wigan. We went on a walk (surprisingly pleasant if you avoid trouble with the natives) which took us up the locks, and past a place he called Wutcher. He couldn't tell me the spelling or etymology, so we asked an owd lass by one of the cottages there- puzzled she was, then switched from Wigan to RP, replying "it's Woodshaw".

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: mandotim
Date: 07 Nov 08 - 04:27 AM

Last time I was there, it was 'topper yebbers'. I suppose the classic one of all of these is Slaithwaite?
Tim

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 07 Nov 08 - 04:36 AM

Funny, I was just thinking about Little Britain. Maybe that is where he got the bee in his bonnet about women tennis players from.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 07 Nov 08 - 05:04 AM

It's not Slayth-wait, then?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 07 Nov 08 - 05:20 AM

Ooh, that is one of my favourite poems. Look forward to hearing that.

It's up now - Here.

Ford o' Kabul River written by Rudyard Kipling in 1890 in commemoration of the 49 soldiers of the 10th Hussars who lost their lives whilst fording the Kabul River at Jalalabad in March 1879 during the second Anglo-Afghan War. The setting is by Peter Bellamy, as featured on Mr Kipling, Mr Bellamy and The Tradition, here somewhat re-imagined as an old soldier remembers. I see him sitting by the fireside in his humble fisherman's cottage in Overstrand as the November winds blow up a storm without, his only clear memories the tragic events of that terrible night 50 years and thousands of miles away...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Paul Burke
Date: 07 Nov 08 - 05:26 AM

Slaithwaite's over beyond, 25000 miles from Lancashire, but I'm told it's between Slough- it and slow- wit. Which brings us neatly back on topic.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 07 Nov 08 - 05:59 AM

"Are you sure you're not American?"

Oi!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: mandotim
Date: 07 Nov 08 - 06:07 AM

Sorry Ruth; present company excepted, of course! Anyway, I reckon Americans have finally learned to do irony; there is no other explanation for Sarah Palin.
Tim ;)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: peregrina
Date: 07 Nov 08 - 06:12 AM

'National' musical instrument?!!!

How about using the English language with no WORDS or syntactical constructions not derived from Old English. (So you'll lose the word national for a start.)

The impoverished result of our language stripped of its rich acqusitions would be a poor instrument for any literary expression. There's an argument for accepting cultural borrowings all right instead of trying to impose this daft enclosure movement on humankind.

And so--why should music be different from language? Neither can be monocultural.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: catspaw49
Date: 07 Nov 08 - 09:22 AM

Whoa up here.......Some Americans DO have a fine sense of irony but most who do have given it up. Enjoying irony in America can often be a very lonely world.............................

Spaw

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Gervase
Date: 07 Nov 08 - 09:34 AM

I saw Palin as more brassy than irony.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 08 Nov 08 - 12:09 AM

Ssssssssh everybody.......
I think he's gone!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 08 Nov 08 - 04:01 AM

Sorry Ralphie - see below the line...

If wishes were horses

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 08 Nov 08 - 03:52 PM

"you are an Australian; most Australians (and English people) are ok with irony. Pip was being ironic. Are you sure you're not American? You're certainly not English." (Tim)...I'm an English repatriate, and please look up the uses of the ! which I used regarding Pip's remark.

Will Fly - you don't like my "direct" (blurb) metre and rhyme, and I don't like free verse "poetry".

"May my parents and I never hear your version of Cob-a-Coaling. We worked on that for ages, it is very much a family song now, and it stretches to breaking point our long-held belief that traditional music is for everyone to think that someone of your agenda could feel welcome taking it from us and singing it. Speaking as immigrants, as Travellers, as human beings, no. You do not have our blessing." (Eliza)...I'm not clear on the meaning of the first sentence (it's similar or different to your tune, or you refuse to give it a hearing?) but, as for the last, it's a traditional song that shall remain in my repertoire.

Got anything recorded for us to listen to YET Don?

And the imperialism of Kipling doesn't put you off, IB?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 08 Nov 08 - 03:57 PM

Sarah Palin.

"Caribou Barbie."

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 08 Nov 08 - 04:18 PM

Have you tried busking, WaV? A talent like yours could go a long way. You could intersperse the music with political speeches to enrich the lives of your spellbound audience.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: catspaw49
Date: 08 Nov 08 - 05:02 PM

Oh Man Smokey.......What a suggestion!!! Why haven't we thought of it earlier?

Yeah Wavy.....Go out there and play that funky music Whiteboy! Then go on to inspire the world with juvenile tripe! Its your calling....Can't you hear it?

And btw Asshole, comments like that about Don Firth coming from the likes of yourself are criminal. Whatever you might say about Don is worthless drivel as we all know the truth. Get a life racist pig.

Spaw

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Gervase
Date: 08 Nov 08 - 05:09 PM

Got anything recorded for us to listen to YET Don?
I'm sure Don is far too polite to say this, but he's got better things to do than to respond to the absurd and irritating requests of a quasi-musical gnat like yourself.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 08 Nov 08 - 05:14 PM

"What a suggestion!!! Why haven't we thought of it earlier?"

Seems obvious. doesn't it? A bit of direct market research.. I think I want to be there..

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 08 Nov 08 - 05:40 PM

Great idea, Smokey! David should try busking.

Burl Ives, in his early autobiography, Wayfaring Stranger (actually, he wasn't that old when he wrote it), describes how he was in New York, studying voice at a music conservatory with the idea of becoming an art singer. He was taking regular singing lessons and trying to wrap his tongue around German, so he could sing lieder.

But he was feeling kind of homesick, and he would often pull out his guitar and sing a few of the songs he had learned from his grandmother. Some of the music students he shared a house with tended to sneer at the songs, so one Sunday afternoon, he took his guitar and went to a nearby park so he could be alone. He sat on a park bench and sang to himself. A few kids dropped by to listen to him. They liked the songs, so he sang to them. Gradually the crowd got bigger and bigger and soon there were several dozen people, children and adults, standing there or sitting on the grass listening to him and applauding each song. He sang to them for a couple of hours.

That evening, he lay on his bed staring at the ceiling and mulled over what had happened that afternoon. "Why am I wearing myself out learning a lot of songs that are difficult to learn, difficult to sing, and are foreign to me when I already know a couple of hundred songs that I learned from my grandmother and from my friends and family?"

That was when Burl Ives decided to abandon the effort to become a lieder singer and devote himself to singing folk songs and ballads. Concerts, radio programs, club dates, and records followed quickly. And for several years—before Pete Seeger and The Weavers, and a bunch of other folk singers appeared on the national scene—if you mentioned folk music, most people thought of Burl Ives.

Burl Ives found his true career by chance. And by the response of the people who heard him in his impromptu afternoon park concert. He wasn't "busking," he just wanted to go and sing to the squirrels. But people heard him, stayed to listen, and liked what he did.

Things went sour for him later, but that's another story.

That's a good way to really learn if you have it or not. Sing for people who are perfectly free to walk away if they wish, and see what kind of response you get.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: mandotim
Date: 08 Nov 08 - 05:47 PM

Culturally, WAV, you are not English. You try to be; but as evidenced by the people on this board who actually are English, and from their standpoint don't seem to recognise your professed culture as one they share, then culturally speaking you must logically be something other than English.
Your formative years were spent absorbing Australian culture. Your attempts at verse, your accented singing and your lack of command of English idiom all show that your efforts to assimilate into English culture are failing miserably, and you remain definitively Australian.
If you really want to be English, why not spend some time finding out what English culture actually is, rather than banging on about what you (an Australian) think it ought to be? Most indigenous people don't like being told how they should practise their own culture by those perceived as 'foreign'. You profess to be against this kind of 'cultural imperialism' (your phrase), yet that is precisely what you are doing to the English people here; attempting to persuade English people to adopt a culture that is not and never has been their own. (Don't come back with that twaddle about being a repatriate, either; it's completely irrelevant to this point, as I'm not talking about nationality, I'm talking about the culture you absorbed and lived in for the important, formative years of your life.)
Please understand; I am not remotely bothered if you want to become English or not; but at least try to become a part of real English culture, rather than living in your fantasy world of an English culture that demonstrably never actually existed. Stop hectoring the kind and generous people on this board with your half-baked ideas about how their world should be, and try listening to the ideas and advice that are provided to you. Stop being rude to truly eminent people like Don Firth and Eliza Carthy (among others), who have tried to help you. If you do that, the many people who know them and love their work will automatically regard your ideas as being without merit.
There are even role models here; Ruth Archer is an American, who over the years has worked tirelessly to gain a deep and wide ranging understanding of English culture, and indeed helps to shape and strengthen that culture in many important ways. You could do much worse than following her example, rather than ignoring her advice. Stop spouting racist slogans whenever the subject of immigration comes up. Listen to and research the arguments and then decide, rather than adopting a position and then slagging off opponents as 'extreme pro-immigrationists'. They aren't anything of the sort, they are anti-racists.
I've said this to you before, and I don't suppose that you will listen this time either; grow up; listen; learn to argue, rather than pontificate; work hard to become good at something, preferably something you enjoy; get a job; get a life.
Tim

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 08 Nov 08 - 05:51 PM

And the imperialism of Kipling doesn't put you off, IB?

Not in the slightest. Kipling's essential humanism resonates out of and beyond his time, however so conservative, or otherwise reactionary it might be; thus, it excites in me a depth of appreciation for my Own Good Culture that otherwise I simply wouldn't have - and for that I am eternally grateful. Kipling also wrote Exceedingly Good Songs which are an absolute joy to sing, invariably to the superlative settings made by Peter Bellamy, but often I'll find a traditional tune that fits them like a glove, as in the case of Puck's Song, which I sing to the Morris tune London Pride (aka Idbury Hill). In both my work and recreation I am absorbed in the past (traditional songs & stories, Medieval art & music etc.); but in my life I am a happily modern man glad to be alive when & where I am with an awareness of history as a process of continuity. That continuity figures in much of Kipling's work, both in terms of the broader strokes of history and the role of the individuals taking part in it (see The Land) and the essential relationship between the two. Because of this, and his richly perceptive awareness of the social, political & cultural complexities of his own time, I think he still has a lot to tell us about ourselves and each other, whether we want to hear it or not.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 08 Nov 08 - 05:59 PM

See, WaV? I've learnt something from Don's post. I didn't know all that, and now I know a bit more. It's a useful transaction. Remember, if Don were doing this just to be 'superior', he'd be better off keeping his acquired knowledge to himself and remaining more knowledgable than 'the competition'. Read his stuff and be grateful WaV.

Thanks Don.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: peregrina
Date: 08 Nov 08 - 06:16 PM

England's national musical instrument is the amazing English language.

Try 'repatriating' all words of French, Latin and other origins and you won't have a title for the thread nor a full line of the verse.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 08 Nov 08 - 06:20 PM

Peregrina, if were left to him, folk clubs would consist of people banging rocks together and singing "Ug" - solo of course.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: peregrina
Date: 08 Nov 08 - 06:23 PM

Hmmm... I thought the idea was to replace folk clubs, mudcat and poetry with a large soapbox on the ground reserved for one speaker?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 08 Nov 08 - 06:28 PM

Yes, that would certainly solve all society's problems, but should there be a raffle? First prize, a night out with WaV - second prize, two nights out with WaV.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,eliza c
Date: 08 Nov 08 - 07:03 PM

I mean the version you sing that you say you learned from us. You do not have our blessing, whether it remains in your repertoire or not. I was brought up to believe it was nice manners to ask someone if you happen upon them if it was alright to sing a song learned from their repertoire, especially if you then use it to promote yourself. That's a good old English custom you don't seem to be picking up, you've had access to me and therefore mine for well over a year now and you haven't mentioned it. That's just rude.
Tourist.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Will Fly
Date: 08 Nov 08 - 07:26 PM

Will Fly - you don't like my "direct" (blurb) metre and rhyme, and I don't like free verse "poetry".

Who mentioned free verse, you idiot? Can't you see that your so-called poetry doesn't have (a) any metre and (b) any rhyme. It's not poetry, and you aren't a poet by any stretch of the imagination. You have no ear, no scansion, no rhythm, no imagery, no lyricism, no point. Even McGonigall - for all that he's laughed at - has more poetic guts in him than you have. Your "verse" is simply a waste of space.

Try reading real poetry. If your "verse", together with your illiterate responses on this and other threads, and the ill-conceived ideas you harbour, is evidence of a BA in Humanities, I'll believe it when I see the degree certificate. You can't write, you can't argue, you can't give sources or proper citations to back up your arguments, you can't see beyond the feeble, racist, bigoted, stupidities that pass for your world view.

Now tell me - am I the first here to mention all this?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 08 Nov 08 - 09:59 PM

WaV - serious question now, do you put your finger in your ear when you sing?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 08 Nov 08 - 11:59 PM

Oh . . . ear!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: mandotim
Date: 09 Nov 08 - 03:29 AM

I put my fingers in both ears when WAV sings...
Tim

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 09 Nov 08 - 04:00 AM

"Whiteboy...racist pig" (Catspaw)...I, rather, have never attacked anyone on the basis of skin-colour or race...I only question the act of immigration itself.

"Culturally, WAV, you are not English. You try to be...get a job" (Tim)...yes, as a repatriate rather than a visitor, I "try to be". And you know damn well that, these days, you couldn't get away with talking about an immigrant like that, but with a repat. from that rival country it's acceptable...just as, at interviews, it's okay to say "why ON EARTH did you come back?" or "you must be mad", etc.

For Will Fly...

Poem 148 of 230: AUDIENCE LOST

I returned, again,
    To what they pen -
The free-verse poets:
    Deep prose in sets...
I could read, again,
    Of Mice and Men.

From walkaboutsverse.741.com

"WaV - serious question now, do you put your finger in your ear when you sing?" (Smokey)...obviously, I soon noticed some on the folk scene doing that and gave it a try but, usually, no...curiousity killed the cat but is it documented anywhere that, over the centuries, some fishermen, farmers, miners, peasants, etc. did indeed do that...?

Back on thread, before I got the bus to the Alnwick Northumbrian Gathering from Newcastle yesterday, in the Windows music shop, I had my hands on a (Scallati?) 30-key English concertina and, although the reed system may not be not quite authentic (others may know more on this), what a fine instrument...?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Will Fly
Date: 09 Nov 08 - 04:26 AM

WAV, you're a clot. Not a single rebuttal of my comments on your poetic drivel - just more drivel! Ah well, better people than me have tried in vain to penetrate the bonehead.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 09 Nov 08 - 05:27 AM

I had my hands on a (Scallati?) 30-key English concertina and, although the reed system may not be not quite authentic (others may know more on this), what a fine instrument...?

I assume it was a "Scarlatti" like this one and the fact that you think it's a fine instrument says a lot about you. Once more you pontificate about something you know nothing about and get it all wrong.

For reference, the Scarlatti is made in China and I think I can speak for most Concertina players when I say that it's considered to be not much better than a piece of crap.

As an Anglo player I think it would be better for me to let somebody like Dick Miles give you some examples of "fine instruments" of the EC persuasion, but then why should he bother as you're sure not to listen.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 09 Nov 08 - 05:43 AM

"Whiteboy...racist pig" (Catspaw)...I, rather, have never attacked anyone on the basis of skin-colour or race...I only question the act of immigration itself.

Again!

Wavy - apart from yourself, no one is under any illusions, here or anywhere else for that matter, on the issue of your racism. You are a proven racist whose misanthropic delusions have you living in a country of which you have no understanding. England is not what you think it is, nor will it ever be what you want it to be - and as long as you continue to think this way it will never be your home. You are a free-loading trivial tourist on one long easy idle holiday, barely scratching the surface of the cultural richness you claim to love and yet know so little - a cultural richness about which you so resolutely refuse to learn. Why? Because your personal bugbears and consequential political agendas far outweigh any cultural interests which are, in any case, only ever a means to your political end. In your world - and the world of all racists - ignorance is the wellspring of determination and delusion; it means you might live in a state of simplistic blinkered bliss gloating with self-righteous indignation upon the rest of the world of which you have no part.

We were in Manchester yesterday - enjoying the sounds the city featuring one of those ubiquitous Eastern European accordion & trumpet duos; a young Hungarian accordionist playing a csardas like he was possessed; an African kora player who's a regular around Picadilly these days and a European string quintet playing Pachelbel's famous Kanon und Gigue in D-Dur with studied precision. A cultural richness of the varied and diverse reality that is our England; a cultural richness which in your ignorant racist scheme is a complete anathema.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 09 Nov 08 - 05:54 AM

Er, Eliza, I've done a version of the Good Old Way which I learned directly from your folk's recording. Is it all right to keep on the internet? I don't use it to promote myself, but love the song.

WAV - Scallati doesn't sound very English, surely you're not going to buy a foreign import?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 09 Nov 08 - 06:16 AM

"We were in Manchester yesterday - enjoying the sounds the city featuring one of those ubiquitous Eastern European accordion & trumpet duos; a young Hungarian accordionist playing a csardas like he was possessed; an African kora player who's a regular around Picadilly these days and a European string quintet playing Pachelbel's famous Kanon und Gigue in D-Dur with studied precision."

I heard the Hungarian chap earlier on this week - he was brilliant. We were in a bit of a rush so didn't have time to stop and listen unfortunately. He was putting so much into his performance I thought he must be knackered after doing that all day.

The Kora player is superb and as you say IB he's often about although sadly not last Tuesday. In the summer you can get a number of good musicians in Piccadilly; last year there were some fantastic African drummers.

By the way, if you're ever in Manchester and fancy partaking of a pleasant benefit of living in a multicultural society, the best Chinese buffet is to be found at Tai Woo's on Oxford Road near The Palace rather than in Chinatown.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 09 Nov 08 - 07:18 AM

"Er, Eliza, I've done a version of the Good Old Way which I learned directly from your folk's recording. Is it all right to keep on the internet? I don't use it to promote myself, but love the song."

I think Eliza seems mostly concerned about her family's repertoire being used as a clothes prop for Wavey Davey's political agenda. But I'm glad I've never sung my dodgy version of Maid on the Shore in her hearing... :D

Mandotim, your words are very kind, but to be honest I don't feel like I've made any real effort - just followed an enthusiasm. I love living here. And for the record, The Jam, The Smiths, The Kinks, The Kooks and The Arctic Monkeys speak as much to me about Englishness as Sam Larner or Harry Cox. :)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Howard Jones
Date: 09 Nov 08 - 07:18 AM

"I, rather, have never attacked anyone on the basis of skin-colour or race...I only question the act of immigration itself." But when you question immigration, you come up with the wrong answers.

As this is a music website, I'll address musical culture first. The greatest threat to England's musical traditions came not from immigrants but from American popular music culture, which was willingly embraced by the English early in the last century, under the influence of the gramophone and wireless. We may regret it, but the "folk" voted with their feet, and chose jazz and blues and rock-and-roll over their good English traditional music.

If you're talking about culture in its wider sense, I find it hard to believe that fewer than 8% of the population (which includes people from ethnic minorities who were born and raised here, and who are more English than you) could have had the influence on our culture you suggest - what influence they have had, most people regard as being largely positive. I accept however that it would be naive to ignore that it has brought some social problems.

If you mean economic migration, this can only mean you object to people coming here from abroad and taking jobs away from native English workers. Does that sound familiar? Except of course, you haven't got a job, and as someone else has pointed out you seem to have chosen to live in one the worst possible places in the entire country for finding one, especially in manufacturing.

WAV, all your talk of being a "repatriate" doesn't alter the fact that you are an immigrant:

"a person who has come to a different country in order to live there permanently" Cambridge Online Dictionary

"a person who comes to live permanently in a foreign country" AskOxford dictionary

Incidentally, "repatriate" is usually either a verb or a passive noun, ie someone who is sent back to their own country. Did the Aussies get fed up with your witterings and kick you out?

WAV, have you heard the expression "when you're in a hole, stop digging"? Everything you write simply reveals more about the enormous depths of your ignorance, whether it's about politics, English music, English culture, singing, playing recorder, and now concertinas. If you don't know about something, you should be asking questions, not attempting to give answers.

But you've been told this before.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Gervase
Date: 09 Nov 08 - 07:55 AM

Don't tell him to stop digging. With any luck he'll carry and on, hey presto, he'll be back home in Australia!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: mandotim
Date: 09 Nov 08 - 08:43 AM

From your post: '"Culturally, WAV, you are not English. You try to be...get a job" (Tim)...yes, as a repatriate rather than a visitor, I "try to be". And you know damn well that, these days, you couldn't get away with talking about an immigrant like that, but with a repat. from that rival country it's acceptable...just as, at interviews, it's okay to say "why ON EARTH did you come back?" or "you must be mad", etc.'

Any comments on the rest of my post WAV? After 'try to be', there is a 'but'. Incidentally, 'these days' I can 'get away' with saying anything I like about anyone as long as it breaks no laws. Recommending someone who is unemployed to get a job, as far as I know, is not illegal. If you find me saying that to you offensive, then the remedy is simple; get a job, you idle layabout.
I still maintain that English culture is something you are not familiar with WAV; an example; when questioning the practice of singing with a finger in one ear, you ask 'is it documented anywhere that, over the centuries, some fishermen, farmers, miners, peasants, etc. did indeed do that...?' Do accountants not sing folk music? What makes you think that doctors don't? How about architects? Priests? Office workers? Once again, your monumental ignorance is on show, coupled with your uninformed prejudice about folk music being either some bucolic idyll or an art form practised by horny-handed sons of toil. It might be where you come from WAV, but not in England.
Why not just accept it WAV; England is never going to be the place your delusions say it is. Either accept the fact, or bugger off to somewhere where racist, sexist wasters are accepted and welcomed.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 09 Nov 08 - 09:01 AM

Hey WAV!

It's going well, don't you think?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: catspaw49
Date: 09 Nov 08 - 09:15 AM

And Wavyracist......Just for your enlightenment since you obviously know fuck all about modern English OR world culture.........

"Play That Funky Music" (also known as "Play That Funky Music, White Boy") is a funk rock song written by Robert Parissi and recorded by the rock band Wild Cherry. The song hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 on September 18, 1976. It was also the basis of a top five U.S.A. hit for Vanilla Ice in 1990. The song also was #10 in the UK and is now listed at #73 on Billboard's Greatest Songs of all time."
The song was inspired by a black audience member who shouted, "Play some funky music, white boy" while they were playing at the 2001 Club. Lead singer Robert Parissi decided they should, and wrote down the phrase on a bar order pad. They later recorded it in Cleveland with a Disco sound. Although the band was concerned about the lyrics, Parissi insisted on keeping them.

Now I dunno' about # 73 all time but the phrase has certainly become part of our almost shared language. Here's another phrase brought about by an overwhelming majority opinion of folks on this thread and your other crapass threads as well...........

David Franks is a racist and a bigot.

Spaw

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jeri
Date: 09 Nov 08 - 09:19 AM

And Catspaw is a bully.
I'm a bitch.
It all works out.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: catspaw49
Date: 09 Nov 08 - 09:24 AM

This is true too............

Spaw

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 09 Nov 08 - 09:53 AM

Hmm.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 09 Nov 08 - 02:22 PM

Re: Finger in Ear.

". . . is it documented anywhere that, over the centuries, some fishermen, farmers, miners, peasants, etc. did indeed do that...?"

For your information, David, if you observed someone singing with his "finger in his ear," then I think you misinterpreted what you saw. No wonder it didn't help. Many singers find that if they cup a hand behind an ear, it helps them hear the sound of their own voice. Especially in a large room or auditorium, cupping a hand behind your ear helps you hear the reverberation of your own voice.

I don't usually do it myself because my hands are occupied with my guitar. I have done it sometimes when I'm singing unaccompanied, and it does give some good "feedback." It could possibly help you stay on pitch.

Remember:   don't put a finger in you ear. Cup a hand behind an ear. By the way, use your dominant ear. The one you automatically use when talking on the telephone.

AND REMEMBER THIS! It has absolutely nothing to do with culture or tradition. Whether or not it is done by fishermen, farmers, miners, peasants, etc., is not relevant.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 09 Nov 08 - 02:45 PM

I mean't the English concertina generally rather than that particular make, Woody, and did question the reed system of that particular brand, whilst admitting that others would know more on this than I, remember? We are on a thread/DISCUSSION forum, afterall; thanks for the spelling, and I'll keep in mind that you think that Scarlatti is "crap".

IB - again, false and inconsistent with your analysis: e.g., you have so many problems with my questioning of immigration itself, but no problem with Spaw using the term "whiteboy"...a bit like accepting your friends who make racist jokes at the pub, I suppose...do you ever think of going back to try again at uni. or other adult education?

HJ - as with Ruth, what you said about industry/location is wrong - my wad of rejection/keep you on file letters is thick HJ; and I find it incredible that you can't even accept that I, BORN HERE, am a repat. NOT an immigrant...and, then, "Don't tell him to stop digging. With any luck he'll carry and on, hey presto, he'll be back home in Australia!" ! (Gervase - who also seems to have no problem with Catspaw's "whiteboy").

Tim - for hundreds of years, it was largely the folk I described above and not your "accountants" carrying on the oral tradition but, yes, I'm not sure about any finger-in-the-ear tradition, and left that, also, open for discussion (okay?)...

Catspaw - given the repeated false and defamatory remarks you've made of me, do you also stand by your use of the term "whiteboy", which still no-one else has questioned you on?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: jimslass
Date: 09 Nov 08 - 02:49 PM

Dear Eliza, if indeed 'tis you, don't get riled, sit back, put your feet up and think of your blood-pressure!! A calm pregnancy means a calm baby. Chill.Breathe.(and when all else fails, demand pethedine!)

As an exiled Lancashire lass I've many a time been to the foot of our stairs, but never, in the spirit of gobsmackedness, to Buxton. In actualitee, I have, and you're right, it's a grand place.

Oh, by the way, did we ever find out what is the national instrument of England???

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 09 Nov 08 - 03:07 PM

Oh WAV. Some were worried that you had dropped off the bottom of the page but it was not to be.

Have you learned anything from the wisdom offered you?

Have you understood the posts from anyone?

Do you realize that all the posters above disagree with your views, doubt your abilities and reject your conclusions.

You are consistently illogical and show a lack of education that is unbelievable.

Regards

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 09 Nov 08 - 03:14 PM

". . . but no problem with Spaw using the term 'whiteboy'...a bit like accepting your friends who make racist jokes at the pub, I suppose..."

Trying to divert flak from your own racist outpourings by jumping on the "whiteboy" comment, are you, David? No joy there, I'm afraid. I believe Spaw was quoting from someone else, and in all the time I've been here on Mudcat (since 1999), I've never read anything posted by Spaw that indicates that he is, in any way, racist. Nor have I ever seen a racist post from Mr. Beard.

So your attempt at a diversionary tactic is a total bust.

David, stop trying to derive guidance in life by rereading your own "life's work." You're in a philosophical "feedback loop." Put that aside and start from the beginning. Re-examine your beliefs and philosophy from the very basics. You've taken a wrong turn somewhere and your positions are untenable.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 09 Nov 08 - 03:46 PM

I'm trying to show, Don, the inconsistency of the group, including yourself, of pro-immigrationists here who are repeatedly making false remarks about me and my life's work. It IS very rare that anyone else gets questioned on what they post - although Ruth did recently when someone suggested Americans lacking an understanding of irony. And please scroll above and re-examine Spaw's use of the term "whiteboy" - honestly/calmly/without bias, please.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 09 Nov 08 - 04:24 PM

I did before I post just above.

You're wrong. On all counts.

As far as Ruth being questioned about suggesting that Americans lack an understanding of irony, first, I don't think Ruth was being serious and any responses were in a humorous vein. There was nothing "racist" about that exchange. It is you who lack an understanding of irony. Or, like many who hold the kind of views you do, of humor in general.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 09 Nov 08 - 04:37 PM

I'm starting to wonder if WAV actually cares about culture at all. He certainly wasn't old enough to take any English culture with him when he left the country; he spent almost all his childhood and a good slice of his adult life in Australia. Genetically he may be a repatriate, but culturally he's quite obviously an immigrant. So maybe it's not culture that determines where people ought to live, in WAV's world, but where your genes come from.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: mandotim
Date: 09 Nov 08 - 04:37 PM

'Tim - for hundreds of years, it was largely the folk I described above and not your "accountants" carrying on the oral tradition'.
How do you know this for certain? You weren't there hundreds of years ago, so you must think you have learned this from some source or other. Now is your opportunity to demonstrate that you are able to substantiate your bletherings. Authoritative sources please, Harvard referencing system preferred, no need for ISBN numbers. (This means you have to go to a good library and do some actual work, for once).

On the subject of false and defamatory; you consistently attack people who disagree with your racist remarks as 'pro-immigrationists'. I am neither for nor against immigration per se. Therefore your description, if it applies to me, is defamatory, if I choose to take it as such. The difference is, calling you a racist and a sexist is neither false nor defamatory, since your oft-repeated outpourings confirm this as fact when any reasonable and academically acceptable definition of terms is applied. You are a racist, a sexist and a cultural bigot. Deal with it, whiteboy (in the Wild Cherry sense of the word).

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 09 Nov 08 - 04:45 PM

By the way, David, where, exactly, did Ruth say anything about Americans lacking a sense of irony? I can't find it anywhere, in this thread or the other one currently going.

There was a humorous exchange between Little Hawk, Smokey, and me, but that was obviously a matter of kidding each other.

As I say, perhaps you are the one who lacks a sense of irony and are not able to recognize humor.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Sandman
Date: 09 Nov 08 - 04:46 PM

can we keep the English Concertina out of this.
I have spoken to my tinas,and they do not wish to be associated with David Franks,they are quite delighted that I play chords,single line harmonies,melody played off the beat[and occassionally shock horror syncopation],melody and accompaniment[they sometimes like to pretend they are duet concertinas,its a bit like concertinas cross dressing]and they have even recorded Dill Pickle rag,Washington Post and other non English material such as Blues.
http://www.dickmiles.com

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 09 Nov 08 - 05:29 PM

WaV, can you please identify these 'pro-immigrationists' of whom you speak?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 09 Nov 08 - 05:40 PM

David, you characterize me, and everyone else who takes issue with your ideas as "pro-immigrationists." I am neither pro nor anti immigration. Immigration is a fact of life in this world. There is nothing, really, that you or me or anybody else, including the United Nations, can do to stop it, short of a state of global tyranny.

Besides, trying to defend an untenable position by slapping labels on those who disagree with you is often a mark of a bigot. "All you (whatever label you chose). . . ." thereby trying to lump everyone who disagrees with them, no matter how diverse, into one single pigeon-hole.

I suppose, if I were asked to take a stand, I would indeed be "pro-immigration." I see the movement of peoples of different cultures from one place to another as having great potential for cross-cultural enrichment, which is all to the good. Cultures are not static and never have been. They are fluid and ever-changing. You cannot freeze a culture at some point or you will kill it. Also, I would never want to limit the freedom of people of good will to live anywhere in the world that they chose.

And an additional point: I have never yet met a bigot who didn't vociferously deny that he or she was a bigot and were highly offended by the charge. Then, they would proceed to say something beginning with the word "But—" and then prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were, indeed, a bigot.

As you keep doing, over and over again!

Take a good look in a mirror.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 09 Nov 08 - 06:06 PM

But have you learned anything from the wisdom offered you?

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 09 Nov 08 - 07:44 PM

To Concur with Uncle Dick Miles.
WAV!
Leave the Concertina alone...What did it ever do to you? God forbid that you ever saved up enough dole money to buy one.
But Dick....Cross Dressing concertinas? Sounds like fun.
Which one gets the Tu-Tu?
I've played with all three (possibly 4 or 5) systems at once, as I know you have.
Have never knowingly just played the "One line melody" How boring would that be, all of the time?
Still feel English though....Must be going mad.
Reading this thread makes me think that I am!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 09 Nov 08 - 07:53 PM

Jaysus.....I got to get 1400!!!
Do I get an award?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 09 Nov 08 - 07:57 PM

Condolences, I think, Ralphie. . . .

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 09 Nov 08 - 09:35 PM

Congratulations Ralphie, you've won 12 hours stuck in a lift with WaV and his English Nationalist Flute.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: catspaw49
Date: 09 Nov 08 - 10:22 PM

Wavyracist Dude!!! You need to read all the posts and read for comprehension. Note this post following my previous one.....Go back and look Jerkwad.....its there:
******************************************************************************************************


Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: catspaw49 - PM
Date: 09 Nov 08 - 09:15 AM

And Wavyracist......Just for your enlightenment since you obviously know fuck all about modern English OR world culture.........

H3>"Play That Funky Music" (also known as "Play That Funky Music, White Boy") is a funk rock song written by Robert Parissi and recorded by the rock band Wild Cherry. The song hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 on September 18, 1976. It was also the basis of a top five U.S.A. hit for Vanilla Ice in 1990. The song also was #10 in the UK and is now listed at #73 on Billboard's Greatest Songs of all time."
The song was inspired by a black audience member who shouted, "Play some funky music, white boy" while they were playing at the 2001 Club. Lead singer Robert Parissi decided they should, and wrote down the phrase on a bar order pad. They later recorded it in Cleveland with a Disco sound. Although the band was concerned about the lyrics, Parissi insisted on keeping them.

Now I dunno' about # 73 all time but the phrase has certainly become part of our almost shared language. Here's another phrase brought about by an overwhelming majority opinion of folks on this thread and your other crapass threads as well...........

David Franks is a racist and a bigot.

Spaw
***********************************************************************************************

Understand? Probably not, but who cares? Thanks Don.....I am a lot of often disreputable things but racist and bigot have never been mentioned in that regard.

Spaw

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 10 Nov 08 - 12:55 AM

Normally I couldn't give a toss what colour anybody is, but I'm assuming Spaw is white. If that's the case, how the heck can it be racist for a white person to call another white person white? I think WaV, what Spaw is trying to tell you is that you're a bigot and a racist. How about showing us some real evidence to the contrary?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 10 Nov 08 - 01:27 AM

Hey Smokey. Thats not nice.
Nobody should suffer that.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 10 Nov 08 - 03:17 AM

Ralphie -

I've played with all three (possibly 4 or 5) systems at once

a) What are systems 4 and 5? I'm intrigued.
b) How many hands have you got?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 10 Nov 08 - 03:29 AM

Hi Pip...
The English
The Anglo
Duets...
MaCann, Crane (Triumph), Jeffries, and latterly Hayden.

I play Macann meself, but can get some sort of tune out of the others on a good day, though the Jeffries Duet does my head in!!
Number of hands.....Two, surprisingly!
Didn't mean to put "At Once" That would be silly, obviously!!
But, lets not tell Wav. He might be tempted to take it up.
Mind you, at current prices he probably couldn't afford one anyway!
Cheers Ralphie

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Howard Jones
Date: 10 Nov 08 - 04:08 AM

WAV, I have friends who were born and brought up in England, and who went to work abroad (some in Australia) for a couple of years before returning home. I wouldn't call them "immigrants", but nor would I call them "repatriates", as they were not repatriated but made their own choices about where to live.

You moved to Australia in infancy (which your parents presumably intended would be permanent), grew up there and lived there for 30-odd years. You then moved to the UK. How is that not immigration?

You are welcome here, and we welcome that you wish to assimilate and become properly English. What is not welcome is that you try to spread your discredited political ideas and barmy notions of what English music should be. We are trying to help you, because you keep getting your attempts at Englishness utterly, spectacularly wrong.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 10 Nov 08 - 05:16 AM

To be Sung to a Traditional Tyneside Melody (Here)

Wavy's got an English Flute
Doley! Doley!
No matter what, it will not toot
Doley-a!
For sucking is all he really knows
Doley! Doley!
One day he'll have to learn to blow!
Doley-a!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 10 Nov 08 - 05:28 AM

"Mind you, at current prices he probably couldn't afford one anyway!" (Ralphie)...that's about the only accurate thing posted since my last one.

And the only one who bothered with Catspaw's use of the term "whiteboy" (above) was Smokey with...
"Normally I couldn't give a toss what colour anybody is, but I'm assuming Spaw is white. If that's the case, how the heck can it be racist for a white person to call another white person white? I think WaV, what Spaw is trying to tell you is that you're a bigot and a racist. How about showing us some real evidence to the contrary?"
In my poetry and on forums, I've never said immigrants from this or that part of the world are better or worse - I've only questioned the act of immigration/emigration itself; and I've suggested that regualtions should be stronger than the status quo.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Nov 08 - 06:50 AM

I tell you what WAV, you've received a right kicking here but you're still going.

I think your politics stink, but at least you're sticking to your guns and giving a bit back.*








*However, please take the musical advice offered - it really is fundamental to being a traditional player.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,stigweard sans cookie
Date: 10 Nov 08 - 07:33 AM

That was me above - more bleedin' computer problems . . .

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Sandman
Date: 10 Nov 08 - 07:53 AM

To use cricketing terms,wav has had his middle stump,off stump leg stump,systematically hit,he has been bowled over,by a googly a full toss,a leg cutter and a chinaman,and like W G GRACE Refuses to exit to the pavilion,he believes like Grace,that the audience have come to see him perform.
WAV let me give you some tips,this is constructive musical criticism,get some voice lessons so that you can hold a note for a length of time without going flat,I would also advise an instrument other than the recorder,that can accompany your singing and help you to make a more varied sound,banjo, guitar etc.,,the didgeridoo would also help you with your breathing[no offence intended].

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Surreysinger
Date: 10 Nov 08 - 07:59 AM

All of that sounds like very sage and wise advice, Dick!! Without going through all the 1400 postings on this thread yet again, I'm pretty sure that David has been offered all of those pointers, individually, conjointly etc more than once ... but of course they were well worth saying again.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 10 Nov 08 - 08:33 AM

Cheers, Ralphie. Any thoughts on which 'tina would be easiest to pick up for a complete beginner? I've been daydreaming about getting an English, partly because I like the look of the system and partly because I've heard good things about the Jackie (which was available ridiculously cheap from the States in the summer, & is still pretty affordable).

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 10 Nov 08 - 12:10 PM

For the attention of Catspaw.

Dear Mr Spaw,

I refer to your posts to this thread of various insts, ultimos and penultimos. Whilst I can find no fault with your general sentiment and am of the humble opinion that it is a fine and beautiful name with which god-fearing parents might christen their little boy, I remain unconvinced how far you believe you will be successful in winning over the heart and mind of Brother Franks by continually referring to him as Wavylimpdick.

I shall not, however,ask you to desist.

I remain, yours faithfully,

Reverend Spleen Cringe

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 10 Nov 08 - 01:40 PM

Any thoughts on which 'tina would be easiest to pick up for a complete beginner? I've been daydreaming about getting an English, partly because I like the look of the system and partly because I've heard good things about the Jackie

Pardon me if I give my ten penn'uth woth here...

As far as I know there aren't any beginner Duets at a similar price to the Jackie. Concertina Connection who make the Jackie also make the Rochelle Anglo which sells for the same price.

As far as which system to choose, if you have a particular type of music in mind that may tend to lead you towards either the Anglo or the English but generally it's worth trying both and seeing which system makes the most sense to you.

For me the Anglo is obvious and the EC is a mystery wrapped in an enigma - for others it's the other way round.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: catspaw49
Date: 10 Nov 08 - 05:12 PM

Dearest Spleen,

I have taken your post under advisement and have given it due consideration. I have determined that your point is well taken. Although young Mr. Franks is indeed a "Limpdick" or possibly a "Broke-Dick" it is sincerely not the best way I might refer to him as I have no certain knowledge of either situation. You have given me "paws" for thought and I have determined you are right and I must change.

It is on that basis that I now will refer to him as WavyFunkyWhiteBoyRacist. This is a bit long, but it works for me and I hope it works for you as well.


Best Regards,

Spaw

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 10 Nov 08 - 05:23 PM

"And the only one who bothered with Catspaw's use of the term 'whiteboy' (above) was Smokey with..."
[blather]
"In my poetry and on forums, I've never said immigrants from this or that part of the world are better or worse - I've only questioned the act of immigration/emigration itself; and I've suggested that regualtions should be stronger than the status quo."

What the devil does that have to do with anything I said?? Whatever - Catspaw wasn't being racist, even if he's a green three headed tripedal (I made that up) fish-man fron Alpha Centauri. You, on the other hand, given the overwhelming evidence, are. The problem being the grounds on which you base your suggestion - they are racist. I find it very hard to believe that you cannot see that. There will always be, and always has been change, WaV; it is the one constant thing we can all rely on. Take some advice from King Canut.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,eliza c
Date: 10 Nov 08 - 06:52 PM

Stigweard, thanks for asking, it's absolutely fine.

David-"it's a traditional song that shall remain in my repertoire"-

   I don't believe I've ever been dismissed so by someone while they were in the process of using the fruits of the labours of me and mine to their own ends before. Part of me wants to tell you "you're welcome", part of me despairs and wishes my gypsy grandmothers had left me some curse or other I could put on you every time that song comes out of your mouth! Hot tea burns, anvils, pianos dangling overhead, that sort of thing. That is incredibly rude. Incredibly rude. You obviously have no idea how rude that is, how much you deserve to be dismissed for that alone if not for other things that you say.
I am not here to insult you. Let's not forget that you initially got in touch with me to tell me how you disapproved of my collaboration with Anglo-Asian musicians. I have been trying to help you broaden your knowledge of England's real traditions rather than just slagging you off which some are more than happy to do, and good luck to them in their righteous but pointless anger. It's bloody good car-crash viewing, but it doesn't half make you tired. Aren't you tired?
It is clear to me that you either have some condition that stops you from taking advice, even good advice, or you are dreamed up by someone in order to piss us all off and poison this board, which can be fairly poisonous all by itself sometimes, but is genuinely a good source of information and mischief. Whatever, you are a liability to yourself and the tradition and this place. I am happy to say you are a liability also to your own cause, although I also wish it wasn't so. I wish you were a genuine, openhearted advocate, and we were able to discourse intelligently and excite eachother about this thing we love. I really, really do. But that's what makes me a fucking idiot, and a PC one at that, along with everyone else here. Well done you for bringing that to our attention. I hope it gives you a real sense of achievement. I'm going to bed.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 11 Nov 08 - 03:44 AM

Hi Eliza.
Nice comment. But, will he listen? Doubt it!!
As for the Concertina question (After all this thread started about instruments. 100 years ago!)
I took up the Duet by mistake in 1973, not knowing anything about tinas, sytems, or anything much.
So I suppose the choice of system is a trial and error sort of thing.
If you want to play Wav's idea of one line playing, then the English would suit best. If your into polyphony, then the Duet wins hands down. (Wav would object, but so what?)
The Anglo is really good for bouncy dance music, and the Irish amongst us have turned it into a wonderful vehicle for their "Good" music.
My advice, Try them all! depends what you want to achieve.
You could do worse than getting hold of the 2 CD sets Anglo International, and English International. (The Duet one is still under construction!)
Regards to all.
Ralphie. (Phew, maybe this can become a thread about music again!)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 11 Nov 08 - 04:21 AM

Someone once questioned Eliza Carthy's collaboration with Argentinian accordionist Chango Spasiuk with the really silly: "But is it folk?"
This was quite funny in a sad sort of way, to which the only possible reply was "don't know, don't care but it's bloody good music".
I cannot fathom how stupid and insulting it must be to her to have some ignorant Australian taking her to task for playing with fellow citizens of a slightly different ethnic origin, or more importantly (to this whiter than white immigrant), slightly darker skin colour.

I see we're moving on to telling the Irish what they can and cannot play. Good luck.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 11 Nov 08 - 06:12 AM

"But that's what makes me a fucking idiot, and a PC one at that, along with everyone else here."

No it isn't. It's what makes us people who are happy to freely impart the wisdom they've learnt, encourage and cajole newcomers to the music and to care enough to get worked up about it.

WAV has wound me up royally on a couple of occasions, and I can't decide if he's a wind-up merchant, enthusiastic but deluded or even not very well. Some of the responses on his threads have been quite ugly and while this is partly due to the frustration of posters in getting their messages through it's also because WAV has been so utterly intransigent all some folk can do is scream at him. His political opinions may be odious, he may not be articulate in expressing what he really means and we're getting the wrong end of the stick, we may not be intelligent enough to comprehend what he is saying, or he may simply be playing us all like fiddles for his own amusement.

A Tibetan Buddhist nun once told me Buddha teaches us all people are teachers, even those with whom it can seem we have no common ground. If this the case then WAV is a teacher to be cherished. The threads he started contain some of the best advice ever seen on this website for a newcomer to any of the traditions of our Islands. To be given access to some of the people who have posted here and expressed their opinions and thoughts is a great opportunity - one that I certainly have taken something away from. have a look through the tirades, rants and bullshit and there are gleaming nuggets of wisdom to be found.

One more thing. WAV's opinions may strike many of us here as contemptible and backward but they are shared by many more people in his beloved England that many of us might care to admit. It may be naive of me, but I always think folkies have a broader outlook on life than many people, and tend to embrace multiculturalism and enjoy the benefits of living in a rich and diverse society. We understand that even the divisions within to our own peoples here on these Islands are the result of ignorance, laziness and intolerance. However tens of thousands, possibly millions of people in this country don't see it that way and maintain the sort of opinions that perpetuate old animosities and misunderstandings that should have been put to bed a long time ago. If, as many think, WAV's opinions are of this ilk then perhaps he truly is home in England and in tune with so many of his fellow countrymen, where ignorance of their own traditions and the lack of tolerance to people who come to live here for whatever reason is the norm, not the exception.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Paul Burke
Date: 11 Nov 08 - 06:28 AM

The Anglo is really good for bouncy dance music

So's the duet Ralphie!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Surreysinger
Date: 11 Nov 08 - 06:40 AM

And so we trundle on ... Stig - good comments, and very charitable and tolerant. You (and Ralphie earlier) are quite right to say that there have been nuggets of information and wisdom contained within this thread... shame about having to dig and wade through the rest of it. I swore I was going to give up reading it, but I'm ashamed to say it really is car crash material, and spectating is exceedingly tempting. Moreover, it's like that sore itch that you can't ignore - you have to keep scratching it... and voila, when the enormity of yet another of WAV's postings causes the boiling over point to be met, the need and urge to make another post is felt!

It's quite obvious, and such a shame, that WAV is never going to accept that there may be some point in the musical advice he has frequently and normally very charitably and thoughtfully been given. Sadly I think Ralphie is mistaken in hoping that the thread will revert to a discussion of music. (And by the way, Ralphie, I love the idea of taking an instrument by mistake - makes it sound as though the tina fell into your hands and forced you to start playing it! A magnetic compulsion, or some such?)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 11 Nov 08 - 06:59 AM

I'd like to clarify that my remark about moving on to telling the Irish what they can and cannot play was addressed to an anonymous guest's now disappeared assertion that the Irish should stick to uilleann pipes, and not to the post now above mine on how well the Irish have embraced the anglo. Which, of course, they have.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 11 Nov 08 - 07:01 AM

I always think folkies have a broader outlook on life than many people, and tend to embrace multiculturalism and enjoy the benefits of living in a rich and diverse society. We understand that even the divisions within to our own peoples here on these Islands are the result of ignorance, laziness and intolerance. However tens of thousands, possibly millions of people in this country don't see it that way and maintain the sort of opinions that perpetuate old animosities and misunderstandings that should have been put to bed a long time ago

To paraphrase a certain Captain Willard: Oh man, the shit piled up so fast on Mudcat you needed wings to stay above it.

Subject: RE: Musical Instruments Played In England
From: GUEST,Working Radish
Date: 11 Nov 08 - 07:44 AM

If you want to play Wav's idea of one line playing, then the English would suit best. If your into polyphony, then the Duet wins hands down.

Well, I'm thinking in terms of fairly unobtrusive accompaniment to singing, playing some melody as well as some chords - John Kelly's Polly Vaughan is pretty much the sound I'm after (although obviously he's playing harmonium). Definitely not bouncy dance music.

Re WAV, shall we just ignore him and talk about musical instruments?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Sandman
Date: 11 Nov 08 - 07:49 AM

the english concertina is great too,as are all the concertinas.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Will Fly
Date: 11 Nov 08 - 07:58 AM

I bought myself a fairly cheap 20 key (C/G) Anglo some months ago and am getting to grips with it in my not so copious free time. I've played harmonica for many years so the push/pull note pattern's not totally unfamiliar. However, I could so with a little advice as to whether there are any decent tutorials (books) that experts could recommend. I'm pretty good at playing tunes on most instruments by ear, but some good advice on the use of the bellows and the air valve would be appreciated.

Like many beginner instruments of this type, the buttons are also rather large. Once I think I've become a little more proficient, what middle-price models would you recommend? (If there are any, that is).

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Howard Jones
Date: 11 Nov 08 - 08:31 AM

Will, I suggest you visit concertina.net where you will get more advice and information than you thought possible on all aspects of the concertina. Alan Day (who also posts on here) has produced a tutor for anglo.

I sympathise with Ralph's "took it up by mistake". Good mistake, Ralph! I too liked the sound of the concertina (which I heard on an album, it happened to be Tony Rose playing an English) so I bought one. Like Ralphie, I was totally ignorant of the different types, or even that there were different types. The one I got turned out to be an anglo, so that's what I play.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 11 Nov 08 - 09:02 AM

Will.
Agree with Howards good advice. concertina.net is a well useful place to vist.
Not much good on the Anglo myself, but you'll find shedloads of advice there.
And Howard....To have been inspired by the late Mr Rose is something to be proud of. Bless him

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: trevek
Date: 11 Nov 08 - 10:07 AM

The Scottish bagpipes, of course. Because anything Scottish belongs to England!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Surreysinger
Date: 11 Nov 08 - 11:06 AM

I'll second the advice above about concertina.net given by much wiser and older (in terms of playing years, she says hastily) concertina hands than myself ( a newbie of 10 months' standing) ... there's more information on there than you could shake a stick at (whatever that may mean)... comparisons of systems, instruction manuals etc etc etc. I'd hankered after playing a concertina for years, but had thought on the advice I was given around 1990 that it might be an English.

However, after being unduly swayed by explanations of what a duet was by a certain duet player of long standing (I'd never heard of it as an option before then), and being allowed the chance to try one out ... that's what I now find myself learning to play.... and making up for years of lost time. It's swiftly become an addiction, and I, who always considered myself a singer and "not interested in tunes" am obviously suffering a sea change ... worrying?? Practice here we come again .... I need my fix...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 11 Nov 08 - 12:52 PM

Blimey....Have we managed to end Wavs utterings, and got back to music????
Maybe but I doubt it!
Irene. You're doing brilliant on the Duet....Another 30 Years should do!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: trevek
Date: 11 Nov 08 - 01:22 PM

On a more serious note I would echo an earlier post about Brass. It's more widely played and recognised than any other instrument, such as pipes or concertinas and is part of a solid working class tradition (if that's actually important). Think of brass bands in collieries, military bands etc.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Surreysinger
Date: 11 Nov 08 - 02:27 PM

> Blimey....Have we managed to end Wavs utterings, and got back to music???? Maybe but I doubt it!

Who knows, but make the most of it and live for the moment!!!

> Irene. You're doing brilliant on the Duet....Another 30 Years should do!

Well, that should be about the amount of time you've been playing it, shouldn't it... if I can get to your standard I shall be a very very happy bunny.... let's see if the arthritis gets me first, eh?? But thankee sir ... curtseys, blushes,and simpers winsomely.... and promptly falls flat on her face!!

Trevek ... not quite sure why you're mentioning brass (I can't face the thought of going backwards in this thread .. there are some things you shouldn't ask a person to do). Coming from a Salvation Army background, I do find I have an affinity for brass band music, and the sound of a really good band in full flight is incredibly stirring. For some years I attended the Music Summer School at Canford Summer School of Music in Dorset, and while I was working my way through the week singing close harmony works (jazz, songs from the shows, spirituals etc) there was another course on campus being run by principals from Black Dyke for the first few years. When it came to the students' concert at the end of the week, the experience of sitting four feet away from a 60 strong brass band playing the theme from Star Wars was, to put it mildly, visceral ... great stuff!!

And on a final (mildly) unrelated note - many congrats, Eliza on being confirmed as Vice President of the EFDSS at the AGM on Saturday. There was a very strong round of applause from those of us present - both for you and for our new President !

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 11 Nov 08 - 02:33 PM

Quite right Trevek, and that's a tradition which is far more likely to die out than 'English folk music' - whatever that is.. Not a lot to do with immigration either. Whilst I see no decline whatsoever in 'folk music' in the last fifty years, (quite the opposite in fact), I'm deeply saddened at what has happened to the brass band world. I grew up with them; virtually every pit and factory seemed to have one. Bloody good musicians too - essential to the job. Nearly all gone.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: catspaw49
Date: 11 Nov 08 - 02:51 PM

Just from this one Yank's point of view........Although there are many worthy instruments virtually all come from elsewhere. That's no big deal. I think for me this thread asks, "What instrument most suggests "England" to some dumbass guy like myself?"

Sam Pirt, Ian, and Bill Sables, sat in our living room playing accordion, guitar, banjo, melodeon, and I think someone even whipped up a whistle or two. In the style they played it would be easy to make a case for most of those things as an integral part of the English tradition. Many other instruments would qualify as well in that manner. But the one thing after all these years and friendships that still makes me think of England first are bells.......and specifically change ringing. It was first done and developed there and no matter where it has gone since, ringing changes is still an English endeavor.

Believe me, that's no insult. There are very few things like it anywhere. Just a dumbass opinion from the Ohio Country Ohio here in the Colonies.


Spaw

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 11 Nov 08 - 02:56 PM

From the evidence I've seen at the Durham Miners' Gala over the last few years I'd say the brass band tradition is alive and well, with some impressive young players coming through to keep the numbers and standards up. The pits may have gone, but the villages, the communities, and the pride, are still there.

Lots of it on You Tube - look for Big Meeting or Durham Miner's Gala 2008.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 11 Nov 08 - 03:01 PM

Blimey - I never knew change ringing was first developed here. - Thanks Spaw, from a slightly less iggorant Engrishman.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 11 Nov 08 - 03:03 PM

And thanks IB - I'll have a look. My observation was local rather than national, I hope you're right.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 11 Nov 08 - 03:07 PM

Change ringing is alive and well too, of course - and there's any amount of it on You Tube. Here's a wee clip from Durham - our old home town; we used to to park right here on Thursday nights for the Durham City Folk Cub just as the bell ringers were getting down to business. Set us up just right for a night of hearty chorus singing...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Gervase
Date: 11 Nov 08 - 03:08 PM

Pure brass does seem very much an English thing. Other countries often have percussion; drums, xylophones, jingling-johnnies and the like - but the English pure brass sound is, er, quintessentially English.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 11 Nov 08 - 03:19 PM

Lots of drums in the Colliery bands; bass, tenor, snare - excellent drummers too!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 11 Nov 08 - 03:20 PM

Elgar's 'Nimrod' (from Enigma vars.) played by a brass or silver band is about the most 'English' thing I've ever heard.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 11 Nov 08 - 03:49 PM

The most English thing I've ever heard...

That could be a very significant thread drift. This is the most English thing I've ever heard:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZYY5m9MZLI

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 11 Nov 08 - 04:10 PM

The most English thing there is:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=uWg048H_ssU&feature=related

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 11 Nov 08 - 04:29 PM

Bugger.

One more time . . .

Jim Eldon

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 11 Nov 08 - 04:30 PM

Nice one, Diane - I linked to that over at the JEAS thread for Hallowe'en.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 11 Nov 08 - 04:55 PM

Whether you like the syrupy nature or not, this Brass Band music may have a decent shot...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 11 Nov 08 - 05:17 PM

This. (Also a strong contender for "single most exciting thing I've ever heard".)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 11 Nov 08 - 06:09 PM

Or, slightly less unpredictably, this (which came out the year before the one above). There's the voice, of course, but there's also the rather plodding 'electric Morris' arrangement (which sounds very 70s and very English) and the wonderful brass section* that comes in halfway through (which sounds timeless and very English). And there's the knowledge that this song, or something very like it, was circulating on broadsides in the seventeenth century... It's powerful stuff.

*Actually sackbuts - a word which in turn sounds incredibly English, but actually comes straight from the French 'saque-boute', meaning 'pull-push'. Whereas 'trombone' comes from the Italian 'trombone', meaning 'daffodil'.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Surreysinger
Date: 11 Nov 08 - 06:19 PM

Errmmm, Ed, that's a ten minute clip from the Railway Children... I dotted in and out of it, but I couldn't find any Brass band music - care to say whereabouts in the clip it is??

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 11 Nov 08 - 06:49 PM

There's a crap silver band 10" in. Or I think that's what it is. There again, it could be an irony band.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Sandman
Date: 11 Nov 08 - 06:58 PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C35qNxq9KWc&feature=relate

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 11 Nov 08 - 09:11 PM

Nah, you're all wrong. (I'm your replacement WaV while he's 'gone walkabout')

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Poland
Date: 12 Nov 08 - 03:30 AM

The most famous of English bell-ringers... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKhMP2r4XGk&feature=related

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Nov 08 - 03:35 AM

And the best known brass band...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKQcApRudIs

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 12 Nov 08 - 04:15 AM

Love those Coventry bells. Reminds me of this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCg1NJFgV7U

Which is nice & English too of course...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 12 Nov 08 - 07:21 AM

"To use cricketing terms,wav has had his middle stump,off stump leg stump,systematically hit,he has been bowled over,by a googly a full toss,a leg cutter and a chinaman,and like W G GRACE Refuses to exit to the pavilion,he believes like Grace,that the audience have come to see him perform.
WAV let me give you some tips,this is constructive musical criticism,get some voice lessons so that you can hold a note for a length of time without going flat,I would also advise an instrument other than the recorder,that can accompany your singing and help you to make a more varied sound,banjo, guitar etc.,,the didgeridoo would also help you with your breathing[no offence intended]." (CB)...as much as I enjoyed VISITING Ireland, I will never do as you've done and "exit" England for that or any other country.
And, also unlike you, I'll keep working at just THE TUNES - as my English folky forebears did for centuries.

To Pip - at least we agree on concertinas, and I'm glad you managed to get folks talking about them, plus bells, brass, etc...and, yes, CB, I prefer the chromatic English concertina for the reasons you, and I, just gave.

Eliza - most of my repertoire I've learnt from the dots and following my flute and keyboards; but I have also learnt a couple of E trads (where I haven't found the dots and have just began to work them out myself) from the likes of Waterson:Carthy - but they are E TRADS, and surely that's okay within our ORAL TRADITION. (To go back to cricket for a moment, are you sure you're playing each ball on it's merrits?)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Will Fly
Date: 12 Nov 08 - 07:31 AM

Mmm...criticising the Captain, now, are we, Franks? A man whoe has more music in his little finger than you can ever hope for. No hope for you, cock. And, incidentally, how do you know what the devil your "folky forebears" were doing or singing centuries ago? Folky foreplay, more like...

And if you're going to exercise the merits of your BA in Humanities, then at least spell the word as "merits" and not "merrits".

And, dang me, you've learned a "couple of E trads" by ear, have you? Well, that makes you able to pontificate even more, I suppose?

Gawd 'elp us!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 12 Nov 08 - 08:21 AM

Whahey! Here's something else for the Quintessentially English Merit Award:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=9yQj4DMAsaY

And Pip - just noticed your link back there; classic stuff! Funny how you forget about these things.

___________________

Otherwise...

Wavy - if such things were possible, I'd tell you to go fuck yourself, which is basically what you're doing anyway - gratifying yourself with no regard for anyone else. Having rejected everything everyone's told you, you now proceed to advise on the nature of the ORAL TRADITION. Whatever else the ORAL TRADITION might be, it is not about copying songs off records & CDs - that is simply lazy, half-arsed sourcing because even after four years of posing as a folky you haven't got the first clue what English Traditional Song is actually about.

The tone of smug superiority you take with both EC & CB is a measure of what a nasty little self-righteous self-satisfied shit you really are. How fucking dare you question what anyone does? I hereby delete you from my various Myspace friends in the sincere hope that our paths never cross again.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 12 Nov 08 - 08:52 AM

This is my idea of English concertina. Also this (incidentally the fourth or fifth completely different interpretation of this song I've heard (counting my own); someone should do a compilation). Full disclosure: I've got a recorder (plastic, made in Japan) but mainly use it for converting tunes I know by ear to notes I can write down; I find its tone difficult to hit consistently & not rich enough to warrant the effort.

Bells always make me think of an odd line in The nine tailors - Lord Peter says, "Bells are like cats and mirrors - they're always queer, and it doesn't do to think too much about them." The odd thing is, I know just what he means.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 12 Nov 08 - 09:25 AM

"I hereby delete you from my various Myspace friends in the sincere hope that our paths never cross again."

Shine on - this is getting serious! Next people will be crossing WAV off their Christmas card lists and drawing moustaches on his picture. Oh, hold on . . .

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Surreysinger
Date: 12 Nov 08 - 10:12 AM

Justlistening to the Heywood Concertina Band with James Eastwood on "English International" - definitely not playing a single line .. lots of extraneous harmonies... oh dear!!!
By the way chaps - only another 37 or so postings before we hit 1500!!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Surreysinger
Date: 12 Nov 08 - 10:13 AM

Sorry - make that 32!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Paul Burke
Date: 12 Nov 08 - 10:16 AM

But the Heywood Concertina Band isn't Really Folk, is it? Just like brass bands play harmonies but don't count either, and neither do the Coppers. I do believe the Coppers were immigrants anyway, and as for Heywood people, it's arguable that they aren't even human, I know, I went there once.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 12 Nov 08 - 12:11 PM

I've got a recorder (plastic, made in Japan)

In dismay that my fingers were too big for the Garklein, I bought a plastic Aulos sopranino recorder in Manchester (Forsyths) on Saturday as something a) very cheap b) damn near unbreakable and c) ultra-portable; so portable is it, that when pulled into its 3 constituent parts it fits into the dinky little draw-string bag (bought from the Fair Trade shop in Liverpool on Monday for that very purpose), 14x9cms, along with a Chinese Kou-Xiang and three Vietnamese Dan-Moi with room to spare. This afternoon I recorded with it for the first time, a nice little no-age groove in the Traditional English Tertius Auris mode called Frigus Cavum, an MP3 of which you can download Here, gratis, secure, via YouSendIt.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Will Fly
Date: 12 Nov 08 - 12:45 PM

Hey IB - that's a cracking groove and a half! Amazing sound - playing it as I write this. Did you use any FX to create the piece, or just record everything straight and then mix down? As to Tertius Auris (3rd ear? My Latin is from long ago and imperfect), I know nothing about it, I'm afraid.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Surreysinger
Date: 12 Nov 08 - 01:08 PM

Paul ... LOL!!! Actually, I might agree that the Heywood Band probably isn't folk... but that depends on your definition ... oops... should I have said that?? Horse alert and all that?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 12 Nov 08 - 01:21 PM

Thanks for the kind words, Will - by way of explanation... I'm indebted to the Third Ear Band for invigorating my latent musical sensibilities in early adolescence and continuing to do so to this day. What this means is droning rhythmic repetition with improvised melodic lines referencing both atonality and medieval modality, and all points in between! Thus - Tertius Auris...

Being without my 8-track right now, I recorded the sopranino live into my Zoom H4 (along with a large Indian (?) cowbell and Shruti box drone) and then processed it using Ableton Live (3) in various layers along with a drum loop (recorded for me some years back by Sned from Generic) and a suitable soft-synth bass line, itself derived from the recorder improvisation. The beauty of Ableton is, is that once all the bits are in place, you're working in real-time, applying the various FX, filters & distortions (and vinyl scratches!) as an intuitive / spontaneous / organic extension of the process.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Will Fly
Date: 12 Nov 08 - 01:45 PM

Thanks for the info, IB. Ah - the Third Ear Band - I do remember them from long ago. Must investigate again. I've never used Ableton software but it certainly seems able (sorry!) to do some very interesting processing. I use Harmony Assistant for music writing, and it's very good, but what little processing I do outside of my Roland 8-track happens with Garageband and/or Audacity - both free.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 12 Nov 08 - 02:37 PM

In the immortal words of Terry Edwards (no relation), I don't know where that's coming from, but I dig it. In the neighbourhood of Loop Guru, I thought.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 12 Nov 08 - 04:21 PM

Nice restrained version of "Sally Free and Easy" there from CB - but the videographer ought to be lined up and shot. For the benefit of others who might make the same mistakes, how was it done? Just a very bad webcam?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,eliza c
Date: 12 Nov 08 - 08:27 PM

David, there are people who contribute to the gene pool of the tradition and there are people who do not. There are people who work extremely hard in order that you might make what you want out of our traditional music, have as much access to it as possible.
But we do not work for you. It's not that we demand your gratitude or anything, but learning other people's repertoires off their records, in essence taking their life's work as the base materials for your own ends, life's work that is intended to give to the tradition, and then demanding its ownership for in return for no endeavour of your own, is not the oral tradition (I can read just fine in lower case, thankyou). It isn't. It is a new thing, one that isn't necessarily bad as for some recordings are the only access that they have and the only way the new tradition has to keep going and flourish. But we do not want our commercial recordings and the fruits of our labours to be allied to your political agenda, it is anathema to us, and therefore you can't expect us to be quiet when we come across it. We are immigrants. The traveller side of the family especially must stand against what you believe. What is your stance on Gypsies I wonder? How do they fare in the new world order? Where do you put them?
When I grew up learning traditional songs from the traditional singers themselves it was considered the very least courtesy to ask, the same if by misfortune of geography you had to learn from recordings and you ran into them by chance, say at the National festival or at the House. No-one is stopping you from singing music that does in essence belong to you. Apparently no-one is stopping you from being blind to common courtesy as well as genuine concern for the state of your knowledge either. Choke on them all brother, they're all your's. But I will say it again. You are a tourist here. Tourist, tourist, tourist.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 12 Nov 08 - 09:24 PM

I don't think I want to hear WaV's views on Gypsies.. mind you, given that we're all descended from nomads, it'd be hard to say it wasn't traditional.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 13 Nov 08 - 12:28 PM

Nice one, Eliza fc. I reckon that just about sums it up.

And nice one, Insane... Ghost meets Jah Wobble meets your good self, methinks... and definitely part of our own good mongrel culture.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 13 Nov 08 - 12:55 PM

"Whatever else the ORAL TRADITION might be, it is not about copying songs off records & CDs - that is simply lazy, half-arsed sourcing because even after four years of posing as a folky you haven't got the first clue what English Traditional Song is actually about." (IB)...you told us after listening to, and quite liking, my RECORDING of "Cob a Coaling" you were going to do so yourself - which you did...so how did you learn how it goes IB?...And have you thought of having another try at uni or other adult education?...seems to me you could do with it. And your next post about buying a plastic recorder again shows how wildly changeable your thinking is - look back at what you posted about suchlike just a few weeks ago.

Eliza - as I said, I've just worked out the dots for "Cob a Coaling" by mimicking my singing with my English flute, because I couldn't find them anywhere...so, may I ask, how/from who did W:C get the tune for it? And accepting all the immigration/emigration (including that of Gypsies) that has occurred, we must still consider what's best FROM NOW ON: I say, nationalism (with respect for any Gypsies within a nation and/or indigenous peoples such as Aboriginal Australians) with eco-travel and fair-trade (via a stronger UN), rather than yet more conquest and economic/capitalist immgigration/emigration.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 13 Nov 08 - 01:39 PM

Come on WAV - while you're unemployed why don't you undertake a course of study and upgrade your moderate and outdated qualifications?

Read IB's posts and compare them with yours and know what erudition is.

Eliza I'm sure there is the odd curse somewhere among mudcat wisdom which could be used for this xenophobic fool.

You offend me for other people who I hold dear WAV.

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 13 Nov 08 - 01:42 PM

"nationalism (with respect for any Gypsies within a nation"

Phew, that's generous WaV, I'm sure they'll be very grateful to you, as no doubt the Aboriginal Australians already are since you emigrated here.

I'm sure you don't really need me to suggest where you stick your nationalist filth, so I'll not waste my time.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 13 Nov 08 - 01:58 PM

so how did you learn how it goes IB?

Since you ask, I've known the song since I first started going to folk clubs around 1976 via the singing of countless floor singers; also we used to sing a lot of the verses ourselves around the streets ourselves whilst guising for Bonfire Night. I confess that I've never actually heard the Watersons' version though, not first hand at any rate...

And have you thought of having another try at uni or other adult education?...seems to me you could do with it.

Further evidence, if any were needed, of your general small-minded shit-headedness. And to think I've been giving you the benefit of the doubt all these years; even going to far as to speak out in your defence. No such doubts now anyway, Wavy - so it's nice to see your true colours at last.

And your next post about buying a plastic recorder again shows how wildly changeable your thinking is - look back at what you posted about suchlike just a few weeks ago.

See my post 21 Oct 08 - 05:53 AM? Remember? The one that sparked off the entire Engrish Frute controversy?* Otherwise, show me a single word I've written about plastic recorders that is inconsistent with me owning and playing them. I may have pointed out the incongruities of you calling a plastic Japanese-made recorder an English Flute - but never once have I said I'd never own & play such a thing? I have literally hundreds of plastic ocarinas, whoopee-whistles, fowler-calls, bird calls, cuckoo calls, ducks, owls, warblers, whizz-sirens, tabor-pipes, penny-whistles, Chinese tweeters, Swiss warblers, fart whistles, reed-horns, fog horns, pan-pipes, recorders etc. etc. - they're an integral part of my work as a storyteller, folk musician and free-improviser.

Remember, I'm not the one under scrutiny here - you are, but only because of your self-published manifesto and your constant defence and promotion of same.

* I know it was Don who first coined the phrase but I believe it was my use of it that Wavy found a particularly convenient way to smoke-screen his racism. Note if you will the use of question marks to denote up-speak, just to make our hapless Aussie Tourist / Exile feel more at home.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 13 Nov 08 - 02:00 PM

have you thought of having another try at uni or other adult education?...seems to me you could do with it.

Just think, IB, you could end up as knowledgeable as WAV!

FROM NOW ON: I say, nationalism (with respect for any Gypsies within a nation and/or indigenous peoples such as Aboriginal Australians) with eco-travel and fair-trade (via a stronger UN), rather than yet more conquest and economic/capitalist immgigration/emigration.

Blimey, WAV - don't you ever bore yourself? I think if I ever quote you in future I'll do something like this:

***: I say, *** (with respect for any Gypsies within a nation and/or indigenous peoples such as Aboriginal Australians) with *** *** (*** *** ***) rather than *** *** ***

Or maybe we could give them numbers. It would save a lot of time.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 13 Nov 08 - 02:09 PM

I have literally hundreds of plastic ocarinas, whoopee-whistles, fowler-calls, bird calls, cuckoo calls, ducks, owls, warblers, whizz-sirens, tabor-pipes, penny-whistles, Chinese tweeters, Swiss warblers, fart whistles, reed-horns, fog horns, pan-pipes, recorders etc

Those little flat semi-circular rubber things with the flat metal bit in the middle that you stick on your tongue and make a really piercing whistle* - have you ever got any use out of one of those?

*It does, I mean.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 13 Nov 08 - 02:18 PM

Those little flat semi-circular rubber things with the flat metal bit in the middle that you stick on your tongue and make a really piercing whistle* - have you ever got any use out of one of those?

Swiss Warblers - they really are the most amazing things; similar to the Punch & Judy swazzle; lots for sale on the streets on Manchester on Saturday. Oh, and I forgot to mention nose-flutes & whistling straws...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Will Fly
Date: 13 Nov 08 - 02:31 PM

IB - do you use circular breathing when you're playing wind instruments? I've always been impressed by instrumentalists and singers who can do that.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 13 Nov 08 - 04:12 PM

I confess, I confess that 'twas I who cobbled up the "Engrish frute" phrase in my alternate version of the development of England's National Musical Instrument. If anyone of Japanese ancestry found my touch of whimsy to be offensive, then to you I duly apologize and beg your forgiveness.

To anyone else who deems it "racist" (such as David, who obviously pounced on it in a vain effort to divert attention from his own racist utterings), I suggest that they strive to perform an impossible sexual act upon themselves.

I have reached a point in my life where I do not suffer fools gladly. In fact, it is the fools themselves whom I feel should do the suffering.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 13 Nov 08 - 05:05 PM

IB, you say you have a foghorn?

<Paul Hogan>This</Paul Hogan> is a foghorn:

Nash Point

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 13 Nov 08 - 05:09 PM

"I suggest that they strive to perform an impossible sexual act upon themselves."

That almost sounds like an interesting challenge Don. I wonder if Brownhead Wankabout has ever done any yoga.. It does annoy me when people are so intent on being seen to be 'anti-racist' they see racism where there is none, make an undue fuss about it, and end up causing more than there was in the first place. As you say though, in this case it was just being used as a red herring and an attention grabber.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Gervase
Date: 13 Nov 08 - 05:36 PM

So, WAV, given the couple of days' rest we've had from your drivel, does that mean you've now got a job, or are you still intent on being a parasite and sponging off my taxes?
To be honest, I don't know why your don't fork off off back to Australia, you pathetic little economic migrant. I know the White Australia Policy is no more, but I'm sure you can find some fellow racists out there with whom to drown your sorrows. And, at the very least, you'd give my Australian mates something to laugh at.
Who knows, you might even be able to get a job and stop being such a burden on society and on the patience of people who are far more tolerant than they should be of folk like you.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 13 Nov 08 - 05:49 PM

IB, you say you have a foghorn?

Amazing picture, Jack - I've got an old postcard somewhere of one on Mull (I think!). Nice pics, but are there any recordings? Personally, I could listen to those old foghorns all day - at a distance of course.

The foghorns I've got are hand-held Acmes like This.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Les from Hull
Date: 13 Nov 08 - 06:25 PM

There's a foghorn right outside my living room window! You can read about the Spurn Lightship here and if you play the audio track at the top left of the page you can listen to its foghorn. Fortunately for me, they don't sound it now.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Les from Hull
Date: 13 Nov 08 - 06:26 PM

Sorry, can't tell my left from my right!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,eliza c
Date: 13 Nov 08 - 08:19 PM

So, from now on, Gypsies should have to do what they are not built or born to do and stay in one place? Our traditions would be a lot poorer without their contribution, and I'm not just talking about my mother and the generations before her. Tradition just does not work the way that you think it does. There are great and ancient nomadic traditions in the world that would be lost under your rules, traditions that rely on constant change, reinvention, the passing and integrating of new blood.
Our traditions do not spring from a single source and would not survive were they reduced to one.
As to where you should learn material from that's up to you, there's a whole world of research material out there for you to find out about; a man of your academic bent is no doubt eager to root it out for yourself, use it to its fullest extent and glory. You are by no means done yet as I'm sure you know. You do, don't you?
But you would just do yourself so much of a favour in your endeavours by exhibiting even the tiniest bit of grace. Now I'm erasing words that I really think and trying to be nice to you again. Time for bed.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Paul Burke
Date: 14 Nov 08 - 04:01 AM

And accepting all the immigration/emigration (including that of Gypsies) that has occurred,

Blimey, how many hundred years do you have to live here before you stop being an immigrant? I wonder if Wavy Davy has checked his DNA to make sure it's fremdenrein?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 14 Nov 08 - 04:04 AM

a man of your academic bent

WAV,

Just so you don't get the wrong idea, Eliza was being ironic....

Ed

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 14 Nov 08 - 04:29 AM

Britain's loudest foghorn: Souter Lighthouse

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 14 Nov 08 - 04:30 AM

Oh, and nearly forgot...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 14 Nov 08 - 04:30 AM

1500!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 14 Nov 08 - 04:44 AM

Poor old thread!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Nov 08 - 04:55 AM

They say, old man, your thread will die
(And they say so, and we hope so)
They say, old man, your thread will die
(Oh poor old man)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Surreysinger
Date: 14 Nov 08 - 06:43 AM

Hope that last guest doesn't get wiped - it's a good rewrite, worthy of the Nice But Dim Knight thread... and Ed, how sad.. it's quite obvious you were trying for the 1500   :-)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 14 Nov 08 - 08:24 AM

OK, I'm beginning to smell a rat here. This message thread has been started on www.thesession.org, an Irish Traditional Music forum:

http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/19731

The sixth post down is the telling one . . .

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 14 Nov 08 - 08:32 AM

WAV and TheSession were made for each other.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Rich
Date: 14 Nov 08 - 08:46 AM

Stigweard, so is one further down....

"James, you asked for an opinion about Walkabout Verse. Going on the Myspace page I'd say his recorder playing is about as good as his singing"

Sorry WAV/David/James Kingston or whatever your name(s) is(are) but you did ask for an opinion.

I think he means its 198920 (for any code breakers out there).

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 14 Nov 08 - 10:09 AM

I had a feeling he was a wind-up merchant. Now we know.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 14 Nov 08 - 10:42 AM

Stigweard,

I don't think that this 'James Kingston' is WAV. If you look at a different thread on the session site, it would seem that people think it's a character called 'dickens metrognome' who has been posting there a good while (but is also a wind up merchant - the recorder in Irish Music is something they argue about a lot)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 14 Nov 08 - 12:57 PM

"his racism...hapless Aussie Tourist / Exile feel", IB - who already knows I was born here and have lived here many years as an ENGLISH REPAT...but, for those who are still interested, my collection of poems is chronological from 0-35 years of age.
And to the last few - I'd never seen that forum until I just clicked Stigweard's link.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 14 Nov 08 - 01:08 PM

No, I don't think that was David's post. Although it expresses the same kind of cultural folk tyranny that David espouses, it was too articulate and coherent to have been written by David.

Unless he's much craftier than I think he is, but I really doubt it.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 14 Nov 08 - 01:50 PM

Chronologicalfrom 0 - 35......

Some infant

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Surreysinger
Date: 14 Nov 08 - 02:25 PM

Damn - I was just going to put something along those lines ... writing poems at 0 is impressive ... but unlikely... nay impossible!!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 14 Nov 08 - 02:46 PM

So, WAV has managed to get himself adopted by a braindead green-beer wannabe-Irish music site as an icon of shite recorder playing and has thereby reinforced their dimwitted prejudices about the recorder in general.

Gee, thanks.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Gervase
Date: 14 Nov 08 - 02:49 PM

I dunno - babies are probably quite good at rhyming - ga and ga, ba and ba and all that. Shame that the ability seems to have atrophied in WAV.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 14 Nov 08 - 05:22 PM

"Smokey - yes I've retired from versification, having said what I wanted to..."

I see.... so you're happy for everyone to think you're a workshy nationalist bigoted racist immigrant loser then? Not to mention a dreadful poet, a hopeless musician and a lousy singer? Sorry if I've missed anything, but you're such a complicated and interesting character.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 14 Nov 08 - 05:36 PM

". . . I've retired from versification, having said what I wanted to. . . ."

That gentle, warm breeze you just felt was the World of Poetry sighing a great sigh of relief.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 14 Nov 08 - 06:33 PM

Well you have to admit, as self-expression goes, it was a pretty effective bout of versification.

Personally I think he's only on here to get a girlfriend.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 14 Nov 08 - 07:13 PM

You have to admire WAV's novel approach of 'collecting' tradition material. Think of the wasted effort that Sharp et al. that could have been saved if they had just sung the songs themselves and transcribed their own versions ;)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 15 Nov 08 - 05:27 AM

WAV relentlessly urges people to read the inane drivel he thinks is poetry, he seems oblivious to the fact that no one gives a shit about it, it's crap man, get real for once in your life.

eric

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 15 Nov 08 - 05:33 AM

"No, I don't think that was David's post. Although it expresses the same kind of cultural folk tyranny that David espouses, it was too articulate and coherent to have been written by David.
Unless he's much craftier than I think he is, but I really doubt it." (Don Firth)...do you have much respect for the late Ewan MacColl (see my Top Friends for a link, if you like) Don?...at his, among other English folk clubs of the time, folks were strongly encouraged to perform from their own culture.
To Stu and Surreysinger, etc.: I began writing my chronolgoical collection (covering from 0-35 years of age) in the 1990s, so, obviously, the early ones are retrospective, and the latter contemporary - hence they have the season and year attached to them (see, if you wish, "A South Shields Walkabout", e.g., just posted on The Weekly Walkabout thread, below the line).
To SPB-Cooperator: I've only "transcribed" when the DigiTrad, or other, notation goes below middle C - the lowest note on my tenor-recorder/English flute...as I've said, my way is to keep trying to play as I sing and sing as I play the TUNES.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 15 Nov 08 - 05:42 AM

This is like a stuck record.
Can't we unplug him, or take his batteries out?
As Eric the Red says. WE DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR GOOD LIFES WORK OR YOUR BLOODY RECORDER.......GO AWAY AND LEARN SOME HUMILITY..
Come back in a few years when you've done that

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 15 Nov 08 - 05:46 AM

"transposed" sorry.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 15 Nov 08 - 05:49 AM

Smokey said..."He's only on here to get a girlfriend"
(That conjures up some bizarre and slightly appaling images!)
If he is, I don't hold out much hope!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 15 Nov 08 - 05:57 AM

GO AWAY AND LEARN SOME HUMILITY..

Ralphie,

The only way that will happen is if we ignore him. We seem incapable of doing that...

Ed

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 15 Nov 08 - 06:39 AM

The comma after eg is so American don't you think?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 15 Nov 08 - 09:03 AM

Hey Ralphie, this moron is oblivious to anything that insults or disagrees with his moronic ideas, his conception of the world is blinkered to put politely, in his own mind he simply cannot be wrong, ever, about anything, and nothing will ever alter his view, he is a self made man who worships his creator.

I wonder if WAV ever ponders on the thought, why does no-one ever agree with me, or even like me ? I seriously doubt it.

eric

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 15 Nov 08 - 09:36 AM

...just heard the rugby crowd at Murrayfield singing "Flower of Scotland" (also on my Top Friends, link just above, if you wish) with just the tune played on just the Scottish highland pipes - sounded good to me folks.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 15 Nov 08 - 09:52 AM

Flower of Scotland

And the point of this reference is what, exactly?

Roy Williamson of 60s singalong pop group the Corries made this up. It's about the battle of Culloden, I think.
Those who know a thing ot two about Scots trad/In The Tradition music say fields where people run about chasing balls are quite the place for it.
A truer refection of Scotland's history and heritage, Hamish Henderson's Freedom Come All Ye, is infinitely preferred, were Scotland to opt, dubiously, for a "national" anthem.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 15 Nov 08 - 11:27 AM

Harmony is used by the bagpipe. The link will give you some simleexamples.

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 15 Nov 08 - 02:00 PM

WaV - Whilst it's fine to sing or play monophonically, and only perform a self-imposed limited range of material, the greater majority of people would find that unentertaining. A large proportion of musicians and singers wouldn't enjoy doing it. Many of us like harmony and texture, and we much prefer our audiences to be entertained, happy, and wanting more. Most performers like to eat as well. Folk music would die. It has to entertain enough people to maintain its existence. It has to be done in a way that a contemporary audience can derive some pleasure from, otherwise it doesn't get propagated. You play, sing and listen to what you like - we'll do the same. Live with it.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 15 Nov 08 - 03:28 PM

". . . do you have much respect for the late Ewan MacColl, Don?...at his, among other English folk clubs of the time, folks were strongly encouraged to perform from their own culture."

David, I met Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger at the 1960 Berkeley Folk Festival. I heard them in concert and in several workshops. And one evening, I had a chance to converse with them informally at a party after one of the concerts. Then once again in the early 1980s, they passed through Seattle on a concert tour, when I met them again and had a chance, with a few other Seattle singers, to swap songs and conversation with them at yet another post-concert party.

Yes, I know that MacColl encouraged people to perform songs from their own culture. But this suggestion was made most strongly at a time when practically everybody in the English folk clubs were singing American folk songs. I fully understand his reason for urging people to sing songs from their own cultures.

I do not believe he intended that this admonition become an ironclad rule for all people for the rest of Eternity.

Here's a little tip to aid you in your "walkabout" through life, David. It is not enough to know the guidelines for a particular activity or situation, one needs to know the underlying reasons for those guidelines.

If you meditate long and hard about this, it could help you avoid saying stupid things.

####

And in his post just above, Smokey is right. If I were limited to singing only songs of my own culture, first of all, I would have to figure out what that culture is. Born in Los Angeles, California, raised in Seattle in the Pacific Northwest, and subject to an early diet of pop music on the radio and opera and classical music later on, I discovered the wide field of folk music in my very early twenties.

What are the songs of my culture? Frank Sinatra? Perry Como? Opera singers like Ferrucio Tagliavini or Italo Tajo? Should I be singing California gold rush songs or the songs of Pacific Northwest loggers and fishermen (which I do, by the way, among many others)?

Once discovering folk music, I dipped into the wide ocean of songs that were available:   songs from all over the United States and Canada (both of which are big countries with a whole patchwork of different cultures), and songs from the British Isles—England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales (likewise with a variety of different cultures within each of these), along with a small number of songs from the European continent, in the original languages.

Were it not for the wide variety of songs available to me to learn and sing, my musical interests would have probably moved on to something else, and I wouldn't have enjoyed the life I have, making my livelihood by entertaining people, and informing and educating them about the infinite variety of that which we call "folk music."

So tell me, David:    What, to your mind, should I be allowed to sing?

And don't say "Amerindian" drumming and chants! There are a couple of problems with that. First, there are several dozen Native American tribes, each with its own distinctive style of music. So—which? Iroquois? Cherokee? Arapahoe? Seminole? Haida? Sioux? Apache? Nez Perce? Navaho? Which?

And the second problem:   on one occasion, in 1953, I saw an exhibition of Pacific Northwest Native American (not "Amerindian," as you so quaintly put it) singing, drumming, and dancing. And this exhibition was done by anthropologist and artist, Bill Holm—who was not Native American. This was my one and only live and in person exposure to examples of Native American culture.

It would be very difficult to make a case that Native American music is part of my culture.

So again, David:   I your view of the world, what is my culture? What songs should I be allowed to sing?

And what songs should I not be allowed to sing?

I await your edict.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 15 Nov 08 - 03:49 PM

I've got a three year old son (late in life, it's a family tradition) and I want him to grow up with as wide a range of music as possible. Anyone who wants to limit that is simply not worth the oxygen.

Yesterday he said to me: "Daddy, what's Diddy Wa Diddy?" then asked me to sing it for him. I was the proudest man on earth.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 15 Nov 08 - 04:48 PM

"So tell me, David:    What, to your mind, should I be allowed to sing?" (Don)...the only way I'd like to answer that is by saying, strictly hypothetically, if I'd stayed rather than visited America in the 90s, I'd probably be listening to Amerindian chants, drums, and flauting; and attempting Country/Rock...perhaps having a go at the lap-steel (although the ones that require co-ordinating feet and knees, as well as both hands!, would probably be beyond me, frankly), e.g. But, as an Englishman, I enjoy LISTENING to the likes of Bon Jovi, The Beach Boys, some Country singers, etc, as well as Amerindian musicians, such as those on my Top Friends.

Diane - "Flower of Scotland" includes the line "those days are gone now", before looking forward.

(P.S:, for what it's worth, I thought Scotland, who finished the stronger, were a tad unlucky to lose to S.A.)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Gervase
Date: 15 Nov 08 - 04:58 PM

WAV, what the fuck do you mean by Amerindian? I always assumed that was a lazy, eurocentric way of talking about indigenous people from South America. What are they doing north of the Darien Gap?
For Pete's sake, every time you put a paw on the keyboard you get something egregiously wrong. Just give it a rest, you numpty.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 15 Nov 08 - 05:05 PM

A complete and utter waste of oxygen.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 15 Nov 08 - 05:39 PM

Well . . . that would appear to be the pattern:   ask an intelligent question, get a stupid answer.

(Sigh)

Don Firth

P. S. Beach Boys!?? Me? Singing Beach Boys covers? Yeah, sure! When they build a ski-jump in Hell!!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 15 Nov 08 - 05:47 PM

Smokey said..."He's only on here to get a girlfriend"
(That conjures up some bizarre and slightly appaling images!)

I dunno. I could imagine Eliza or Diane suddenly feeling a desire to experiment with domination by duct tape.

Diane - the battle in "Flower of Scotland" is Bannockburn, not that knowing that makes the song any better. The Corries were better than a "singalong pop group", but not with that one.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 15 Nov 08 - 06:44 PM

The author of The Flower of Scotland sings it with guitar accompaniment and of course vocal harmonies

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 15 Nov 08 - 06:46 PM

If David does manage to find a girl friend, I hope he remembers to get a bicycle pump to inflate her with.

Don Firth

(Naughty naughty, Mr. Firth!!)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 15 Nov 08 - 07:34 PM

Flour of Scotland (When will we see your like again?)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 15 Nov 08 - 08:57 PM

Link doesn't work - Dave doesn't like you linking directly to images on his site.
I can guess what it's of from the URL, I used to live just along the shore from it.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 16 Nov 08 - 02:56 AM

If WAV indeed finds a girfriend at all, let's all pray that they don't breed.

eric

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 16 Nov 08 - 09:16 AM

Gervase - I first heard the term "Amerindian", in Australia, from my American anthropology lecturer, and have since read/heard several others use it.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 16 Nov 08 - 01:07 PM

What about Aussiepom?

What accent should Jimmie Miller have used?

What about the thirty foot trailer?

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 16 Nov 08 - 01:12 PM

Oh and 'Go Move Shift' didn't reflect some sort of anti immigration stance of MacColl's

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 16 Nov 08 - 01:38 PM

"David, I met Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger at the 1960 Berkeley Folk Festival. I heard them in concert and in several workshops. And one evening, I had a chance to converse with them informally at a party after one of the concerts. Then once again in the early 1980s, they passed through Seattle on a concert tour, when I met them again and had a chance, with a few other Seattle singers, to swap songs and conversation with them at yet another post-concert party.

Yes, I know that MacColl encouraged people to perform songs from their own culture. But this suggestion was made most strongly at a time when practically everybody in the English folk clubs were singing American folk songs. I fully understand his reason for urging people to sing songs from their own cultures.

I do not believe he intended that this admonition become an ironclad rule for all people for the rest of Eternity."



He shoots, he scores.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 16 Nov 08 - 02:26 PM

And isn't it written that McColl based his singing style on the Muezzin and other melismatic & decidely non-English vocal techniques, & encouraged others to listen outside the box for similarly essential inspiration?

Such inspirations notwithstanding*, in terms of ethnomusicology, I believe the cause of indigenous music & culture is best served by indigenous people - which is why the thought of a Naturalised Australian throwing away his Own Good Culture to mimic that of a country which he has no evident appreciation or understanding of a tad irksome.

*I, for example, use various non-Western musical hardware to accompany my performance of English Speaking Traditional Song but I make no attempt to play the music of the cultures this hardware comes from. Please note, this is a personal preference and not a manifesto, published or otherwise. Similarly, when I tell Norwegian folk tales, I do so in English.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 16 Nov 08 - 03:12 PM

David, Native Americans themselves do not agree as to how they wish to be referred to. Some object to being called "Indian" because it misidentifies them (and indicates that Columbus and many who came after him didn't have a clue as to where they really were and assumed that they [the "Indians"] were inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent or of what we now refer to as "the East Indies"). Some dislike "Amerindian" or "Amerind" because it merely takes "American" as an adjective and the original misidentification and turns them into a compound word.

On the other hand, some Native Americans don't mind it because it is brief, contrary to some of the convoluted attempts to be "politically correct."   For example, Native American author and poet Sherman Alexie says that he does not mind being called an "Indian."

By the way, you will note, if you scroll down in the link above, the number of novels and books of poetry by Sherman Alexie that have been published—not just on a web site, or self-published, but by big name publishers. Note also the many awards he has received for his literary efforts. At least one of his novels has been made into a movie.

And, also by the way, he doesn't go around in buckskins and feathers. He usually wears casual western dress and frequently wears a suit and necktie.

Sometime in the mid 1980s, I met a Native American writer (unfortunately, I do not remember his name, but he has several science fiction novels to his credit) at a Norwescon, a local science fiction convention (he, too, was wearing a suit, not feathers and buckskins). In a workshop in which we participated (on building a believable alien culture inhabiting another planet), he had a great deal to add to the discussion. One of the points he made which is most germane to this discussion is the following. Heed this, David, because it is important, relevant to your suggestion that Americans should do "Amerindian chanting and drumming."

He said that such things as chanting, drumming, and flute playing are more often that not ceremonies of one sort or another, generally of a religious nature, and they should not be performed out of the context of the ceremony. For this reason, they do not like it when anthropologists or ethnomusicologists try to record their music. To "perform" these chants by playing recordings of them, or for non-Native Americans to try to perform them, in essence, is to violate their equivalent of one of the Ten Commandments: "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord Thy God (the Spirits) in vain." They feel that for non-Native Americans to sing these chants verges on desecration.

So—out of respect for the culture(s) of the Native American peoples, your suggestion that Americans should do "Amerindian chanting and drumming" displays your lack of knowledge.

And lack of knowledge has been your problem all along. You know not whereof you speak. You should be trying to learn. Not telling others what they should or should not be doing.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 16 Nov 08 - 04:46 PM

Besides, David wants to play and sing the music of his ancestors - his "cultrual heritage". Relatively few Americans can claim Native American heritage. Many in the northeast can't trace their American heritage back more than a few generations, and have grown up with the music and food cultures of their own ancestors, may of whom were European.

Why would it be more relevant to my cultural inheritance to sing "Amerindian" music, when it is completely foreign to my cultural heritage? Surely the music of my Irish and Sicilian ancestors would be more relevant...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: catspaw49
Date: 16 Nov 08 - 06:31 PM

Let's face it.....Wavyfunkywhiteboyracist don't know jack-shit, ain't interested in learning jack-shit, and could give less than a shit that most folks find him to be a dickhead.

To sum up, his poetry is horrendous, his opinions are racist and bigoted, he's an arrogant fuckwit with limited knowledge, no abilities he can prove, and obviously no job since no one in their right mind wants this asshole around. He's a pathetic broke-dick jadrool with no redeeming social value.

Have a nice day!

Spaw

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 16 Nov 08 - 06:54 PM

Wanted: Employer with good sense of humour, N.E. area.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Nov 08 - 11:43 AM

Within the broader music industry, and beyond, what some get for their hour's work, compared with
others, is ridiculous and inhumane; hence, many relatively competent musicians within the folk-scene are
really struggling to make ends meet; so, if we like fair competition, we don't like capitalism. A better way,
as I've suggested in verse, is to accept that humans are competitive, and have strong regulations (partly via
nationalisation) to make that competition as fair as possible – whilst also providing "safety-net" support.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 17 Nov 08 - 12:15 PM

Guest - we should introduce you to WAV. He spouts similar drivel

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 17 Nov 08 - 12:54 PM

I presume that GUEST just above is David still in his pajamas.

". . . what some get for their hour's work, compared with others, is ridiculous and inhumane. . . ."

David, this is a common fallacy of people who really haven't thought the matter through. If you figure only the hour or two that you see them on stage, it would appear that the thousands of dollars that some musicians get is way out of line.

But—if you take what they receive for their time on stage, then deduct the amount of money they paid for lessons early on and the tuition they paid to a university music schools or to music conservatories, then divide it by the number of hours, weeks, and years of concentrated practice they had to put in to learn to do what you saw them do on stage, then you get a better idea of what their "hourly wage" really is!

They paid one helluva lot of money and put in a helluva lot of hours in practice to be able to earn the fees they charge for their performances.

Don't forget to factor in the immediate expenses of going on a concert tour, such as travel, hotels, taxis to and from the venue, and a whole host of other costs.

While attending the Cornish School of the Arts (a conservatory) some decades back, one of the most eye-opening courses I took was "the Business Side of a Career in Music." That was quite a reality sandwich!!

And this has nothing to do with capitalism. It has to do with just compensation for the amount of hard work the musician had to put in to get where he or she is. But then, I don't think you are fully acquainted with what that really entails.

Read, listen, and learn, David.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: catspaw49
Date: 17 Nov 08 - 01:18 PM

Wavyfunkywhiteboyracist..............I could care less about capitalism and fair is a place to go see the produce and tractors and quilts ant watch the horse pu;; and sulky racing. It has nothing to do with competition. Anyone who is truly competitive doesn't want a safety net.

Once again you speak without knowledge or even informed opinion. Yo're truly a dick...............

Spaw

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 17 Nov 08 - 02:40 PM

Don - you did put some words in my mouth in your second-last post, but some of the issues you raised are also raised during anthropology subjects. Frankly, I don't know if the Native American/Amerindian music on my Top Friends is secular or sacred - but they've decided to present it for others on myspace, and I've done my bit (and I genuinely like their sounds).

"Within the broader music industry, and beyond, what some get for their hour's work, compared with
others, is ridiculous and inhumane; hence, many relatively competent musicians within the folk-scene are
really struggling to make ends meet; so, if we like fair competition, we don't like capitalism. A better way,
as I've suggested in verse, is to accept that humans are competitive, and have strong regulations (partly via
nationalisation) to make that competition as fair as possible – whilst also providing "safety-net" support." No idea who the Guest who took the liberty of posting this is, but it's a quote of mine (probably copy/pasted) from here.
And, to Don, I still stand by it - but not in "pajamas", which I do not own!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 17 Nov 08 - 03:05 PM

David, just exactly what words did I put in your mouth in my second to last post? I can't see where I quoted you anywhere in that post, with the possible exception of your suggesting that Americans should do "Amerindian drumming and chanting," and I think I can find a number of instance where you said exactly that.

Please elucidate.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Sandman
Date: 17 Nov 08 - 03:48 PM

I cant find the thread about WAV and Jane Kingston and WWW.SESSION .ORG what was it all about.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 17 Nov 08 - 04:17 PM

As I said it was www.thesession.org, and I can't see it there any more. I guess they deleted it.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 17 Nov 08 - 05:52 PM

WaV, would you please define what you mean by 'fair competition' as applied to folk music, or indeed music in general? What measures would you propose to alleviate the 'unfair competition' which you seem to imply?

"I still stand by it - but not in "pajamas", which I do not own! "
That's just too much information..

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 17 Nov 08 - 06:03 PM

Before he explains that the UK common spelling is pyjamas I'll do it for him.

Unless...

He couldn't....

Not in the NE in our own good English winter.

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 17 Nov 08 - 07:14 PM

Who d'you think pays his heating bill?

A significant number of old people will die from hypothermia this winter - I bet WaV doesn't.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 17 Nov 08 - 07:27 PM

"Pyjama" is a Persian word that came into English via Urdu and describes an article of clothing which is also of Persian origin. The first person recorded in English as wearing pyjamas was Tippoo Sultan in 1800. So obviously WAV can't wear them.

"Depends" is of Latin origin so that's out too.

The obvious article of nightwear with a purely Anglo-Saxon name is "straitjacket".

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 17 Nov 08 - 09:28 PM

Anglo-Saxons? Foreign capitalist/economic immigrants the lot of 'em. Came over 'ere and corrupted our Own Good Culture, they did.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 18 Nov 08 - 02:50 AM

Woad is part of our own good culture, which was pushed into Wales. We should reclaim it as ours FROM NOW ON.

Trouble is it stains the sheets..

Atu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 18 Nov 08 - 03:47 AM

But according to here; "Woad is native to the steppe and desert zones of the Caucasus, Central Asia to eastern Siberia and Western Asia" so it is part of their good culture. (I do love the world being multicultural).

FROM NOW ON we should use this dye from own OWN good culture.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 18 Nov 08 - 10:06 AM

Re: fees

And also the performer is not doing other paid work for the other six hours of the day, so that would really be a daily rate so divide by seven for the hourly rate.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,MiZZ iNDiE
Date: 18 Nov 08 - 12:57 PM

YOU NEED MORE iNFORMATiON ON THiS PAGE By WHAT EVER TiME BUT MORE iNFORMATiON NEEDS TO BE PUT ON THiS PAGE ASAP

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 18 Nov 08 - 01:28 PM

Apparently, Mizz, at one time in olde England, each county had its own type of bagpipe.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Will Fly
Date: 18 Nov 08 - 01:40 PM

WAV:
Apparently, Mizz, at one time in olde England, each county had its own type of bagpipe.

Not proved, David - and a very controversial idea. Various people have tried to construct what they consider to be regional versions of the small pipes - but there's very little evidence to support the theories.

And please don't use the word "olde" for old - it's a meaningless variant on the spelling. Like using "ye" - which was purely an abbreviation for "the". "Ye olde tea shoppe" merely means "The old tea shop" - crap, pseudo-medieval imaginings of spelling.

See what I mean about being pulled up on Mudcat when you talk crap? Heed the advice!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 18 Nov 08 - 03:08 PM

"Apparently, Mizz, at one time in olde England, each county had its own type of bagpipe. "

WaV, that's an obvious attempt at red-herringsmanship if ever I saw one.. answerind the 'smap' and ignoring the awkward questions.

Don't rise to it folks, he already knows it's bollocks.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 18 Nov 08 - 03:10 PM

Good grief - I meant answering the 'spam'.. sorry.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 18 Nov 08 - 03:32 PM

Whan that ye Catfysshe first did swymme
In ENGLAND's own good Mudd
Some found its syngynge dulle and grymme
But others thoghte it good.

Yet some seyde, Catfysshe cannot synge!
No Fysshe makes such a sounde!
'Twould be a most outlandysshe thynge
And foreign, Ile be bounde.

But you may here that warblynge yette
Whan nyghtes grow darke and stille
Ye Mudcatte, syngynge, for a Bette:
Hay dilly, dilly dillye...

Noe Moral has thys woeful Verse,
Freindes, Brothers, Mothers, Grannies:
But thynke yowe, it could bee much worse -
At leaste yt rhymes and scannes.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 18 Nov 08 - 07:40 PM

Blymie, ande I thochte mie fpellynge waf badde.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 19 Nov 08 - 04:43 AM

Meezus jyste all crucking fighty, it all gone unintelligable in here.

eric

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 19 Nov 08 - 07:00 PM

Verily and forsoothe, Gudde Eric, thou hast to speake in ye Olde Tonnge, lest thou shouldst offende ye keepers of Ye Gudde Englische Customf who wouldst banische thee fromme ye lande at ye droppe of a hatte.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Paul Burke
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 03:07 AM

Apparently, Mizz, at one time in olde England, each county had its own type of bagpipe.

Back in ye Dayes of Merrie Olde Englande every town- every village- every street- had its own kind of bagpipe, and its own tradition.

Mind you, bagpipes were imported, an alien tradition probably from Scotland (or Alba). The native instrument before the Norman Yoke was of course the Anglo-Saxophone, with a different note for blow and suck.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 03:13 AM

No, the Irish gave Scotland the bagpipes, the Scots still haven't got the joke.

eric

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 04:04 AM

Staying with "Merrie Olde Englande" (PB), Shakespeare, in "Measure for Measure," does have the recorder referred to as a "little organ" and, if you so wish, both may be heard, along with a mention of the "merry organ" in my Christmas recording of "The Holly and the Ivy", which will be on myspace for about 6 weeks.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 04:19 AM

In "Hamlet" sorry.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 04:21 AM

From: eric the red

No, the Irish gave Scotland the bagpipes, the Scots still haven't got the joke
But then didn't the Scots come from Ireland, so the Irish gave the Bagpipes to the Irish who still haven't got the joke????? Oh dear - this is all so confusing!

As the Irish were being so generous, no doubt they stopped off in each English county as well, making slight changes before introducing the locals to their instrument (!?!?!?!) - possibly an attempt to befuddle the neighbours while they were being economic migrants coming over here to dig medieval canals?


From: WalkaboutsVerse

Staying with "Merrie Olde Englande" (PB), Shakespeare, in "Measure for Measure," does have the recorder referred to as a "little organ" and, if you so wish, both may be heard, along with a mention of the "merry organ" in my Christmas recording of "The Holly and the Ivy",

WAV we're well ahead of you here. We've already worked out the size of your organ and that you spend a disproportionate amount of time playing with it ;-)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,baz parkes
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 04:23 AM

I don't know why I'm bothering, but....

yes he does, but it's a mucky joke aimed at poor deluded Ophelia...and talking about poor and deluded....

And yes, he makes another reference when he talks to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern about how playing a pipe (Note!) is "as easy as lying"...strange how apt some accidental references are

Baz

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: KEVINOAF
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 05:12 AM

englands national musical nstrument---

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: KEVINOAF
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 05:14 AM

the arse-trumpet

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 05:23 AM

With apologies to Spike Milligan

I shoot the Hippopotamus with bullets made of platinum
Because If I used Leaden ones, his hide is sure to flatten 'em.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 05:49 AM

"yes he does, but it's a mucky joke aimed at poor deluded Ophelia..."

I don't think WAV understands country matters...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Surreysinger
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 06:06 AM

Kevinoaf ... the prime exponent of the fine instrument you mention was Le Petomane ... but wasn't he French ?
I note that WAV has now put up some Christmas recordings ... I think I shall decline the invitation to pop along and listen....

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 06:07 AM

"I just listened to "Down in Yon Forest" on WAVs myspace page. It is truly vile. Quite possibly the worst rendition of a traditional song that I have ever heard."

Followed closely by The Holly and the Ivy.

David, can you not hear that in Down In Yon Forest you're not even singing in the same key you're playing in?

Your bizarre, forced vowel intonation of "coovered" doesn't make you sound any less Australian, by the way.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Surreysinger
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 06:13 AM

Further to my last posting, herewith a Leonard Rossiter tribute

And there's only a single line of melody!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 11:07 AM

WAV is the 'Holly and the Ivy' in your respectful voice or your folk voice?

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 11:34 AM

From: Ruth Archer

"I just listened to "Down in Yon Forest" on WAVs myspace page. It is truly vile. Quite possibly the worst rendition of a traditional song that I have ever heard."

Followed closely by The Holly and the Ivy.

David, can you not hear that in Down In Yon Forest you're not even singing in the same key you're playing in?

Your bizarre, forced vowel intonation of "coovered" doesn't make you sound any less Australian, by the way.

I just popped onto the site to listen to his outpourings. I'll give him credit, it's the best laugh I've had in a long time. Is it possible he's actually got worse? Out of key, out of tune and timing all wrong - were you drunk when you recorded them WAV?

My 6 year-old said about 'Oh come all ye faithful' - "Daddy that's awful. Can you turn it off please, I'm trying to play!" - out of the mouths of babes?

Remember this is the guy who presumes to tell Eliza FC how she should perform.

I also had a look at his green/godly gardening post - apparently we're not allowed to grow non-native plants either, so it's Dandelions and Fat Hen for tea again.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 12:12 PM

Poulet Dodu Aux Dents de Lion? That's in Traité De La Cuisine Familiale. Don't think the WAV régime tolerates such Gallic influence.
I was eating my breakfast when I put on WAV's Xmas Toons. What I cannot fathom is how, if he plays through the tune (sort of) on a plastic whatever it is, he can then start singing a verse in a totally unrelated   key. Or why. But I was quite incapable of eating any more.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Will Fly
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 12:19 PM

Is the French for dandelion "pissenlit" - because it's supposed to make you wee the bed?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 01:20 PM

"What I cannot fathom is how, if he plays through the tune (sort of) on a plastic whatever it is, he can then start singing a verse in a totally unrelated   key."

It's a rare skill, normally requiring years of rigorous training. In his case a natural gift. Most of us couldn't hope to attain that level of musicality; we can but gaze in wonderment and humbly bow to His musical superiority, boundless knowledge and indisputable wisdom.

If them Watersons would only take a leaf out of WaV's book, they could be quite well-known by now.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 01:37 PM

I've just listened to WAV's latest recordings.

Brilliant. Keep it up.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 02:06 PM

When I hummed the tunes in the key that WAV was actually playing, he was almost singing harmony. Almost.


For shame, Wavey! You are a disgrace to singers of Top Line Melody everywhere!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 02:27 PM

Ruth, I don't think David is quite up to grasping the subtle—and sometimes not so subtle—puns that Shakespeare occasionally slips into his plays. . . .

David is singing about a quarter-tone flat throughout "The Holly and the Ivy," with occasional temporary explorations of other nearby keys.

Some years ago, my wife Barbara and a young woman named Deborah Reed sang "Down in Yon Forest" as a duet in a Christmas Eve service at a local church, with me providing a lute-like accompaniment on the classic guitar. Beautiful and haunting, with the candle-light, and those two voices blending, lofting, and reverberating softly through the church.

After listening just now to David's rendition (emphasis on the "rend"), I'm trying desperately to recapture the memory of the sound of Barbara's and Deborah's voices on that occasion.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 02:35 PM

Don - somehow you've just given me the best laugh I've had for ages. I can see you with a look of haunted desparation trying to expunge one and recall the other.

Just a picture in my head..

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 03:10 PM

This is kinda gamey (sorry), but some years ago I thought I was developing hearing problems and found out that it was no big deal, just impacted ear wax. My quack had me get a little kit at the local pharmacy (chemist?). Drops in the ears, wait for a bit, then hose out the ears with a little bulb syringe. Worked, no problem.

I think I still have that little bulb syringe somewhere in a drawer in the bathroom. . . .

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 03:14 PM

Bugger me!

1600

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Sandman
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 03:38 PM

Holly and the Ivy by David Franks,I dont think I have ever heard anything like it before,very unusual.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 04:01 PM

David,

I'm no great shakes as an instrumentalist or a singer. I accept that and whilst I might sing or play for my own enjoyment, I keep it to myself.

You have a terrible lack of talent. Your recordings on your myspace page are completely awful.

Why are putting yourself up for ridicule?

Can you really not notice how bad you are?

Do you wish to parade your oddities as if part of a Victorian freak show?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Sleepy Rosie
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 04:52 PM

Dear Thready Posters,
Gosh, who or what is this famous WAV creature/thing that you all celebrate on here? It's the longest refreshed thread on Mudcat since I arrived, and whenever I glance at it, I see people referring to 'WAV'.

Is it some mythical folk beasty like the Silkie, or even the renowned singing Mermaid.

It must surely be famous or magically enchanting, or at least addictive. Or just maybe it's even Englands top-secret National Musical instrument? 'Cos although I keep seeing it discussed, dissected and referred to, I still don't quite know WTF it is!

Rosie the speculative

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Will Fly
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 05:13 PM

Rosie - you don't want to know - believe me - it's not for young innocent ears like yours...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Sandman
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 06:08 PM

W.A V.is WALKABOUT VERSE AKA David Franks

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 06:20 PM

Click on the 'Holly and the Ivy' link above and find out what really makes a folk voice Rosie

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 06:21 PM

I just looked David Franks up on the recently leaked BNP membership list.

He isn't on it.

I suspect this is just because he's too mean to put his money where his mouth is.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 08:46 PM

I don't think David can hear himself, or doesn't fully comprehend what he does hear.

I have an old friend who is very much into folk music. Plays the guitar pretty well. And he sings. But he rarely sings in front of anyone else, and on those occasions, he has to be coaxed.

It's not that he's shy, God knows! But he has had asthma since he was a child and this has a profound effect on his singing ability. He can hear melodies just fine—nothing wrong with his ear—but there is a disconnect between his ear (clear mental concept of the notes he wants to sing) and his ability to reproduce those notes with his vocal mechanism. Among other things, his restricted lung capacity prevents him from using sufficient breath support, and his vocal cords simply will not respond accurately to his will. The result is that his singing sounds breathy and a bit hoarse, and he tends to sing flat.

He knows this. He can hear it. This is why he generally confines his singing to his own home, not wanting to inflict it on others. But whenever we have a songfest, we make darned sure he gets his turns and that he takes them. He's a really fine person and he loves the songs and loves to sing them. That is, he would love to be able to sing them. So we make sure he gets in his licks along with everybody else.

It would never occur to him to put his singing on MySpace. In fact, he'd be horrified at the idea.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Surreysinger
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 09:06 PM

Rosie - I hope you realise that Stu is, of course, joking. I finally gave way to curiosity and ventured onto that Myspace page, and it's suddenly hit me that what we have here is Folk's very own male counterpart of the wonderful Florence Foster Jenkins .... the same lack of essential pitch and breath control, and the same total belief in own singing ability!!!

I regret that I was unable to display the stamina to listen to more than one third of each of WAV's offerings - the supreme lack of pitch, and dire lack of breath control was so evident in each piece. The sad thing is, at one point I came to the conclusion that under it all there might be a decent voice, given some proper tuition in singing technique - the end of every line that looked as though it might get somewhere in terms of pitch (and there weren't many) was let down by the sudden loss of breath control leading to wavering pitch and tone. The items sung against recorder were interesting ... the Bells of Paradise rendition seemed to have what I would consider a conventional HARMONY, albeit pitched just sufficiently out to make you wince... but that's being charitable and assuming an intent on harmony, which WAV has consistently said that he doesn't consider to be right or allowable.

The interesting thing is the number of plays that he has had in a day ... presumably from people like me who just couldn't resist finding out just how bad it all was!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 09:42 PM

"The interesting thing is the number of plays that he has had in a day"

I wonder how many managed to get through a whole song though?
I think it's actually worse than his older stuff.. unbelievable. WaV, if you insist on using folk music as a platform for your sick nationalist politics, my advice would be to at least make the music fit to listen to. This is music to slaughter pigs by.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: catspaw49
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 10:18 PM

OHMYGAWD!!!!!!!!

Look folks, I'm not much of a singer myself but for the love of crap I cannot believe what I just listened to!!! Based on recent posting on both the threads I am trying to be charitable towards Wavyfunkywhiteboyracist..........So I went off to have another listen and found Christmas had invaded his MySpace page.

YOU MUST GO LISTEN TO O COME ALL YE FAITHFUL...... I can assure you there is none other like his rendition and you will come away in awe. I was in awe. I was incredulous. No one in their right mind would put up something like that on a public website for any reason other than a joke!

I am totally serious. It must be a joke. Right? I had already decided to drop off these threads but thought I would try to bow out with the most charitable feelings possible towards WFWBR. But after that experience I simply had to make this post and invite you one and all to visit his MySpace page and check it out.

Here ya' go.....#6 is the MUST HEAR


Spaw

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 21 Nov 08 - 12:20 AM

The Gospel of John, 11:35 (!)

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 21 Nov 08 - 01:07 AM

How can anyone get worse by practising?

Anyone ever heard of that before? I certainly haven't. I think I smell a rat.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 21 Nov 08 - 01:47 AM

With fear and trepidation I followed the link that Spaw kindly(?) provided.
Am not sure how I can describe the feeling of nausea.
Irene is right. Wav is either the Florence Foster Jenkins or Mrs Miller of folk music....
I'm going to download his songs for posterity, and put them in with my recording of Kenny Everetts Bottom 30!
He has to be preserved for posterity!!
It's not that he's so bad that is painful. We've all heard appaling singers and musicians in our time, and either left the room, or said Oh bless you for trying.
Thats no problem.
It's the inmitigated arrogance of the man. To tell people like Eliza and Don how songs should be sung????
It defies belief.
Off to download his songs now, before they get wiped!!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 21 Nov 08 - 02:50 AM

Compare if you dare This is the ex champion.

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 21 Nov 08 - 02:53 AM

Swans sing before they die,
'twere no bad thing,
Should some folks die before they sing. [ anon ]

eric

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Gervase
Date: 21 Nov 08 - 03:04 AM

Christ on a bike! Thanks for the link Pat - that treatment really beggars description. There must be some way we can get this to a wider audience; it's the sort of thing that could become a viral phenomenon across the media. I see clips being played everywhere as the perfect antidote to Christmas. It is truly, breathtakingly bad. C'mon chaps - link to it as much as you can. Tell a friend that you've found the Eddie the Eagle of the recorder, that the spirit of Florence Foster Jenkins lives (even if it's in the shrivelled form of a workshy racist).
The sheer effrontery of the bloke is remarkable. Still Eliza, at least you now know what you and your family have been doing wrong all these years.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 21 Nov 08 - 03:08 AM

Hey Stu..Ms Jenkins is still the Guvnor!
Wav has get to do a lot more practising to get down to ner level!
Loved the Cat photos as well!!
Ralphie.....Where's WAV gone?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Sleepy Rosie
Date: 21 Nov 08 - 04:16 AM

Hey it might not be the best I've heard, but it'd be absolutely perfect as a Christmas slasher-movie, pro-mo soundtrack!

Picture this: it's a classic American Dickensian consumerist fantasy scene.

Nice drunken slo-mo, of some Father Christmas masked psycho (of course no-body but us viewers realise he's very obviously a psycho). That jolly Santa mask...? But... it's somehow too joyful! And of course that mysterious haunting Christmas music...
Somehow, we just 'sense' something isn't quite right with this scene!

Glass is shattered, blood curdling screams are heard, and bright red blood gushes over virgin white snow.

"Santas back, Ho ho ho....
Have you been a good little girl this year?"

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: KEVINOAF
Date: 21 Nov 08 - 06:14 AM

in reply to SURREYSINGER
YOU ARE CORRECT concerning le Petomane being French , however his performances did not involve any form of mechanical amplification one of his clone performers at the time (a woman having a similar feminized stage name did in fact use the instrument nominated,she too was of course French}
I nominated the instrument because of the english preoccupation for talking with this oriface they might try doing something a little more creative with it.
or course the greatest source of prospective talent in this field lies in Westminster.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Surreysinger
Date: 21 Nov 08 - 07:57 AM

Stu - great choice of clip ... I posted that up as a fave on my Facebook profile some long while ago ... it's the bedraggled cat demanding its tuna at the end that I particularly like ... and the one with the electric cable in its mouth !!!!!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Surreysinger
Date: 21 Nov 08 - 08:27 AM

Just out of interest I went back to You Tube ... there are an awful lot of clips of Florence on there, one quite interesting one about her accompanists (Cosme McMoon among them), and would you believe it, one about a play about her = "Glorious" .... way to go for WAV??

Seriously though, as you've been told many times before, David, you would be best advised to seek some advice and tuition from a decent singing coach. It sounds to me as though you possibly have the makings of a pleasant voice BUT your sense of pitch, breath support and rhythm are all seriously lacking. I don't think that there's anything there that couldn't be at least partially cured or assisted with a lot of hard work both from a teacher and from you... but at the moment it just ain't got it.... sorry.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 21 Nov 08 - 10:35 AM

I hadn't noticed before that WAV claims to be a Christian musician. So presumably there are Christian music forums that are getting the same kind of dialogue we see here and in uk.music.folk.

You'd think one of his fellow churchgoers would have pointed out by now that performances like that "O Come All Ye Faithful" rendition make a pretty compelling argument for converting to Satanism or the Taleban.

I can't imagine how he achieves that. You hear a lot of singers who can't hit the right pitch at the start of a note, but WAV quite often *does* hit it and then slithers away from it like a slug meeting a pile of salt.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 21 Nov 08 - 10:40 AM

Managed to drag my computer kicking and screaming to WAVs music site.
Downloaded offending items...!
I'd move house if I where you. Or expect a very nasty Christmas present!
(Mind you Floerence FJ wins hands down.....and why not check out MA Numminem too!...A rock opera whose subject is Wittgensteins thoughts on logical positivism....I'm sure Irene can provide a YouTube link!)
Thanks WAV for cheering up my day

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Gervase
Date: 21 Nov 08 - 10:52 AM

Well, the devil does have all the best tunes, so WAV probably thought it was best to avoid all tunes.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: catspaw49
Date: 21 Nov 08 - 01:32 PM

LOL Gervase......Perfect!

Spaw

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,surreysinger
Date: 21 Nov 08 - 09:09 PM

Ralphie ... only too happy to oblige!! Herewith the sublime rendition of Wittgenstein's thoughts, "Wovon man nicht sprechen kann..." by the said M A Numminem ....
as pointed out by Ian Blake elsewhere , the pianist in the background should be observed as he provides a distinct
homage to that wellknown work by John Cage ... so homages to two idols of our time in the one divine performance!! Enjoy!

It should be noted, however, the Numminem manages to stay more or less in pitch throughout .. although the homage to dear Flo is pretty evident throughout!! Lovely way to finish my birthday - thanks Ralphie!!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,surreysinger
Date: 21 Nov 08 - 09:36 PM

Further to my last post, I have just found the following link, which provides details of M A Numminem's track record up to date . It makes very interesting reading ... the man was part of the Orgiastic Winnie the Pooh Big Band in his early days in the 1960's ... graduating to a film in 2000 entitled M A Numminem turns into Rabbit ... and is or has been in the throes of composing another piece of music based on philosophical treatises ... although having heard the whole of the Tractatus Suite (thanks for the introduction Ralphie!) I doubt whether it will be the same in nature!! His track record is vast ... and it is clear that his singing style is INTENTIONAL ... and he has been successful.

Someone (possibly Ralphie) made the observation way back in this thread that the one good thing that has come out of it all is the introduction to some very interesting information. Whereas I doubt I would pay to go and see Numminem, I nevertheless find his background fascinating ... and until today I had never actually gone looking for any detail... thanks WAV!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,surreysinger
Date: 21 Nov 08 - 09:45 PM

Don - it's taken me this long to look up your Biblical quote ... LOL!!! even ROFL!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 21 Nov 08 - 10:41 PM

Very good. . .

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 22 Nov 08 - 12:25 AM

Thanks Irene.
Back to WAV though.
I'm reminded of the quote.
Jazz is knowing all the notes of a tune, and then playing all the other ones.
I've repaired the computer now. but it's stopped talking to me and gone into a sulk....

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 22 Nov 08 - 04:31 AM

WAV's inspiration???? Les Dawson

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST
Date: 22 Nov 08 - 05:57 AM

Yesterday, Smokey said: How can anyone get worse by practising?

I don't think he has, Smokey. If you look at the recording dates the 'carols' are December '07 whereas 'Christmas Sung Simply' which is a big improvement in terms of vocal technique is August '08.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,surreysinger
Date: 22 Nov 08 - 05:58 AM

Ralphie - I'm not surprised that your computer is having a strop ...it's obviously sensitive ... call out the RSPCC !! So you're now suggesting that WAV is an exponent of the jazz genre?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 22 Nov 08 - 07:21 AM

After playing and singing "Down in Yon Forest" many times, I did change the key before recording my Christmas tracks about a year ago, and my singing of it does need more work...I may drop it shortly and re-do it one day with "organ" rather than "piano" accompaniment.
But, as for the others, including "O Come all Ye Faithful", a year on, I think the quality is about the same.

Jazz is an aspect of American culture, SURREYsinger - I'll keep working at playing and singing just the unadorned unadulterated tunes of English chants, carols, hymns and folk-songs, thanks.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 22 Nov 08 - 07:57 AM

Oh WAV....You just don't get it do you???
God you must have the hide of a Rhino!
Your recordings are unmitigated rubbish.
And Jazz is American Eh? I'll mention that to Courtney Pine next time I see him. Sadly can't inform Humphrey Littleton.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Surreysinger
Date: 22 Nov 08 - 07:58 AM

Sigh.... you have a long way to go with your working at playing and singing David, and also it seems with construing ironic content.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 22 Nov 08 - 08:14 AM

I've never seen anyone play the recorder like this moron, he's got it up his nose fer fecks sake.

WalkaboutsVerse has got 7004 friends,[ in his own mind.]


eric

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 22 Nov 08 - 08:51 AM

Having downloaded the offending items, I've got lots of people that I don't like who are now going to have a miserable Christmas.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jeri
Date: 22 Nov 08 - 09:20 AM

It's not WAV who 'just doesn't get it'.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST
Date: 22 Nov 08 - 10:05 AM

"I may drop it shortly and re-do it one day with "organ" rather than "piano" accompaniment."
Oh Please Don't....Please Please Please.......It's rubbish already.
What did we do so wrong to suffer this?
Have I been strangling Cats or something?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 22 Nov 08 - 10:08 AM

That was me sorry !

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 22 Nov 08 - 10:59 AM

WAV - can't you hear the problems with "Oh come all ye faithful?" Don't you understand how poor it is?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 22 Nov 08 - 11:36 AM

Don't listen to 'em WAV - you stick with it son.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 22 Nov 08 - 11:45 AM

"I've never seen anyone play the recorder like this moron, he's got it up his nose fer fecks sake." (Eric)...while waiting for a singaround to kick-off, a chap (who was very good at quickly learning new tunes by ear, and who had a wooden tenor-recorder with him) wanted to "nick my tunes" - and very soon he was indeed playing them in very close unison with both my tenor recorder playing and singing.

And as for leaning toward "organ" rather than "piano" setting on my keyboards - it may be slightly better given my way of trying to play like I sing and sing like I play (i.e, no fade-out on the former).

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 22 Nov 08 - 11:57 AM

close unison . . . .CLOSE UNISON?

Is that another way of saying Good Enough For Folk?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 22 Nov 08 - 12:31 PM

Um . . . David, there is no such thing as "close unision." It is either unison or it is not. "Close" is still a miss.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 22 Nov 08 - 01:49 PM

"Yesterday, Smokey said: How can anyone get worse by practising?

I don't think he has, Smokey. If you look at the recording dates the 'carols' are December '07 whereas 'Christmas Sung Simply' which is a big improvement in terms of vocal technique is August '08."


This seemed to be anonymous, but I must confess I hadn't seen the dates. It's my own fault for not wiping my eyes whilst I was listening. Sometimes one is just too overwhelmed with emotion to pay attention to details.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 22 Nov 08 - 04:39 PM

Further to Down in Yon Forest/Corpus Christi Carol: having not bothered with carols for a year, I just checked my notes and I first learnt it from DigiTrad in Eb but, finding the fingering difficult, I changed to C when I saw it that way in the "Oxford Christmas Carol Book"; for what it's worth, my fingering has improved a bit and I intend to re-do it in Eb for next year, as that key suits my voice better.
"Christmas Sung Simply"/"As Gospellers Have Said", Smokey, is the very last piece in both my book/website "Walkabouts" and my CD "Chants from Walkabouts" and, again for what it's worth, I've just finished working out/writing the tunes for all 17 Chants, so will probably have an accompanied version of "CSS" ready for next year, also.

Subject: no such thing
From: peregrina
Date: 22 Nov 08 - 05:16 PM

This comes from a post in the BS thread.

I find it intriguing that the focus here is ENGLISH rather than, say, Lincolnshire, Lancashire, Yorkshire or Northumbrian regional instruments.

It seems to me that an English identity is oppositional, and is sharpened by the need for definition AGAINST those over a border (to Scotland or Wales). It is, in other words, self definition that is negatively constructed AGAINST a non-English OTHER.

Whereas a regional area identity is far more 'real' in the sense of being associated with specific regional dialect, food, field and farming traditions, vernacular architecture and so forth.
There is no homogenous pan-English identity--it's a label of political designation , but any investigation looking for an English instrument that had any historical depth would have to take account of regional diversity.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 22 Nov 08 - 05:40 PM

Absolutely right, P. The concept is nonsensical and the starting of this thread was intended to be inflammatory, although it has brought up a lot of interesting information. There has been some benefit from it thanks to the patience and tolerance of some contributors - yourself included, it would seem.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 22 Nov 08 - 05:50 PM

It seems to me that an English identity is oppositional, and is sharpened by the need for definition AGAINST those over a border (to Scotland or Wales)

I think it's arguable that this is also true of Scottish and Welsh national identities. Certainly there's a big difference between people who make political assertions of the Scottish or Welsh cultural heritage, on one hand, and people who are actually involved with Scottish & Welsh culture on the other. The latter tend to be keenly aware of the different cultural forms which flourish in different parts of the country, even at as basic a level as language (Scots vs Scots Gaelic, North Walian vs South Walian vs English).

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: peregrina
Date: 22 Nov 08 - 05:58 PM

Yes, precisely Pip. People identify with the larger unit in opposition to the other larger unit. Historically, though, I believe that England took longer to be ruled by one king than Wales or Scotland, so one might argue that the notion of an English identity is more recent than for the others. In any case, it's preposterous to look for an English national instrument when there are so many regional variations in language, food, even musical style and song repertoire.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 22 Nov 08 - 06:47 PM

WAV you can dress it up all you want but your recordings fail on a basic musical level -


Your singing is in a different musical key to your playing
Your singing fails to stay in tune within its key
The timing is all over the place


However E.Trads were performed in the past, you can pretty much guarantee that they were sung in key with any instruments, in tune, and with correct timing, or else their peers would have ridiculed them. I'm just old enough to remember people singing around the piano in the pub, and anybody as bad as you would have been mercilessly mocked unless very old or very young.


You can come up with all sorts of stuff about opinion or whatever but your recordings are just rubbish because you're failing to achieve the bare minimum of technical competence, and failing by a long way. It's not that difficult, my daughter can do it and she's only just over 3 feet tall and still believes in Father Christmas (sorry if I've ruined the magic for anybody!).

These issues could plausibly be down to a degree of tone-deafness which can affect all the above areas, so maybe you should get yourself checked out? See some of the tests at http://jakemandell.com/

I suspect however that you're just lazy and lack the necessary degree of constructive self-criticism required to achieve any quality as this would be consistent with the general standard of your posts, poetry and opinions. You seriously need some kind of tuition, something that will take you through the basics, and you need to learn to critically listen to what you're producing. Your current postings are embarrassing!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 22 Nov 08 - 07:35 PM

my CD

One suspects, Wavy that that should actually be CD-R - which is to say R for recordable - those things you run off on your computer for a minimal outlay and which are, in any case, a very different beast to your actual CD. Be careful with your trades descriptions, or else misleading your public as to what they're actually buying (much less buying into) at a rather hefty £8 a throw...

I find it intriguing that the focus here is ENGLISH

This is because Wavy is a naturalised AUSTRALIAN who has fabricated a fantasy of Englishness based on a set of anachronistic & otherwise risible clichés designed solely to demonstrate his hostility to immigrant cultures which he perceives as posing a threat to Our Own Good Culture as he has defined it. He has no understanding of the regional diversities and identities (much less those of a socio-economic nature) which are the defining attributes of the realities of English, and indeed British, culture which is ultimately composed of innumerable elements any one of which being as crucial to an appreciation of the whole as any of the individuals who populate this England of ours. That this cultural identity exists in a state of constant & inevitable flux is not something our ultra-reactionary friend can stomach, feeling as he does that England was a more English place 50 years ago and choosing, therefore, to make his home in the most English region of England according to this evidently racist criteria. This is not so much a matter of name-calling as it is one of naming, and defining, indeed of outing him as the malicious malcontent we know him to be on account of the material he publishes to promote his ultra-right wing political convictions that have brought him in recent years to both Folk Music, and to this Forum, where, all things considered, he gets a fair hearing given his incessant trolling and arrogant self-aggrandisement.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 23 Nov 08 - 05:08 AM

Woody I agree with most of what yousay but I don't think WAV is lazy at all. His output of all sorts of stuff is prolific.

I do think that he doesn't know how much work (practice, research, editing, reviewing, listening) is needed to acquire a degree of expertise in anything. He publishes before he is ready, and in trying to defend his publication finds himself in an entrenched position from which he cannot extricate himself.

Instead of reading the posts of others and internalizing, he either ignores them or refers them to previous posts and publications as some sort of verbal tennis match.

I wonder (apart from punctuation which has improved) whether any post from anyone has modified his intransigent opinions one iota.

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 23 Nov 08 - 02:58 PM

Throughout all of these threads, I certainly haven't noticed any acknowledgement, much less appreciation, of attempts to help him musically, or any changes in his rock-headed opinions. It appears to be a case of monumental egotism with absolutely nothing to be egotistical about.

Sad case!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,surreysinger
Date: 23 Nov 08 - 03:00 PM

Stu, I don't think that there;s any question on that point , not one jot, tittle or iota of change is apparent

Subject: RE:endless loop
From: peregrina
Date: 23 Nov 08 - 03:06 PM

The title of the thread is 'England's national musical instrument' not bash WAV. Since he repeats himself, and the others repeat themselves, I shall follow the convention and do the same. There are some points that could be pursued in a real discussion. One would be about regional English musical identities.

I find it intriguing that the focus here is ENGLISH rather than, say, Lincolnshire, Lancashire, Yorkshire or Northumbrian regional instruments.

It seems to me that an English identity is oppositional, and is sharpened by the need for definition AGAINST those over a border (to Scotland or Wales). It is, in other words, self definition that is negatively constructed AGAINST a non-English OTHER.

Whereas a regional area identity is far more 'real' in the sense of being associated with specific regional dialect, food, field and farming traditions, vernacular architecture and so forth.
There is no homogenous pan-English identity--it's a label of political designation , but any investigation looking for an English instrument that had any historical depth would have to take account of regional diversity.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 23 Nov 08 - 03:38 PM

The only instrument developed wholly in England is the English Concertina (as I said many miles up). The only Scottish person I know who plays one is Simon Thoumire and he studiously avoids referring to it as "English", just as a concertina.

Just sayin" . . .

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 23 Nov 08 - 04:10 PM

"There is no homogenous pan-English identity--it's a label of political designation , but any investigation looking for an English instrument that had any historical depth would have to take account of regional diversity."

peregrina, this is what people here have been saying all along, in response to David's adamant espousal of a "return" to a non-existent, monolithic "good English culture" that he fancies existed in the 1950s.

And another issue is David's constant admonitions to singers and scholars, some very prominent in the field, who have devoted much of their lives to learning about and presenting traditional songs and ballads (he, having become interested in traditional music four years ago, and all he knows about folk music—admittedly—is what he has gleaned from a few television programs) that they are singing it all wrong, and, among other things, should not be allowed to sing anything but songs from their own "cultures." (And who, pray tell, is going to enforce this?). This includes telling me (an American) that I should not sing the English and Scottish songs and ballads I love, but confine myself to "country rock," which he seems to regard as true American folk music, or better still "Amerindian chanting and drumming."

No. This is not a "bash WAV" thread. David has presented his ideas, both musical and political, and people are letting him know that they strenuously disagree with him.

And this, while trying to give him helpful advice on how to improve his own singing! (Which he ignores.)

Don Firth

P. S. I believe the matter of "England's National Musical Instrument" has been thoroughly discussed and has been answered long since and again immediately above.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: peregrina
Date: 23 Nov 08 - 04:14 PM

The 'national' in national instrument is open to several interpretations.

If it means that the instrument was invented, patented, and also produced in England, then surely the Overton whistle (despite some Irish associations) has a claim alongside the English concertina.

If it means the instrument most readily associated with England in popular perception, then the popular perception needs investigation.

If it means that instrument most often played in England, likewise, that needs investigation.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 23 Nov 08 - 04:31 PM

In the middle of last night I was devising an exercise for WAV whereby he played a scale on his plastic thing and then repeated it, stopping at various intervals to insert a vocal note, until he was comfortable about hitting the notes accurately at whatever point in whichever scale he played.
(Actually, it might seem obvious to most people here that he ought to be practicing scales and arpeggios on a daily basis anyway, though doubtless he considers himself above all that so it would be a complete waste of time to recommend it).

I have just been introduced to a performer called Bishi who is described on MySpace as "folk/glam/powerpop". Someone said she's a bit like Abba, but no, they were always in tune (if nothing else). Possibly it could be arranged for she and WAV to meet up and sail off cacophonically into the sunset.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 25 Nov 08 - 03:52 AM

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r

Woody I agree with most of what yousay but I don't think WAV is lazy at all. His output of all sorts of stuff is prolific.

I say he is lazy because it's easy to produce lots of rubbish, the hard work is in the refining of basic output. Anybody that has learned a musical instrument to any degree of competence knows that getting a tune out of the instrument is easy. The thing that really takes work is learning to produce something of quality.

I've been playing Anglo Concertina for about the same amount of time that WAV has been into folk music and by no means would I describe myself as even being competent with the instrument - I reckon that's another year or two away, and being good at it will be many years more, but I'm getting there. I can pick up a new traditional tune and be playing it far better than WAV's efforts in about 5 minutes, but to get it to a level at which I'd consider it good enough for playing to others would probably take days at least. Performers such as Eliza FC or Squeezy will probably spend more time obsessing on and refining one particular tune than WAV has spent in total playing.

WAV is not prepared to do the hard work required to achieve any quality. This is why I think he's lazy.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 25 Nov 08 - 04:13 AM

His output of all sorts of stuff is prolific.

This isn't the case at all. WAV no longer writes poetry, and no longer travels; he has learned his 17 E. Trads, and 17 E. Hymns and has no intention of learning any more; these, along with 17 self-penned Chants form his entire performance repertoire. At singarounds he very carefully performs of his own chants and, if he gets another, he'll sing an E. Trad (showing us where his priorities lie). Basically, he is on a repeat cycle of endless repetition of his Life's Work & the promotion of same - no new songs, no new thoughts, no new insights, no chance of ever changing his mind because he has reached his CONCLUSIONS.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 25 Nov 08 - 06:04 AM

Diane thats an horrendous idea, what if they breed ?

eric

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: KEVINOAF
Date: 25 Nov 08 - 06:17 AM

THIS THREAD HAS WANDERED WAY OFF TOPIC
i.e what is englands' musical insstrument?
I nominaated the ARSE-TRUMPET to redirect it to the original theme
The english propensity for talking from this oriface has manifested itself magnificently on this thread. and now it reveals a few candidates who might show promise here at the MUDCAT!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Surreysinger
Date: 25 Nov 08 - 09:22 AM

Including you, presumably Kevin? You were hardly directing the thread to its original theme!!!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 25 Nov 08 - 12:11 PM

English Teeth! English Teeth!
Shining in the sun
A part of British Heritage
Aye, each and every one.

English Teeth, English Teeth!
Always having fun
Clamping down on bits of fish
And sausages half-done.

English Teeth! HEROES' Teeth!
Hear them click! and clack!
Let's sing a song of praise to them -
Three Cheers for the Brown, Grey and Black.

- Spike Milligan

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 25 Nov 08 - 12:14 PM

I stand corrected Woody.

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Sleepy Rosie
Date: 25 Nov 08 - 12:20 PM

Lol!
Cheers for the Milligan, Mr. Campion.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 25 Nov 08 - 12:22 PM

Jus t by the way folks - this thread was never about musical instrument. It is one of a number started by WAV to slip in his strange views:

The Weekly Walkabout (self promotion to get hits on his website)
England's National Musical Instrument (to lecture us on his views on the tenor recorder and the world)
Foreign Farce Football (to say we should get rid of foreigners)
5000 Morris Dancers (to say we shouldn't do foreign dances or play foreign music)
Ryder Cup (Anti American, anti foregners)
No Olympics Football (anti UK)
Olympics or Globalization (anti Immigration)
An English Folk Awards (Anti UK)
Green Godly Gardening (anti foreign plants)

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 25 Nov 08 - 12:33 PM

Diane cum Cupid and Woody - I "do ra me..." sometimes but prefer to work at my intonation by "playing a line, singing a line" as that aids with memory as well. And I love the timbre of the English concertina.

Don and IB - you've again distorted what I've said, as you both distorted "Engrish frute" when describing a recorder made in Japan. (But your second post, IB, is fair enough.) And, Don, to use a cricket/baseball analogy, I'd like to think I do play each ball on it's merits and have given credit where due – even when someone has been extremely nasty elsewhere.

Smokey Stu- I genuinely didn't know, e.g., the answer to England's Nat. Mus. Inst.

"He publishes before he is ready" (Stu)...before I sat down to write, I stood to find my way through about 40 countries on a shoestring, and achieve some 4 tech. certificates and a degree in humanities.

Peregrina - some countyism fits okay within my kind of nationalism...

Poem 84 of 230: NATIONALISM WITHOUT CONQUEST

Everything in moderation?
    Well...with "nationalism" it's true:
It can carry unique cultures on,
    But, overdosed, cause their conquest, too.

From walkaboutsverse.741.com

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 25 Nov 08 - 01:42 PM

"Don and IB - you've again distorted what I've said, as you both distorted "Engrish frute" when describing a recorder made in Japan. (But your second post, IB, is fair enough.) And, Don, to use a cricket/baseball analogy, I'd like to think I do play each ball on it's merits and have given credit where due – even when someone has been extremely nasty elsewhere."

David, referring to the "Engrish frute" pun, go back to the post in which it was originally used and refresh your memory. You've either lost the thread or never understood it in the first place.

As to the "cricket/baseball analogy," what in blazes are you talking about?

And once again you wave your four technical certificates and your degree in humanities around. You could have forty technical certificates and a degree in every field in the university's catalog and still not be sufficiently educated to produce anything worthy of publication. The purpose of formal education is to teach one how to learn, not just to stuff your head full of data. As you are getting the certificate or the degree, that's when your real education should begin. And if it doesn't continue after you receive the diploma, then the diploma is as worthless as last week's newspaper.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 25 Nov 08 - 02:24 PM

From: WalkaboutsVerse

Diane cum Cupid and Woody - I "do ra me..." sometimes but prefer to work at my intonation by "playing a line, singing a line" as that aids with memory as well.

You are clueless. You can't even do the basics.


and achieve some 4 tech. certificates and a degree in humanities.

Which of these equipped you with the skills for writing poetry?
Which of these equipped you with musical knowledge & playing skills?

Was one the infamous "City & Guilds Certificate in basic Fork Lift driving, romance poetry, and folk song" that has led to so much tragedy?


And I love the timbre of the English concertina.

OK, as you seem to want to talk about the English Concertina, do please enlighten me....

What do you mean when referring to the timbre of the English Concertina?
Please explain how the timbre of an English Concertina differs from an Anglo or Duet Concertina?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 25 Nov 08 - 03:43 PM

Smokey Stu- I genuinely didn't know, e.g., the answer to England's Nat. Mus. Inst.

I wasn't implying that you did know the answer, my point was that you knew that there was no answer, and that it was merely a device to attract attention to yourself in order to propagate views which you already knew were unpopular and offensive to some. I would be genuinely fascinated to hear your reasons for doing that.

Don - I think your views on education are absolutely spot-on, even more so now degrees seem to be ten-a-penny in the UK.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,eliza c
Date: 26 Nov 08 - 07:01 AM

"Everything in moderation?
    Well...with "nationalism" it's true:
It can carry unique cultures on,
    But, overdosed, cause their conquest, too."


Like the Gypsies, for instance?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Paul Burke
Date: 26 Nov 08 - 07:09 AM

Nationalism can mean different things:

(1) Hey, look here, we've have great fun doing things our way! Come and join in!
(2) We're us, and you are different, so bugger off and leave us alone. You say this is your house? Well there, we've burnt it down, so now bugger off before we kill you.

I know which I prefer.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 26 Nov 08 - 07:41 AM

Punctuation WAV. For Christ's sake learn how to use the language before attempting to write it.

Dear Gwalia! I know there are
Towns lovelier than ours,
And fairer hills and loftier far,
And groves more full of flowers,

And boskier woods more blithe with spring
And bright with birds' adorning,
And sweeter bards than I to sing
Their praise this beauteous morning.

By Cader Idris, tempest-torn,
Or Moel yr Wyddfa's glory,
Carnedd Llewelyn beauty born,
Plinlimmon old in story,

By mountains where King Arthur dreams,
By Penmaenmawr defiant,
Llaregyb Hill a molehill seems,
A pygmy to a giant.

By Sawdde, Senny, Dovey, Dee,
Edw, Eden, Aled, all,
Taff and Towy broad and free,
Llyfnant with its waterfall,

Claerwen, Cleddau, Dulais, Daw,
Ely, Gwili, Ogwr, Nedd,
Small is our River Dewi, Lord,
A baby on a rushy bed.

By Carreg Cennen, King of time,
Our Heron Head is only
A bit of stone with seaweed spread
Where gulls come to be lonely.

A tiny dingle is Milk Wood
By Golden Grove 'neath Grongar,
But let me choose and oh! I should
Love all my life and longer

To stroll among our trees and stray
In Goosegog Lane, on Donkey Down,
And hear the Dewi sing all day,
And never, never leave the town.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Sue Allan
Date: 26 Nov 08 - 07:57 AM

Once again drifted in here after weeks away ... and gobsmacked to find WAV still pontificating. Why has this man not found a job yet? There are plenty of them around, even if they may not be what he feels he wants. After you've been out of work so long it's incumbent upon you to take ANYTHING. It makes me really angry to see you moving back to the UK, so you can hold forth with your way-off-beam and sometimes repulsive views, advertising your ignorance about so many topics whilst DRAWING OUR GOOD ENGLISH BENEFITS David. Have you no sense of guilt and shame at all?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 26 Nov 08 - 08:17 AM

He's got no sense full stop.

eric

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 26 Nov 08 - 08:42 AM

Thought this abomination of a thread had died with the Mudcat upgrade.
Sadly not....
WAV is still tweaking all our worst feelings.
Let him go.......Please!!!
He really isn't worth it...Jesus 1600 posts and counting????
We are better than this, people.
He'll no doubt appear again, another place another time.
People like him always do.
So, everybody......DEEP BREATH.....DO NOT RESPOND AGAIN>>>>>EVER!!
Yes It's hard, but it is the only way to expunge this odious man from our lives.
I will try to resist temptation....(But will probably fail)
Regards Ralph Jordan

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Nov 08 - 08:44 AM

91   TAX

The flouting statement is rife -
    How death and taxes are
The two certainties of life.

And both, to be sure, do hold
    Lores of being a shame -
Thus, backing one may seem bold.

But taxes it seems to me -
    When used the correct ways -
Are good for humanity.

It's natural to compete,
    But cultural to share -
And tax keeps folks off the street.

For, to open the unfair trap -
    No job, no means, no job -
Welfare the poor must tap.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 26 Nov 08 - 09:47 AM

England's national benefit system is the workhouse.

Or a bit before that, getting a bag of peasemeal and a jug of buttermilk once a week from the parish.

Not many workhouse inmates got to set up their own websites.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 26 Nov 08 - 12:54 PM

Woody - timbre (not to be confused with timber) is the quality/nature of the sound, which does vary slightly between the concertinas - and, yes, in anticipation, I have heard English, duet, and Anglo at folk clubs.

Smokey - via IB, according to Wiki., we now know the answer is the bell; and I don't believe my life's work is "offensive" at all: I think it's a good way forward for humanity - otherwise I wouldn't "propogate" it.

And I also agree regarding the merits of BOTH informal and formal study.

"Punctuation WAV. For Christ's sake learn how to use the language before attempting to write it." (Stigweard)...and how about quoting?

Eliza - I said "in moderation."

And no idea which Guest took the liberty of posting my poem # 91 from the same above site/link.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 26 Nov 08 - 01:50 PM

Woody - timbre (not to be confused with timber) is the quality/nature of the sound, which does vary slightly between the concertinas - and, yes, in anticipation, I have heard English, duet, and Anglo at folk clubs.

Jolly good. And how would you describe the difference between English and other concertinas, with regard to their timbres? That's the question Woody was asking.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 26 Nov 08 - 02:27 PM

Thanks WAV for assuming that if I don't know the meaning of a word I must be incapable of looking it up.

Thanks Pip for explaining what I did mean to WAV.

For more clarification WAV....

So you've heard the Anglo, English and Duet systems played at folk clubs and you've decided that you like the timbre of the English Concertina? In that case, as you've obviously given it some serious thought, you should be able to explain your decision process, what you consider the difference to be between the timbre of the three systems, and what it is about the timbre of the English system that makes it stand out from the others for you.

I'm sure the Concertina players on this site are looking forward to your answer.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 26 Nov 08 - 02:49 PM

Omigod.

Other players have explained far higher up why it was that they took up this or that concertina system. Because it was there. I (for example) began to play the English because a very fine player lived upstairs. Not actually because it was more "pure". A friend of mine at the time took up the Duet because someone who was already learning it offered to teach her. Music is filled with those who play whatever they play by chance. Nobody gets anywhere though without practice, practice and practice. I was talking to a banjo player recently who's been at it since his first lesson from Peggy Seeger 50 years ago. He's still practicing.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 26 Nov 08 - 03:28 PM

". . . practice, practice, and practice."

My first guitar was a steel-string because that's what other people around me were playing. Then I switched to a nylon-string classic because I liked the mellower sound, and my hands are fairly big, so I liked the wider fingerboard. My choice of instruments had nothing to do with the history of the guitar as a musical instrument. I have one guitar made in Spain, one made in Japan, and one made in San Diego, California. I can tell them apart of course, but anyone else would have to look at the label to know where they are from.

I have been learning to play the guitar since the early 1950s. I am still practicing and learning. If I live long enough, I may even become a fairly competent guitarist.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 26 Nov 08 - 05:26 PM

Smokey - via IB, according to Wiki., we now know the answer is the bell; and I don't believe my life's work is "offensive" at all: I think it's a good way forward for humanity - otherwise I wouldn't "propogate" (sic) it.

I think we're all well aware of your opinion of your life's "work" by now Wav, and I would have thought that you were aware of the general opinion here, and the fact that most people do not agree with you.

Perhaps you should learn to play 'the bell', it might suit your learning technique and inimitable musical style. Or you could just wear it around your neck.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 26 Nov 08 - 06:29 PM

I have noticed that Japanese recorders have a different timbre from German recorders.

Look up when to use 'it's'
Look up when and how to use brackets.

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 27 Nov 08 - 02:41 AM

I've never heard more arrogant shite, " my lifes work, a good way forward for humanity, " does he think he's the new messiah or what ?

eric

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Dave (Bridge)
Date: 27 Nov 08 - 02:52 AM

Is it not time people stopped pandering to the needs of this person. We are all doing what he wants. That is prolonging a stupid argument, whilst he sits back and laughs. Notice how he is not as involved recently.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 27 Nov 08 - 03:34 AM

He's not the messiah, he's a very naughty boy.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Goose Gander
Date: 27 Nov 08 - 03:47 AM

This thread has NOTHING to do with "Englands's national musical instrument" . . . could someone PLEASE end this farce?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 27 Nov 08 - 03:55 AM

Oh, there's LOTS in this thread about music as it is actually played by the diverse population of this place called England today, much of it valuable. Certainly this wasn't the OP's intention, and the other strand of the thread has been informing him how muddled and wrong his ridiculous ideology is.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Paul Burke
Date: 27 Nov 08 - 05:03 AM

No need to log off, WAV, you've told us before. Odd that someone can do so much travel and education without learning much.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Paul Burke
Date: 27 Nov 08 - 05:07 AM

And where's Leadfingers when you need him?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: TheSnail
Date: 27 Nov 08 - 05:11 AM

Just thought I'd drop in to see how people were getting on. At a rough count, out of the last 125 posts, seven are from WAV. He only needs to give th occasional gentle prod to keep you all on your toes.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,JM
Date: 27 Nov 08 - 05:42 AM

I haven't dropped in for a while - I have better things to do, but haven't we already found out that WAV's "shoestring-travel through about forty countries" amounted to just one summer travelling - i.e. only a day or so in each country?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 27 Nov 08 - 06:01 AM

From: GUEST,JM
... haven't we already found out that WAV's "shoestring-travel through about forty countries" amounted to just one summer travelling - i.e. only a day or so in each country?

Makes a lot of sense. I don't why I'm surprised!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 27 Nov 08 - 06:08 AM

The English concertina has a beautiful homely timbre, e.g.

What the hell does that mean? "Homely?????" Isn't that American for ugly?

Please, with your extensive knowledge and experience, explain what the difference is between the three systems. Or are you just spouting on once more about something you know nothing about? I think we all know the answer.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 27 Nov 08 - 06:28 AM

They say travel broadens the mind, on this basis WAV must have travelled about four inches.

eric

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,eliza c
Date: 27 Nov 08 - 10:13 AM

You can't halt thousands of years of traditional nomadic life "in moderation". Either society suffers when people lose their traditions or it doesn't...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Sue Allan
Date: 27 Nov 08 - 10:53 AM

With "shoestring-travel through about forty countries, A-grade junior sport, a B.A. in humanities, four technical certificates in manufacturing, plus several years on the shopfloor" WHY haven't you got a job yet? You can't afford to be picky after a long period unemployed (I know from experience): you've just got to take any old job WAV. You've evidently far too much free time. I resent my hard earned taxes going to keep you. You're like the kid who won't leave home, indulging their adolescent fantasies while being shielded from being in the real world of employment. Time for tough love I think.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 27 Nov 08 - 11:29 AM

Unbelievable.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 27 Nov 08 - 11:56 AM

"What the hell does that mean? "Homely?????" Isn't that American for ugly?"

Oi, Woody! My friend's mum (from Redcar if that makes any difference) called me "homely" when I waxed lyrical about the quality of her fruit loaf. If I'd known she was calling me an ugly bastard I'd never have had that second slice!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 27 Nov 08 - 12:43 PM

"I haven't dropped in for a while - I have better things to do, but haven't we already found out that WAV's "shoestring-travel through about forty countries" amounted to just one summer travelling - i.e. only a day or so in each country?" (JM) - I'd say in total the travels in my collection add up to a about a year on the hoof.

But as for the different matter of nomadically moving home, Eliza, why not just counties rather than countries, from now on?

As with the tenor-recorder/English-flute, Woody, when one plays a tune on the chromatic baritone English concertina (which I still think has a nice homely timbre) they are playing the very tune/top-line melody on the score - which, if also a singer, they can, of course, readily match with their voice. I also like the Anglo, but it is not fully chromatic and, with it's push-pull system, is more likely to develop holes and the associated gushing sounds that slightly spoil the timbre. And thanks for that on the duet's reeds, Ralphie/Nellie...Snail's also back out of his? shell, I see.

Stu - for what it's worth (seemingly a lot to you), I intend to remove the comma after "on"/before "but" in my last poem, above...and what's your stance, then, on "practiS/Ce" others above?

"Perhaps you should learn to play 'the bell', it might suit your learning technique and inimitable musical style. Or you could just wear it around your neck." (Smokey)... As well as bell ringers, on our local news recently, we've had a group of players each responsible for striking one or two variously-sized bells as their notes come up on the score - seems like a fine social activity.

"I haven't dropped in for a while - I have better things to do, but haven't we already found out that WAV's "shoestring-travel through about forty countries" amounted to just one summer travelling - i.e. only a day or so in each country?" (JM) - I'd say in total the travels in my collection add up to a about a year on the hoof.

But as for the different matter of nomadically moving home, Eliza, and I think that's what you mean, why not just counties rather than countries, from now on?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 27 Nov 08 - 12:59 PM

WAV, how many times do you need to be told that practice and practise are BOTH correct in the UK? One is a noun, the other is a verb. Do you not actually possess a dictionary? This is typical of your half-baked theories which you don't even bother to research. By the way, I had the opportunity to attend a concert by the students on the Newcastle University folk degree course on Monday - it was pleasing to see that your accusations about their musical output being largely non-English was complete bollocks, as I suspected.

Your patronising edicts on the culture of Travellers don't even deserve the dignity of a response.

I love it that you're now repeating yourself within the same post. Your arguments are becoming ever more reductive...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 27 Nov 08 - 01:26 PM

why not just counties rather than countries, from now on?

Regarding travellers WaV; how exactly do you propose to prevent them going where they please in this Good New Order of yours?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 27 Nov 08 - 01:55 PM

Same as Ruth's WAV (and the OED). What's your stance on the greengrocers' apostrophe in 'it's'.

Have you any idea whether these (fictional?) concertinas of yours had brass or steel reeds?

Did you know they had reeds?

Did you know they were made of different materials.

I personally think the brass reed has a more Victorian tone suited to top line melody or harmony.

Thanks for reductive Ruth - I was looking for recursive to describe WAV's posts and couldn't bring it back to mind.

English (the language) I love in its many variants and dialects: because I love the poetry of the language I hate sloppy grammar and pretentious imitations of poetry.

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 27 Nov 08 - 03:22 PM

Wasn't that Hitler's motivation for writing Mein Kampf?

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 27 Nov 08 - 04:18 PM

I can't decide whether WaV's magnum opus is 'The Thoughts of Chairman WaV' or 'Mein Twaddle'..


WaV - I think most people read your stuff through morbid fascination, not because you're sure it contains a good ways (sic) forward for humanity.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 27 Nov 08 - 07:21 PM

From: Spleen Cringe

"What the hell does that mean? "Homely?????" Isn't that American for ugly?"

Oi, Woody! My friend's mum (from Redcar if that makes any difference) called me "homely" when I waxed lyrical about the quality of her fruit loaf. If I'd known she was calling me an ugly bastard I'd never have had that second slice!

I'd only worry if that was Redcar, USA. If it is then I'd let her tyres down if I were you ;-)


From: WalkaboutsVerse

... I'd say in total the travels in my collection add up to a about a year on the hoof.

Somebody who goes for a fortnight's holiday every year for 26 years could say exactly the same. Not exactly immersion in a culture is it?


But as for the different matter of nomadically moving home, Eliza, why not just counties rather than countries, from now on?

Like Eliza asked - Are you now saying it's alright for some people to lose their culture?


As with the tenor-recorder/English-flute, Woody, when one plays a tune on the chromatic baritone English concertina (which I still think has a nice homely timbre) they are playing the very tune/top-line melody on the score - which, if also a singer, they can, of course, readily match with their voice. I also like the Anglo, but it is not fully chromatic and, with it's push-pull system, is more likely to develop holes and the associated gushing sounds that slightly spoil the timbre.

I was going to write a detailed reply, but to be honest I can't be bothered. The depth & breadth of your ignorance is truly breath-taking.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Paul Burke
Date: 28 Nov 08 - 03:58 AM

Sounds like he once tried a ragged old anglo in a junk shop. I think he just might be hinting at the uneven legato caused by push-pull action, but he obviously hasn't listened to much English song, otherwise he'd know that it's not so much a problem as an opportunity in skilled hands. Maybe his record (I can't believe he's heard more than one) only has English on it.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,eliza c
Date: 28 Nov 08 - 06:20 AM

I'll say it again, David, and use your own pronouncement-either society suffers when cultures lose their traditions, or it doesn't.
If the Gypsies had been restricted in the way you suggest two hundred years ago you might not have any tradition at all to be misusing in your cause, as generations of them have preserved and continued the repertoire while settled people have moved on musically to other, more fashionable things. The Smith family alone deserve your respect, and your research...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 28 Nov 08 - 06:32 AM

RESEARCH, Eliza? That's going it some, isn't it? If it can't be found on a BBC4 programme or in the pages of an abridged encyclopedia, surely it's not worth investigating? That is the Franks Way...

(By the way, I think you'll find that his pronouncements on English song traditions spring from one Joseph Taylor recording he once heard. As it's the only example he ever cites, I can only assume it's his only frame of reference.)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 28 Nov 08 - 01:01 PM

"WAV, how many times do you need to be told that practice and practise are BOTH correct in the UK? One is a noun, the other is a verb. Do you not actually possess a dictionary?" (Ruth)...my Collins says "Practise, US practice..." and my (American) Websters gives no mention of "practiSe" - only "practiCe"...

Poem 149 of 230: FOR BETTER OR WORSE

Largely due to America,
    English - to use Italian -
Is now the world's lingua franca,
    Where, it seems, it once was Latin;
But, while brogues are a good thing,
    I doubt American spelling.

From walkaboutsverse.741.com

And if English folk-degree students have begun to lean more toward their own culture - good.

Further on concertinas, without any hot-air - I've heard Keith Kendrick play both Anglo and English at the same gig; and I've read from both Alistair Anderson on the English, plus Mick Bramich on the Anglo; and, as I say, happen to prefer the former.

Eliza - when some older English people say present social problems are partly due to greatly reduced church attendence, do you believe them?

Don - AGAIN, I hate imperialism: be it Nazi, Victorian, or any other; and, unlike you, I would never refer to a recorder made in Japan as an "Engrish frute."

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 28 Nov 08 - 01:16 PM

Minor off-topic English orthographical explanation:

to PRACTISE: verb
a PRACTICE: noun

Easy to remember, Noun starts with N and verb with V.
N is earlier than V in the alphabet as the C in Practice the noun is earlier than the S in Practise the verb.

Re US spelling: this is often the much earlier, Elizabethan spelling rather than the more modern English usage.
Would have thought that, logically, WAV would have preferred this.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 28 Nov 08 - 02:38 PM

Just to explain how a dictionary works WAV. If you have problems Surestart offers literacy courses for the unemployed I believe.

1. Look up practice - result: noun, usual or customary...repetition in order to acqire mastery...

2. Look up practise (or US Practice)result: VERB to do repeatedly in order to gain skill...

Oh by the way that's from Collins...

So in UK English (Collins is published in Glasgow) Practice is the noun, practise is the verb. In your own Scottish choice of dictionary WAV.

The OED my dictionary of choice agrees with this.

English folk music owes more to the Carthy/Watersons than you could ever conceive. You are rude to the emissaries of the culture you choose to espouse.


Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 28 Nov 08 - 03:09 PM

When some older English people say present social problems are partly due to greatly reduced church attendence, do you believe them?

More to the point, WAV - do you?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 28 Nov 08 - 03:57 PM

Poem 149 of 230 is Holy Writ? Why do you keep citing your own doggerel, David?   Well, I answer my own question:   because to you, it is Holy Writ and the only "authority" you have for your pathetic ideas. A bit of a God complex?

Well, no, you do have one more thing. ". . . and, unlike you, I would never refer to a recorder made in Japan as an 'Engrish frute.'" Dud ammunition, old frute. That's because you try to hide your racism behind a lack of a sense of humor (sorry, "humour"). As I pointed out, two friends of Japanese ancestry found it amusing, and John Matsumoto commented that he found your efforts at "PC' not just "precious" in its duplicitous attempt to avoid sounding racist, but indicating underlying racism on your part by your automatically assuming what he would find racist.

And explain, pray tell, just how "present social problems are partly due to greatly reduced church attendence (sic—correct spelling, "attendance")."

Don Firth

P. S. As far as the spelling of "practise/practice" is concerned, you'd be better off if you spent less time quibbling about how it should be spelled and much more time doing some.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Tootler
Date: 28 Nov 08 - 04:21 PM

As with the tenor-recorder/English-flute, Woody, when one plays a tune on the chromatic baritone English concertina (which I still think has a nice homely timbre) they are playing the very tune/top-line melody on the score - which, if also a singer, they can, of course, readily match with their voice. I also like the Anglo, but it is not fully chromatic and, with it's push-pull system, is more likely to develop holes and the associated gushing sounds that slightly spoil the timbre.

What a load of codswallop. For someone who claims a degree in humanities, WAV you are remarkably inarticulate.

To address some of the points.

I play recorder and regularly play in parts so don't always play melody.

Both English and Anglo concertinas can be played chordally - but that is anathema to WAV's world view.

A 30 (or more) button anglo concertina is fully chromatic and is capable of playing in any key - though the more remote keys are not always easy. The last part of your statement about the anglo is utter nonsense.

By the way, you need to do an awful lot of practice before you are even competent on the recorder. Your playing is dreadful. You need to work on timing, breath control and phrasing if you want to be taken seriously. An awful lot of practice is needed.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 28 Nov 08 - 05:56 PM

"Regarding travellers WaV; how exactly do you propose to prevent them going where they please in this Good New Order of yours? "

As you've ignored my question WaV, I'll take the liberty of guessing that your answer, based on your previous statements, would likely be: "Via a stronger UN". Would that not involve the increased use of barbed wire and guns? That has, I think, always been the traditional way of making borders more restrictive; bureaucracy has its limitations. Or maybe you have some alternative strategy? I went through Checkpoint Charlie when it was in operation - believe me, it wasn't pretty.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 28 Nov 08 - 08:15 PM

When some older English people say present social problems are partly due to greatly reduced church attendence, do you believe them?

England is a very secular country. To increase church attendance you'll want to encourage a large amount of immigration from more religious parts of the world.

Personally I believe that society's difficulties are best addressed through communication, understanding and people feeling that they have a stake in their community. I don't believe these problems will be solved by alienating or forcing conformity upon minorities, nor do I believe that they'll be much affected by people sitting in a big old building singing songs once a week.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 29 Nov 08 - 04:43 AM

Eliza: Either society suffers when people lose their traditions or it doesn't...

Franks has never answered this one and I don't think he ever will. The logic of his position is that society suffers when English people lose their traditions, but it doesn't suffer - in fact, it benefits - when incomers lose their traditions. In other words, there are two kinds of people, and some are more equal than others. He's never acknowledged this, which is why I call him a dishonest racist.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 30 Nov 08 - 10:36 AM

"P. S. As far as the spelling of "practise/practice" is concerned, you'd be better off if you spent less time quibbling about how it should be spelled and much more time doing some." (Don)...it was brought up, again, for the benefit of Stu, who (if you'll pardon the poetry) is relatively keen on such matters - and my (American) Websters still has only "practiCe" in it; but (as for my practiSe on the English flute, keys and vocals) I carry on and hope to do much more recording next year: hymns with "organ", E. trads U/A, carols both ways, and Enlish flute intros to everything (I shall add them to my Chants from Walkabouts, also, having worked out/written down the tunes this year).

And, Pip, saying that societies suffer when folks cease to practise their culture is neither "racist" nor "dishonest."

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Tootler
Date: 30 Nov 08 - 04:58 PM

I carry on and hope to do much more recording next year: hymns with "organ", E. trads U/A, carols both ways, and Enlish flute intros to everything (I shall add them to my Chants from Walkabouts, also, having worked out/written down the tunes this year).

I would recommend a lot less recording and a lot more practice - on getting basics right before you record anything else for public consumption.

So now it's "Enlish" flute is it. For goodness sake use the proper English name for the instrument. It's Recorder. As a recorder player I find your terminology intensely annoying as it is simply plain wrong.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 30 Nov 08 - 05:00 PM

saying that societies suffer when folks cease to practise their culture is neither "racist" nor "dishonest."

True. However, saying this while also saying that some people should cease to practise their culture is racist. Refusing to address that charge, and carrying on as if it hadn't been made, is dishonest.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 30 Nov 08 - 05:01 PM

And, Pip, saying that societies suffer when folks cease to practise their culture is neither "racist" nor "dishonest."

That isn't what Pip said, WaV.

Do we really need to practise our culture? Have we not perfected it yet?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 30 Nov 08 - 05:03 PM

Sorry, Sure Start is for younger people The link might help with speling probem's etc.,.,

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 30 Nov 08 - 07:39 PM

saying that some people should cease to practise their culture is racist

I dunno. Saying that WAV ought to give the recorder a rest sounds pretty good to me.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 30 Nov 08 - 08:40 PM

He'd do well to practise his rests - they're as important as the notes, after all.. Ask John Cage.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 30 Nov 08 - 09:50 PM

Well, looking over the course list, he could always take up sky-diving.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 30 Nov 08 - 11:58 PM

I'm not entirely convinced he's governed by the laws of gravity Don, it's a tricky business when the sun shines out of your arse. I wonder if you get to meet the person who packs your parachute..

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 01 Dec 08 - 02:48 AM

Hmm. . . .   Lots of interesting possibilities there. . . .

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 01 Dec 08 - 03:37 AM

Smokey - Youve identified plagiarism in our midst. Listen to Wav's silent recorder demonstration...

I think it's a rip-off of Cage's 4'33"


Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 01 Dec 08 - 03:45 AM

"when some older English people say present social problems are partly due to greatly reduced church attendence, do you believe them?"

I don't.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 01 Dec 08 - 03:47 AM

That's not racist, Jack, it's talentist.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 01 Dec 08 - 03:47 AM

Mind you, I've never heard anyone say that either, probably because it's complete bollocks.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 01 Dec 08 - 10:17 AM

35 pages, 1740 posts, and still no decision, i see.

I'm only here cause Facebook is down...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Gervase
Date: 01 Dec 08 - 12:35 PM

"when some older English people say present social problems are partly due to greatly reduced church attendence, do you believe them?"
Me neither. I don't think going to a big building to talk to an imaginary friend has any bearing on the matter whatsoever.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 01 Dec 08 - 12:39 PM

Tootler - some do refer to the recorder as the English flute, and some have enjoyed my playing of it.

Stu: if/when my spelling on Mudcat is so bad that people can't understand me, I'm sorry - but, as I've also said before, I don't put quite as much care into posts as I do my published poems...does that ring a bell with anyone? (And remember, as well as mistakes, there has also been hacking - which I DO have a PM from a Mod. about. Why don't you lay-back a bit on this matter?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Sandman
Date: 01 Dec 08 - 01:14 PM

As with the tenor-recorder/English-flute, Woody, when one plays a tune on the chromatic baritone English concertina (which I still think has a nice homely timbre) they are playing the very tune/top-line melody on the score - which, if also a singer, they can, of course, readily match with their voice. I also like the Anglo, but it is not fully chromatic and, with it's push-pull system, is more likely to develop holes and the associated gushing sounds that slightly spoil the timbre.
more rubbish from WAV,the timbre of a concertina varies from instrument to instrument,to some extent it is dependent on the materials used,metal ends are brighter.however Ihave several different ebony ended concertinas and they all have a different timbre.
baritone concertinas do not always copy first treble,this is rubbish,I played in the New Mexborough English Concertina Quartet,and am very well acquainted with four part arrangements for concertina,they occassionally play the same notes as First treble,but a lot of the time play a chordal part.
Anglos dont develop holes because they are diatonic,concertinas develop holes because idiots play the bellows over their knees,thus wearing them out.
Wav you are out of your depth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Gervase
Date: 01 Dec 08 - 01:27 PM

Wav you are out of your depth
Aye, Dick, but he's been out of his depth since the very start of this thread and has steadfastly and stubbornly refused to listen to anyone's advice. Best just to look upon him as our very own global village idiot and more to be pitied than scorned (until his starts the racist bleating again, of course).
He really would be better off with a pig's bladder on a stick than his execrable recorder - sorry "English Flute" - playing. The singing really has to be heard, though. It's an absolute hoot!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 01 Dec 08 - 01:28 PM

...but for any given tune, CB, the bellows of an Anglo would be pushed and pulled more than with an English, yes?...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 01 Dec 08 - 02:38 PM

". . . published poems. . . ."

Published where? What is the name of the publishing company? Who was the editor?

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Gervase
Date: 01 Dec 08 - 02:40 PM

The Onanist's Press, of course.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 01 Dec 08 - 04:39 PM

"Why don't you lay-back a bit on this matter?"

WAV you put a lot of care into misspelling words with some misunderstood political agenda, and capitalizing your errors. Is this to wind people up? Or some strange attempt at humour.

Do you wind me up - too bloody true cobber.

Why do I respond? (God knows I ask myself the same question)

Because I respect the Mudcat Forum and its accumulated wisdom.

Because I dislike anti-female anti-immigrant anti God-knows-what rants.

Because I value poetry and music, and I sincerely want you to become a competent singer/writer/musician - and I wish the same to anyone who chooses these paths.

Because I resent the rudeness you show to people who I regard as friends, that I have met through this forum.

Because I suspect the dissembling nature of your posts.

Because you evade normal discussion.

Regards

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Sandman
Date: 01 Dec 08 - 04:56 PM

..but for any given tune, CB, the bellows of an Anglo would be pushed and pulled more than with an English, yes?..
not necessarily,but often yes,but that doesnt create holes in them.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Dec 08 - 05:12 PM

No question, it must be the: English Concertina

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 01 Dec 08 - 05:54 PM

Smokey - Youve identified plagiarism in our midst. Listen to Wav's silent recorder demonstration...

I think it's a rip-off of Cage's 4'33"

Yes, I listened Stu. You're quite right, but I think he did it a bit fast for my tastes. That's beginners for you though - rush the music and miss all the subtle nuances. Really, one shouldn't record stuff until it's been aired in front of an audience.

some do refer to the recorder as the English flute

Who? I've played recorders since I was a child, and later on in a professional capacity and I have never heard the instrument referred to as an English flute until you came along. Please stop being silly, you know perfectly well what it's called, it's on the sheet of paper you got with it when you bought it.

and some have enjoyed my playing of it.

Some what? Your peers? Very polite people who just wish you would go? Dogs?

...but for any given tune, CB, the bellows of an Anglo would be pushed and pulled more than with an English, yes?...

Yeah right WaV - what would a long-standing professional concertina player know about it?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Tootler
Date: 01 Dec 08 - 06:19 PM

WAV Wrote

Tootler - some do refer to the recorder as the English flute,

Guest, Smokey Wrote

Who? I've played recorders since I was a child, and later on in a professional capacity and I have never heard the instrument referred to as an English flute until you came along. Please stop being silly, you know perfectly well what it's called, it's on the sheet of paper you got with it when you bought it.

There you have it WAV. Even a professional agrees with me. But then, what do I, a mere amateur know, even though I probably first learnt to play the recorder before you were born and have been playing it regularly for the past 25 years.

and some have enjoyed my playing of it.

No comment!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 01 Dec 08 - 06:26 PM

". . . and some have enjoyed my playing of it."

Well, I did rather enjoy the fact that there was no sound recorded with it.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 01 Dec 08 - 07:26 PM

Well I've enjoyed some of your offerings WAV. I believe the technical term is schadenfreude.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 01 Dec 08 - 08:02 PM

Well, I did rather enjoy the fact that there was no sound recorded with it.

He could have just been miming, we don't know for certain..

What I'm waiting for is the 'air-recorder' video demonstrating his tonguing technique.

I almost wish I hadn't said that.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 01 Dec 08 - 10:54 PM

OY!!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 02 Dec 08 - 07:24 AM

social problems are partly due to greatly reduced church attendence

Having reached your conclusions, WAV, is it not true that you now believe you are right about everything?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 02 Dec 08 - 07:27 AM

He's not the only one on this board who thinks like that.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 02 Dec 08 - 08:35 AM

I can assure you he is.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Surreysinger
Date: 02 Dec 08 - 09:11 AM

LOL!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 02 Dec 08 - 09:12 AM

Which is to say (having pressed the submit button a tad prematurely)...

The general objection to WAV is one of exasperated infuriation at his absolutism, ill-founded or otherwise. Sure we all have opinions, which are true for ourselves, but only up to a point - that is until we realise the error of our ways and change our minds. And whilst debate & devil's advocacy might be fun, I don't think there's anyone here would be so arrogant as to assume anything approaching the degree of righteous conviction that underlies WAVs pronouncements on things he obviously knows fuck all about and yet so doggedly persists in the promotion of.

Well we remember the 'English Country Dances', Please? thread where his initial position was thoroughly trounced by considered erudition from some highly qualified individuals, showing him the error of his ways. And yet in his latest Myspace Monthly Message (which I still get notice of on account of him being a friend of some of the pages I monitor on behalf of other people) he persists with his original position without having learned anything from the discussion [1]. Indeed, this is just a standard repetition of his rhetorical position formulated by way of conclusion years ago which will, no doubt, be repeated ad infinitum by way of the darker obsessive compulsion that underlies his Life's Work with no hope of ever learning anything anything new because he knows it all anyway.

Having reached his conclusions, he believes he is right about everything he has pronounced upon, irrespective of how wrong those conclusions are and have been shown to be - be it on the nature of English Country Dance, The Chinese Erhu Fiddle, Immigration, Cultural & Ethnic Purity or the English Flute. No matter what anyone says, he will not change his mind; no matter how wrong his conclusions can be proven to be, not one jot will he alter his position.

Who else is there on the fecking planet, let alone on this board, thinks like that?

_________________      


[1] Walkaboutsverse Monthly Message, December 2008:

CEILIDHS?

An English octogenarian has told me that at school - whilst one or two Scottish dances were learnt - at least 90% of their dancing was English Country Dance.

From
davidfranks.741.com

(ORIGINAL) MESSAGE EMAILED-OUT DURING 2005

To many online folkies:

Folk music IS meant to be local/regional/national. Our forebears were loyal to this when they formed the English Folk Dance and Song Society, as have been contemporary Scots by forming a Degree in Scottish Traditional Music. Furthermore, I'm told several of our earliest folk-clubs strongly encouraged participants to select from their own culture.

My usual and only complaint with our present English-folk scene is the lack of loyalty to our own good tradition. There are more than enough good English songs, tunes and dances (plus instruments) for anyone's lifetime – let's appreciate others but perform our own!

More broadly: nationalism with conquest is bad; but nationalism with eco-travel and fair-trade (via the U.N.) is good for humanity.

Yours Faithfully,

David Franks

For more, see - davidfranks.741.com

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Surreysinger
Date: 02 Dec 08 - 09:23 AM

Hmm . interesting - don't think I'd seen that last before, otherwise I might have commented on the sentence "Our forebears were loyal to this when they formed the English Folk Dance and Song Society". Since the EFDSS was an amalgam of the Folk-Song Society and the English Folk Dance Society, he's certainly less than right on that one!! The FSS did NOT restrict itself to consideration of English folk song alone - indeed at least one of it's early committee members was referring to "world music" as being of interest long before the term was used by certain worthies on the roots scene these days. Editions of the Folk Song Journal contained articles on song from all parts of the British Isles, and individuals such as Lucy Broadwood were intensely interested in song from all parts of the globe ... Lucy was intensely interested in Gaelic song, and regarded her collections of phonograph recordings of Gaelic songs as one of the pinnacles of her life's work. So, no, the formation of the EFDSS via it's forebear on the song side at least had nothing to do with being "loyal" to regionality. But most of us knew that anyway, didn'twe ? Hey ho....

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 02 Dec 08 - 12:26 PM

"Published where? What is the name of the publishing company? Who was the editor?" (Don)...you have asked me this before and I have answered - via simple links, you will find here a list of some of the places I've been published in, as well as the self-published website itself and info. on the original A4 paperback (plus what IB just took the liberty of copy/pasting - but at least he didn't post as "Guest Walkaboutsverse" as someone in BS has decided to do, and which I have complained to the Mods about).

Surreysinger: you don't mention the romantic/nationalistic views of those times?...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Will Fly
Date: 02 Dec 08 - 12:38 PM

I've just checked the link in WAV's last post. David - there is no sign of any publication, as such, in any area other than your own. You've donated self-published copies of your own oeuvres to various libraries - but so what? Any clot can do that. It's not publication in the conventional sense meant by Don - i.e. your work being, assessed, accepted and then published by someone else. I produce DVDs of my stuff, which I sell commercially, but I would not presume to say that I've been "commercially published" - because I haven't.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 02 Dec 08 - 12:54 PM

So, David, you have posted you "work" on a poetry forum and on MySpace. I see nothing else on you website that tells where you have been

PUBLISHED

in the accepted usage of the word:   submitted to an editor, approved and accepted by said editor, subsequently printed in book form, and distributed to book stores and other such outlets—and for which you received a financial advance and for which you are currently receiving periodic royalty checks.

This does not mean self-published (paying a printer to print your book) and then distributing them yourself (a good way to wind up with 500 copies in a box under your bed).

Nor does it mean giving copies of your work to local libraries. My wife works in a major library and they get writers and poets walking in all the time with copies of their works, wanting them to be entered in the catalog and put on shelves to be checked out. In fact they receive so much of this unsolicited stuff that they have a policy of refusing anything that does not come through regular channels from a book publisher. If the person insists on leaving their book, it is discarded immediately.

Nor does published mean "posted on the internet."

Therefore, David—

Where have you been published?

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 02 Dec 08 - 01:40 PM

I am not a barefoot pilgrim when it comes to publication, David. I have been published. One article submitted to Sing Out!, an American folk music magazine published in New York and distributed nationally. I submitted the article, it was accepted, and I subsequently received a check in the mail. I have also had some sixteen one- and two-part articles published in Victory Review, a magazine published locally by Victory Music. Victory Review is sent monthly to members and subscribers, and it is distributed to music stores in the western Washington area.

So I think I can legitimately claim that I have been published.

Submitted to an editor for approval. Accepted. Printed. Distributed. Paid.

I am also working on a book on the folk music "scene" in the Pacific Northwest as I have experienced it. Not finished yet, but I work on it daily and the first draft is over 100,000 words—so far. It is going to need serious editing before it will be ready to submit to a publisher, but I intend to finish the first draft first. It's much easier to go back and edit than it is to get bogged down in editing as one goes along (that way, sometimes the book never gets finished).

When it has been submitted to a publisher, accepted by an editor, and subsequently printed and distributed—then—I will say that I have a book published. But not until then.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 02 Dec 08 - 04:12 PM

Surreysinger: you don't mention the romantic/nationalistic views of those times?..

The nationalistic views of those times led to 2 world wars. Lovely....

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 02 Dec 08 - 04:30 PM

A Google Image Search for English Flute comes up with this:

An English Flute off Satalia

A depiction of the port of Satalia on the south-west coast of Turkey in 1677, surrounded by a rocky coastline. The ancient walled city, with minarets rising from it, overlooks the small harbour and gulf, and is enclosed by high mountains in the central distance. An English merchant pink or flute, with the Royal Arms on her stern, is shown standing into Satalia. Figures on the foreshore on the left are loading or unloading a small boat and a two-masted galley can be seen off the harbour entrance.

Artist - Jan Peeters
Date - 1677

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Will Fly
Date: 02 Dec 08 - 04:38 PM

And, of course, a French flute would be a long, thin loaf...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 02 Dec 08 - 04:54 PM

Googling "English flute" also comes up with a fair amount of stuff about English flautists (repeated hits on a CD entitled "The English Flute" recorded by Celia Redgate) and on English composers who have written pieces for the flute—that is, the transverse flute.

Don Firth

P. S. Under "English flute," I also came up with THIS.    And THIS.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 02 Dec 08 - 04:55 PM

Just out of interest, WAV, how do you justify saying that society suffers when people lose their culture while also saying that some people (immigrants and Travellers) should lose their culture? Surely, as Eliza said, either society suffers when people lose their culture or it doesn't.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 02 Dec 08 - 05:16 PM

Sorry, that last was meant to go on a BS thread.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ptarmigan
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 02:02 AM

Michael wrote:

"This thread has NOTHING to do with "Englands's national musical instrument" . . . could someone PLEASE end this farce?"

Sounds like a good idea Michael, especially as it takes so long to get down here now! :-)

So, as this is a Folk Music Forum, let's stick to instruments that are used for that music & song.

So surely you must say that the ENGLISH CONCERTINA wins the day! ...... Musn't you?

After all, this was invented by an Englishman, how many other instruments played in English music can make that claim.
Many were adapted from earlier instruments but no others were actually invented there, were they?

Cheers
Dick

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Paul Burke
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 03:17 AM

Ptarmigan, it don't take long to get to the bottom. Just click on the number of posts rather than the thread name, and you just get the last 50. Isn't the Session crude?

Was there ever a transprose flute?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 03:22 AM

and if you click on the little 'd' to the side of the post number, you get the last post first.

Ain't Mudcat wonderful

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ptarmigan
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 03:28 AM

EXCELLENT! :-)

Thanks guys.

Cheers
Dick

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 06:56 AM

If you have been published WAV, tell us an ISBN number of your work

eric

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 07:13 AM

Sadly Eric even an ISBN number means little these days as you can buy them for your self-published work at a cost of about £45. For an example see here.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 07:25 AM

I didn't know that Woody.

eric

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 07:58 AM

pub·lish         [puhb-lish] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–verb (used with object)

1.        to issue (printed or otherwise reproduced textual or graphic material, computer software, etc.) for sale or distribution to the public.

Self-publishing is a totally legitimate method of getting your work out there. WAV's assertion he is published is correct. He (or anyone else for that matter) can publish his work through any number of media and they don't need permission from anyone, they don't need an ISBN and they don't need to meet any particular criteria.

Anyone who knows owt about poetry will know self-publishing is a common way of getting work out there, and the internet is an equally valid way of publishing. Individual poets and artists often print and issue their own work as it's cost-effective and they can be far more creative on small runs that can be finished as wished without editorial or financial restraints (a bonus as most self-publishers can't afford much anyway).

Did Winstanley have an ISBN when he issued his pamphlets in the face of Cromwell's oppression? Did that make his publications less legitimate? Should Ian Hamilton Finlay have abandoned the Wild Hawthorn Press because he printed all his works himself? Perhaps the resistance should have stopped publishing Défense de la France because it wasn't sanctioned by the Nazi's? There is a vibrant artistic and political community that continues to self-publish in all forms of media and long may it do so. Although not everything published is either good and may well be execrable in any number of ways, it is still an very important creative outlet.

Whatever stick you decide to beat WAV with, this one ain't it.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Will Fly
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 08:15 AM

The issue, I think (wearily), is slightly more complex than that. David is trying to give the impression that his work - as well as being self-published (as you say, a perfectly legitimate and respectable outlet) - has been published: in the sense of being accepted by someone else as a work which the someone else has then published. The act of being published by someone else is a kind of legitimisation, an acceptance of his efforts, by a third party - implying merit, credibility, etc. I quote David's words to Don Firth:

via simple links, you will find here a list of some of the places I've been published in, as well as the self-published website itself and info. on the original A4 paperback...

Actually, no, you won't find any places where David has been published in the conventional sense of the word. He has certainly self-published, but that, in itself these days, is vanity publishing and is no way any indication of merit. By implying that he has been published independently of himself, David is making a false claim to enhance what he does.

I'm sorry that this all becomes so incredibly tedious, but it's this type of obfuscation that does get up the collective nose.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 08:20 AM

I think the problem is that while WAV's use of the term may be technically accurate, there is no doubt that he uses the term deliberately to deceive.

He cites publication of his works in an attempt provide support for his arguments through the implication that others have found it of sufficient worth to spend money. time and effort publishing it. He also cites the supply of same to libraries again to provide a veneer of legitimacy - i.e. his work must be good or why would a library take it? (a question which has been ably answered by Don Firth I think).

So it's not really the terms he uses but rather how they are used.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Gervase
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 11:51 AM

And there was me thinking he was just stupid. Now it seems, he's dishonest as well. *sigh*. What's the Australian equivalent of 'the naughty step'? I think he should go and sit there and not post anything for a while. Three years sounds good.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 12:50 PM

Will and Don - self-publication is publication...by the way, did you, Will, send a copy of your DVDs to the half-a-dozen or so compulsory libraries - "compulsory", at least, for books? (For what it's worth, both my (ISBN-less) A4 "Walkabouts..." paperback, and my CD "Chants from Walkabouts" were received by them...Brit. Lib., one in Oxford, Cambridge, etc.) And then I noticed Stigweard gave much more detail on this matter which I agree with. But, one other thing, it's true that without an ISBN retailers are unlikely to stock a book, but libraries may - and have done for me - make one up.

And, as for "elsewhere" and all the mud just thrown, I'll copy/paste this time, from the same, abovementioned, site...

"...And some Walkaboutsverse has also been published in The North East Poetry Journal, The Northern Lines poetry journal, Newcastle's Evening Chronicle newspaper, Gateshead Library's talking newspaper, as well as Kent Folk News, & has been recited on local radio."

But as for: "and for which you received a financial advance and for which you are currently receiving periodic royalty checks" (Don)...everything I've done so far on the folk and poetry scene has been as an amateur - just a few mini- free entry/drinks-type gigs/spots.

And the transverse flute, Don, is also known as the German flute.

Pip - as I DID suggest above, are you sure travellers can't keep their culture going, from now on, within a nation?

Thanks for those tips, Paul and Stu - I have an old/slowish computer.

Gervase - I prefer to live in the land of my birth, England.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Will Fly
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 02:08 PM

Some facts. Self-publication is not publication in the conventional sense of the word - as any independent publisher will tell you. My DVDs are self-publications - and I'm under no obligation to send a copy to the 6 Legal Deposit Libraries in the UK. These libraries are:

# Bodleian Library, Oxford
# Cambridge University Library
# National Library of Scotland
# Library of Trinity College Dublin
# National Library of Wales
# British Library

Libraries do not issue ISBNs. Whether the Legal Deposit libraries you send your stuff to actually retained them or not is another matter. You're only obliged to send 6 copies of your work to the LD Libraries if you actually print off multiple copies to sell. Vanity publishing doesn't count if they're not commercially for sale.

Will (in my capacity as a University Librarian)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 02:39 PM

and my CD

As I've said elsewhere, a CDR-R is not a CD; saying otherwise is dishonest, deceptive and contravenes trades descriptions. Also selling such a thing for £8 is a total rip-off irrespective of the quality of the content. Try £5. Likewise a bundle of home-bound photocopied / computer printed pages is not what comes to mind by the term paperback.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 03:04 PM

Thank you, David. I just wanted you to make that clear.

Self-publishing is referred to by most writers as "vanity publishing." Anyone can do it, as long as they can afford to pay a printer.

Have any newspaper or magazine critics reviewed your poetry?

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 04:21 PM

Pip - as I DID suggest above, are you sure travellers can't keep their culture going, from now on, within a nation?

That's not an answer. Set aside Travellers for the time being. You've said that immigrants to England should assimilate to English culture. You've also said that society suffers when people lose their culture. How do you resolve this contradiction?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 04:48 PM

"Have any newspaper or magazine critics reviewed your poetry?" (Don)...not that I know of.

It's better, Pip, if the the land, the culture, and the law of the land are linked: one of the reasons why I think immigration/emigration should be greatly reduced/regulated via the UN, the world over, from now on; and why I think those who have should make an effort to assimilate. And, remember, after nearly a decade of promoting diversity, even New Labour have recently leaned a bit this way with English tests, etc.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 05:23 PM

So let me understand this:
Travellers (people whose culture is to travel) could still travel within a country...Or perhaps a county...or perhaps a reservation, where they could travel round the inside of a perimeter fence

My traveller friends will feel much better knowing that.

And as a de facto immigrant will you make every effort to assimilate?

Regards

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 06:04 PM

WaV - Just how is the (your) U.N. going to carry out what you are proposing - "the world over"?

What do you propose to do about the people who don't actually want to "assimilate" to (your idea of) English culture?

Regarding travellers - they are called that because their tradition is to travel. Restrict that, and you are eroding their culture, to which they have at least a moral right, as does any other. To recommend restriction of such movement "via a stronger U.N." is tantamount to a threat of violence as far as I can see. Please explain yourself.

As I've said before, nationalism is the mother of intolerance.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 06:28 PM

even New Labour have recently leaned a bit this way with English tests

Not that I really want to defend the Labour party, but I think you'll find that the English language test requirement is being introduced for a combination of reasons, some of which are....

1 - Taking the effort to learn the language indicates a level of desire and commitment for those wishing to live in the country

2 - Having English language skills obviously increases employability

3 - English language skills help the immigrant to access services

4 - Those who can speak English are less vulnerable to exploitation

5 - English language skills enable better integration into the community - NB Integration, not shedding of culture


Passing the English language test is not about losing your own culture & pretending to be born/raised in England or adopting fake accents. The language test is supposed to be the equivalent of GCSE English grade A-C, judging by your "life's work" WAV, I doubt very much that you'd be able to pass it.

I'd be surprised if any of the main political parties will be including a requirement that minority communities shed their own culture as part of their next election manifesto. That'll probably be reserved for your friends in the BNP.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 06:34 PM

I'll answer WAV's last point, but I'm not continuing this discussion here. WAV's insistence on talking politics above and below the line is disgraceful.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 06:58 PM

I don't see the United Nations ever taking up your cause, David. There are many pockets of tribalism here and there, but the general trend—the zeitgeist, if you will—is toward a breakdown of such arbitrary limitations as national borders and passports and such, and an acceptance of the idea of open travel and multiculturalism.

Tribal thinking, or in its mega-form, nationalism, is one of the main stumbling blocks on the road to the earth becoming a civilized planet. This is not to say that we should all "assimilate" and become one monolithic culture. No. The true benefit to all mankind is when we can pick and chose from the rich variety of cultures there are in the world.

Although the city I live in is not generally regarded as one of the world's major cultural centers, it is a major west coast (of the U. S) seaport, and it is a very cosmopolitan and multicultural city. I have eaten in Chinese restaurants that are not the usual "chop suey" joints, but where the fare is real Chinese food. Within walking distance of where I live, there are restaurants featuring the foods of at least a dozen nations. There is an excellent Indian restaurant three blocks from where I live.

Speaking of "culture", we have a world class symphony orchestra, opera company, and ballet company.

I got a good explanation of the Palestinian view from an Egyptian-born Arab. I have drunk real Turkish coffee brewed in the traditional way by a genuine Turk. I have had enjoyable fencing matches with French, Italian, German, Latvian, and Russian fencers, all who live here. I have several Vietnamese friends. I know people from England, Bali, Japan, and Tonga. I had a drinking buddy from Estonia. I have had many interesting chats with acquaintances from India and Kenya.

Seattle has quite a large Scandinavian population. There are churches here of all denominations, including a number of synagogues and at least two mosques.

I learned to play some flamenco guitar from a genuine Spanish gypsy who was playing at the Spanish Village during the Seattle World's Fair in 1962.

In the building in which I live, there is a Chinese doctor and his mother, a Chinese exchange student attending the University of Washington, and a couple from South Africa. Across the hall lives a young woman from Belgium with her husband and her three year old son. I had many interesting conversations on the fado music of Portugal with a young woman from Lisbon who lived in the building and who loaned me some CDs (I mentioned to her that I had seen and heard Amalia Rodriguez in a movie some decades ago).

And they are all right here, where I live. I am surrounded by a rich diversity of cultures, viewpoints, and ideas. Like the biologists' view of hybrid vitality, this kind of diversity is a source of strength and vibrancy in any community.

The United States is a country made up of immigrants. So is England. The immigration to the U. S. is just more recent than the immigration to England.

I think I would suffocate in the kind of bland monoculture that you seem to be advocating, David. Loosen up! Open your mind to new ideas! Get some excitement into your life.

Don Firth

P. S. I have a friend who is a flautist in the Seattle Symphony. He doesn't call his flute a "German flute." He calls it a "flute."

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 07:10 PM

Well said Don..

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Tootler
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 07:15 PM

The term "German Flute" was once used a very long time ago in England for a while to distinguish the transverse flute from the end blown flute, namely the recorder. However as the recorder fell out of use as an orchestral instrument the term became redundant and died out.

The best that can be said is that "German Flute" is an archaic term - very archaic - about 300 years out of date.

Yet another of WAV's attempts at misinformation.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 09:13 PM

Some time ago WaV seemed to implicitly cite Plaid Cymru as an example/justification of his brand of nationalism. The following is from their website:

(found under "Our aims")

"To build a national community based on equal citizenship, respect for different traditions and cultures and the equal worth of all individuals, whatever their race, nationality, gender, colour, creed, sexuality, age, ability or social background."

Why would my criticism of your nationalism offend these people WaV?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 04 Dec 08 - 12:28 PM

"I'll answer WAV's last point, but I'm not continuing this discussion here. WAV's insistence on talking politics above and below the line is disgraceful." (Pip)...on the contrary, you repeatedly ask such questions "above and below the line", and repeadedly complain/accuse if you feel I haven't answered them fully.

Don - I'm definetely NOT against "open travel"...the full name of my collection is "Walkabouts: Travels and Conclusions in Verse".

Back on thread: there's a link above to a 20th century article in which a well known authority on the recorder/English flute uses the latter term in his title - here's another.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 04 Dec 08 - 12:48 PM

WaV - The term 'English flute' is obsolete, was never commonly used, and there is no reason to revive it.

I note with interest that you've chosen not to answer any of my other points - I must therefore assume you are fully aware of how dodgy your political inclinations are, and that your aim is to be offensive. That's all I needed to know.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 04 Dec 08 - 01:28 PM

on the contrary, you repeatedly ask such questions "above and below the line", and repeadedly complain/accuse if you feel I haven't answered them fully.

WAV, I'm asking you not to answer political questions here. Keep them for BS.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 04 Dec 08 - 01:58 PM

...but this is the thread on which he exposes his politics..

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 04 Dec 08 - 02:20 PM

Is WAV still in the stocks? Is everyone still throwing rotten eggs at him?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Will Fly
Date: 04 Dec 08 - 02:29 PM

Well, he's still ducking and diving, refusing to give straight answers to perfectly reasonable and straight questions, refusing to back his assertions with hard evidence, making claims for the validity of his work that he can't substantiate, and using his own Good Website as evidence for his own Good Website in the now familiar circuitous manner. Apart from that, everything's fine.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 04 Dec 08 - 02:36 PM

His 'life's work', Will. Which he appears to have completed.
I think I prefer to take my time.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 04 Dec 08 - 02:39 PM

It might be just me, but I always find a moving target a bit more of a challenge.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 04 Dec 08 - 02:42 PM

I find there are more meaningful areas of life in which to seek challenge..

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 04 Dec 08 - 02:53 PM

Hmmm.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Will Fly
Date: 04 Dec 08 - 02:56 PM

Strange as it may seem, I believe that David is absolutely entitled to hold the views he holds - we do, after all, still (just about) live in a democratic country - and he can think and speak as he likes. It shouldn't be any other way.

However, David chooses to promote some views which are felt to be abhorrent by many on this forum - in thread after thread. He pushes them in our faces. I wouldn't even mind that, IF - and it's a really important IF - he would accept the challenge of honest debate and substantiate, with hard evidence, the views he holds.

I would also prefer a moving target - God knows it would be far more stimulating. The crux of it all is whether you think that the constant promotion of these views matters or not. Do you stand back, shrug your shoulders and say, "Aw, what the hell, he's harmless enough", and metaphorically walk away. Or do you say, "It's insidious, and ultimately detestable - and not harmless." And then you don't walk away. The fact that the whole business becomes tedious and repetitive is perhaps the price for not walking away.

That's the point.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 04 Dec 08 - 03:00 PM

Well, it certainly aint a challenge. It just occured to me though, that it's a bit like watching a plate-spinner.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 04 Dec 08 - 03:12 PM

David, o obtuse one, I am not talking about "open travel," which, incidentally, I also favor.

I am talking about people who live right here where I live, in the city in which I live, in the neighborhood in which I live, and in the apartment building in which I live.

You say you favor getting your daily nutrition from that traditional English dish, pottage. Okay.

Hey, waitaminute—

Traditional English dish? Wasn't pottage mentioned in the Bible? I believe Esau sold his birthright to Jacob for a "mess of pottage" (Genesis 25:29-34). Which means that pottage has been around for many centuries, if not a millennium or two, before England even existed. And that would make it a Middle Eastern dish, not traditional English. Capiche?

But I digress. . . .

Pottage. The dictionary tells me that this is "A thick soup or stew of vegetables and sometimes meat." Stews and such dishes are usually made with a variety of vegetables such as potatoes, carrots, onions, celery, often whatever vegetables happen to be at hand. Stews are usually characterized by meat (beef, mutton, chicken, seafood such as oysters if available) as one of the ingredients, whereas pottage tends to emphasize the vegetables while sometimes including meat.

Okay, David. Let me draw you a parallel:   You say your choice, to stay true to your "good English culture," is to subsist on pottage. I don't know what recipe you use, but let me suggest one to you. In fact, since your website and your choice of songs seem to indicate that you have a religious bent, let's make it Biblical:

Regarding the pottage mentioned in the exchange between Esau and Jacob, the Bible tells us it was composed of lentils. Let us ignore for now that lentils did not originate in England, and make your pottage of lentils. Let us not corrupt it or compromise its purity with potatoes (which, after all, came to England from the New World, along with tomatoes and a number of other foods which you may enjoy), carrots, onions, or anything else. Lentils.

You will spend the rest of your live subsisting on lentil soup.

Lentil soup for breakfast. Lentil soup for lunch. Lentil soup at tea-time (this is England, after all). And lentil soup for supper.

That, David, is the mono-culture you favor.

You can, of course, take a break from lentils and go to a nearby restaurant or pub and partake of other provender—analogous to the "open travel" and sampling other cultures that you advocate—that is, when and if you can afford to.

But—when you can't afford to, it's back to the lentil soup.

Think about it!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 04 Dec 08 - 03:12 PM

Anyone can hold trivial opinions Will; most of us do, and in casual conversation we will offer all sorts of half baked ideas without real justification. What bothers me is that here there are demonstrably wrong opinions tied into what appears to be a rather unpleasant agenda purporting to represent the English Folkie.

That's why I keep posting: I don't want anyone to accept these ideas as typical of the folk movement in any way.

Part of me wants to respond to improve the guy's education, part of me to disassociate myself from his pontifications

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 04 Dec 08 - 03:22 PM

I'm not saying I agree with WAV's views - they're a long way from my own and I can't say I particularly like them, even though they're far more common than many of us would like to believe. How many people read the Daily Mail for Christ's sake? 800,000 of our countrymen voted for the BNP in the last election; more vote UKIP and all those other right-wing tossers including many in the Tory party itself.

WAV has wound me right up on a couple of occasions, but he's getting a right kicking on some of these threads from one or two that seem to think they are a cut above everyone else. It's too easy to keep taking pot shots at him - as you said Will, he isn't listening anyway. What I don't like is this idea someone isn't a poet because their poetry is crap, or they're not published because they weren't in The Rattle Bag or they are not a musician because they can't sing. Everything's a sliding scale, and we're all on it.

I wish WAV would take advice as I think he'd get more from the music and then perhaps understand why his views are so out of step with many folkies. But many here are simply kicking and kicking and kicking, and it's not very pretty.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 04 Dec 08 - 03:30 PM

I'm perhaps the wrong person to say this, but participation is not compulsory.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 04 Dec 08 - 03:50 PM

stigweard, rather than telling us all to go home, I think you need to note carefully who is merely getting their giggles by whacking away at an easy target, and who is actually trying to get through to David.

An artist friend of mine (who, incidentally, referred to himself as a "painter." "Whether I am an artist or not is for others to say, not me.") once said that an artist's most valuable tool is his waste basket. And the taste and intelligence to use it when his work merits it.

I don't know what it would take to get through to David, but if he would spend half the time learning to write poetry, to sing, and studying up on English traditional music from authoritative sources than he does on attempting to prematurely promote his "life's work" and claiming that those who have been folk music performers and scholars longer than he has been alive should listen to his singing, learn from it, and follow his example. . . .

Not to mention his neo-fascist political ideas.

It's probably impossible to get through to him, but one makes the attempt.

Also, if nothing else, these threads have stimulated some interesting discussions.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 04 Dec 08 - 04:13 PM

"You say you favor getting your daily nutrition from that traditional English dish, pottage. Okay." (Don)...what I have said, in verse, is...

206 of 230: MY DIET

Chasing breads, nuts, bananas,
    Red sauce, apples, sultanas,
Crackers, conserves, cucumbers,
    Pickles, porridge, pottages -

Lemon barley,
    Cocoa, coffee,
Or cups of tea.

From walkaboutsverse.741.com

And I've also said, in verse and prose, that FAIR TRADE is part of my argument.

My "pottages" have varied slightly since publication in 2003; here's the present particulars:

Half an onion, lettuce, baked beans, cup-a-soup, and a bit of extra red sauce...plus toast.

More seriously, as for most of the other posts since my last, I do read/listen to advice here, take SOME of it, and occasionally make changes to my sites due to it.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 04 Dec 08 - 04:17 PM

"More seriously, as for most of the other posts since my last, I do read/listen to advice here, take SOME of it, and occasionally make changes to my sites due to it."

Well, that's progress, at least.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 04 Dec 08 - 04:22 PM

CUP-A-SOUP??!! THAT's a component of your "traditional" pottage?

I've heard it all now...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 04 Dec 08 - 04:23 PM

However, David, I'm not sure you even understood the point I was making in my thread of 04 Dec 08 - 03:12 p.m.

I do admire the alacrity with which you skirt issues and answer the inconsequential. Even Fred Astaire couldn't tap dance quite that skillfully.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Will Fly
Date: 04 Dec 08 - 04:23 PM

Half an onion, lettuce, baked beans, cup-a-soup, and a bit of extra red sauce...plus toast.

David - I would seriously check the contents of cup-a-soup before imbibing. Lord knows what chemicals this stuff is shot through with. I haven't checked it myself for years, but my memory of it was not pleasant.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 04 Dec 08 - 04:46 PM

Never mind the salt. Wavey, let me share some soup recipes with you. Seriously, you'll never touch that rubbish again.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 04 Dec 08 - 04:47 PM

Let's see, now. If I were to confine myself to what some folks think of as "traditional American food," I would be surviving on roast beef, mashed potatoes and gravy, and canned peas, followed by apple pie with ice cream. With some Americans, it's a Big Mac and fries. In regions of the country other than my own, I might be starting the day with biscuits and gravy, whereas I usually start with cereal and fruit.

My wife is an excellent cook. She learned much from her Czechoslovakian grandmother on one side and her Swedish, Scots-Irish, English, and Swiss grandmother on the other side. I addition, she reads a lot of cook books and is given to experimentation. She had a friend once who taught her quite a bit about Persian cooking.

I, on the other hand, am the absolute master of the frozen dinner and the microwave oven. Beyond that, I make culinary history with such things as peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Ham and cheese is a specialty of mine. A favorite sandwich is a thick slice of pre-cooked ham, a slice of Swiss cheese, and a slice of onion, along with a dollop of mustard and a dollop of mayonnaise, all on a split bagel. I used to take these for lunch when I worked at the Boeing Airplane Company back in the 1970s and a co-worker of the Jewish persuasion commented, "Ham? On a bagel? God's gonna get you for that, Firth!"

Lemme see. What's for lunch today? Barbara bought a big bag of tortilla chips yesterday and I know we have some guacamole in the fridge. . . .

I'll be back later.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 04 Dec 08 - 05:53 PM

In regions of the country other than my own, I might be starting the day with biscuits and gravy

The thing to remember about biscuits and gravy, at least if you're not American, is that the biscuits aren't biscuits and the gravy isn't gravy. I was at a breakfast buffet once in Colorado where b. and g. were one of the options; for the guy behind me in the queue, who came from further south, they might as well have started serving nectar and ambrosia. I thought it looked weird and uninviting.

Another breakfast I had in Colorado was in a diner, and according to the menu it included a portion of grits. I'm pretty sure the grits didn't arrive - I think the waiter heard my accent and took pity.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: peregrina
Date: 04 Dec 08 - 07:09 PM

I have heard -etc.- that to make a supply of self-made soup in one's native kitchen, chopping fresh vegetables (that were not wrapped in plastic) ... the full name is home-made soup... is good to do with your own hands if you have time on your hands (rather than eat freeze dried processed reconstituted e-numbered global commercial so-called soup powder)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 04 Dec 08 - 07:26 PM

Yeah, Barbara quite often makes soup with fresh vegetables. She makes substantial quantities, so we wind up eating away at it, with various additions, for a couple of days. Great assist on the days when we're working and come home hungry, but too tired to make a major production of fixing dinner.

I've never eaten biscuits and gravy, but when I was in a restaurant in north central Kansas one morning, I saw someone else woofing down a large plate of glop. I asked Barbara, who is more familiar with the plains states than I am, what he was ingesting. "Biscuits and gravy," she informed me, with a slight wrinkling of the nose. I noted that the plate was swimming in grease. Just looking at it made me feel a bit queasy, so I took a sip of coffee and turned my attention back to my scrambled eggs and toast.

I was introduced to grits once when I was in Denver. I once heard someone describe grits as "French fried moth balls." I drew the line at the dish of boiled okra!

Rummaging for lunch today, I was wrong about the tortilla chips. But we did have some very nice sourdough bread, so I toasted a couple of slices and slathered them with guacamole. Delicious!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Paul Burke
Date: 05 Dec 08 - 03:38 AM

Barbara quite often makes soup with fresh vegetables....we wind up eating away at it

Yes, it can have that effect on you.

1 onion
half a white cabbage
Half a head of broccoli
Handful of red lentils
handful of pearl barley
Stock (cube) - chicken or veg
Knob of butter or a bit of olive oil
Boiling water

Soak the lentils and barley overnight (so that the veg isn't overcooked by the time they are done).
Shred the cabbage, joint the broccoli and chop the onion
Fry the onions, cabbage and broccoli for a couple of minutes, dissolve the stock cube in water, add to the onions etc, throw in the lentils and barley, add more water to bulk out, salt/ pepper to taste, 20 minutes.

Now you can wind up on THAT.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stu
Date: 05 Dec 08 - 03:48 AM

"rather than telling us all to go home"

I wouldn't presume to tell anyone to go home, just making a few observations.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 05 Dec 08 - 04:04 AM

Roasted winter vegetable soup

3 sweet potatoes
1 butternut squash
4 carrots
1 onion
1 stock cube
oil
garlic
1 tsp spices (cinnamon, allspice, ginger or similar)

Peel and chop your veg roughly (de-seed the squash). Put it into a roasting tin with some oil and a couple of cloves of garlic, and the spices (Schwartz have this spice blend called apricot, date and cinnamon, I think, which is AMAZING in this soup - you can get it in Sainsbury's. Otherwise, something warming like cinnamon or allspice is fine). Chuck over some salt and pepper. Roast for about 25 minutes, turning occasionally - don't let the veg brown too much.

Put the veg (including garlic) into a large saucepan and cover with water, and add a stock cube. Boil for about 15 minutes. Blend with a hand blender, food processor, or just mash with a potato masher - the result will be chunkier, but the roasting will have made the veg very soft. Add more water if necessary and bring to the boil again.

Enjoy! Leftovers can be frozen.


(If you can't be arsed to roast the veg, chuck it all into the pan of water and just boil for an hour with the garlic, stock cube and spices before blending. It's also very nice this way.)


Orange vegetables are scientifically proven to be especially health giving as they're packed with anti-oxidants.This is a perfect winter pick-me-up!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Will Fly
Date: 05 Dec 08 - 04:12 AM

All this talk of soups and no mention of dumplings! Vegetable soup with dumplings has just that little bit (of lovely stodge) extra. However, for the true vegetarians out there, I have to report that vegetarian suet, in the opinion of Mrs. F., doesn't make as good dumplings as beef suet. Discuss...

Tip: Leave the dumplings soaking in the soup until the last knockings and then guzzle down

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 05 Dec 08 - 04:21 AM

Ah - see, for me, dumplings are all about stew, not soup.

I'm planning a nice game stew with suet dumplings for Boxing Day...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Will Fly
Date: 05 Dec 08 - 04:25 AM

Ruth - I'll get me coat.. what time is grub up? :D

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 05 Dec 08 - 04:28 AM

homemade steamed treacle pud for afters? With homemade custard, naturally... :D

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Will Fly
Date: 05 Dec 08 - 04:32 AM

Temptress! (Crosses fingers). Get thee behind me! :D

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Gervase
Date: 05 Dec 08 - 05:06 AM

Had my first dumplings of the winter last night in a beef and paprika stew - I'd forgotten how good they are. Let's hear it for suet - England's national saturated fat!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Will Fly
Date: 05 Dec 08 - 05:15 AM

Stop it - I'm dribbling into the keyboard...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 05 Dec 08 - 05:20 AM

In my ongoing quest for a salt-free diet, I've lately developed a dumpling comprising organic white flour, herbes de provence, olive oil and water. This gets poured over the stew and cooks as a dumpling-cum-pastry soaking up much of the flavour from below. Absolutely first class.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 05 Dec 08 - 05:30 AM

That sounds similar to a cobbler topping (US), only savoury...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 05 Dec 08 - 06:00 AM

Cobbler eh? I'll look that up. It's a bad habit carb-wise, but at this time of year... Otherwise, on the dumpling front if you're out & about in need of something cheap and cheerful, I can heartily recommend the lamb mince & dumplings at Wetherspoons.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: mandotim
Date: 05 Dec 08 - 06:10 AM

Pork chunks cooked in cider with onions, celery and apples, add cream, throw in some sage dumplings...mmmmm
Tim

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 05 Dec 08 - 12:52 PM

"David - I would seriously check the contents of cup-a-soup before imbibing. Lord knows what chemicals this stuff is shot through with. I haven't checked it myself for years, but my memory of it was not pleasant." (Will)...vegetable cup-a-soup, i.e. - I being mostly vegan, although I will have whatever is going if invited, folks! ;-)>
P.S: I find lettuce much more tasty when in such soups cum pottages; and both the above, slightly more sophisticated, recipes do sound good; and I've also heard that, for different minerals, we should eat vegetables of different coulour.

Something in common, Don - mornings, while awaiting my porridge, I often have toast with raspberry jam and smooth peanut butter; also, for a treat, I'll spread avocado/gaucamole on toast.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 05 Dec 08 - 01:19 PM

Honestly, David - if you don't fancy working too hard, do the easy version of mine: chuck it all in the pot, boil it for an hour, whizz it up. It's got to be better for you than all the processed nasties in cup-a-soup. And it's delicious.

Do you have a little mouli hand blender? They're ever so cheap, and a complete godsend if you like soup.

cheap blender

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 05 Dec 08 - 05:40 PM

David, you want to be careful about where you get your guacamole. Some packaged dips are bogus. For example:

November 30, 2006—
"A woman in the United States is seeking unspecified damages and a Superior Court order barring Kraft Foods Inc. from calling its dip "guacamole." Her suit seeks class-action status. The Kraft product contains modified food starch, coconut and soybean oils, corn syrup and food coloring. It is less than 2 percent avocado, which, in traditional recipes, is the main ingredient of the Mexican dish."

Which is to say, whatever Kraft was selling, it wasn't guacamole!

Not unlike orange Jell-O, which, at one time, consisted of gelatin, orange food coloring, and a touch of citric acid as flavoring. Not a bit of orange or orange juice in it. Pure power of suggestion! Or so I read in a nutrition magazine.

In 1959, while Bob (Deckman) Nelson and I were singing around the San Francisco Bay area, we were often invited to the Sausalito home of Juanita Montrand, a retired Mexican cabaret singer and her son and daughter, Bennie and Lola. Juanita had retired from singing in cabarets, but not from singing. To keep her hand in, she sang one night a week at the "No Name Tavern" down on the Bridgeway. The "No Name" also featured such off-the-wall entertainers as Harry "The Hipster" Gibson, composer of "Who Put the Benzedrine in Mrs. Murphy's Ovaltine?" and "I Flipped My Wig in San Francisco" and other works that got him banned from radio, television, and most of the bigger clubs.

And the legendary Lord Buckley*, not too many months before his Lordship died.

Juanita sang Mexican folk songs in a warm, contralto voice, accompanying herself with a well-worn but deep-toned Mexican guitar.   She was in her sixties perhaps, but her singing voice hadn't aged, it had matured. Beautiful and rich! Her Malagueña Salerosa put everybody else's to shame! Sometimes she, Bennie, and Lola would sing it together in three-part harmony. Goosebumps!!

Juanita, a wonderful, grand lady, took we two itinerant minstrels under her wing and fed us frequently and lavishly, mainly with her specialty, Mexican cuisine. Not the sort of stuff you get in the usual run of Mexican restaurants one finds in the U. S., but the real thing!

One afternoon I sat chatting with Juanita in her kitchen while she prepared the evening's meal. After dinner, several other singers were due to arrive (including Rolf Cahn) and we were going to have an evening of much singing in Juanita's large living room, with the balcony and the picture windows looking out through the trees toward the lights of Tiburon. As she and I chatted, I watched her preparing a huge bowl of guacamole for the evening gathering. When finished, she took a tortilla, spooned a generous strip of guacamole across it, rolled it up, and offered it to me. I had to be careful to keep the guacamole from squirting out the ends, but—absolutely delicious!!

I don't remember her exact procedure, but this recipe [CLICKY] looks pretty close. She started with the freshest of ingredients, and she didn't garnish with radishes and she didn't serve them with tortilla chips, she served them with tortillas. But chips or toast are a functional medium for shoveling it into your face.

Before I got married, I sometimes used to buy avocados from the nearby grocery store. Not sure how to pick a good one, I would lurk near the stack of avocados and wait until an older woman stopped by and selected one. Usually she would pick up several, test them for softness/firmness, smell them, then make her selection. Once she left with her choice, I would pounce, and pick up the one she almost took.

I'd cut them in two, dig out the seed, drip a bit of lemon juice and a sprinkle of salt on one half, and eat it right out of the skin with a spoon. Then I'd sprinkle some lemon juice on the other half (neutralizes the enzyme that causes them to turn brown), wrap it in plastic wrap, and put it in the fridge until later. Yummy!!

Barbara usually gets our guacamole (and many other edibles, including very good wines) from a nearby Trader Joe's (dedicated to fresh, healthy, pure foods—plus zany catalogs and fliers).   It comes in plastic tubs, about a pint, I guess. They also have a very good hummus.

*Lord Buckley meets Groucho Marx

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 05 Dec 08 - 06:05 PM

You met Lord Buckley? Now I'm really impressed.. I'll look at the links as soon as I've time to savour them properly - thanks.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 05 Dec 08 - 07:06 PM

'Mostly Vegan' is a sort of contradiction in terms like 'a little bit pregnant'.

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 05 Dec 08 - 08:34 PM

Smokey, I can't honestly say that I actually met his Lordship, but Bob and I enjoyed his (whatever he does) with much laughter and amazement from a table about five feet from the small stage, and as was his Lordship's wont, our eyes met on several occasions, but beyond that, we didn't actually exchange greetings.

I had never heard of Lord Buckley when Bob and I were walking down the Bridgeway one evening and we ran into Koz, one of the weekend denizens of Sausalito (Koz was a fascinating character on his own, but that's another story). He said that he had heard this guy at the No Name the previous evening and he was going to be back this evening. He urged us to come. He said, "I can't figure out what he is. Is he a stand-up comic? Is he a preacher? Is he nuts!?"

Well—all of those things, I guess.

We saw Lord Buckley on two occasions at the "No Name Tavern," and he did his thing for a couple of hours each time. Among other things, he treated us with his classics:   The Nazz, The Raven (The Bug Bird), Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, several speeches from Shakespeare (Willie the Shake) including Marc Antony's funeral oration (he did part of it for Groucho), and one that really digs deep, The Black Cross.

At one point, he explained his philosophy, a bit more thoroughly than he had a chance to explain it to Groucho. He said that he addresses people as "Milord" and "Milady" because no matter how obscure, or how small, mean, and petty a person might be, inside, sometimes hidden down deep inside, there is a spark of true nobility. And it is this spark which he wishes to acknowledge and address.

And then he got serious for a moment. He opened his arms expansively and said, "Would it embarrass you awfully if I told you that I love you all?'

The audience shuffled their feet and shifted uncomfortably in their seats.

"Yes," said his Lordship with a rueful smile and a shake of the head, "I see that it does. But I do love you all, you know."

Then he cleared his throat and went into his next routine.

Not a bad philosophy. Not bad at all.

This was in September or October of 1959. It was some months later that Lord Buckley went to The Gate of Horn in Chicago, then in October of 1960 he went to perform at the Jazz Gallery in New York, with a possible appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. But for some unexplained reason, the New York police took away his cabaret card (a legal requirement to perform in New York clubs at the time). More that three dozen major entertainment figures, including author George Plimpton, attempted to intervene and get his card restored, but without success. A few days later, he was taken to a hospital where he died. Cause of death, unspecified.

There are many bizarre stories about how his Lordship died: one that he died of a stroke, another that he died from exhaustion after drinking vodka spiked with mescaline and making love to an underage mulatto girl—and another that he had been beaten to death by the police. But as far as I know, to this day, there has never been an adequate explanation for his Lordship's sudden demise.

I feel very lucky to have had the opportunity to hear him when I did.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 05 Dec 08 - 10:31 PM

What a character.. What a philosophy.. yes, you were fortunate even to have seen him - they don't seem to make 'em like that any more. Many thanks for that, you've made an old hippy very happy :)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 05 Dec 08 - 11:12 PM

In the early 1960s I met a fellow by the name of Jean Galland who made his way through Seattle and sang for a time at one of the local clubs before he moved on. Jean was French and he loved American folk music, which he sang with a French accent. He couldn't help it. Interestingly enough, he got turned on to American folk music by Rolf Cahn, a German immigrant who sang American (and Scottish) folk songs with a slight German accent.

Anyway, Jean had met Lord Buckley in San Francisco and he told me a couple of stories about him. He said that when he could afford to, his Lordship rode around San Francisco in a chauffeured limousine. One day he, in the limo, passed an elderly woman who was standing on the curb wanting to cross the street, but the traffic was too heavy and drivers were simply ignoring the fact that there was a pedestrian crosswalk there. His Lordship told the limo driver to circle the block. But he wanted to make a quick stop at a flower shop one street over.

As the woman stood there, despairing of ever getting across the street, this limousine pulled up and parked and a tall, well-dressed and mustachioed gentleman got out carrying a big bouquet of flowers. He offered the lady his arm and with an imperious glance as he held up a hand, he stopped traffic and conducted the lady across the street. When he saw her safely on the other side, he bowed, kissed her hand, presented her with the bouquet, bowed again, and returned across the street to his limo.

His Lordship would sometimes hold salon in his San Francisco apartment, where he would welcome a few friends for drinks and some good conversation. One of Jean's friends often attended these salons and he invited Jean to go with him. When they arrived at his Lordship's, his Lordship asked Jean what his shoe size was. He came back a few moments later with a pair of soft slippers in Jean's size and invited him to change from his shoes to the slippers. This was not to save his Lordship's carpets, it was because, as his Lordship explained to Jean, "I want everyone here to feel relaxed and comfortable." Jean notice that everyone there was wearing slippers. He also noted that his Lordship had a whole closet shelf of slippers with name-tags on them. The next time Jean came, his Lordship presented him with a new pair of slippers with his name on the tag.

That true nobility that Lord Buckley talked about; he, indeed, was well endowed with it himself.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 06 Dec 08 - 12:25 AM

Charming tales Don, and somehow I'm not surprised. It's good to learn LRB was the gentleman he seemed to be. A lesson to us all, I think. Thanks again.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 06 Dec 08 - 05:08 AM

From: Ruth Archer

Honestly, David - if you don't fancy working too hard...

Ah well! I think we all know the answer to that one Ruth.

You'd think that as he's doing bugger all else of any worth, he might at least use his abundant free time to learn to cook. And of course, women shouldn't as it may make their arms all bulgy.


From: WalkaboutsVerse

...I being mostly vegan...

Hee hee hee. Possibly the most stupid thing you've said?


...smooth peanut butter; also, for a treat, I'll spread avocado/gaucamole on toast.

How quaintly English. Just like it was in the 1950s

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 06 Dec 08 - 05:29 AM

Lord Buckley, eh? Well that's a new one on me, so thanks for that, Don - a revelation! And always good to see Groucho. In fact, being ill today (and home alone - this being one of my wife's occasional working weekends) perhaps I'll line up a few old Marx Brothers films, beginning, of course, with The Cocoanuts - or should I leave that for last? It being my all-time favourite movie...

But what's this I see? BBC2 - 2.10pm - The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp - now there's one I haven't seen for a while. Of course what I really want to see right now is You'll Find Out, the 1940 Kay Kyser horror-spoof featuring Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre - and some of creepiest vocal effects in the history of cinema besides...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Will Fly
Date: 06 Dec 08 - 05:33 AM

IB - hope you aren't feeling too wretched today. Powell & Pressburger are always worth watching, and they probably made some of the most subtle films of the period.

Best wishes,

Will

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 06 Dec 08 - 04:18 PM

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. Good movie. I've always enjoyed Roger Livesey. Another one he's in is Futtock's End, a goofy comedy with Ronnie Barker, Michael Hordern, and others. It's the sort of thing you might expect to find Ronnie Barker in. There is no actual dialogue, but lots of grunts, incoherent mumblings, and sound effects.

Roger Livesey plays an artist attempting to paint landscapes and what he's attempting to paint keeps moving on him. He looks, then concentrates on the canvas for a few moments, and when he looks again, the landscape has changed. You see what's going on, but he is totally bewildered.

Also, I understand that Livesey, in his mid-sixties at the time, insisted on doing his own stunts, like getting ejected from the grossly overloaded back seat of a car when the door is opened and landing on his back.

Michael Hordern plays a lecherous butler.

IB, hunker down, rest up, have a few good laughs (very therapeutic), and get well soon.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 06 Dec 08 - 04:20 PM

Ruth and Don: my local supermarket is okay but not that "super" in terms of fresh vegetables - but when I get the chance I'll try some of the above; and the avocado spread I occasionally use is just that - a softish one cut in half and then spread on toast, with either red sauce, or peanut butter and raspberry jam (but I didn't know about Don's lemon juice trick for leftovers). Also, a highlight of my visit to Mexico, below, was the delicious cuisine.

Poem 36 of 230: WALKABOUT MEXICO

In late December,
    1996,
I can remember
    Being in a fix -
For time and pesos -
    And, thus, unable
To see Mexico's
    Sights commendable.

So, in Tijuana,
    I enjoyed the show
At a miniature
    Rep. of Mexico.

From walkaboutsverse.741.com

Back on-thread: an elastic band and paper clip, bent to a right-angle, at the foot of a recorder/English flute, form a simple system for attaching the music - until memorized.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 06 Dec 08 - 05:17 PM

Fuck, that even makes James Taylor's "Mexico" sound good.

What English-language takes on Mexico could we suggest to WAV to bring home the immennse yawning chasm that separates that kind of braindead doggerel from anything worth reading or listening to, on the counterfactual assumption that he'd ever bother finding them or take them on board? Woody Guthrie's "Deportees" and Malcolm Lowry's "Under the Volcano" come to mind.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 07 Dec 08 - 12:12 PM

Poem 36 of 230: WALKABOUT MEXICO

So what this is saying is that you popped over the border to a plastic Tex-Mex caricature for a day and you consider that qualifies as visiting and experiencing the culture of Mexico?????

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 07 Dec 08 - 12:28 PM

Don and Will, I can't resist taking the liberty of pointing you toward the work of my all-time hero Vivian Stanshall, "Sir Henry at Rawlinson End". There's both a film and an album, slightly different in every sense. I'm almost sure it would appeal to you both. English eccentricity at its finest.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 07 Dec 08 - 12:30 PM

Michael Hordern plays a lecherous butler.

Cheers Don & Will - I didn't get to watch Colonel Blimp after all; Ross came round and lifted my spirits by taking me out for a walk to savour the day & the sunshine & the beguiling halcyon calm - see Here for view from Fleetwood beach to the snow capped mountains of the Lake District - not an amazing picture, but I was a bit shivery! The joys of living in Fleetwood really...

Still to emerge from the boxes still unpacked: Michael Hordern reads the Ghost Stories of M R James - True Icons of Englishness and essential Christmas listening besides. I hope BBC4 are screening the TV adaptations again this year - of which, of course, the best has to be Jonathan Miller's 1968 adaptation of Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad starring Michael Hordern in one of his key roles.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 07 Dec 08 - 12:40 PM

Vivian Stanshall, "Sir Henry at Rawlinson End".

Another Icon of Englishness! But whilst the film and album are good - eternal favourites of mine anyway - let's not forget the sessions he did for John Peel which were the essence of Rawlinson End, and in which Stanshall excels in his sublime evocations. Some of these were re-edited for Radio 4's Book at Bedtime a few years back (over a decade actually) - & the sequence makes about 75 minutes of perfect listening. There's a stray episode on YouTube Here - but ignore the horrible graphics. This was a radio broadcast so treat it as such...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Will Fly
Date: 07 Dec 08 - 12:41 PM

Smokey:
Don and Will, I can't resist taking the liberty of pointing you toward the work of my all-time hero Vivian Stanshall, "Sir Henry at Rawlinson End". There's both a film and an album, slightly different in every sense. I'm almost sure it would appeal to you both. English eccentricity at its finest.

I know it well. My last personal encounter with VS was at a village hall dance near Esher, back in the early 70s. Our band was the booked act, and Viv and a few friends had turned up, unasked, to play as an unofficial support. Viv sober was a lovely man. Viv not sober...

Unfortunately, although the performance (jazz-ish) was terrible, he was surrounded by some very sycophantic and vociferous "friends", who egged his lot to play on, and on, and on... We eventually did 15 minutes, collected our money and drove back to London and home. An evening to remember; when I next met him - back to normal and his usual self - he couldn't remember any of it. The Rawlinsons, of course, were one of the guest acts on "The Intro and The Outro"!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 07 Dec 08 - 01:04 PM

Viv's gigs were always rather unpredictable, I did the mixing at several in the mid 70's - you never knew who was going to turn up and play, he seemed to know everyone. Drunk or sober, he was a wonderful bloke. If a little unpredictable.. I was playing in rock bands back then though, so behavioral excesses were the norm - though Viv did seem to have made an art form of it.

"I don't know what I want, but I want it now!"

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Stringsinger
Date: 07 Dec 08 - 01:11 PM

It seems that the Cittern could be a national English instrument. Also,
for obvious reasons, the Elizabethan lute. Campion, Dowland and other
great songwriters wrote for it.

You could also argue that the Kammeyer five-string banjo with the
fifth string running through the slotted head rather than a fifth peg
would be an English development as well. I used to own one of those
instruments which were used in classical banjo playing but with steel strings.

Frank

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 07 Dec 08 - 01:14 PM

Tijuana!?? David, I hope you saw more of Mexico than Tijuana (which is about three baby steps south of the California-Mexico border).

I've been there, and it's hardly what I would call "Mexico" if you're looking for real Mexican culture. It's a town full of shops for American tourists looking for bargains, like $25.00 guitars with elaborate (gaudy) mother of pearl inlay work, but made with green, unseasoned wood—or beautifully embroidered dresses that some poor Mexican woman spent days or weeks working on, for which she received maybe a couple of pesos, but the shop sells for $35 or $40 to tourists.

You can have your picture taken with a burro. For a few dollars extra, the photographer will loan you a sombrero and a serape to wear as you stand by the burro.

The sidewalk cafes (where you can get exotic cuisine such as nachos made with Frito-Lay tortilla chips and melted Velveeta cheese) are infested with children with soulful eyes (but downright chubby from being grossly overfed on junk food given them by sympathetic but easy-mark tourists) hovering around your table and trying to guilt-trip you into hand-outs.

When I was there, there were also a number of Guatemalan children, refugees from hostilities, begging on the streets because they were hungry—and homeless.

You can't walk for more than a block without at least three provocatively dressed women accosting you and asking if you are "looking for something special?" The "looking for something special" phrase is so that if the police try to pick them up for soliciting, they can claim they were just trying to assist a bewildered tourist.

No, Tijuana is in Mexico (by a few feet), but it's hardly what anyone would call typical of Mexico. I certainly hope you saw more of Mexico than that.

####

You really need more than just avocado for guacamole. It might depend on what your red sauce consists of, but spaghetti sauce or pizza sauce ain't gonna cut it. Salsa, either medium or hot, on the other hand, would be much better. Guacamole should have a bit of "snap" to it, otherwise it's just avocado (which is fine by itself, but it isn't yet guacamole).

Real guacamole usually contains finely chopped onion, tomato, and cilantro, and a bit of salt. Peppers, often jalapeños, are an essential part of the mix, and don't forget the lemon or lime juice, both for flavoring and to neutralize the enzyme that causes the avocado to turn brown when exposed to air for any period of time. And be sure to store in the refrigerator if you're going to keep it for any length of time. But even in the fridge, it doesn't last forever.

Don Firth

P. S. Thanks for the movie recommendations, folks! My wife and I have a NetFlix subscription (a friend gave it to us as a Christmas present one year and he re-ups it every year—Thanks, Will! Uh . . . a different Will). We've seen a lot of good movies, some we had never heard of, since we got the subscription.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 07 Dec 08 - 01:25 PM

By the way, following on my previous post (and paying homage to this thread being above the line, hence, related to music), there are some very good luthiers in Mexico and I've played some really good guitars that came from south of the border. But there is an incredible amount of crap to be had from there also, such as the ones hanging in the Tijuana tourist shops. I peered through the sound hole of one of them and notice that there was sap still oozing out of the wood. Sound? Very muddy.

But it was very pretty, if you like lots of mother of pearl. It would have made a nice wall-hanging.

Caveat emptor!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 07 Dec 08 - 05:44 PM

David: chuck a chopped tomato and a dollop of creme fraiche into your avocado when you're mashing it. Then add a squeeze of lime. You'll thank me.

Avocado is all right spread on toast (British sailors apparently used it as a butter substitute, which is one of the reasons they didn't get scurvy), but it's so easy to make it much tastier...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 08 Dec 08 - 12:51 PM

Don and Woody - I was actually in Tijuana, Mexico, for 2 weeks: making a few day trips, inluding one back over the border to San Diego, and one along Baja California by bus (seeing jumping beans for the first time); I also played the golf course and, as I say, eat very well and inexpensively on the delicious cuisine.
Ruth - I'll keep that in mind, too...I find vine tomatoes far tastier but, again, not available at my local "super"market.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 08 Dec 08 - 03:42 PM

Guacamole.

North-east England.

Which local food and New Labour politician come to mind?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 08 Dec 08 - 04:26 PM

Yeah, it did occur to me that, when it comes to "good English culture," guacamole is kind of a far cry from pottage and mead. . . .

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 08 Dec 08 - 04:46 PM

It wasn't Mr (now Lord) Mandelson who mistook mushy peas for guacamole in a Hartlepool fish & chip shop but one of his aides (source: another aide).
Mushy peas - now that's a real English vegetable.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 09 Dec 08 - 12:25 PM

"It seems that the Cittern could be a national English instrument. Also, for obvious reasons, the Elizabethan lute. Campion, Dowland and other great songwriters wrote for it." (Stringsinger)...Not sure which bird/s (I'm not a peasant plucker...) but, apparently, the 5 times 2 metal strings of the English cittern were plucked with a feather-plectrum.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 09 Dec 08 - 02:34 PM

From: Stringsinger

It seems that the Cittern could be a national English instrument. Also,
for obvious reasons, the Elizabethan lute.

With all due respect - how the bloody hell can it be a national instrument when there's only one man and his dog playing it? If you were asking "What was Elizabethan England's National Instrument" then maybe.

If it's a national instrument presumably the nation should know what the hell you're talking about?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Tootler
Date: 09 Dec 08 - 05:21 PM

Ah Woody - On that basis, England's National Musical Instrument has to be - wait for it - The Electric Guitar!!!!!!!!!!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 10 Dec 08 - 03:23 AM

Well it wouldn't have to be the most played. I'm sure lots less people in Scotland play Bagpipes than Electric Guitar but most Scots know what the pipes are.

Today in 21st Century England there could be many instruments that fit the bill. Obviously fiddle - played a lot now but also played in England for hundreds of years and recognisable to most - would be a good candidate, as would the guitar, G/D Melodeon (recognisable to many), and whistle (though many might think it Irish). What relevance obsolete Elizabethan instruments have to 21st century England I don't know, and for those into tradition - I'm sure my great-great grandparents wouldn't have thought them relevant to the 19th Century either.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Paul Burke
Date: 10 Dec 08 - 04:37 AM

Well my (paternal) grandfather used to play the melodeon while standing on his head, but that wasn't English Folk, that was Music Hall. He was (3rd generation) Irish anyway.

If my maternal granny's side is anything to go by, the main instrument was the Parlour Piano, all walnut and ivory, with brass candlesticks. Nobody ever played it, because the parlour was damp, the piano was rusty inside, and it had never been tuned in fifty years. We demolished it one bonfire night, and it was so rotten we couldn't get it to burn until someone doused it in paraffin. They sang a lot though- usually unaccompanied, old traditional English songs like Show Me The way To Go Home, Come Back to Sorrento, The Happy Wanderer, Ave Maria, The Laughing Policeman, The Hole In The Elephant's Bottom (My dad's party piece when several bottles down), Cardigan The Fearless, Eileen Og, Hullabalooballay, Down Came The Blind, Donald Where's Your Troosers, Mother Machree, and so on. I think it was meant to be in harmony, but not really sure.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 10 Dec 08 - 12:34 PM

"Obviously fiddle - played a lot now but also played in England for hundreds of years and recognisable to most - would be a good candidate" (Woody)...

"PLAYING THE FIDDLE?

There are many different fiddles from many different lands – for example, the Chinese erhu fiddle, the Norwegian hardanger fiddle and, the one most in the West now play, the Italian fiddle/violin" (here).

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 10 Dec 08 - 01:41 PM

From: Paul Burke

Well my (paternal) grandfather used to play the melodeon while standing on his head, but that wasn't English Folk, that was Music Hall.

I doubt we'd have to limit it to "Folk" instruments - though maybe to eras and styles. For the later part of the 20th century I guess the guitar in all its forms would be the instrument most had played at one time or another and so might qualify for many styles. 21st century? - Well it's early days yet. Late 19th Century & early 20th? The piano would have to be high up there - especially in pub culture. Concertina - all types, Melodeon and PA would also get a shout.

Any answer would obviously be an arbitrary and nonsense one but it's interesting to explore. For my money though, for it's pervasiveness, versatility and longevity it's got to be the fiddle.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 10 Dec 08 - 02:23 PM

PLAYING THE FIDDLE?

WAV, this particular chunk of ignorance has been corrected on this thread. Here's your friend and mine, Insane Beard:

When people say fiddle they're referring to the violin. The word has an interesting (complex & by no means fully understood) etymology, but in terms of pragmatics it would seem to derive from a verb rather than a noun - a verb which at last yields the noun violin, but it is interesting that in modern musical usage fiddle exists as both a noun and a verb. That said, the iconographical evidence would suggest the earliest bowed instruments in the West were, in fact, lyres (i.e. crwth, juohikko, talharp etc.) rather than lutes (i.e. violin, viol, vielle, rebec etc.) - but, oddly enough, no bowed-lyre was ever called a fiddle.

So - fiddles are thus called by English speakers simply to denote that the instruments in question are played with a bow. It is only English speakers who would call an Erhu a Chinese Fiddle, likewise the Karandeniz Kemence a Black Sea Fiddle, or a Hardingfele a Hardanger Fiddle. The Hardingfele is a specific development of the violin about as far away from the erhu in terms of organological taxonomy as one could wish to get. In terms of classification they're not even in the same family and yet both get called fiddles by English speakers, which only makes them fiddles in the sense of convenient, but not accurate, nomenclature.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: catspaw49
Date: 10 Dec 08 - 02:30 PM

"Inaccurate Nomenclature" is another name for David Franks.

Also Wavy, how insulting can you possibly be to say that Slow Hand plays "American-Style Pop?"

Spaw

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 11 Dec 08 - 06:43 AM

From: Pip Radish

When people say fiddle they're referring to the violin.

Certainly in England the terms' usage appears to be fairly interchangeable. Regarding references to other instruments like the "Chinese Fiddle" - what this name really means is "it's an instrument from China that's a bit like a Fiddle."

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Working Radish
Date: 11 Dec 08 - 09:57 AM

I don't think anyone would call an erhu a Chinese violin - it would sound patronising and fake. Calling it a Chinese fiddle has a veneer of ethnomusicology about it - as if our fiddle and the Black Sea fiddle and the Chinese fiddle were all offshoots of the ancestral fiddle diaspora. But there's no justification for this - 'Chinese fiddle' is just as patronising and fake as 'Chinese violin'.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 11 Dec 08 - 11:17 AM

From: GUEST,Working Radish

I don't think anyone would call an erhu a Chinese violin - it would sound patronising and fake.

I think that with some there is a kind of snobbery about calling it a fiddle, particularly when it relates to classical music. This probably accounts for the "Chinese Fiddle" rather than "Chinese Violin" - it seems it might be a way of dismissing the instrument for use in "serious" (i.e. Western Classical) music. Possibly a hangover from less enlightened times?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 11 Dec 08 - 12:47 PM

...but doesn't the term "playing second fiddle" derive from the violin section of orchestras..?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 11 Dec 08 - 01:00 PM

All classical violinists I know call their instruments fiddles, at least informally, just as they call their bows sticks, but not fiddle-sticks, which is still in common usage but not in music. Formally, it's a different matter, but a fiddle is always a violin. I would think the Er-Hu is more likely to be referred to as a Chinese Violin than a Chinese Fiddle, though the only thing it has in common with a violin is strings and a bow. In the same way a Pipa is referred to by English speakers as a Chinese Lute and a Sanxian as a Chinese Banjo.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 11 Dec 08 - 01:35 PM

To call any of these instruments a "Chinese Violin" or "Chinese Fiddle" or a "Chinese Lute" or a "Chinese Banjo," is only an approximate description of them from the "western" viewpoint, and does not necessarily mean that they are in any way related to their western counterparts, save by the principles of physics and acoustics by which they function.

To be sure, certain musical instruments are often associated with various countries or localities, such as the bagpipes to Scotland, the harp to Ireland or Wales or both, the banjo to the rural southern United States, the guitar to Spain, et al, but these instruments did not spontaneously generate in any of these places, nor did they set up permanent and exclusive residence there.

In my considered opinion, this whole business about a "National Instrument" is simply not relevant to the real world. It's a bogus concept.

Don Firth

P. S. I think it comes from jazz, and I haven't heard the expression for some time, but one often used to hear an instrument--any instrument--referred to as an "axe." For obvious reasons, I would be very reluctant to try to chop down a tree with my guitar.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Nerd
Date: 11 Dec 08 - 02:07 PM

Insane Beard,

Here in the US, "fiddle" does not exclusively mean "violin." It more or less means "viol," just as it originally seems to have done. So a double bass is a "bass fiddle." But by default, if the word is said alone, it usually just means "violin."

Fiddlesticks are not bows. (Tellingly, you never hear the word "fiddlestick" in the singular, yet rarely does a player use more than one bow at a time!) Fiddlesticks are a pair of sticks you use to hit the strings with. You can see a video of this, with Dewey Balfa, here

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: catspaw49
Date: 11 Dec 08 - 02:21 PM

Axe (or Ax) is probably the last residual of an archaic and now little used Jazz/Blues expression regarding improvisation....."Choppin' Wood." The rest is obvious......

Spaw

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 12 Dec 08 - 03:07 AM

As far as I'm aware I've never heard the phrase "Chinese Violin" in the real world. From classical players/teachers I've encountered, the use of the term "fiddle" for their instrument has always gotten a distinctly frosty response. YMMV

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Paul Burke
Date: 12 Dec 08 - 03:25 AM

That's because you were using it as a verb applied to children, Woody.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 12 Dec 08 - 04:46 AM

Fiddlesticks are a pair of sticks you use to hit the strings with

I first came across this about ten years ago via Phil Tyler and we duly experimented with a couple of Japanese chopsticks to quite pleasing effect. As I recall you have to tune the fiddle to an open tuning, playing the sticks on the strings that aren't being fiddled. The term he used was Beating Sticks, and traditionally, seems to be limited to a small region of the USA, with the wife beating her husband's fiddle strings with her knitting needles. I know I certainly hadn't heard of it before, nor indeed since (to be honest I'd quite forgotten about it until now) so I'm not at all convinced that this obscure musical practise is the source of the more widespread term fiddle-sticks, which, according to Here, was recorded from the fifteenth century.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 12 Dec 08 - 11:34 AM

From: Paul Burke

That's because you were using it as a verb applied to children, Woody.

Please explain?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Paul Burke
Date: 12 Dec 08 - 11:42 AM

Sorry, woody, bad joke.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 12 Dec 08 - 11:47 AM

According to the OED, 'fiddlestick' singular was in use as early as the fifteenth century (as IB says), and meant 'bow'. The record seems to show people saying "A fiddlestick's end!" (to mean 'something and nothing', 'something completely inconsequential') a bit before people were saying "Fiddlesticks!" (to mean 'nonsense'). It's not conclusive, but it looks to me as if "Fiddlesticks!" is a mutation of the earlier phrase; apart from anything else it's punchier and easier to say.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Nerd
Date: 12 Dec 08 - 12:43 PM

IB

You may be right, of course. Certainly, the Shakespeare quotation has a singular fiddle-stick. But it's not clear from that quotation (which is the earliest recorded use in OED) that a fiddle-stick is a bow.

Other names for the sticks used to hit fiddle-strings with are straws, beating sticks, and beating straws. Usually the sticks are very light wood or (nowadays) bamboo. Knitting needles were occasionally used, but that wasn't the norm. Generally, it was an apprentice fiddler who acted as the "straw-beater," but occasionally, as you say, it was the fiddler's wife.

Is this limited to a small region of the US? I don't think so. In the Library of Congress we have examples from Mississippi and Florida, it was known on Georgia plantations in slavery times, (according to the book The Sounds of Slavery by Shane White), and it was common in Idaho at the Weiser Old-Time Fiddling contest. As you can see from the video, it's part of Cajun fiddling too. According to ethnomusicologist and fiddler Erynn Marshall, it was done up in Quebec as well. Those limits define what is really a rather vast area of North America. And the question arises: where id it come from? It could have come from Britain, or France, or been made up in the new world.

Still, of course, no one would nominate fiddlesticks as England's National Musical Instrument.

(Did you like that heroic effort to rein in thread drift?)

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 12 Dec 08 - 12:56 PM

"but a fiddle is always a violin" (IB)...that's ethnocentric - if not fiddlesticks! And, if you check an encyclopedia of music rather than a general dictionary, you'll soon find instruments much earlier than the violin described as a fiddle.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 12 Dec 08 - 01:24 PM

Why do I get the distinct impression that this argument over "fiddle" and "violin" is about as significant as the old theological argument about how many angels can dance on the point of a pin? Even less, in fact.

With the angels/pin argument, at least the bone of contention was whether or not angels have substance. If they do, then only one angel can dance on the point of a pin. If angels have no substance, then it could be an infinite number.

Theologians way back when used to spend a lot of time and energy on that argument. Did all their efforts accomplish anything?

How many flamenco dancers can dance on a violin? On a fiddle?

Inquiring minds want to know. . . .

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 12 Dec 08 - 01:26 PM

". . . ethnocentric."

What's ethnocentric about it?

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Will Fly
Date: 12 Dec 08 - 01:42 PM

OK - let's dance on the pinhead...

And, if you check an encyclopedia of music rather than a general dictionary, you'll soon find instruments much earlier than the violin described as a fiddle. (WAV)

You're missing a vital semantic distinction, here, David. Many instruments have been labelled with the general term "fiddle", but they are not themelves actual fiddles or part of what we know as the fiddle family. The term has been used loosely to describe a general category of stringed instruments played with a horsehair bow. The fact that they have been labelled "fiddles" as a general semantic term doesn't make them phyically part of the actual fiddle family.

It's similar to a sax player referring to his instrument as a "horn". It's a general term, but the instrument is not an actual horn. The Memphis Horns are a famous soul backing section, but there isn't a real orchestral horn in sight - the group is made up of saxes, trumpets, etc.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 12 Dec 08 - 02:04 PM

Beating stringed instruments with sticks is done in several regions of Europe. The tambourin de Bearn (from the Basque Country) is a sort of minimal dulcimer used to beat out a single chord. The gardon (from Transylvania) is a kind of agricultural cello tuned in unison - three of the strings are hit with a heavy stick, the fourth is lighter and plucked. These both play lower than a violin, though.

I've never heard the erhu called a violin. It's generically known as a "spike fiddle", and it's useful to keep the terms separate since it is sometimes used along with the Western violin, both in China and in the Middle East (which adopted both instruments).

Turkish music has a particular problem keeping fiddle/violin terms straight since there are no less than four different kinds of them in common use.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 12 Dec 08 - 03:47 PM

"but a fiddle is always a violin" (IB)...that's ethnocentric - if not fiddlesticks!

Not in the slightest, WAV. Fiddle is an informal English word (however so derived) meaning violin. It is ethnocentric to apply the word fiddle to the bowed stringed instruments of other cultures, as you have done, for whatever reason.

Thanks, Nerd for the expansions. I was going to mention the gardon of Gyimes - see this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXuRrG4wmUo

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 12 Dec 08 - 03:55 PM

Going back a bit:

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Insane Beard - PM
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 12:37 PM

Fiddle is and anciently ubiquitous word with many derivations as can be proven, but to call an Erhu a Chinese Fiddle is to miss the point rather, though ethnomusicolists would no doubt call it a category of spike-fiddle, this is by way of taxonomy rather than naming per-se.

But then again, I've seen the Sanxian described as a Chinese Banjo, and, more absurdly, the Sheng as a Chinese Mouthorgan.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 12 Dec 08 - 04:26 PM

Here they are again:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEUbIBn1CH8

Beautiful, beautiful music!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 12 Dec 08 - 06:11 PM

1901

Bugger

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 12 Dec 08 - 07:05 PM

What time was that second one in? I reckon the first one (that people were dancing to!) was 11/8, but I could be wrong. I couldn't even count the second one - it wouldn't stay still long enough.

These peasants know more than they're letting on...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 13 Dec 08 - 05:22 AM

I'm counting 6 on both of them, hitting the emphasis on 1 & 3. The second part of the second one seems to resort to 4, counting 1,2,3, like the Breton Andro.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Nerd
Date: 13 Dec 08 - 10:39 AM

Great stuff, IB. I once did a long interview with Daniel Hamar of Muszikas, who plays the Gardon as well as cello, bass and other instruments.

I also once interviewed the guys in Lo Jai. Guy Bertrand used to play a big string tabor in that group, essentially like the tambourin de Bearn mentioned by Jack.

My own feeling is that fiddle is a word much older than the violin proper, and with wider meaning than "violin." Because the violin is by far the most common bowed stringed instrument, "fiddle" almost always means "violin" in ordinary usage. But not always--I have mentioned "bass fiddle" as a common American expression for the double bass.

Ethnomusicologists don't have any problem using "fiddle" to mean, generically, "bowed lute," as in this passage from the University of Michigan's Instrument Encyclopedia here:

As part of the generic "lute" family, there are two basic types of rebab: wooden fiddles with pear-shaped or elongated bodies, and spiked fiddles, named for the extension or spike on the bottom of the instrument on which it stands when played. Generally, both styles have 2 or 3 gut or other strings. Spike-fiddle rebabs used in the Javanese gamelan are made from wood, or sometimes from a hollowed, half coconut shell covered with hide. This body is attached to a long, narrow wooden neck which has no frets; instead, the fingers of your left hand become moveable bridges. These instruments ornament the melodic line, creating a dialogue with the singers.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Woody
Date: 14 Dec 08 - 05:32 AM

Certainly "experts" in different parts of the world may use the word "fiddle" in different ways. However I'd suggest it likely that if you walk up to somebody in an English street and ask them what a fiddle is, they'll probably think of a violin.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 14 Dec 08 - 07:45 AM

Ethnomusicologists use the term fiddle as informal taxonomical shorthand for bowed chordophone, at least those of a spike or lute based variety; as far as I know, no bowed-lyre (crwth, jouhikko, talharp etc.) has ever been called a fiddle, though there is a bowed Icelandic zither called a fidla. Whatever the case, an Erhu is an Erhu, not an Erhu Fiddle.

As well as bass fiddle for double bass (more of a viol than a violin?) I've heard bull fiddle. I've also heard hog fiddle for Appalachian Dulcimer, which has occasionally (traditionally?) been played with a bow, as is the Icelandic langspil from which it (partly) derives.

So back to WAV's Playing THE fiddle rhetoric (which he regurgitates whenever the word fiddle is mentioned) for a man who loves a multi-cultural WORLD, his patronising ethnocentricity in this respect would appear as misplaced as his professed faith in one of the worlds more culturally oppressive religions. All part of God's plan no doubt...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 14 Dec 08 - 08:13 AM

For another ethnocentric definition of Fiddle see Here. Easy to see why such misconceptions abound with this sort of bullshit being offered out in the guise of information. I came across this in a Google search for a Native American (Apache?) instrument I only know as Cactus Fiddle in the hope of finding out what it's actually called. A picture Here says it's known as the wood that sings and probably was inspired by the violins the settlers brought with them...

More, anyone???

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 14 Dec 08 - 08:42 AM

To twisting IB - it was you, not I, who failed to recognize all the many fiddles, through time and place, other than the violin...

"but a fiddle is always a violin" (IB, above)..."that's ethnocentric - if not fiddlesticks! And, if you check an encyclopedia of music rather than a general dictionary, you'll soon find instruments much earlier than the violin described as a fiddle" (me, above).

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: s&r
Date: 14 Dec 08 - 02:01 PM

Gene Krupa with drumsticks on the bass viol

Is it folk?

Stu

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 14 Dec 08 - 03:25 PM

To twisting IB - it was you, not I, who failed to recognize all the many fiddles, through time and place, other than the violin...

Classic stuff, WAV! I recognise all manner of fiddles - I play a lot of them myself: Erhu, Karadeniz Kemence, Crwth, Crowd, Rabab, Rebec, Violin, Kemane, Jouhikko, Talharp... all of which might be described as fiddles by way of ethnomusicological taxonomical shorthand but are not called fiddles in their mother cultures. The Karadeniz Kemence, for example, is often referred to as a Black Sea Fiddle, but only by Engish speakers - it's proper & correct name is Karadeniz Kemence.

Is this beginning to sink in yet? Fiddle in this context is a taxonomical category, not the proper name of an instrument. However, when English speaking people say they play the fiddle, they mean they play the violin.

Now, go back and actually read my many posts on this subject, all of them in response to the warped ethnocentric misconception that is your Playing THE fiddle? rhetoric.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 14 Dec 08 - 04:25 PM

PS - I also play the monochordal Gusle, one of two instruments that get called Horse-Head Fiddles, the other being the Mongolian Morin Khuur. Both traditionally have strings made of twisted horse-hair, both have carved horse heads as an integral part of the design, neither would be called the fiddle by an English speaker.

This looks like an interesting read, but at $95 for a mere 188 pages I'll put it on my car-boot wish list.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 15 Dec 08 - 12:26 PM

So when you said, "but a fiddle is always a violin" (IB, above), you didn't mean it.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 15 Dec 08 - 01:07 PM

In common English usage a fiddle is always a violin. If someone says I play the fiddle they mean they play the violin - it is the only instrument to have this name in this sense. Confusingly fiddle is also a category of ethnomusicological reference for bowed chordophones, so such instruments from other cultures are both classified as fiddles and are referred to as such informally (and ethnocentrically - i.e. Chinese Fiddle, Black Sea Fiddle, Cactus Fiddle, Spike Fiddle, Horse Head Fiddle etc.) but never simply as the fiddle, and certainly not by the musicians who play them in their mother cultures.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Nerd
Date: 15 Dec 08 - 02:11 PM

I see what IB is saying, and he is right: nowadays, in common English usage, especially in UK standard English, "the fiddle" means the violin. That is what the dictionary should, and indeed does, list as the primary definition.   

Some of the caveats, which IB acknowledges, and which WAB thinks are quite important, are

(1) this has not always been the case (the word "fiddle" being older than the violin)

(2) music specialists use "fiddle" in a broader sense to mean "bowed lute," so from this perspective there are many "fiddles" in many different cultures.

So, does anyone still disagree? If so, how does it affect our wider discussion of musical Englishness and English musicality ?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 16 Dec 08 - 12:28 PM

On the BBC Radio 3 Choir of the Year, the other night, the Italian fiddle/violin was used - as was the English flute/recorder.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 16 Dec 08 - 12:50 PM

". . . the Italian fiddle/violin was used - as was the English flute/recorder."

You could tell by their accents, of course?

Don Firth

P. S. Why the hell does it matter!??

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Gervase
Date: 16 Dec 08 - 01:25 PM

And, of course, the announcer called them 'the Italian fiddle' and 'the English flute', didn't she?
WAV, you really are a stubborn arse at times. If you put half as much effort into your music as you do into the pusillanimous claptrap you post here you'd be half decent.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: catspaw49
Date: 16 Dec 08 - 03:11 PM

......pusillanimous claptrap......

Damn.....Ain't that beautiful? I love a true and professional wordsmith. Pusillanimous Claptrap. I'm always in awe of the great ones and Gervase has many times been my hero...........Just beautiful!

I mean, shitfire......I'd have said something like "limpdick jadrool bullshit" but it has nowhere near the character to it. You ARE the MAN Gervase..................and Wavy is a limpdick jadrool.

Spaw

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Nerd
Date: 16 Dec 08 - 03:15 PM

See, I try to calm everybody down, and then Spaw comes in and whips 'em up again. Gotta love the 'cat!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: GUEST,Smokey
Date: 16 Dec 08 - 03:27 PM

Some of us may develop a slightly glazed look upon entering a music shop..

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: catspaw49
Date: 16 Dec 08 - 03:28 PM

Okay....Wait up here......Don't want to do that Nerd so I take it back...........Wavy isn't a limpdick jadrool.....He still posts limpdick jadrool bullshit but I will henceforth take my place behind my main Man Gervase and refer to it as pusillanimous claptrap.

Best As Always (;<))

Spaw

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 12:33 PM

The infantile attacks from Catspaw, who has also used the term "white boy", should be deleted.
"And, of course, the announcer called them 'the Italian fiddle' and 'the English flute', didn't she?" (Gervase)...I don't recall the few instruments used for accompaniment being introduced; I do recall how a lot of that performed was American culture, rather than our own hymns and, SEASONAL, carols. And, again, I must stress the difference here between being anti-American and anti-Americanistion - we should all love our world being multicultural.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Gervase
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 01:15 PM

Yawn - WAV makes a link. And guess where it goes - straight to his inane website.
Mr Franks, the purpose of putting a link is for elucidation. Yours always go to your own websites, where one finds the same drivel, only in much larger quantities.

I would have though, as a workshy, benefit scrounging immigrant, you might be able to find the time to educate yourself better. The Open University is a good start - you could take a foundation course in the humanities (as clearly your claimed 'degree in the humanities' taught you nothing) and then work up to a proper degree.

Then one of two things might happen - you may stop believing in and spouting crap, or you may be able to find an intelligent way to try to justify your belief in crap. Either would be preferable to the current scenario, whereby you come out with a fatuously incorrect statement, and then simply post a link to your witterings which just makes you look more of a fool.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 01:59 PM

Considering their variegated origins, not to mention all the cultures and circumstances in which these instruments are played, a person who persists in referring to a violin as an "Italian fiddle" and a tenor recorder as an "English flute" is either grossly ill-informed or downright dim-witted. It also indicates a mind that can't handle multiple concepts without a whole wall of arbitrary pigeon holes in which to keep old ideas and to place any new ideas that come along, whether they fit in any of them or not. If you have misfiled a lot of things, which you most certainly have, David, the whole system breaks down.

Time to clear the slate, dump the rubbish out of the pigeon holes, and do a serious re-think.

Don Firth

P. S. By the way, do you ever read anything other than your own writings? I think you have what computer engineers refer to as a "feedback loop" there, in which the same data keeps recycling. It's also one of those things that they refer to generally as a "glitch." And then, of course, there is the acronym "GIGO:    "Garbage In, Garbage Out."

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 04:42 PM

"And, of course, the announcer called them 'the Italian fiddle' and 'the English flute', didn't she?" (Gervase)...I don't recall the few instruments used for accompaniment being introduced

Lord help us, WAV, are you actually incapable of answering a straight question?

Do you think it's likely that the announcer would refer to them as 'the Italian fiddle' and 'the English flute'?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Don Firth
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 07:36 PM

I have been listening to classical music radio stations all of my life, and I have worked several years as an announcer for two such stations. I have never heard any announcers (some of whom had been professional musicians), ever refer to the violin as an "Italian violin," nor have I ever heard any of them refer to a tenor recorder as an "English flute." Nor did I ever do so myself.

Also—I studied classical music for three years at the University of Washington School of Music and two years at the Cornish School of the Arts (basically, a conservatory) and I never heard any national designation used by either professors or students for any musical instrument.

With the exception of "French horn," which is actually a German horn, referred to in the English language, erroneously, as a "French horn;"   and "English horn," or "cor anglais" which is neither English (it, too, originated in Germany) nor a horn. It is a double-reed woodwind.

When I was in school, one or two people did refer to my classical guitar as a "Spanish guitar" (mainly in an effort to distinguish the nylon-string classical guitar from the steel-string guitar or the electric guitar), but the "Spanish" guitar I was using at the time was made by C. F. Martin & Co. of Nazareth, Pennsylvania.

I currently own four guitars. Two of them actually came from Spain. One of them is a classic and the other is a flamenco, both made in Madrid. I also have a very fine classic guitar which was made in Japan. And a small nylon-string travel guitar made in San Diego, California.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 20 Dec 08 - 05:03 PM

Gervase: nothing wrong with using an anonymous web-nickname - but hiding behind it and taking cheap-shots is cowardly, in my opinion.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: catspaw49
Date: 20 Dec 08 - 05:32 PM

First, I have never taken a cheap shot at you. I've infused every one with value!!!

Next up Wavy........I've been here for 10 years and everyone has easy access to my name, address, phone number, e-mail......Hell, there were even CAT-scans of me posted at one point so there is nothing anonymous about me.

Several kind folks on this forum have told me that you're entitled to your say......and they're right! You've been having it ad infinitum and as Gervase correctly points out, nothing is new with you and every link goes to your sites of assorted amounts of weirdness.

Your type of bigot though needs to be countered and many here have tried as well as the many who have tried to help you in your other works. Some, like me, are just tired of your "pusillanimous claptrap" which screams bigot in every way. You live off the public dole and blame others for your state of affairs. Your logic is faulty and your premises are those of the racist and bigot. This is not a put down or an attack but simply the truth as I see it.

Have a nice day.

Spaw

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Gervase
Date: 21 Dec 08 - 05:24 AM

I can probably give you Pat's address, and can tell you what his house looks like, WAV. There's no mystery about that man (apart, perhaps, from the vagaries of his digestive system). And the same goes for most posters here; over time everyone opens up and shares more about themselves and becomes an integral part of what has become a real community. Apart, that is, from you - who has stuck to the same crap like a stuck record.
And I use my own name here - the one I was given by my parents. When you get an insult from me, you know it's from me. If you're curious (a trait that does seem to be lacking in your make-up) a quick search here and a bit of Googling will tell you all you need to know.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 22 Dec 08 - 05:04 AM

and "English horn," or "cor anglais"

As I posted last year on the original Walkaboutsverse thread (10th December 2007, 4.53 am)

A NORTHUMBRIAN MIDDLE-SCHOOL EPIPHANY (To be Sung to a Gelinaeu Psalm-Tone)

When I was nine in 1970,
I played Melchior in the school nativity;
and I banged a big frame-drum from Bethlehem,
brought back from a Holy Land holiday by Miss Morrison,
who showed me some choice cyclic Arabic rhythms,
that have been with me ever since.

Miss Morrison played upon a shawm,
because she played the English Horn;
though that is only what the Yanks, in their funny way,
call the instrument we Brits know as the Cor Anglais.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Nerd
Date: 22 Dec 08 - 12:35 PM

Hmmm, it looks as if the Catter Formerly Known As Insane Beard has changed his handle to Troll the Ancient Yuletide Carol. I didn't know this would result in a retroactive changing of his handle on all his previous posts. Thus, when in the future people read this thread and see me responding to "Insane Beard" or "IB," they might be confused. Hence, this post!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 22 Dec 08 - 12:51 PM

I can assure you the name change is temporary; I do it as I don my Father Christmas hat and deck the halls with boughs of holly & suchlike festive jollity.

Will Insane Beard be back? Not sure - I rather fancy Deputy Seraph in the new year. Of course before IB I was (& am) Sedayne, so maybe I'll go back to that...

Don't be dismayed, according to one Mudcatter my posts are recognisable no matter what name I go by.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Will Fly
Date: 22 Dec 08 - 01:13 PM

I quite like "Troll the Ancient Yuletide Carol" - it has a certain ring to it. Perhaps not "Carol", for short, though...

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Sleepy Rosie
Date: 22 Dec 08 - 01:16 PM

Was that Richard Bridge again describing your style as something akin to "concentrated gibberish"?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Gervase
Date: 22 Dec 08 - 01:32 PM

Entertaining gibberish, though. As the sainted Kelvin McKenzie was wont to say, "It might be shit, but at least it's shit with a shine!"
And it's nice to have some distraction from WAV's witless witterings.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 22 Dec 08 - 03:55 PM

Months ago, I sometimes didn't bother logging in - hence the "Guest Walkaboutsverse" way above - but nowadays I always do; so would the one who rencently posted as "Guest Walkaboutsverse" like to own up - while we are at it/before the new year..?

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 15 Feb 09 - 09:18 AM

Sorry about this, but on our jaunt over the Pennines yesterday we caught an episode of the new Does the Team Think? with the ever wonderful Vic Reeves. Quite a result for seasoned Vic & Bob fans such as Rapunzel & I (who didn't even know it existed) and all the more so when the subject of England's National Musical Instrument raised its ugly head. Listen again at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00hjdnn/Does_The_Team_Think_Episode_5/

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Sleepy Rosie
Date: 15 Feb 09 - 09:43 AM

I was debating where they began on telly with my fella the other day.
The first time I remember seeing them, was on "Friday Night Out"

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Sleepy Rosie
Date: 15 Feb 09 - 09:49 AM

Oops, think I'm getting "Big Night Out" muddled with "Friday Night Live" (later "Saturday Night Live")

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Sleepy Rosie
Date: 15 Feb 09 - 09:58 AM

Oh no, now I'm sunk deep.

Mulligan and O'Hare In which their fine rendition of "Another day in Paradise" should be of particular interest to ethnomusicologists everywhere.

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 15 Feb 09 - 11:24 AM

I don't think Vic Reeves was ever on TV before the Big Night Out. The BNO started as Jim "Vic Reeves" Moir's stage show, which began in a pub back room (and without Bob "Bob Mortimer" Mortimer).

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Sleepy Rosie
Date: 15 Feb 09 - 11:52 AM

Can't recall the exact year at school - maybe around the fourth or the fifth year? But I do recall it being a general buzz amongst my little bunch of mates, that *at last* there was something really funny on telly!

Subject: RE: England's National Musical-Instrument?
From: Strawman
Date: 15 Feb 09 - 12:14 PM

Vic's earliest TV appearances were One Hour With Jonathan Ross in the Knock Down Ginger game show segment on C4 in 1989.