Pop Goes The Folk Singer

Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
From: glueman
Date: 04 May 08 - 12:42 PM

"...and like most Australians they are racists."

Cough, splutter. Isn't that a little racist?

Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 05 May 08 - 08:51 AM

English repat, were you born in England?

Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 05 May 08 - 09:25 AM

Yes, Volgadon - it was actually St. Mary's Hospital, Manchester, the day Alf Ramsey's English team won the World Cup of football.
Back to the topic, I don't have it now, but, on a Musician's Channel, I heard it said by an instructor that someone can play whatever they want as an intro. or interlude to a pop-song...sadly, I think, many of the recordings on folk-radio have adopted that idea - and some interludes go on for so long one could easily forget what the lyric was on about...again, I prefer the traditional way.

Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
From: GUEST,eliza c
Date: 05 May 08 - 11:32 AM

David,
   The "traditional" way is to move naturally with the times. What you are talking about is freezing your whimsical idea of tradition in aspic,making everyone the same. That is not music, it is not tradition and it is not life.
e

Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 05 May 08 - 12:04 PM

On the contrary, Eliza, I think globalisation (e.g., many nationals "going-pop"/employing pop-methods such as the one mentioned above) is much more likely to make "everyone the same". Masai leaders, e.g., are well aware of globalisation/potential loss of culture, and they are very stubborn and determined against it...as I said in poem # 52: "I like the Masai"!

Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
From: Acorn4
Date: 05 May 08 - 12:16 PM

It's a bit "War and Peace" this thread isn't it -when I read the title couldn't see why it was going on for so long.

I'm going to try to avoid getting involved in all the controversial stuff. We're probably all familiar with the film "Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou" -it led to a great revival of interest in Old Time American Music. This music had always been there, has always been findable, and has a band of followers on both sides of the pond, but why did it need a film to make people discover it? Mick Peat on "Folkwaves" recently mourned the fact that there was not an English equivalent to give the same profile to English Folk music.

Perhaps the argument should be more about marketing culture and media spotlighting rather than about accents. I probably like American and English music about equally, but do, I'll admit, have a problem with a lot of "world music", simply because if I'm listening to singing in a language I don't understand, I am, to all intents and purposes, listening to an instrumental. I therefore find myself switching off.

I'll probably regret posting on this thread. Hope I'm not going to get my head bitten off by someone.

Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 05 May 08 - 12:34 PM

...no talking-heads on here, Acorn4...yet?!

Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 05 May 08 - 12:37 PM

:-(

Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
From: GUEST,Frank Lee
Date: 05 May 08 - 03:30 PM

A young lad edged rather nervously into The Radway at the last Sidmouth festival. He played the 'The Sportsmans' Hornpipe' on his melodeon, and in an attempt to alleviate his apparent discomfort at finding himself in the Lion's Lair of all music sessions, someone decided to show an interest in him and asked the name of the tune he had just played. 'Er, I'm not sure', came the reply, 'It's a John Spiers tune'.
What does this tell us? - nothing much? Or an awful lot about where our traditional music is going?
Frank Lee.

Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
From: GUEST,The Mole Catcher's unplugged Apprentice
Date: 05 May 08 - 03:51 PM

" What does this tell us? - nothing much? "

the lad learned it from John Spiers, who presumably learned it from another source ad infinitum....

and on another point, or should I say the same one re-ierated..

On the contrary, Eliza, I think globalisation (e.g., many nationals "going-pop"/employing pop-methods such as the one mentioned above) is much more likely to make "everyone the same".

Eliza C is NOT talking about globalisation or anything like it..what she is saying is that, and I quote "The "traditional" way is to move naturally with the times" umm...again I present The Imagined Vilage (which Eliza appears on, by the way) as evidence of the tradition moving forward in good way, a natural way...it's one of my favourite CD's. The tradition isn't a museum piece in a glass case to be viewed by the paying punters, it's a living thing, ever changing, ever growing, and long may it do so.

Charlotte R

Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 05 May 08 - 04:44 PM

Pop music has always influenced traditional music. Music halls didn't kill it, now did they? I love the aspic image.

Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 05 May 08 - 05:11 PM

"Pop music has always influenced traditional music"...Pop music derived from American religious music last century, Volgadon - trad. music goes back a tad further than that!. But, yes, it is increasingly influencing trad. muscics, sadly.

Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
From: GUEST,The Mole catcher's unplugged Apprentice
Date: 05 May 08 - 05:41 PM

"But, yes, it is increasingly influencing trad. muscics, sadly."

That's the tradition on the march, ever moving forward, ever changing, the world, nor its musiks, stand still for no one, thank god!

Charlotte R

Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 05 May 08 - 07:01 PM

No, pop music means popular music. American religious music of the last century is one of the many sources of today's pop music, but hardly the only one, or even the most definitive.

Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 06 May 08 - 06:17 AM

Folk music was, for a long-time popular - the music of the people - but what has come to be accepted as pop-music is something quite different: belting, more-often in one's head-voice, less earthy, miming, showing taut-toosh, if you'll pardong my French, etc.
And as for The Imagined Village, I'd genuinely rather imagine a proper English pub, in a proper English village, with proper English music...a clog-dancer by my side, a glass of mead in hand, and a stottie stuffed with chips and red-sauce on the table...and, out of the window, snow falling on swans as they glide gently by a river-licking weeping-willow...(further to poem # 72 MILLENNIUM DREAMS)

Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 06 May 08 - 06:35 AM

"a clog-dancer by my side, a glass of mead in hand, and a stottie stuffed with chips and red-sauce on the table...and, out of the window, snow falling on swans as they glide gently by a river-licking weeping-willow..."

I swear, sometimes I think WAV is actually a piss-take. MEAD, FFS?!

Pop music has been influencing the tradition since - well, since there was pop music. Many of the "source" singers collected in the earliest part of the revival sang music hall songs alongside their traditional songs. Sometimes collectors couldn't tell the difference.

That's why the kind of purism you advocate, WAV, is a completely false construct.

Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 06 May 08 - 07:21 AM

"False construct" Ruth?...if not at my local, I can still get a stottie and find a chippie for it's stuffing; I can and do get a glass of mead at a nearby pub; with a bit of imagination, you should be able to picture a willow "licking" the river's flow; swans can be on the river when it's snowing in England; and there are still some English clog-dancers about...
Music hall songs are, again, very different from what most now understand pop to be - so yours is the "false construct"...and why are you so heavily against the idea of English culture in England?...don't you, like me, love our world being multicultural?

Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
From: GUEST,Joe
Date: 06 May 08 - 07:32 AM

Noone is against 'English Culture' in England particularly, but 'English culture' is so very different from what you picture. Random chunks of things that happen to be English pulled together in some false construct??? Sounds like something they would have at Disneyland.

I'd rather have a curry, and a Corona on hot days.

Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 06 May 08 - 07:42 AM

It was a response to The IMAGINED Village, Joe; and I prefered vegetable birianis, during my enjoyable month or so in India.

Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 06 May 08 - 07:56 AM

Music Hall songs were the popular music of their day. many cvollectors thought they "polluted" the tradition, yet many dource singers sang them. The false construct, WAV, is the assumption that there has ever been any kind of purism or parameters around English music.

Henry VIII brought in court musicians from Italy. Was the music played at his and subsequent courts less English for that? The throne of England has been littered with rulers from all over Europe, and each brought their own cultural influences to bear on "English" culture. Then, as someone mentioned earlier, there were the Huguenots,and the Dutch in the 17th century, and various other waves of immigration throughout history, which have all added their own influences to "English" culture. Right up to the present day.

People like you who believe in a monoculture are deluding themselves. This country has ALWAYS been a nation of immigrants.

The monocultural, village-green England you pine for was invented by the Victorians. It never existed. I say this as someone who lives not 50 yards from a picture-perfect English village green, flanked by a picture-perfect English pub. But I also know that my village is not (and has never been) the typical English experience, and I'm sensible enough to know how little relevance it bears to the majority of people who live in England today. And to insist that my experience is the "right" or "true" one, and that all the other people living in cities, or in suburbs, or on council estates somehow have a "less English" way of life as a result, is a complete absurdity.

Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 06 May 08 - 08:01 AM

This is all getting rather - well if not extactly false, then certainly surreal, at least as far as WAV's very singular take on England's Dreamtime is concerned.

Even if such places do still exist, one is increasingly reminded of Vivian Stanshall's Rawlinson End, or ye merrye musinges of the Amazing Blondel: thoughts of church and priory inspire me and fire me dwell on times gone by.... On Sunday we attended the scarecrow festival in the village of Wray, a good old traditional English event which records show dates as far back to 1992; along the way we basked by rivers with licking willows and fed the gliding swans with chunks of stotty cake* and there was a Lancastrian clog dancer...

Otherwise - chips and red-sauce I can accept; Mead however (and I'm with Ruth on this one) is perhaps taking things too far, though I'm sure the Amazing Blondel sang of mead, though maybe not as an ideal accompaniment to chips and red-sauce, for which the traditional tipple would be a bottle of Dog (aka Newcastle Brown Ale).

Sedayne

*Interesting to note that the Stotty is unique to the North East, and even then, as far as quality is concerned, unique to Greggs, who only do their stotties in their North East shops. Our monthly visits to Tyneside are therefore three-folk: 1) to visit my family; 2) to attend Joe's come-all-ye at The Cumberland Arms in Byker, and 3) to buy a bag load of stotties from Greggs for the freezer.

Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 06 May 08 - 08:04 AM

three-fold of course - that darned F-word!

Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 06 May 08 - 08:24 AM

Yes, Ruth, although I don't like monarchism, I accept, as you suggest, that some kings were born-and/or-bred elsewhere and catalysed huge change when they arrived or returned; and I accept that England is indeed an old-old blend of mostly European cultures - until about 50 years ago, ie. (when, as you would know, immigrants were less than a percent of the population.) But the key thing is, given all that, what is best FROM NOW ON...Do you at least agree that because some phenomenom has occured for a long time it does not necessarily mean that it should definitely go on? I've said above what I think is best, from now on.
And I'm just hearing on the news of another independence referendum for Scotland in 2010 - God's speed to that.

Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
From: GUEST,Joe
Date: 06 May 08 - 08:35 AM

We are going round in circles, the idea of a distinct national culture is itself a false construct. In modern society there are no culturally isolated groups, different cultures (of which there are many types) overlap, and many are not limited by geography. As it has already been argued, the influences of local music, cuisine, etc do not stop dead at national boundaries.

'Do you at least agree that because some phenomenom has occured for a long time it does not necessarily mean that it should definitely go on?' No, but in the case of immigration yes. Would all the Eastern Europeans come and work in the UK if there werent any jobs? Why is there unemployment among the 'native' population whilst immigrants still manage to find work? Its too easy to blame the foreigners for all the problems in the UK, where in fact many of the problems are home grown.

Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
From: Silver Slug
Date: 06 May 08 - 08:38 AM

The writer of a recent article in the Daily Mail bewailed the fact that 'village skills' had all but disappeared from England. He was talking about trades such as thatching, smithying, dry-stone walling and all of those other gentle trades that we associate with pre-industrial revolution village life.

I'm willing to bet that if we could speak to somebody who endured such a life they would call us lucky b'stards for not having to cope with mind-numbing, back-breaking work for little reward, with every chance of being thrown out of the tied cottage at the hint of old age or illness.

It is also very unlikely that such a person would know the joys of listening to Amerindian chants, drums and pipes or any form of music other than a small number of hymns and carols.

Time and music have moved on and definitely for the better. Folk is, in my opinion, just one of many styles of popular music which has benefited from the absorbtion of ideas from other cultures. (e.g. folk-rock) Move on or die!

Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 06 May 08 - 09:02 AM

What Joe said.

Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 06 May 08 - 09:08 AM

In Japan, amid all the modernisation/Westernisation/gloabalisation/Americansiation, they have, I've heard, pensioned "national treasures" to keep the old traditions going, yes? But have you also heard it said that most people here do indeed like folk music, when it's given a chance - and that's the thing, it isn't nowadays...even on an otherwise great programme Countryfile (BBC) they often use American Country music for backing to an article on the English country side - that IS sad; and it is good that finally more English people are speaking-out against suchlike.

Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
From: GUEST,Joe
Date: 06 May 08 - 09:39 AM

Surely then, groups such as Bellowhead, Seth Lakeman etc, provide the key to the world of folk music to most people, because of the similarities with other genres. This seems more plausable than someone randomly coming across a performance of unaccompanied folk singing and instantly connecting. Im not saying the latter is impossible, but that the former is something that I have witnessed many times.

Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
From: GUEST,Neil D
Date: 06 May 08 - 10:10 AM

Then, as someone mentioned earlier, there were the Huguenots,and the Dutch in the 17th century, and various other waves of immigration throughout history, which have all added their own influences to "English" culture. Right up to the present day.
   
    It has been estimated that more than 1/4 of the poulation of England and as much as 1/6 of the population of the USA are descended from French Huguenots.

Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 06 May 08 - 10:38 AM

"To Ron: recently on tv the concern was raised that a very high percentage of childrens programmes, e.g., in England now are from America - is that "evolution" or replacement/globalisation/Americanisation...and here, again, I must stress that I do enjoy some American culture/music myself, but we in England DO have our own good culture, which IS being lost, which is NOT good for our society. "

WAV- you never answered my question. WHY are you importing such a high percentage of American programs? Why aren't there more opportunities for "homegrown" problems? What do American programs offer that are different from yours? You do have a very good culture, but what does that have to do with teaching skills?

I'm not sure why you feel that you are losing your culture and cannot accept that life is evolving. There are no calls for buggywhip manufacturers anymore, but we have preserved what the process was like and we teach our children what life was like back then.   We've progressed since we first began rubbing two sticks together to make fire or beating our clothes against rocks. Life changes, culture changes. It is one thing to preserve the old traditions, but is wrong to continue those traditions if they force other traditions from being allowed to grow.

We live in a global world and it won't be going back.

Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
From: The Sandman
Date: 06 May 08 - 10:42 AM

I know what I would like to tell walkabout verse to do,butIwould be banned from mudcat.

Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
From: Lowden Jameswright
Date: 06 May 08 - 10:59 AM

If you can manage to get your head as far up your arse as possible, you may find true enlightenment. Meanwhile, try and enjoy some fresh air.

Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 06 May 08 - 11:01 AM

The US is obviously very powerful/influential, Ron...I, for one, wish the UN (where, at least in theory, it's one nation/one vote, yes?...I think I heard that on my VISIT to NY/UN in 1997) was a lot more powerful. Again, that's NOT to say I'm against all US citizens - I like John Steinbeck, e.g...although he didn't seen to sympathise with Amerindians much...perhaps he did in a novel I never read..?

Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 06 May 08 - 11:15 AM

The UN is going to bring homegrown childrens television back to the UK???

Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
From: GUEST,Joe
Date: 06 May 08 - 11:31 AM

Would those be tales of selling guns to Militia groups?

Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
From: goatfell
Date: 06 May 08 - 11:47 AM

I jsut wold love it one day when English people shut up about 1966, we and the world know that you won the world cup but 42 years ago ,I mean you never talk about 1967 when we (the Scots) beat you at Wembley 3-2, that makes us the unoffical world champs doesn't but when you come up to Scotland or meet a Scot they don't go on about 1967 do they, good on you England but it was 42 years ago.

Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
From: Banjiman
Date: 06 May 08 - 11:50 AM

"I jsut wold love it one day when English people shut up about 1966, we and the world know that you won the world cup but 42 years ago ,I mean you never talk about 1967 when we (the Scots) beat you at Wembley 3-2, that makes us the unoffical world champs doesn't but when you come up to Scotland or meet a Scot they don't go on about 1967 do they, good on you England but it was 42 years ago."

Bit of a chip on the shoulder there old boy, I think!!!!

Paul

Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
From: The Sandman
Date: 06 May 08 - 11:54 AM

Iwould like it,IF every time I go to Glasgow,I was not asked about the bloody Battle of Culloden.

Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 06 May 08 - 12:14 PM

I've enjoyed my VISITS to Scotland, Flower of Scotland is on my Top Friends, and God's speed to the SNP...who knows, maybe Gordon Brown will join them soon?!

Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
From: Acorn4
Date: 06 May 08 - 12:28 PM

WDFU Ron-

An intersting point to add to the TV programmes slant of the thread is that a clear majority of children who were asked actually preferred the home grown programmes.

Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 06 May 08 - 12:50 PM

"WAV- you never answered my question. WHY are you importing such a high percentage of American programs? Why aren't there more opportunities for "homegrown" problems? What do American programs offer that are different from yours? "

Ron, what they offer is cheapness. Buying in is substantially cheaper than producing, and the BBC and ITV have had their budgets for producing children's programming slashed in the last 10 years, just as the digital platforms have come on-line which allow them to broadcast many more hours of children's programmes, including dedicated digital channels.

Go figure.

Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 06 May 08 - 12:51 PM

I don't doubt it Acorn4! Which brings up my still unanswered questions - why is it happening and how is the UN supposed to solve it?

Having worked in television production for the last 28 years, I know that EVERY decision is based on $$$$. There is a reason why the American programs are being imported and why more UK based shows are not - if that is indeed the case.   Television in the U.S. does not come cheap, so there is larger reason why.

Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
From: The Sandman
Date: 06 May 08 - 12:53 PM

WAV,You missed my point.
I have enjoyed my many visits to Scotland too.
What I object to is a small minority of Glaswegians,who when they hear an english accent,bring up the subject of Culloden,in an attempt to provoke a fight,
like wise I object to Rangers and Celtic, [So called football supporters],who engage in tribal warfare,based on hatred of another religious sect.
I object to your views on English traditional music and Immigration.your time[imo] would be better spent on playing the recorder.

Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 06 May 08 - 01:08 PM

Until what point?
I think Walter Pardon makes an interesting study.

"Well before he was old enough for it, pub-singing in that part of Norfolk had faded away, and he commented: "My generation ridiculed songs. There were no young men forty years ago, when I was twenty, who went near a man of sixty to hear the songs. That is a fact. I never did sing out of the house - hardly. The only time I used to sing in here was Christmastime. We finished all Christmas parties when Mother died … the last time was 1952. That just left Father and I here. Ever since, I've gone to an aunt who lived up the road, and in later years to my cousins. We never had any singing up there. I never sang up there or even took the accordeon out of the house. Nobody seemed to want to know anything about the songs, so they lay dormant until [my nephew] Roger Dixon - he was the one who wanted them - right from a boy."

But why do you think music hall songs so vastly different from today's pop music? They definitely weren't quite the same as what you consider folk songs. Then we've got Handel, did that upset purists in the 1730s?

"Folk music was, for a long-time popular - the music of the people - but what has come to be accepted as pop-music is something quite different: belting, more-often in one's head-voice, less earthy, miming, showing taut-toosh, if you'll pardong my French, etc.
And as for The Imagined Village, I'd genuinely rather imagine a proper English pub, in a proper English village, with proper English music...a clog-dancer by my side, a glass of mead in hand, and a stottie stuffed with chips and red-sauce on the table...and, out of the window, snow falling on swans as they glide gently by a river-licking weeping-willow...(further to poem # 72 MILLENNIUM DREAMS)


"False construct" Ruth?...if not at my local, I can still get a stottie and find a chippie for it's stuffing; I can and do get a glass of mead at a nearby pub; with a bit of imagination, you should be able to picture a willow "licking" the river's flow; swans can be on the river when it's snowing in England; and there are still some English clog-dancers about...
Music hall songs are, again, very different from what most now understand pop to be - so yours is the "false construct"...and why are you so heavily against the idea of English culture in England?...don't you, like me, love our world being multicultural?

Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 06 May 08 - 01:39 PM

I suppose, Volgadon, music-hall songs could also be a tad cheeky!...but peformers weren't belting-out the lyrics in their head-voice, with lots of dynamics, as the top pop-singers do, and neither were they miming the way the worst pop-stars do, yes?

Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 06 May 08 - 02:00 PM

WAV, i can't decide whether you're being deliberately obtuse. The point is that Music Hall was considered vulgar and populist by most of the collectors. This will be for myriad reasons that are no longer particularly relevant, because we can't really see music hall in context as we're viewing it from a distance of 100 years; the point is, but it was the popular music of its time. Performers would have deviated substantially from what was considered traditional music, and also from what was considered the "correct" way to sing traditional music. Just like pop music deviates from your ideas of what is acceptable. But many of the "source" singers still loved music hall, and sang it.

The whole point is that traditional culture should not be viewed in opposition to popular culture, but rather as something that exists alongside it. Neither is more valid than the other.

Blimey, it's not bleedin' rocket science, is it?

Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
From: GUEST,The Mole Catcher's unplugged Apprentice
Date: 06 May 08 - 02:30 PM

WAV, There is a scene in Flora Thompson's Lark Rise to Candleford (not sure if it's in the tv series) where a local lad, returning from serving in the army, brings with him a melodeon. He begins to play for a gathering crowd, and they begin to dance to the tunes he's playing, well guess what, according to Flora Thompson, all the tune's played were the "popular songs and tunes of the day", music hall included, no sign of the Ye Olde Merry England dance tunes that seem to exist no where else except in you head

Charlotte R

Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
From: GUEST,The Mole Catcher's unplugged Apprentice
Date: 06 May 08 - 02:35 PM

"And as for The Imagined Village, I'd genuinely rather imagine a proper English pub, in a proper English village, with proper English music...a clog-dancer by my side, a glass of mead in hand, and a stottie stuffed with chips and red-sauce on the table...and, out of the window, snow falling on swans as they glide gently by a river-licking weeping-willow..."

and everyone is white....

You live in a fantasy world, a world,of stereotypes.., sunshine, get a grip!

Charlotte R

Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 06 May 08 - 02:41 PM

To RA and CR, I was answering this from Volgadon: "But why do you think music hall songs so vastly different from today's pop music?"

Subject: RE: Pop Goes The Folk Singer
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 06 May 08 - 02:48 PM

Music hall was seen as crude and vulgar, without much artist value and was gripped about, much like with pop, but it didn't ruin folk music, so I don't think folk musicians adopting elements of pop will either. Much of it will be crap, but that is down to musicianship and is well worth the gems that we'll get, as well as making it more accesible.

You don't see much trad music being mimed, do you, so not sure what the point is. Besides, you can't mime on a recording!!!