In Praise of Traddies!

Subject: RE: In Praise of Traddies!
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 24 Feb 10 - 03:59 PM

That is exactly what folk music does not do (remain unchanged in versions) but exactly what karaoke seeks to do (for example I will ask the operator if he has the Chuck Berry version of "Down the Road Apiece" rather than the Rolling Stones version)

Subject: RE: In Praise of Traddies!
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 25 Feb 10 - 07:29 AM

That is exactly what folk music does not do (remain unchanged in versions)

Further idle musings...

Once a variant has occurred, it remains unchanged. If another variant is made, that does not, as a rule, change the variant it derives from, nor yet preclude other variants being made from the initial variant, or yet earlier variants. The learning and shaping of songs in an oral tradition across isolated communities with poor communications would lead to a greater fluidity by way of comparison, but not necessarily with any given variant or singer thereof. Thus folk songs exist in many variants, but each variant is an entity in and of itself, and each variant is the consequence of exacting craftspersonship on the part of the song maker, who is working within the idiom of his or her tradition.

Getting back to my final point above, when a variant remains unchanged in & of itself then does this not preclude it from being a Folk Song according to the 1954 Definition?

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I've never sang Karaoke, but from what I've heard I'd say that whatever the backing track does, it's the singers determine the essential folk character of the music.

How does the 1954 Definition work when applied to musical genre rather than specific compositions? How could we, for example, apply it to the development of pop music from, say, Louis Jordan to Bat for Lashes taking in everything from The Animals, Zappa, Soft Machine, The Fall, Neu!, Henry Cow, Art Zoyd, Spherical Objects, Young Marble Giants, This Heat, Univers Zero and It Bites along the way? Could we do a similar thing with reggae & jazz? All of these things are included in the remit of the International Council for Traditional Music after all...

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I mentioned Folk Songs and Crop Circles a while back. Interesting that the makers often hide away too to help propagate the myth of alien process. I love the Crop Circles Tradition, not least for the fact of what a bunch of blokes with sticks can achieve on so vast a scale in so short a time. This is Folk Mastery at work!