Is this folk music?

Subject: Is this folk music?
From: GUEST,mark E
Date: 03 Apr 12 - 07:32 AM

I wonder what people here think? Is this folk music? And if not, what the hell is it?

There's more here

Strangely ... I think I quite like it!

Subject: RE: Is this folk music?
From: theleveller
Date: 03 Apr 12 - 07:49 AM

I've no idea what folk music is (no, don't go there) but I also quite like it - in an ambient sort of way.

Subject: RE: Is this folk music?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 03 Apr 12 - 07:52 AM

It's some kind of far-out jazz, with a bit of Meredith Monk influence.

It'd work better as part of a live show, with more than a still picture to look at.

Subject: RE: Is this folk music?
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 03 Apr 12 - 08:00 AM

I used to do this a lot in high school. For a second I thought it was one of our tapes!

My friends who play this sort of thing nowadays (all of whom are both very technically proficient and musically educated players of jazz) call it, I believe, "improvised music." It owes an obvious debt to jazz, but I think they prefer not to bring any baggage that comes with that word.

It's fun to hear live, as the musicians switch instruments and explore their environment, sometimes doing a spacial thing with the sound.

Subject: RE: Is this folk music?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 03 Apr 12 - 09:08 AM

It sounds like non-musicians having fun on each others borrowed instruments; either that or it's a cynical attempt at faking weirdness for its own sake. As an experimental / free improviser I tend to take things rather more seriously in terms of resonance and technique, which doesn't preclude rough edges & a certain naivity, God forbid, just maximising on the sonic potential of this thing called music which takes a lot of hard work & chops. It's mistaken to say anyone can play like this without putting the work in, just as it's mistaken to think anyone can paint like Picasso at his most primitive; some of the most awesome & technically accomplished musicians I know are free-improvisers. Sadly, this just sounds like people who can't play.

Remember the Third Ear Band? They did the most far out folky weird free improv and were some of the most amazing musicians on the planet as this brief clip proves.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1XrbbIV-g8

Maybe the Tradition of this sort of thing passed long ago?

Subject: RE: Is this folk music?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 03 Apr 12 - 09:23 AM

PS - I might only say that because I'm identifying myself on clarinet, circa 1984. Is that what this is?? Certainly sounds like the sorts of sessions we did back then whilst under the influence of Beefheart and The Fall (and other substances). Weird on another level entirely.

Subject: RE: Is this folk music?
From: David C. Carter
Date: 03 Apr 12 - 09:25 AM

A great friend of mine played bass for the Third Ear Band,and for the band"High Tide".They put out an album called "Sea Shanties".But you ain't never heard sea shanties like these.We were talking about the music one evening,and my mate said"We don't call it anything,we just play it".
I go along with Suibhne Astray,They were weird,but they were"doing it".
By the way,thanks for the link,brought back some good memories.

David

Subject: RE: Is this folk music?
From: Leadfingers
Date: 03 Apr 12 - 09:29 AM

Well they sure as hell wouldnt get a booking at any Folk Club I go to !!

Subject: RE: Is this folk music?
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 03 Apr 12 - 09:37 AM

Whatever it may or may not be;

The important question is:

Does anyone actually enjoy listening to it and want to hear it again ???


Now where's my "David Bedford - Nurses Song With Elephants " LP
which I've not played since first and probably only time well over 30 years ago ????

Subject: RE: Is this folk music?
From: John P
Date: 03 Apr 12 - 09:43 AM

Nothing folky about it. It sounds like improvisation by people who don't know what they are doing. It sounds like a too-loosely organized sound-scape. It sounds like stoned people fooling around and thinking they're clever. It's not dreadful; it's also not very good. A little more organization might have turned it into art. A little more demonstrated skill might have turned it into music.

There are about 20 people in every large city who like this sort of thing. Before YouTube, this music would have been heard about once every two years by those twenty people, and it wouldn't have been the best example played in those two years.

Subject: RE: Is this folk music?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 03 Apr 12 - 09:43 AM

Well they sure as hell wouldnt get a booking at any Folk Club I go to !!

Ah! As sad an indictment on the current state of the UK folk scene as any I've read, though I doubt the Third Ear Band ever bothered much with folk clubs, even back in 'the day'.

Subject: RE: Is this folk music?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 03 Apr 12 - 09:58 AM

There are about 20 people in every large city who like this sort of thing.

We need more of this sort of righteous optimism in the world right now; we need fuel for our radical convictions and the passions of indignation to reignite the wondrous in the realm of the bland. The only real trouble with non-musicians is that they have a habit of becoming musicians, so I take it all back; I'm a grunting, curmudgeonly, old fart who has lost touch entirely with such youthful vibrancy, but whilst my peers turn to their sheds and model railway layouts, I still find time to pick up my Accursed Viol and do this sort of thing:

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

But never in any sort of folk context, weird or otherwise, because folk it ain't...

Subject: RE: Is this folk music?
From: Leadfingers
Date: 03 Apr 12 - 10:03 AM

Suibline Astry - Duke Ellington , Count Basie and Louis Armtrong wouldnt get booked in many FOLK clubs either !!

Subject: RE: Is this folk music?
From: theleveller
Date: 03 Apr 12 - 10:11 AM

I'm now inspired to play the Oceans of Sound CDs that accompany David Toop's fascinating book.

Subject: RE: Is this folk music?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 03 Apr 12 - 10:48 AM

Duke Ellington , Count Basie and Louis Armtrong wouldnt get booked in many FOLK clubs either !!

Indeed, but despite Satchmo's definition of Folk Music, they belong to a whole different tradition of music, whereas the Third Ear Band still define the essense of Folk Music in an Indo-European sense; they seem to embody A L Loyd's notions of a Dreamtime of migrations of melismatic modal hunter-gatherers following the retreating ice-sheets across ancient continents before borders had ever been dreamed of.

That said: Duke Ellington is my God, John Coltrane my redeemer, Rahsaan Roland Kirk my Saint Paul, and Louis Armstrong's Hot Fives and Sevens are pure Old Testament prophecy. In such a context Miles Davis will always be Lucifer...

David Toop's fascinating book.

Indeed, as is his Exotica. Toop himself was quite the improvisor / experimentalist back in the day; he released some amazing albums of New Guinea ritual flute music on his Quartz label (I've still got one of them - unless there was only one; I seem to remember more) and he still does amazing things like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=za8-tw4fndQ

Subject: RE: Is this folk music?
From: GUEST,Tony Rath aka Tonyteach
Date: 03 Apr 12 - 10:58 AM

It is interesting music of its type - I would imagine that it would not be played in most "folk" clubs because there is'nt a chorus but can be very enjoyable in the right mood

Subject: RE: Is this folk music?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 03 Apr 12 - 11:06 AM

the Third Ear Band still define the essense of Folk Music in an Indo-European sense

From the samples you linked to, they don't - they seem to have been an attempt to create a dumbed-down version of American minimalism for a British pop audience. Whereas Mark E's outfit is dumbed-down Anthony Braxton. Not a lot to choose between them. Both are inoffensive enough to make reasonable cafe music, but that's about all the enthusiasm I can summon up for either.

Subject: RE: Is this folk music?
From: EBarnacle
Date: 03 Apr 12 - 11:11 AM

Of course, the real question is: Is it music at all?

This stuff is to music as dribble art [a la Jackson Pollock] is to painting. Even if it is repetitious planned sound, it goes nowhere. It could be used as elevator music or background sound in a bar as there is nothing to really engage a listener beyond providing a medium for meditation.

Subject: RE: Is this folk music?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 03 Apr 12 - 11:39 AM

they don't - they seem to have been an attempt to create a dumbed-down version of American minimalism for a British pop audience. Whereas Mark E's outfit is dumbed-down Anthony Braxton

Wrong on both counts. Suggest you clean out your ears, ditch the superficial comparisons or just stick to what you know.

Subject: RE: Is this folk music?
From: GUEST,Mike Yates
Date: 03 Apr 12 - 11:45 AM

Actually, I quite like this sort of thing. Very David Toop.

Subject: RE: Is this folk music?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 03 Apr 12 - 12:50 PM

Muzac ?

Dave H

Subject: RE: Is this folk music?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 03 Apr 12 - 01:27 PM

I listened for a while. I would call that communal noodling.

Subject: RE: Is this folk music?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 03 Apr 12 - 01:27 PM

I dunno. Are any of the watersons kids, or Ashley Hutchinns kids playing on it?

If not, I'd guess cecil Sharp house won't be interested.

Subject: RE: Is this folk music?
From: GUEST,Guest TF
Date: 03 Apr 12 - 01:41 PM

If you have to ask, the answer is usually NO. TF

Subject: RE: Is this folk music?
From: Elmore
Date: 03 Apr 12 - 08:16 PM

No

Subject: RE: Is this folk music?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 03 Apr 12 - 08:53 PM

I hadn't heard any David Toop before Mike Yates mentioned him. I have now. I liked about half of what I heard.

Mark E is no David Toop and neither was the Third Ear Band.

Subject: RE: Is this folk music?
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 04 Apr 12 - 12:05 AM

1. folk music as a genre w/stylistic features
vs
2. folk music as a process
vs
3. folk music in terms of who produces music / how / for what reason

I personally am not interesting in nailing down a definition of "folk music." If I really need to describe something, I know of clearer adjectives.

I will say, however, that my personal notion of folk music lays emphasis on #3, in which the producers are acting as amateurs (this has nothing to do with skill or training) or at least it is inclusive of amateurs. And the people are creating the music at some "local" level, for themselves and their "community."

Growing up as a musician, who first played in punk/hardcore bands and when to those shows, and had little jams with friends on Blues and stuff, along with tinkering around on dulcimers or whatever...and also having free form improvisation sessions like this (i.e. making a bunch of racket with fun sounds to get out creativity and enjoy ourselves)... I had the sense that that was our contemporary equivalent of whatever people, in hindsight, had labeled to be "folk" music of the past.

My concept of "folk music" is not specific to the genre of music played, nor does it have to do with a continuous tradition, and definitely not to do with national/ethnic "heritage." I'm aware that I may have "wrongly" appropriated "folk music" for my own ideas, but I'm not worried about it.

Subject: RE: Is this folk music?
From: GUEST,Chord Chucker
Date: 04 Apr 12 - 12:23 AM

It is worth mentioning that the collection of sounds that we use for music were rather arbitrarily selected, as are the rules and theories by which it is arranged.

Furthermore, the "music" that we and others create from them is appealing to us primarily because we are familiar with it, and understand how it is used to express things.

An analogy would be to our beloved English language, which is a closed collection of phonemes and morphemes that have specific meanings attached,and are organized according to strict rules of grammar to convey the full range of human feelings, ideas, and information.

Even so, it is an arbitrary contrivance, with meaning a product of familiarity and shared understanding, rather than any intrinsic qualities of either the sounds and words, or of the grammatical rules.

Just as Urdu, Arabic, Mandarin Chinese, and other profoundly different and mutually incomprehensible languages have the same capacity for summing up the human experience, there are other systems of sound and rhythm that can be creatively used to express the parameters of the human spirit.

Undoubtably, there are many places on Earth where people listen to, say, YouTube clips of the Watersons, and ask if it is music at all...

Subject: RE: Is this folk music?
From: GUEST,simple
Date: 04 Apr 12 - 07:24 AM

Folk music = music played by folk !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Subject: RE: Is this folk music?
From: theleveller
Date: 04 Apr 12 - 08:08 AM

"An analogy would be to our beloved English language, which is a closed collection of phonemes and morphemes that have specific meanings attached,and are organized according to strict rules of grammar to convey the full range of human feelings, ideas, and information."

Some of the most expressive uses of the language, however, result from the inspirations that break the rules and, in doing so, create an impression or "feel" that is beyond the rational. I'm alluding, of course, to poetry.

Subject: RE: Is this folk music?
From: Elmore
Date: 04 Apr 12 - 08:10 AM

No

Subject: RE: Is this folk music?
From: Young Buchan
Date: 04 Apr 12 - 08:17 AM

"Folk music = music played by folk !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Utterly unhelpful (even without the superfluous exclamation marks) and utterly wrong.

Slightly more useful might be:
Folk music = music played by folkies.

Subject: RE: Is this folk music?
From: Bill D
Date: 04 Apr 12 - 09:01 AM

We have a cable channel called "Soundscapes" which plays things like this at times.... I sometimes put it on late at night as background 'noise' to go to sleep by.

Nothing remotely 'folky' about it....

Subject: RE: Is this folk music?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 04 Apr 12 - 09:19 AM

Folk music = music played by folkies.

But only in a designated folk context, like me wandering in a dream along the green lanes between Trunch & Knapton last week singing Butter and Cheese and All in the baking sunshine; part vagabond, part interloper, part tourist, part antiquarian (I was actually seeking the late medieval font cover in St Botolph's and it's queer carvings; a unique example I believe; SS Peter & Paul has a very fine 14th century roof), and total dilettante. What lurks along such byways is the notion that Folk Music is that which lingers and yet still invigorates; it is spectral in essence and ectoplasmic in manifestation. As such, it only exists for the faithful, be they happy medium or casual onlooker, or a bit of both as most Folkies tend to be, though I much rather prefer the term Traddy myself, as Folkie covers too wide a multitude of utter sinfulness.

But if I wandered into Saint Botolph's and heard the music of Mark E's YouTube links in the OP being played therein, I'd either take a pew and listen intently, or else take out me fiddle and join in, content that there is more cause to think of that sort of thing as being Folk Music than much of what I no longer hear in so-called Folk Clubs if only because life's too short to waste listening to old blokes wielding acoustic guitars and singing hits from their long vanished youth, which isn't bad necessarily, just not to my taste.

Often the idea of a music can be more compelling than the music itself. Gibb Sahib speaks of Folk Music as a process; such Free Improvisation is a process too - it begins, it interacts, it ends; it serves it's organic purpose and vanishes away never to be repeated least someone is on hand with a tape machine. Folk Song is like this too, organic, fluid, never the same thing twice, living and breathing in the liminal realm between Concept and Corporeality; each rendering as alike or as unalike as trees, grass or crickets* with the essence of the thing in the doing, the experience, the being there, the ceremonial excellence of performance.

We often talk here on Mudcat about the Folk Process, with many people feeling this is unique to Folk, the Orthodox Congregation of the 1954 Faithful. Thing is, I think the history of human music these last 50,000 years has been a struggle against process, because Process = Nature, and Nature is generally Bad for you. Nature is impulse, sin, death, disease, violence, suffering, winter, cold, dark, sorrowful, chaotic and unpredictable. Early Cultures in the UK made Very Big Monuments like Thornborough, Avebury and Stonehenge that were Bigger than Themselves and, by implication and perspectuve, Bigger than Nature too. These monuments sought order in the chaos of the natural world, they created perfect flat horizonsm they looked for patterns in the heavens, they perceived in the simplicity of arcs, circles, lines and elipses an Order which was entirely Unnatural and therefore Good.

Scroll on 50,000 years and many of us feel as we've taken it too far; the ordered blandness of the human world is utterly artificial and entirely uninspiring, so we might seek after a more Natural music, or Folk Music, in which Organic Process is integral, be it from one rendering of a ballad to the next, or simply by Improvising without pre-conception. The music is still Traditional, just that the potentials are entirely unpredictable in terms of a Chaos which some of us now perceive as A Very Good Thing, if only to get back to something which is all but lost to us. Music born of that principle, that yearning, is, I feel, Folk Music by default as it carries with it the very essence of the 1954 Definition - i.e.

(i) continuity which links the present with the past;
(ii) variation which springs from the creative impulse of the individual or the group;
(iii) selection by the community, which determines the form or forms in which the music survives.

I suppose what I'm saying here is that, if Mark E's OP links aren't Folk Music, then in all seriousness I don't know what is.

* Quoted by memory from the sleevenote of Alchemy by the Third Ear Band (EMI, Harvest 1969)

Subject: RE: Is this folk music?
From: theleveller
Date: 04 Apr 12 - 09:37 AM

Ha ha - what a delightful vision I have of you tramping along a Norfolk lane. For some reason it brought to mind H V Morton's description of the Peddars Way from In Search of England:

"The silence of death lies on the Peddars Way. I am conscious that this is a ghostly spot. Every time a leaf falls, every time there is a sudden rustle in the undergrowth I look up, half-expecting to see a figure not of this age coming towards me along the dead road".

Subject: RE: Is this folk music?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 04 Apr 12 - 09:49 AM

Brilliant! It feels like that out there anyway; God alone knows what sort of ghosts I raising singing Butter & Cheese & All, even by day; nay, especially by day. And talking of Norfolk ghosts...

Download This Free for Next 6 Days

Subject: RE: Is this folk music?
From: GUEST,John from Kemsing
Date: 04 Apr 12 - 11:03 AM

If I had a washing machine that sounded like the example on the first post I would get the "Homecare" man in tomorrow!.

Subject: RE: Is this folk music?
From: theleveller
Date: 04 Apr 12 - 11:19 AM

John, I think you'd be better off with an exorcist as there would, undoubtedly, be a ghost in your machine.

Subject: RE: Is this folk music?
From: GUEST,John from Kemsing
Date: 04 Apr 12 - 11:30 AM

theleveller,
             Good one Cyril. Lots of laughs!

Subject: RE: Is this folk music?
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 04 Apr 12 - 11:44 AM

" Is this folk music? "


errrrmmmm... Do bears shit in a Folk Club ?


like I said, I don't care what it is;

I experienced enough of this 'challenging' sonic indulgence
[as keen listener and dope/mushroom head 'racket - ear' practitioner]
back during my late teens early 20s experimental phase 3 decades ago...

now off to listen to a couple of hours of good enjoyable dub reggae...

Subject: RE: Is this folk music?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 04 Apr 12 - 11:59 AM

[as keen listener and dope/mushroom head 'racket - ear' practitioner]

I always associate such substance usage / abusage with dub reggae actually. I can't listen to King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown without getting flashbacks, but I'll listen to The Topography of the Lungs with a clear & level head.

Subject: RE: Is this folk music?
From: GUEST
Date: 04 Apr 12 - 02:16 PM

"Some of the most expressive uses of the language, however, result from the inspirations that break the rules and, in doing so, create an impression or "feel" that is beyond the rational. I'm alluding, of course, to poetry."

In a "poetic" sense, there is truth in what you say, leveller, but, having studied poetry, it strikes me that there tend to be even more rules about structure and the assignment of meaning than in regular language.

Subject: RE: Is this folk music?
From: theleveller
Date: 05 Apr 12 - 03:30 AM

I understand what you're saying, GUEST, and I am, as you so perceptively say, talking in a "poetic" sense. I suppose it boils down to the difference between poetry and versification, the difference between true poets and 'vulgar rymsters' as referred to by Graves in The White Goddess and what Housman says in his lecture, The Name and Nature of Poetry:

"There is a conception of poetry which is not fulfilled by pure language and liquid versification, with the simple and so to speak colourless pleasure which they afford, but involves the presence in them of something which moves and touches in a special and recognisable way."

Or,indeed, Wordsworth's "...sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused..."

Oh my god, we'll be having a "what is poetry"! debate next :0

Subject: RE: Is this folk music?
From: John P
Date: 05 Apr 12 - 08:55 AM

A "what is poetry?" debate would be interesting. As for this one, it sounds like are you comparing great poetry to the musical example under discussion, simply because it doesn't follow the "normal" musical rules. "...sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused..."?? Great poetry -- or great art of any type -- requires a honing of skills and a close attention to how those skills are being used. I'm hearing the opposite here.

Subject: RE: Is this folk music?
From: theleveller
Date: 05 Apr 12 - 09:25 AM

"are you comparing great poetry to the musical example under discussion, simply because it doesn't follow the "normal" musical rules"

Not really. I'm talking about intuitive creativity. I'm not drawing a comparison, I'm making an analogy of the creative processes outside the technical skills.

"Great poetry -- or great art of any type -- requires a honing of skills and a close attention to how those skills are being used"

I suppose it depends what your idea of "great" is. Not, I hasten to add, a word that I used.I'm not sure how much deliberate honing of skills there is in, say, the poetry of Clare or Robert Bloomfield's 'The Farmer's Boy'- and in Edward Thomas's poetry there is a deliberate 'unhoning' that was criticised by his friend Walter de la Mare.

Subject: RE: Is this folk music?
From: theleveller
Date: 05 Apr 12 - 09:36 AM

Sorry, John P, I forgot to add, thanks for an interesting and articulate discussion.

Subject: RE: Is this folk music?
From: Stringsinger
Date: 05 Apr 12 - 10:10 AM

Suibhne Astray not to mention Charlie Parker is "apostasy".

Subject: RE: Is this folk music?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 05 Apr 12 - 10:38 AM

I think Bird & Birks belonged to something wholly different thing really; I'm not saying I don't dig be-bop, but they were the Magi who prophesied & nurtured the dark genius of Miles Davis which once hatched went through various levels of initiation (2 classic quintets and 1 near divine collaboration) until he gave the world In a Silent way after which things were never quite the same again really. The great work will always be Bitches Brew - on this the universe turns (even if I do actually prefer On the Corner; especially Black Satin which the essence of all I hold sacred).

There are musicians whose genius is so profound I don't feel in any way qualified to listen to them - Bird and Art Tatum fall into this category; their music is as entirely Holy and totally Unspeakable as the name of God.

Subject: RE: Is this folk music?
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 05 Apr 12 - 10:53 AM

challenging avant garde music..???


..but nobody could ever rival the sheer naive divine inspired idiot genius of Marc Bolan
when he commanded centre stage and pranced off into an epic extended clumsy improvised lead solo...

Subject: RE: Is this folk music?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 05 Apr 12 - 11:58 AM

Even so I've never actually regretted not hanging around to watch T.Rex after The Damned had finished their set at the City Hall in Newcastle back in March 1977. Not quite The Sex Pistols at The free Trade Hall, but the gig has similar legendary status in that if everyone was there who claims they were there they'd never have fitted in; but I was there and had Captain Sensible's blood soaked promo postcard for years after to prove it!

I also think it's a mistake to assume that Free-Improv / Experimental or the Avante Garde call-it-what-you-will ever set out to be challenging as such; it just explored different idiomatic paramenters & possibilities and continues to do so quite nicely in terms of its own Tradition. You're far more likely to hear of some new folk act determined to breathe new life into the music than some new improviser determined to do do likewise. I breathe life from folk as much as I do from free music, though as I keep saying it's easier to slip in a few Folk Songs to an audience at a free-improv gig that it is to start improvising at a folk gig. Back in the day we were buying vinyl of Gaelic Psalm singing, the obligatory Gamelan (the Nonsuch Explorer Music from the Morning of the World is still much cherished), as well as albums of Davie Stewart, Harry Cox, Sam Larner, and Willie Scott et al.