Its why people dont go to folk clubs....

Subject: RE: Its why people dont go to folk clubs....
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 05 Aug 12 - 12:37 PM

Unless a drunk Japanese tourist singing "My Way" is your idea of Folk

I think it would be to strict adherents of the 1954 Definition, although I very much doubt they be prepared to admit to it on open forum.

Subject: RE: Its why people dont go to folk clubs....
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 05 Aug 12 - 01:26 PM

Wrong on several counts, but why am I not surprised?

Subject: RE: Its why people dont go to folk clubs....
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 05 Aug 12 - 01:36 PM

Don, that sounds like a great round of Drunken Sailor - and it is the type of thing that "you had to be there" - the recorder might have impacted or diminished it. It's like looking at a stunning view or amazing activity and not pointing a camera at it - you'll remember much more clearly.

SRS

Subject: RE: Its why people dont go to folk clubs....
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 06 Aug 12 - 08:00 AM

Wrong on several counts, but why am I not surprised?

You lack the vision, Richard - much less the generosity of spirit - that would enable you to see just how bogus the 1954 Definition really is. It goes something like this...

(i) continuity which links the present with the past;

To our Drunken Japanese Tourist My Way is an icon of such an historical continuity. It is a sacred & solemn testimony of the functionalist dream of capitalist individualism his country seized upon as eagerly as the media of its post-war renaissance. He sees no irony in this, eagerly grabbing the microphone he gives golden-voice praise to the very heavens...

(ii) variation which springs from the creative impulse of the individual or the group;

As well as the backing track, he sings to an idealised definitive version embedded in his brain; this ideal is what he aspires to with all his heart and soul unaware of any shortfall which is not, naturally, inconsiderable. This is the measure of his creative impulse, as he, in effect, reinvents the song from the inside out.

(iii) selection by the community, which determines the form or forms in which the music survives.

The community roar their unreserved approval; they have determined the form in which this music survives; for, however so debased it might appear to the outsider, they are the triumphant masters of their vernacular art.

(The term can be applied to music that has been evolved from rudimentary beginnings by a community uninfluenced by popular and art music

As an aside I can say that no such community exists or has ever existed, certainly not in the West.)

and it can likewise be applied to music which has originated with an individual composer and has subsequently been absorbed into the unwritten living tradition of a community.

Unwritten? Well leaving that particular myth aside as plainly idiotic, we can see how My Way has been absorbed into the living tradition of our Karaoke Community, who demand and insist upon hearing not only that which they know, BUT would rather listen to in an impassioned living vernacular variation of same than a recording by an established artiste.

The term does not cover composed popular music that has been taken over ready-made by a community and remains unchanged

God knows that the song remains unchanged; in the case of the Karaoke Community, the song-meme exists as a conceptual fragment that manifests itself in a million different variations each night around the Karaoke bars of planet earth.

Now, imagine in a keen folklorist / ethnomusicologist was on hand to record all these variations...

for it is the re-fashioning and re-creation of the music by the community that gives it its folk character.

And there, in a nutshell, is the very essence of Karaoke Music: that these songs are re-fashioned and re-created nightly in a ceremonial celebration of the very essence of folk character. Cultural entropy is counterbalanced by a more occult level of inner-creativity that exists by means of the technological innovations that have necessitated a surfeit of nostalgia which, as a species, we're prone to anyway (how folk singers does it take o change a light bulb?). Thus does our Drunken Japanese Tourist experience My Way in precisely the same way Harry Cox experienced The Crabfish, and Richard Bridge experiences The Famous Flower of Serving Men.

The only difference, I'd have to say, is one of taste.

Subject: RE: Its why people dont go to folk clubs....
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 06 Aug 12 - 04:21 PM

You slide over at least one important point - the function of karaoke is to reproduce the recorded performance. The songs are not "RE-FASHIONED"


I mean "God knows that the song remains unchanged; in the case of the Karaoke Community, the song-meme exists as a conceptual fragment that manifests itself in a million different variations each night around the Karaoke bars of planet earth."

For Fuck's Sake - listen to yourself!

Subject: RE: Its why people dont go to folk clubs....
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 06 Aug 12 - 06:33 PM

The song is RE-FASHIONED with each performance & even the ideal is a fragment of an earlier dream which we all hear differently anyway. There can be no reproduction - it is a different experience even from one set of ears to the next. This is the way of all things; the default state is such that not only does Nature never repeat itself, Nature can never repeat itself. Each fashioned thing speaks of its change; to say otherwise is to refute the temporal & transitory nature of existence in which all is flux.

Subject: RE: Its why people dont go to folk clubs....
From: johncharles
Date: 06 Aug 12 - 06:57 PM

Aah did it mah whay!

Subject: RE: Its why people dont go to folk clubs....
From: GUEST,Charles Macfarlane
Date: 06 Aug 12 - 07:39 PM

> From: GUEST,Blandiver
>
> There can be no reproduction - it is a different experience even from one set of ears to the next. This is the way of all things; the default state is such that not only does Nature never repeat itself, Nature can never repeat itself.

What rubbish. Nature repeats itself all the time.

The whole of existence generally and life particularly is founded on repeatability. If nothing was repeatable, there would be no laws of nature generally, and physics and chemistry particularly.

Every event that had ever occurred from the Big Bang onwards would essentially have been random and unpredictable, and the universe would have remained entirely chaotic - the particular ordered arrangements that we call galaxies, stars, planets, molecules, and atoms would not exist, and that particular self-replicating (implying repeatability) arrangement of molecules that we call life, even at the very lowest level let alone the highest, could never have evolved, and therefore neither you or I would exist.

Suppose you are a lion hunting wildebeest, and you succeed in catching and killing one. Fine, from what we know, that's as expected. But tomorrow, randomly, the wildebeest that you had thought was prey catches and kills you the lion? How could evolution occur in such an environment?

> Each fashioned thing

Meaning what exactly?

> speaks of its change;

How? Are you saying that you're hearing voices?

> to say otherwise is to refute the temporal & transitory nature of existence in which all is flux.

If all was flux, I wouldn't be able to deduce anything about you, yet I can, even though I've never met you. I know that you are a type of animal that we call mammal, of the perhaps inappropriately named genus Homo Sapiens, and that at some time or other you were born, and some time later you will die. I can use averages to predict how long you are likely to live, the sort of things you are most likely to eat, etc, etc. From the fact that you are posting such idle rubbish here I can further predict that you must have access to at least one of a selection of possible pieces of electronic gadgetry - a mobile phone, a tablet, or a personal computer (without capital letters).

The whole scientific and technological man-made world that we are using to have this latter day equivalent of a discussion is based on humans being clever enough to understand that nearly all aspects of existence are to an extent predictable, to have worked out the laws of nature that govern them, and to have built devices that can manipulate these laws for our own ends. Without repeatability, none of this would have been possible.

Subject: RE: Its why people dont go to folk clubs....
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 07 Aug 12 - 05:12 AM

What rubbish

How nice!

'Nature never repeats itself' is a quote from Sun Ra; 'Each fashioned thing speaks of its change' is a quote from Chris Cutler of the Art Bears (a song called The Slave from Winter Songs). Both concern the diversity of organic eventfulness & the general impermanence of things be it terms of growth, entropy or built-in obsolescence at all levels of material existence. We are all us changing; we are are all of us unique; we are all of us very different (thank god). This applies as much to the various lives & manifestations of Popular Songs as it does to trees, grass, crickets, solar systems, or personal computers.

Subject: RE: Its why people dont go to folk clubs....
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 07 Aug 12 - 05:21 AM

I suggest a band name - "sesquipedalean tendency".

Or maybe "Never mind the Sex Pistols, here's the bollocks".

Subject: RE: Its why people dont go to folk clubs....
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 07 Aug 12 - 05:49 AM

Perhaps I go to the wrong places, but I can't recollect this matter being debated in quite these terms in any folk clubs I've been in.

Critics of my work seem to be more trenchant in their observations - phrases like 'this is bollocks' seem to spring readily to their lips.

Subject: RE: Its why people dont go to folk clubs....
From: The Sandman
Date: 07 Aug 12 - 06:24 AM

people would go to folk clubs more frequently, if every professional and semi pro went out once a week and did a floor spot in a folk club

Subject: RE: Its why people dont go to folk clubs....
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 07 Aug 12 - 06:30 AM

That sounds more like folk to me, Al - as Richard and Charles have both demonstrated here. Your average folky scowls from his sactimonious den ready to denounce as bollocks any heresy to the prescriptive orthodoxies of their superior 'purist' 1954 faith (being born in 1961 I say it hardly applies to me).

Mind you, when I'm in our folk club (or any other folk club) I don't court controversy, much less question such terms as 'In the Tradition' or 'The Folk Process' that glibly pepper the conversation much less point out that the repetoir of many a self-respecting Traddy owes more to Martin Carthy than Harry Cox. That's a sort of Karaoke I suppose, like Richard's Famous Flower of serving Men, which is a wondrous piece of Idiomatic Balladry in itself however so derived, or contrived, or, indeed, RE-FASHIONED.

Like all music, the various idioms of Folk exist / existed within specific cultural & social contexts, outside of which they make little sense other than in terms of a generalised fundamentalist / escapist / eccentric romanticism which is the popular view of Folk in its various guises. But Folk is all things to all Folkies; by it's very nature it is changing all the time, even though the tendancy remains to write new songs that only sing about how good the old one was.

Subject: RE: Its why people dont go to folk clubs....
From: Musket
Date: 07 Aug 12 - 01:48 PM

Well, it took a long time and a good few posts for the 1954 definition to rear its head, but well done, you got there.

The sad bit is that I have been going to folk clubs for 30 odd years and still find I am one of the youngest in the room. Yet go to a large folk festival such as Cambridge and I am one of the oldest in the ruddy audience. Methinks many yearn for a lost youth and think they will get it at these odd evenings we hold in spare rooms of pubs, just like we used to....

Or maybe Bridge has a point when he reckoned you could get laid all those years ago at a folk club and can't now... The quality of what you hear may have varied too...

Still enjoy them mind. Just not so easy to get friends excited by what is fast becoming self indulgence for an ageing few.

Subject: RE: Its why people dont go to folk clubs....
From: GUEST,Charles Macfarlane
Date: 07 Aug 12 - 01:55 PM

> From: GUEST,Blandiver
>
> > What rubbish
>
> How nice!

I don't mean any personal offence, but I do believe in calling a spade a spade. There is a tendency these days to denigrate science & technology, applying disparaging terms like 'geek' to those who profess to understand it. This tendency is often accompanied by vacuous, meaningless, or, such as you have made above, simply incorrect statements which show a fundamental misunderstanding of the world and the way it works. The fact that these are quotes from others doesn't make them any less wrong logically and scientifically.

> Both concern the diversity of organic eventfulness

Read that aloud as though someone else had written it. It's pseudo-intellectual meaninglessness.

> the general impermanence of things be it terms of growth, entropy or built-in obsolescence at all levels of material existence. We are all us changing; we are are all of us unique; we are all of us very different (thank god).

All but the last statement is true - we are all of us more alike than we are different, so we really can't be described as being *very* different - but as they're a rather obvious points, and not really relevant to this conversation, they don't really add anything uselful to it.

> This applies as much to the various lives & manifestations of Popular Songs as it does to trees, grass, crickets, solar systems, or personal computers.

Not really, most people who investigate the subject rationally think that far too many popular songs are formulaic and repetitive. See the recent thread where scientific investigation showed that popular songs are becoming less and less varied and more and more alike.

Subject: RE: Its why people dont go to folk clubs....
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 07 Aug 12 - 02:22 PM

There is a tendency these days to denigrate science & technology, applying disparaging terms like 'geek' to those who profess to understand it.

Never once have I made any such accusations; neither would I dismiss anyone as a 'geek' or anything else.

Read that aloud as though someone else had written it. It's pseudo-intellectual meaninglessness.

It is not psuedo anything - try readinng as if you had any sort of wit or intelligence at all, much less imagination and you'd see it makes perfect sense. All things BEING are also BECOMING; everything is change & eventfulness from the blooming of clouds to the unfurling of leaves and flowers. They come, they go, they are all alike, but different, hence the diversity of organic eventfulness.

but as they're a rather obvious points, and not really relevant to this conversation, they don't really add anything uselful to it.

It's what this conversation is about though; how all things are different & changing be it terms of evolution, or entropy. As individuals our value lies in our uniqueness, though of course the foundation of that uniqueness is similarity. You might say our uniqueness is defined by the diverse nature of the parameters of our similarity. It is that uniqueness, indeed, that defines our humanity.

See the recent thread where scientific investigation showed that popular songs are becoming less and less varied and more and more alike.

The same can be said of any musical genre. All musical idioms sound the same when you don't understand them, be it hip-hop, opera, baroque sonatas, Elizabethan consort music, folk song, gagaku, free jazz, or Irish jigs. Each idiom reveals its uniqueness in terms of its fomula.

Subject: RE: Its why people dont go to folk clubs....
From: GUEST,Charles Macfarlane
Date: 07 Aug 12 - 03:54 PM

> From: GUEST,Blandiver
>
> Never once have I made any such accusations; neither would I dismiss anyone as a 'geek' or anything else.

That was just an aside about people in general. The issue here is that, in the post to which I took exception, you made a logically and scientifically incorrect statement, in fact a wildly incorrect statement which was the exact opposite of the truth!

> It is not pseudo anything - try reading as if you had any sort of wit or intelligence at all, much less imagination and you'd see it makes perfect sense.

Well I went to a top English school, have a first class honours degree, and also have written a few songs and poems, which I think covers all those points, and to me, and I suspect to most other people, it's just meaningless mumbo jumbo.

> It's what this conversation is about though

Not as I've been reading it. I've been reading it as "Why people don't go to Folk Clubs".

> The same can be said of any musical genre. All musical idioms sound the same when you don't understand them.

While there are elements of some musical genres that tend to sound the same - to the extent that they become clichéd like, for example, the wailing steel guitar favoured by some country artists or the artificial vocal angst favoured by some soul singers - you could never just apply that to the whole of one genre. In opera, Bizet's Carmen doesn't sound anything like Verdi's "Aida", which in turn doesn't sound anything like Wagner's "The Ring Cycle". In turn of the century classical, Rachmaninov sounds very different from Debussy who sounds very different from Sibelius. In jazz, Miles Davis sounds completely different from Sidney Bechet, who sounds different again from Charles Parker. In country, Shania Twain, even her first least 'pop' CD, sounds very different from Johnny Cash, who sounds very different from his daughter Rosanne Cash.

However, that is all irrelevant here. Understanding doesn't enter into it. What the scientists did was MEASURE popular music to determine its variability, and showed that it is in fact becoming less variable.

Subject: RE: Its why people dont go to folk clubs....
From: GUEST,raymond greenoaken
Date: 07 Aug 12 - 04:19 PM

> It is not pseudo anything - try reading as if you had any sort of wit or intelligence at all, much less imagination and you'd see it makes perfect sense.

>>Well I went to a top English school, have a first class honours degree, and also have written a few songs and poems, which I think covers all those points, and to me, and I suspect to most other people, it's just meaningless mumbo jumbo.

Curious. I went to a bog-standard school, have no degree in anything and have written nothing of any consequence, but I understood what Mr Blandiver was saying without any difficulty. Perhaps I'm a genius after all.

Subject: RE: Its why people dont go to folk clubs....
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 07 Aug 12 - 05:01 PM

Trust me, it's meaningless mumbo-jumbo. If I can construe what the parliamentary draftsman creates, I can find meaning in agricultural slurry. But there is none there. There is less in there than meets the eye.

Subject: RE: Its why people dont go to folk clubs....
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 07 Aug 12 - 05:03 PM

In fact, tell you what, try reading it out aloud during your floor spot as a folk club and see how fast it empties the room. Faster than the full length version of Sir Patrick Spens, read off the inside of your hand, and in imperfect pitch (by a long chalk).

Subject: RE: Its why people dont go to folk clubs....
From: GUEST,raymond greenaoekn
Date: 07 Aug 12 - 05:08 PM

Subject: RE: Its why people dont go to folk clubs....
From: GUEST,raymond greenoaken
Date: 07 Aug 12 - 05:10 PM

Cor Richard – I wish I had a proper education like you. Can't even spell my own name...

Subject: RE: Its why people dont go to folk clubs....
From: GUEST,Charles Macfarlane
Date: 07 Aug 12 - 08:01 PM

> From: GUEST,raymond greenoaken
>
> I understood what Mr Blandiver was saying without any difficulty.

Can you be certain of that? Perhaps, consciously or subconsciously, you put your own meaning to it? The trouble is with any statement of no, little, or ill-defined meaning is that it can mean just about anything that anybody wants it to, and will mean different things, often wildly different things, to different people; thus it fails as a means of communication of a single idea.

> From: Richard Bridge
>
> There is less in there than meets the eye.

And that's really the point. It reads suspiciously like someone using big words with the aim of sounding impressive, without actually having anything useful to say.

Subject: RE: Its why people dont go to folk clubs....
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 08 Aug 12 - 05:50 AM

you could never just apply that to the whole of one genre.

A musical genre is defined by its specialised idioms which are always going to sound the same to people who don't understand them - as do languages to those who don't actually speak them. It's all very well saying Miles Davis sounds different to Sidney Bechet, but the casual listener won't even know who Miles Davis is, much less Sidney Bechet, much less the significance of their respective contributions or why their contributions were significant at all, much less that those for whom Kind of Blue represents some kind of apotheosis of the art will probably run screaming when faced with the radicalised street-funk of On the Corner - so imagine trying to explain that those who love On the Corner will also love Kind of Blue. All the casual listener will hear is 'JAZZ'; only the devotee gets, or cares about, the detail wherein dwells, of course, the very devil himself.

We could extend this to the various idioms and traditions currently known as POP MUSIC and (if we ever could be bothered) subject them to the necessary meta-analysis that would be sure to establish (once and for all) that they don't really sound the same either - just as all Harry Cox songs don't all sound the same, or all Seamus Ennis' piping doesn't all sound the same, or all John Coltrane solos don't all sound the same - though I bet some scientist would be willing to contradict me. In my defence I might offer them at least a dozen different recordings of My Favourite Things, from the original 1961 studio recording to the 50-minute epic recorded on tour in Japan five years later. Who else but those for whom Coltrane is the Redeemer would bother enough to care to trace the evolutionary continuity between them? Or know that on the Japanese recording Coltrane eschewed the trademark soprano to duet with Pharoah Sanders on plastic altos? And yet, it such details that make it all worthwhile to your average Jazzer.

Whatever scientists say up there in their ivory tower, to the millions of people out there listening, loving, creating, mixing, remixing, sampling and celebrating the Culture of Pop Music, it is (most demonstrably and empirically) a living thing of infinitely diverse beauty and wonderment. Same goes for the 'scientific' 1954 Definition - which has feck all to do with the songs, much less the lives & experience of the people who made and sang them.

I wonder, is science becoming the new fundamentalism? For sure its advocates are sounding suspiciously absolutist in their joyless pronouncements of late, daddy-o. At least they are on this thread, where a bit of fun over a Japanese Karaoke Singer unwittingly ticking the boxes of some prescriptive 'definition' of a music that was hatched in complete cultural, historical & socio-economic isolation from the music itself, is taken by our resident 1954-Bore as further evidence of The Sesquipedalian Heresy (now that is a band name!) necessitating the usual barrage of petty insults all backed up by them telling us how clever they are.

Lighten up, eh lads? Or I'll be forced to conclude the Equinophobia is contagious.

Subject: RE: Its why people dont go to folk clubs....
From: GUEST,raymond greenoaken
Date: 08 Aug 12 - 06:34 AM

> I understood what Mr Blandiver was saying without any difficulty.

>>Can you be certain of that? Perhaps, consciously or subconsciously, you put your own meaning to it? The trouble is with any statement of no, little, or ill-defined meaning is that it can mean just about anything that anybody wants it to, and will mean different things, often wildly different things, to different people; thus it fails as a means of communication of a single idea.

Yes, I can, because Mr B was kind enough to give a careful paraphrase of the offending utterance. It's not just the words, not just the grammar: the context points you towards the meaning too. I guess I am a genius after all.

And what's the problem with big words, chaps? I'm told Shakespeare used a few...

Subject: RE: Its why people dont go to folk clubs....
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 08 Aug 12 - 07:02 AM

"Big words" have their place - but not piled inches thick so as to provide a barrier to meaning, nor a pretence at meaning where there is none.

And, for those who will hear - folk is not a style. It is a product of a derivation, and of an adoption. The product must have been transmitted (orally or aurally). It must have been modified by or in that process. It may possess (in certain forms) stylistic traits but they do not define it. Jazz, conversely, for example, is indeed defined by stylistic traits.

Karaoke can never fulfil this requirement of variable form. The backing track is designed to reproduce a particular recorded version. The objective of the singing is to replicate a particular recorded version. The transmission is by a FIXED recorded form. There is no adoption within a community (unless the community be the world).

Subject: RE: Its why people dont go to folk clubs....
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 08 Aug 12 - 07:10 AM

And what's the problem with big words, chaps?

I have a problem with Sesquipedalian. It denotes long winded and is used (by Richard anyway) as a put down of same, and yet by its very nature it's the most - er - sesquipedalian word of all. Is this some sort of clever irony I wonder? I guess it must be.

*

The trouble is with any statement of no, little, or ill-defined meaning is that it can mean just about anything that anybody wants it to, and will mean different things, often wildly different things, to different people; thus it fails as a means of communication of a single idea.

I defy our boy MacFarlane to demonstrate a single instance in the present discussion, or any other, and without resorting to the usual lobby of personal insults and / or references to his oh-so superior CV, where this is actually the case. Everything I've said here is pretty basic stuff, and very much to the point.

'Folksong is the music of the uneducated and impoverished which is avidly collected by a particular egg-bound elite who consider themselves intellectually equipped to understand it, which, naturally, they believe is something the Folk themselves singularly failed to do. If they (The Folk) did, then they (The Egg-bound) would not be interested.' Col. Killingworth-James (to Hilda Cuckfield; Letters, Volume 85 (unpublished) August-October 1947.)

Subject: RE: Its why people dont go to folk clubs....
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 08 Aug 12 - 08:14 AM

folk is not a style. It is a product of a derivation, and of an adoption.

All musics are a matter of style; all musics are derived and adopted; but all musics are not folk. Folk music has only existed since the 19th century when the term was first coined; the 1954 Definition only compounds that with a prescriptive formulae entirely at odds with the context (culturally / socially) of the music. As such, it's a sort of musicological Intelligent Design; we all love trees, but only Creationists believe they were created by God. Similarly, we all love Folk Songs, but only the 1954 Orthodoxy believe they are somehow different from other musical styles because of their derivation (rather than their selection by a higher social elite).

The product must have been transmitted (orally or aurally).

Surely transmission is transmission? All human culture is generated by communication, oral, written or otherwise. Where does that leave the great folksong writers of the tradition? Tommy Armstrong, George Bruce Thompson, or the written traditions of the Northumbrian Smallpipe? All these people were masters of their respective IDIOMS. I think much Folksong thinking is misled by the myth of anonymity, feeling that these things grew on trees, rather than are the painstaking products of a very deliberate human mastery, albeit it one that was complete anathema to the egg-bound elite who wanted them to be different.

It must have been modified by or in that process.

This is a classic example of prescription. The simple fact is all music is the production of idiomatic modification and process. But of course, not all music is folk.

It may possess (in certain forms) stylistic traits but they do not define it. Jazz, conversely, for example, is indeed defined by stylistic traits.

As are the innumerable idioms of what we think of as Folk today. Each and every one of them is defined by stylistic traits, and yet their appeal as Folk is largely the consequence of the vestiges of 19th century romanticism & nationalism which is still very much part of the case today (certainly where the BNP are concerned).

Karaoke can never fulfil this requirement of variable form. The backing track is designed to reproduce a particular recorded version.

The backing track is in itself a approximate variation on a notional prototype, often highly debased & stylised, much like those old TOTP LPs that consisted of wonky cover versions of the originals. What the individual singer does against that backing track however (as I said earlier) is as idiosyncratic a variation of any given song as any sung by any traditional singer you could care to name. If a folklorist was on hand to record these variations it would make for an interesting study in the fluidity of popular song-form I'm sure.

The objective of the singing is to replicate a particular recorded version.

I think the main objective of the singing is to fulfil a ritualised social contract and strengthen community ties & identity. A study of the Ethnomusicology of Karaoke would no doubt reveal this.

The transmission is by a FIXED recorded form.

Any given recorded backing track is, I grant, fixed - to an extent anyway. I once heard some Karaoke singers diligently persevering a their machine skipped and looped of its own accord; the joys of digital technology, CDs anyway. What makes this really interesting is that people are singing live, often in a state of considerable inebriation, to a unforgiving recorded backing track.

Off the point perhaps, I used to work in a youth club where one of the kids used her Karaoke backing tracks for songs of her own composition. Bloody good they were too. She was in great demand in the community as a whole.

There is no adoption within a community (unless the community be the world).

Let me take you by the hand and lead through the pubs / front rooms / social clubs / wedding parties of Fleetwood... and I'll show you something that'll make you change your mind.

Or not. Because your mind's already made up. Mine isn't you see. I'm into description, not prescription. To me, Folk is as Folk does, which is why I find the pedantic religiosity of the 1954 folk orthodoxy such a pain in the arse because its got nothing to do with the vibrant creative empirical wonderment of working-class music making of the last 50,000 years.

And dare I point out (again! but it's always the first time for someone) that the International Folk Music Council who gave us the 1954 Definition in the first place, has now grown up into The International Council for Traditional Music whose aims are to further the study, practice, documentation, preservation and dissemination of traditional music — including folk, popular, classical and urban music — and dance of all countries.

So, for sure, define Folk Idioms by style & social / cultural context; describe their vastly diverse derivations & evolutions, but by way of demonstating the richness & complexity common to all human music making - not in the name of some perverse and blinkered dogma hatched from the God-given Paternalism of the Victorian Bourgeoisie who got off on the forelock tugging deferential anonymity of their authentic grubby Folk.

Subject: RE: Its why people dont go to folk clubs....
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 08 Aug 12 - 08:49 AM

PS:

The product must have been transmitted (orally or aurally).

Implicit in this, is, of course, the notion that The Folk were cherished for being too impoverished to afford means of written communication AND entirely lacking in the education that would make them literate. However, one often encounters the testimony of Traditional Singers saying they got such-and-such a song when it was written down for them. Indeed, Jimmy Knights says he got Out With my Gun from a written source, and his 1975 rendering of same (VOTP 18) is little different from the Manchester boadside of 100 years earlier. On the same volume you'll hear Willie Scott singing the Kielder Hunt which was written by James Armstrong in the 19th century.

Subject: RE: Its why people dont go to folk clubs....
From: GUEST,Charles Macfarlane
Date: 08 Aug 12 - 08:57 AM

> From: GUEST,Blandiver
>
> > you could never just apply that to the whole of one genre.

> A musical genre is defined by its specialised idioms which are always going to sound the same to people who don't understand them

That is an absolutist assertion stated as though it were fact, and, unsurprisingly, it's wrong. When we look at the way genres are used in the real world, a musical genre is simply what the generality of the public think it is when they use it as a classification, nothing more, nothing less.

> as do languages to those who don't actually speak them.

I don't speak the majority of the world's languages, but nearly all that I have heard spoken without any understanding on my part, to me sounded noticeably different from one another.

> It's all very well saying Miles Davis sounds different to Sidney Bechet, but the casual listener won't even know who Miles Davis is, much less Sidney Bechet,

They don't need to. If they hear both in succession they will realise immediately that they are completely different despite being in the same genre.

> so imagine trying to explain that those who love On the Corner will also love Kind of Blue.

Or quite possibly not.

> All the casual listener will hear is 'JAZZ'

No, the *casual* listener won't even bother with genres, but simply like or dislike. If the former, they then may start to think along the lines of: "I wonder what this is? It seems to be some sort of Jazz, I must look out for the credit at the end of the number!"

> only the devotee gets, or cares about, the detail wherein dwells, of course, the very devil himself.

I think devotees can probably speak for themselves, and in many cases would probably answer differently from what either of us would expect.

> We could extend this to the various idioms and traditions currently known as POP MUSIC and (if we ever could be bothered) subject them to the necessary meta-analysis that would be sure to establish (once and for all) that they don't really sound the same either

As explained in the other thread, it's been done, and the results were opposite to what you claim here.

> Whatever scientists say up there in their ivory tower

THAT'S EXACTLY THE SORT OF DENIGRATION OF SCIENCE THAT I REFERRED TO ABOVE! While occasionally there is bad science, even rare scientific fraud, apart from this relatively small number of aberrations science increases our understanding of the world. Technology resulting from scientific progress made the man-made world most of us in developed nations inhabit today, get used to it. You may not like what science tells us about ourselves, but you'll have to do better than unsubstantiated assertions stated as though fact if you want to refute a given piece of scientific research.

> to the millions of people out there listening, loving, creating, mixing, remixing, sampling and celebrating the Culture of Pop Music, it is (most demonstrably and empirically) a living thing of infinitely diverse beauty and wonderment.

Another statement which is provably bollocks.

Firstly, human pitch sensitivity is limted to at best about 25Hz to about 25KHz and our ability to discriminate pitch accurately seems to be concentrated at the centre of that range. There are similar contraints with loudness and ability to discriminate two aural events temporally. These are fundamental limitations incompatible with the word 'infinitely'.

Further, as long ago as the Ancient Greeks, Pythagoras worked out that notes which sound pleasant together have a simple mathematical relationship to each other. Notes not having this simple relationship do not sound pleasant together. (We now know that the simple relationship is in frequency aka pitch.) This particularly limits the use of discordant notes.

Probably from the regular use of concordant notes and the need to tune instruments such as lyres able to sound more than one note at a time, natural scales evolved. When it became desirable to introduce more variety, modes using the notes of natural scales differently evolved. To acheived greater variation still, the compromise of the western tempered scale was invented, whereby some of the notes of a natural scale were made slightly discordant so that one could now base music on any note of the scale, without any one such 'key' sounding more discordant than another. Both natural and tempered scales further limit the notes available to be played.

Whether built to play a natural scale - tin whistle, melodeon - or a tempered scale - concert flute, accordion - with the major exceptions of guitars (string bending or fretless), viols, and brass, instruments are made to play notes from these scales, and cannot play others, which is a further limitation. Further, all instruments have a limited range.

So the constraints of our physiology, the scales and instruments that we use, all introduce limitations that do not allow infinite variation in music, even supposing the people making pop music were pushing these limits, which it has been shown that they are not, presumably because they are constrained further by the need to achieve commercial success.

> Same goes for the 'scientific' 1954 Definition - which has feck all to do with the songs, much less the lives & experience of the people who made and sang them.

See below.

> I wonder, is science becoming the new fundamentalism? For sure its advocates are sounding suspiciously absolutist in their joyless pronouncements of late, daddy-o. At least they are on this thread, where a bit of fun ... is taken by our resident 1954-Bore as further evidence of The Sesquipedalian Heresy.

No, if anything the new fundamentalism is denigrating science, believing, against all logic, that everything in life either can be answered by religion, or is just a matter of personal opinion, however uneducated and ignorant the person holding that opinion. Witness what has happened in this thread. You reply to one or two people about something that happened in the 60s, during the course of which you make a provably inane statement, whereupon I come in quoting science to put you right. In reply you make another untrue statement, whereupon I point to another thread which refers to a scientific paper which disproves your assertion. The 60s people have never mentioned science, and I've never mentioned the 60s, yet here you are lumping us together, blaming science for what you see as didactorialism of the 60s. Note just how eager you are to slag off science for something it didn't claim, and how unwilling you are to accept its statements of a truth that you don't happen to like and seem to find uncomfortable because it contradicts your previously held views. Whether you like scientific results or not is irrelevant to their truth. If you want to attack science you'll have to read and try and understand the papers, and find a rational scientific flaw in the research. Unsubstantiated contrary assertions stated as though they were fact won't do.

I have no interest in debating 60s didactorialism, and I don't suppose many others have either - something that happened in one, albeit influential, folk club 50 years ago has little or no influence on whether people go to folk clubs today. The determining factor is many times more likely to be the standard of entertainment on offer in modern clubs.

Subject: RE: Its why people dont go to folk clubs....
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 08 Aug 12 - 10:38 AM

to me sounded noticeably different from one another.

What I meant was, if you don't understand a particular language all you'll hear are vocal noises without the meanings. If you didn't understand it, you'd be hard pushed to differentiate between the recitation of a shopping list or a love poem. This is what 'all Pop Music sounds the same to me' means - it is a confession that states: 'I don't understand it, neither do I wish to; I am better than that. I am vastly superior & very happy in my reactionary ignorance.'

Or quite possibly not.

Well, speaking empirically, evidence would suggest this to be the case. It certainly is with me. The one is enriched by the knowledge of the other, and all points in between, and beyond, & most of my Jazz pals (and Folk ones for that matter) are similarly thorough in their musical appreciations. It's all part of the fun, don't you know? People who love Milestones might not get Bitches Brew but I've yet to meet a fan of Bitches Brew who wasn't of the opinion that every utterance by The Dark Magus is worthy of our attention. This is how we learn. Same goes for Rahsaan Roland Kirk & Sun Ra, who for all their radicalism & experimentation schooled a whole generation on the importance of knowing what went before.

Another statement which is provably bollocks.

You obviously don't get out much, do you? You're picking it all up second hand instead of experiencing it for yourself. Fair enough when science tells us about the Higgs Bosun or water on Mars or cures for diseases, but I don't think this same methodology applies in any way to Art, high or low, Popular or otherwise, much less how we appreciate & experience such things either collectively or individually.

For sure, Scientists can tell us what an orgasm is, but it's worth noting that Kinsey and team went impotent as a consequence of their infamous studies of human sexuality.   And worse. Much worse.

As far as Pythagorean theory goes, I suggest you read (& maybe even listen to) Harry Partch, who in order to truly enjoy perfect mathematical intervals found he had to split the Octave into 43 divisions. What we accept as concordant in Western Music as a whole is always going to be a compromise of tempered intonation. Listen to one of Partch's pure thirds and compare it to that on a piano, or a melodeon. Otherwise, what sounds pleasant to one person will not sound pleasant to another - there is no law of pleasantness, which will always be a quality best left to the beholder. I love banjos, but I'm not much of a fan of melodeons (with significant exception); and Peter Bellamy's anglo playing is one of life's true joys. I love Jim Eldon's fiddle playing, yet the same instrument in the hands of Nigel Kennedy becomes mind-numbingly dull though I don't flinch at the eager virtuosity necessary to play Handel sonatas. Personal taste, right? In which we're all unique, despite what we may have in common. I'm also a lifelong fan of YES, though I limit myself to their first 6 albums (with reservations); my wife hates them. Guess what? She thinks it all sounds the same - maybe there's scientific data somewhere to prove she's right. To me however, I'm out there sailing the Topographic Oceans as happily as I did when I was 13. The first 2 sides anyway.

On another level aesthetics are derived from our biological sub-routines. So what? The manifestations of that are as vast & diverse as our capacity for languages (6,809 according to a review in the current number of Fortean Times), arts and (yes) sciences. But, I fear, you are responding to science as a means of prescription rather than description. Here's a thing - even in a belfry of 8 bells there are a possible 40,320 change variations; on 12 there are 479,001,600 (source - WIKI). I don't think the innumerable melodic, rhythmic, harmonic, textural & technological factors of the innumerable idioms & exponents (present, past & future) of popular music & song have to fear they'll be running out of material any time soon. Whatever the scientists tell us, Heaven and earth will pass away before human ingenuity and creativity grows weary from the lack of stimulation of new music, popular or otherwise.

Witness what has happened in this thread.

Okay. You've misunderstood pretty much everything I've said, but feel you have to disagree with it anyway. To do this you aggressively & insultingly confront me in an attempt to turn me into a fool instead of spending time actually attempting to understand or address anything I've written wgich you smugly (and wrongly) dismiss as someone using big words with the aim of sounding impressive, without actually having anything useful to say. In so doing you not only reveal your own somewhat superficial knowledge of a number of subjects, but a rather irate personal proclivity towards precriptive righteousness (a quality I regard as a complete anathema to a come-all-ye world view).

And who mentioned the 60s anyway, daddy-o? Despite the emergence of a possible Third Wave revival this past decade & a half or so, Folk is still very much a thing of the 50s. If people don't go to folk clubs anymore it's because they're just getting old, or they're not as thick on the ground as they used to be, or because the 50's Traddy vision has become diluted by an MOR tendancy towards idiomatic Dylanesque singer-song-writing.

So - come down from your high-horse and talk to me man to man. Otherwise I feel I've wasted enough time giving you the benefit of any number of doubts. As for the rest - well, what I have written, I have written.

Subject: RE: Its why people dont go to folk clubs....
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 08 Aug 12 - 11:50 AM

I really don't think Charles or I need to say another word. The problem is there to see.

Subject: RE: Its why people dont go to folk clubs....
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 08 Aug 12 - 11:51 AM

PS - yes the choice of the word sesquipedalian was intentionally ironic.    It was to denigrate what a learned judge once called "gratuitous philological exhibitionism".

Subject: RE: Its why people dont go to folk clubs....
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 08 Aug 12 - 12:02 PM

I really don't think Charles or I need to say another word.

We live in hope, Richard, we live in hope...

Subject: RE: Its why people dont go to folk clubs....
From: GUEST,raymond greenoaken
Date: 08 Aug 12 - 12:50 PM

I'm reminded of the apothegm (big word, sorry) about two nations divided by a common language. Wilde, was it, or Sun Ra? Here we've got the Scientists and the Non-Scientists similarly sundered. Mr B uses the word "infinitely" in a perfectly acceptable, perfectly understandable colloquial fashion and Charles strafes him with a fusillade of factoids. Yes, infinite means "endless, boundless", but it also means "very great" (Concise Oxford). That is, not boundless, quite. When confronted by a word that has several shades of meaning, one looks to the context to work out which shade is intended. Doesn't one? Or is that not scientific?

I apologise for this gratuitous philological exhibitionism.

Subject: RE: Its why people dont go to folk clubs....
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 08 Aug 12 - 03:23 PM

(2) (Of England and America) 'Two nations separated by a common language.'

Sometimes the inquirer asks, 'Was it Wilde or Shaw?' The answer appears to be: both. In The Canterville Ghost (1887), Wilde wrote: 'We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language'. However, the 1951 Treasury of Humorous Quotations (Esar & Bentley) quotes Shaw as saying: 'England and America are two countries separated by the same language', but without giving a source. The quote had earlier been attributed to Shaw in Reader's Digest (November 1942).

Much the same idea occurred to Bertrand Russell (Saturday Evening Post, 3 June 1944): 'It is a misfortune for Anglo-American friendship that the two countries are supposed to have a common language', and in a radio talk prepared by Dylan Thomas shortly before his death (and published after it in The Listener, April 1954) - European writers and scholars in America were, he said, 'up against the barrier of a common language'.

Inevitably this sort of dubious attribution has also been seen: 'Winston Churchill said our two countries were divided by a common language' (The Times, 26 January 1987; The European, 22 November 1991.)

Subject: RE: Its why people dont go to folk clubs....
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 08 Aug 12 - 03:25 PM

Sorry Sweeney - but you should note the conciseness and clarity of my remarks on this thread, in contrast to your own.

Subject: RE: Its why people dont go to folk clubs....
From: GUEST,Charles Macfarlane
Date: 08 Aug 12 - 06:20 PM

>        From: GUEST,Blandiver
>
>        If you didn't understand it, you'd be hard pushed to differentiate between the recitation of a shopping list or a love poem.

Well again this is just plain wrong. You'd almost certainly be able to differentiate between the two through intonation, style of delivery, etc.

>        This is what 'all Pop Music sounds the same to me' means - it is a confession that states: 'I don't understand it, neither do I wish to; I am better than that. I am vastly superior & very happy in my reactionary ignorance.'

AFAIAA, noone here has said "I don't understand it, neither do I wish to; I am better than that. I am vastly superior & very happy in my reactionary ignorance.", nor even just "all Pop Music sounds the same to me", while the referenced research said something different, but of course you couldn't be arsed to read it, perhaps because your arse was too busy saying: "I don't understand it, neither do I wish to; I am better than that. I am vastly superior & very happy in my reactionary ignorance." ...

>        Pop Music DOES All Sound The Same
>
>        > From: GUEST,Blandiver
>        >
>        > What utter rot [irrelevant and ignorant rant snipped]
>
>        > From: Jack Campin
>        >
>        > Somebody didn't read the article.
>
>        > From: GUEST,Blandiver
>        >
>        > True; I got bored after the first few words.

So, it's just as I said. You are denigrating a piece of scientific research without even bothering to try to understand it.

>        Or quite possibly not.
>
>        Well, speaking empirically, evidence would suggest this to be the case. It certainly is with me. The one is enriched by the knowledge of the other, and all points in between, and beyond, & most of my Jazz pals (and Folk ones for that matter) are similarly thorough in their musical appreciations. It's all part of the fun, don't you know? People who love Milestones might not get Bitches Brew but I've yet to meet a fan of Bitches Brew who wasn't of the opinion that every utterance by The Dark Magus is worthy of our attention. This is how we learn. Same goes for Rahsaan Roland Kirk & Sun Ra, who for all their radicalism & experimentation schooled a whole generation on the importance of knowing what went before.

The trouble with using selective criteria such as "it certainly is with me" and "most of my Jazz pals" is that it is almost always possible to find opposites. For example, punk was so self-obsessed that its exponents openly confessed to rejecting the entire preceding musical history of mankind. Even Billy Bragg, who now likes to think of himself as an advocate of folk music, was one of the leaders of Britain's "anti-folk" movement of the '80s (with friends like that does folk music need enemies?).

Hence "Or quite possibly not".

>        but I don't think this same methodology applies in any way to Art, high or low, Popular or otherwise, much less how we appreciate & experience such things either collectively or individually.

If you'd read and at least tried to half-understand the research referenced in the other thread - you don't have to understand all the parameters and statistics of graphical networks to get the drift - you'd realise what an ignorant ass you are making yourself appear.

>        For sure, Scientists can tell us what an orgasm is, but it's worth noting that Kinsey and team went impotent as a consequence of their infamous studies of human sexuality.   And worse. Much worse.

This is irrelevant to this discussion, but it is another unsupported assertion stated as though it were fact. Care to find a creditable reference for it?

>        As far as Pythagorean theory goes ... Listen to one of Partch's pure thirds and compare it to that on a piano,

You don't need to listen to Patch to hear a pure third, you can hear one simply by suitably tuning a guitar, which I've already done, and I've already stated that the Western tempered scale is a compromise. Your point is?

>        or a melodeon.

Being English I use the term 'melodeon' to apply to a diatonic instrument which plays in a limited number of keys rather than a chromatic instrument which can play in them all, which I call a 'button accordian' or simply an 'accordian' for a keyed instrument. As I've always understood it, though a search shows that hard facts are hard to come by, a melodeon is tuned to a natural scale, so should contain pure chords EXCEPT possibly for the tremelo which may or may not be deliberately introduced by voicing, while an accordian is tuned to a tempered scale. In fact I've heard some experts say that's where the latter's name comes from because it is in 'accord' with all the keys, though I've seen other reasons for the name on the web. This could easily be the subject of a whole new thread, and probably has already been, but I don't intend to go further than that here.

I merely used it as an example of an instrument that I believe is tuned to a natural rather than a tempered scale.

>         Otherwise [snip irrelevant wittering] anyway.

>        On another level ... Here's a thing - even in a belfry of 8 bells there are a possible 40,320 change variations; on 12 there are 479,001,600 (source - WIKI). I don't think the innumerable melodic, rhythmic, harmonic, textural & technological factors of the innumerable idioms & exponents (present, past & future) of popular music & song have to fear they'll be running out of material any time soon.

In the 1970s, someone said to me that you could never program a computer to beat a chess grand-master, but it has since happened. The number of moves in chess is huge, but it is finite, which is partly why this has come about. Similarly, even given the constraints I outlined previously, the possible number of musical combinations is huge, but is still finite. Further, for all your protestations, nothing like the full gamut of possible combinations have ever been used, and the number actually in use in pop music is decreasing, as the article you were too lazy to read showed. Therefore, your use of the word 'infinitely' was wrong whether you want to use the word exactly or loosely.

>        Whatever the scientists tell us, Heaven and earth will pass away before human ingenuity and creativity grows weary from the lack of stimulation of new music, popular or otherwise.

Another bland assertion stated as though it were fact. Neither of us can possibly know the truth or otherwise of this, so it's not a useful thing to say.

>        >        Witness what has happened in this thread.
>
>        Okay. You've misunderstood pretty much everything I've said

I don't believe that's so, but if it is so, whose fault is it? If you want to convey ideas unambiguously to other people, you must learn to put arguments in a rational way, not spout endless quotes plucked out of the air because they seem vaguely connected with the subject, or because you just happen to like them because you think they sound cool.

>        but feel you have to disagree with it anyway.

I'm merely trying to force you to be argue in a rational manner, rather than bullshitting.

>        To do this you ...

With remorseless rationality have just pointed out every mistake that you've made, and you sure have made plenty.

>        in an attempt to turn me into a fool

Really, I wouldn't go there if I were you, the reply - that I don't even have to try to do that for you, because you're an expert at it yourself - is from your point of view dangerously obvious and easy for me! The best thing you can do when you're in a hole like this, is stop digging.

>        instead of spending time actually attempting to understand or address anything I've written

Most of it has been one or more of illogical, irrelevant, not useful, or just plain wrong.

>        In so doing you not only reveal your own somewhat superficial knowledge of a number of subjects, but a rather irate personal proclivity towards precriptive righteousness (a quality I regard as a complete anathema to a come-all-ye world view).

Now THAT I would say is aggressive & insulting.

>        And who mentioned the 60s anyway, daddy-o?

Certainly not me, until you did. And I'm not your daddy - if I was unfortunate enough to be so, I hope I'd've managed to thrash some sense into you by now.

>        Despite the emergence of a possible Third Wave revival this past decade & a half or so, Folk is still very much a thing of the 50s.

If the current standard of performance of folk music was still at the level it was at in the 50s and 60s, I suspect that there would be many more people in the clubs. One of the pleasures of digitising all my vinyls last year was rediscovering just how professional, slick, and entertainingly good were many of the top folk bands of the era - for example The Clancy Brothers, The Dubliners.

In the late 60s, I used to go every now and then to a pub on the Isle of Dogs to see a band called The Levity Lancers who played a riotously eclectic mixture of Jazz, Music Hall, Vaudeville, etc, interspersed with double entendres, blue jokes, and ribald stories. Unfortunately, I don't believe they were ever recorded, let alone live. As long as they were playing there, that pub was always heaving, the moment they left, it died, and was never as full again. Even as late as the 80s folk scene, there were acts like Cosmotheka who used to pack them in, and again, although they produced a studio album, they were never recorded live.

If it wasn't for albums like ...
        The Dubliners - Finnegan Wakes (Live at the Gate Theatre, Dublin)
        The Dubliners - Live at the Royal Albert Hall
        The Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem - Hearty & Hellish
        The Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem - A Spontaneous Performance Recording
... AFAIAA of which only Hearty & Hellish was ever released on CD, and maybe not even that, it would be easy to forget just how massively popular folk music was at the time, and, more importantly, WHY!

If you want to get bums on seats, you have to entertain them.

>        If people don't go to folk clubs anymore it's because they're just getting old, or they're not as thick on the ground as they used to be, or because the 50's Traddy vision has become diluted by an MOR tendancy towards idiomatic Dylanesque singer-song-writing.

No, some of the above may be true, it's not worth arguing the toss either way because it's not why people don't go to folk clubs. If people don't go to folk clubs, it's because the standard of entertainment in them is not what it used to be to pull them in.

>        So - come down from your high-horse and talk to me man to man.

Oh, we're plucking phrases from a spaghetti western now are we?

>        As for the rest - well, what I have written, I have written.

And, believe me, it speaks volumes, but probably not in the way you intend.

Subject: RE: Its why people dont go to folk clubs....
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 08 Aug 12 - 06:59 PM

but you should note the conciseness and clarity of my remarks on this thread, in contrast to your own.

Well, Richard, I was all ready to rock 'n' roll but your boy MacFarlane's just pipped me in the sesquipedalian stakes. I thought I was good, but - I managed maybe 30% of that last post before I felt my life just ebbing away. I suspect maybe that was his intention; let's hope so, eh? Either way I am, for once, quite lost for words.

See you on another thread sometime, old timer!

Happy trails, Jack Blandiver.

Subject: RE: Its why people dont go to folk clubs....
From: johncharles
Date: 09 Aug 12 - 03:39 AM

who is right?
john

Subject: RE: Its why people dont go to folk clubs....
From: GUEST,raymond greenoaken
Date: 09 Aug 12 - 04:41 AM

I had a strange and troubling dream last night. I dreamt I was present (but out of sight) at an emergency meeting of the 1954 Club, that shadowy sodality dedicated to the worship and sanctity of the holy screed known only as The Definition. Chairman Richard Bridge called the meeting to order with a peremptory crack of his gavel on a bust of Cecil Sharp.

"Emergency meeting now in session," he intoned gravely. "Tonight's business: we gotta do something about this guy Blandiver. For years now under a range of implausible cognomens he's poured scorn on everything we hold to be inviolable and beyond refutation. We've sent the big guns in – Carroll, Gardham, Peters – but they just can't get a bead on him. What to do? It's time for the Final Solution…"

The sanguine faces around the table turned waxen at these words.

"You mean…?" croaked one.

"Yes," spat Bridge. "—The Prof. "

A shudder of nameless dread ran round the table.

"There is no alternative. He's the only guy with the guts to insist on a rigidly literal interpretation of Blandiver's every utterance. It's the only way — pure, lethal pedantry. It never fails."

"B..but…" stammered another, "it's never been done before on Mudcat. It could (gulp) destroy civilized discourse forever."

"That's a risk we gotta take," growled Bridge. "All in favour…?"

At that point I awoke, relieved that if was only a dream. Then I logged onto Mudcat…

Subject: RE: Its why people dont go to folk clubs....
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 09 Aug 12 - 05:02 AM

Well Charles, you have a thooughly incomprehensible way of expressing yourself - but there are some nuggets of insight hidden deep in all those words.

i doubt I could keep up a correspondence with you. (You should work for the tax people - everyone would just see the letter and say - ah fuck it! I'll pay.)

However I think you are in the right - particularly about the standard of entertainment in folk clubs.

This tradition business has been very selective and self important about what it has decided to sustain.

Very recently I watched Josh White Jnr's tuition dvd on his Dad's guitar style. And the strange thing - there was a style of guitar playing, I hadn't really seen ,anything like since Gerry Lockran retired. A style totally gone.

We thought Carthy, Jansch etc were Lords of everything they surveyed - technique wise - and of course they weren't. They were just very talented charismatic individuals.

Nic jones, Carthy, Jansch, Dylan even, were very dangerous people to try and emulate. their earnestness and brilliance at what they did sort of made it work for them. It absolved them from doing anything much in the way of presenting their work and explaining it. The minstrelsy of Seeger, derek Brimstone, Maccoll, Cosmotheka - people working from a more theatrical background are what made people understand and feel that folk music was their friend.

Nowadays every young playeryou see is so damnned earnest. You want to shake them and say - wake up smell the protoplasm! - you are not bringing down thetablets of stone from Mt Sinai. We are of the same flesh as yourself.

Subject: RE: Its why people dont go to folk clubs....
From: johncharles
Date: 09 Aug 12 - 06:23 AM

people not going to folk clubs may have found something better to do.
john

Subject: RE: Its why people dont go to folk clubs....
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 09 Aug 12 - 08:16 AM

Sorry about this but Re-reading through Macfarlane's post of 08 Aug 12 - 06:20 PM whilst doing some tedious digital editing I find there are a couple of things that I would be remiss in not responding to...

Firstly:

Oh, we're plucking phrases from a spaghetti western now are we?

I was thinking more of Hollywood Westerns, sort of John Wayne style. If paraphrased in Spaghetti Westerns I can, off hand, think only of Tuco (Eli Wallach) in The Good, the Band and the Ugly who after shooting an vengeful opponent from beneath his grubby bathwater utters the immortal line: "When you have to shoot, shoot. Don't talk." It just happens to be a classic scene from one of my all time favourite films:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZXlhSgq7us

*

The second is more serious:

This is irrelevant to this discussion, but it is another unsupported assertion stated as though it were fact. Care to find a creditable reference for it?

This would involve trawling through the legacy of Kinsey's Team who were widely reputed to have numbed their own sexuality to such an extent they could only 'get off' by recourse to increasingly bizarre & self-destructive practices. Worse (much worse as I say) is that they drew much of their published data (i.e. the sexual responses of infants) from the paedophiles with whom they frequently colluded, and, by implication, encouraged. Yorkshire TV made a documentary about this in 1998; Hollywood made a biopic comedy in 2004.

As for its relevance to the discussion, I offered it as a precedence on the limits that human scientist have in gaining an objective perspective on any aspect of human behaviour / culture without losing sight of the fact that it's always going to be subjective anyway. I guess to believe otherwise takes real faith, huh?

"So what has all this to do with the 1954 Definition, Blandy?" I hear hapless reader ask. Well, The Pragmatist (like any linguist) observes and describes the mutability of language in terms of its living usage. The Pedant, on the other hand, prescribes grammatical correctness by way of enforcing a holy law in fear of the feral reality of the wilderness, innit? The Pedant will thus delight in the Oxford Comma, whilst the Grocer's Apostrophe will reduce them to blustering fits (we've seen a fair few of these from Bridge & Macfarlane I have to say). The Pragmatist, OTOH, will delight in the Grocer's Apostrophe as integral to the living lore of language, regarding with suspicion any correctness that insist language is anything other than mutable.   

The 1954 Definition is prescriptive musical pedantry that has nothing whatsoever to do with the entirely pragmatic musical usage it attempts to define. It's appeal is, therefore, always going to be to the more egg-bound Folk Enthusiast (those self-styled purists we're always hearing about?) for whom Taxonomical (and Taxidermic) correctness is paramount.

Perhaps Richard would like to paraphrase that for me so it meets with his exacting standards of conciseness and clarity.

Subject: RE: Its why people dont go to folk clubs....
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 09 Aug 12 - 11:19 AM

Easy. There you go again.

Subject: RE: Its why people dont go to folk clubs....
From: GUEST,Charles Macfarlane
Date: 09 Aug 12 - 11:28 AM

>        From: GUEST,Blandiver
>
>        Firstly:
>
>        >        >        So - come down from your high-horse and talk to me man to man.
>        >
>        >        Oh, we're plucking phrases from a spaghetti western now are we?
>
>        I was thinking more of Hollywood Westerns ...

Again, you've completely missed the point, which is that you frequently pluck quotations and phrases out of the air and include them, presumably because you think they sound impressive and/or cool, without regard to their relevance, appropriateness, accuracy, or usefulness. The original quote from yourself about high-horses was an example - it was irrelevant both to the wider thread topics or the specific issues I raised against you. In other words, it was just more bullshit.

>        The second is more serious:
>
>        This is irrelevant to this discussion, but it is another unsupported assertion stated as though it were fact. Care to find a creditable reference for it?
>
>        This would involve trawling through the legacy of Kinsey's Team who were widely reputed to have numbed their own sexuality to such an extent they could only 'get off' by recourse to increasingly bizarre & self-destructive practices. Worse (much worse as I say) is that they drew much of their published data (i.e. the sexual responses of infants) from the paedophiles with whom they frequently colluded, and, by implication, encouraged. Yorkshire TV made a documentary about this in 1998; Hollywood made a biopic comedy in 2004.

You may be correct, or you may not, but either way you STILL haven't pointed to a creditable reference for it. Given the relative enormity of what you are claiming, I would have thought there would be something out there.

>        As for its relevance to the discussion, I offered it as a precedence on the limits that human scientist have in gaining an objective perspective on any aspect of human behaviour / culture without losing sight of the fact that it's always going to be subjective anyway. I guess to believe otherwise takes real faith, huh?

If you'd read and tried to understand the original research in the other thread, you'd know that this allusion of yours was completely irrelevant both to this thread topic and that research. Your further attempts to justify its inclusion merely further prove your ignorance and misunderstanding of scientific methodology.

>        "So what has all this to do with the 1954 Definition, Blandy?" I hear hapless reader ask.

I don't see or hear anyone ask that. I've never mentioned 1954. Seemingly, the people here most obsessed with that date are yourself and Raymond Greenoaken. Most, quite possibly all, of the rest of us couldn't give a FF about what happened in 1954. I have said as much, quite possibly more than once, yet you persist in bringing it up.

>        Well, [more irrelevant bullshit] mutable.

>        The 1954 Definition is [more irrelevant bullshit].

THE 1954 DEFINITION IS IRRELEVANT TO THIS TOPIC.

>        Perhaps Richard would like to paraphrase that for me so it meets with his exacting standards of conciseness and clarity.

I'll save him the trouble ...

BULLSHIT

Subject: RE: Its why people dont go to folk clubs....
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 09 Aug 12 - 11:58 AM

I couldn't help but note the following phrase from further up the thread:

"You might say our uniqueness is defined by the diverse nature of the parameters of our similarity."

Brilliant! Now, if only I could work out what it means ... ?

Subject: RE: Its why people dont go to folk clubs....
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 09 Aug 12 - 12:04 PM

Crivvens! And to think my original quip about the Japanese Karaoke Tourist & the 1954 Definition (of 05 Aug 12 - 12:37 PM; my point of re-entry into this interminable thread) was actually meant to be a wee tease. Funny how things end up, ain't it?

Subject: RE: Its why people dont go to folk clubs....
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 09 Aug 12 - 12:12 PM

You might say our uniqueness is defined by the diverse nature of the parameters of our similarity

Crivvens again! That's a wonky one even by my standards.

Well, I'd say our diverse individuality (subjectively / culturally) is that which defines our humanity. We all have finger prints (at least those of us with fingers) but no two sets are alike; genetics likewise. It is the differences that make us what we are as both individuals and as a species; and the fact that we may all see things a little differently, and how we share our opinions in a constructive & open hearted way in a spirit of wisdom, enlightenment, general crack & coloquy... You know the sort of thing - it's the Mudcat way!

Subject: RE: Its why people dont go to folk clubs....
From: GUEST,bouzouki bob folkestone
Date: 09 Aug 12 - 12:16 PM

hi richard   sad news bo foaks has just passed away overnight 9 aug 2012 will be greatly missed at tenterden folk festival and every event he lit up with his endless talent and warmth.