Is Folk Dead

Subject: RE: Is Folk Dead
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 04:10 PM

Please, Al, the Bay Shitties were fuckers and buggerers, but not wankers.

Subject: RE: Is Folk Dead
From: GUEST,Big Al Whittle
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 03:47 PM

Yes I admit the eskimos, and the gallant zulus and hottentots all have their folk music - probably the Martians as well.

The thing is, I'm not sure it should be our top concern - now that the world map is no longer coloured red, and our dreams of empire have faded.

course its a bit of a bugger - you'll have to bother with those nasty working class types who create our folk music, and listen and are influenced by musicians like the Bay City Wankers and Mumford and his family - rather than Sam Larner, Harry Cox, Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all- and those Zulu lyrics, which are SO telling.

Subject: RE: Is Folk Dead
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 02:52 PM

Artbrooks, I agree. Maybe a bit of fine tuning, but I agree. Good enough for folk.

Subject: RE: Is Folk Dead
From: MikeL2
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 02:42 PM

Hi

Some think that folk is dead - but it is definitely not lying down.
Sometimes it is just sleeping occasionally.

Cheers

MikeL2

Subject: RE: Is Folk Dead
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 02:23 PM

Sorry, that was me below, paraphrasing Frank Zappa (from The Be-Bop Tango on Roxy & Elsewhere) : Jazz is not dead - it just smells funny.

Subject: RE: Is Folk Dead
From: Will Fly
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 02:11 PM

Well, that's droll isn't it?

Subject: RE: Is Folk Dead
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 02:10 PM

Folk is not dead - it just smells funny.

Subject: RE: Is Folk Dead
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 01:16 PM

I think there is confusion as to whether folk music is no longer sung anywhere [it always will be, somewhere?], or simply whether it has ceased to be commercially viable, as it was from about the 50s-90s as part of a wider popular-music/country &c scene.

No particular opinion on this myself ~~ haven't been active on the folk scene for years now, though still enjoy singing for myself and have put some videos up on youtube. But I think that those contributing in good faith to the discussion of the thread title would do well to separate out these two strands in their minds before deciding what their answer to the question is.

~M~

Subject: RE: Is Folk Dead
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 01:08 PM

Frank-
Amen

Subject: RE: Is Folk Dead
From: Stringsinger
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 12:43 PM

The bearer of this thread has a limited and ignorant view of folk music, is not a branch of show business featuring pop artists turned acoustic but a vital and living tradition outside the commercialization of the music on stages, concert halls or "folk clubs".

Actually the genuine folk process has little to do with certain folkie individuals who are selling the wares on commercial ads. The genuine folk process has always been an underground river seen only by those who understand the significance of folk music as a cultural process, always in motion, never static and is continuing unobserved by many who attribute folk music to someone onstage with an acoustic guitar.

The process includes many who play and sing or just sing folk music for their own enjoyment away from the microphones and spotlights or on certain radio stations. These people may one day be collected by folklorists who use their material as a gauge of history and society.

It does not represent a star system. There is no American folk idol program nor will there ever be. Many young people just don't get it because they have sucked at the tit of the commercial music industry for so many years, indoctrinated by playlists and star worship and are futile in their "hipness".

In the meantime, folk music survives throughout the world on as an undercurrent despite technology or in some cases because of it, as collecting techniques become easier, and there is more of an interest today in folk music that is authentic than at any other time in our history.

Folk music is not a fad like the newest wave of pop music engendered by corporate music moguls who get rich off it at the expense often of the artists they purport to serve.

To paraphrase Mark Twain: "The death of our folk music is greatly exaggerated".

Subject: RE: Is Folk Dead
From: Ernest
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 12:42 PM

We wouldn`t have to discuss the 54-definition over and over again if somebody had come up with something better.

Subject: RE: Is Folk Dead
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 12:28 PM

Why do you assume they are more ethnic and pure than the poor sod trying to tell his eternal truth with a Mumford song

No-one is. It's not about 'ethnic' or 'pure'. It's just that you always seem to have a problem with foreign music, Al - you go on and on about it and seem to think the fact fRoots covers it has singlehandedly destroyed the folk scene, as you've implied on another thread. You seem not to accept that there are types of folk music all over the world, not just in the UK and America. You also seem to think that if someone has broad enough tastes to like some folk music (and other music - about McDonalds or whatever) from overseas this is somehow to the detriment of Britsish folk singers and singer songwriters. Can't someone like both?

Personally I think the Mumfords are as dull as fuck, so they are a bad example for me. Though if someone else enjoys them good luck to them. But taking some artists I do like - Michael Chapman, Bill Fay, Roy Harper, Hiss Golden Messenger, Adam Leonard, for example, they're great songwriters all. I have no need to worry if they are folk or not, I just like their music, and if someone wants to cover their songs,that's their business - though I'd rather hear the originals. I also have no need to disparage foreign folk music because I like their music.

Subject: RE: Is Folk Dead
From: GUEST,999
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 12:18 PM

As what I hope is my last post to this seemingly endless thread--perhaps I think so because there have been so many seemingly endless threads about essentially the same topic--I would like to say that 'folk' isn't dead, but the interminable same-same over the years makes me wonder why so many people want to kill it with arguments few read, think about or respond to.

Subject: RE: Is Folk Dead
From: GUEST,Big Al aka Archie Traddy Basher
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 11:04 AM

For all we know the peruvian nose flautist might be singing the equivqlent of the Birdie Song and the Aborigine might be chanting an add from the telly about the new MacDonald's cheeseburger.

Why do you assume they are more ethnic and pure than the poor sod trying to tell his eternal truth with a Mumford song.

Its just a bloody excuse to turn away from humanity in all its grossness. And without that two fisted bash at life that is in all the best folk music, you're left with something rather anaemic.

Still you know that.

Subject: RE: Is Folk Dead
From: artbrooks
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 10:44 AM

Just a reset for those who haven't sat through multiple iterations of people (mostly Brits, I think) discussing "what is (and isn't) folk...The International Folk Music Council in 1954 defined folk music as "the product of a musical tradition that has been evolved through the process of oral transmission." That organization is part of the International Music Council which is, in turn, part of UNESCO.

IMHO, "oral" includes recordings and playing/singing from written notation, as well as sitting at the knee of someone who learned material from multiple generations of knee sitters. Others are free to disagree.

Subject: RE: Is Folk Dead
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 10:22 AM

Most of the folk music I play takes place in people's homes.

Testify, brother! We need to know...

In our home there's lots of it too, sessions, recording, rehearsals but mostly for the pure unadulterated joy of it. Some nights we're too engrossed doing music we forget about going to the folk club. I suspect that's true of most Folkie Homes... and Musicianly Homes in general. Music is a domestic joy, like making love, raising kids, making up flat-pack IKEA* bookcases and baking bread - ancient things done eternally by way of renewal of our very humanity.

By my own fireside with my wife I do sing -
& I wouldn't change that with a high-crowned king!

* I've heard much Viking furniture was flat-packed, to be carried o'er seas and erected in foreign lands. Then you drive out where the storms clouds follow, and the sound of your hex key grinding hollow, is all you will hear in the months to follow...

Subject: RE: Is Folk Dead
From: John P
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 10:00 AM

It's interesting that all the examples given so far for both folk being dead and for folk being alive and well are about folk music taking place in public venues: concerts, clubs, sessions, open mics, festivals. Even those who talk about folk music being non-commercial and home-grown only talk about going out somewhere, usually to a commercial establishment, to see or take part in it. Most of the folk music I play takes place in people's homes.

Subject: RE: Is Folk Dead
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 09:35 AM

Dead? How can it be be dead when Mark Ratcliffe is presenting a new Folk show on Radio 2? Shame he's not doing it with The Boy Lard though - well I remember the Folkier aspects of their Radio 1 show with Bernard Wrigley, the History of the Strawbs and features on Morris Dancer of the Week. Anyway, check it out...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2012/mark-radcliffe-adds-folk-to-radio-2-roster.html

*

The problem for you Blan-whoever-you-used-to-be is that the 1954 definition is basically right (could do with a little fine tuning) and culturally neutral.

Balls. It's born of Upper Class English Colonialism. How on earth is that Culturally Neutral? It's as biased as it is patronising & condescending.

Your "definition" if that is the word for it would leave Peruvian nose flutes (or aborigine chant or whatever) as not folk music

Do I have a definition? Not sure if I do. Music is what it is - it doesn't need defining, just observing & respecting. Peruvian Nose Flute music is Peruvian Nose Flute music - why does it have to be folk as well? I've got shelves of ethnomusicological field recordings and very few of them use the term folk. Some do, granted, but it really is quite irrelavant to (say) Ritual New Guinea Flute Music or Mauritanian Griots or Madagascan Fiddle Music or Albanian Kaba laments. To say these musics are somehow folk because of some ghastly set of prescriptions hatched as Holy Writ in some ivory tower by a bunch of quasi-religious aristocrats and clung onto zealously by the fundamentalist faithful ever since is utter nonsense.

which is plainly ridiculous while admitting Mumford and Sons which is equally ridiculous.

Having never knowingly heard Mumford & Sons I couldn't possibly say.

And while I hate Sweeney O'Pibroch's pretentious use of things like a kaossilator on (say) the ballad of Sir Patrick Spens

Never sung Sir Patrick Spens in my entire life, though earlier on today I was using the Kaossilator for looping drones, Jew's Harp and pocket trumpet on King Orfeo. How on earth is that pretentious, Richard? Untypical maybe, I grant, in Folk circles anyway, but it's just what comes naturally to me, just as plagiarising Martin Carthy ballads comes naturally to you.

by your "definition" it would not be folk whereas it obviously is.

I've no problem calling it folk because folk is nothing if it isn't FORM and IDIOM. Amongst tons of other things Folk Form & Idiom consists of drones, modes and a studied unnatural obsession with traditional balladry - all of which I have in spades. Any accompaniment of such balladry is entirely relevant - be it an English Concertina or a fiddle or a banjo or guitar or a laptop computer or an Indian pocket trumpet looped through a Korg Kaossilator with mountains of FX thrown in for good measure.

Would I do this in Folk Club? No. But I do it at home & on-line & in more 'experimental' performance contexts where a ballad or two goes down a lot warmer than even an electronic shruti box does at a folk club. It's more than once I've had some mithering folkie coming up to me saying 'As a purist I find your use of electronic drones deeply offensive' or how dare you use a Turkish fiddle and Indian harmonium to accompany English Folk Song. Of course self confessed purists know fuck all about musical realities. Fact. If they did, they wouldn't be purists.

I wonder - are you a purist too Richard? Or just a Righteous Folk Puritan? WAV-like in your wonky prescriptions of how it ought to be, rather than just out there delighting in how it is...

1954 Folk isn't dead because it never existed in the first place. The Revival Continuum, OTOH, does exist. It stetches from the night of August 22nd 1903 when Cecil Sharp performed his parlour arrangement of Seeds of Love right through Fairport, Pentangle, Mr Fox, The Wicker Man Soundtrack to the myriad folk musicians & singers both great & small, straight & weird, out there doing their own thing in their own way today.

2012 Folk is alive & well & amazing; 2013 Folk will be even better.

Subject: RE: Is Folk Dead
From: Dave Sutherland
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 07:48 AM

I would love to know who the "same old faces" who get booked around the trad clubs are; considering that the club that I have helped run for the last 21 years, and which has been described as being "too traditional" (a bit like saying that the BNP is too right wing I always think) usually has a gap of around three to five years before a guest returns. As for not encouraging the younger generation we have had among our guests over the last couple of years Jon Boden and Fay Heild, The Askew Sisters, Sam Lee, Gren Bartley and Tom Kitching (we have Pilgrim's Way next year), Sam Sweeney & Hannah James and Jim Causley many of whom have featured on the television programmes mentioned above. We have even been described as "welcoming" by none other than arch traddie –basher Big Al himself (:-))
Yes I'm sure that Gibsonboy just popped in to stir the shit but it did open the floodgates for some of the ill informed comments that have ensued

Subject: RE: Is Folk Dead
From: GUEST,Murphy
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 07:36 AM

Sorry to mention Country Music in this thread. It seems to me that since that Brokeback Mountain movie it is now obligatory for male country singers to reach higher pitch than the females. I haven't heard a good country song for over ten years. That "sreech factor" which has permeated all genres must be due to the evolution of the human ear which can no longer tolerate "normal" pitch. Us old fogies are the losers.

Subject: RE: Is Folk Dead
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 07:05 AM

Gibsonboy just wanted to start an argument, I love a good argument but Gibsonboy just talks bollocks.

Dave H

Subject: RE: Is Folk Dead
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 07:02 AM

the old spoken music-hall monologue/routine

Phew. We don't tend to get this...

Subject: RE: Is Folk Dead
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 06:55 AM

Richard Bridge: And while I hate Sweeney O'Pibroch's pretentious use of things like a kaossilator on (say) the ballad of Sir Patrick Spens...

How can a small electronic drone generator (or it's use) be pretentious? Would it be ok if it was a shruti box? It's just a drone, man!

'Big' Al Whittle: And the problem with your definition is that the chances of a chanting aborigine or a Peruvian Nose Flautist turning up to do a floorspot are extremely remote.

Whereas the chances are some misguided soul, with the potential to become a folksinger, might turn up and do a Damien Rice or a Mumford and sons song

The former are unlikely to turn up at a folk club in (f'rinstance)Northamptonshire. They are however highly likely to play the folk music of their own culture in the places where they live. The chances of a person covering a Mumford and Son song turning up at a remote mountain settlement in Peru or an Aboriginal settlement in the outback is also pretty slim. Or are you assuming folk music only exists in white English speaking cultures and only takes one form? And that Peruvian folk music is not folk music?

Subject: RE: Is Folk Dead
From: GUEST,matt milt
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 06:50 AM

"I've found the trad ones to be extremely welcoming. More so than the anything goes ones, certainly. The traddish singaround I mainly go to always has someone or other who insists on playing something that isn't trad, but they always get a polite smattering of applause. I also think if a folk club describes itself as 'trad' there's a bit of a clue on the tin."

But that reminds me of a curious unwritten rule about quite a few trad folk clubs: that certain singer-songwriter repertoire is allowed and positively welcomed. As if it were traditional. Richard Thompson songs, Les Barker songs, Ralph McTell songs, Jake Thackray songs etc.

...Or alternatively that other rather arcane aspect of trad folk clubs: the old spoken music-hall monologue/routine. You only tend to get that, ironically, at the more trad clubs - not the "anything goes" ones. Ironically, because were someone to go to a trad folk club and launch into a Bill Hicks or Eddie Izzard standup routine, audiences would presumably regard that as inappropriate.

Subject: RE: Is Folk Dead
From: GUEST,Pete the Pirate
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 06:32 AM

I tend to agree that Folk by the people, for the people, amongst the people, is alive and well. On the other hand you have the concert based, guest booking Folk where we are under seige from armies of singer songwriters who use folk as a platform to perform their introspective ramblings. This area of alleged folk is in my view slowly dying and a good thing to.

Subject: RE: Is Folk Dead
From: GUEST,Big Al Whittle
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 06:05 AM

And the problem with your definition is that the chances of a chanting aborigine or a Peruvian Nose Flautist turning up to do a floorspot are extremely remote.

Whereas the chances are some misguided soul, with the potential to become a folksinger, might turn up and do a Damien Rice or a Mumford and sons song.

Subject: RE: Is Folk Dead
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 06:04 AM

That's a folk dance!

Subject: RE: Is Folk Dead
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 05:13 AM

You put you left leg in, your left leg out .............

L in C#
Beech Singaround tonight M21 9EG

Subject: RE: Is Folk Dead
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 05:03 AM

The problem for you Blan-whoever-you-used-to-be is that the 1954 definition is basically right (could do with a little fine tuning) and culturally neutral. Your "definition" if that is the word for it would leave Peruvian nose flutes (or aborigine chant or whatever) as not folk music which is plainly ridiculous while admitting Mumford and Sons which is equally ridiculous.

And while I hate Sweeney O'Pibroch's pretentious use of things like a kaossilator on (say) the ballad of Sir Patrick Spens - by your "definition" it would not be folk whereas it obviously is.

Subject: RE: Is Folk Dead
From: GUEST,Big Al Whittle
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 04:57 AM

Poem

Folk is not a matter of form, but one of derivation.
There is a term for that, my friend, call it:-
verbal masturbation.

Subject: RE: Is Folk Dead
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 04:42 AM

Folk is not a matter of form but of derivation.

I think this sort of 1954 thing is long dead though, assuming it had any life in it in the first place outside of a shrinking cell of fundamentalist pseudo-academic reactionaries. There's no longer any point in asking What is folk? because everyone knows what it is - and what it does. It's right there on the tin & it's alive and well because of that. These days Folk is all about form - and the derivation is immaterial to the overall aesthetic which determines that form.

On Mudcat you often hear Folk referred to as The sort of music we like which sums it up pretty neatly. And you're hardly going to call other genres of music Folk Music because their derivation fits in with the Patronisining Colonial Prescriptiveness of the 1954 Definition, are you? Or are you?

Subject: RE: Is Folk Dead
From: GUEST,Tony Rath aka Tonyteach
Date: 16 Oct 12 - 06:50 PM

I hate the modern commercial aspects of folk music - you know learning your words properly singing in tune - remembering to relate to the audience and staying relatively sober while performing. Twill be the death a of vibrant living art form to to be sure, I mean people will start rehearsing next and thats just the end of everything as we know folk

Our local club thanks to Kevin Sheils and colleagues seems to be thriving at the Olde Rose and Crown

Subject: RE: Is Folk Dead
From: GUEST,muskrat
Date: 16 Oct 12 - 05:55 PM

It's very much alive here in North Elmham as our regular Sunday night club shows!

Subject: RE: Is Folk Dead
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 16 Oct 12 - 03:44 PM

I posted earlier but it has vanished. Folk is not a matter of form but of derivation. And it is not dead.

Subject: RE: Is Folk Dead
From: Waddon Pete
Date: 16 Oct 12 - 03:38 PM

The horse chestnut season is here, but the sweet chestnuts are not yet ready in these parts.

....as long as I've been in folk this particular chestnut has always re-surfaced!

Best wishes,

Peter

Subject: RE: Is Folk Dead
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 16 Oct 12 - 03:32 PM

No folk 'n' good?

Subject: RE: Is Folk Dead
From: GUEST,999
Date: 16 Oct 12 - 03:20 PM

Gotta pluralize the word folk then. Howz about

"Is/Are Folk/Folks Dead?"

I'm just tryna help out here . . .

Subject: RE: Is Folk Dead
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 16 Oct 12 - 03:16 PM

Shouldn't the title of this thread be "Are folk dead?"

Subject: RE: Is Folk Dead
From: GUEST,Ron
Date: 16 Oct 12 - 02:38 PM

Predictions of the death of folk music have been going on for so long they are almost traditional.

Subject: RE: Is Folk Dead
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 16 Oct 12 - 01:03 PM

Desi C, sorry if it seems like I'm picking on you below. I'm not, but I hear the sort of things you're saying quite a bit so I'm kind of hijacking your post to make a few points. No offence intended!

Open mics welcome with open arms the increasing number of people who want to play real instruments and 'live' music.

The ones I've been to are either endless covers of Don McLean, Bob Marley and so on or generally not very good (with a few notable exceptions) acoustic singer songwriters. I didn't hear much folk, even in the broadest sense of the word. Of course, anywhere with live music is a good thing, but I don't necessarily see much relationship between open mics and folk music. Especially the open mics that are more like acoustic karaoke nights...

Anyone who saw the BB folk awards last year must agree it resembled a dinosaurs graveyard!

Far be it from me etc, etc, but I wouldn't call The Unthanks, The Young Folk Awards entrants, Tim Edey and so on dinosaurs. Don McLean, yes, but he was there to appease the R2 demographic. And any ceremony that gives a Lifetime Acheivement Award to the great Bill Leader can't be all bad. He may be in his 80s but he's no dinosaur!

Folk Clubs especially the very trad ones, all I hear from young and even old performers is that they feel very unwelcome there as they get dirty looks if they try anything but trad English.

I've found the trad ones to be extremely welcoming. More so than the anything goes ones, certainly. The traddish singaround I mainly go to always has someone or other who insists on playing something that isn't trad, but they always get a polite smattering of applause. I also think if a folk club describes itself as 'trad' there's a bit of a clue on the tin. You wouldn't go to a jazz worshop and play death metal. Or would you? :-)

Which is fine but nobody seems to want to help newcomers to learn the genre

Beginners tunes sessions at the Beech in Chorlton. That's helping. I'm sure there's plenty of other examples.

Trad Folk music and an ever ageing BBC radio need to embrace modernity or they will die out, simple as that

Have you not noticed all the trad singers and players under 30? I persoanlly find a lot of it a bit bland, but it's definitely out there. And Mike Harding has played stuff I've put out on Folk Police that certainly isn't old stuff by old people. Though a bit of old stuff by old people isn't necessarily a bad thing. Have you heard Tom Paley's new album?

Subject: RE: Is Folk Dead
From: GUEST,Big Al Whittle
Date: 16 Oct 12 - 01:01 PM

There were three men came out of the west
Their fortunes for try
And these three men swore a solemn oath
That folk music would die
Thet bashed it with a bodhran
They sang it, just to bore
But the BBC served it worst of all
With a series of programmes on folk music
First shown on BBC4

Subject: RE: Is Folk Dead
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 16 Oct 12 - 12:43 PM

If it's not we can always kill it.

Subject: RE: Is Folk Dead
From: Ernest
Date: 16 Oct 12 - 12:42 PM

Random thoughts:

#1: Some folks are dead. Still their music is very much alive.


#2: If Folk is dead we are playing dead music. And we play it "live". Can music being played live be dead at the same time? Sounds absurd to me.

#3: Therefore the statement "folk is dead" can only mean the writer doesn`t consider it relevant for him or his peer group or the music industry. Irrelevant for the industry means that there is no big market, but maybe just a small niche for a kind of cottage industry. From that point you could just as well state that organic food is dead. And fast food is relevant.
Irrelevant for himself or his peer group? Lots of things are irrelevant to me and my peer group. Techno or rap music or soccer. Logically they all must be dead too.

#4: Statements like "folk is dead" themselves are deadLY BORING.

Subject: RE: Is Folk Dead
From: GUEST,Desi C
Date: 16 Oct 12 - 12:35 PM

You're possibly right that open mic'ss are the way of the future. But I see that as a good thing, and a very good thing for Folk music. Why? because open mics welcome with open arms the increasing number of people who want to play real instruments and 'live' music. Folk radio and trad Folk clubs are perhaps dying. Radio because it's obsessed with playing the same old artists and largely ignoring the new, anyone who saw the BB folk awrds last year must agree it resembled a ninosaurs graveyard!

Folk Clubs especially the very trad ones, all I hear from young and even old performers is that they feel very unwelcome there as they get dirty looks if they try anything but trad English. Which is fine but nobody seems to want to help newcomers to learn the genre, on top of that most trad booking clubs book the same old faces. Folk has always survived because it changed with the times, it's thriving in the festivals for the very reason you see as killing it. It's welcomed in other genres who in turn can only do Folk good. I.E have you noticed how many Folk acts (largely new ones) have been featured on Jools Holland's show in recent years?
Trad Folk music and an ever ageing BBC radio need to embrace modernity or they will die out, simple as that

Subject: RE: Is Folk Dead
From: Morris-ey
Date: 16 Oct 12 - 12:20 PM

No

Subject: RE: Is Folk Dead
From: GUEST,mando-player-91
Date: 16 Oct 12 - 12:13 PM

Nah as long as their is a human race still singing it even a small amount it's not dead.

Subject: RE: Is Folk Dead
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 16 Oct 12 - 12:04 PM

Further signs of life...

http://www.facebook.com/bobsfolkshow

Subject: RE: Is Folk Dead
From: SteveMansfield
Date: 16 Oct 12 - 11:57 AM

Whenever one of these discussions start I'm always reminded of something John McCusker said, back when he had his Mohican ... (I paraphrase, obviously)

Every few years the media rediscovers folk music, decides it's trendy, and then after a while loses interest and moves on, declaring folk 'dead' in the process. Then a few years later it rediscovers it and the cycle begins again. Meanwhile ... we're here all the time!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is Folk Dead
From: Vic Smith
Date: 16 Oct 12 - 09:50 AM

Unlike Gibson Boy, I am very sorry that folk dead.

However, I am glad that nobody informed the 2000+ people that packed out the 28 events - many sold out - at Lewes Folk Festival this weekend that folk is dead.

I am also very pleased that none of the 200-odd morris dancers and musicians that took part in the festival plus goodness knows how many people watched those 16 sides dancing in four sites continuously for five hours were aware of the fact.

Did I mention that more than 100 singers that contributed either paid performances or took part in singarounds had not been informed?

Neither were the band, caller and a mass of dancers - a record number at this year's ceilidh - in receipt of this knowledge.

Nor were the visitors who came from five European countries told.... the many young performers....

Would you like me to go on, or have I made my point?

In fact, I would prefer it if Gibsonboy kept this a secret or a lot of people might be confused and wondering what they have enjoyed this weekend.


*********************
Right, I have only been taking a break. Now back to the slog of the final festival accounts.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Is Folk Dead
From: GUEST,999
Date: 16 Oct 12 - 08:55 AM

I think the OP's thought has to do with wishful perception rather than a well-considered reality.

Some songs do fine in a local area but don't spread much beyond that for various reasons.

In very broad strokes: I love the sound of an erhu played by someone who knows what s/he's about.

Moon Reflected on Erquan Pond - Erhu solo by Zhou Wei

I know that that sound and music affects me at a different place in my head than most country songs, but I'd bet that the erhu played as an accompanying instrument with a guitar and vocal duet/trio on Foster's "Hard Times" would kick ass and take names.

Often, the sound of fifty voices on the same song is awesome. However, I find that too many choirs have little room for a soloist to take off and stretch his or her pipes. When community singing becomes trapped in a lowest common denominator, the music tends to deaden a bit.

Music boils down to understanding and interpretation--although maybe not in that order. Songs (music with lyrics) even more so. Good music is too important to die on the altars of our vanities. That is fortunately being handled by keepers of tradition, and we owe them a debt we may never be able to repay, or even know how to.

Folk music will die when there's no one left to sing the songs, and imo as long as music continues to be important in our daily lives it will remain important in our cultures and there will have to be people to sing the songs.

I have no idea about the OP's intent in starting this thread, but thanks. Gave me some food for thought. And I think you need to consider more completely. No offence intended.