Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 16 Oct 13 - 10:16 AM

And let's not forget, Lighter, that I only came into this thread because of your negative comments about 'Rap Music'.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Oct 13 - 10:15 AM

"G&Vs songs than those of Albanian peasants, regardless of the quality or authenticity of the music."
Probably the same with most of us, but there's no reason on earth why you can't enjoy and appreciate both.
I still remember being thrilled by the hair-rising 'Plaka Grandmother's Choir' at Cecil Sharp House a dozen or so years ago.
I suggest a quick listen Bert Lloyd's 'Folk Music Virtuoso' which some kind Mudcatter put up for downloading last year - does a magnificent job for those who wish to broaden their musical outlook
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: selby
Date: 16 Oct 13 - 10:06 AM

Huge problem one mans folk is another mans poison and never the twain shall meet
Does the question need to be? Is an open mind essential to enjoy folk music?
I have been in concerts that I have enjoyed immensely, to see them panned and visa versa Dance shows that are cutting edge, that have received standing ovations then talked to people, who thought it was utter rubbish. I sat next to a bloke at Warwick Festival this year, who never laughed once at Les Barker, when I asked him why, he told me it was puerile crap. Which loops round to the start of what I have just written. Huge problem one mans folk is another mans poison and never the twain shall meet
Keith

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 16 Oct 13 - 09:39 AM

I don't believe it did, Lighter, but I am always open to being corrected. (Oo, err Mrs...) I think it was said that words like folk and traditional are useful in defining what is being presented. IE - At a folk event people expect to hear folk music, at a traditional event people expect to hear traditional music etc. What has been discussed here and extensively elsewhere is exactly what do those expressions mean.

Interesting discussion point just sprang to mind. Let us start with the premise that a music venue advertised a vaguely described folk event. The event itself then presented a number of different types of music that this broad term has come to encompass. Would the people who have one narrow definition be within their rights to take the venue to task about misrepresentation? Which faction would then win the case and, presumably, be recompensed for their trouble?

Or are we back round the circle to 'what is folk' again? :-)

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 16 Oct 13 - 09:36 AM

No. All I'm saying is what I like & listen to. There is a difference.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Lighter
Date: 16 Oct 13 - 09:26 AM

An entirely erroneous assumption seems to lurk behind some earlier comments. Namely, that defining words like "folk" and "traditional" in useful and coherent ways amounts to telling people what they should like or listen to.

Weird.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 16 Oct 13 - 09:25 AM

BEST!

Sorry, I keep missing words in my old age.

Anyhoo... I'm taking this as a friendly blether over an imaginary pint and I'm sorry if Vic & CS haven't picked up on that. Apologies to anyone else who sees it as a bar room brawl.

I seek.... Serenity! In fact Serenity Now is my new motto. My life is now dependent on four different types of medication - one of which is fecking blood pressure pills.

Stressed? Then turn it round, and it become DESSERTS! Yum, yum - what's for pudding?

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 16 Oct 13 - 09:17 AM

I'm getting very confused (put it down to old age and poverty). Two people have now said the thread is going down the pan just as I thought it was getting better! Maybe it is me :-( Anyway, the other thing is -

Traditional Musics well rooted in their respective communities

Didn't you come up with that one, BD or were you just quoting someone I missed?

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 16 Oct 13 - 09:06 AM

If I have been guilty of any of the listed crimes I unreservedly apologise

Ditto!

It's all done in the possible taste...

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 16 Oct 13 - 08:55 AM

Oh dear, and I thought this thread was actually managing to pull itself up into something like an interesting and civil discourse!

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 16 Oct 13 - 08:48 AM

I thought it was getting quite interesting Vic! If I have been guilty of any of the listed crimes I unreservedly apologise. But, if I am, can you tell me how so I can be a better folky in future? :-)

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 16 Oct 13 - 08:43 AM

Traditional Musics well rooted in their respective communities - as all musics indeed are - be it Bix or Bartok or Bellamy or Bjork the Butthole Surfers. Not all are Folk...

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Vic Smith
Date: 16 Oct 13 - 08:37 AM

Such an amazing amount of narrow minded micro-point scoring; fish in a tiny pond trying to bite one another rather than looking for the stream outlet that will allow them to swim into wider waters where they can communicate with the broader world.

Such a huge waste of time and effort that could be used constructively in some positive way - practicing and learning song & instrument, promoting events and understanding of this music to a wider audience, engaging in positive ways to proselytise the music they love.

Such a bad example of the way the great mutually supportive and encouraging community of the folk/traditional world actually operates.

If you are are outsider who has stumbled on this forum and thread by chance, please, please believe me that we are not all like this.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 16 Oct 13 - 08:31 AM

Probably no need to conflate, BD - They are both distinctive in their own rights. We could of course sub-genre-ise them (is there such a word?) but then when do we stop? I think it is pretty easy for anyone to tell the difference between the traditional musics of different communities. Explaining that they are both folk music is the tough one but I think most people have enough sense to accept both the similarities and the differences. It's all part and parcel of being a 'folky' and, simply because you understand these things, you must be one:-)

Now, about that ePint. I didn't understand the question I'm afraid :-(

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 16 Oct 13 - 08:08 AM

I don't enjoy it at all - in fact, I find it irksome & depressing as hell (just as I find Les Barker totally unfunny and The Band Played Waltzing Matilda sentimental schlock). But that's a matter of taste & utter subjectivity, as all enjoyment is. But then, I'm not really a folky, only by unhappy accident and association because I just like certain aspects of Traditional Song & Balladry and it's darker offshoots. In this way 99% of so-called Folk Music goes over my head, or passes unnoticed beneath my dignity.

This is the problem with Folk - or else the certainties of music. As idioms it's easy to describe the easy listening of the Aspeys et al, just as Ethnomusicologists have written extensively on the vocal polyphony of Southern Albania. Both, I accept, can be thought as Traditional Musics well rooted in their respective communities*, but calling them Folk is to be talking about two very different usages of the word. Conflate the two at your peril!

* Name me one that isn't & I'll email you a pint.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 16 Oct 13 - 06:41 AM

the easy listening Folk 'n' Fun of Gary & Vera is born of a different earth to the unearthly Vocal Polyphony of workers on a collective farm in Albania.

Probably, but is that a problem? Why can they not both be folk music? I, amongskt many others, can relate far more to G&Vs songs than those of Albanian peasants, regardless of the quality or authenticity of the music.

As an example outside folk, André Rieu is still classed as classical albeit far more commercial than other musicians. I liked a quote from his Wiki entry -

The fact that Rieu's focus is on highly accessible, enjoyable repertoire is not an argument against his musical credentials.

Surely the same applies to Gary and Vera, Jasper Carrot, Mike Harding and many others in the 'folk scene' (Another deliberate use of quotes :-) )

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 16 Oct 13 - 06:21 AM

The difference is one of aesthetics and musical intention; the easy listening Folk 'n' Fun of Gary & Vera is born of a different earth to the unearthly Vocal Polyphony of workers on a collective farm in Albania. Although it's just as unearthly over lunch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4Y_tuSsCXw

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 16 Oct 13 - 06:07 AM

Mmmm - Understand what you are saying, Blandiver, but as you mention 'Coal Hole cavalry' maybe it is a good example. Ted worked down the pit, amongst many other things, in his younger days. That song, along with 'The Coal and Albert Berry' and others came from his experiences there. How is that different from a contemporary song, that someone must have written at the time, about Victorian Cotton Mills or 18th century farm labourers? They are all, to my mind, folk music. And, OK, Gara and Vera, well, Gary in particular, does have his comedic repartee and repertoire but, at the core, they sing songs that were written by people who experienced the things they wrote about. What is so odd about Topic releasing the two albums in question as folk music?

While I think about it, G&V do the song 'From the North' with words by Cicely Fox-Smith. Cicely (Rhymes with Nicely BTW) was a girl brought up in a nice middle class family from Cheshire but went on to write some wonderful poetry - Particularly about sea faring. Now, I only bring this up because, on the face of it, she could be described as an academic dabbling with folk. But when you look further she did an awful lot of stuff to give her the experience to write these things, including hunting on foot (from where 'From the North' sprang) and putting herself in pretty precarious places in sea ports to gain first hand knowledge of all things nautical. No particular point but does, maybe, emphasise that the songs can come from anywhere.

Ted is still singing Coal-Hole Cavalry BTW - Has fought back a lot since his stroke although one side is still badly affected. I think he gets up to somewhere in Chorley occasionally. Not sure where but I can find out if you like. Just re-purchased his book 'Fight the Wild Island' as my original one disappeared. Back to a full set again now.

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 16 Oct 13 - 05:23 AM

One of the cornerstones of my Folk Dilemma was how Topic could release an album A.L.Lloyd's 1965 field recordings of village musicians of Albania alongside Gary & Vera's Taste of Hot-Pot. It baffles me to this day how both of these could somehow be termed 'Folk Music'.

Mind you, I felt oddly honoured to hear Ted Edwards singing his Coal-hole Cavalry at a singaround in Lymm a few years back.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 16 Oct 13 - 05:02 AM

Good grief, Phil - Don't give me shocks like that so early in the day :-)

I was chatting to Gary a bit back at Swinton and he reckons Blue Grass Music comes from Lancashire. It was quite a reasonable argument at the time but it has now completely escaped me.

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 16 Oct 13 - 04:14 AM

maybe revival folk music is the least traditional of all because it's too self-conscious of its traditionalism

Something in that. Not necessarily a bad thing, either.

On the other hand it could mean Traditional as in Old Fashioned, like Traditional Fish 'n' Chips, or Traditional Hot-Pot

I love a taste of hot-pot, me.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Oct 13 - 03:52 AM

"MacColl adherents, please note"
Where on earth did this come from Steve?
My personal tastes are as wide as you have described, if not wider.
MacColl and the Critics were constantly being told by clubs that booked them not to sing contemporary song (particularly political ones) because "the audience doesn't go in for that sort of stuff here" (always blaming the audience - note).
MacColl constantly argued the view that unless the revival produced new songs at its clubs we would become "museum curators".
The Singers Club booked the artists they did because that's what they wished to present, it was not a criticism of Jazz Clubs, Heavy Metal sessions.... whatever, it was not what we set out to present.
It doesn't mean that we didn't have opinions on other musics, and didn't express them occasionally (who doesn't) but if you can come across any example of our "telling people what they should be listening to" please feel free to put it up.
This is yet another of those myths created around what we did which has managed to prevent open discussion on MacColl and his work now stretched to a quarter of a century after his death.
Sorry - a little surprised to find this coming from someone whose opinions I usually respect.
"Also Bartok's string quartets - great stuff!"
Someone coming away from Bert Lloyd's funeral service was overheard to say, "A great tribute to a great man, but those bloody Bartok Quartets were a bit of a downer".
"usufruct is just an academic term for what you just said"
Sorry Susie - not arguing - a word I'm totally unfamiliar with - put it down to my shitty Secondary Modern education.
Ah well- at least it gave me a chance to sound off about the people who have left their fingerprints all over my life.
Apologies.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 16 Oct 13 - 03:49 AM

In that case, Phil maybe revival folk music is the least traditional of all because it's too self-conscious of its traditionalism - unlike other musics which just get on with it & are secure enough in what they are not to need a definition.

On the other hand it could mean Traditional as in Old Fashioned, like Traditional Fish 'n' Chips, or Traditional Hot-Pot, which again seems too much of a put-on to be of any use, and it's usually tourist bollocks anyway.

All music is traditional; and there's every point in talking about it because it's a defining aspect of what music is as a dynamic cultural phenomenon - collectively, individually, historically - which applies as much to pre-revival Folk Song as it does to Jazz, Hip-Hop, Krautrock & post-Oram electronica. It's the tradition of music that makes each idiom so vibrant & diverse.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Will Fly
Date: 16 Oct 13 - 03:20 AM

Steve - I absolutely adore Beethoven's late quartets - glorious music. Also Bartok's string quartets - great stuff!

I never read analyses of such work - not because I'm not interested but because life (making music mainly) is just too short! I just enjoy it.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,big al whittle
Date: 16 Oct 13 - 01:50 AM

Bix's approach to composition had many points of confluence with classical music and followers of the Philarmonic wouldn't even spot the join if their favourite orchestras were to tackle something like In a Mist.

Like every real traditional musician - Bix was open to all kinds of influences. He didn't waste time letting people tell him what was in his tradition and what he was entitled to do. He just DID it.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 15 Oct 13 - 07:10 PM

If "all music is tradition" then either

- all music is equally traditional

or

- all music is traditional, but some examples are more traditional than others

If it's the first, then the word 'traditional' doesn't mean anything and there's no point talking about it.

If it's the second, then we just need to stop saying "traditional" and say "very traditional" instead - and start saying "not very traditional" instead of "not traditional". Or else we could stick with "traditional" and "not traditional", and leave it to anyone using Blandiver's definitions to translate.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 15 Oct 13 - 06:41 PM

Well, Will, every kind of music I can think of is a minority interest, if you take the population as a whole. Most people hate modern jazz. Most people wouldn't know what Wagner was all about even if it reared up and bit 'em on the bollocks (lucky them). Heavy metal is very much a minority cult. Even the poppiest of pop music has its millions of detractors, who far outnumber its adherents, detractors who are mostly outside the very narrow age limits set by the genre(s). I love late Beethoven, but almost everybody wouldn't bloody know what I was on about if I raised it in conversation, and the level of scholarship about it is, in general, utterly pathetic (google the title of any of his late quartets if you don't believe me!). "English folk" is its own worst enemy in making itself inward-looking, cliquey, rule-ridden and utterly self-regarding. No wonder most people turn their backs on it. I don't get the same feeling about traditional Irish music, whenever I've heard it played in settings outside those created by it aficionados. I nearly always detect warm enthusiasm, and it matters not a jot, usually, when the "punters" are people who don't "get the scene" (speech-mark cynicism fully intended!). Good stuff is good stuff (I have enough confidence in my appreciation of music to be able to make that somewhat banal remark), and I don't need purists or experts to analyse the stuff I'm listening to to tell me whether I should be enjoying it or not. MacColl adherents, please note...

But I love Shoals of Herring...

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: The Sandman
Date: 15 Oct 13 - 05:13 PM

Peter, so what?
what relevance has your comment, apart from trying to score some obscure point against me, [which seems to be one of your tiresome and very predictable preoccupations]I did not say in my post that comhaltas did not give lessons.
why not do away with the competitions, and just have scoil eigse, the following week instead of the competitions.
peter ,that is what i meant by replacing them, is that clear

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Suzy Sock Puppet
Date: 15 Oct 13 - 04:08 PM

Jim, usufruct is just an academic term for what you just said. You are so accustomed to arguing, that you can't take yes for an answer :-)

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 15 Oct 13 - 04:07 PM

Scoil Eigse is considered a major part of each Fleadh.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: The Sandman
Date: 15 Oct 13 - 04:05 PM

we are not going wrong we are gradually trying to get things right, now is the time for comhaltas to give up competitions, and replace them with lessons,the perphery would still continue as it does at willie week, the fleadhs ave been going so long all that is needed is reform

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 15 Oct 13 - 03:28 PM

Er - not the same, no - I was just pointing that I wasn't confusing the two.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Lighter
Date: 15 Oct 13 - 03:03 PM

Only one "as" was intended.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Lighter
Date: 15 Oct 13 - 03:02 PM

> The vernacular operates in a traditional manner.

Which means that as, as concepts, the "vernacular" is not identical with the "traditional."

Quibble, quibble. Have fun!

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 15 Oct 13 - 01:18 PM

you confuse "traditional" with "vernacular." They're related, and can overlap, but they're fundamentally distinct.

The vernacular operates in a traditional manner. It changes, evolves according to individual & cultural usage. Each culture has vernacular idioms that are constantly evolving according to the letter of the 1954 Definition. Even inside of the idiom of (say) Hip-Hop there are a myriad of vernacular traditions evolving quite distinctly, and happily.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Oct 13 - 01:17 PM

"Does that make sense? "
Sort of Susan, but "take ownership" overstates the situation in our experience.
Some singers is communities we recognised as having 'first pick' of certain songs - not to retain their integrity, but because of the age or status as singers.
Some of Norfolk singer Harry Cox's large repertoire came from other local singers who had always sung them (or who had inherited them from family members" - Harry never sang them until his sources died.
Sam Larner got many of his songs from 'Old Larpin' (Jimmy Sutton) he never sang them until after Sutton's death.
Wal;ter Pardon was particularly interesting - he never sang in any of his families singing sessions during Harvest Suppers (except Dark-Eyed Sailor - "nobody else wanted that").
Walter's later extremely large repertoire was carefully and lovingly assembled after all the family singers had died.
It was not a rule but an accepted deferential convention by all concerned.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Suzy Sock Puppet
Date: 15 Oct 13 - 01:15 PM

Usufruct- (Law) the right to use and derive profit from a piece of property belonging to another or to a community, provided the property itself remains unaltered in any way.
[from Late Latin ūsūfrūctus, from Latin ūsus use + frūctus enjoyment]
usufructuary].

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Suzy Sock Puppet
Date: 15 Oct 13 - 12:51 PM

Manifold's comments have a striking similarity to comments made by Jim Carroll in regard to "ownership" of songs. While I certainly understand what is meant by this, a better term might be usufruct. The distinction is this: The songs and stories of a cohesive community are community property, yet there are certain designated individuals who take them into their personal possession in order to preserve their integrity and ultimately pass them on intact. Not just anybody can have a go at them. Does that make sense?

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Lighter
Date: 15 Oct 13 - 12:38 PM

Thanks, Suzy.

Blandiver, you confuse "traditional" with "vernacular." They're related, and can overlap, but they're fundamentally distinct.

Homer's works are traditional, not vernacular, poems.

John Lennon's and William McGonagall's are vernacular, not traditional.

Robert Burns's poems are often vernacular, occasionally traditional or (when he rewrites extensively) semi-traditional, often literary.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: The Sandman
Date: 15 Oct 13 - 12:04 PM

manifold continued

"I sometimes wish, in vain, that we could keep up the strict etiquette that was observed by the real bush singers. A young man used to learn his songs from the acknowledged singer of the district, and might eventually earn permission to sing them to the limited 'public' of the bush wherever or whenever the acknowledged singer was not present. Some few songs were common property; others, 'songs from the books', were rather contemptuously exempted from the rule; but in the main this apprenticeship system prevailed, at least among men. When the public performer of a 'treason song' might earn a stretch in jail, it was a point of honour to perform it properly.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: The Sandman
Date: 15 Oct 13 - 11:58 AM

I am not sure i like the idea of traditional music being used to sell tooth paste, and i find i am in agreement on this point with the australian song collector j s manifold.
see this thread where there is some particular nastiness from folkie dave aka dave eyre.
Publication does a doubtful service to folk songs .it preservesthem;
but it preserves them dead, like stuffed animals in a museum,it brings them to a wide audience, but this includes so many of thewrong people,from school teachers,to hill billy addicts.
the wrong people are those who are bent on taking folksong out of its natural surroundings.Folksongs belong in the home,in the pub,in the focsle,in the back of atruck or a friendly verandah;not in the list of set peices at an Eisteffod,not in the schoolroom unless as a rare
treat,not between toothpaste advertisements on radio or television.
In the alien atmosphereof the concert hall it takes agreat artist to preserve the life and spirit even of his own folksongs let alone those of other people.
J s.Manifold,Queensland 1962[compiler of Penguin Australian folk songs]
this raises some interesting points,that are worthy of discussion.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Suzy Sock Puppet
Date: 15 Oct 13 - 11:57 AM

Distinctive means that the textual or melodic variants in question have an unmistakable resemblance that denotes a common ancestry.

Long-established means that the manner of performance in question is generations older than the oldest extant version. In my mind this extant version would likely be a recording since performance is a very fleeting thing unless preserved in that medium.

Texts are a double edged sword when it comes to "long-established manner of performance." In some cases, they can be extremely helpful and can fill in some important missing blanks. In other cases not so much because the publication of a text can too easily alter the manner of performance in a way that breaks the chain. That's where the person to person thing comes in.

Very well worded Lighter. I accept that.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 15 Oct 13 - 11:53 AM

I'm after a specific definition of TM

I doubt there is one, but here's my opinion...

All music is tradition as it all derives and works upon what has gone before it in a process of continuity and development and diversification that could, if one had the means, be traced back to a common ancestral source 50,000 years ago.

Tradition is a couple of guys in Manchester going to see the Sex Pistols at the Free Trade Hall in 1976 and deciding to form a band even though one of them hadn't touched a bass guitar in his life. Within three years they'd changed the face of popular music forever with 'Unknown Pleasures' - an idiomatic masterpiece born of very authentic vernacular experience & inspiration, yet inspirational in itself.   

Music springs eternal, as all human culture will, and must, on a level which is born from as much from the collective subconscious as it is from individual genius. That applies as much to Purcell and Handel as it does to David Bowie and Ian Curtis as it does to Harry Cox and Davie Stewart.

One thing is clear - as long as there are people on Planet Earth, there will be culture, language, art, technology and a myriad evolving musical traditions.

IMHO.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 15 Oct 13 - 11:24 AM

PS by 'long-lived' I mean that in a contemporary context where popular creative forms of expression, now come and go at a phenomenal rate.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Lighter
Date: 15 Oct 13 - 11:23 AM

BTW, other quite compatible definitions exist.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Will Fly
Date: 15 Oct 13 - 11:21 AM

Yes Jim - the Lomax recordings are great.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 15 Oct 13 - 11:18 AM

Tradition is generally the handing down of aspects of culture, most usually from one generation to the next. I guess really anything that has been inherited from ones forebears, is traditional, it just depends on scope as to how significant collectors and other academics rank said traditions?

I think Blandiver is quite logical where his arguments about what is and is not 'traditional' are concerned, for example take rap which must by virtue of it's long-lived embrace and transmission by an increasing diversity of cultures, very definitely represent a distinct form of traditional music by now.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Oct 13 - 11:17 AM

"Trouble is, Suzy, most people who HAVE played tables (and paint cans)"
Not paint cans or tables, but have any of you fellers ever listened to the wonderfully melodic steel drummers (oil drums) at the Notting Hill Carnival or listened to the beautiful rhythms produced by the Parchman convicts chopping wood on the Lomax recordings?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Lighter
Date: 15 Oct 13 - 11:11 AM

"Music that is typically passed on from person to person, performed in a long-established manner, and usually exists in distinctive textual or melodic variants."

My two bloody cents. Now nail down "long-established" and "distinctive."

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Mr Happy
Date: 15 Oct 13 - 10:46 AM

How long after the first songs & melodies were composed did they become Traditional Music?

I'm after a specific definition of TM