Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 04 Oct 13 - 12:24 PM

That in England there are far more diverse forms of music speaking to young people.




I doubt very much that is the case. As I suggested earlier, different types of music are not mutually exclusive.

I could point out young musicians who are playing electric guitar in their local prog rock band one night and take the stage as the finest young piper/traditional player in the country the next.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Lighter
Date: 04 Oct 13 - 12:19 PM

Spleen, that's just your opinion.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 04 Oct 13 - 12:06 PM

I'm starting to draw a few conclusions from the discussions:

(1) What I saw being promoted and performed while I was on holiday in Ireland is not necessary the best representation of Traditional Irish music and song, but it is what visitors expect to hear and it pulls in the punters and sells the pints! However, in my view it is still folk music, and it does give folk music a visible presence. Those who want to delve deeper into traditional music can still do their own research on where to find it.

(2) There is very much a chicken and egg situation oversupply and demand. If the demand is there then there would be greater provision and promotion, but the demand (from visitors) probably would not happen until there was more folk music to be easily found, and for it to be more widely promoted.

(3) That Irish music is played much more openly as, for as suggestted by the various theories it is much more part of the national 'psyche' - I can think of the right word, than English music is.

(4) That in England there are far more diverse forms of music speaking to young people.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,Spleen Cringe
Date: 04 Oct 13 - 11:34 AM

A weird tendency is emerging to state opinions as if they were incontrovertible facts.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Lighter
Date: 04 Oct 13 - 10:53 AM

Another point about rap. Let's not confuse two issues.

Rap may be a fantastic outlet for "political" expression (not that I think it is) and still be execrable as a form of music or even as a way of declaiming verse.

The medium isn't really the message; or, if it is, it's a tedious, diffuse, and very limited message.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Suzy Sock Puppet
Date: 04 Oct 13 - 09:49 AM

I think also Steve that it doesn't necessarily require "foreigners" in the strict sense. I think the same phenomenon would occur in the case of class warfare.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Lighter
Date: 04 Oct 13 - 09:00 AM

> to keep the old traditions

Underlying the whole discussion is the apparent fact (sad, neutral, or rilly cool, depending on your POV) that only a quite small - even minuscule - part of the English-speaking population has much interest in doing so.

Even a total modernization with discernible traditional roots like Riverdance, which is more "accessible" to pop audience, is just another transient "entertainment option" for 99% of the people who like it.

They don't phone their Top-Forty stations demanding a trad line-up, and they'd be thought of as just a little bit wacky if they did.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Rumncoke
Date: 04 Oct 13 - 07:54 AM

Ah great - now we aren't allowed to sing, play or dance without a licence maybe people will rebel against council control of their right to keep the old traditions.

I'm not holding my breath though.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Suzy Sock Puppet
Date: 04 Oct 13 - 07:22 AM

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,SteveT - PM
Date: 03 Oct 13 - 04:39 AM

I have often wondered whether a "pride" in your folk culture is the product of oppression. Oppression can result in the obliteration of a culture or it can drive it underground where it gains strength. You tend to be more likely to value things if they are being taken away from you. Both Ireland and Scotland, for example, suffered from years of cultural oppression; England hasn't really been oppressed by outsiders since the Norman invasion. So, are we going wrong by not being oppressed and not having any "foreigners" telling us to stop playing/singing?

****************************************************************************************************
ABSOLUTELY! Steve, you may not have developed these thoughts to any great extent but what a brilliant thesis! IMHO, it would hold up. Also, the romanticism of oppression mentioned by Lighter is another brilliant line of thought that fits right in with this thesis.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 03 Oct 13 - 03:33 PM

This is how far from unthinking violence the rap idiom can get.

Exactly, Jack. CAN being the operative word. But not often enough. Yes, you may be able to multiply that hundreds of times. But for each one of those I would hazard a guess that 100 are of the other type and more. Anecdotal evidence is not a good argument I'm afraid. Show us what percentage of rap music is an 'international expression of popular resistance' compared to that that is simply violent, misogynistic or raking more cash in for those covered in gold already. I then may believe you are right but until then I can only go off the facts I know.

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 03 Oct 13 - 02:12 PM

This is how far from unthinking violence the rap idiom can get. A group of peasant women in eastern Turkey protesting against the damage caused by a hydro-electric scheme and demanding the authorities listen to them:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xfq9tz_kadin-rap-grubu_people (mostly in Turkish with some bits in English and some bits bleeped out).

You could multiply examples like that hundreds of times. It's a thoroughly democratized idiom that long ago escaped the control of the American media industry.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Lighter
Date: 03 Oct 13 - 12:28 PM

> riddled examples of radical politics

Surely you don't mean shootin', killin', rapin', and I almost forgot braggin'.

But you do seem to assume that "radical politics" automatically means "benevolent politics that would enhance the lives of all (or at least all whom we think deserve it)."

Rap (even more than other recent pop music genres) became fantastically popular largely because of zillion-dollar advertising and marketing campaigns aided by cynically eroticized images of the performers (often with harems).

If rap had really been propagandizing some kind of coherent, appealing, beneficial social agenda insistently and repetitively for the past 25 years, I think we'd have noticed some positive results by now. And presumably that would be true even if you mean non-commercial, unrecorded, street-corner "folk rap."

Like other words and lyrics, it basically goes in one ear and out the other, leaving various attitudinal residues. And do you really want teens, oppressed or otherwise, learning their agenda for social change (in whichever "radical" direction you prefer) from rhymers who declaim their love for violence? (Radical neo-Nazis can rap too, though maybe not in Greece.)

I also have a problem picturing thinkers like Jefferson, Marx and Engels (to take the most obvious examples) as choosing the hip-hop idiom to advance their extensively thought-out radical positions.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,Allan Conn
Date: 03 Oct 13 - 12:14 PM

My main issue with Rap (and I know it is personal taste etc) is that I find it incredibly boring and repetative. I know there are exceptions, and the Television link above is one of them, but I just find so many of the tracks sound exactly the same with the words being spouted out in the exact seem rythm etc. Then people say it is all about the words but quite honestly on many of the tracks I can hardly make the words out anyway. Not a clue what they're talking about. and it isn't an old fogey thing. I was still quite young when Rap music first came on the scene and initially I was quite keen. Just didn't think that many of the songs would still be sounding exactly the same 30 years on. I do like some tracks and on many of the more commercial R&B tracks you get catchy choruses (more often than not from older songs) that are the only bit of the track worth listening to as the rest is just the same old monotonous sound of undecipherable muttering! I know many folk would disagree but just my view.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 03 Oct 13 - 11:47 AM

you don't need Nazis, Greek or otherwise, to shoot rappers

Except in Greece a rapper, Killah P, has just been murdered by a member of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn.

Can't say much about speed metal, but the other two forms you single out, rap and punk, are riddled with examples of radical politics. If your views about rap are solely based on what you son plays, do you not think that reflects more on the sort of rap he likes than the genre as a whole?

The Goats - Burn the Flag

The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy - Television, the Drug of the Nation

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 03 Oct 13 - 11:31 AM

Anything that can't be co-opted and thus neutralized, gets suppressed.

It doesn't get much more thoroughly suppressed than what happened to Killah P.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Suzy Sock Puppet
Date: 03 Oct 13 - 10:59 AM

Gross generalization? Lazy stereotype? I have a son who has listened to rap for years, which means, I have heard plenty of it myself. Gross Generalizations and lazy stereotypes result from limited exposure. That is not the case with me. I was not the kind of mom who made him turn it off because I didn't want to hear it (maybe I should have). I am also extremely open-minded about music. I don't love all genres equally but I respect most - all but rap and punk or speed metal where the "vocalist" basically screams in your ear the entire time.

Rap has become an international expression of popular resistance? I have to disagree Jack. It's an international expression of cynicism, nihilism or something along those lines. If there were in fact anything that could be characterized as an international expression of popular resistance, it would be not broadcast everywhere. It would not be mainstream. It would be underground. Anything that can't be co-opted and thus neutralized, gets suppressed. Trust me.

What solutions does rap propose to the injustices of the world? It encourages youth to use injustice as an excuse to act out violently and get thrown in jail, use and abuse women, make it your life's priority to buy more bling... Have I left anything out? In other words, it mirrors and reaffirms the in-the-toilet values of the current establishment (as reflected in the mass media) - in a musically bankrupt "art" form.

And btw, you don't need Nazis, Greek or otherwise, to shoot rappers. They do a fine job of that themselves.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 03 Oct 13 - 09:51 AM

Change hands!

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 03 Oct 13 - 09:32 AM

How much of what is played today was collected from Irish Emigrants, and came back to Ireland via O'Neill's collection(s)? sidetracking myself now!

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 03 Oct 13 - 09:18 AM

And Lighter, I have agree about rap. In fact, I feel sorry for kids who have been led to believe that it is anything approaching that which could be called music. It is angry hateful degrading garbage. It's something much more sinister than can be explained by the usual "generation gap."

I take it that means you agree with your Greek Nazi pals that rappers ought to be shot?

Rap has become an international expression of popular resistance. It's been the most important progressive musical phenomenon exported from the US in the last generation.


Both Ireland and Scotland, for example, suffered from years of cultural oppression

Most of the cultural oppression Scotland suffered was at the hands of the Scottish power elite, the Kirk in particular. Scottish song and instrumental music thrived after the Union, precisely because it was a secular symbol of national identity.

The same was mostly true of Ireland - the worst enemy Irish music had was the Irish Catholic priesthood, not the British colonizers.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Lighter
Date: 03 Oct 13 - 07:55 AM

The key is to be oppressed in a way that *others can romanticize*.

Being forced out of the country or being occupied after losing a war are the best methods.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 03 Oct 13 - 06:53 AM

I think Steve has a good point but the major flaw I can see is that ordinary folk, even in England, have been oppressed even to this day! Songs about the poor treatment of tenant farmers or factory workers or the unemployed could still provide a vehicle for hitting back at this. Maybe it still is? Thinking of the Punk Rock era in particular were not a lot of the songs hitting out at the establishment?

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Jim Martin
Date: 03 Oct 13 - 06:25 AM

Surely "resistance through song" has also happened in England with the likes of the street ballads (which also happened in Ireland!).

And didn't English traditional music also mantain continuity in the NE & Suffolk (& probably other placed too - Dorset/W.Gallery singing?).

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 03 Oct 13 - 05:06 AM

That's quite possible, Guest SteveT. My wife's of Estonian extraction and resistance to "Russification" in Estonia throughout the Soviet era was in the form of traditional song and dance. The Soviet Union banned many icons of Estonian nationhood, but couldn't stop the passing down of patriotic and Estonian folk songs. This culminated in the "Singing Revolution" but "resistance through song" was well established there for years before that. When we visited in 1983 people would sing Traditional Estonian songs at every opportunity. The mere act of singing them was seen as resistance against the USSR.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,SteveT
Date: 03 Oct 13 - 04:39 AM

I have often wondered whether a "pride" in your folk culture is the product of oppression. Oppression can result in the obliteration of a culture or it can drive it underground where it gains strength. You tend to be more likely to value things if they are being taken away from you. Both Ireland and Scotland, for example, suffered from years of cultural oppression; England hasn't really been oppressed by outsiders since the Norman invasion. So, are we going wrong by not being oppressed and not having any "foreigners" telling us to stop playing/singing?

I've never developed this thought further and there are probably major holes in the argument but I thought I'd throw it into this mix.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,Nigel Parry
Date: 02 Oct 13 - 09:12 PM

RE the OP.
I think in Ireland the music fits with the whole image. It can also be identified with by people young and old as a popular national treasure. I live in NZ and when you play old Irish tunes in a public bar, young Irish people get all nostalgic and want more.

Doesn't happen with the English songs. The image is far more muddled I guess.

But maybe folk music in London is just as 'underground' as Wellington. Conversation between a mate and the owner of a popular city bar; 'this is Nigel, he's a really good folk musician.' ... 'Ah, folk music, there's no market for it.' So I wont be getting a gig there then.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,Rev Bayes
Date: 02 Oct 13 - 05:39 PM

Regarding kids, they don't give a damn whether their parents like it or not. Again, see Raploch. Eight year old kids going nuts over classical music.

What they do care about is being able to fit into a culture of the people around them. Teach all the kids and they will come. But they will make it their own. Plockton et al are double edged swords for those who think they own the tradition.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,Big Al Whittle
Date: 02 Oct 13 - 04:29 PM

I still think the green hats is a good idea.....something stylish like a green fedora.

That would show 'em we mean business!

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Stringsinger
Date: 02 Oct 13 - 01:12 PM

For me, a problem, not being a Brit but a Yank, is that I go on a song to song
basis. If I find a tune I like and want either to learn it or listen to it again, I try
to find out as much as I can about the history, culture or composer/lyricist.

Where many "folkies" go wrong is to overemphasize the style of music from an
academic standpoint and become rigid in their standards of performance.

Music is a fluid and dynamic expression subject to change even in trad circles.
What was once popular song or dance music had an original source which was
later amplified by many hands changing it.

The seeking of a national music is always a problem. In the US, there was a move about twenty years ago to make square dancing the national American form to the exclusion of other forms. The Senate actually took this up in a bill. Fortunately,
that was torpedoed.

As an outlander, I see Irish and British music overlapping in so many areas that
I can hardly be a proponent for a national music. I see its influence on trad American music as well.

The solution: Let the song or tune dictate the interest that would propel those who would learn them to study their history, culture, background and relevant info.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Lighter
Date: 02 Oct 13 - 01:00 PM

Naah. We know what sort of society that is already. The most interesting question is what happens next.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Acorn4
Date: 02 Oct 13 - 12:52 PM

I've heard it said that rap has a "silent c".

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,Spleen Cringe
Date: 02 Oct 13 - 12:14 PM

The most interesting questions would be about the sort of society that created the conditions for such a thing to come into being, wouldn't you think?

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 02 Oct 13 - 12:13 PM

Much MobO and reggae (the bits of them that I like better) do play to a resentful aggressiveness - as a direct result of the oppressiveness of mainstream society. MobO turned to bling where reggae turned to a deeper politicisation. In general, not in every case.

Meanwhile, back on folk, there was no folk music in my prep school (unless you count some horrid part songs we were forced to sing in "music lessons" featuring Miss Barfoot on the piano, and tootling noises on recorders). We were forced to do some semi-folk dances though, like the Dashing White Sergeant, the Eightsome reel, and Stripping the Willow - as well as the waltzes and quicksteps that were supposed to be our passports to polite dances. There was no folk music at my public school either save a very few boys who played it as I think a gesture of insubordination (I learned "the Foggy Dew" that way). Of course since it was the 60s there regrettably was Dylan - but he too was anti-establishment, then.



So I don't think we can entirely blame schoolteachers. I am not wholly clear why the mass media think it fit to make mock of all English traditions, but there is little doubt that they do.


On the other hand, however, I don't think that the same scorn of folk exists at real "muso" level. I went to, and my band played at (and another folk-ish band played at) a sort or punk/metal/prog festival in September (on my birthday weekend too) and I was doing the tankard and waterproof fluorescent poncho thing all weekend, and many people expressed extreme envy that I was warm and dry (outside but wet inside) while they were not. There were also at least two border morris sides there who danced in or near the chillout tent, and it was all very good-tempered.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Lighter
Date: 02 Oct 13 - 11:55 AM

> There is plenty of rap music out there that does not fall anywhere near such a lazy stereotype.

Quite true.

But there's just as much that does.

Could we say that about any other vastly popular kind of music over the past century (and more)?

Raises interesting questions, doesn't it?

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST
Date: 02 Oct 13 - 11:33 AM

I have agree about rap. In fact, I feel sorry for kids who have been led to believe that it is anything approaching that which could be called music. It is angry hateful degrading garbage. It's something much more sinister than can be explained by the usual "generation gap."

This is a gross generalisation. There is plenty of rap music out there that does not fall anywhere near such a lazy sterotype.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Suzy Sock Puppet
Date: 02 Oct 13 - 11:16 AM

I believe the Industrial Revolution has been responsible for a sea change in the way people think and live and that it accounts for the demise of tradition in general- including music- in every culture that has undergone this shift from agrarian to industrial society. This is what I really mean by "sophisticated". I have condensed into a few sentences here but there is so much one could say on the topic.

In any case, this change occurred earlier and more successfully in Britain than anywhere else in the world. In my mind, this is what accounts for the diminished accessibility of traditional music. To complicate matters, there was a revival in the later part of this sea change which appears to have been dominated by Scots and which was tailored to commercial appeal. It was a very text oriented revival riddled with the poetic license and "better judgement" of song collectors and publishers. It's a fact that nostalgia is seldom an accurate window into the past. IMO, the lack of popularity and hype does not hurt the mission of recovery and restoration at all. In fact, I think it helps it.

I do think it's very important that children be exposed to traditional music as part of their learning about their cultural heritage whatever culture they happen to be from. They don't have to love it but they should at least be aware (whether they regard it as hokey or not). It should have its place in education. I also believe that what has been said here about families is absolutely true. For instance, I am half Ukrainian and my grandma regularly towed me along to church with her. So the sound of Ukrainian hymns, always sung a cappella, is always beautiful to my ears. I know that a lot of other people might find it too solemn and could not sit through it.

And Lighter, I have agree about rap. In fact, I feel sorry for kids who have been led to believe that it is anything approaching that which could be called music. It is angry hateful degrading garbage. It's something much more sinister than can be explained by the usual "generation gap."

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Mr Red
Date: 02 Oct 13 - 10:33 AM

When the English public stop laughing at the WORD Morris, then we will have respect for our tradition in music, customs, song, etc.

In Ireland their dance tradition was considered a joke until Michael Flatley turned up and was the leading light of Riverdance. Now they are frightened of winning the Eurovision Song Contest for fear of having to pay his fee for reminding them how exciting their tradtion is.

Amazingly they now regard him as Irish as Molly Malone. He is American and was digging ditches in Chicago when the Dubliners made the call. He had won the World Irish Dancing Championships for about 11 years by then and was pretty good at it.
Lord of the Dance (tune) is an American Shaker Hymn "Simple Gifts", Words by Sydney Carter as English as the come. Molly Malone has no record of existing, the song was first publish in Edinburgh by a Scotsman but has many similarities to an earlier song by an Essex man.

Ireland had a healthy tradition of making their own music, particularly in the rural areas because they didn't have much money. Since they became Celtic Tigers and paid the price of their hubris (as if we didn't see their growth was built on sand! and subsidies - how apt) the tourist industry is the quickest way to recovery and draws on their tradition heavily. But it can!

Every town around the world seems to have an Irish pub - Green seat covers & Guiness being the only proof of validity. Even on Ko Tao in Thailand - so Ewen Macoll songs and varied pop songs are now considered Irish because they are played loudly throughout.

When I play in English sessions I often get some reference to "Irish Music" from the general public. England does not have a singular identity. Ireland has Music and Dance. Belgium has Beer, France has Fromage. Germans have efficient industry, America has Hollywood, Brazil has coffee, we have football we share (not me personally understand) with the world and we are not that good at it!

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,Big Al Whittle
Date: 02 Oct 13 - 08:34 AM

How about if we all wore green hats to show we were recycling the old songs? Turning them into compost, as it were.....

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Lighter
Date: 02 Oct 13 - 08:12 AM

Hilarious.

However, during the '80s I once belonged to the worst Irish band in the world. We *couldn't* play fast, just falteringly and out of synch. Our "sessions" were practice rather than "jam," and we were so bad we could hardly stand to hear ourselves play.

One day a tasteless friend offered us the chance to perform in public. We were predictably awful. Afterward a large, wide-eyed lady approached and said (I swear this is true): "You sound just like the Chieftains!"

It was a whole new perspective. But no, we didn't get any better.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,Spleen Cringe
Date: 02 Oct 13 - 08:10 AM

I don't actually agree with your suggestion that we disagree, Rob, except perhaps in defining what a young kid is! I was thinking of my son, who is 10 and loves chart pop almost indiscriminatorily, if that's a word, and can sing along with all the words. I would like to hope that by the time he gets to 13 or so he will be listening to stuff I neither know or understand, just as I started doing at that age, whilst occasionally mining some of the gems in my collection(!). If he follows the same trajectory as I did, his stance on folk music will probably soften when he hits around forty, but he'll still be partial to a bit of earsplitting rock mayhem...

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Acorn4
Date: 02 Oct 13 - 07:29 AM

Think this is possibly marginally relevant here on the "Fast and loud" theme:-


Worst Irish Band in the World

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: selby
Date: 02 Oct 13 - 07:16 AM

I do not think we have gone wrong anywhere and certainly do not need to worry. Look at the numbers of young people at festivals both participating and watching.

There is the romantic notion that exists about Ireland. We have a 4 generation Irish friend who insists she is Irish that her daughters do Irish dancing must wear a green shirt when Ireland plays etc etc, but never been to Ireland. She dislikes on point of principle any other folk music. I suspect she is not on her own about this.I think this gives a perception that all is well in Ireland with music I think they are not moving forward like our music has done.
Keith

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Rumncoke
Date: 02 Oct 13 - 07:14 AM

From what I've experienced, music has to be licensed - turn on a radio in a shop and it needs a licence, singing or playing in a public place has to be licensed.

Mumming, Christmas carols, even a hurried rehearsal in a car park have all been stopped because apparently it needs to be licensed, controlled - stifled.

Perhaps there has grown up the idea that people should not be able to ask for money wihley nihley so all the means to that end should be stamped out, or down as much as possible, even if money is not being asked for just them, but it might be.

Allowing people to learn how to sing, play, dance or carry on in public is obviously regarded as a bad thing and ought not to be allowed.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Alan Day
Date: 02 Oct 13 - 06:51 AM

About twenty years ago some pubs were receiving money from the Tourist Board to put on Folk Music.If this was reintroduced (it may still be going on)it needs to be organised,not by selected pubs, but by forward thinking folk enthusiasts,who can put forward our traditional music,song and dance to the general public and UK visitors, to create more interest in our music traditions.
Our Morris Dancers are doing a fine job but we need to expand it.
Al

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Banjo-Flower
Date: 02 Oct 13 - 06:25 AM

Thanks Rob You've put over the point I was trying to make much better than me

Cheers

Gerry

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 02 Oct 13 - 05:59 AM

DtG: I think we may be at cross purposes then, Gerry! I know that Rob said session which I think was the point - It was an open session and the young couple heard and liked it. Your point, and correct me if I am wrong, is that they would not have heard it if it was in a 'dingy back room', which is quite true.

Yes, that's it exactly...they wouldn't have heard it if it had been in an opulently-decorated bright and cheerful back room, either! Pub sessions and other "open" events are the places you'll see the music exposed to newcomers, not "folk clubs" in back rooms (dingy or otherwise!) which are preaching to the converted.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Jim Martin
Date: 02 Oct 13 - 05:58 AM

More Clyde nostalgia with the same tune!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AP9_cbl5cjY

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 02 Oct 13 - 05:51 AM

Spleen Cringe: Most young kids want chart pop, not what their parents and grandparents are listening to. And fair play to them for that - it's exactly the same as what I wanted at that age. Those who don't are an exception and a minorit.

I disagree with that. "Most kids" grow out of "chart pop" by about the age of 11-12 and graduate onto stuff that their parents and grandparents don't hear on the radio, Same as when I was young.

For example, my parents were well aware of Herman's Hermits and Freddie and The Dreamers, etc, as they were never off the radio. But by 13 I was ignoring them and listening to Velvet Underground, Pink Floyd, The Nice, Buffalo Springfield etc, who were never,or rarely, given any airplay back then. In the same way today, kids listen to bands and artistes that are totally outside their parents' awareness...and in fact the "non-commercial" scene is even more fragmented now with a whole host of websites and magazines (sometimes download only)exposing artistes who are unknown in the mainstream "chart pop" world.

And a lot of those artistes draw inspiration from the 60s and 70s, in the same way that those of the 60s and 70s often drew inspiration from the 40s and 50s, particularly the blues stuff of that era.

People into folk, though, in both eras, are I'll agree, definitely in a minority.

Same as it ever was.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Jim Martin
Date: 02 Oct 13 - 05:43 AM

Just realised that the Para Handy I had in mind was in the late 50's/early 60's - didn't realise later series had been made!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auU6Zdkun_I

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 02 Oct 13 - 05:37 AM

- I may well be wrong, but I don't think Phil Cunningham could've written it because at the time it was on TV, I think he may have been too young!

Exactly, the underlying point was ofcourse the tune linked to wasn't the para handy tune at all but 'Manus Lunny's Terracotta Plower Pop' by Phil Cunningham

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,Allan Conn
Date: 02 Oct 13 - 05:31 AM

"the Brits became too sophisticated for their own good." I think the original poster was asking about the lack of folk music in London and maybe England generally. I don't think Scottish folk music has suffered the same so maybe using the word "Brits" is a bit misleading. Saying that I think the way the music was sometimes packaged (ie the likes of White Heather Club) and presented didn't sit well with the younger generation when I was younger but we still knew the songs etc. There is a thriving folk scene her in the Borders (as there will be in many parts of Scotland) with lots of youngsters, mostly girls for some reason, playing fiddle music. I was into punk rock in the late 70s but still knew many Scottish songs from watching and lsitening to the Corries on TV every week. There was no stigma in liking both. Youngsters here still seem to know the songs and happily join in during our pub sessions.