Marj,
Sorry, I know you said you didn't want a long argument - now you seem to have hold of Br'er Rabbit's tar baby and can't let it go. It's partly your own fault for putting up such good arguments.
I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree.
I see no reason why people can't go on enjoying and appreciating traditional music without having to claim that they are part of the process that created and perpetuated it. It's not a value judgment, merely a question of definition of where we stand in relation to it. I believe that we revivalists bear a responsibility to the music we have borrowed; at least to the extent of passing it on as it was passed on to us. The best summing up I know is that we should treat it as if we are looking after something precious for a friend.
I have spent the last thirty odd years recording traditional singers and I know that many of them who gave us their songs and stories, placed a value on them and wanted them to survive; many were far more conservative than I am about how they should be performed.
From your posting, I think we are in total agreement about most other things.
Dick
I haven't heard the Wilsons; I believe they were over here earlier in the year (the Spalpín weekend?), but couldn't make it. I did hear mixed reports about them but I wouldn't want to comment without having heard them myself. If they are, as reported, a harmony group, I'm afraid I overdosed on harmony a long time ago. For me, apart from the odd ritual song, harmony militates totally against the narrative nature of the tradition. The Watersons were fine on ' Frost and Fire' but when they harmonised everything I'm afraid they succeeded in doing what I have often heard folk song performers often being accused of; making everything sound the same.
I wonder why you think Harry Cox would have used accompaniment if he had been born fifty years later. He had every opportunity to do so; he could play melodeon and fiddle and there were certainly enough people around him who would have been happy to encourage him, if only to prove us stick-in-the-muds who claimed that the British song tradition was an unaccompanied one. Walter Pardon also could play fiddle and melodeon, but again, he made no attempt to accompany himself and he told us on several occasions that, while he had a couple of enjoyable evenings with friends who accompanied his songs at private house-gatherings, he always regarded it as a bit of fun, but totally unsuited to his way of singing.
I'm sure you are aware that there have been a number of Irish traditional singers who also play instruments – Mary Anne Carolan, one of the finest singers, played concertina, but never attempted to accompany herself.
I do remember early efforts to accompany traditional singers as being utter disasters, the foremost one being Robin Hall accompanying Jeannie Robertson – oh dear!!!
I won't mention what I think of Peter Kennedy's arrogant vandalism in dubbing accompaniments on the BBC field recordings.
Accompaniment is fine, but it requires a great deal of skill, otherwise it doesn't - (accompany that is) it dominates the song and at best is unnecessary and at worst, intrusive.
Reasons for accompaniment should always be made on artistic grounds, never commercial ones.
Jim Carroll