The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #95082 Message #1851300
Posted By: GUEST,lox
05-Oct-06 - 03:36 PM
Thread Name: Ewan MacColl's accent
Subject: RE: Ewan MacColl's accent
I think (and I believe that Brian might already suspect this) that he and I are in fact much closer together in our views than our chosen manner of expression would indicate.
In fact, reading through our discussion, I find a different perspective emerging that renders our disagreement obsolete and unsustainable.
I am starting to believe now that if we are to disagree, it must be along the lines simply of who is a good performer and who isn't.
The recurring worry is that if someone doesn't do their preferred option well, then it won't sound good or convincing to an audience.
Likewise though, if they do a good Job then it will presumably be both.
Folk music will of course evolve. Romeo and juliet became west side story, and thank god it did because it was a masterpiece in it's own right.
However, seeing shakespeares version as it would have been performed in his day, with the cultural context explained beforehand and even perhaps a little glossary of terms relevant to his era that are hard to relate to this day and age, when it is done well, is such a rewarding experience that to let it die out because we have west side story would be a great loss to us and a gaping hole in the riches of our cultural closet.
In the same vein, there was a bloody awful modernisation of the same story in the 80's called chinatown about gangs in an american city, (though which city I have forgotten). It would serve to support the argument that shakespeare should be left well alone.
Equally, many an amateur dramatics society has bored the hell out of their audience by fumbling through lines that clearly have no real meaning to them in a way that has as much real impact on it's audience as a speech in swahili would at a Conservative party conference.
"I don't like that accent" is balanced by "I don't like that interpretation"
"That singer simply doesn't have the ear to reproduce that dialect" is balanced by "That singer simply doesn't have the cultural understanding to translate that song as they have."
Both artforms, because they are clearly different, are equally valid. Both might need a little explanation beforehand for different reasons (unless updating also means recontextualising according to 21st century norms and metaphors etc, which might be an extremely tricky procedure).
One attempts to preserve the story so that its meaning isn't lost, the other to preserve the feel of the song as it might have been heard however many hundreds of years ago.
I would precurse a rendition of the original form with a synopsis of the story, and little reference to certain key words or phrases that might otherwise seem unfamiliar, before entertaining my audience.
They would hopefully go home having been entertained by the music, the unfamiliar sound, the story and that feeling of being a bit special because they knew something they didn't know before about the dialect of the song which not many other people are likely to know. They would probably forget what they had learned within a few hours, but it would be in their minds just long enough to make the performance just that little bit more magical.