Subject: RE: The state of the 'cat
From: Richard Bridge - PM
Date: 28 Jul 08 - 04:28 AM

My understanding of the country side of things is distant - it is not my chosen music, but I have read (here) that country is now stylistically distinct from country and Western, and that in some country circles the debate "is teh modern music really country, or s it just pop" is heard - but there is no touchstone equivalant to folk's much argued 1954 definition.

Blues nowadays worries me. How can pretty well any modern musician relate to the concerns expressed or exemplified in most early blues? On the other hand, Chicago blues fathered (IMHO) the great rock and pop era of the late 60s and early 70s although I am less clear of its conection to what was then called "soul".

The absence of discussions related to those communities perhaps indicates that the 'cat has changed (if it was ever like that) much as some would argue that folk has moved on and is no longer the ethnomusicologist's concept that spawned the 1954 definition. Oddly, I went looking the other day for the "folk and blues" mission statement that I was sure I remembered from the days when I first came here, but could no longer find it. Has it gone? Did I dream it?


But I and many others still come here several times a day, so it must be doing something right!