Hi,

Ooh, this is a biggie. (I had to go to work first, or I wouldn't have had the time to answer.)

Let's see:
On the "rules": I can't imagine anyone to tick off the rules like that; this must be a constructed example. If it's not constructed out of generalisation, I would expect it to be constructed by condensing a much longer conversation. Faye, did you maybe press the man for a more exact justification than just "It's not traditional enough!"? Maybe he came to a point where he had to put it down to these rules, where he wouldn't have done so otherwise.

On the heritage policy: If the club wanted only musicians that specialised in heritage music, the organiser probably would have approached this differently. But if it was just about heritage music, I'm not sure how the organiser got the impression that Faye and her friend would be unwilling to play that. Still, if people feel they ought to be respected for what they believe to be a good choice of music, then the club and the organiser ought to be respected for doing the same. Obviously, they don't all see it the same way, but that's humans.

There's a general issue here, regarding heritage music, that most have probably heard before: Though people can ask for heritage music, music that existed in that shape through the generations, we have very little to determine what music looked like before. Even now, recorded music is only a window on how music is played. So the most we can ask for is actually music as it has been played for the last few generations. And indeed, that's usually what people want when they ask for heritage music, as this basically will give them music that all concerned know in that form.

There's a curious duality in the way heritage influences tradition. Counter to what one would expect, in most cases heritage is the lesser part in tradition: Think of how few traditions we have that existed in that same form even fifty years ago. Indeed, if heritage is the major part, that's an usually an indication a tradition is dying: If there's no interest in it any more, people will no longer add to it, and all that's left is what was done by those who went before. I guess that's part of what in folk music makes some people scared of having stress on heritage music. But the folk tradition, like any other stream of style, is defined in part by its extremes. If you were to outlaw heritage music, you would be narrowing the mainstream of traditional music. Then there would be a new extreme some people would dislike. One could forbid that as well, etc., but there's probably no benefit to folk music to do any such thing; it just makes the stream of folk music narrower. Let people search their own grail in traditional music, whether they're musicians, historians, or organisers.

On doing things outside the main stream: Of course it's OK to do so. If anyone wants to add something new or retrieve something old that isn't in the main stream of traditional music, that just means the folk tradition is alive. It's not messing; it's a kind of evolutionary process. Music historians at one point suggested an as yet unknown historical composer might have written all those great traditional tunes, but what really happens is that everyone in the tradition tinkers with it: Maybe just a word that has gone out of fashion, just a caesura, or equally shifting stuff around or rewriting it. And the versions fittest for survival in the tradition of that time survive, letting the tradition evolve to what fits its day. Those great tunes and songs exist and survive, not in spite of us changing them, because of us doing so. The problem with all this is, of course, that any specific change that is made may actually be worse; something that will eventually be left on the wayside of the road the tradition is travelling. Or it may be an improvement to some, but a destructon to others. So while everyone should feel free to add to the tradition, no-one should expect those changes to be accepted by all.

On the changes Faye and her friend made: Well, personally, I'm not a fan of adding instruments that the music wasn't written for. I feel that, generally, it subtracts from both the instrument and the music. That doesn't mean you can't play pan-pipes in the tradition of the British Isles, but to do it well would probably require developing a British Isles style of playing those pipes, as well as slight changes to the melodies to accommodate the instrument. But the change of the tune, the new lyrics and the new melody, I hope we'll hear more detail about those. Wouldn't it be a bit cruel to tell us about these improvements, yet not actually tell them what they are?

That's the short version of what I wanted to say, I guess. I hope it adds something to the discussion,
                                                                Mysha