"but I would rather listen to a passionate musical performer....."
Sorry Cap'n - not for the first time you've lost me completely.
Are you suggesting that passionate singers aren't competent, or that competent singers lack passion - can't we have both?
Good singing, as far as I'm concerned, is a balance of the two - surely?
This thread, which you started, is about our relationship with the media. If we are going to have any credibility with them - with arts bodies in order to further our music - with the world in general, we are going to have to be good at what we do and how we present what we believe to be important.
By the way, for most people musicality isn't found under a goosberry bush but has to be worked for; it's part of an aquired technique for most of us.
Marje,
I agree with much of what you say regarding what goes on at SOME clubs and festivals; unfortunately we are judged by everything that goes on and quite often it's the crap that floats to the top. Our image is one of deliberate amaturism in the worst sense - "we're only doing it for fun, so why make the effort?"
"I bet Walter Pardon never had a singing lesson!"
This is one of those lovely "folksong is as unconcious as birdsong" arguments which sinks to the ground the moment that somebody like Joe Heaney or Paddy Tunney or Phil Tanner or Harry Cox opened their mouths.
Let me tell you about Walter.
He grew up in a household where singing was a regular event, Harvest Suppers, Christmas, Birthdays, Agricultural Workers Union meetings.... whenever.
Unlike those of his own age, he took to the old songs and memorised them, though the opportunity for him to sing them wasn't great - 'older people's privilege'.
He sat for years learning songs and singing from his two uncles, who both died at the beginning of the 40s When he returned home from the war he began writing out his family's songs in an exercise book, painstakingly filling in gaps from other family members. He kept the tunes alive by playing them on a melodeon.
Shortly after this the last of his family died and he was left at home alone, singing to himself and playing the melodeon.
In the early seventies his nephew persuaded him that the songs were important, so he bought a tape recorder and spent four months recording about a dozen songs - we have a hilarious recording of him describing the process, blow by blow.
When he started to sing in clubs he would practice each song carefully until he was totally satisfied with it. He seldom forgot words, and on the few occasions he did he would work twice as hard to make sure it didn't happen again. He was his own fiercest critic. He would go through this process every time he sang in public - why - because he passionately believed that the songs were worth it, especially as they were all his family's songs.
One week-end, a few years before he died, he told us that, as he could no longer do justice to the songs, we would no longer sing in public - he never did again.
I wonder if you can name me anybody on the scene who has put in a fraction of that work throughout their lives.
Personally, I find people who use Walter, who quietly dedicated his life to the singing of folk songs (a term he used constantly), or anybody like him, as an excuse for not putting in the work on singingmore than a little nauseating.
As I have said before, if we don't take ourselves and our music seriously, no other bugger will, and folk music will remain an object of ridicule - simple as that.
Jim Carroll