The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #121085   Message #2642526
Posted By: Jack Blandiver
28-May-09 - 04:22 AM
Thread Name: Are 'Folk Arts' Elitist?
Subject: RE: Are 'Folk Arts' Elitist?
SoP - can you hear the sound of one hand crapping?

I'm assuming that's an attempt at humour rather than a typo, but whatever the case one is reminded of an anecdote in which a young James Jacson sprung the old koan on Sun Ra, who answered: a breeze, Jacson! A breeze!.

That has got to be one of the most pretentious and meaningless things I ever read on here.

Pretentious? Moi? Meaningless? Well, to an inveterate folky (such as yourself) maybe it is, but I was brought up as much on Davie Stewart's Dowie Dens as I was on Cage's 4'33", and more important to me altogether were the sleeve notes to a record called Alchemy by the Third Ear Band where dualities are discarded in favour of the Tao and each piece is as alike or as unalike as trees, grass and crickets. My first musical love is Free Improvisation & even to this day much of my free time is spent optimising configurations on a drumkit I call The Obelisk (just yesterday I added the 4 antique Burmese kyeezee gongs my father-in-law picked up for £8 at a car boot sale a couple of weeks back) or else exploring the acoustic resonances arising from playing my old Hofner Congress in conjunction with Nepalese singing bowls. In such a music change is the organic constancy of the entire narrative aesthetic - and it's a principle I abide by in my storytelling & traditional ballad / folk song singing too. So once a Free Improviser, always a Free Improviser; and all sound is found sound after all, even that of a Dylan wannabe.