The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #123431 Message #2724668
Posted By: Jack Blandiver
16-Sep-09 - 06:05 AM
Thread Name: What is The Tradition?
Subject: RE: What is The Tradition?
Maybe, but questioning the same accepted assumptions again and again, in the same way, with the same if you define that as this then they're the same thing arguments, gets a bit wearing.
Has anyone actually said that they're the same thing? I certainly haven't, and to assume that's what this is about is to miss the point entirely. Just because hip-hop and gagaku are both musics born of a venerable tradition doesn't make them the same thing, any more than heavy metal is the same as flamenco, or jazz is the same as xhoomi. Even The Horse Definition does not say all music is the same, it just says it's all folk music. The problem is one inherent in the nature of revivalist pedantry in which a couple of innocent enough general adjectives (i.e. folk and traditional) have somehow become Holy Nouns for a musical construct which on the one hand is as wonderfully diverse as all the thread titles on Mudcat would suggest, yet as anally narrow as the more religiously hysterical reactions on this thread would indicate.
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Have you any plans to publish more of your collections - songs and their context?
The Max Hunter Folk Song Collection serves as the perfect blueprint in on-line accessibility with fully annotated transcriptions and downloadable MP3s of all 1600 songs in the archive - making it an invaluable resource appealing to the casual enthusiast, singer and serious scholar alike. Shame there aren't more collections made available in this way - God knows there's plenty webspace out there and such a venture (with a nominal charge per download) could pay for itself. The web has the potential to be the ideal aural museum without the need for hard-copy which necessitates editorial intervention, interpretation and presentation to justify the expense. Topic did the VOTP series, and is presently lining up the Kennedy Archive for a similar treatment. How much better it would be if the entire archives were on-line and accessible to all.
Theoretical debates are all very well, but the importance of the real stuff of this heritage is beyond dispute. In this iPod age where one might wear the entire Max Hunter archive around one's neck as to barely notice its there, surely the time is ripe for these collectors to take advantage and maybe reep some genuine rewards for all their diligence and hard work?