The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #128012 Message #2865929
Posted By: glueman
17-Mar-10 - 08:00 AM
Thread Name: What defines a traditional song?
Subject: RE: What defines a traditional song?
"'Progress' isn't always positive."
I completely agree.
"Surely in our increasingly fragmented communities, in a world being driven to the point of exhaustion by consumer capitalism, we can recognize that, without being called 'sentimental'."
You can, but I'd say terms like 'fragmented communities' and 'exhaustion by consumer capital' are shaped by sentiment, if you think the answer is to sing old songs. I may be a square peg for seeing traditional music as one part of a compelling soundscape my generation (50 somethings) have inherited, rather than the single music worth the bother. I don't share the revival's obsession with folk music if it's to the exclusion of all others, or believe it's an honest response to the totality of where we are at musically. To maintain the railway analogy, you can seek out a preserved engine shed any weekend and see men and women keeping craft skills like alive, such as retubing a boiler or handlining a teak coach without ever believing steam power or wooden carriages are the answer to the nation's current public transport problems.
The myth I don't subscribe to is that folk music will die if it isn't performed. It may die if it isn't listened to (whatever 'die' means as Prince Charles might say) but there are enough exemplary recordings by singers closer to the mother lode than we can ever be to make such announcements appear neurotically sentimental. And anyway, there are those who are convinced the current generation can't add to the tradition in any meaningful way, meaning the best the living can do it repeat the words of the dead. I'm convinced folkies understand the scene for what it is and enjoy what we have without subscribing to sentimental myths or the arbitrary barriers of vested interests.