The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #134079 Message #3047521
Posted By: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
06-Dec-10 - 12:11 PM
Thread Name: Getting started with singing ballads?
Subject: RE: Getting started with singing ballads?
No toes to be trod on, DMG - at least none that I can feel anyway what with this bloody cold. No indeed - just making an observation that's all & I dare say it's different for everyone, which is how it ought to be. For me a ballad operates in terms of its own textual jouissance so all a ballad singer has to do is put it there, which is how the old singers did it - almost mediumistically. Mind you, I hear these things in terms of imagery anyway - the narratives are very much a secondary thing, which might have something to do with my ADD, or the fact that there are always other factors underlying the story. I love singing a ballad like Earl Brand because the story barely comes into it. Maybe this true of other ballad narratives, which wouldn't work as stories because they'd be too dull, but as ballads they really kick off, like a film as oppose to a novel.