We're All Revivalists Now!

This quip was made in response to Reynard's preceding claim that It's time to claim the name for ourselves; we are now the traditional singers, we are the tradition. He's not the first to suggest this; such claims have been made throughout the Revival I'm sure and I dare say the feelings have been sincere enough too, however so fanciful in respect of the nature of Folk as a Cultural Theology. Thinking about it in a little more depth I think it (i.e. my quip) carries more weight in respect of the impact of Revival Expectations on even the most pure-blooded of extant traditional singers, or else the very notion that such innocence might exist and persist in a modern society. Maybe I should have said We're All Post-Revivalists Now...

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The Truly Tradition Singer is one who draws in the breath with which to then excite into harmonic vibration his or her vocal cords by controlled exhalation with which to further modify with the aperatus of the oral cavity. By this means might we find the common ground of everything from Opera to Khoomie, all of them the consequence of an unbroken human tradition which not only predates the advent of our very humanity but also unites us with our fellow primates (Gibbons are especially musical* in this respect - I can recommend the morning songs of both Pilated and Siamangs) and many other species. We were singing before ever we were talking, and in this act we have retained the same atavistic values and virtues as our earliest hominid forebears, though maybe this isn't the time nor the place to go too deeply into that. Suffice it to say the earliest examples of Cro-Magnon song were never recorded, much less collected; another job for our time-travelling musicologists I think...

* Like Folk, Music can be something we may bestow upon any sound regardless of the intention of the composer, human or otherwise, thus giving the lie to having never heard a horse sing a song.