The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #153720 Message #3610793
Posted By: Will Fly
19-Mar-14 - 05:10 AM
Thread Name: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
Subject: RE: Review: New book - Singing from the Floor
Yes, it's always difficult to respond to an anonymous GUEST - particularly one who thinks that "progress" is a transitive verb...
I hadn't realised that the folk world had leaders, and that the "top people" in it were doing things that one ought to follow. I live and learn.
As for the "you're only as good as your last gig" cliché, well, that's just what it is - a cliché.
Your original post, GUEST, posits a situation where folk has to move on, or to be seen to move on, to make some sort of progress if it has to survive - to be some sort of social force. What a far cry that view is from people just singing what they knew, or know; from people singing and playing and dancing for fun - at parties, at weddings, at social occasions in houses and pubs. Music for the hell of it - and who cares if it's not popular or mainstream or at the heart of cool culture. People will make music and they'll do just what they do.
I happen to play a lot of traditional tunes, jazz, ragtime, blues, music-hall, rock'n roll, southern funk. Why, I might even be a "top person" in my own village - a sort of legend in my own lunchtime.