The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #28803   Message #364635
Posted By: Uncle_DaveO
28-Dec-00 - 01:07 PM
Thread Name: playing traditional music correctly
Subject: RE: playing traditional music correctly
Seems to me,if you go back to the title of the thread, it's "playing music correctly".

"Correctly"? What does that mean? Depends upon what you see as the purpose of playing.

If the purpose is to say, "This is repeating what other people in the past did in dead tradition, and no other", it's one thing. If the purpose is to say, "I hear a spirit and process of music that's been handed down, continually evolving in its details, and I've allied myself to it and now I'm making it mine to carry it forward in that spirit," that's another thing altogether.

The first approach is a sort of dead copy-cat approach. The second approach, seems to me, is what keeps the tradition alive and growing.

Dave Oesterreich