"Where is that claim?"
"I've put it up already Richard - do you really wish to do so again - probably save a bit of time if I do
Subject: RE: 'Historical' Ballads
From: Steve Gardham - PM
Date: 19 Apr 11 - 05:14 PM
You're now changing my 95% into 100%, Jim.
"Steve Roud's book deals with what went on among ordinary people in England. "
Yet Roud tore down the barriers between what the ordinary people sang and what it has always been believed they actually made to express their own emotions and opinions
If he is right, the o.ps are still participating in a healthy living tradition in the karaoki venues in Britain - that has become the new folk music.
I don't think anybody is seriously claiming that, but that is the logic of the new definition.
"Liking has everything to do with which songs survived"
Liking has nothing to do with defining the genre of a song - I like some operatic arias, but they remain what they are
Why the singers sang what they did is a question that needs addressing, but I don't think the term "audiences" is a helpful one in this respect
I believe the songs survived because they had something to say about the lives and communities of the people who sang them
It is inconceivable to me that people in these circumstances actually learned songs they didn't like
The Tradition ended when print, radio, manufactured entertainment... replaced the home-made songs
That was when the ordinary people (hate that term) ceased to be creative participants in their culture and became passive obd=servers of it.
We wer told a story by a man in Winterton in Norfolk, Jim Larner (no relation as far as we could make out).
He described an old man walking into the local pub, 'The Fishermans Return' where Sam used to sing and seeing a new-fangled cats-whisker radio on the counter
He asked what it was and the publican told him that it was a gadget for bringing in music and news from London.
The old man swept the radio off the shelf and it smashed to pieces on the floor - it wasn't replaced till decades later.
That's what Mrs Laidlaw was saying taken to the extreme.
"I haven't seen many personal insults,"
Then you've been very selective in your reading - Steve is still trading in them
A have a PM from Steve that counts as hate mail - I have no intention of using it here, but I have it for future reference
I may get passionate and angry but I have not dealt in personal insults here and only do in return for persistent personal insulting from others elsewhere
Jim Carroll