The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #166789 Message #4013866
Posted By: Jack Campin
15-Oct-19 - 06:07 PM
Thread Name: The current state of folk music in UK
Subject: RE: The current state of folk music in UK
An example of a folk event that is slowly circling the drain with stultifying uniformity:
Scottish Fiddle Festival
It's always been ethnically exclusive, a spinoff of the moribund "Celtic music" idea expanded to include the equally Aryan traditions of Scandinavia and North America. Coffee-coloured or black violin traditions don't get a look in, even for such au lait varieties as Greek or Romanian fiddling.
Most of the people you'll see on that billing are unknown outside Edinburgh. Probably they don't have the money to do anything different now - Rhiannon Giddens would be way over budget - but Abdo Dagher or Aurel Mandache wouldn't exactly have broken the bank when they were alive, and they'd have brought musical ideas that would have been new and inspirational to almost everybody participating.