e f d s s examinations

Subject: RE: e f d s s examinations
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Aug 06 - 04:11 AM

I really don't want to give the impression that I am either anti-EFDSS or Comhaltas. There are merits (or potential merits) in both. Comhaltas did play a great part in protecting the music in the dark days and I have nothing but respect for the wonderful members who devoted and still devote their time to passing on the music; many of them are or were my friends.
The same goes for the pioneers of English traditional music.
In the case of both organisations it seems that somewhere along the way they have gone astray; EFDSS has become a nonentity and CCE have evolved into an influential and wealthy bureaucracy who has taken it upon itself to re-invent Irish music (and particularly dance).
As things stand at present Ireland does not need Comhaltas as the music is undergoing a tremendous renaissance without it.
I believe England does need an authoritative and knowldgeable body to pull together all the disparate threads and give traditional music some direction.   
Jim Carroll
PS Miltown Malbay (the home of traditional music!)

Subject: RE: e f d s s examinations
From: The Sandman
Date: 05 Aug 06 - 08:11 AM

I would agree with that jim. i hope you too have noticed that efdss remit regarding song is not just resricted to england.Iam still awaiting replies as to what they have done nationally and internatiionally to instigate tradiional or folk songs. come on efdss prove to us that you are not a nonentity, as a former member i would be very pleased to be proved wrong.

Subject: RE: e f d s s examinations
From: The Sandman
Date: 06 Aug 06 - 06:42 AM

Iwould suggest a suitable person to lobby is the mp for romford Mr rosindell see efdss promotion thread.

Subject: RE: e f d s s examinations
From: shepherdlass
Date: 06 Aug 06 - 07:24 PM

Interesting thread. It seems logical that, if you can do a degree in traditional music, then you could conceivably do graded exams too - so long as they're not deadly dull (I have awful memories of bashing away at the same 3 classical pieces for 3 or 4 months at a time).

Would it be traditional? Who knows, but then that same question applies to almost any activity within the modern scene (eg, "are festivals traditional?"; "is touring traditional?", or indeed "is Martin Carthy traditional?" etc).

As for whether you CAN effectively grade this kind of music, perhaps we can learn from other non-classical forms. To shed light on this, does anyone have experience of the Associated Board's jazz exams?

Subject: RE: e f d s s examinations
From: The Sandman
Date: 07 Aug 06 - 06:42 AM

No unfortunately ,I dont. But I do think comhaltas examination system
is fairly well done, apart from taking into consideration the difficulty of the peices for differrent instruments.DickMiles

Subject: RE: e f d s s examinations
From: shepherdlass
Date: 07 Aug 06 - 06:40 PM

The problems with judging different instruments are probably the same whatever the genre - I clearly remember being praised twice in classical singing exams for my wonderful breath control: this showed the examiner to be a non-singer/non-wind player or they'd have noticed asthmatic old me cheating all the way through. And then, examiners who are pianists are often thrown by how much trickier scales can be on, say, a clarinet. So, yes, it's easy to see that things could get even more problematic with umpteen varieties of pipes, concertinas, etc.