True Traditional Music

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: Stringsinger
Date: 27 Nov 09 - 06:28 PM

"I mean, if you look at the objectives of The International Council for Traditional Music (formerly The International Folk Music Council) which are: to further the study, practice, documentation, preservation and dissemination of traditional music, including folk, popular, classical and urban music, and dance of all countries. I think that just about covers it!"

What it covers is an attempt to dilute the definition to suit contemporary audiences.
I don't know anything about the International Council for Traditional Music but its
goals are amorphous and I don't think they cover it at all. I can see that they might want to preserve some commercial music and some classical but it ain't folk and never will be.
Popular music is music industry driven. Classical music is academy trained music. Urban music is a sub-genre of pop.

There is a tradition in the commercially-based popular music field but it ain't folk.
It's money-driven whether we like it or not.

Classical music is a tradition but it ain't folk. You learn that in music school, pure and simple.

Just because you like certain forms of music, that doesn't mean it qualifies as folk music.

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 27 Nov 09 - 06:41 PM

All musics operate with respect of community, tradition and process - all musics are, therefore, traditional - but not necessarily folk, which isn't really what this thread is about. I'd have a look at the ICTM if I were you; they were formerly the IFMC who came up with 1954 Definition in the first place. It's got nothing to do with dilution - on the contrary, it is taking a serious look at ethnomusicology.

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 27 Nov 09 - 10:42 PM

Apparently the IFMC is a British invention. I've never even heard of it over here. But then, I am not a musical scholar. I just play stuff. If I had, I'd not feel bound by their definition. You are correct, this thread is not directly concerned with the definition of folk music. There are umptybillion threads on Mudcat that have explored that question with no agreement. It's a valid discussion, and perhaps yet another thread can be started. I wanted to talk about the whole process of how music evolves, and what role music of the past has to do with that evolution.

Thanks for the post though, SoP.

Jerry

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 28 Nov 09 - 04:14 AM

"I wanted to talk about the whole process of how music evolves, and what role music of the past has to do with that evolution."

It's an interesting question Jerry. When you go back to look at early rock and rock, its roots and antecedents (blues, hillbilly music, etc) are really obvious. They become less so over the years, as rock music develops as a genre in its own right. Yet, you can trace the evolution of rock and see how one development/innovation led to the next or came about as a reaction against what came before (e.g, punk developing as a reaction to 70s soft rock and AOR, but with it's roots in 60s garage band music).

I wonder now, though, if rock is in a post-evolutionary phase? Anyone can access its entire history at the click of a mouse, as well as its antecedents, related genres, spin-offs and blind alleys, and create a music that doesn't necessarily naturally follow on from what came before, but takes its cues from a gigantic historic pick and mix. Exciting times, huh?

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 28 Nov 09 - 04:31 AM

That would be "early rock and roll". Early "rock and rock" is much more one dimensional...

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 28 Nov 09 - 04:42 AM

I am not a musical scholar. I just play stuff.

Me too, just as a Horse Definitioner I carry in my heart the ideal that all music at least can be folk when it occurs in an essentially amateur / recreational / designated folk context. What the horse definition does is to put individual human beings back into the equation, whereas The 1954 Definition & the Folk Process remove them altogether, dealing instead with the collective mass. Never felt part of the collective mass myself - who does?

When I said the Folk Process was dead back there, I was, of course, being ironic, though from Jim Carroll's point of view it's as dead as a proverbial door nail simply because it no longer applies to the strictures of those sorts of songs in their pure Traditional context which no longer exists anyway. They have been removed from their natural habitat; a natural habitat which is no more; they are now the reserve of taxonomists and taxidermists - I avoid their threads because they smell of formaldehyde.

Traditional Musical Process is part and parcel of all music however; it is the creative urge by which musicians can formulate their essentially cultural craft and put it to whatever use they see fit. It as never been more alive than it is today. As Ian Curtis once sang: the past is now part of my future; the present is well out of hand. Exciting times indeed!

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 28 Nov 09 - 04:59 AM

their essentially cultural craft

Should be their essentially creative cultural craft.

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: MikeL2
Date: 28 Nov 09 - 06:03 AM

Hi

Well said SOP......This thread develops along depressingly similar lines to the vast majority of threads here. Your view makes me just a little happier that music is alive and well.

I woke up today feeling more cynical than usual and I would forward the view that the difference between traditional music and "marketed music" is that with traditional no one remembers who is legally entitled to claim the royalties and to market it music for financial gain.

Good music ( this is extremely subjective to individuals) exists as a means of enjoyment and entertainment whether you are a musician or a listener.

My own slant on this is that for me music is like wine.....if you like it, it is good. The doesn't mean that what other people like isn't. !!!!

Cheers " holding my glass of Rioja

Mikel

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 28 Nov 09 - 06:42 AM

If the definition of folk music is music that doesn't sell, my albums are pure folk... Maybe that's because I have never written a song with any thought about whether people will even like it, let alone buy a recording of it. I write for my own enjoyment, because it is such a delight to play with words and melodies. The whole process of song writing for pleasure hasn't changed since the time of the Greeks. If through some weird quirk, one of my songs became commercially viable, it would be unintentional. The song would still be small, and done for the pleasure of creation. My other writings are done for the same purpose.

Folk music isn't measured by units sold.

Jerry

Glad to see all of you folks back...

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: ard mhacha
Date: 28 Nov 09 - 06:58 AM

Seamus Ennis and his quest for the real tradition,
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/weekend/2009/1128/1224259585306.html

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 28 Nov 09 - 07:56 AM

Thanks for that link. Seamus Ennis is among my all time musical heroes along with Jordi Savall, Sun Ra, Gegorio Paniagua, Don Cherry, Jim Eldon, Harry Cox, Glen Sweeney, Daevid Allen, Derek Bailey, Michael Hurley, Ian Curtis, Frank Zappa, Rene Zosso, Rahsaan Roland Kirk etc. etc.

See The Seamus Ennis Appreciation Society thread.

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 28 Nov 09 - 07:58 AM

Forgot to mention Peter Bellamy! Shame on me!

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: Severn
Date: 28 Nov 09 - 10:34 AM

Somme aspects of the oral tradition and folk process will NEVER die!


As long as there is a traditional context, any song used in it becomes a folk song. I give the example of the lulabye. When my daughter was in infancy, I would sing her to sleep using all the traditional lullabyes I remembered while sitttting in a dark room next to her crib rocking in a in a rocking chair. If she didn't want to go to sleep that particular night and I ran out of traditional lullabyes, I sang any slow song I could think of until the job was done and that became a folk song the second I sang it, EVEN if it reverted back to its origins the moment I stopped. I've heard several mothers use the Elvis hit "I Can't Help Falling In Love With You" as a lullabye, so Elvis didn't just borrow "O Sole Mio" and "Plaisir D'Amour", he managed to give back as well.

I've marched in cadence to Manfred Mann's "Doo Way Diddy" just like I have to the traditional derivatives of "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon", "The Crawdad Song", Civil War era tunes while re-enacting or any other "Jody Calls" from US Army basic training.

The "Jody Call" is another context where new verses are made and passed on in a "traditional Manner", as are Barracks songs and kids' playground songs, both as often as not parodies of familiar tunes P.D. and popular. Some of the parents' military songs from the world wars even made it to the playgrounds amidst"Mine Eyes Have Seen The Glory Of The Burning Of The School" and the like, as I remember singing:

First Marine bought the bean, parlez-vous
Second marine cooked the bean, parlez vous
Third Marine ate the bean
And PFFFT all over the submarine
Hinky-dinky parlez-vous

Third Marine jumped the fence
And milked a cow with a monkey wrench

...and on into infinity. Or taunts like :

Roses are red
Violets are blue
You've got a nose
Like a B-52


....So professional singer-songwriters be damned, there are "Traditional Folk Songs" being created in barracks and on playgrounds as we speak, and as long as there are soldiers and children the folk process will never die and the cycle will continue.

(Maybe Joe Hickerson, if he's reading this, can write a NEW final verse to "Where Have All The Flowers Gone" adressing this part of the cycle).

The work gangs are pretty much gone here, but anything you sing to yourself in rhythm as you hoe your garden becomes as much a folk song as "Ain't No More Cane On The Brazos" until the task is done, after which it can go on back to its original context once its temporary purpose is served.

My mother is 94 and is in a seniors home. Once when she was in the rehab building and I was waiting for her, I heard the muzak in trhe building playing Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry and Jackie Wilson. There are people in the home in their 70's now to whom that music was the sundtrack of their lives and the same age my late pre-war 1941 born oldest sister would've been if she were still alive, people considered "old folks" listening to music my parents couldn't stand when my sister played it.

Choose your own examples. Draw your own conclusions.

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: GUEST
Date: 29 Nov 09 - 12:57 PM

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