BS: Millenium Folk Revival??

Subject: Millenium Folk Revival??
From: folk1234
Date: 15 Feb 01 - 09:48 AM

Can it be? Or is it just my imagination? It seems to me that I'm hearing more and more folk and traditional music on TV commercials. One plays the City of New Orleans, several are playing Mountain fiddle music. Could this be the start of something new? Or rather something old becoming new in the mind of the public.
We're told that, as a consuming culture, we do as the TV commercials tell us to do. Maybe Madison Avenue is (unintentionally, of course) doing something good!

Subject: RE: BS: Millenium Folk Revival??
From: Naemanson
Date: 15 Feb 01 - 09:59 AM

You might have something. My Daughter and I went into Strawberry's the other day. For those who don't know this is a chain of music stores run by kids selling music to kids. The music played on the store system is usually one of the various modern rock bands played loudly. This day there was a celtic band playing a wild medley of reels. You could have knocked me over with a feather!

Subject: RE: BS: Millenium Folk Revival??
From: Ranks
Date: 15 Feb 01 - 10:04 AM

I wouldn´t mind a Folk revival at all. As long as we do not have to many teachers involved and political correctness does not prevent people singing traditional songs. If you see the success of people like the Corrs and Loreena McKennit and others , the interest in Celtic music is there. It only has to be performed professionally. And not as it used to be, that people who knew three chords clim up on stage and sing whisky in the jar.

Greetings

Ranks

Subject: RE: BS: Millenium Folk Revival??
From: sledge
Date: 15 Feb 01 - 10:29 AM

I love the idea of a strong resurgant folk scene, I'm doing my bit, so far my parents have been treated to Chris While, julie mathews, Ashley Hutchings and Phil Beer, even going so far as to buy a cd or two and now concede that its not all diddly dee and then everyone dies. Next month I take a friend to see Martin Carthy and Norma Waterson, the Crusade continues.

Sledge

Subject: RE: BS: Millenium Folk Revival??
From: GUEST,sam
Date: 15 Feb 01 - 11:32 AM

Last week I went to see " O Brother, Where Art Thou". some wonderful music, and a fun story. When the movie ended, ther was a long segment of acoustic music while the credits ran. only a couple of poeple out of a full theatre got up to leave. Usualy its a mad stampede to get out to the parking lot. Almost the entire theatre sat in thier places, read the credits, and LISTENED TO THE MUSIC! Most of these folks had never heard of ralph stanley, and didn't have a clue who the Carter family was. Could it be, a folk revival?

Subject: RE: BS: Millenium Folk Revival??
From: Dave (the ancient mariner)
Date: 15 Feb 01 - 11:38 AM

we're baaaackkk.. hee hee! Young people get tired of heavy metal and rap and re-discover their roots. Yes lots of young people exposed to Celtic music and folk are interested. Folk/Celtic is certainely alive, and played by young people in Nova Scotia Yours, Aye. Dave

Subject: RE: BS: Millenium Folk Revival??
From: MudGuard
Date: 15 Feb 01 - 12:47 PM

btw, Millennium (with double n!) derives from Latin mille (thousand) and annus (year, annium = genitive plural).
Millenium therefore derives from Latin mille (thousand) and anus (medical term for a whole at the rear of your body...)
;-)
MudGuard

Subject: RE: BS: Millenium Folk Revival??
From: Jim the Bart
Date: 15 Feb 01 - 02:37 PM

No! NO! No! No! No!

You can't let the culture vultures get their hands on this music. POP Culture is voracious; it sniffs around, gulps you down, chews on you a while and spits you out before it moves on. And what it devours is never quite the same again.

I've seen this happen to country music three specific times in my musical career. Each time the cycle was fundamentally the same:
1. Articles are written highlighting the-music-that-you-love. Unfortunately they have focused on all the wrong aspects of it.
2. Suddenly, there are people showing up, asking for all the songs you always hated because they read about them in the Sunday supplement.
3.High-rolling goombahs move in, opening plastic-coated replicas of real performing venues. Everybody cheers - more places to play!! Meanwhile
4. The small, neighborhood people who have been scraping along for years, keeping the flame burning, are surrounded by slick operators who are grabbing the big audience. The big audience likes their drinks RIGHT NOW. In NEW CUPS! And doesn't this place smell a little FUNKY?? At the same time
5. New young, fresh faces learn enought songs from the "MTV Big Book of Real Folk Music" to start gigging. The "new canon" is essentially Grateful Dead versions of traditional songs. This is all you hear and all you're expected to play. Anything else marks you as "quaint" or "self-indulgent" and not competitive. Suddenly
6. The big spotlight moves on to the next big thing. Maybe Rumanian calypso jazz or Def Jam Suburban Comedy. Now the shiny new coffee house-replicas are booking only Rum/ca/jazz and DJS Comix. So the folk fans go back to the "old same place", there for all those years and
7. It's gone. Bought out by some gentrifying Sumbich at the peak and sold to a Peruvian restaurant owner when the bottom fell out.

That's the way it will happen (more or less). There will be a tough transition period during which those caught in the stampede will regroup, dust themselves off, and go back to doing what they were doing before it all started. Maybe the next time it comes back a little stronger; maybe some of the best stuff doesn't survive at all.

It's not as if this hasn't happened to folk music before. And it's survived. But Pop Culture commoditizes things and anything that becomes a commodity loses some of its essence. And I hate to see it happen when there really appears to be a strong grass roots, counter-culture thing happening.

I read a quote from Conway Twitty once, who attributed his longevity to never having a number one hit. He said something to the effect that once you get to number one it's all down hill from there. If your next song is "only" number two, everyone thinks you're slipping. Maybe we can give the pop mavens zydeco - or calypso again! Yeah! That's it - a new calypso revival! Someone call up Harry Belafonte. . .

Subject: RE: BS: Millenium Folk Revival??
From: folk1234
Date: 15 Feb 01 - 03:44 PM

Thank you, Mudguard. I'm truly embarrassed. I honestly looked it up in my 1953 edition of The American College Dictionary. I just failed to type what the dictonary said.

Subject: RE: BS: Millenium Folk Revival??
From: Doctor John
Date: 15 Feb 01 - 04:50 PM

MudGuard, A whole: do you mean whale or vole or mole perhaps. Oh I get it! I remember some school boy poem where a thousand ... heaved and strained in the heat of the mid day sun. Abob, Son of Babob or something. No I won't give the hole lot the though police are on the 'net these days.
Dr John

Subject: RE: BS: Millenium Folk Revival??
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 15 Feb 01 - 05:08 PM

I think there are some people here who need to take their medication more often........

We lost more members of the folk club when the brewery changed the beer, than any electric caterwauling or Peruvian masterchefs ever disposed of.....

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Millenium Folk Revival??
From: Jim the Bart
Date: 15 Feb 01 - 06:29 PM

You're right Liz. Feeling better noooowww....

Subject: RE: BS: Millenium Folk Revival??
From: Hawker
Date: 15 Feb 01 - 07:01 PM

HEY......DID I MISS SOMETHING?

A FOLK REVIVAL?

HELL... I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW IT HAD DIED!

Lucy

Subject: RE: BS: Millenium Folk Revival??
From: Ranks
Date: 16 Feb 01 - 05:31 AM

You are propably right in one way Hawker. It never died in my tape Recorder or CD play and on my accordion.

You have to see the business though. In the last years it was nearly impossible to see goo british or Irish Artists in Germany. And even if they had been here, there would not be more than 20 people listening.

Theb general interest in this music has died out. It arose again as I mentioned above by Michael Flatley or Loreena McKinnet. An even there i doubt that their fans do really know that they are listening to Folk Music.

Reviving the Folk scene does not mean to take friends to see the old farts (nothing against Martin Carthy, he is a star). It does take new people with a different approach to what a stage show is. No endless tuning, not acting as teacher in hour long introductions about poltical correctness. Then the repertoire should not be copied from other bands. Here in Germany "Irish Bands" nearly have the same repertoire (50% Pogues/50 % Dubliners) and bore people to death. I do not mind seeing a traditional Folk Band on MTV at all. In these days that is how a revival starts.

Ranks

Subject: RE: BS: Millenium Folk Revival??
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 16 Feb 01 - 06:03 AM

I agree with the sentiment "it has never been away".

As Gary Aspey once said "The song says 'It's all Rock and Roll to me'. Well take it a step further - It's all Jig and Reel to me!"

The intrinsics of the Music are essentialy the same whatever you call it. There are some fine artists out there doing clever stuff. It doesn't matter that it is with Electrics or Synths. I certainly agree that the general pop scene leaves a lot to be desired but when you get acts like Coldplay, David Grey and the Divine Comedy bringing out wonderful original stuff we will always have an alternative.

Don't let 'em know it's folk though! Let's keep it a secret eh?

Dave the Gnome