Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions

Subject: RE: Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 17 May 06 - 10:59 AM

Greg, to me it makes you a puzzle. How can both/all three types of music be equally relevant to you? That is very close to where I started - how can you be equally placed to know and interpret on the one hand the Louisiana tradition and on the other the English?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions
From: BuckMulligan
Date: 17 May 06 - 11:21 AM

"relevant to you?" How does one determine what music is "relevant" to one? Again you seem to be committed to a notion that there's something inherent in a given musical form or tradition that makes it "relevant" (whatever that means) only to a particular ethnic group. Granted that any ethnic music is going to have a greater impact on members of the group whence it arises, but that hardly indicates any sort of exclusivity. Do you expect that only French Canadians will be moved by St Anne's Reel?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 17 May 06 - 11:48 AM

No, it's the other way round - I expect people to have an innate connection to their historical antecedents, what you might call "race memory" (an awkward phrase, today). I expect the English to be fonder of Waterloo than the French, and the Italians to love the Tiber and the legends of Romulus and Remus. I expect the Irish to feel the history of Ireland as one of the major European centres of culture (and free from snakes). People may alter themselves, but must always grow from their roots.

What is "Roots Music" unless it grows from roots?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions
From: MMario
Date: 17 May 06 - 11:54 AM

Maybe it's "roots music" because it GIVES one roots?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions
From: greg stephens
Date: 17 May 06 - 12:01 PM

Buck Mulligan: you seem to be implying that St Anne's Reel was written by a French Canadian. I sthere any evidence for that?
Richard Bridge: a fair question. I am a musical dilettante, a serious multi-ethnic folk music junkie. I have played professionally inthe areas of jazz, blues, Irish, English, old time American, bluegrass, cajun and zydeco. I've organised countless street/carnival bands, using a percussion mixture based on samba, Cuban, English-speaking Caribbean, traditional British, and bhangra.The brass and other melody instruments on top of that have played in a huge variety of styles, and also I have written a lot of original pieces. I have also written vast reams of ephemeral music for theatre shos over the tears. So basically I like learning, and attemting to assimilate, a lot of kinds of wetehnic music(which is what I love, and also the only way I know how to make a living). So I guess the Jack-of-all-trades approach puts me more in the McGrath half of this argument.
    But, on the other hand, the work I've done in reviving and nurturing traditional English music(especially that of the northwest) is something different, undertaken almost as a moral or sacred duty which I must admit I dont fully understand, and can't really rationalise. I do get huge pleasure(not to mention the sin of pride) when youngsters learn old tunes from me and then pass them on themselves. All that "folk" thing means a lot to me. And, sitting back and taking a cool look at how I've spent the last forty years, it is bleeding obvious that I have spent a lot more time on the music of the land of my fathers(and mothers) than could be strictly justified on purely musical(or professional) grounds. So I'm definitely in your "stick to your own culture" camp as well. Except, of course, I didnt learn English music from my dad, any more than I leant blues from him.
So I'm firmly in both the current categories, and will continue to be. Sitting on the fence has traditionally been the least comfortable option. But there you go.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions
From: BuckMulligan
Date: 17 May 06 - 12:24 PM

greg, I haven't a clue who WROTE St Anne's Reel, but it's a very popular tune among Canuck fiddlers.

"Race memory" is a fascinating concept Richard. Pls elucidate, is this a metaphor, or an actual genetic phenomenon? While I would agree that people on the whole are more likely to feel affinity to cultural artefacts up with which they've grown, I would argue that in this day & age there's little likelihood that most of us in the "Developed" world anyway are likely to feel limited to that. Nor should we. I'd also suggest that one is under no constraint to necessarily continue that affinity post education & awakening to a wider world. I have a nagging suspicion that there's a "should" behind your comments, and I probably wouldn't be able to accept it, if it's there.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions
From: M.Ted
Date: 17 May 06 - 12:33 PM

I kind of disagree with Richard--owing to the fact that I played in a "international" band for a long time, but also kind of agree with him, for the same reason.

Part of the reason I left off playing Russian, various sorts of Balkan, Scandinavian, and the odd Turkish or Arabic tune, was simply that I realized that the native players were drawing on personal experiences with the music and the culture that I could never have. And "native" is not the right word, because some of the best players I knew had adopted and assimilated--It is more a question of simply being there--

Still, I was always welcomed as a player--which hasn't always been true in the "American" music community--

Subject: RE: Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions
From: BuckMulligan
Date: 17 May 06 - 12:47 PM

Sure the "native" players were drawing on certain "background" things; but then you were bringing something to the performance that they couldn't, no? A point of view that did NOT depend on stuff that wasn't in the tune. The whole "non-ethnics can't do it 'authentically' " notion is a little weak, IMO. It's viewing a piece of music as having characteristics that are not really part of the music itself. Suppose you simply heard a piece of music, knowing nothing about its provenance? Could you legitimately attempt it? Suppose you did learn it, and well, and played/sang it a great deal, and it was popular; and then someone came along and pointed out to you that the piece "really" belonged to the Makkawak tribe of Lower Slobbovia, and they did it thus and such a way, and it was sacrilege to perform the piece other than on the feast day of the Sacred Carp? Is that a quandary?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions
From: melodeonboy
Date: 17 May 06 - 01:36 PM

"McGrath's" word "deculturated" (a curious word, but useful) is the key to much of this discussion. When people are distanced in huge measure from the culture of their predecessors, there exists a vacuum which will suck in forms from other cultures, for better or worse. This applies particularly in the case of English music.

I've played zydeco, Cajun and blues and thoroughly enjoyed it, yet (and I'm not getting misty-eyed about this; honest, guv!) when I'm singing English stuff, particularly in chorus, I feel a sense of home, belonging and emotion that I don't find elsewhere. I would imagine that people the world over feel like this towards the music of their own country. (Yes, it refreshes the parts that other forms of music can't reach!!!!) Sadly, as far as England's concerned, and for the reasons stated above, I think I belong to a small minority!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 17 May 06 - 04:55 PM

Wikipedia on Racial Memory

Subject: RE: Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 17 May 06 - 05:00 PM

Studies at Durham University touching the topic

Subject: RE: Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 May 06 - 06:52 PM

You wouldn't say to someone "how can someone possibly read and enjoy Jane Austin and also Mark Twain and Leo Tolstoy. Or how can someone possibly you write letters to friends and also articles in a newspaper.
.........................................

"Race memory" - I just don't believe in it. We make choices as to who we feel drawn to in previous generations, and where our loyalties lie, and ancestry is only one of the factors involved, and not by any means the most important in many cases.

There are clearly plenty of people in America who feel a strong sense of solidarity and loyalty towards with the people and the music and traditions of pioneer America, even though none of their ancestors arrived in the States till maybe a century or more later. And the same is often the case in the various nations of the British Isles.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions
From: BuckMulligan
Date: 17 May 06 - 07:30 PM

Richard Bridge - when I asked what you meant by "racial memory" I was quite certain you did NOT mean the pseudo-phenomenon describes in the target Wiki article (or I wouldn't have asked). It's nonsense. Everyone knows it. Or are you referring to it metaphorically (seeking to give you an intellectual escape hatch here)?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions
From: GUEST,MikeofNorthumbria (off base)
Date: 17 May 06 - 08:16 PM

Hello folks,

What a fascinating discussion! Sorry I got into it so late in the day, but here are a few afterthoughts you might care to consider.

I was once priviliged to hear Willard White performing the role of Wotan in "Die Walkure". He did it superbly. Would Wagner have approved of an Afro-Caribbean singer playing his Nordic hero? I doubt it. Does that matter to me? Not at all.   

I have also heard Dick van Dyke attenpting to sing in a Cockney accent in the movie "Mary Poppins". Despite his wildly inauthentic vowels, he made a pretty fair job of the role.   As someone born and raised in London, do I resent this "appropriation" of "my culture"? No way.

Two of the world's great opera stars (Jose Carreras and Kiri Te Kanewa) have recorded songs from "West Side Story". Despite their awesome technical skills, the result is somehow lifeless. Is this just because neither of them are native New Yorkers? I don't think so. And as they were not New Yorkers, should they have been discouraged from even trying the experiment? Not in my opinion.

Ethnicity? Schmethnicity! The question is, does it work? And the only way to find out whether it works is to try. Musicians and singers - like painters and poets - are roving magpies, liable to pick up anything that glitters and use it if they can. What matters is not where they found it, but what they make of it.

Remember that Shakespeare stole most of his plots from other authors - and foreign ones at that. Does that make him any less of a great writer, or any less English? Of course not. And does Shakespeare's Englishness make it impossible for actors from other ethnic backgrounds to deliver authentic and moving performances of his plays? Perish the thought!

But what about traditional folk music? Isn't that more personal, more intimately associated with our sense of self - more likely to be defiled by the touch of an outsider? Well ...maybe... but when you look at them carefully, it seems that most traditional folk cultures have always been fairly promiscuous, gathering in songs and tunes from foreigners as readily as Shakespeare appropriated plots from other authors. Whatever works is retained, and eventually becomes "traditional", What doesn't seem to work (today) goes back on the compost heap, perhaps to be reborn in a different form for a later age.

Just to illustrate the point ... a recent publiation has pointed out that one dance tune in the repertoire of William Kimber, the great English concertina player and Morris dancer, was also recorded by Lead Belly, the great African American songster. Who got it from whom remains obscure, but that's what Uncle Pete calls "the folk process" - long may it flourish!

Wassail!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions
From: Azizi
Date: 17 May 06 - 09:48 PM

"...when you look at them carefully, it seems that most traditional folk cultures have always been fairly promiscuous"

Do I have to watch? It seems kinda x rated to do so.

LOL!

I also love your "Ethnicity? Schmethnicity! The question is, does it work?" sentences too.

Great writing, MikeofNorthumbria (off base)!

And btw, in addition to appreciating how you said what you said,
I agree with what you said.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions
From: M.Ted
Date: 18 May 06 - 12:16 AM

I am certainly not telling anyone what they can or cannot sing.

I agree with the point that different cultures grab up what interests them, from a variety of sources--sometimes they draw from their own past, and sometimes they don't--whatever they collect, however they collect it, becomes theirs, done in their own way--and it exists in their own place and time--the same thing, done by someone else, somewhere else, is something else again.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 18 May 06 - 03:14 AM

The mudcat went down just I was about to remind readers of the Jungian concept of the collective unconscious.

Incidentally, Mike of Northumbria, I think you mean Das Valkyr - which in a way illustrates one importance of continuity of a tradition, and yes I am and have always been wholly offended by Dick van Dyke's accent: were there any idea of Mary Poppins as a serious dramatic piece it would be ruined by his total inability to convey a crucial part of the role, that is to say, speech. It is always a matter of concern to me if I am prevailed upon to do one of the few Irish songs that I do do, "Step it out Mary" that I may be ruining the meaning of a very political song about the focus of power in a society by my inappropriate accent or (possibly worse) by a tendency to to create a "cod Irish" delivery.

Little as I approve of much of Ewan MacColl, I think he was right to insist that performers only sing (if singing traditional material) material appropriate to their own tradition(s) and certainly not to attempt phonetic renderings of langauges they did not speak (as is reportedly done, in my view laughably, by rhinestone cowboys in Hamburg bars).

West Side Story does not really count - it is not part of a tradition (maybe I should say "yet") merely Broadway candyfloss. No doubt musically fine (I particularly liked the Nice's version of "America") but not on point. The cultural mofern referents in it are not I think integral to what was largely a remake (as that word is used in the entertainment industry) of Romeo and Juliet. I suspect the problem was there the difference between the operatic style and the subject matter, in much the same way that possibly the worst version of "Carrickfergus" I have ever heard was Charlotte Church's compete (if that is the word) with one of the added Victorian verses.

Correct me if I am wrong but we have not yet had any Irish posters defending others performing their tradition, nor any blues performers asserting that source blues singers would have approved the white college boys coming to be the majority of performers of the blues, in which context it may be relevant to ask why the late Jo-Ann Kelly was regarded as so remarkable in her ability to convey the blues.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions
From: greg stephens
Date: 18 May 06 - 04:22 AM

Mike of Northumbria produces the good old liberal inclusive view very eloquently and convincingly. But I think a close analysis of what he is saying exposes the fgundamental weakness of his position: he really shoots himself in the foot with his Leadbelly/William Kimber. That they share a tune is a lovely and and interesting story, and an interesting bit of ethnomusicolgy. But Mike mentions they share one tune. Mike soncentrates on the "sharing" concept, but I'd like to lok at the "one" as well. Just think what a loss to the world of black music it would have been if Leadbelly had devoted his life to playing Cotswold morris tines rather badly with Sonny Terry. And what would have happened in Headington thaqt memorable day in 1899 if Cecil Sharp had watched the dancers vainly trying to get their stepd right as William Kimber attempted "Rock Island Line" and "Pigmeat Blues".
   Lets face it, nether Richard Bridge or anyone else is going to be other than intrigued by singers adotpting the odd anomalous song in their repertoire. What is being discussed here is whether people should adopt(or attempt to adopt) other cultures wholesale. And that seems to be a very evenly balanced and complex question with no easy answers.
    It is often observed in the world of vaccination/immunisation that the best thing to be is the only person who hasnt been vaccinated: that way you get the benefit of an immune population making the disease die out, without the unfortunate risk of any side effect from the injection. I feel that McGtath of and Mike of N (and me!)actually want the benefits of being able to play whatever they like themselves, while expecting the ethnic hordes, whether in Headington Quarry or Louisiana, to keep producing the beautiful and culturally specific music we all know and love.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 18 May 06 - 04:46 AM

The real problem is that today, influental media moguls are brainwashing everybody (so they can make money!) to have the same world wide beige pseudo-culture.

Fight The Beige!
(Billy Connoly)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions
From: Grab
Date: 18 May 06 - 08:26 AM

Frankly, if you're trying to tell someone else what should be relevant to them then you're talking crap. You can't know what's relevant to someone. De gustibus and all that...

Re race memory, do the majority of Americans not have European origins? Was the country itself not founded by English-speaking Europeans? Given that, all American musicians have some roots in European music. They'll also have links to whatever else they've heard (black slaves with songs from African origins, etc). So when those American songs go back across the Atlantic via Paul Simon and Bob Dylan, are Europeans not then allowed to pick up on the new versions of the old stuff? Or are they only allowed to play the Bob Dylan songs that have recognisable English influences in them? And even blues songs can often be traced back to older broadsides or traditional lyrics, so what then?

Would you have told Django Reinhardt that he couldn't play jazz because it originated from black musicians? And would you then tell all current American jazz guitarists that they can't try to play jazz on guitar because Django Reinhardt did it first?

As far as I can see, the main people who are *really* keen on keeping a culture isolated are immigrants who come to another country, feel isolated, and gang together with other similar immigrants against the rest; or those who feel threatened by those immigrants. In that case the culture becomes a definition of us-versus-them. You only need to look at how fanatically the Orange Order proclaim themselves to be British, or the Boston Irish (or in fact most Americans who say they're "Irish" or "Scottish").

Graham.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 18 May 06 - 08:48 AM

But are those who come to the traditions of others not colonialists (or uncle Toms if slavish)?

Are those who export their cultures to others not cultural imperialists?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions
From: jacqui.c
Date: 18 May 06 - 08:58 AM

IMHO songs are songs. A lot of the folk music I have heard has been performed by English singers at local song sessions. From those singers I have learned songs like Step It Out Mary, Fields Of Athenry, Glencoe, The Silver Darlings, the list is long. These songs were sung in the accent of the singer, not that of the country it came from. I am glad that there hasn't been a rule that only Irish or Scottish singers could attempt to sing their own country's songs. If that were the case I would have missed out on a lot of good music.

The same goes for the USA, where I now live. The people I associate with in folk circles are, for the major part, at least third generation Americans. Their musical interests are diverse - including English, Scots, Irish and Welsh music as well as American music from all parts of this very large land. It is the exception to the rule that anyone feels the need to sing in an accent other than their own, but that does not detract from the enjoyment of the song.

The one thing I have noticed though is that Americans are more interested in their roots than most of the British people that I know. A fair number of Americans, in the areas I have moved in, will be able to recite their national lineage going back to the ancestors who emigrated to America. Most of my UK acquaintances couldn't say, and don't seem to care, what part of the UK their antecedents originated from.

Oh, and yes - I agree about the Dick Van Dyke fiasco. Much better, unless you can do a very good job of it, not to try and ape a different accent. It just ends up sounding ridiculous.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions
From: Ernest
Date: 18 May 06 - 09:40 AM

Richard, the terms "cultural imperialism/colonialism" are not helpful in our discussion, someone could accuse you of suppressing "Freedom of choice/songs".

Nobody is forced to sing a song from a foreign culture among us here - everyone does it because he likes the song.

Your original question - why people prefer foreign songs - is a different pair of shoes.

Maybe the fact that it is a living tradition accepted by everyone (not only by a minority = folkies) is what attracts people to irish music.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions
From: Grab
Date: 18 May 06 - 11:52 AM

Cultural imperialism is "we'll all do things my country's way because it's the best way to do it".

"I like playing your country's music, and you like playing my country's music, and ain't it cool that we both like this stuff" is not cultural imperialism...

So to use a loose analogy, McDonalds is cultural imperialism, whereas Coca-Cola isn't. Mickey D's dictates that all their fast-food restaurants shall look like this, and all the staff shall dress like this, and this kind of food shall be what we serve. If a McDonalds looks out of place in a historic European city - screw it, build it anyway. But sugary drinks aren't inherently tied to a culture (unlike food), and Coca-Cola don't dictate what the places that it's served look like, or how it's served, so it's an addition to the locally available tastes rather than being intended as a replacement.

Graham.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions
From: GUEST
Date: 18 May 06 - 12:44 PM

Dead right Ernest. It's how you do the music rather than what music you do that defines the tradition. IMHO the "english" tradition as currently peddled is a spurious construct, perhaps more alien to most people who live in England than the Irish tradition.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions
From: M.Ted
Date: 18 May 06 - 01:38 PM

I actually have seen the reactions of "traditional" black blues artists to white college boy blues artists, and , in general, they like them, and often like them a lot. And I've seen this same positive reaction in other ethnic groups, as well. People are flattered when outsiders take an interest in their culture, even when they don't get it quite right.

The disapproval tends to come from other college white boys, who fuss more about minor details of style than the traditional artists themselves.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions
From: BuckMulligan
Date: 18 May 06 - 01:44 PM

Is there such a thing as "quite right" when talking about an essentially folk idiom? To hang onto the blues example, I wonder whether some oldtime quiet Piedmont picker would necessarily think Howlin' Wolf (or Screamin' Jay) "got it quite right?" Other examples abound. Reiterate: what's "quite right?" What about jazz? ("Which jazz?" is of course the only usable response - Dixieland? Django & Stephane? Paul Whiteman, Bix Beiderbecke, Benny Goodman? Chet Baker? Is jazz somehow an exception?)

By introducing that concept ("quite right") you're accepting and reinforcing the "race memory" notion, but doing so within an example that disproves the concept in & of itself.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions
From: CarolC
Date: 18 May 06 - 02:46 PM

I come from Irish (Catholic) and Irish (Protestant), and English, Scottish, French, German (and by way of immigration, Canadian and Bermudan) heritages, and was born and raised in the USA.

So what is my musical heritage?

And with my ancestry, how can I possibly embrace music from my musical "heritage(s)" that don't insult and/or disrespect my ancestors. My ancestors were disrespecting each other (or at least the nations from which they came were) prior to my arrival on this Earth.

So what music should I play? My father listened exclusively to classical music (from many countries), and my mother listend exclusively to muzak. Should I confine myself to these kinds of music?

The type of traditional music I play the most of is from Finland. I do not have any Finnish ancestry. Why do I play it? Because it speaks to me. Because I find that it lives inside of me. Why is this? I have no idea.

Why should I not play the music that lives inside of me, just because it doesn't come from my "heritage"?

And if I didn't play Finnish music, what should I play?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions
From: BuckMulligan
Date: 18 May 06 - 03:03 PM

well according to the "race memory" notion, there must be some woodpile Finnish in yer genome, else how could it possibly speak to you - you wouldn't know what it was saying.

The whole problem with the notion of "race memory" as it might apply to music, (besides the fact that the notion itself is daft) is that it relies on music itself possessing some intrinsic, ethnically traceable qualities; which it can't.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions
From: GUEST,Russ
Date: 18 May 06 - 03:03 PM

Cultural Carpet Bagging
The other side
This post is NOT about SHOULD BE. It is about IS.

Grew up in WV.
Not an easy thing.

Know huge numbers of people who visit WV regularly or have even emigrated to WV.
I find that They are people who have fallen in love with a myth, not a reality.

When somebody tells me how much they love WV, the WV they love is "WV-land," not WV. WV-land is the version WV you'd find at Disney World. Expurgated, sanitized, shrink wrapped.

Although I am an expat from WV, with no desire to return, I still find such cultural carpet bagging somewhat annoying.

Nothing unusual here.

Anecdote:
Jay Rockefeller, the "other senator" from WV, moved there in 1964 as a VISTA worker. He served his time and decided to stay. He got into politics, moved up the ladder.

For many years, whenever my mother referred to Jay the word "carpet bagger" always appeared in the same sentence.
I still remember the first time she ever referred to him without the usual epithet.
I called her on it and she grudgingly admitted that he'd finally made the cut.

Point:
Most of the discussion in this thread has been relatively abstract.
Granted, theoretically, there is nothing wrong with adopting a culture and/or its music and/or its food/drink/whatever.

Yet, I still find WV wannabes annoying, no matter how pure their love and sincerity.
When I try to put a finger on this annoyance, it turns out to be partly about dues-paying and partly about naievete. Basically two sides of the same coin.

Jay, after decades of being in the red with my mother, had finally gotten his dues paying balance in the black.
After decades of living and politic-ing in WV, Jay was now fully aware of, could not help but be aware of, what life in WV was like, as opposed to life WV-land.

So, for the adopters the discussion remains and will remain theoretical.
For the adoptees its something more personal.

Am I advocating the elmination or demonization of cultural carpet bagging?
No. It's gonna happen. It is not a bad thing in inself.

What I am suggesting is that if you practice cultural carpet bagging you keep in mind that imitation, no matter how pure the motivation, is NOT always simply a form of flattery.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions
From: M.Ted
Date: 18 May 06 - 03:24 PM

When I say "not quite right" , it has nothing to do with style--it is about technical stuff--clams, notes that are fudged, weak projection, , mechanical solos and awkward rhythmic figures--as a teacher, when I say "not quite right", I am not imposing the idea of "race memories", I am imposing the idea of "more practice"--

And, BuckMulligan, my experience with Jazz players is that, of all the different kinds of musicians that I have played with, they are the most adaptable--all those guys that you listed could have played together, no problem--Coltrane, one must remember, played with Earl Bostic--

Subject: RE: Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions
From: BuckMulligan
Date: 18 May 06 - 03:30 PM

The fact that it annoys you does not, ipso facto, mean much. The fact that you apply a derogatory term (carpetbagging) indicates that you're being disingenuous when you say "It is not a bad thing in inself." [sic] You DO think it's a bad thing or you wouldn't use that term. But exactly WHY you think it's bad you can't say except that it seems to boil down to "the place sucks and I don't wanna go back there but it's mine and you can't have it." I suspect you're also confusing an affinity for cultural artefacts with something else - your use of the term "wannabe" (another pejorative) indicates that you somehow think that when I sing "Coal Tattoo" I "wanna" be a coal miner. Nope. Wanna sing a nifty song. My great grandfather was a logger on the Vermont/Canadian border, but damn if I think Pete Seeger was a "Canuck wannabe" when he sang The Ballad of the Frozen Logger. (I happen to know he was a 40 year old waitress wannabe). Was Stan Rogers an iron-puddler-wannabe when he sang that song about the iron puddlers? My other great-grand-dad WAS an iron puddler, but I'm not annoyed at Stan.

I take your point that the annoyance is THERE; I just don't understand why, and I don't understand what anyone oughta do about it. Issue disclaimers?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions
From: BuckMulligan
Date: 18 May 06 - 03:32 PM

M Ted - agreed about jazz, didn't mean to imply that the players would find any difficulty. As far as the technical stuff, ok, I get what you're saying, but did the "authentic" players of any of the forms of interest "get it right" from that perspective?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions
From: Brían
Date: 18 May 06 - 03:55 PM

Now, an authentic, scientifically validated video of an alien grays jamming with the US military in a hanger in Area 51 is somethig that would really impress me.

Brían

Subject: RE: Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions
From: M.Ted
Date: 18 May 06 - 04:35 PM

Definitely. They had it right. That's what makes them blues guys. How they got it right depended on the person--it is a balance of your gift and your committment. Understanding the music is also a factor--with some people, understanding is seemingly intuitive, some get it with exposure, and some have to have it explained.

A lot of the problem with White College Guy Blues(which eventually turns into White Middle Aged Guy Blues) is that the players don't really understand the mechanisms. If you can play guitar, you can learn them in about an hour--give or take. But you need the right teacher.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions
From: BuckMulligan
Date: 18 May 06 - 04:48 PM

There's something a little circular about your "that's what makes them blues guys" assertion. I've heard a fair amount of blues from "real" blues guys and some of the "technical" stuff you mention was not in the forefront of their playing (fudged notes, poor projection, awkward rhythms, etc.) Were they not realy blues guys? Or was that a function of my cultural ignorance? I'm sniffing some magic supposedly going on here, and not sure I buy it.

What they were playing was blues because they were blues guys who were blues guys because they played it right because..... see what I mean? You seem to be saying that only blues guys can really play the blues, and you can tell it's really the blues because it's being played by blues guys.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 18 May 06 - 04:57 PM

I've always felt that "roots" is a strange word to use in conjunction with music.   Roots serve a purpose of holding a plant down in place and delivering the nutrients to keep the plant alive. The plant will only grow as it is genetically intended and it will stay put.

Music has much more freedom and less limits. It is intended to spread and infect others. Music can also be a universal language and may be why other cultures pick up and learn to love the music from other cultures.

Why should we be expected to play only the music of our home? How boring is that?

Can you imagine if we limited our diet to intake only the food of our birth?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions
From: Santa
Date: 18 May 06 - 05:16 PM

To me the interesting part of this discussion, if perhaps the least explored, is not why people find interest in other musical traditions. This I can readily understand: the attraction of the new, the different, the exotic. What I do not understand is why this so often results in a rejection of the home tradition.

I can understand how someone brought up in a tradition should restrict themselves to that tradition (assuming it has a richness and depth to sustain that.) I can understand why someone can grow up in one tradition (or no tradition) and open his mind to music of other - not necessarily all - traditions. But why someone should turn their back on their own tradition to adopt something very different and then cling to that: no, there's a wrongness there.

I don't hold with race memory, but I do believe that much of what forms you comes unconsciously from your background. The music of your area comes from the people of your area, and so do these influences. I believe this is what some of the posters above are describing, when they return to the songs of their background. In-comers, however welcome, willing and talented, are not going to have that same "feel".

Subject: RE: Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 18 May 06 - 05:23 PM

"why someone should turn their back on their own tradition to adopt something very different and then cling to that: no, there's a wrongness there."

Can you elaborate on why you find this wrong? I'm very curious about this discussion.

Here in the United States, there are many traditions that are either adopted from other cultures or blending from a variety.   I look at something as say a Christmas Tree as an example of how one culture will adopt a tradition from another. Is it wrong? I don't think so.

As for music, not everyone who comes from the south will enjoy Old-time music. Not every African-American will enjoy the blues. Is it wrong for a white kid from Boston to start playing southern tunes on the banjo, or a woman from Canada to play the blues? I think it points to the beauty of the tradition.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions
From: Brían
Date: 18 May 06 - 05:29 PM

I must admit I have found the idea of holding old-time country music sessions in English pubs rather curious, although probably no more curious than singing British ballads in American venues. I suppose it is easier for me to envision the roots emanating from Britain to America rather than the other way around. When one considers what tradition is we are actually adapting aspects of other traditions through the cultural lenses of our own experiences.

Brían

Subject: RE: Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 18 May 06 - 05:30 PM

"social memory"

Subject: RE: Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 18 May 06 - 05:33 PM

"sociology of collective memory"

Subject: RE: Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 18 May 06 - 05:43 PM

I'd really love to hear Leadbelly playing Morris tunes. Somehow I think they would have ended up sounding like Leadbelly. That's the point - whatever you play will be mediated through who you are, and where you come from.

I don't think there is necessarily any clash between wanting traditional music to remain true to its tradition, and maybe wanting to be part of that - and yet feeling free to pick and choose what to play and how to play. It comes down to the context within which you are making the music. There are times and occasions when the important thing is to play within the tradition, and the time when the important thing is just to make music.

Just because someone is a Morris Dancer and wears a costume doesn't mean they can't go to a social dance and wear jeans. Just because someone is in a string quarter that plays Mozart doesn't mean they might not enjoy playing reels and jigs in a pub session. And its not really any different in principle for the rest of us.
..............
No need for anybody to put on a cod Irish accent for Step it out Mary. I can't see anything that specifically Irish in the story or the song for that matter. It could as be imagined as happening in, say, Yorkshire or Essex. (After all, to return to a song I mentioned earlier in this thread, no one in Ireland ever felt obliged to put on a Norfolk accent to sing the Wild Rover.)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions
From: BuckMulligan
Date: 18 May 06 - 06:31 PM

uh, Richard? First link - lotsa stuff there. I don't have time (or inclination) to plow throw it and discern whether it makes sense.

Second link - ok, don't mean to be dismissive, but it looks pretty much like a postmodern, theoretical overstatement of the notion that cultural artefacts get handed down between generations. Eureka.... they're still learned things, not innate, and that which can be learned can be molded, unlearned, transmogrified, and/or outgrown.

Santa - I don't find the rejection of the "home culture" - at least at some developmental stage - particularly puzzling. In the same way as we need to leave our parents' hearth & home, sometimes we leave the larger context, for more or less the same emotional reasons. Sometimes we outgrow that need to leave, and sometimes we don't.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions
From: greg stephens
Date: 18 May 06 - 06:57 PM

The discussion goes on, and on. and on, but the interesting point to me is the fact that different people have such a passionate and angry attachment to their positions at opposite ends of the spectrum, when I seem to manage to live quite happily in the middle ground where the pendulum swishes happily to and fro(occasionally bopping me on the head while it passes). Nothng wrong with the odd exotic tune is there? And equally, surely there's nothing wrong in loving what you were brought up with? Where is the incompatibility? The problem only arises with those who can't cope with the odd foreign visitor, but also with those who can't cope with people who quite like things to be familiar.
Pure spice would be a crap diet;so would grey goo.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions
From: M.Ted
Date: 18 May 06 - 08:06 PM

Blues is circular, BuckMulligan--that's the beauty of it--

Subject: RE: Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions
From: GUEST,MikeofNorthumbria (off base)
Date: 18 May 06 - 08:21 PM

I believe Carol C has got to the root of the matter

>>The type of traditional music I play the most of is from Finland. I do not have any Finnish ancestry. Why do I play it? Because it speaks to me.<<

There's a similar phrase in a story about George Fox - founder of the Quakers - for which I don't have references to hand. A sceptic came to hear Fox preach and was rapidly converted, saying to him: "Friend, thou speakest to my condition."

Songs and tunes from far-away places can also "speak to our condition" - they seem to make something resonate inside us, like the sympathetic strings on a sitar or a Hardanger fiddle. Sometimes they even seem to say "sing me", or "play me", and we can't resist the invitation.

Of ourse it's a good thing that some people choose to focus on preserving and documenting "the tradition", while others seek to develop and expand it. But those committed to the former camp would do well to remember that everything traditional was an innovation once. (Sometimes the innovation was more recently than we would like to think - for more on this, see E Hobsbam and T Ranger's fascinating book "The Invention of Tradition".)

Wassail!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions
From: greg stephens
Date: 18 May 06 - 08:34 PM

MikeofNorthumbria: I've spent plenty of time being dangerosuly innovatory. My hardcore traddie activities, which I find myself more drawn to as senescence kicks in, I regard as paying my dues. You're right, all tradition started life as innovation. But,ponder well: all innovation is not going to lead to tradition:yea verily, not even the one hundredth of a one hundredth part.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions
From: BuckMulligan
Date: 18 May 06 - 09:42 PM

greg - angry?

Generally, y'mean? As in "not necessarily in this thread?" I haven't seen anyone angry in this exchange.

M. Ted - agree blues is (are?) circular in a sense (broom dustin', card playin, easy ridin, start over...), but that doesn't apply to analytical apparatus applied to it/them.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Adopting Alien Traditions
From: M.Ted
Date: 18 May 06 - 10:02 PM

Actually, the blues are structurally circular, not thematically circular(or maybe they are both-that'd be OK too)--the analytical apparatus is even more circular than the Blues themselves--

Just out of curiousity, BuckMulligan(to discover if I put my foot in it) are you one of those White College Blues guys? If you are, I take it all back--even white boys can have the blues--