nouveau 'folk'

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: treewind
Date: 22 Aug 09 - 07:54 AM

"Isn't nouveau folk a bit of a high-brow, arty and pretentious-moi term?"

Yes. I thought it was invented by Thomas Stern who started this thread. If you Google for it you find this thread and then a load of fashion stuff, and one rather obscure music link in the first page. That's why I asked whether it was like "nu-folk" (whatever that is, but it's a more popular term)

Never mind, welcome to Mudcat - thanks for de-lurking!

Anahata

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 22 Aug 09 - 08:47 AM

I accept that "doing something with"/"rattling" (SH) the trad songs of an oral tradition is a long tradition in itself - in England, e.g., RVW, Thomas Ravenscroft, and, still further back, art songs. But the diminishing numbers of folkies maintaining the oral tradition itself IS a worry, I feel.

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: oldhippie
Date: 22 Aug 09 - 08:50 AM

SianH - Does Rattlebag have a website where we can listen?

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 22 Aug 09 - 09:32 AM

On the inlay note to a record I made a few years ago, I wrote: "All these songs are traditional; but I suspect that every one will have been more or less consciously modified in the course of making them my own". Surely we all "rattle", neologise, modify, collate versions ...
Don't we? Just as we adapt our living environments to our own tastes.

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: treewind
Date: 22 Aug 09 - 09:34 AM

Must be This lot. Sounds nice! (there's one sound clip that I can find)

A.

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: Sian H
Date: 22 Aug 09 - 09:46 AM

Yes - we are ' this lot'. Our blogspot is http://rattlebag01.blogspot.com or if you google 'Rattlebag folk' it comes up first at the mo. We are planning to get more samples on the site but would love any comments now as it's new.
Yes I have lurked for years Anahata so I feel it's time come out.

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: Piers Plowman
Date: 24 Aug 09 - 06:39 AM

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: Darowyn - PM
Date: 20 Aug 09 - 04:15 AM

"Traditional folk:-
1. Like a scene from a Thomas Hardy novel. Country people in a village pub, accompanied by fiddle, concertina or whatever instruments the village Waits had managed to scrounge. [...]
2. Like a post-war Junior School. [...]

3. Like Peter Pears at The Maltings, or Kathleen Ferrier. [...]

4. Like a fifties Folk Group. [...]

5. Like Bob Dylan and/or Joan Baez. [...]

6. Like the New traditionalists. [...]

There are so many traditions, even in one small country, that either everyone is traditional or, nobody is. How many times does something have to be repeated before it becomes a tradition?"

I liked your list and thought it was very well put. A few items could probably be added for the US, Great Britain and Ireland, but they would have to be for Germany and other German-speaking countries. What "folk" means and how "folksong" or "folk music" ("Volkslied", "Volksmusik") is perceived is somewhat different here. I'm sure it's the same in other countries/cultures. "A wide field" as Mr. Briest would say in Theodor Fontane's _Effi Briest_.

A very small quibble (not that people interested in folk music would ever quibble, of course): My recollection of the passages involving folk music in Thomas Hardy don't involve concertinas. Hardy wrote about the demise of the tradition of playing stringed instruments in church (the Melstock quire) in "Under the Greenwood Tree". Of course, Hardy was a fiddler himself and the son and grandson of string players, as I'm sure many people here know. As both a folk music and a Thomas Hardy anorak, I felt I had to post this. Maybe a harmonica, concertina, accordeon, guitar or other mass-produced instrument occurs in Hardy, but I don't remember any such passages. I haven't read all of his novels or poems, though.

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: theleveller
Date: 24 Aug 09 - 07:38 AM

"Maybe a harmonica, concertina, accordeon, guitar or other mass-produced instrument occurs in Hardy, but I don't remember any such passages."

Not that I recall - does the Serpent qualify?

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: theleveller
Date: 24 Aug 09 - 07:40 AM

'Old things pass away, 'tis true; but a serpent was a good old note: a deep rich note was the serpent.' Under the Greenwood Tree.

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: s&r
Date: 24 Aug 09 - 07:55 AM

Just read that Thomas Hardy was given an accordion by his father at the age of four.

Stu

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: Piers Plowman
Date: 24 Aug 09 - 12:10 PM

I think it's important to distinguish between how the songs were performed when collected and how they were performed when there had been a "living" tradition of singing folksongs (accompanied or unaccompanied) or playing folk tunes (to accompany dancing or for any other purpose). Sometimes I've read about how songs were collected from people who were considered "old-fashioned" for singing the songs and they were no longer performed at weddings, gatherings, etc., and there was no interest in preserving them in their communities. It's typical of collecting that people start taking an interest in a thing when it's already disappearing.

I think it's reasonable to suppose that in most places, folksongs were accompanied, if instruments were present and people knew how to play them. There may well have been exceptions where certain kinds of songs were never accompanied.

I also think the term "folksong" or "folk music" tends to lump too many different kinds of music together and the term "World Music" is even worse in this respect.

I recently bought a copy of Johann Gottfried Herder's
_Stimmen der Voelker in Liedern: Volkslieder_ (_Voices of the Peoples in Songs: Folksongs_) --- a very early collection of folksongs (1778/79). In the introduction, it says that the first volume wasn't popular with the critics, because (to paraphrase) they weren't slick enough. In the second volume, he made more changes to the songs in order to make them fit in with the taste of the time. However, it wasn't popular, either, and the real enthusiasm for folksong in Germany started a generation later with Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim's _Des Knaben Wunderhorn_ (_The Boy's Magic Horn_). Funny how little has changed since then.

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: Piers Plowman
Date: 24 Aug 09 - 12:25 PM

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: theleveller - PM
Date: 24 Aug 09 - 07:38 AM

"Maybe a harmonica, concertina, accordeon, guitar or other mass-produced instrument occurs in Hardy, but I don't remember any such passages."

"Not that I recall - does the Serpent qualify?"

No, I think mass-production of serpents was a no-goer.

I just read (or rather read in) two books, one about accordeons and one about harmonicas. They were more about the historical and sociological aspects and styles of music and didn't contain very detailed information about the construction of the instruments. They were very interesting with respect to the changes in the way music was made by the nearly universal availability of inexpensive instruments, especially the harmonica. I'm sure a similar book could be written about guitars. Of course, a negative aspect (from my point of view) is that the availability of inexpensive, mass-produced instruments "pushed out" traditional instruments.

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: Darowyn - PM
Date: 20 Aug 09 - 04:15 AM

"There are so many traditions, even in one small country, that either everyone is traditional or, nobody is. How many times does something have to be repeated before it becomes a tradition?"

I think this is one of those questions that don't have an ultimate answer. One has to look at every case and define exactly what one is talking about at any given time. Maybe singing folksongs to the accompaniment of a guitar is a tradition now, but it isn't what I usually mean when I talk about traditional folksongs (but that's just me).

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 24 Aug 09 - 12:38 PM

"I think this is one of those questions that don't have an ultimate answer. One has to look at every case and define exactly what one is talking about at any given time. Maybe singing folksongs to the accompaniment of a guitar is a tradition now, but it isn't what I usually mean when I talk about traditional folksongs (but that's just me)." (PP) I've read a folk-guitar instructional book that noted how the folk songs in it were traditionally sung unaccompanied, before going on to explain how to finger-pick them.

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: Piers Plowman
Date: 24 Aug 09 - 12:49 PM

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: WalkaboutsVerse - PM
Date: 24 Aug 09 - 12:38 PM

"(PP) I've read a folk-guitar instructional book that noted how the folk songs in it were traditionally sung unaccompanied, before going on to explain how to finger-pick them."

Yeah, that's what people seem to want. I play the guitar and have finger-picked many a folksong in my day, but traditional it ain't.

I think most people just don't care whether it's traditional or not, what the tradition is, who collected it, when, etc., etc. I think it's important, but most audiences wouldn't be entertained by authentic folk music of whatever culture.

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 24 Aug 09 - 12:54 PM

PP - There are one or two festival comps here in NE England for accompanied singing (my list is here) but, pleasingly for any tradie, most are still for unaccompanied singing.

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: Piers Plowman
Date: 24 Aug 09 - 01:04 PM

Sorry, WalkaboutsVerse, I was forgetting things were a bit different in Great Britain with respect to folkmusic, folk revivals, etc. I'm more familiar with the US and Germany, though mostly just what I pick up from the radio, books, the internet, etc. I haven't been to a club or a bar in ages. So, I'm not any kind of expert on the "folk scene". For a long time, I stayed away from bars and restaurants because I had respiratory problems (under control at present) and I couldn't stand the smoke. I'm very glad that they changed the laws about this.

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 24 Aug 09 - 01:09 PM

I think that was a good law change, too, here in England, PP; and what I forget to say just above is that a few of the unaccompanied singers in these comps sound great, as did karine Polwart singing a couple of Scots songs unaccompanied upon her recent visit to the Durham Folk Gathering.

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: theleveller
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 03:34 AM

What folkies have to accept is that the social conditions that were the birthplace and breeding ground of 'traditional' singing no longer exist. It no longer meets popular tastes in music. There are, therefore, two options fo folk music. It can either be regarded as a museum piece, performed by a rapidly diminishing number of 'curators' to an even faster diminishing audience until, finally, it becomes a dim and distant memory gathering dust in the attic of social history. Or, hopefully, it can be adapted to become a vibrant and enjoyable part of our modern society - perhaps still a minority interest but, nonetheless, a living, evolving thing.

I know which I prefer.

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 03:45 AM

...I wasn't there last year but, at the Morpeth Gatherering trad-singing comps recently, e.g., there have been only a few competitors but almost all the hall's seats were taken.

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: theleveller
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 05:04 AM

I think you've reinforced my point, WAV. Compare a half-full hall at Morpeth to the crowd watching Springsteen at Glastonbury.

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: Mr Happy
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 05:11 AM

Could it include thishttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_pop??

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 05:40 AM

I said "ALMOST ALL the hall's seats were taken", Theleveller, but at least you're a "half-full" and not a half-empty kind of leveller! I saw Springsteen at Glastonbury, via the Beeb - loads of hype and muscle and very little music. The masses need re-educating.

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 05:49 AM

The masses need re-educating.

The only one who needs re-educating around here, WAV - is you.

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: theleveller
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 05:51 AM

"The masses need re-educating"

Yes, the whole world's out of step with you, WAV. I thought Springsteen was BRILLIANT.

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: s&r
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 06:57 AM

"The masses need re-educating"

There is a strange imagined superiority in this statement. It actually seems to fit better with some sort of meritocracy rather than a socialist democrat..
Marie Antoinette would be proud of you cobber.

Stu

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 08:20 AM

...you may like to check "An Opium" - 5 up from the bottom of the BS "WalkaboutsVerse Anew" thread.

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 08:48 AM

...you may like to check "An Opium" - 5 up from the bottom of the BS "WalkaboutsVerse Anew" thread.

Which gives us this barely literate piece of rhetoric:

National Lottery passes -
    Slight chances to be richer,
    With lots more than thy neighbour,
    Gained without any labour -
    Keep the system in favour:
An opium of the masses.

WAV - once again you astonish in your inability to understand the workings of humanity - much less yourself, who would hold himself aloof in vane glory as the Best Way Forward.

When did you last do any labour, WAV? You don't seem to be doing too badly on it anyway.

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 08:59 AM

I have a degree in humanities, S., along with 4 technical certificates in manufacturing which (despite daily job-searches), yes, are not currently being used by way of a living.

How about you - was it some kind of pension you said you were on, or are you, too, looking for work?

And, as often, S., you didn't focus on the actual words/argument - just my "inability", etc.

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: theleveller
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 09:01 AM

"you may like to check "An Opium" - 5 up from the bottom of the BS "WalkaboutsVerse Anew" thread."

On the other hand, I've already lost the will to live!

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 09:08 AM

And, as often, S., you didn't focus on the actual words/argument - just my "inability", etc.

There is no argument, WAV - just a banal statement about people taking chances to get more money which you seem to regard as being in some way immoral. What this has got to do with The Boss I don't know, but you obviously feel The Masses have got it very wrong somehow. Nothing could be further from the truth however - people are just getting on with their lives, loves, labours, hopes, fears, and dreams just as they've always done. Shame you can't do likewise really without feeling the need to pontificate on matters which really are none of your concern.

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: s&r
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 09:16 AM

Have you any recent qualifications WAV. Perhaps your certification is obsolete.

I didn't follow your reply: I think the phrase is non sequitur and is to do with Logical Fallacies.


This may help your reasoning skills.

Stu

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 09:52 AM

Yes, fairly recent, Stu - when I arrived in Newcastle in 2001, I knew very little of computers and the web; I now have basic level 1 qualifications in both hardware and software (aimed to help with both manufacturing and my poetry/folk), plus some level 2 Serif desktop publishing, which I used to produce my library books, mentioned here.

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: Piers Plowman
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 02:33 PM

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: theleveller - PM
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 03:34 AM

"[...] It can either be regarded as a museum piece, performed by a rapidly diminishing number of 'curators' to an even faster diminishing audience until, finally, it becomes a dim and distant memory gathering dust in the attic of social history. Or, hopefully, it can be adapted to become a vibrant and enjoyable part of our modern society - perhaps still a minority interest but, nonetheless, a living, evolving thing."

Yes, but then it becomes a different thing. Not necessarily bad, but no longer the same thing, and probably no longer folk music, at least in my opinion. Why do people knock museums? I love museums. I'm as eclectic as the next guy (depending on whom I'm standing next to), but I think it's important to know what folk music really was, as far as this is possible. Obviously, there isn't even agreement on the definition of folk music and the field is too large for any one person to be well-informed about every aspect of it in even a few cultures. I believe there is a value in exploring folk music in one way or another. Not everybody has to be a great expert on folk music.

I think some kinds of music are called folk music but aren't, and I think that tends to make it harder for people to find out that the real thing even exists. For example, what does "folk rock" have to do with folk music? In my opinion, not very much, at least most of the time.

It doesn't really bother me that folk music doesn't attract huge audiences and make lots of money. If it's changed so that it does, it would stop being folk music. This is what I see happening with so-called "World Music", judging from what I hear on the radio. This is what I mean when I use the terms "ethno-pop" or "ethno-kitsch". For awhile, it seemed like there was a growing interest in musical traditions from other countries and now a lot of what I'm hearing is more of a mish-mash, in my opinion. Not that I'm trying to spoil anything for anyone else, if they like it --- that's what makes ball games.

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: s&r
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 03:04 PM

Giving a book to a library makes it a library book?
That's the absolute pinnacle of disingenuity - a new limit even for you

Stu

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: GUEST,aeola
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 03:56 PM

I'm relatively new to 'folk music' that probably makes me nouveau!!However someone mentioned about folk songs passing the test of time :--- does anyone know of any folk songs which haven't passed the test??!!

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 04:26 PM

I agree Piers, and would add: "World-music stalls and stages should be places where folkies of different nationality present
different unfused music to each other." (here).

Aeola: do you like cryptic crosswords by chance?!

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: theleveller
Date: 26 Aug 09 - 03:32 AM

"I think some kinds of music are called folk music but aren't,"

Whilst I don't disagree with much of what you say, Piers, we're back with the thorny question of 'what is folk music?'. It's one which has caused huge disagreement and which no-one has successfully answered, so I'll withdraw from that debate and hope that everyone will enjoy their version of "folk" and, hopefully, other people's, in whatever way they choose, without being preached at by the likes of WAV.

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: Marje
Date: 26 Aug 09 - 04:36 AM

Aeola, that's a very interesting point you've raised. There are, of course, thousands of songs that don't survive. Many vanish without leaving a trace, but others can be found in books and manuscripts. Scholars of folk song sometimes trawl the archives for long-forgotten gems; sometimes they find a real jewel of a song that merits being reintroduced to the repertoire, but in other cases there's clearly a reason why the song remained forgotten for so long ...

For example I've got a 1970s book called One Hundred Songs of Toil.
Many of the older songs in it are still regarded as classic, but there are also some modern ones in the collection. Most of these have not survived, as far as I'm aware, although they may have served a specific purpose at one time. At the time of publication, these new songs had not been subjected to the "folk" selection process, and many of them are simply not good enough to stand on their own merits 40 years later.

Marje

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 26 Aug 09 - 04:50 AM

"World-music stalls and stages should be places where folkies of different nationality present different unfused music to each other."

There is fused music, there is unfused music; there are ethnomusicological documentary field-recordings and there are revival folk albums; there is World Jazz that draws on all World Music and there those that stick to particular local idioms; there are folk musicians who choose to concentrate on one particular tradition and there are creative musicians drawing on a multiplicity of world-folk influences; there are folk singers who sing without accompaniment and there are folk singers who accompany themselves on musical instruments; there are folk singers who only sing trad. and there are folk singers who are songwriters...

This is only the tip of a vast and wonderful iceberg. People do what they are moved to do out of passion and wonderment and that is a very beautiful thing. It is also the right and purpose of every human being alive on this planet to do exactly what they want to do. Thus the reality is what the reality is. Accept this, WAV - and respect it. If you don't like it, fair enough - please go elsewhere, but DO NOT dare to dictate how it SHOULD BE when you clearly know FUCK ALL about it.

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 26 Aug 09 - 05:58 AM

If you think someone with a degree in humanities, including distinctions for anthropology, knows "fuck all about it", then you ARE deluding yourself, S. Have you ever considered trying again to get a degree in some DISCIPLINE?

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 26 Aug 09 - 06:56 AM

If you think someone with a degree in humanities, including distinctions for anthropology, knows "fuck all about it", then you ARE deluding yourself, S. Have you ever considered trying again to get a degree in some DISCIPLINE?

More personal insults! Is this the only way you can defend your lazy ill-conceived rhetoric? But yes - in your case, obviously it's true that someone with a degree in humanities, including distinctions for anthropology, knows "fuck all about it" because I certainly see no evidence to the contrary. How can someone with distinctions in anthropology write that English Culture is taking a hammering? Nothing could be further from the truth. Never has English Culture been more vibrant & exciting as it is now. Open your heart to the world reality, WAV - it's very beautiful place full of all sorts of people doing all sorts of music.

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: Piers Plowman
Date: 26 Aug 09 - 06:58 AM

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: theleveller - PM
Date: 26 Aug 09 - 03:32 AM

"Whilst I don't disagree with much of what you say, Piers, we're back with the thorny question of 'what is folk music?'.' [...]"

I wouldn't expect anyone to agree with everything I say, just I don't agree with everything people say here. A lot of what we discuss here is a matter of taste and opinion, anyway.

I think "What is folk?" is another one of those unanswerable questions. A question one might have some chance of answering would be "What was folk music of Lower Bavaria between the years 1820 and 1850". Even then, preferences and opinions would probably play a part in the answer a given person might find to this question. That's part of what makes studying folklore interesting, from my point of view.

What I think is important with respect to folk music and what I play myself are two different kettles of fish. Not being qualified to be a representative of any particular tradition myself and being interested in lots of different kinds of music, I more-or-less automatically mix elements of different styles. Not that I try to do so consciously; I just play the way I play.

Except for the extreme case of the music of a society entirely isolated from other societies for centuries or millenia, there's really no such thing as a "pure" style. There can't be.

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: Piers Plowman
Date: 26 Aug 09 - 08:28 AM

I wrote:

"I wouldn't expect anyone to agree with everything I say, just I don't agree with everything people say here."

Sorry, I meant "just as I don't agree ...".

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 26 Aug 09 - 08:33 AM

I think "What is folk?" is another one of those unanswerable questions.

Never mind what it is, Piers - the jury's still out as to whether or not it actually exists! A bit like God really - all a matter of faith or else delusion, the sand upon which we dare to build our absolutes.

Subject: RE: nouveau 'folk'
From: GUEST,aoela
Date: 26 Aug 09 - 05:21 PM

Getting a degree never made anyone '' clever '' in fact I've met a lot of people with degrees who completely underwhelm me!! There are so many great people out there who don't seem to need to advertise their qualities, but then , perhaps they are the Nouveaux folk??