True Traditional Music

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 23 Nov 09 - 10:25 AM

Some of us like to talk about folk music, and traditional music, and you clearly don't. So, as I said before, go somewhere else and talk about the genre of music, since folk, traditional, classical, rock, and blues don't mean anything to you.

You're missing the point here by several miles, John P. Fact is Traditional Music is not a meaningful noun for a genre given that it is a tautological truism for the nature of all music irrespective of genre. Again I might point you at the objectives of the International Council for TRADITIONAL MUSIC which includes the study of folk, classical & popular music of a million genres. So go back and read what has been written here and elsewhere; go think, and go learn - especially before hurling any more abuse around like some retard in a sand-pit.

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 23 Nov 09 - 10:39 AM

Does it never occur to you, Suibhne, that lone·voices·crying·in·wildernesses like you are THE ONES WHO ARE MISSING THE POINT? HURLING ABOUT THE ABUSE LIKE RETARDS IN SAND PITS [INSOFAR AS THAT FORMULATION HAS ANY REFERENT WHATSOEVER, WHICH I TAKE LEAVE TO DOUBT]? DEALING IN TAUTOLOGICAL TRUISMS?

John P is writing a lot of sense. All you can do to respond is patronise — with no basis at all to come on so toffee·nosed·superior.

Hate to say it — but you are just not coming over as right bright.

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: Amos
Date: 23 Nov 09 - 10:41 AM

LEt's not be thick about the tradition of singing. It in the broadest sense is a global tradition that goesa back to the caves and the Etruscans.

But for any meaningful discussion within that broad stream, the fact must be faced that there are many traditions, of different temporal lengths, with different degrees of literacy or other devices in their transmission, and different musical dimensions.

Bach is a standout in one tradition, involving highly figured and formalized constructions. Elvis is a standout in another tradition which is closer (in time) to certain primitive oral forms, and closer to a different economic class. Economic classes and the kinds of effort that go into their formation are one of the vectors that form certain similarities in musical tradition, but by no means the only one.

But it is absolutely obvious to me thare is no single "tradition". There is a sheaf of them, wending and dividing and rejoining through time. So it would be helpful for the muddy-headed ranters to mention which ones they were ranting about before pounding their chests.

A

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: Young Buchan
Date: 23 Nov 09 - 10:58 AM

You may recall the character in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe who argued that black was white and got run over on a zebra crossing. If we accept that music is music is music we risk the same traffic-related accident.

I want a definition of traditional music which however robust it may be is tight enough that if I set up a traditional music club no-one turns up and plays the whole of Pettersson's 2nd Violin Concerto, and then has to say, 'Sorry. Wasn't that the sort of thing you wanted? It's all music, you know.'

By the same token, if I went to a concert to hear Alan Bush's B Minor Sonata I would not be happy (unless it had been clearly advertised as such) to hear it played on a kazoo.

If I go to hear Vaughan William's Wasps I don't get out my spoons and start playing them with a merry shout of 'But VW is folk, you know!'

If I went to hear Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance I would sit through No 1 in silence UNLESS I were at the last night of the proms.

My point is that we respect classical music as a generally identifiable form with its own conventions, and accept that its adherents have the right to enjoy these conventions without undue interference.

So why do we 1954ers get spoken of as if we are musical fascists when we claim that traditional music has its own integrity as a separate form?

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: John P
Date: 23 Nov 09 - 11:01 AM

Yes, yes, and copiers are all called xerox machines. One supposes, though, that the folks at Xerox see a difference between their machines and the others. This is, after all, a folk music forum.

You are stating obvious truisms -- no one would disagree that the word traditional has many meanings in different contexts. Isn't English a wonderful language? Everyone knows that all music is related; I myself have spent a lifetime exploring the strong similarities between the blues, medieval music, progressive rock, childrens' songs, and traditional idioms from all over Europe and America. I think we can all agree that everyone who makes music does it because they have it in them to do so; the desire to play or sing comes from a deep place within each of us, regardless of how that desire finds form. The emotions created or emphasized by music is the story of humanity, regardless of the genre of music or when or where it happens. How not? What's that got to do with whether or not a bunch of folk music enthusiasts should use the word 'traditional' to define a specific form of music so they can have a conversation about it?

Oh, and speaking of throwing insults around, what makes you think you know anything about the nature of my thinking and learning? And what did you find insulting about what I wrote? I may have misconstrued your words to mean that you don't see the differences between different types of music, or don't think they're important, and think that 'traditional' is a bad choice of word to use to discuss a type of music. If so, I think most everyone else here got the same idea, so perhaps you should explain yourself further. If you objected to my asking to leave, I don't apologize. I'd like to have a conversation on this subject without your antagonistic statements of obvious but completely tangential truisms.

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: John P
Date: 23 Nov 09 - 11:04 AM

Sorry, that last post was directed at SoP, not anyone who posted while I was writing it.

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 23 Nov 09 - 11:38 AM

Does it never occur to you, Suibhne, that lone·voices·crying·in·wildernesses like you

Nice one, MtheGM - you that's so bright. Suggest you check what Voice Crying in the Wilderness actually means (which in this case would be entirely apt actually) before using it to mean something else entirely. Otherwise, again I refer you to the objectives of the ICTM. I did not write them; but upon them I base what I've written on this thread. You obviously know better than they do. How wonderful it is to be in such exalted company.

But it is absolutely obvious to me thare is no single "tradition". There is a sheaf of them, wending and dividing and rejoining through time. So it would be helpful for the muddy-headed ranters to mention which ones they were ranting about before pounding their chests.

Absolutely - & the OP makes the point beautifully about one such tradition.

And what did you find insulting about what I wrote?

How about the rather barbed use of the word jerk, John P? Otherwise - go back to that opening post and re-enter the spirit of what this thread is actually about.

To clarify my position: whilst all music is indeed traditional, and all music could indeed be called folk music in terms of both the Horse Definition and the 1954 Orthodoxy (definition of community notwithstanding &c. &c.), beyond the fact that it is all composed & performed by human beings, all music most certainly is not the bloody same - no one here is suggesting otherwise, least of all myself. Furthermore, the music of any given tradition and the music of a revival / reinvention of that tradition are two very different things. The former exists in its wild state, running free in its natural habitat. The latter exist, at best, in captivity - at worst, stuffed in a glass display case. The former could be said to be traditional; the latter, perhaps rather less so...

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: GUEST
Date: 23 Nov 09 - 12:05 PM

I pop in read some of this have a laugh then go write anew folk song LOL
Slowly I will destroy the bloodlines and all will be destroyed.
Ha ha ha aha aha aha a ahaa ha aa ah ah
Hmmm maybe that monkfish was a bit off

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 23 Nov 09 - 12:22 PM

To clarify my position:>>>

THAT will be the day, Suibhne acushla

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 23 Nov 09 - 12:30 PM

"So what to do? I love traditional folk music, play it a lot, and listen to it more than anything else."

There is no "traditional folk music". There are, however, plenty of traditional folk musics. Lots of different countries and regions have them - and guess what? They don't all sound the same! They're not a single genre! I presume, JohnP, you play a couple of them, perhaps from the UK/US traditions, rather than from, say, the Mongolian or Uzbekistani or Malian traditions? Personally I'm a huge fan of traditional folk musics from India, Pakistan, North Africa and the Middle East. None of them sound much like Dock Boggs or Lizzie Higgins, f'rinstance, much as I love the music of those two individuals. I guess that's not what you mean when you describe traditional music as a "genre"?

Just a thought.

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 23 Nov 09 - 12:30 PM

S e mìr na caca a th'annad

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: Amos
Date: 23 Nov 09 - 12:42 PM

This is a little like the battle of the Clades in linguistic studies. When you have a big, dynamic field like language, there is always an impulse to subdivide it into groups of like thing, but the hook is that you have to choose the attributes you are using.

You could define the perpetration of unaccompanied CHild's ballads as "oral agrarian Anglo-Saxon pre-industrial" musical tradition, if you wanted. You could probably label it in historical terms, or by its scalings, or by its rhyming methods, or some other attribute.   Depending on how you chose the diagnostic attreibutes, you would find the set included more or less instances, and would include and exclude different candidates. The first definition would rule out, for example, many of the Appalachian versions of the same songs, even though also agrarian, oral, and unaccompanied.

It would be a lot more useful for purposes of discussion if we chose labels we could relate to that could actually be used to define the set of candidates we were discussing, instead of miasmic generalizations that are, essentially, semantically null at worst or impossibly ambiguous at best.

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 23 Nov 09 - 01:06 PM

"I can't make heads or tails of what he thinks he is on about. Can anybody?"

Not me! Well almost, sort of, nearly, yes possibly.
At least the ensuing mayhem is always jolly entertaining anyway.

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 23 Nov 09 - 01:09 PM

SO'P: "caca"

Apparently, all babies from whatever country, race or culture call poo 'caca' or something very similar!

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 23 Nov 09 - 01:19 PM

Can't make heads or tails of what he thinks he is on about. Can anybody?"

... Well almost, sort of, nearly, yes possibly. >>>

Good summary, Crow Sister. But watch it — Sweeney will get all subtle & call you 'a turd' if you go on like that about him. He's ever so sensitive, you know — one has to make allowances.

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: richd
Date: 23 Nov 09 - 01:26 PM

O good! I do like it when Sweary O'Pillock and Mthef'nG*T start gettin' it on. Watch it boys, or Joe'll be round with his redish-brown type, just as soon as he's back from his bout of Cornish wrestling.

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: Marje
Date: 23 Nov 09 - 01:31 PM

One traditional singer (i.e. not a classical opera singer, right?) - and I wish I could remember which one - said something like, "I know the difference between traditional music and any other kind of music. It's as clear to me as the difference between night and day, and just because I can't tell you exactly where one ends and the other begins, it doesn't follow that they're both the same." In other words, we're talking about a distinctive and recognisable genre of music, even if any attempted definition is a bit flaky for some purposes. Other genres of music (jazz, swing, rock)are just as hard to define precisely, but equally distinctive. Can't we just move on and talk about traditional music without someone invoking the mythical "folk police" and declaring that it's impossible to discuss this music because no one knows what it is?

A much more interesting, and less contentious, line of inquiry is the difference, mentioned by Jerry above, between US and UK interpretations of the term "traditional" music, as demonstrated in his original post at the top. I think, for one thing, we're looking at, one one hand, a young country where anything "traditional" may be relatively recent, and on the other, an old country where the traditions stretch back over many centuries.

Marje

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 23 Nov 09 - 01:41 PM

Awww, do you think?

Well... As Sweeney is indulging in the Oirish there, I'd no doubt read that as 'Thurd' - which strictly speaking, is in fact a vernacular variant of the term "You total feckin' Arse'ole!", and thus clearly a far more formal expression of affection than the common "Thurd" - YMMV.
:)

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: Amos
Date: 23 Nov 09 - 01:51 PM

DO they use Thirds in traditional music?

Depends on your definition of third...



A

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: TheSnail
Date: 23 Nov 09 - 01:55 PM

Thirds never sound quite right in even temperament.

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 23 Nov 09 - 01:56 PM

"DO they use Thirds in traditional music?"

Interesting question Amos, hopefully Jack Campin will be along shortly to enlighten us?

I'm sure someone may have made use of dried cow pats/elk dung/llama doo-doo at some point in the history of (folk) music, after all people have used shite for every other kind of early innovation (such as constructing buildings and as fuel for fire etc.)

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: Waddon Pete
Date: 23 Nov 09 - 02:02 PM

Hello Jerry,

Yes, there is a difference between perceptions of folk music, depending upon where you are.

I have always felt that US folkies have more of a grasp on the genre than others. Utah Phillips talked a great deal of sense about folk music, its usage and its origins. You can still find his views on the web.....(but you knew that!)

Best wishes,

Peter

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: Amos
Date: 23 Nov 09 - 02:16 PM

In another tradition, John Cage staged a piece called, if I recall aright, "Child of Tree" in which the instruments included various plants. One of the "new music" musicians of the era, Miles Anderson, a renowned trombonist, told me a hilarious story about auditioning various cactii in a large SOuthwestern nurdery, using a portable amp and a contact mic. He eventually selected the best one for its long and varied spines which produced a wide rangeof tones when plucked.
OF course you could, if you chose, define this as merely the most recent episode in the long tradition of playing music on trees and hollow logs and the like.



A

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: Jack Campin
Date: 23 Nov 09 - 02:28 PM

I wonder if in the UK one finds Northern English and Scottish ears are more attuned to 'Slow Airs' and further South in the Midlands down to the South coast Morris tunes are more easily responded to/recognised.

I was talking about Scotland there. I've no idea how the sort of tune I was playing (Nathaniel Gow's "Mr Ronald Crawford", say) would be perceived in England.

But it is absolutely obvious to me thare is no single "tradition". There is a sheaf of them, wending and dividing and rejoining through time. So it would be helpful for the muddy-headed ranters to mention which ones they were ranting about before pounding their chests.

There are roughly three different subcultural traditions I meet with personally here in southern Scotland: the singer-songwriter crowd (on Radio Scotland: Ian Anderson's show), the Scottish revivalist folk scene (Archie Fisher's "Travelling Folk"), and the fiddle and accordion music scene (Robbie Shepherd's "Take the Floor"). They overlap pairwise, and you often get misunderstandings when somebody used to one of them walks into an event that's mainly the other. I use the sort of instruments you might expect to find in the revivalist folk scene, but the music I play is mainly the fiddle-and-accordion-club repertoire, so neither of them quite knows what to make of me. And the singer-songwriter crowd (who dominate the participant music sessions around where I live in Midlothian) really don't know what to make of my tunes - it's very, very rare for any of them to have any idea how to accompany one on their guitar, however good they may be at blues or John Prine songs. (Oh, and a fourth category: the "world music" scene, as represented on Scottish radio by Mary Ann Kennedy's show. My ventures into that cause equal bafflement in all the other three).

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: Jack Campin
Date: 23 Nov 09 - 02:41 PM

I hadn't heard of the Cage connection Amos mentioned, but came across this recently:

cactus tune on Oddstruments

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 23 Nov 09 - 02:52 PM

Some traditional music from Manchester: here

Believe me, this is more of a tradition than much mentioned above. It involves real people rather than conjecture, mind.

Ed

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: TheSnail
Date: 23 Nov 09 - 02:55 PM

Amos
in a large SOuthwestern nurdery

Like it.

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: GUEST,glueperson
Date: 23 Nov 09 - 03:11 PM

Grumpy Music had much to commend it as a description. Reflexive, self-serving, reactionary. A rolling stone that gathered so much moss, it's pretty much all greenery these days.

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 23 Nov 09 - 03:26 PM

He eventually selected the best one for its long and varied spines which produced a wide rangeof tones when plucked.

I've got rain-sticks made from dried inverted cactus stems, the spines on the inside catch the seeds.

OF course you could, if you chose, define this as merely the most recent episode in the long tradition of playing music on trees and hollow logs and the like.

How else could you define it?

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 23 Nov 09 - 03:35 PM

"Do a search for 2 Girls, 1 Cup ... which, sadly, fails to live up to the hype."

Oh dear SO'P, sounds like it was something a dissapointment for you! Sadly my own interest in watching other people eat shit (and various permeations of same), rather died the death at around age two or so. Thanks for the considerate recommendation though :)

I do like the pig/shitting/rotting/eating/fucking fantasy scene in Last Tango however, which like the rest of the film, might offer some interest? And of course there is that scene in Salo, though I don't know as I'd recommend anyone "Google it."

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: The Sandman
Date: 23 Nov 09 - 03:44 PM

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: Amos
Date: 23 Nov 09 - 04:02 PM

Subaine:

It was viewed as leading edge new-music experimental stuff at the time, and I doubt much thought was given to the tradition of ancient tree-thumping behind it.

A

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: Jack Campin
Date: 23 Nov 09 - 05:19 PM

Cage's use of Irish music in Roaratorio is pretty incidental, and it was planned out before most of those players were even born. Basically it's a response to Joyce, i.e. the highest of high culture.

I take Jerry's original question to be about what happens when a group of people takes some kind of music from outside to its bosom and makes a tradition out of it. There is one elephant-in-the-room example of that: religious music. Whether it's Catholic chant, Protestant hymns or Islamic calls to prayer, most believers end up performing music from the tradition of the culture their religion came from. What happens next is the interesting bit. Gregory the Great, Luther and Mohammed couldn't have predicted Corsican folk polyphony, Hebridean psalms, or Sudanese Koranic recitation.

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 24 Nov 09 - 02:44 AM

C'mon, MtheGM. You love it really!

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: Jack Campin
Date: 24 Nov 09 - 04:45 AM

Jerry started this off with an interesting point stated in a charming and intelligent way. Anybody want to get back to it?

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: Jack Campin
Date: 24 Nov 09 - 05:35 AM

There is no "traditional folk music". There are, however, plenty of traditional folk musics. Lots of different countries and regions have them - and guess what? They don't all sound the same! They're not a single genre! I presume, JohnP, you play a couple of them, perhaps from the UK/US traditions, rather than from, say, the Mongolian or Uzbekistani or Malian traditions? Personally I'm a huge fan of traditional folk musics from India, Pakistan, North Africa and the Middle East. None of them sound much like Dock Boggs or Lizzie Higgins, f'rinstance, much as I love the music of those two individuals. I guess that's not what you mean when you describe traditional music as a "genre"?

Marketing people realize that the same customers who buy Dock Boggs and Lizzie Higgins are a likely market for Asik Veysel or Gnawa drumming, so in their terms they are in the same genre. If you want to hear some Asik Veysel on the radio you're more likely to hear him on a programme that also features Lizzie Higgins than one featuring Atomic Kitten or Eddi Reader.

And people who like to understand what the music they're listening to actually means will use the same sort of reasoning on it for Asik Veysel and Dock Boggs (both came from cultural and religious backgrounds that influenced what they did in ways that nobody in a professionalized commercial form of music-making would ever experience).

The interesting thing about the sort of pop-and-rock-gone-feral that Jerry started off this thread with is that it ends up being an utterly different genre in practical terms. Where would you hear a bunch of geezers playing Buddy Holly for fun? Except in their homes, probably nowhere. You can't buy their performances on CD, they don't get played on the radio. You need the approach of an ethnomusicologist to locate that music at all unless you happen to be their neighbours. As a genre, it relates more closely to the corroboree music of the Australian Aborigines than it does to Springsteen in a plastic box or Beyonce from iTunes. (YouTube has made that sort of music-making a bit more public, but not much).

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 24 Nov 09 - 07:17 AM

Jerry started this off with an interesting point stated in a charming and intelligent way. Anybody want to get back to it?

I've always thought of Folk and Traditional as dynamic adjectives descriptive of musical context & process rather than the insubstantial & misleadingly conservative & reactionary genre nouns they've become. The 1954 Definition does not describe a musical genre, rather it contextualises music as Folk in terms of its human process regardless of genre. We might niggle over its reading, but in terms of a contemporary appreciation of music in context, it is, perhaps, supremely ironic that the musics most likely to be called Folk or Traditional are those which are no longer subject to the sort of processes described by the 1954 Definition on account of their somewhat precious revival status.

As a performer of such material (however so eccentric in terms of the wholly non-traditional revival orthodoxy) I treat it with the kid-gloves of the purist, like handling anything anciently precious, no matter how robust such things are in and of themselves. In other words, I become as conservative and reactionary as the best of them in terms of a wider ecology in which I regard their continuing presence in this word not only vulnerable, but perilous. As I said back there in my post of 23 Nov 09 - 11:38 AM: the music of any given tradition and the music of a revival / reinvention of that tradition are two very different things. The former exists in its wild state, running free in its natural habitat. The latter exist, at best, in captivity - at worst, stuffed in a glass display case. The former could be said to be traditional; the latter, perhaps rather less so... I don't mean this in any pejorative way - I am a Revivalist Traddy of some 36 years standing and proud of both it and my brethren and sistren who continue to make it all worthwhile - Shimrod included.

However, The Revival has only very tenuous links to the history and culture which gave us The Tradition. History and culture is a good thing to be aware of in terms of musical process, which is why I reacted as I did to Jo Taylor's post of 22 Nov 09 - 05:03 PM. To what extent are trad. English tunes (16, 17 18c?) an aspect of our wider culture? And to what extent has an awareness of that historicism permeated into that culture as a whole? I might sit playing 13th-Century Cantigas de Santa Maria on a reconstruction of a medieval bowed-lyre, but how are people who don't know that meant to access it in terms of musical empiricism? In the Folk Scene, there is a tendency towards a pedantry which I feel is totally unnecessary when it comes to dealing with such public reactions as Jo has described. After all, you have to walk many miles in the real world before meeting another folkie, let alone one shares your love of trad. English tunes (16, 17 18c?).

Is Folk Music something we might only appreciate if we've done the book-work? Well, if 3 years of Mudcat has taught me anything it's that the answer to such a question is a resounding Yes. Not that I was in any sort of doubt at all, and not that see any harm in that, but in terms of musical empiricism - Ministry of Sound it ain't. This is how I interpreted the OP Of this thread, that so-called Folk Music lacks the essential immediacy which is one of the defining factors of a truly traditional, or indeed folk, music. In other words, a music which is as natural to you as the words you speak; the music you grew up with as cultural ambience, a music which needs no words to tell you what it is; a music you are born with. In that music are the seeds of everything - like the thrill I felt on my 6th birthday in the summer of 1967 when I flipped over my band-new copy of All You Need is Love and heard the exquisite modal piping sounds at the opening of Baby You're A Rich Man and recognised therein a kindred empathy to an ancient music I've been questing after ever since. Even when I was six I realised it was the beginning of something amazing. As Camus said: A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.

As much as culture defines of individualism, it is our individualism that redefines our culture; all is change, mutability and enrichment; all is process, everything is tradition.

Enjoy!

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 24 Nov 09 - 07:39 AM

Thanks for that last post SOP. I had hoped that there might be a little thoughtful, insightful reflection on how all music is built upon what has gone before, but I'm afraid that in the UK conversations quickly descend to firing rounds from behind barricades. That seems to be a uniquely English phenomenon, although friends like Peter seem perfectly comfortable stepping beyond arguments about definitions to reflect upon how we all make music.

For the record, I love what I think of as traditional music and still get a rush out of singing the old songs. That love shapes the songs I write and my respect for the tradition has not waned over the years. I wrote a song about it many years ago. It's not a folk song I suppose, and certainly is not traditional. But it honors the tradition.

"We are walking in the footsteps of those who've gone on before
And their music will keep on ringing until we meet on that Golden shore"

This has become a UK thread. You'll notice that almost no one from the U.S. is posting. I think I'll leave this discussion to my U.K. friends, of which I have many. I don't have any more to add.

Thanks for the posts.

Jerry

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: John P
Date: 24 Nov 09 - 10:47 AM

Getting back to a couple of things that caught my interest earlier:

Spleen Cringe: There is no "traditional folk music". There are, however, plenty of traditional folk musics. Lots of different countries and regions have them - and guess what? They don't all sound the same! They're not a single genre! I presume, JohnP, you play a couple of them, perhaps from the UK/US traditions, rather than from, say, the Mongolian or Uzbekistani or Malian traditions? Personally I'm a huge fan of traditional folk musics from India, Pakistan, North Africa and the Middle East. None of them sound much like Dock Boggs or Lizzie Higgins, f'rinstance, much as I love the music of those two individuals. I guess that's not what you mean when you describe traditional music as a "genre"?

Yes, obviously there lots of traditions from lots of places. And no, they don't all sound the same. They do, however, sound a lot more like each other than any of them sound like modern pop or classical music. Since almost everyone on Mudcat is primarily involved with European or American folk music, it seems like if we need to delve into other traditions for specific discussions or examples, it is easy to get more specific. Most of the time it's not needed.

I have a lot of familiarity with European, British Isles, and American traditional idioms, and I hear common themes and similarities all over the place. I listen to but don't know much about Andean, Turkish, Greek, and North African music. They have the stamp of tradition in my ear, even though the melodies and rhythms are different. They don't sound anything at all like what I hear on the radio most of the time. For my purposes -- and that's all that really matters when I'm playing or listening -- I can easily lump them into one genre with a bunch of interweaving idioms.

Which brings us to:

Amos: But for any meaningful discussion within that broad stream, the fact must be faced that there are many traditions, of different temporal lengths, with different degrees of literacy or other devices in their transmission, and different musical dimensions. But it is absolutely obvious to me there is no single "tradition". There is a sheaf of them, wending and dividing and rejoining through time.

I love the interweaving of traditions -- in fact that's part of how the music came to be. I've noticed that European music gets more odd the farther east it goes -- German and Austrian music is pretty straightforward, Hungarian starts moving away from the "standard" modes and harmonic patterns, Bulgarian can be like that or more Turkish in sound, etc. I sometimes get accused of playing Bulgarian music when I'm playing Swedish music. There is a type of polska in 3/4 time that is rhythmically very nearly the same as a daichovo in 9/8, and which uses a scale that includes a one and a half steps between two of the notes. A cursory listening can make them sound like they come from the same tradition.

But the idea that really caught my interest here is wondering if the type of musical collusions/collisions that made Appalachian music, Cajun music, and the blues are still going on. Or has the prevalence of rock music and the shrinking world made that a thing of the past? Does anyone know of any blending of different types of traditional music to make a new idiom in the last hundred years or so?

Perhaps one of the reasons that rock music has become the music of the people is because it lends itself very well to mixing with any other musical genre or idiom, without losing the basis of what makes it rock. I hear Mexican rock, a few different types from Africa, Euro folk-rock, jazz fusion, rock based on classical music, and, of course, the blues. All definitely rock, all definitely influenced by and fused with completely different genres.

From a process standpoint, rock is even doing the whole change-through-the-gnerations thing. Just listen to Crossroads by Robert Johnson and then by Cream.

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: Jack Campin
Date: 24 Nov 09 - 11:46 AM

But the idea that really caught my interest here is wondering if the type of musical collusions/collisions that made Appalachian music, Cajun music, and the blues are still going on. Or has the prevalence of rock music and the shrinking world made that a thing of the past? Does anyone know of any blending of different types of traditional music to make a new idiom in the last hundred years or so?

Jazz (Black song traditions mixed up with white dance and military music)

French cafe music (northern French bagpipe-based dance music mixed up with jazz harmonies when transferred to the accordion)

Scottish dance music of the same period (similar process starting with the fiddle repertoire, the standard lineup being originally derived from American dancebands of the early 20th century)

Rembetika (Turkish fasil music increasingly mixed up with all kinds of other stuff)

Arabesk (Turkish fasil music with Kurdish folk tunes and Arabic backings)

Tango (Cuban dance rhythms and Argentine song lyrics on German instruments with harmonies from jazz)

Klezmer (Romanian, Ukrainian, Gypsy and Jewish music all mixed up)

The Hungarian "new song" (started in the 19th cetury but really got under way after WW1)

Samba (African dance adapted to urban Brazil around WW1)

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: Joe Offer
Date: 24 Nov 09 - 01:12 PM

I'm sorry that this thread was interrupted by a personal squabble, which I moved over here (click).
Please go on with the original topic of discussion. further squabbling is not permitted in this thread. As for the two people involved, I will not tolerate any further disturbances from either of you. If I find them, I'll dispatch you to the loony bin.
Please - no apologies, and no further discussion of the squabble in this thread. Let's go back to the original topic of discussion.
Thanks.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 25 Nov 09 - 02:48 PM

I don't know if anyone is left who is interested in conversing about the subject of this thread: how all music is forged out of an awareness and appreciation for tradition. Before the old songs were freeze-dried and stuck into the Traditional Music locker, musicians were naturally creating new music that grew out of the "traditional" music of the day. I picture some poor bugger who created a new song only to be told, "Sorry, the deadline for traditional music was last Thursday. You just missed it."

If it looks like we can actually have a concersation, I'd also like to talk about the process by which recently written songs become folkized. I've seen that with some of my songs, and I heartily approve. I can give some examples, as well as changes I've made in recently written songs by others. The folk process is anything but dead.

Jerry

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 25 Nov 09 - 03:07 PM

"The folk process is anything but dead."
Can't speak for the US Jerry, but on this side of the pond it's been a gonner for a long time.
This isn't to say that the songs aren't still performed - they are, in the diminishing number of clubs, but the people who once made and preserved them are now passive recipients of whatever they listen to and have no say in their form, style, subject matter.....
The last living tradition was among the Travellers, who dropped the ball when portable televisions became available and, as somebody put it at the time, "Barbara Ellen was deposed by Sue Ellen!"
We virtually witnessed this happen sometime between September 1973 and March 1975 (remember where I was then better than I remember where I was when Kennedy was shot).
There were still old singers in substantial numbers around here imn the West of Ireland for some time following this, but their adiences were largely carrying tape recorders or listening to them in concerts - their contemporaries had lost interest in the old "diddly-di" and "come-all ye's".
The last of the English 'big' singers hadn't even sung at home - too young - but only ever before folk club and festival audiences.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 25 Nov 09 - 04:21 PM

Hey, Jim: It's true that there are very few remaining "traditional singers" left (without arguing what that means to different people.) The folk process: new songs being written, and then being shaped as they are passed around from singer to singer, is very much alive.

Last weekend I did a concert with my friend Susam Trump. Susan is a great admirer of my song writing and has recorded at least four of my songs. At the concert, she sang one of mine, Screen Porch Door. I had written the song about when I was a kid. During the summer we lived more on our front porch than in the house because it was cooler, and we could watch the parade of neighbors "out to catch the evening breeze." My father would always blow up when we ran out the screen porch doorway, leaving the door to slam loudly. At least at home, my father watched his language. I'm sure he swore a storm around his drinking buddies, but he rarely swore at home. The one thing that could set him off was when we slammed the screen porch door. No matter how many times he warned us not to do it, in the heat of the moment when we wanted to go out, we'd the door running and were almost out of earshot before he yelled at us.

When Susan sang the song, she brought her memories of sitting on the front porch swing at her Grandmother and Grandfather's house when she was a little girl. The line I'd written:
"And that's about the only time my father ever swore," became"
"And that's about the only time my Grandpa ever swore."
That's how the folk process works. Every song had an original songwriter, whether his or her name is lost to posterity. If the song was good, other people started to sing it, changing the lyrics to suit them. Many years later, folklorists gather different variants of the same song and its origins are lost in time.

Susan has changed the lyrics on other songs I've written, always with a good reason. She's not the only one. I've had people write an additional verse to one of my songs, thinking it was a traditional song. That's why all this desire to make a definitive, iron-clad definition of what is traditional music is futile. I've written an additional vese to old gospel songs that were artifically shortened by the need to fit the song onto a 3 minute recording. Some of those additional verses may be picked up by others and eventually be a seamless part of the song.

All of this is fine with me. I'm pleased that people change the lyrics on my songs to make them their own. I even found myself in the awkward position of singing an old gospel song where I'd added a verse in front of the group I learned the song from. They were very gracious. It wouldn't surprise me if they start doing the verse I added.

Music is supposed to be fun. Getting all wound up about definitions, or whether the songs evolve through time seems counterproductive.

I have no problem with people changing some of the words in songs I've written any more than I do changing or combining lyrics from more than one version of the same traditional song. As long as it's done out of respect. Maybe even if it isn't...

Jerry

Thanks for the post, Jim

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: Ron Davies
Date: 26 Nov 09 - 01:37 PM

J. S. Bach is praised to the skies here.   This is not, strictly speaking, germane to the thread, but it's interesting to note that this was not universal in his own day. Bach was admired for keyboard skills but his music was considered old-fashioned by some. And Johann Scheibe, a composer and music critic, said that Bach took away "the natural element in his pieces by giving them a turgid and confused style...".   I understand that Bach got back at Scheibe by casting him as a figure of ridicule in 'Der Streit zwischen Phoebus und Pan". Somehow it must have been possible to know that Scheibe was being portrayed--sort of a musical roman a clef, I suppose.

And he had problems supporting his family.   With the large family he had--Garrison Keillor says it's because his organ had no stops--Bach was hard-pressed, and he complained, for instance that "when a healthy wind blows" the income he derived from funerals went way down.

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: Valmai Goodyear
Date: 27 Nov 09 - 05:01 AM

Could we remember dance music as well as songs? Social dance tunes are still played for their original purpose. Tunes several centuries old co-exist with recently-written ones and both are constantly modified under the fingers of musicians to fit what their instrument, tastes or abilities require. They are transmitted in print, by ear in sessions, and by ear from recordings, and are constantly changing. This sounds like the live folk process to me.

Will Fly recently started an interesting debate about developments to the recently-written tune The Sweetness of Mary in the thread 'The folk process and tunes'.

Valmai (Lewes)

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 27 Nov 09 - 08:31 AM

A good point, Valmait:

Many, Many years ago I used to play fiddle. I wasn't very good but I met a kid in highschool who plaed hammered dulcimer and he mentioned to me how badly he wanted to get someone to play fiddle with him. I asked him "how desperate are you?" I had figured out a handful of tunes on a wonderful fiddle I bought at a tag sale, and told him if he played loud enough, I'd give it a try. He was pretty heavy handed on the hammered dulcimer, so we were a match made in hell. As long as he played really loud, we were o.k.

One of the tunes I knew was Forked Deer (Which I pronounced Fork-ed deer.) It's so long ago now that I don't remember which key I played it in. It was the only key I COULD play it in. When we performing once, a real fiddle player came up after our set and I figured he was going to ridicule my playing (which would have been legitimate of him.) Instead he said, "Why did you play Forked Deer in D?" (or whatever key I played it in.) NOBODY plays that tune in D! "Someone does now," I answered. I guess there not only are lyric, tune and definition pedants, there are even key pedants.

Sheesh!

God help us common folks.

Jerry

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: GUEST,Russ
Date: 27 Nov 09 - 11:08 AM

Jerry,
In the US, among fiddlers (as opposed to violin players) key pedantry is the rule rather than the exception. If you're in a G jam and you suggest the D Forky Deer (as I learned it), God help you.

Russ (permanent GUEST and old time banjo player)

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: Stringsinger
Date: 27 Nov 09 - 06:19 PM

Musical imperialism is the province of the music industry which seeks to promote a product that will appeal to at the most the greatest common denominator and at least
a mid-line market. Some of the music is good.

Traditional folk music is not traded like a commodity for a musical Wall Street.
It comes out of a community that has sung and played music that was passed down
through generations. That's why it is traditional and not made for the market.

There is an analogy here between the "commons" or the public ownership and privatization
of a resource. Traditional folk music is public. Rock and Roll, Rock, Rap, Hip Hop, Country,
and even some forms of jazz are bins in a record store that has been privatized. It's a given commodity to sell to likely audiences. Traditional folk music isn't sold like that.
You can't buy and sell it on the music market because it wasn't created for that purpose.

I love all kinds of music but I believe I know the difference between commercial music
and traditional folk.

Subject: RE: True Traditional Music
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 27 Nov 09 - 06:23 PM

Dream on, Stringsinger! Traditional Folk is as much a marketing myth as anything else. Conversely, of course, Rock and Roll, Rock, Rap, Hip Hop, Country, and Jazz have deep Traditional roots in their respective communities.