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Suggested definition: tradition
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Subject: Suggested definition: tradition From: GUEST, Mikefule Date: 18 Mar 07 - 04:39 PM We see so many complicated and selctive definitions of traditional. How does this one sound?: History is how we think they used to do things. Tradition is how we like to think we've always done things. It's all in the pronouns and the tense. |
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Subject: RE: Suggested definition: tradition From: Richard Bridge Date: 18 Mar 07 - 05:55 PM It sounds like an attempt at wit. |
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Subject: RE: Suggested definition: tradition From: Bill D Date: 18 Mar 07 - 07:07 PM "Pie like Mother used to make- 50¢....Pie like he SAYS she made...$1.00" |
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Subject: RE: Suggested definition: tradition From: Dave Hanson Date: 19 Mar 07 - 07:51 AM You'll have to check it out with John Leonard first. eric |
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Subject: RE: Suggested definition: tradition From: skipy Date: 19 Mar 07 - 07:58 AM Ask Seth. Skipy |
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Subject: RE: Suggested definition: tradition From: Big Al Whittle Date: 19 Mar 07 - 08:31 AM a load of old gits telling us we know nowt. |
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Subject: RE: Suggested definition: tradition From: Ruth Archer Date: 19 Mar 07 - 09:28 AM ah, the representative of the Willfully Ignorant Brigade has turned up,I see. |
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Subject: RE: Suggested definition: tradition From: GUEST,Sparticus Date: 19 Mar 07 - 09:40 AM I wonder what came before the tradition??? |
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Subject: RE: Suggested definition: tradition From: GUEST,Rob H Date: 19 Mar 07 - 11:02 AM Nothing came before the tradition. We've always done it like this. |
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Subject: RE: Suggested definition: tradition From: GUEST,M.Ted Date: 19 Mar 07 - 11:25 AM Before the tradition, they were all singing "Mairzy Doats", and having more fun. |
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Subject: RE: Suggested definition: tradition From: Stringsinger Date: 19 Mar 07 - 03:20 PM How 'bout the good ol' tradition of slavery and the abuse of child labor laws? Anyone up for that? :) Or the wearing of veils. Frank |
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Subject: RE: Suggested definition: tradition From: Folkiedave Date: 19 Mar 07 - 06:16 PM Tradition is when you can't remember what you used to do before. |
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Subject: RE: Suggested definition: tradition From: GUEST Date: 19 Mar 07 - 07:22 PM meaningless twaddle |
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Subject: RE: Suggested definition: tradition From: Big Al Whittle Date: 19 Mar 07 - 07:29 PM During the 1950's Ruth, the Bishop of Somewhere JB Philips wrote a translation of the gospel called Your God is Too Small. With the best will in the world Ruth, your tradition is miniscule - it excludes nearly everybody except those toadies of trad, like yourself. Your folk music tradition is too small. A folk music that alienates about 90% of the poplualtion is a nonsense. if you bothered to read about the the roots of the ideas you pretend to understand, you would know that Bert Lloyd who put the package, as an articulate statement into being in Folk Song in England during the 40's was a translator of surrealist poetry. I have often suspected that subscribing to a folk culture that virtually nobody in the country knew about was an elaborate exercise of the surrealistic ideal. My view of folk music is intelligent and coherent and borne of many years listening to the Bellamy style yelps and the Waterson/Carthy lugubrious savaging of my native tongue. I am entitled to my opinion and entitled to express it. And I would like to hear a folk music of my country that the people would respond to immediately - as they do in other countries with their folk music. If there is anything except personal abuse to your point of view, I would like to hear it. I suspect I will have a very long wait. |
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Subject: RE: Suggested definition: tradition From: Amos Date: 19 Mar 07 - 08:47 PM Geeze drummer, tell her how you really feel! Should I send out for more teacups again? A |
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Subject: RE: Suggested definition: tradition From: Big Al Whittle Date: 20 Mar 07 - 04:11 AM To be honest Amos. I am so jealous of you, with guys like Jed Marum....just telling the stories and singing the songs in a simple, skillfull way. Instead over in England, we have this ersatz 'tradiotional' style cooked up by a few intellectuals and supposedly in the manner of the ancients. In fact, all it ever achieves is sending the vast majority of English people away thinking they don't like folk music. Also it provides a haven for folk who don't want to be confused with Bay City Rollers fans. |
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Subject: RE: Suggested definition: tradition From: bubblyrat Date: 20 Mar 07 - 04:43 AM Hurrah ! for the intellectuals , without whom much of our great mucical tradition would have gone unrecorded, and become eventually lost !! Whether the " traditional style " that they noted is , or became, "ersatz" ( not a traditional word, by any means ) , is a matter for some debate , by far better people than the Bubblyrats and Weelittledrummers of this world, but it is better, surely, than having no recorded "tradition" at all ?? |
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Subject: RE: Suggested definition: tradition From: greg stephens Date: 20 Mar 07 - 06:00 AM You could try going out to a pub and sampling the actual tradition, weelittledrummer, instead of sitting at your computer pontificating about ersatz intellectuals. Which is, to be frank, not a position yoiu are likely to encounter much traditional music in. |
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Subject: RE: Suggested definition: tradition From: Big Al Whittle Date: 20 Mar 07 - 06:05 AM Okay Ratty old pal, but the point is that people have phoned me - shall I go and see this guy, and in those days I was a completely uncritical member of the movement - and these people....good people I might add have never gone to folk club again. we have a responsibility to hand on this music. think of the idealism behind the singing together programmes on the steam radio, think of Bands like The Spinners who played The Bleacher Lass of Kelvihall on Pebble Mill at One. It wasn't perfect what those guys were trying to do, but unless we start applying ourselves to looking for a more accessible way - this music is going to die. That simple. Ask club organisers like The Villan, what kind of reputation folk music has got for indifference to its audience. I just see the responsible bodies, as totally irresponsible. |
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Subject: RE: Suggested definition: tradition From: greg stephens Date: 20 Mar 07 - 06:19 AM I entirely agree that accessibility is a primary definition of traditional music(or folk music). But not necessarily accessibility to everyone. On Saturday night I was playing in a remote(but not ridiculously remote) country pub for a Paddy's night do. Gypsy step dancing and general mayhem was happening, entirely informally. Definitely traditional, but not I think acceptable either to a mainstream Saturday night town pub, or to the Smooth Operations/Cambridge Folk Festival world either. And certainly absolutely nothing to do with the Leonard/Lakeman concept of tradition. It was a pissup with gypsies, and others, dancing to fiddle and accordion and banjo, pure and simple. |
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Subject: RE: Suggested definition: tradition From: Ruth Archer Date: 20 Mar 07 - 07:10 AM WLD, I don't know where that bag of chips came from on your shoulder, but you really need to get a grip. I'll say this for the millionth time, and slowly, so that maybe when I'm finished ytou'll actually understand where i'm coming from: "The tradition", for want of a better phrase, is a body of work that has been handed down orally for generations. It is the spring from which much conntemporary folk music has emerged. I have NO PROBLEM with accessible folk music, no matter how you wish to define "folk music": singer-songwriter, nu-folk, twisted folk, whatever. Go for your life. I think that the tradition is a part of folk music. I think it deserves to be protected, to have libraries dedicated to it, to have funding thrown at it, because it is the heritage of every one in this country and they deserve the opportunity to find out about it. If they decide it's not for them, fine. But they can't make that decision - the tradition cannot become more accessible - if people are not given MORE ACCESS to it. I'm all for young musicians coming along and interpreting the traditional canon in new and exzciting ways. It keeps the music alive and relevant, and may provide access points to new audiences. But I believe in the preservation of that fundamental body of work that we call the tradition, in the same way that I think important buildings and works of art deserve to be conserved, celebrated and above all USED - by everyone. Once heritage is gone, it's gone. "I would like to hear a folk music of my country that the people would respond to immediately - as they do in other countries with their folk music." Why do you think that doesn't happen here? Because our traditional music isn't as good as that in other countries? Because it is less accessible? No - it's because the traditional music in this country is fundamentally undervalued. The reason people in some other countries "respond immediately" to their traditional music and culture is because they've been exposed to it from the cradle, so its peculiarities and singular features do not seem odd and foreign when they come to experience them. Look at morris dancing: most people never experience it until they are grown up, so of course it looks odd and foreign, and because it is undervalued by our culture, it's something to sneer at for most people. But look at Breton or Basque dancing in contrast - no weirder than morris, but people grow up with a respect and an understanding of that tradition, so it doesn't feel strange or foreign - they accept it as part of their heritage. |
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Subject: RE: Suggested definition: tradition From: George Papavgeris Date: 20 Mar 07 - 08:04 AM "A folk music that alienates about 90% of the poplualtion is a nonsense"(weelittledrummer). That got me thinking. Clearly, in England (and less so, I think, in Wales and Scotland) we have a comparative break between the majority of the people and the traditional music of the country. While we can point fingers at journalists, radio and TV shows and comedians taking the piss out of Morris dancing or finger-in-the-ear singing, I am not sure they are the cause of the break; they simply perpetuate what already is. The break existed clearly before the 50s revival and even before C.Sharp. Therefore is makes no sense to blame the revivalists, or the current fans of traditional music, or club organisers, or whoever, for "making traditional music unpalatable to the majority". Neither is calling traditional music "nonsense" helpful. For better or for worse, like it or not, mangled and misrepresented and handed down chinese-whisper-like, traditional music simply IS. Take for example the romantic songs of the 30s and 40s. Though they have their afficionados today, the majority of the people get bored with them, see no relevance to themselves and simply bypass them. But that does not mean that the music is nonsense, or its afficionados somehow to blame. No, this break goes deeper than that, and though I don't claim to understand it, I believe many of the causes lie in the past (and not only the recent), the development of society and its tastes, the disappearance of borders and population mobility, the effortless exposure to other cultures and types of music and so on. And the musical break is simply one facet of a wider gap. The revivalists never mended that break unfortunately, they simply applied a patch, papered over the gap; and the patch is wearing thin. It would take a lot more imaginative (and even near-dictatorial) measures, and a good few generations to mend such a break, to the point where once again children listen to their parents' favourite music, as well as their own - to bridge the gap properly. It may unfortunately never happen. And I say "unfortunately", because this English society that took me in and that I love, in my eyes suffers sorely because of that break; not only in musical terms, either. It lacks that ease between the generations that you encounter every day in Southern Europe and South America, and Africa. It's a hell of a price to pay for progress. |
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Subject: RE: Suggested definition: tradition From: GUEST, Mikefule Date: 21 Mar 07 - 02:08 PM Well, I started the thread, and I'm disappointed by how bad temepred and confrontational some of the responses have been. I thought we were all united by a common love of the music. My point with the brief definition has been demonstrated, perhaps unwittingly, by some of the responses. One response says, in effect, "Tradition is that which has been handed down orally... and we need a good library to preserve it." QED. The minute it is written down and archived and researched, it becomes different. Sharp not only saved the Morris, but he changed it forever. The same can be said of all of the song and tune collectors. Kimber amended his costume, his presentation and even his opinions once he was plucked from obscurity to become an object of interest and celebrity for the middle classes. I'm sure he was not the only one. Tradition is about ownership. How WE like to think WE have always done it. I say "like to think" because frankly few of us remember exactly what we did last year, but we remember the gist of it. Traditions develop accidentally, spontaneously, and flower - or sometimes die, to be replaced by another. Others persist for much longer. Sometimes the tradition is spoiled the first time someone points it out. I have seen this happen. History is about research and detail. How we think THEY used to do it. We observe, record and sometimes attempt to recreate history, whereas we maintain traditions - sometimes without realising it. Folk is a different thing again. The "folk community" is a small and marginal sub culture. As someone else wrote (I paraphrase) "Something that alienates 90% of the population can't be called "folk"." I used to work in a back recess of a large office, sitting next to a friend who was very much "mainstream" from her local culture. I have an irritating habit of whistling or humming tunes as I work. When I hummed Buddy Holly songs, she knew all the words - yet Buddy Holly died long before she was born - and before I was born, in fact. However, if I hummed or whistled a so-called folk song, it meant nothing to her. We shared a knowledge of and liking of the music of a man who had died before we were born, yet we were nearly a generation apart in ages. When you go to a working class wedding in the UK, everyone, young and old, dances to certain records: The Birdy Song, Agadoo (push pineapple), Hi Ho Silver Lining and so on. No one really likes these songs, and no one dances to them anywhere except weddings. That is a contemporary folk custom - albeit a rather degenerate one. When I was a rocker in the late 1970s, we all danced "the greasy bop" to The Rolling Stones and Status Quo. No one knew why; we just did it. The same dance was performed (in circles instead of parallel lines) to certain 1950s rock and roll songs at rock and roll clubs I frequented. When I read Buddy Holly's biography, there was mention of the same dance (then called the "dirty bop") being performed by individuals in the crowd at a gig in Lubbock in about 1956. Tell me that that isn't an evolving traditional dance form, and a folk custom. I've been involved in "folk" music and the Morris for the best part of 25 years. I've danced "traditional" dances, learned dances from the book, written a few, changed a few. I've written songs, sung a few so-called traditional ones, and played traditional tunes as well as ones I've written. I wouldn't characterise my position as "willful ignorance" as someone suggested early in the thread. I would characterise it as undogmatic. There are too many people who assert a narrow definition of folk/tradition that suits their own preference, and then spend far too much effort telling everyone else how wrong they are. |
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Subject: RE: Suggested definition: tradition From: GUEST,Shimrod Date: 21 Mar 07 - 02:50 PM Dear WLD, OK, you finally got me, I'll come clean. I'll admit that traditional music, and enthusiasts like me, are responsible for (among other things): terrorism, the break down of the family, nuclear proliferation, AIDS, global warming, extreme weather events, tsunamis, and I can finally reveal that it wasn't an asteroid that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago ... I also realise that my addiction to English trad. song is very bad for me personally ... thing is, can I keep on doing it until I need glasses? |
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Subject: RE: Suggested definition: tradition From: Mr Happy Date: 01 May 07 - 07:25 AM If some 'traditional' rituals are no longer carried on by anyone, are they still 'traditional' ? |
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Subject: RE: Suggested definition: tradition From: Grimmy Date: 01 May 07 - 08:57 AM "What one generation spurns, another seeks out and lovingly preserves" Roy Palmer |
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Subject: RE: Suggested definition: tradition From: Wilfried Schaum Date: 02 May 07 - 02:16 AM back to the roots: tradition is a noun derived from the latin verb tradere - trado, tradidi, traditum. It is a compound of the preposition trans = over and the verb dare = to give, so it literally means to hand over. During this handing over from person to person changes occur during decades or even centuries. Fortunately steps of this traditions were documented in handwriting or print. Tradition also may be the subject of historical research. Doing so on The Blue Stork, dedicated to the Eurogathering in 2004,I noticed how a song changed from Renaissance time upto nowadays. |
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Subject: RE: Suggested definition: tradition From: Joe Offer Date: 02 May 07 - 02:28 AM Hmmm. Let me try my understanding on you:
History is what gets printed in books. Tradition is dynamic, and history is static. Take your pick. -Joe- |
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Subject: RE: Suggested definition: tradition From: Dave the Gnome Date: 02 May 07 - 03:51 AM I happen to like 'traditional' music. That often includes renditions of old songs with electronic enhancement and driving rhythms as well as unaccompanied renditions by some old gits (with very good voices). I also like contemporary music. Particulary when well written and about subjects I find either interesting or emotive. What I dislike is the people who believe that the 'tradition' should be untouched and performed exactly as it was in 1652. As if they really knew. I dislike them almost as much as the introspective whinings of many of the contemporary singer songwriters who (dis)grace folk clubs because no-one else will have them! Make of that what you will. Cheers Dave |
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Subject: RE: Suggested definition: tradition From: The Borchester Echo Date: 02 May 07 - 03:54 AM As I've said before: The tradition comprises art forms of a distinctive national, ethnic or social group rooted in that community's lore and customs and passed on orally, aurally or by demonstration rather than by written/recorded or formal didactic means. It has thus belonged collectively to that community, rather than to individuals or the state, and tells the history of the people from their common experience. In the case of music, its platform has been predominantly the informal social gathering, the workplace or the home rather than the theatrical stage or concert hall, and pieces tended to be known by what or who they were about rather than by composer. This is not, of course, to say that trad musicians have not borrowed and adapted from formal composers or from other cultures. Obviously they have, and do, which is why the tradition continues to evolve. However, three factors in the current revival are forcing ever more rapid and inexorable changes: (a) digital archiving. (b) writing, consciously, 'in the tradition' and registering the result with MCPS/ PRS. (c) population mobility resulting in monumental cross-cultural influence and collaboration. It will, thus, never be the same again. 'The tradition' will remain that static body of information that has been quite literally passed down before the irrevocably altered times put an end to the centuries-old process. What is NOT traditional, by definition, is a recently composition of known origin. Even if you call it The White Hare. |
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Subject: RE: Suggested definition: tradition From: Rasener Date: 06 May 07 - 12:25 PM >>What is NOT traditional, by definition, is a recently composition of known origin. Even if you call it The White Hare<< I like that definition Countess Richard It also helps to support WLD's comment >>Ask club organisers like The Villan, what kind of reputation folk music has got for indifference to its audience<< A great deal of my audience like what Countess Richard defines as NOT traditional. Consequently, Faldingworth Live has evolved into concert style NOT traditional live music. that does not mean that there isn't a lot of traditional music played at the venue, becuase there is. |
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Subject: RE: Suggested definition: tradition From: The Borchester Echo Date: 06 May 07 - 12:32 PM And how, exactly, does this assist in defining 'traditional'? Cos that's what the thread is asking, not 'what do you play at your venue?' Which is an entirely different question. |
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Subject: RE: Suggested definition: tradition From: Rasener Date: 06 May 07 - 01:19 PM Blimey you don't change CR always got to have a snipe.. You tell me, your NOT trad definition helped me to know what isn't trad. Your the expert. |
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Subject: RE: Suggested definition: tradition From: Rasener Date: 06 May 07 - 01:36 PM Ah well hey ho off to a Ceilidh now. Enjoy yourselves. |
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