The New Folk Process (youtube link)

Subject: The New Folk Process
From: John Hardly
Date: 03 Jun 07 - 08:24 AM

Amen, Brother

Subject: RE: The New Folk Process
From: Dave Earl
Date: 03 Jun 07 - 08:27 AM

Crickey!!

I hope not!!!

Dave

Subject: RE: The New Folk Process
From: John Hardly
Date: 03 Jun 07 - 08:30 AM

It's an 18 minute video, yet you responded within 3 minutes.

Subject: RE: The New Folk Process
From: Surreysinger
Date: 03 Jun 07 - 08:31 AM

Would have helped if there had been some indication that that was a YouTube link - no good to peeps like me who don't have broadband - unless you've got a spare half an hour of your life waiting for it to load!

Subject: RE: The New Folk Process
From: Dave Earl
Date: 03 Jun 07 - 08:33 AM

Yes

Cos I knew after a minute that I didn't want to here any more.

I have a aversion to drums.

Dave

Subject: RE: The New Folk Process
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 03 Jun 07 - 08:36 AM

Slowed down a bit, the Amen break could be used for a rant step: Hop, hop, change (pause), hop, hop, change (pause). So not that new.

Subject: RE: The New Folk Process
From: John Hardly
Date: 03 Jun 07 - 09:26 AM

It's not that it's "new"...

...it's that, as with folk music taken from the public domain and then copyrighted ... and with the reverse -- parody allowances made to take advantage of copyrighted material ... sampling is changing the way we "use" law.

And the thesis of the author is that in many ways the very copyright laws that are supposed to protect, and therefore encourage creativity, instead squelch it.

Subject: RE: The New Folk Process
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 03 Jun 07 - 10:28 AM

Surrysinger, if you touch the clicky with your cursor you can see the URL on the bottom line of your page. Of course, if you touch it too firmly you will start loading it ...

Subject: RE: The New Folk Process
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 03 Jun 07 - 11:05 AM

John Hardly, well yes indeed.

I'll listen out for e-ceilidh bands who might already have employed the riff.
As they already have with Aerosmith's Walk This Way.

Subject: RE: The New Folk Process
From: John Hardly
Date: 03 Jun 07 - 11:16 AM

"...As they already have with Aerosmith's Walk This Way"

Are you telling me that that's not a Run-D.M.C. song?!

I'm crushed. And disillusioned.

Subject: RE: The New Folk Process
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 03 Jun 07 - 11:18 AM

Oh dear . . . !

Subject: RE: The New Folk Process
From: Charley Noble
Date: 03 Jun 07 - 01:02 PM

John Hardly-

Nice point!

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: The New Folk Process
From: Stringsinger
Date: 03 Jun 07 - 02:52 PM

The sole purpose for the creation of any music licensing group is about money. When the licensing organization doesn't excercise control, it loses money. The publisher and the songwriter loses money. Other factors are comparitively unimportant such as squelching creativity or allowing a folk process to happen.

The appropriation of music as a commodity by corporate interests is the history of the music business in the US and Britain and perhaps some part of the rest of the world. It's a kind of musical imperialism. Even the underworld enters the music business when it finds out about the money that it generates and the craft or substance of music in not material. The music business is a business first and music secondary.

The Amen drum lick is also found in other forms which are presented as musical styles.
When something clicks on the charts, it's bound to be emulated and sampled too.

Art as a vehicle for lining the pockets of corporations is of course a double-edged sword and a "catch-22". Someone has to pay for the art. As in politics, money talks and bullshit walks and the music business is no different.

Originally, the folk music revolution if you can call it that was to circumvent or offer an alternative to the problem of financial monopoly of music. This was to be co-opted cleverly by the music industry in the 60's.

I am surprised at the amount of people who ostensibly understand folk music in this context who have drunk the "kool-aid" of the pop music culture. Pop music hype has literally brain-washed the tastes of the public with its newest abomination American Idol.

One of the reasons that the Left and folk music resonated together is that both offered an alternative if not just a reaction to corporatized public tastes. The initial problem is that it's not possible to totally politicize artistic expression. And to be fair, there were artists who were credibly good that were financed by corporate media and the Broadway stage.

The "new folk process" might be regarded as a return to the pre-60's where underground artists, musicians, songwriters, singers etc. found refuge in small enclaves such as coffee houses, small concerts, parties and political bookings for unions and various organizations. There was a time when the folk singer could find support in this way without having to "be on the charts" or be a "cover-band". During this period we saw the rise of folksong scholarship by the likes of Kenny Goldstein, Archie Green, Alan Lomax, Irwin Silber, Greenway and others. A Jean Ritchie could emerge out of a climate like this.

Now, what we call "folk" has appropriated the vestiges of the music business becoming a new way for some entrepeneurs to make some money by festivals, camps, fan-clubs, sales of CD's and music magazines.

Now ASCAP, BMI, recording companies, venue-owners and broadcasting media own what is thought of as "folk music" today by the public.

I advocate a musical revolution in which the buzz and hype created for the artist(s) is based on a genuine interest in the artistic output and not for the sales that it generates.
This means that the role of the artist will have to be content by eschewing the "big time" and finding that niche whereby they will be supported. This doesn't mean that the artist must be boring or unentertaining but they will have to create a new kind of market that doesn't rely on the music business of the entrepeneurs. This market historically for folk music will necessarily be small. It's where folk music belongs, in the living room, in informal gatherings and venues such as libraries or museums and local coffeehouses. Time was in a folk community, the performer was rewarded by being asked to ply his trade and often given a stipend for support. This is an important model for the role of an artist in the Twenty-first century.

It goes along with the need to re-order our thinking about consumerism and its impact on not just artistic expression but environment and politics as well. We don't need a MacFolkmusic.

Frank Hamilton

Subject: RE: The New Folk Process
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 03 Jun 07 - 03:46 PM

I don't think that all of the demonstration beats are samples of the Amen Brother recording. Some sound more like fresh performances of the same rhythm, but others are clearly NOT the same drum riff, some of the doubles and some of the drops being in different places. I think there is some bulshitting going on!

Drums are all very well in the right places - Sandy Nelson usually managing to achieve that.

Subject: RE: The New Folk Process
From: Rasener
Date: 03 Jun 07 - 05:09 PM

Sandy Nelson - Let there be drums

Les goes away to the rythm of Sandy Nelson.

Subject: RE: The New Folk Process (youtube link)
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 04 Jun 07 - 03:56 PM

And "Quite a beat"

Subject: RE: The New Folk Process (youtube link)
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 04 Jun 07 - 04:01 PM

Someone will apply for a copyright on breathing before long. Or a patent on Oxygen.

Subject: RE: The New Folk Process (youtube link)
From: John Hardly
Date: 04 Jun 07 - 04:17 PM

.."Or a patent on Oxygen."

I already own that one. Pay up, bub.

Subject: RE: The New Folk Process (youtube link)
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 04 Jun 07 - 04:27 PM

Nah mate, Europatent granted to Jean-Michel Jarre