The Future of Folk Clubs

Subject: RE: The Future of Folk Clubs
From: redsnapper
Date: 16 Nov 07 - 05:06 AM

Brendy, as always, talks a lot of sense.

Part of the problem, as I see it, is an internal one to the community...

What is a folk club?
What is a folk tradition?
What is a folk singer?
What is a folksong singer?
Are a folk singer and a folksong singer the same thing?
Does all of this comply with the 1954 definition?
Is AniDiFranco a folk singer or is she a folksong or is she neither or both?
Is the term (add genre or category here) just used for marketing purposes?
Can traditional and singer songwriter genres both be considered folk?
And the big one... What is folk?
And on and on (ad nauseam)...

All of this, and the stridency of the various protagonists, almost tempted me to abandon the Mudcat after more than eight years.

But I love my music (several genres) far too much for that and so do a lot of other people so I think folk clubs (whatever they are or will become) have a good future.

RS

Subject: RE: The Future of Folk Clubs
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 16 Nov 07 - 05:02 AM

Brendy is absolutely cock on with one thing - its the mean spiritnedness that has holed the operation below the waterline.

You get detractors in whatever you do in life. But the guys (and ladies) who run folk clubs seem to raise a really virulent form of bile from the viscera of their fellow folkies.

The ability to run a successful club - okay,(I hear the critics hitting the drone pipe already) some of it may be fortuitous in choosing a good location etc. - but,to me is a very special talent and one that isn't lauded highly enough. It is a rare quality, quite as wonderful as anything the guest singer may bring to the table.

The folk clubs are precisely where people who care about the real tradition are to be found. The real folk tradition is the property of the people. In olden days when social mobility was much less - stable communities had generations create and refine traditions.

Nowadays society is much more amorphous in nature - only this week we had someone in Chicago in mudcat trying to put together and English folkmusic band. The folk club movement is an embodiment of a conscious desire that we do have a living folkmusic.

If the tradtion to you is just a load of stuff that Cecil Sharp got from societies that were on their way out anyway, then your vision of folk music is indeed facing a doomsday scenario, only fit for academia to browse over in libraries. But if you feel there is something of yourself in the music that you want to express - take it to a folk club. What a modern audience does to your music (and it does impose conditions!) may not leave it as it was in the 18th century. But who really knows how they sang - surely whats important is the way WE relate to the music.

Subject: RE: The Future of Folk Clubs
From: GUEST,sparticus
Date: 16 Nov 07 - 04:39 AM

Banjiman seems to be following your model Brendy. I'm sure that he's reading your posts with great interest - they're good.

Subject: RE: The Future of Folk Clubs
From: Mr Happy
Date: 16 Nov 07 - 04:24 AM

It's been my impression, in my immediate local area, that formal 'old style' folk clubs have been on the decline since their heyday in the 1970s & 80s.

This is not to say that folky events have died away, but rather have evolved into more participatory singaround/music session type gatherings.

Subject: RE: The Future of Folk Clubs
From: Folkiedave
Date: 16 Nov 07 - 03:22 AM

Far more folk music about now when there was at the height of the folk club boom.

Sessions and festivals maybe and not folk clubs - but it is there. The death of folk music has been predicted a number of times. They all got it wrong so far and I am positive that your prediction - if it is indeed a prediction - will be amongst them.

Subject: RE: The Future of Folk Clubs
From: IanC
Date: 16 Nov 07 - 03:15 AM

Sorry, but I'm really not sure that Folk Clubs have that much to do with Folk Traditions. These things continue very well, in general, without much help from Folk Clubs.

I know this thread's about Folk Clubs, but I don't think that their survival should be in any way confused with the survival of the Folk Tradition.

Ian

Subject: The Future of Folk Clubs
From: Brendy
Date: 15 Nov 07 - 09:55 PM

Right....
Let's start off with a few common denominators.

Everyone reading and contributing to this thread loves our respective folk traditions, whether that be English, Irish, Scottish, American, etc. Some (like myself) love folk tradition no matter where it's from, because for me, unlike language, it lets you into the soul of a Nation, and thus it brings people together all the quicker.
I think we all agree, too, that nobody owns the tradition; we got it handed to us on our lap.
I would imagine also that we all wish to bequeath a healthy folk scene to our children & grandchildren, because we know that if the tradition isn't passed down, the tradition gets lost...., and there goes the soul of a Nation.

Audiences seem to be dwindling, folks.
Folk Clubs ain't what they used to be.
Then we only had to deal with the 'The Two Ronnies' on telly as the competition on any Thursday night.
.. yeah, well that was the '70's

Now 'Happy Hours' last all day. If there's a Champion's League game on the box somewhere, guaranteed there'll be a shower of people in the pub that's showing those matches.
Now it's all BUISNESS

To say that a Folk Club is not a 'business', I think, is to overlook certain criteria that is essential to making anything tick over properly, when all around you, your 'competition' is extremely business-like, given the ever-decreasing circles the Service and Entertainment industries have to run in these days.
To call a Folk Club a 'business' does not detract from the intrinsic nature of the Club. Its' integrity remains.
All it does is to open up a way of thinking in the minds of the Club's committee that is constantly focussed on getting your place full every night you have music on, irrespective of who's on the bill.

Getting the word out there and getting people enthused is vital, not for the performer necessarily first and foremost, but for The Club.
The committee should not think of itself as a vehicle to bring artist to audience, in the main.
It should think of itself as a vehicle to bring that audience to The Club

Otherwise the dependency line breaks.
The Club needs to survive, first and foremost.
It needs a fair spattering of 'a cut above average' musicians playing there in order to attract any sort of interest from 'the general public'.
The Club also needs a loyal core of members that will turn out every week, even if it's only to fill the place up a little in case any 'real people' come in.
The Club needs engagement and enthusiasm from the committee, because they are the people on whose shoulders the tradition has come to rest, and it is they who took that upon themselves the day they made the Charter for the Club.
Whether they would realise that or not at the time, is entirely down to them.
But that is the responsibility everyone who takes on a Folk Club bears.

You can nurture it... or you can crush it.

To compete in the ever decreasing circles is getting harder.
Pubs will close in the wake of the smoking ban, and it will remain that downward way for a while, until the tide will turn and people will get used to it.
I've seen it in happen in Norway and Ireland, and it does come right again.

But there will be less pubs around, though by the time it's all levelled out.
And it might take a few Clubs with it before it does level out.
Now is the time to look at what's coming, and re-evaluate the business model.

And if you're not getting the bums on the seats, remember that 90% is your fault.

There's two old men in Mexico; the last survivors of a race of people, and they have their own language.
These two men have stopped talking to each other, and the experts who have been studying the language are afraid that if they don't start talking again soon, the language may be lost.
... now there's a metaphor....

When the last of the folk singers sings the last song, what then?

B.