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Money v Folk
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Subject: RE: Money v Folk From: TheSnail Date: 13 May 08 - 11:46 AM Grab And by being better at it than anyone else, they'll naturally become professionals in that area Complete non-sequitur. There is much more to being a professional than the ability to sing or play. Giving up a secure, if dull, job for life on the road and an uncertain future when you've got obligations to family and social ties where you live is not a light decision either now or 200 years go. Is it inconceivable that someone could be good at something purely for the love of it without getting paid? |
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Subject: RE: Money v Folk From: Leadfingers Date: 13 May 08 - 11:51 AM Agreeed there Snail - I have known a LOT of excellent performers AND writers who have only ever done low Paid Local gigs (IF they Gig at All) because they either DONT have the need for acclaim or have VERY well paid Day Job and families to keep ! |
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Subject: RE: Money v Folk From: GUEST,Tom Bliss Date: 13 May 08 - 12:43 PM "The idea that there has ever been some sort of Guild of Master Folk Singers strikes me as absurd" No-one has even remotely suggested such a thing Bryan. |
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Subject: RE: Money v Folk From: GUEST,Tom Bliss Date: 13 May 08 - 12:45 PM "To suggest that the high quality of our traditional music could only arise from professionals seems disrespectful to our heritage and to brush aside the oral tradition as a myth." Sorry I should have included that bit too. Completely missing the point, if i might make so bold - and really rather insulting and divisive too I fear. I'm not going to try to explain because I don't think you will ever understand. |
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Subject: RE: Money v Folk From: Don Firth Date: 13 May 08 - 01:19 PM Not to put too fine a point on it, Sminky, I believe you revealed the level of you qualifications by attempting to divert my critical comments by picking on a typo in my post. When it comes to "petty," I think you have me beat on that one. My point stands. Don Firth |
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Subject: RE: Money v Folk From: Dave the Gnome Date: 13 May 08 - 02:02 PM I don't believe for one moment that the onus of proof is on me, Sminky. You are the one with the contentious and unproven theory that between 650BC (Why on earth that date?) and 1850 people were not paid to perform 'folk' music. An art form for which you refuse to provide a definition anyway. But, as it happens, one doesn't have to look too far. So how about the following - BARD. The word is a loanword from descendant languages of Proto-Celtic Bardos, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European: "to raise the voice; praise". The first recorded example is in 1449 from the Scottish Gaelic language into Lowland Scots, denoting an itinerant musician, usually with a contemptuous connotation. The word subsequently entered the English language via Scottish English. Secondly, in medieval Gaelic and Welsh society, a bard (Scottish and Irish Gaelic) or bardd (Welsh) was a professional poet, employed to compose eulogies for his lord (see planxty). If the employer failed to pay the proper amount, the bard would then compose a satire. (c. f. fili, fáith). In other European societies, the same function was fulfilled by skalds, rhapsodes, minstrels and scops, among others. Bards or filid were those who sang the songs recalling the tribal warriors' deeds of bravery as well as the genealogies and family histories of the ruling strata among Celtic societies. The pre-Christian Celtic peoples recorded no written histories; however, Celtic peoples did maintain an intricate oral history committed to memory and transmitted by bards and filid. Bards facilitated the memorization of such materials by the use of poetic meter and rhyme. The Bardic tradition ran from Pre-roman times to the middle ages (In Ireland) There is ample documentary evidence. Sorry if it doesn't fit with your views. A little further search and a little later on we find Minstrels and troubadours. A minstrel was a medieval European bard who performed songs whose lyrics told stories about distant places or about (real or imaginary) historical events. Though minstrels created their own tales, often they would memorize and embellish the works of others. Frequently they were retained by royalty and high society. As the courts became more sophisticated, minstrels were eventually replaced at court by the troubadours, and many became wandering minstrels, performing in the streets and became well liked until the middle of the Renaissance, despite a decline beginning in the late 15th century. Minstrelsy fed into later traditions of itinerant entertainers, which continued to be moderately strong into the early 20th century, and which has some continuity down to today's buskers or street musicians. Want some Renaissance stuff? By the middle of the 15th century, composers and singers from the Low Countries and adjacent areas began to overspread Europe, moving especially into Italy where they were employed by the papal chapel and the aristocratic patrons of the arts, such as the Medici, the Este family in Ferrara, and the Sforza family in Milan. They carried their style with them: smooth polyphony which could be adapted for sacred or secular use as appropriate. Principal forms of sacred musical composition at the time were the mass, the motet, and the laude; secular forms included the chanson, the frottola, and later the madrigal. Notice a pattern here? Throughout the entire period you refer too people were paid, retained, whatever you would like to call it, to perform music. The music was telling of current events and was of the current style. In other words, that dreaded term you will not describe, FOLK music. Non of them worked on the fringes. None were trivialised. They were important members of society. Now, having said all that, they were no more important than those unpaid farm labourers singing in pubs and modern football hooligans chanting on the terraaces when it comes to their contribution to folk music. But to deny their existance at all. A mistake surely? And I still want to know how 650BC fits in:-) Cheers Dave |
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Subject: RE: Money v Folk From: Peace Date: 13 May 08 - 02:17 PM I have one thing to say, and it's a general statement. When I sing/perform it is for one of a few reasons: I have contracted to or have been asked to by a friend and then I do. However, whatever skills I have took me lots of time to develop, whether that is singing, playing guitar or writing songs. In many ways I have 'paid my dues'. So, either I get paid what I want or I sing for free. I have two words for folks who tell me I should sing for free because what I do is 'just music'. Those words are, uh, well, uh, very much like 'sex and travel'. No offense to anyone. |
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Subject: RE: Money v Folk From: GUEST,The Mole Catcher's unplugged Apprentice Date: 13 May 08 - 02:20 PM "very much like 'sex and travel'. No offense to anyone." for me it's sex, travel and funeral arrangements *LOL* |
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Subject: RE: Money v Folk From: Peace Date: 13 May 08 - 02:50 PM LOLOL Never heard that one before. Consider it 'absconded with'. |
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Subject: RE: Money v Folk From: Grab Date: 13 May 08 - 07:14 PM And by being better at it than anyone else, they'll naturally become professionals in that area Complete non-sequitur. There is much more to being a professional than the ability to sing or play. Not a complete non-sequitur. Let's say they have the *opportunity* to become professionals in that area, then. If you're not better at it than other people though, lack of ability rules out that profession for you. Giving up a secure, if dull, job for life on the road and an uncertain future when you've got obligations to family and social ties where you live is not a light decision either now or 200 years go. Is it inconceivable that someone could be good at something purely for the love of it without getting paid? Not at all - I'm one of them. :-) But because I'm not putting the time in on music, I accept that I'm only doing it for fun. I don't expect to be an aspirational figure for anyone to look up to and say "I want to be able to play like him", the way you would with people like Michael McGoldrick, Bob Brozman or Doc Watson. Nor do I expect to contribute significantly to human knowledge or experience in what I do musically. And being "good at something" requires practise. If your day-job is music, then you might well practise 7 hours a day (when touring permits). The professional who can put in the practise time is almost always going to be better than the part-time amateur who can't. And the professional can't do that unless they have another source of income, which typically means getting paid for playing. (Or these days, retiring and having a secure pension.) By the way, let's remember about the "uncertain future" that generally choosing music as a profession is almost always for young adults whose future is *inherently* uncertain. Graham. |
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Subject: RE: Money v Folk From: Leadfingers Date: 13 May 08 - 07:25 PM When Bob Copper's grandfather (He who wrote all the words of the songs he knew in a Hard Cover notebook in 1920thingy) was singing for beer in the pub in Peacehaven , was he a folk Singer ? Or a semi-Professional entetrtainer ? |
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Subject: RE: Money v Folk From: GUEST Date: 13 May 08 - 07:34 PM both - there's no conflict of interest |
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Subject: RE: Money v Folk From: Don Firth Date: 13 May 08 - 07:39 PM Agreed. Both I believe Jean Ritchie (Singing Family of the Cumberlands, born and raise in the tradition) gets paid for concerts and other performances. Does that make her any less of a folk singer? Not that I can see. Don Firth |
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Subject: RE: Money v Folk From: TheSnail Date: 13 May 08 - 08:40 PM Leadfingers When Bob Copper's grandfather ... Peacehaven didn't exist in "Brasser" Copper's time. Since he was bailiff of a 3000 acre farm in charge of 65 men, he probably didn't have time for 7 hours practice a day. Whether he had to sing for his beer in the Black Horse in Rottingdean is debatable since his brother Thomas was the landlord. Was he a folk singer? I think so. Whether or not he was a professional is utterly irrelevant. |
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Subject: RE: Money v Folk From: GUEST,Jon Date: 14 May 08 - 02:53 AM I don't expect to be an aspirational figure for anyone to look up to and say "I want to be able to play like him", the way you would with people like Michael McGoldrick, I doubt too many pros expect to either. Thinking of the wind instruments, the best/my favourite whistle player I came across was an amateur, lectured in a University and not in music and didn't even do very occassional music booking I know of. She did have the advantage of belonging to a "competition" Irish family though and had been at the top end of things in childhood and I believe won one the all Ireland championship (from what I remember being told, being relieved when the pressure was finally off). I guess that might be an extreme example but by my assessments I've met quite a few who don't do semi-pro work who's musical abilities I think are above that of a number of pros I've heard. Of course we might not know the backgrounds of these people but following on from your "pro arguments" based on hard work done, if you could do it, would your 7 hrs a day make up for that sort of missed childhood background I mentioned above? Or perhaps for maybe getting lets say getting grade 8 violin, maybe following up with a music degree before becoming an amateur session player? I suppose the answer is maybe, maybe not. One thing I feel sure of in practice though is I've been in situations occasionally over the years where I could say put together a line up of say 6 of the strongest players present and I'd feel it a safe bet that there would be no way (except chance) you could identify which one was the professional. |
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Subject: RE: Money v Folk From: Dave the Gnome Date: 14 May 08 - 03:18 AM I didn't know that about the Coppers, Bryan. Next time someone tells me the Coppers were farm labourers who sang for their beer I know what to tell them! Clever businessmen who knew exacly what they were doing! Cheers Dave |
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Subject: RE: Money v Folk From: GUEST,Tom Bliss Date: 14 May 08 - 04:45 AM I don't think we can pin too much argument onto one family at one point in time. This discussion is about the importance or otherwise of money in the development of traditional music - over a millennium. And I don't think it's very that relevant that, yes, some amateurs are vastly better players and singers than those who sometimes or usually accept money. They are today and always have been. The relevant factors are that a) to take money off people you need to be able to impress them, and this need filters out weaker contributors. And b), that trade-musicians/writers/singers/distributors will tend to have more influence than those who only sing/write/play/distribute within their immediate community. These are simple facts about which there can be surely no dispute. Where the dispute occurs is when people seek to deny the influence of commerce in music through the ages. This romantic and wholly erroneous view stems mainly from the romantic and/or political notions of various influential collectors in the past - and it's left us with a dangerous and divisive muddle which makes me want to howl with frustration. Why? Because it leads directly to the sort of thinking - based on what is essentially a lie - that people who make money from music are to be mistrusted, or resented or seen as some kind of a threat - when in fact they should be respected and thanked for their contribution. The see-saw has been sat with one end stuck in the lawn for 100 years. We badly need to re-balance our thinking about traditional music - and I'm delighted to read so many erudite, informed and passionate posts above to that end. But what makes me want to do much worse than howl with frustration is when people claim that any effort to redress the balance is a demand to bury the other end of the see-saw in the sand-pit. I'll return to my cart analogy. For a long time there has been a 'folk faith' that the cart sailed up hill and down dale without the need for any horse. All we are saying is that is a fallacy. Please remove pink glasses and notice that sweating animal in front of you. He may smell a bit, and make some embarrassing noises, but he's doing his bit as well. And by saying this we are NOT NOT NOT claiming that the cart neither has, nor needs, wheels. The horse would have been dead, flogged, and unable to sing or neigh long long long ago. And before anyone chips in to pick holes in my metaphors - they are just metaphors, ok? The reality is a complex and shifting story, with many strands and streams and shades and nuances and contradictions and any number of other weasel words. But for goodness sake PLEASE let's start basing our opinions and beliefs on reality, and treating eachother accordingly. Tom |
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Subject: RE: Money v Folk From: GUEST,Jon Date: 14 May 08 - 04:55 AM And I don't think it's very that relevant that, yes, some amateurs are vastly better players and singers than those who sometimes or usually accept money. Nor me but I will challenge those who suggest it's not the case. The relevant factors are that a) to take money off people you need to be able to impress them, and this need filters out weaker contributors. And b), that trade-musicians/writers/singers/distributors will tend to have more influence than those who only sing/write/play/distribute within their immediate community. a) for sure. The "base level" is undoubtedly far higher and has to be. b) sounds reasonable to me. |
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Subject: RE: Money v Folk From: GUEST,Tom Bliss Date: 14 May 08 - 05:08 AM And you're right to challenge anyone who says that, Jon - it's obviously plain nonsense and equally insulting. But the key issue here is influence - not quality. Important in times gone by and massively, overwhelmingly so post-revival. |
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Subject: RE: Money v Folk From: GUEST,Tom Bliss Date: 14 May 08 - 05:17 AM Sorry - I just have to add this as I've become so used to being massively misunderstood here.. Bob Copper's Grandfather writing all the words of all the songs he knew in a notebook was a 'wheel' event. A really important one - but it was still only of influence within his family and community. Bob's publication of those songs in print and on record was a 'horse' event - and that's the one that had the influence, because without it they'd still be at the back of a drawer in the sideboard. See? BOTH |
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Subject: RE: Money v Folk From: Grab Date: 14 May 08 - 05:52 AM Jon, my point wasn't that non-professionals can't play well - clearly that would be incorrect. My point is that non-professionals aren't the ones who push the music forward. To use Tom's wonderful analogy, they aren't "horses". Graham. |
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Subject: RE: Money v Folk From: GUEST,Jon Date: 14 May 08 - 06:06 AM OK, sorry I missunderstood you, grab. |
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Subject: RE: Money v Folk From: GUEST, Sminky Date: 14 May 08 - 06:09 AM "In almost every country village there is a stock of well-known songs and stories in the dialect, of various qualities, the best of which have seldom risen to the dignity of being printed, even on a broadsheet; yet they maintain their hold on the minds and in the hearts of our villagers, by whom the songs of our greatest singers are altogether uncared for, and almost unknown; and with whom even the popular street lyrics of our large towns obtain only a transient resting place before they pass away into obscurity.... And we have little doubt that the singer has greatest influence, and is most loved by the people who, avoiding all elaborate forms of expression and high flights of sentiment, comes to them in their own simple way, and, with their own homely phrases, weaves his songs, as it were, with a musical thread into portions of their every-day life." [J.Ramsbottom, "Writing in the Dialect", undated newspaper cutting in John Harland's Scrapbook of Manchester and District] |
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Subject: RE: Money v Folk From: GUEST,Tom Bliss Date: 14 May 08 - 06:35 AM Your point being? That is a beautiful celebration of the wheels in motion - one vital strand of tradition, but not the only one - as is clear form Ramsbottom's own words. It looks to me like he himself is doing a small, valuable rebalancing act here, reminding his readers of the essential importance and quality of local dialect orally-transmitted material when perhaps they were forgetting it, or had never known about it. It fits right in with what we've been saying. It does not say that lyric sheets are not influential in the 'large towns' or nation as a whole. Quite the opposite, if anything. This is about influence, NOT quality, remember. (Or do you ONLY admit folk music to be that present in rural communities at a time before recordings, which was only ever orally shared and never written out, and was never ever heard from a singer or player who took a farthing? If so then everything you say is absolutely correct, but your repertoire will be teeny tiny weeny compared to everyone else's, and your arguments irrelevant to the the discussion here). |
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Subject: RE: Money v Folk From: TheSnail Date: 14 May 08 - 06:58 AM Dave Polshaw I didn't know that about the Coppers, Bryan. It's all here - Copper Family. |
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Subject: RE: Money v Folk From: Dave the Gnome Date: 14 May 08 - 07:17 AM Thanks Bryan - Nice bit of lunchtime reading there:-) Sminky - I can only repeat Tom's question. What is your point with the quote? It doesn't say anywhere that no-one was paid to sing. Just that some songs and singers go 'unknown and uncared for', something that no-one is disputing. There always have and always will be a majority who will go unnoticed. In any art form, not just 'folk'. It is the minority who become nationaly renowned and then, by virtue of the fact that they have become so, also become widely influential. Love the horse and cart analogy, Tom. Maybe the carter could also be included - It is he who decides where both go. Or is that market forces? ;-) Cheers Dave |
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Subject: RE: Money v Folk From: Snuffy Date: 14 May 08 - 08:53 AM I think that both sides are right to some extent: Yes, the paid professionals created the songs in the first place and distributed them to the general public. Without them most songs would not exist. But it was the unpaid, non-professionals who took some of that output to their hearts, and kept it alive (if sometimes radically changed) for a century or two by actually continuing to sing the songs, while ignoring other songs created and distributed in exactly the same manner, allowing them to die out. Being adopted and adapted by "the common folk" is what makes it a folk song, not (necessarily) being created by them. And if they don't take to it, then it's merely an antiquarian curiosity. |
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Subject: RE: Money v Folk From: GUEST,Tom Bliss Date: 14 May 08 - 09:11 AM I think you'll find that's exactly what one 'side' is saying, Snuffy. |
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Subject: RE: Money v Folk From: Snuffy Date: 14 May 08 - 09:21 AM I'm afraid it's not at all apparent to me which "side" that might be, though. |
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Subject: RE: Money v Folk From: GUEST,Tom Bliss Date: 14 May 08 - 10:29 AM (sigh) There are those who suggest that money/commerce/professionalism has no relevance in folk music, and never has. ('side' A) And there are those who say that is not the case - that an element of commerce has been and remains a factor - but only a factor, while the unpaid element is crucial too. (Both 'sides' A+B) No-one has suggested that money/commerce/professionalism is MORE important than the oral/amateur element (your other 'side' B) though people have been wrongly accused of doing so. Your post supports the middle group very nicely. |
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Subject: RE: Money v Folk From: TheSnail Date: 14 May 08 - 10:47 AM My problem with the horse and cart metaphor is that it still portrays the amateurs and the professionals as two separate groups whereas, as I tried to explain in my post of 13 May 08 - 08:33 AM, I see the professionasl as being a subset of all the people that go to make up the folk world. The only thing that really distinguishes them is the proportion of their income that comes from their work as performers. I imagine that the number that get ALL their income that way is very small. |
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Subject: RE: Money v Folk From: GUEST,Tom Bliss Date: 14 May 08 - 10:56 AM It is a metaphor about locomotion - movement. Not about groups. And people are discussing levels of influence, not proportion of income. |
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Subject: RE: Money v Folk From: TheSnail Date: 14 May 08 - 11:13 AM GUEST,Tom Bliss levels of influence, not proportion of income. Ah, but is there a correlation? If so, which is cause and which is effect? |
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Subject: RE: Money v Folk From: Dave the Gnome Date: 14 May 08 - 11:38 AM I don't think anyone is denying that the number of people making a living out of folk music is small. This is true in all walks of life. The number of people making a living out of playing football for instance, compared to the vast numbers who are involved in one way or another is, I suspect, even smaller! To say that no-one made a living out of it before 1850 is my sticking point. I have endevoured to show that people did indeed make a living out of it then and may even go one step further. I would hazard a guess, and it is just that, that the proportion of people making a living out of it was higher then than now. There were more wandering minstrels and bards then because todays equivelents can spread themselves much further with modern transport and media. Maybe the horse and cart analogy is a little divisive but as Tom explained it is only a vehicle (pun intended) to get his point across. How about a man selling sweets at a market instead? He cannot manage without the customers. Some of the customers are quite capable of making their own but occasionaly they prefer to have something different. Between them they are satisfying a requirement that is by no means vital but, all in all, makes life more pleasant. One could indeed manage without the other but at no point in time has such a thing ever happened. Nor should it. It all makes the market place a nicer place to be:-) Cheers Dave |
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Subject: RE: Money v Folk From: GUEST, Sminky Date: 14 May 08 - 12:16 PM Forgive me if I interrupt all the supposition, guesswork and wishful-thinking going on here. I'd just like somebody to point out where anybody said that no-one made a living out of folk music before 1850. The reason I ask is that I tend to get just a tad suspicious when people feel the need to misrepresent what someone actually wrote. |
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Subject: RE: Money v Folk From: Don Firth Date: 14 May 08 - 01:06 PM Here you go, Sminky. Subject: RE: Money v FolkAlways glad to help. Don Firth |
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Subject: RE: Money v Folk From: Dave the Gnome Date: 14 May 08 - 01:11 PM Sminky. Here is an 'audit trail' of how the discussion went vis-a-vis the 1850 argument - 1. The Observer (Thread initiator) - Would folk survive without professional singers and musicians? 2. *laura* - Of course it would. It DID for a long long time. 3. Dave Polshaw - When was that then? 4. *laura* - Dave - when parents sang songs to their kids and workers sang songs in fields and then the kids grew up and they sang the same songs to their kids etc etc I'm not saying it hasn't been helped by professional singers but it existed and survived without people paying for it. 5. Dave Polshaw - The point I was trying to make is that there has never been a time when people have not paid for music, just as there has never been a time when people have enjoyed it for free. Whether it is the latest rock band at Wembley stadium, the singer at the Music Hall, the kings Bard or, presumably, the cave man being fed for drumming out a particularly funky beat:-) You seem to imply that there was a time when no music was paid for and I still ask; when was that? We do not know if it would survive without, because there has never been such a time and there never will be. This is where you come in, 6. Sminky - (Quoting me) You seem to imply that there was a time when no music was paid for and I still ask; when was that? Now back to your own words - If we're talking folk music, then the answer is 650BC - 1850AD (approx). For centuries, 99% (substitute your own percentage) of traditional music was sung/created wherever 'ordinary' people gathered. I'm struggling to understand where money played a part. Sure, there've been minstrels, ballad writers/sellers, publishers etc trying to eke out a living, but they were peripheral at best. Or am I missing something? Full circle to your last question where you ask for someone to point out where anybody said no-one made a living etc. Well, how about point 6 above... Don't believe me? Check it out yourself. It's all there. To me, if I ask when was there such a time when no music was paid for and you answer 650BC to 1850AD, then there is no doubt in my mind that you have just said no music was paid for between those dates. How else can I interpret it? If no music was paid for how on earth could anyone have made a living out of it? Your second point about minstrels etc being peripheral becomes moot because you have already answerd quite categoricaly that no-one paid for music between those dates. Can I put it any more simply? Q. During which period was music not paid for? A. Between 650BC and 1850AD. If you are now saying that you did not actualy mean that music was not paid for between those dates then, please, just say so. Let us know what you did actualy mean. No need to make up sinister misrepresentation plots when all I did was report what you had actualy said. And for heavens sake put us out of our misery. What DID happen in 650BC? Cheers Dave |
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Subject: RE: Money v Folk From: Don Firth Date: 14 May 08 - 01:26 PM By the way, Sminky, it is this paragraph I was referring to For centuries, 99% (substitute your own percentage) of traditional music was sung/created wherever 'ordinary' people gathered. I'm struggling to understand where money played a part. Sure, there've been minstrels, ballad writers/sellers, publishers etc trying to eke out a living, but they were peripheral at best. Or am I missing something?At which point, you accused me of "suffering from mythical romantic fantasies" and subsequently questioned my qualifications as a ballad scholar on the basis of finding a typographical error in one of my posts. And no, the mistrels, troubadours, bards, skops, and minnesingers were not just peripheral. It is generally believed by many ballad scholars that they were quite probably the original sources of many traditional songs and ballads. Don Firth |
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Subject: RE: Money v Folk From: Don Firth Date: 14 May 08 - 01:29 PM "Minstrels." Before Sminky finds another typo to duck under. Don Firth |
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Subject: RE: Money v Folk From: Jack Campin Date: 14 May 08 - 01:55 PM :: If you were a villager living in 1723 where would you go to listen to/sing folk songs each :: night - a 'concert' in town (no railways, remember) or your local alehouse? [...] : Of course you would go to an alehouse and of course you wouldn't pay. How many people in the British Isles in 1723 lived within a day's walk of an alehouse? A small minority, I'd guess. Most people lived in very small villages where the only public building of any kind was a church, if that. || The idea that there has ever been some sort of Guild of Master Folk Singers strikes me as absurd | No-one has even remotely suggested such a thing Then maybe they should have done. In some parts of the world that was exactly how folk music worked (like the "ashik" lineages of Turkey and Central Asia, which mirrored the structures of discipleship in Sufism). Some aspects of folk music in Scotland come near to that model - Highland piping schools or the family traditions of the Travellers. % Human nature has not changed much throughout recorded history. Just because we have no % evidence for something in the past does not suggest it didn't happen exactly the way it does now. That is probably the most wrongheaded comment in this whole thread. We know of many societies where money in any form was totally unknown, and many where music developed in directions where it could not possibly have been paid for, even if the society had started to use money. Some of these are so different from what we know in the modern developed world that we might as well be talking about the Antarctic Ocean market in whale songs. "Human nature" predicts nothing. Two examples: a culture in Bolivia where everybody was expected to compose exactly one song in their lifetime, adopt it as their own, and would never sing anything else; the song would die with them. In other South American cultures, every piece of music was considered to have been composed by a totem animal or plant, with the human who first performed it being a mere amanuensis. In the one case there was no way something like a solo concert performance could exist - there wouldn't be enough material - and in the other the performer couldn't claim credit, the music was the utterance of the totemic deity. And relationships between amateur and professional can be very different from those prevailing in the present-day West, even in societies where music is solidly part of a money economy. Hiromi Lorraine Sakata's "Music in the Mind" (about the musical culture of three different regions of Afghanistan in the 1970s) is an eye-opener. About the only generalization is that amateur music in the areas she looked at was of higher status than the professional variety, but the situation varied depending on musical genre, ethnicity, where you played and who for, what your day job was... and there was next to no transmission of music from professional to amateur, though the other way did happen. (One particular oddity was the position of the flute, which was the only melody instrument considered acceptable by the Mevlevi dervish order in Anatolia and Iran; in Persian-speaking Afghanistan it wasn't regarded as being a musical instrument at all, though it was widely played - fluteplayers weren't seen as being musicians, whether or not they took money for playing it). |
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Subject: RE: Money v Folk From: GUEST,Tom Bliss Date: 14 May 08 - 03:11 PM Good points, Jack - and I stand corrected. Perhaps a little later in history and certainly in the last century things were more as I and others have suggested. |
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Subject: RE: Money v Folk From: GUEST,The Mole Catcher's unplugged Apprentice Date: 14 May 08 - 03:44 PM I'm sure that "observer" is enjoying all the attention he/she is getting, most gratified I'm sure Charlotte R |
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Subject: RE: Money v Folk From: Dave the Gnome Date: 14 May 08 - 04:26 PM The thread has an interesting point and continued with an even more interesting discussion, Charlotte. Whatever Observers intentions were, a generaly intelectual and well mannered debate occured. I see little to criticise the originator for except, maybe, the subsequent 'copycat' threads. But even they have a certain humour about them. Cheers Dave |
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Subject: RE: Money v Folk From: GUEST,The Mole Catcher's unplugged Apprentice Date: 14 May 08 - 04:32 PM Well, I'll take the money and run.... *LOL* for musical services rendered "What is money? Is it a medium of exchange, a store of value, or a means of command? " It pays the mortgage and feeds and clothes my family, and that's my primary interest in money Charlotte R |
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Subject: RE: Money v Folk From: Dave the Gnome Date: 14 May 08 - 07:26 PM It pays the mortgage and feeds and clothes my family Good job you weren't about between 650BC and 1850AD then, Charlotte. You would have been starving, naked and homeless:-) Cheers Dave |
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Subject: RE: Money v Folk From: Jim Carroll Date: 15 May 08 - 08:45 AM The question of folk and money is much more complicated than has been discussed so far IMO. As was said earlier in the thread, of course there is nothing wrong with anybody being paid for singing, researching, teaching, writing about... whatever... folksongs and music, any more than there is with any other pursuit. When the tradition was alive and thriving the act of singing and playing was largely an unpaid activity, this is no longer the case. Carolan, and all those unnamed minstrels may have fed into and taken from the tradition, but they were not part of it; their audiences and paymasters were the landed gentry and nobility, certainly not 'the folk' (read Donal O'Sullivan's excellent study of Carolan and his music). The problem for me is not whether a performer is being paid, but rather, what effect this has on his/her performance, if any. I get a little tired of hearing, "I've got to pay my bills, feed the kids, put petrol in the car" – and all the other excuses for performing in a certain way, or including material that has little (if any) connection with 'folk' or 'tradition' – in other words, does not do exactly what it says on the tin. My response is usually, – "tough; go and get a proper job". Singers and musicians who perform solely to suit their bank balances are little more than cultural juke-boxes – in goes the coin, out comes the product. I am not suggesting that being professional automatically makes for a bad, insincere or unprincipled performance, but I do believe that there is a danger of allowing he who pays the piper to call the tune to the detriment of the music. We should have learned that from the monkey-suits and the anodyne performances of the 'folk boom'. Money should not make one happ'orth (no pun intended!) of difference one way or another – but all too often it does. My favourite story about payment (those who have heard it bear with me – it's a good story, no matter how many times I hear it) is told by Ciarán MacMathúna, who was collecting for one of his radio programmes down in Kerry. He recorded an old fiddle player, and at the end of the session said to him; "there is the matter of a small recording fee". The old man thought for a minute, and said, "I'm taking a bullock to the market tomorrow, so I should be able to pay you then". If only..... nah, forget it! Then, of course there's the (IMO) thoroughly dishonest practice of tweaking traditional material, then claiming ownership by copyrighting it... or the behaviour of the Irish Musical Rights (in league with CCE) and Performing Rights Societies in claiming performance fees for traditional music.... but that's for another time maybe. Jim Carroll |
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Subject: RE: Money v Folk From: GUEST,Tom Bliss Date: 15 May 08 - 09:32 AM Ah, well here again we have a the old problem of two varying definitions of the word 'folk.' If you exclude O'Carolan and all that goes with him, which is fair enough within your terms Jim, then I go along with everything you say (until the last sentence, see below). But I should explain that when I use the f word I'm using the modern 'common' meaning of the term, rather than the 54 definition - which would certainly include Carolan. And I think we can take it that many of the people who have contributed above are doing so too. For me the word means anything you might hear at a folk club or folk festival, or which a majority of the population might allow as folk, because that's the democratic (if technically wrong) definition - but let's not have that debate again! However, I would like gently to remind everyone for the umpteenth time (not because I'll ever change your mind, Jim, but because there is a lot of misunderstanding over this which we do have a duty to try to clarify whenever we can) that you can effectively only copyright your own rendition of a traditional work, so only you get paid on your own performances, and on your own performances only. No-one else need ever pay you a cent unless they choose to tell PRS that they are doing your 'tweak' and no other. This takes nothing from the public ownership of the tradition, but may possibly enhance it if it brings that material to new ears. Happy Thursday from Leeds Tom |
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Subject: RE: Money v Folk From: GUEST,The Mole Catcher's unplugged Apprentice Date: 15 May 08 - 02:15 PM Actually in the 1850's I'd probably have been a governess who also taught music, and gave oh so proper music recitals *LOL* (very low paying on the whole though) Charlotte R |
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Subject: RE: Money v Folk From: Dave the Gnome Date: 15 May 08 - 05:58 PM ***Sigh*** Having us old blokes imagining you as a governess is doing us no good at all Charlotte. Now, stop it at once or I will have to spank... Arrrggghhh. It's happening again Matron! Can't believe this thread ends up on this note! Sminky! Where are you? :D |
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Subject: RE: Money v Folk From: GUEST,The Mole Catcher's unplugged Apprentice Date: 15 May 08 - 06:10 PM Go to your room, young Master David, and I'll send Matron up to... you...umm to see if you...no wait...'ang on.... ummmmmmmm TAXI!! :-D Charlotte R |
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