'5000 Morris Dancers'

Subject: RE: '5000 Morris Dancers'
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 08 Oct 08 - 02:15 PM

"I did a lot of reading, during my first year of folk,"

Given the skewed conclusions you've leapt to, I'd be very interested to know which books you ploughed through. Bibliography?

Subject: RE: '5000 Morris Dancers'
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 08 Oct 08 - 02:01 PM

IB - I was aware of what you just posted...I did a lot of reading, during my first year of folk, before the recorder/English flute became my main instrument of choice (keys also).
Pip - I obviousy get quite a lot of criticism here, but at least most don't put words in my mouth the way you do, and just did again:
I have NEVER said "racial purity"; and, on nationalism, I've repeatedly said this - "nationalism with conquest IS bad; but nationalism with eco-travel and fair-trade (via the UN) is good for humanity" (here, e.g.).

Subject: RE: '5000 Morris Dancers'
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 08 Oct 08 - 01:41 PM

On another thread (arguably misplaced above the line), TheSnail wrote:

I will do everything I can (and as I reported above, already have) to keep English nationalism out of English folk music.

I'll sign up to that.

I actually have a certain amount of time for English nationalism, when that's understood as the democratic and inclusive nationalism of a polyglot multi-ethnic nation with a long and glorious history of cultural mongrelisation. Needless to say, this means that I have no time whatsoever for David's reactionary fantasies of racial and cultural purity. But, more importantly, I believe that English folk music deserves to thrive for its own sake: singing, playing and passing along the music of the traditions of these islands is a worthy goal in its own right, as well as being some of the best fun you can have with your clothes on. Yoking the music to any political agenda not only does it a disservice here and now but makes it less likely that it'll survive - all the more so when the agenda in question stinks as badly as David's.

So, let it be said. I will do everything I can to keep English nationalism out of English folk music.

Subject: RE: '5000 Morris Dancers'
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 08 Oct 08 - 08:21 AM

And the "English" in the title, Volgadon and IB, derives partly from the fact that it does indeed have a long-tailed tradition in England.

The recorder had a long-tailed tradition throughout the whole of Europe, and by implication the European colonies, but not as a folk instrument. This fact Mr Hunt is most keen to stress in his book: Folk instruments with a whistle mouthpiece are to be found in so many parts of the world that one cannot point to a particular one and say 'this is the father of the recorder'. These folk instruments do, however, provide the rough information and experimental material from which a craftsman might, given suitable tools, make a recorder (Hunt, 1962, p. 24) and There can be little doubt that that the earliest extant recorders are craftsman-made art instruments which have left folk elements far behind. (ibid.). He does allow, however, that the name English Flute indicates the possibility of an English origin, and to distinguish it from the German (transverse) flute. Interesting to note that it was known in France as a Flute d'Angleterre a long time before it was known in England as an English Flute - but never as a folk instrument.   

Whatever the case, it's all fascinating stuff, but if you bothered to do your research, WAV, you'd soon realise that it's always more complex (and more interesting) than you might have assumed, and that attaching any sort of emblematic Nationalistic status to anything is just a waste of time. But what are facts to the agenda-driven nationalist but wretched inconveniences to be bent, at last, to his will?

Subject: RE: '5000 Morris Dancers'
From: catspaw49
Date: 08 Oct 08 - 07:09 AM

Wavy is used to exposing himself. He was never arrested for it though since his victims were all laughing too much to press charges..............

Spaw

Subject: RE: '5000 Morris Dancers'
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 08 Oct 08 - 06:51 AM

But is it MEANT to cut through?
And it's 'long-tailed' tradition in English is scarcely more than that of the guitar and the banjo, let alone the fiddle! You discriminate against the latter because they lack that in the title, thus exposing your shallowness.

Subject: RE: '5000 Morris Dancers'
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 08 Oct 08 - 06:30 AM

Thanks, Don - I like the latter, but, in the former, that particular English flute doesn't really cut-through hte ensemble. And the "English" in the title, Volgadon and IB, derives partly from the fact that it does indeed have a long-tailed tradition in England.

Subject: RE: '5000 Morris Dancers'
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 08 Oct 08 - 05:16 AM

The tenor recorder is every bit as traditional as the English pipes, the English horn, the English bass horn and the English harp, and it's just as appropriate for playing English traditional music.

Not The Right Idea At All Dept:

English mandolin: See French mandolin.

Subject: RE: '5000 Morris Dancers'
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 08 Oct 08 - 05:05 AM

Maybe this should be on the other thread, but in respect of the above I've just picked up a first edition of Edgar Hunt's The Recorder and its Music (Herbert Jenkins, 1962), which gives but a single instance of English Flute, and this in a table of names by which the instrument was known. A similar table is reproduced Here, giving the historical window when this name was current, but no indication of just how widespread or common the term might have been.

Subject: RE: '5000 Morris Dancers'
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 08 Oct 08 - 03:57 AM

How dare you question it's appropriateness, Don! It has ENGLISH in the title!!!!!

Subject: RE: '5000 Morris Dancers'
From: Don Firth
Date: 07 Oct 08 - 07:14 PM

By the way, I'm not sure that the tenor recorder ("English flute" according to David) is really quite appropriate for playing folk music. Here is a tenor recorder in its natural habitat:    CLICKY

More of same, but working with its own species:    CLICKY again.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: '5000 Morris Dancers'
From: Don Firth
Date: 07 Oct 08 - 07:05 PM

Gad, sir! I still say that you are the incarnation of

Colonel Blimp!

"England for the English!!"
(and the occasional vagrant Australian)

Don Firth

Subject: RE: '5000 Morris Dancers'
From: Gervase
Date: 07 Oct 08 - 06:02 PM

Twonk!
I'm tempted to splutter "You couldn't make it up," but this absurd character seems to be a wonder of self-invention and poodle-faking. Probably has a longing for a pith helmet and pugaree.

Subject: RE: '5000 Morris Dancers'
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 07 Oct 08 - 02:19 PM

Don't know, Donno - where's the pot of Hedera helix, the English flute, the lawn tennis racket, the stottie stuffed with chips, the anthology of English verse, the die-hard sense of humour!
:-)>

Subject: RE: '5000 Morris Dancers'
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 07 Oct 08 - 02:05 PM

Dunno, looks more like Fu Manchu.

Subject: RE: '5000 Morris Dancers'
From: Don Firth
Date: 07 Oct 08 - 01:56 PM

WAV, living in his ideal England.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: '5000 Morris Dancers'
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 07 Oct 08 - 01:14 PM

Wav, how do you explain that morris nearly died out long before the corrupting influence of High School Musical (which I've never seen and don't plan to).

Subject: RE: '5000 Morris Dancers'
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 07 Oct 08 - 12:30 PM

...You know that I know of such history, but, as I keep coming back to, given all that history, WHAT'S BEST FROM NOW ON? The latest was just on channel 5 news - "High School Musical", whose cultural elements will be blindly copied by English children who could, rather, be clog, country of morris dancing, etc.

Subject: RE: '5000 Morris Dancers'
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 07 Oct 08 - 08:33 AM

Leaving of Liverpool was, I believe, first collected in New York...Even in the 18th and 19th centuries, folk music was being swapped and exchanged throughout the maritime world - that means COMING IN as well as going out.

But in WAV's Pretendy England, none of that ever happened. Everyone stayed in their little homogenous English box, and liked it.

You want to visit the Museum of Slavery in Liverpool, WAV, and see just how culturally diverse that city was long before the Beatles ever got there. It puts paid to all of your notions of a homogenous England pre-1950.

Subject: RE: '5000 Morris Dancers'
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 07 Oct 08 - 06:11 AM

It formed part of THEIR own good culture, Wav. Sailors and passengers in Liverpool would bring back with them fun music they heard in the States. Not globalisation, just because having fun.
Why is morris different?
Also those far wiser English were just as heavily influenced by American music, including rock.

Subject: RE: '5000 Morris Dancers'
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 07 Oct 08 - 04:36 AM

Don - again, The Beatles were indeed very good at COPYING THE AMERICAN GENRE WE CALL ROCK; and, if you hear or read interviews, you'll find that they suggest so in mentioning those that influenced them. At the same time, of course, other (and, I would say, wiser) English were getting into their own good culture - the folk revivial of the 60s.
Catwpaw - go back to your kitty litter and purge your foul fowl-feathered mouth.

Subject: RE: '5000 Morris Dancers'
From: catspaw49
Date: 06 Oct 08 - 11:54 PM

The funky chicken was only recently released from the hospital after being molested by Wavylimpdick and his Momma. The chicken put up a good fight but Momma held the poor thing down while Wavy had his way with her......and what a strange way that was! Decorum prohibits the full telling but Viagra figured into it as well as a broom and a large eggplant........................

Spaw

Subject: RE: '5000 Morris Dancers'
From: Don Firth
Date: 06 Oct 08 - 08:00 PM

Rock is an American genre? I was under the impression that four guys from Liverpool had something to do with that. And almost all the rock singers I heard early on had English accents.

Morris dancing? Morris dancing?

Whatever happened to the Funky Chicken?

Don Firth

Subject: RE: '5000 Morris Dancers'
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 06 Oct 08 - 05:57 PM

"Mistaken" and "deluded" are very different. Granny was mistaken; you, Wavey Davey, on every level, are deluded.

Subject: RE: '5000 Morris Dancers'
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 06 Oct 08 - 05:35 PM

Paul Simon must have polluted America's own good culture by introducing ENGLISH melodies.....

I see my Mary Poppins dig went quite over his head...

Subject: RE: '5000 Morris Dancers'
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 06 Oct 08 - 05:01 PM

No no, Gran. - I was being lighthearted, of course, following Volgadon's bit of lightheartedness (hence the !) but there is an E. trad. called "Homeward Bound"; but I won't call you "deluded".

Subject: RE: '5000 Morris Dancers'
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 06 Oct 08 - 02:38 PM

Dear Gran - I was ignorant of that BEFORE attending folk clubs here in NE England: but I'd still call WM an Australian song...wouldn't you?
Stu, speaking of frenzy, I got the wanderlust part way through my BA.
"Anyway, I nominate Wav to represent England culturally during the Olympics" (Volgadon)...mic technique might need a bit work, but I wouldn't say no!..."Homeword Bound"..."I vow to thee, my country"..."WALKABOUT WITH MY PEN"!!..?

Subject: RE: '5000 Morris Dancers'
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 06 Oct 08 - 08:20 AM

Volg Old mate.
Give up...Give up....Please.
There is no point.
FTR, I worked on Live Aid, and yes indeed it was all LIVE.
Astonishing for the technology at the time.
There was even talk of having donkeys to revolve the stage, at one point.
Health and Safety put an end to that idea!

Subject: RE: '5000 Morris Dancers'
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 06 Oct 08 - 08:13 AM

"Yes, Golightly, Live Aid was "real music" to the extent that they played live, rather than miming; but they were singing their verses in the framework of American, NOT English, genres such as pop and rock."

Wav, why are pop and rock AMERICAN genres, yet morris and ECD, from Spain and France respectively, are ok?

Subject: RE: '5000 Morris Dancers'
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 06 Oct 08 - 07:48 AM

OK Chaps.

Just done an audit.
Nat Istrument thread...........563
Walkaboutverse2 thread.........703
5000 Morris Dancer thread......724

Grand total...................1990 posts
Has he changed his bizarre view on life?
Is he going to?
Are we wasting our time?

Thats enough publicity for this person. (I say person, not Singer, Musician, Poet, That would be too demeaning for those of us who attempt in whatever way we see fit, to further ALL of the Arts that we are involved with).

Who else on Mudcat has enjoyed this much oxygen of publicity?
We are all suckers.
Lets all go and talk to some of the many interesting and erudite people on other threads, and leave Wav to his weird world.

(you could say "Mudcat is WAV-ing goodbye"...with apologies to Sooty!)

Subject: RE: '5000 Morris Dancers'
From: s&r
Date: 06 Oct 08 - 06:29 AM

Why 2 universities WAV?

Were you a mature student?

Just un petit curious

Stu

Subject: RE: '5000 Morris Dancers'
From: s&r
Date: 06 Oct 08 - 06:20 AM

Dear Granma

I haven't got any naughty pictures of your younger days, unless I knew you by another name. Have you ever been to France?

WAV and frenzy in the same sentence is I feel oxymoronic - just a tad.


Love Stu

Subject: RE: '5000 Morris Dancers'
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 06 Oct 08 - 03:22 AM

And just for the heck of it, this is an example of 'bland, musical soup.' =)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGFJ5ihKZeE
Look at their faces, it's a most unfamilair look Wav, yes, a rare anthropological moment, they are having FUN!!!!


Anyway, I nominate Wav to represent England culturally during the Olympics. Why, you ask? Well most people's conception of England is of odd characters with phoney accents, usually Cockney, but Wav'll do nicely.

Subject: RE: '5000 Morris Dancers'
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 06 Oct 08 - 03:21 AM

continued
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Gkf0-BnMbQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GV871hxisqw

Subject: RE: '5000 Morris Dancers'
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 06 Oct 08 - 03:20 AM

Here are some examples which developed from the same ancient traditions that morris comes from, via Northern Iberia, that is.
http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=76V1LAqDY8U&feature=related

Subject: RE: '5000 Morris Dancers'
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 05 Oct 08 - 06:36 PM

One of your tech certs is in Waltzing Matilda?!

Blimey - I want a PhD in Maria Martin.

Subject: RE: '5000 Morris Dancers'
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 05 Oct 08 - 06:05 PM

2 uni's Stu - Adelaide and NSW; and yes - including Waltzing Matilda, of course.

Subject: RE: '5000 Morris Dancers'
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 05 Oct 08 - 03:37 PM

Fantastic video. Kieran Hebden, a.k.a. Four Tet, is quite an interesting guy; he's steeped in 70s Revival folk, & has said that the sound he wants to 'get' in his work is the sound of an album like Basket of Light (only without the folk songs, or indeed any songs). He's got no interest in the tradition as a performer, but I think he's going to lead a lot of people to it, almost despite himself.

Subject: RE: '5000 Morris Dancers'
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 05 Oct 08 - 02:02 PM

"I thought the dancing and fiddle playing were great but the other (drum kit, etc.) noise unfortunate pollution."

Happily, the "noise" (FYI, it's not a drum kit in this case but largely electronica) is one of the things that gets loads of kids to engage with traditional dance and say, "I want to do that!" - even when they're not dancing with fire.

Subject: RE: '5000 Morris Dancers'
From: s&r
Date: 05 Oct 08 - 02:01 PM

Did you sing Australian songs before you emigrated WAV?

Did you get your degree on line or in person?

Just curious

Stu

Subject: RE: '5000 Morris Dancers'
From: Don Firth
Date: 05 Oct 08 - 01:58 PM

Not, strictly speaking, morris dancing, but. . . .

CLICKY.

I suppose you could call this "horsing around."

Don Firth

Subject: RE: '5000 Morris Dancers'
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 05 Oct 08 - 01:11 PM

Fascinating stuff that firedancing, Ruth. Thanks!
Isn't the Four Tet video something?

Wav, may the UN purchase your chants from Walkabouts and play them at an international convention of immigration and regulations, but accompany them with chords played on sitar, banjo and balalaika.
There's, that's part of MY own good culture, Jewish curses!!!!

Subject: RE: '5000 Morris Dancers'
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 05 Oct 08 - 01:04 PM

Thanks Ruth - for what it's worth, I thought the dancing and fiddle playing were great but the other (drum kit, etc.) noise unfortunate pollution.

Subject: RE: '5000 Morris Dancers'
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 05 Oct 08 - 12:31 PM

Loving that video. Got it on my Facebook profile now.


I wonder if this is "proper" morris accompaniment to "proper" morris dancing?


In Waveyworld, I suspect not. What a sad world that must be to live in.

Subject: RE: '5000 Morris Dancers'
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 05 Oct 08 - 12:21 PM

Why is that not proper morris (with a small 'm' you ignoramus) accompaniment? The music lets you carry out the required moves, doesn't it?

Subject: RE: '5000 Morris Dancers'
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 05 Oct 08 - 12:06 PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5OM82LTsU0...that's the one, Volgadon, but hopefully discover proper Morris accompaniment to the kinds of good dancing it shows.

Subject: RE: '5000 Morris Dancers'
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 05 Oct 08 - 06:49 AM

Wav, thanks! Thanks to you, I just made a new discovery. This is seriously one of the coolest things I've seen. It would actually be pretty good for the cultural part of the Olympics.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5OM82LTsU0

What you fail to see is that some kid, who thinks that morris is a bunch of silly old men jumping up and down with bells and sticks, will watch this video and discover that there is more to morris than that.

Subject: RE: '5000 Morris Dancers'
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 05 Oct 08 - 05:10 AM

So how do you feel about this Volgadon: on oMusic TV, probably every day, we are seeing Morris Dancers BUT, rather than the music they are dancing to, we only hear some modernistic stuff called, I think, "As serious as your life" from a group called, I think, "Four Tet."

Subject: RE: '5000 Morris Dancers'
From: GUEST,Volgadon
Date: 02 Oct 08 - 01:35 PM

You had to bring them into it!!!!
No matter how fine a song, it is now damned by association. Ruined, sheer ruined.

Subject: RE: '5000 Morris Dancers'
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 02 Oct 08 - 12:36 PM

It's a fine song - certainly NOT "the pits".