English Folk - Peasants to Professors

Subject: RE: English Folk - Peasants to Professors
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 10:35 AM

"To me it implies "I learnt this song face-to-face from a source" and by extension,"I am worthy of mention in the same breath as": I regard it as self-aggrandising. What I suspect it actually means is "I heard this on one of the Voice of the People CDs and I liked the sound it made": that's where I get some of my material from, but I would feel fraudulent using that expression."

Mmmkay. So I want to sing a Sam Larner song. Should I say, "this comes from the repertoire of Sam Larner?" "I learned this from a CD that was made of Sam Larner's LP Now's the Time for Fishing?" Given that I was born after Sam Larner died, is it likely that my statement "this is from the singing of..." will mislead anyone in the audience into thinking Sam Larner actually taught it to me...

I think "from the singing of" simply differentiates a song as being from someone's sung repertoire, rather than having been written by them.

Subject: RE: English Folk - Peasants to Professors
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 10:28 AM

"If you can't see that folk is perceived through the historically valorised position of its enthusuasts to the detriment of other readings, nothing I say will convince you."

Well, no...because you've presented an opinion without giving us any evidence. It's an interesting idea, and one I'd be happy to explore further.

Subject: RE: English Folk - Peasants to Professors
From: manitas_at_work
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 10:27 AM

"What I do have a problem with, is those who look down their noses at others who have a different way of loving the songs."

That's you, that is.

Subject: RE: English Folk - Peasants to Professors
From: tijuanatime
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 10:25 AM

>> that preposterous expression "from the singing of". <<

'Preposterous' or 'simple courtesy'?

This may be a purely personal reaction, but "from the singing of" carries a weight of authenticity that it's rarely able to sustain. To me it implies "I learnt this song face-to-face from a source" and by extension,"I am worthy of mention in the same breath as": I regard it as self-aggrandising. What I suspect it actually means is "I heard this on one of the Voice of the People CDs and I liked the sound it made": that's where I get some of my material from, but I would feel fraudulent using that expression.

Subject: RE: English Folk - Peasants to Professors
From: glueman
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 10:23 AM

It isn't in 'the spirit of academic rigour' though, is it? It's in the spirit of brow-beating and brinkmanship that marks the rest of Mudcat discussions. Pumeling others into malleable dough the easier to dispose of their words and re-set the folk dial to business as usual.

If you can't see that folk is perceived through the historically valorised position of its enthusuasts to the detriment of other readings, nothing I say will convince you.

Subject: RE: English Folk - Peasants to Professors
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 10:20 AM

"Quite. But that suggests there's a proper way to discuss the subject and rules have been breached"

No it doesn't. It suggests that there are dozens of discussions taking place on Mudcat right now. If you don't like the intellectually-based ones, don't take part. Simples.

"If history is of no interest to her should she be banished?"
Of course not - but she should respect others' right to explore and enjoy the music in the ways they choose, and not see that it a threat or some sort of implicit criticism.

Subject: RE: English Folk - Peasants to Professors
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 10:19 AM

"But if you don't like talking about these subjects or the terms in which they are couched, no one is forcing you to do so."

Quite. But that suggests there's a proper way to discuss the subject and rules have been breached

Not really. It just suggests that Lizzie is joining a conversation which is being conducted in a certain way (at the moment, in this forum, for whatever reason) & complaining about the way it's being conducted. Which very rarely works, if only because of the relative numbers involved.

Subject: RE: English Folk - Peasants to Professors
From: Folkiedave
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 10:14 AM

It's one thing to be proprietorial about favourite tunes but ownership has extended itself across folk as a whole, even to the extent of marshalling the terms by which the discussion takes place it seems.

An interesting argument. Show us (in the spirit of academic rigour of course) some of the favourite tunes about which people are proprietorial. And give (again in the spirit of academic rigour) examples of where the terms by which the discussion takes place have been marshalled.

Which terms do you mean?

Subject: RE: English Folk - Peasants to Professors
From: Folkiedave
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 10:06 AM

I disagree with some things she says but not because her approach is invalid.

I disagree with the things she says because she does not support them with any evidence.

She disagreed with me saying dyslexia was a problem. I never said anything of the sort but that didn't stop her writing it down on here. I said it gave rise to problems, and that her super-hero in the field of dyslexia said the same as me. Funny but we never heard much more about it after that.

This started because Lizzie said "How has it become so controlled by those who demand that the correct history of the song is constantly given out, when these songs were sung by people who didn't give a shite about the history of them....They just SANG them, and I've no doubt that each time they were sung they were changed, notes here and there, words, intonation, etc..."

Example after example have now been given to show where this is simply not true.

But no matter about the evidence, Lizzie still believes it so, without any evidence whatsoever note - NO EVIDENCE - she can still insist it is true.

That is why I say she is talking bollocks.

Incidentally I think the hair of my true love has had some chemical additions.

Subject: RE: English Folk - Peasants to Professors
From: glueman
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 10:02 AM

"But if you don't like talking about these subjects or the terms in which they are couched, no one is forcing you to do so."

Quite. But that suggests there's a proper way to discuss the subject and rules have been breached whereas Lizzie is usually running along in parallel doing her own thing. I'm not sure what that thing is but it attracts undue amounts of opprobrium.
If history is of no interest to her should she be banished? If I put folk no higher or lower than other musical genres, or aren't fussed about singing old songs because I own recordings of them that are better than I can achieve, or can't be bothered challenging artificial attitudes that have aggregated around certain soungs and their singing should I also be pilloried also?

It's one thing to be proprietorial about favourite tunes but ownership has extended itself across folk as a whole, even to the extent of marshalling the terms by which the discussion takes place it seems. That's neither academically rigorous or particularly cool.

Subject: RE: English Folk - Peasants to Professors
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 09:56 AM

"What's the colour of my true love's hair, then?"

Mousy. But 'mousy' doesn't sound as good as 'black' in a song, Pip.

"Mousy is the colour of my true love's hair....."
Just don't ring, do it? :-) :-)

Subject: RE: English Folk - Peasants to Professors
From: Brian Peters
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 09:43 AM

>> that preposterous expression "from the singing of". <<

'Preposterous' or 'simple courtesy'?

>> Folk more than most types of music... contains a dominant ideology that proscribes ways of consuming the music. Let's name it for what it is, bullying by one group over another... <<

And let's name that statement for what it is: fantasy.

Like Ruth, I want to know who these so-called 'professors' are, that have the power and inclination to stop other people enjoying music. If you want to listen to music, go and listen to it. If you don't want discussions about it, don't join an online discussion group.

Subject: RE: English Folk - Peasants to Professors
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 09:41 AM

Black is not a colour.

What's the colour of my true love's hair, then?

Subject: RE: English Folk - Peasants to Professors
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 09:38 AM

"Lizzie you can say black is a colour and no-one will disagree."

Well, just to lighten this thread up a little, I would disagree. Black is not a colour. Black absorbs all colours of the spectrum and does not reflect any to the eye. It is therefore not a colour. Ask any artist or physicist.

There, isn't that much better than this stupid, interminable, childish bickering and insult-hurling by (presumably) adults who should have better ways of passing their time?

Subject: RE: English Folk - Peasants to Professors
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 09:37 AM

No it doesn't. Why can't you understand that? Anyone is free to enjoy the music any way they like. If they want to remain ignorant they can. If they want to get their knickers in a twist, they can.

But some of those who wilfully do that seem to have a great resentment that others may get more from the music by knowing something about it.

And the informed historical approach does offer more. It in no way reduces the musical pleasure. It in no way inhibits the imagination. It enables the political dimension. So it offers at least two enhancements that ignorance does not.

I am curious though. Waht is the objection to the expression "from the singing of"? It seems a parallel to the common usage of "an "x" song" to mean a song recorded by, rather than written by "x".

Subject: RE: English Folk - Peasants to Professors
From: Morris-ey
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 09:37 AM

>>What many, however, object to is fallacious claptrap, rantings about ignorance being bliss, and a resentment that those who do know more do know more.<<

amen.

Subject: RE: English Folk - Peasants to Professors
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 09:35 AM

Lizzie's pillioring is largely to do with her insistance that everyone else should view the world exactly as she does, enthuse over the same bands that she does, express their enthusiasm on precisely the same terms she does. Lizzie is pillioried because, in a frenzy of anti-intellectual self-righteousness, she makes unfounded and ignorant attacks on organisations like EFDSS and people like Walter Pardon.

I am not going to stop discussing subjects that interest me just because doing so makes someone else feel insecure. Put it another way: there are millions of breathless, squeeing fansites on the internet, for folk as much as any other music. Mudcat is one of the only places where serious discussions of folk music can and do take place. I have learned a hell of a lot from being here, which is why I keep returning, despite the lunacy. And I will keep coming, and contributing to and reading interesting discussions (I read a lot more threads than I actually participate in, inluding some of the political ones below the line), because I like to learn and discover new things.

If that makes me a bully, or an intellectual snob - guilty as charged, I guess. But if you don't like talking about these subjects or the terms in which they are couched, no one is forcing you to do so.

Subject: RE: English Folk - Peasants to Professors
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 09:35 AM

Folk is to a large degree an hermetic world with belief systems, idiologies and received wisdoms none of which hold water against other similar systems.

"Belief systems, ideologies and received wisdoms". Like what? Did you have anything specific in mind?

It is a shortcoming in the participant to believe their's is a more stable view of their subject than any other.

Which I think translates as "You're wrong, I'm right and no returns."

Seriously, I think you should try reducing your distance from participatory folk music some time. I think you'd be pleasantly surprised - or possibly disappointed by the lack of things to complain about.

Subject: RE: English Folk - Peasants to Professors
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 09:29 AM

Hello Flowers, Hello Trees.
Memories of '68 from Lizzie.
Not that she was actually alive then.....
(Memo to self....must go off and find an Elfin Dwarf singing a ballard about an execution...Or some sort of bloodletting, disembowelling, Something warm and sweet, might even harpoon a couple of whales for good measure)
Lizzie. Back to your hippy home. Reality is something different.

Subject: RE: English Folk - Peasants to Professors
From: glueman
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 09:22 AM

Ruth Archer, Folk more than most types of music and this board more than others, contains a dominant ideology that proscribes ways of consuming the music. Let's name it for what it is, bullying by one group over another in the hope they'll leave them to enjoy the music in the way they see fit.

My own distance from participatory folk music is because I believed this to be true years ago and having looked here recently, still think it is so. The informed historical position is seen as an ideal one whereas it is only one way of consuming music, each different, all with unique attributes, many as academically respectable as an historical reading - before we even get into differing modes of historiography. Lizzie's pillorying is primarily because she refuses or is unable to continue a discourse based on such histories. I disagree with some things she says but not because her approach is invalid.

Folk is to a large degree an hermetic world with belief systems, idiologies and received wisdoms none of which hold water against other similar systems. It is a shortcoming in the participant to believe their's is a more stable view of their subject than any other.

Subject: RE: English Folk - Peasants to Professors
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 09:20 AM

"there are also many in here who seek to turn the magic off and bring in Institutionalised Music which HAS to be appreciated in the correct way."

This is an allegation you have made on a number of occasions, Lizzie. I'd like some evidence, please. It is similar to the completely groundless allegations you levied at the EFDSS recently, before admitting you had no actual experience of the organisation, and could cite no occasion on which you had been denied access to its support or resources.

So who is it that says music HAS to be appreciated in the correct way? Who says there is a "correct" way? Names, please, and quotes. I'm genuinely interested.

In recent threads, it has been repeatedly demonstrated to you that those who are interested in history or provenance do not necessarily equate these things with perceptions about contemporary performance of traditional songs. I, for one, love to see people doing interesting and innovative things with traditional music. You should hear the Lomaxy, prison-farm vibe John Jones has given to his new recording of Polly on the Shore, for example. Great stuff. It will be up on the Myspace soon so you can hear for yourself. Or as I said the other day, Jim Moray's Lucy Wan. Or Benjamin Zephaniah's Tam Lin. Bring it on - the more ambitious the better. Admittedly, I feel I have a better understanding of those songs by knowing some of their provenance, and I feel that helps me to appreciate new versions even more.

If you want to dance round your sitting room or a festival field in a floaty dress listening to your favourite bands, have fun. I have no problem with that. It's when you insist that we're all "moaning minnies" for not wanting to be just like you that we start to disagree.

Subject: RE: English Folk - Peasants to Professors
From: tijuanatime
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 09:16 AM

To add to glueman's post of 7:50am:

The songs and tunes come first: in fact, ultimately, that's all there is. You wouldn't feel impelled to investigate the background of, say, "The Bonny Ship The Diamond" if it hadn't grabbed you as a song.

It could be said that Lloyd operated in reverse fashion: he arrived at a theory of folk music and then "found" the songs to fit it.

What glueman calls "the embedded historiographic approach" culminates in that preposterous expression "from the singing of". My own introductions rarely exceed ten words: if a song can't sell itself to an audience under its own steam then either I'm singing it badly or it's not worth singing in the first place.

Subject: RE: English Folk - Peasants to Professors
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 09:02 AM

"One of the stumbling blocks for a more widespread appraisal or consumption of traditional music is that the historiographic approach is so deeply embedded in the revival newcomers can find no way in"

Glueman, I don't accept this. Having loved folk for most of my adult life I was a newcomer to the semi-academic dimension of "the tradition" only a few years ago myself. I believe Crow Sister has similarly had a recent and powerful epiphany, and has often said she has been met with nothing but support and encouragement. I had the same experience.

I think that some people develop a kind of paranoid anti-intellectualism which results from their own insecurity - they perceive people who want to discuss things from an historiographic approach as somehow being "out to impress, with facts and figures and hoitytoity 'look at me, ain't I a clever muppet!' kind of stuff." Of course, it could just be that thse people want to talk about subjects that interest them, but the anti-intellectual resents this, and thinks that all such discussions are only trying to highlight their lack of knowledge. They interpret this as a lack of joy in the music. Well, every person I know who has researched traditional music does it precisely because it has inspired such deep love and passion in them. They are driven to learn more and to really iunderstand it. Just because they are not stood at the front of a festival marquee wearing a big goofy grin and glitter on their face does not mean they are not feeling great joy in the music. Lizzie often tells us we should not stifle her self-expression. I would equally ask her to respect my (and others') right to enjoy this music, which we love very much, on our own terms rather than on hers.

I'm not particularly interested in participating in an on-line fanzine. If that's what some wish to do, good luck to them. But I wish they wouldn't pitch a tantrum because other people choose to do things differently.

Subject: RE: English Folk - Peasants to Professors
From: Folkiedave
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 08:59 AM

but there are also many in here who seek to turn the magic off and bring in Institutionalised Music which HAS to be appreciated in the correct way.

There you go again Lizzie - talking bollocks.

Lizzie you can say black is a colour and no-one will disagree. You can say white is a colour and again no-one will disagree.

When you say black is white people who know just a little bit about colours may tend to disagree with you.

In you statement above - there is not one iota of justification for what you have written - except in your own imagination.

Subject: RE: English Folk - Peasants to Professors
From: glueman
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 08:55 AM

I rest my case.

Subject: RE: English Folk - Peasants to Professors
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 08:53 AM

I have taught dyslexic students - in a letter-based discipline, law. If they wanted to learn the law, they had to come to it. It is not open to them to say that the words are a restriction. The law is words and written principles. Generally, with appropriate treatment, they managed, if they wanted to. Those who wanted to float in coloured wonderlands failed.

A close relative was "hyperactive". His mother taught him that he could not treat that as an excuse, but needed to take charge of his own life and find a way to manage it. He got a first in philosophy.

My current lodger has an IQ of 170 - and is dyslexic. Because he wants to, and is prepared to work at it, he can read computer manuals, digital recording device manuals, and make the gadgets work.

He doesn't treat dyslexia as an excuse for not getting to grips with a subject he needs to understand.

Similarly, dyslexia is not an excuse for accusing "professors" of stealing the music from the peasants. No-one is stopping the "peasants" from listening to or making the music, or understanding it, or learning where it came from. In almost every case anyone doing any such thing is welcomed by every other participant.

What many, however, object to is fallacious claptrap, rantings about ignorance being bliss, and a resentment that those who do know more do know more.

Subject: RE: English Folk - Peasants to Professors
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 08:47 AM

Oh, go on wij yer, Dave...I know you read it 'cos you luvs me! :0) LOL

Diane, do put a sock in it, there's a dear. My daughter's doing an OU degree at the moment, not because she *has* to, but because she wants to, she's always loved learning, apart from when she was at school. Children are born learning, the education 'system' is switching that off by demanding children learn only what they are told to, in the way they are 'supposed' to. Freedom in Education, and in The Appreciation of Music is wayyyy overdue.

Sensual 'darowyn Dave' yes, absolutely.

It doesn't matter HOW we love the music, only that we LOVE it in the first place. Each to their own.

Hey, there are many of us out here who have the magic, many in here too..but there are also many in here who seek to turn the magic off and bring in Institutionalised Music which HAS to be appreciated in the correct way.

There is NO *correct* way, just free range chickens running around clucking to the songs in the way they love best..

:0)

Subject: RE: English Folk - Peasants to Professors
From: Folkiedave
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 08:17 AM

Tell me, Dave...WHY, when I apparently write such "bollocks" do you bother to read it? Not only that, but WHY do you bother to read every single word of it, not just on this board, but on the BBC too?

Lizzie - you write tripe. I read it thoroughly so that I don't misquote you.

I read it in order to correct the misconceptions you insist on perpetuating.

I read it to see how stupid and misguided you can get.

I must admit you are getting better and better at that.

Subject: RE: English Folk - Peasants to Professors
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 08:11 AM

What I actually said was that it was wilfully ignorant for parents to remove children from school and lambast the entire education system just because they "didn't like school". Such educationally-deprived children, given the self-will and determination, could presumably seek out appropriate remedial help and GCSE tuition themselves later. That's as long as they are not imbued with inherited anti-intellectualism wrapped up in sparkly, rainbow-coloured froth.

Formal education is, as has been pointed out time after time, a discipline in learning how to use the brain, how to think and assess the scholarship of others and thus formulate one's own. As with any other field of learning, this applies equally to music which, actually, does NOT fall from the skies for "yokels" to pick up and not question its origins. How patronising. And far from the truth.

Subject: RE: English Folk - Peasants to Professors
From: Gedi
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 08:11 AM

"I do the magic part....the songs whisk me away...and in no time at all, I'm away being that doxy, or pining for my Love..."

Lizzie, please don't make the mistake of thinking that you're alone in this. You're not the only one with an imagination, dyslexic or otherwise.

Ged

Subject: RE: English Folk - Peasants to Professors
From: Brian Peters
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 08:09 AM

Subject: RE: English Folk - Peasants to Professors
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 08:02 AM

"He recommends a variety of strategies in Part Four of the book. Now why don't you adopt the one I suggested to you."

Because.....I don't *want* to. I'm perfectly happy with who I am, you're the one who isn't.

If I become you, who will become me? As the saying kinda goes...without the owls. :0)

"Adopt a strategy of not posting bollocks to message boards - you will find it a great help. And let me try and explain that so it comes through loud and clear. It does not mean not posting on message boards. It means not posting bollocks on message boards.
That's all."

Tell me, Dave...WHY, when I apparently write such "bollocks" do you bother to read it? Not only that, but WHY do you bother to read every single word of it, not just on this board, but on the BBC too?

Gotcha! ;0)

Ronald Davis was treated terribly by those who supposedly thought themselves better than him. He's developed a strategy to make letters sit still. I don't have that problem. The letters sit still, I don't. :0) Neither does my mind..it leaps around all over the place, and I love that it does. I'm happy being me. Really happy....and when I have the music playing in my earphones, well, that sends me 'somewhere else'...("if ONLY!" you all shriek) LOL

Just think on this though, not once has The Peasant told The Professors that she may feel that they write '.........s'.....so who has the better manners?

All I'm complaining about is the floodgates of academia that pour out, often stifling 'ordinary' conversation and putting the music into a very **serious** place.

I'm whizzing back to watch those Gorgeous Oysters again now...and bring a smile back to my face.. ;0)

Subject: RE: English Folk - Peasants to Professors
From: Darowyn
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 07:59 AM

As I drive my Honda Civic along the motorway, it is so much more deep and valuable an experience because I do it in the knowledge that Sochiro Honda's original design was a pedal assisted bicycle built in his shed.

Perhaps that is a reductio ad absurdum, to be professorial. However, the analogy holds because one of Lizzies arguments can be summed up in more academic language by saying that music of any kind can be appreciated as a sensual experience, with no knowledge of its prior origins.
If some find that the combination of both perceived pleasure and academic satisfaction is better, then good for them.
If others are happy with only one channel of pleasure, fine.
I'd just like to note that it is rarely Lizzie who descends into vulgar abuse.
Cheers
Dave

Subject: RE: English Folk - Peasants to Professors
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 07:52 AM

Exactly, blowz...for you. That's what turns the colours on, for you.
And I don't have a problem with that.

What I do have a problem with, is those who look down their noses at others who have a different way of loving the songs. It doesn't mean that one is better than the other, it simply means we all love the songs, but in different ways.

I'm not out to impress, with facts and figures and hoitytoity 'look at me, ain't I a clever muppet!' kind of stuff. I simply love the songs, and if I interpret them differently, so what? It doesn't mean that I get any less enjoyment from them. It does seem to drive The Professors bats though.

Diane, thanks for the insult about my kids, ho hum, but my daughter could run rings around you, intelligence wise, at just 22. And my son, at 14, is well on his way there.

Nope, this thread was started because of the angst going on in Kate Rusby's thread about, shock, horror, a *mistake* having been made, which seemd to have reached the point of the guillotine being brought in to chop off the head of the person who DARED to make it.

I don't feel like that, it doesn't worry me. I just love the music.

Lizzie - The Happy Funny Bunny! :0)

Subject: RE: English Folk - Peasants to Professors
From: glueman
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 07:50 AM

The point isn't that additional contexts might not reward the reader-listener but that their absense doesn't automatically impoverish. One of the stumbling blocks for a more widespread appraisal or consumption of traditional music is that the historiographic approach is so deeply embedded in the revival newcomers can find no way in.

Fandom is perceived as especially suspect, whereas in other musics it has academic respectability.


http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/71/56

Subject: RE: English Folk - Peasants to Professors
From: Folkiedave
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 07:47 AM

Appreciating your own difficulties understanding what people have written might help.

I did NOT say it was a problem. I said it gives rise to problems. I have never met anyone who denies that, even Ronald Davis. In fact chapters 6, 7, 8, and 9 of his book are labelled "Problems with Reading", "Spelling Problems" "Math Problems" and "Handwriting Problems". Take a look at your copy if you don't believe me. You do have a copy of this 288pp 34 chapter four part book - don't you?

He mentions a variety of strategies (it's part four) to overcome the problems that dyslexia gives rise to. All dyslexia specialists do. It's sorting the specific strategy to suit the specific person that makes them specialists.

The sub-title of his book you recommend is "Why some of the smartest people can't read and how they can learn".. Have you got to that bit yet? How did you get on?

He recommends a variety of strategies in Part Four of the book. Now why don't you adopt the one I suggested to you.

Adopt a strategy of not posting bollocks to message boards - you will find it a great help. And let me try and explain that so it comes through loud and clear.

It does not mean not posting on message boards. It means not posting bollocks on message boards.

That's all.

Subject: RE: English Folk - Peasants to Professors
From: Brian Peters
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 07:46 AM

There are many examples apart from Bob Copper - as detailed by Fred, Jim and others - which expose the false dichotomy between "peasant" and "professor". I chose Bob deliberately, not just because he studied his family's singing tradition and described it with exceptional eloquence, not just because he was self-educated to a high degree of expertise on a variety of subjects from local architecture to blues music, not just because he was himself a collector who delighted in turning up different versions of songs he knew, and not just because he liked to describe himself with self-deprecating irony as a "peasant", but because singing was to him essentially about having a good time. His knowledge never compromised that, nor does it for all those other singers of old songs who have sufficient curiosity to want to know something about them.

Subject: RE: English Folk - Peasants to Professors
From: GUEST,blowz at work
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 07:20 AM

I think as well, that if all that is seen is, to quote Lizzie:

"Colours, magic, sounds, words, skies, seas, fishermen, miners, bal maidens, weather, worry, hard times, good times, high times, low times, weddings, funerals, rivers, streams, tors and prisons, exiles and immigrants, tall ships and ploughs...YES!"

and you have no handle on when the song was written and how it came to be that we still have it now (ie when / how it came to be collected) then so much is lost from the song. I am reminded of 'The Bonnie Ship the Diamond' - a great song, I've always loved it and the pictures it creates. But, when I learnt, in an introduction, that it is known that the song was written before 18?? (I can't remember off the top of my head, sorry) because The Diamond was lost in the ice off Baffin Bay that year, it meant much more. (Someone will probably know far more than me about this, and I will probably learn that all that I was told is wrong!)

Someone found that information out because the song meant something to them - not because they were a boring academc, but because they cared enough about the song and the ships / characters in it, to want to know more. For me, rather than making songs dull, detail gives them colour and breathes life into them.

Subject: RE: English Folk - Peasants to Professors
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 07:16 AM

This anti-intellectualist garbage in relation to the "gift" of dysexia has all been spouted before, ad nauseum. Two very fine musicians, John Spiers and Colin Cotter each entered the fray describing their own forms of dyslexia and how, with minimal appropriate remedial treatment, overcame completely any vestige of learning difficulty and became outstandingly knowledgable and skilled in their fields.

Both, incidentally, are also Cambridge graduates in scientific subjects.

I wonder why the OP hasn't followed a similar route? Ah yes, I remember. She even hauled her own children out of school and deprived them of an education.If ever there was an example of wilful ignorance, this is it.

Subject: RE: English Folk - Peasants to Professors
From: Jack Campin
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 06:54 AM

EVERY person with dyslexia will have a different magic. We are not all the same, some read well, some can't write, some have words that leap around, some miss them out entirely

Quite. There are many possible solutions, and there will be one that works for you if you pull your finger out and look for it. Have you even tried text-to-speech? Screen magnification? Coloured glasses? Getting somebody else to read to you?

You've written more words to Mudcat than there are in Lloyd's book, with no spelling mistakes or slips in grammar and less typos than I make. That suggests you don't have any problem in comprehension of text that you couldn't overcome if you put your mind to it. You just need to care enough about the songs, their creators and the world they came from to put the effort into understanding them.

Subject: RE: English Folk - Peasants to Professors
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 06:42 AM

"I don't *insist* you see it my way."

Oh, that's funny - I thought that's what this whiole thread is about, isn't it?

Who ever told you that you had to be interested in the academic side of folk? No one. You started this thread with a confrontational attack on academic interest in folk music, one of your many and wearisome hobby horses.

You love to wave your ignorance like a flag. Hurrah. Just don't insist that others do the same, or wave your flag right in people's faces too frequently, and everyone is happy. And then maybe we'll be spared another of these tedious, reverse-snobbery diatribes. Because christ on a bike, they are getting bloody boring.


Back OT: John Clare, the Peasant Poet. Wrote poems, many of which have been set to music at one time or another. Also was a folk song collector, visiting gypsy families like the Boswells and the Smiths to collect their songs. In the early 19th century. Not an academic, not middle class, but he was interested in the songs and where they came from. But hey, don't let yet another fact get in the way of a good rant.

Subject: RE: English Folk - Peasants to Professors
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 06:26 AM

Or indeed here: Ritual Turnip

Oops I seem to have missed several posts in my last reply there...

Subject: RE: English Folk - Peasants to Professors
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 06:23 AM

Lovely post Lizzie... I might disagree with you on many things, but the way you come out with stuff does mek me smile!

Ooh, and some excellent Ritual Turnips to be found amongst the savages to be observed capering about on the Isle of Man.. ;-)

Subject: RE: English Folk - Peasants to Professors
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 06:20 AM

"Dyslexia is not much of an excuse. Totally blind people read books on the scale of these two by using a scanner and OCR. "

Ohhhhhhh! Save me from The Professors! Totally blind people are NOT dyslexic. They simply do not see. The messages that carry the words to the brain don't go down the same paths as they do in the dyslexic brain. EVERY person with dyslexia will have a different magic. We are not all the same, some read well, some can't write, some have words that leap around, some miss them out entirely...but many of us go off at tangents and our minds are free range...We can't be controlled because even WE can't control our minds...but more than that, we don't WANT to do things 'your way', we're quite happy with 'our way' because it makes sense...to us. :0)

You adore facts, that's great. I love that you do. But don't *insist* that I have to as well. I love the music in a different way to you, that's all. I see music. Simple as that.   I don't *insist* you see it my way.

:0) The Peasant is as important as The Professor. :0)

Subject: RE: English Folk - Peasants to Professors
From: Fred McCormick
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 06:15 AM

The Snail. "Fred McCormick

"I've read this posting of Lizzie's about four times

Why?"

I though I might have been missing something.

Subject: RE: English Folk - Peasants to Professors
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 06:05 AM

You will also find, in that book, how Ronald talks of the many creative people who are dyslexic, musicians in particular. They 'see' *inside* the music, the know instinctively how to play an instrument, needing no music to show them the way.

Yeesh! The things I could teach you! ;0)

Subject: RE: English Folk - Peasants to Professors
From: Jack Campin
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 06:04 AM

Georges Denis Zimmermann, "Songs of Irish Rebellion: Irish Political Street Ballads and Rebel Songs 1780-1900", Four Courts Press 1966/2002, ISBN 1-85182-629-7.

It's about twice as big as Lloyd's book but takes a similar approach; the central theme is that these songs are not homogeneous, but originated in several different ways with different intentions, with subsequent histories that went in many different directions. Zimmermann is an academic, but the idea that songs have specific histories is anything but an academic one in the Irish context - get the history of a song wrong and you can offend people enough to get your head kicked in. The specifically academic contribution was that Zimmermann was creating a big picture, telling a story that linked all the political songs of the Irish tradition into one vast sweep of narrative. You can learn a hell of a lot about Ireland that way.

Dyslexia is not much of an excuse. Totally blind people read books on the scale of these two by using a scanner and OCR.

Subject: RE: English Folk - Peasants to Professors
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 06:03 AM

Very good, Dave.

Sadly though, it shows me you have NO understanding at all. If you truly think that dyslexia is a 'problem' then you are living in the stone ages, and shouldn't be teaching dyslexic students at all, because...we have magic, not problems.

May I recommend, to both you and your wife...Ronald D. Davis's book 'The Gift of Dyslexia'....It may open up your mind...it's also written in very large print, short chapters and is easy for even me to take in and remember, mainly because Ronald is deeply dyslexic, was regarded as a 'savant' as a child, deeply abused by teachers who found him difficult to comprehend, with a mind that refused to be controlled by theirs.

Problems? Pah!   :0) :0)

Subject: RE: English Folk - Peasants to Professors
From: Folkiedave
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 05:57 AM

Correct Lizzie, I did teach dyslexic students, not a specialism but part of my work with students who have learning differences. My wife does it as a specialism at a University. We still discuss it over dinner occasionally. Not the most riveting of conversation pieces for most people but hey ho - it suits us. I do appreciate your problems and possibly than better than most.

Most people with dyslexia, a well-known folk-singer/songwriter of whom you are a great fan; Jackie Stewart; Eddie Izzard; Steve Redgrave; Tom Cruise for example, have developed strategies for overcoming any problems their dyslexia gives them - difficulty in reading some things or difficulty in retention, for example. Dyslexia manifests itself in many different ways so there are a range of strategies needed.

One of those strategies is not to talk bollocks on message boards.

I recommend it to you.

Subject: RE: English Folk - Peasants to Professors
From: TheSnail
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 05:44 AM

Fred McCormick

I've read this posting of Lizzie's about four times

Why?