The re-Imagined Village

Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
From: Sailor Ron
Date: 27 Aug 09 - 03:56 AM

Preston. Don't forget the Harkness collection of broadsheet ballads, 100s of them, qwell worth a visit but ask in advance.

Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
From: Jamming With Ollie Beak (inactive)
Date: 26 Aug 09 - 05:58 PM

I see WAV has been putting his hands all over things he knows nothing about, elsewhere on the net Glorishears of Brummagem and subjecting them to what he calls poetry.

I'm embarrassed on behalf of the ladies, who truly are a very talent morris side, and they come from a city, not a rural "idyll"

Charlotte Olivia Robertson (Ms)

Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 26 Aug 09 - 12:11 PM

(remember the pendulum?)

I've only known Preston for six years or so - and only intimately since we moved to The Fylde some two years ago. Naturally I assumed the Foucault's Pendulum was a new installation! It's still swinging, measuring the earth's spin as it does so, reminding one of our place in the cosmic scheme of things. Always a humbling, reverential experience, a meditation on pure materialistic wonder indeed. A reviewer once pointed out that when the Sun Ra Archestra swings, they do so like a Foucault's Pendulum. That's my groove right there - and it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing!

Preston's Foucault's Pendulum

Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
From: Will Fly
Date: 26 Aug 09 - 11:30 AM

My first job after leaving school was in Preston - in 1962 - and I travelled the 20 or so miles from Lancaster daily to that bus station you mention. The Harris Art Gallery was home to the Harris Library, Preston's Public Library, before it was merged with that of Lancashire C.C.

Derelicts on their way to snooze in the newspaper reading room were sprayed with DDT by the janitors in the large circular hall (remember the pendulum?). Us juniors on table tidying duty used to jolt the snoozers as we passed them, to wake them up. I did this one day and the old boy's teeth fell out on to the table - he was as dead as a doornail.

Interesting times. There was a lung in a large jar on display in the window of the Public Health Office. It was stained a dark brown and was supposed to be a disincentive to smoking. People used to stop in ones and twos to remark on it - Woodbines and Capstan Full Strength dangling from their lips...

Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 26 Aug 09 - 07:10 AM

And, the "Ribble's flow", etc. is not too far from the RIV topic of this thread.

Maybe not, but some original observations would have been more welcome. What else did you do in Preston? Did you check out the amazing breadth of stock at Action Records or the many fine English paintings in the Harris Art Gallery? Did you sample the Parched Peas from the vendors in the square or else marvel at the Market buildings and trestle stalls thereunder? Did you gawp in reverential awe at what is still the largest bus station in Europe, or else explore in the fragrant hush the antiquarian delights on offer at Halewoods? Proud Preston indeed! I love the place; we often head there of a weekend. It's also the location of The Moorbrook in which of a Friday night you can hear the finest folk music in the country - the Holy of Holies indeed.      

Chris Watson - Embleton Rookery (Embleton, Northumberland, England)

A classic! CS would love it! Though for Human League I'd go for Empire State Human.

Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
From: Stu
Date: 26 Aug 09 - 05:46 AM

For the rave:

Ulrich Schnauss - Far Away Trains Passing By

Stanley Holloway - Sam, Pick Up Thy Musket

Jethro Tull - Heavy Horses

The Human League - Do or Die

Paul Weller - Brushed

The Goons - I'm Walking Backwards For Christmas

Todd Dockstader - anything from Aerial #1 or #2

Rambling Syd Rumpo - The Drunker Nurker

Chris Watson - Embleton Rookery (Embleton, Northumberland, England)

Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 26 Aug 09 - 05:32 AM

S: You had just mentioned recording in a Preston music shop, with one of their instruments, and that poem came to mind.

And, the "Ribble's flow", etc. is not too far from the RIV topic of this thread.

Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 26 Aug 09 - 05:18 AM

WAV - you've already got a thread for your poetry. The feeling is that here you can write what you like as long as it doesn't include cutting & pasting from your Life's Work, or else linking to same.

Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 26 Aug 09 - 04:59 AM

Poem 122 of 230: PROUD PRESTON - AUTUMN 2000

Heavy autumnal rain
    Had surged the Ribble's flow
When I walked to and fro
    The foot-, motor- and train-
Bridges, that have allowed
    Many - some in combat -
To cross this river at
    A town justly self-proud.

From http://blogs.myspace.com/walkaboutsverse (e-book)
Or http://walkaboutsverse.sitegoz.com (e-scroll)
(C) David Franks 2003

Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 26 Aug 09 - 04:33 AM

"Please post random musical selections for top volume listening (bring your own drugs and sloe gin). x "

My personal contribution in respect of The Season would by my MAUSOLEUM - August 2009 (alluded to below) which you can listen to HERE - AND my YORK MINSTER CHAPTER HOUSE - August 2009 which you can listen to HERE. Both are field recordings - the first recorded on 22-8-09 using a bass guitar in a Preston music shop, the second using two Jew's Harps in the Chapter House of York Minster on 20-8-09. Folk Music? Well they are to me, heart & soul. I don't suppose many here would agree but isn't that the pure vibrant joy of the thing?

Otherwise you can download Vivian Stanshall's classic Men Opening Unbrellas Ahead (1974) entirely gratis from HERE. Never been a CD re-issue...

Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
From: mandotim
Date: 26 Aug 09 - 04:04 AM

Still waiting for an answer to my question at 2.19 pm yesterday...

Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
From: theleveller
Date: 26 Aug 09 - 03:43 AM

"Please post random musical selections for top volume listening (bring your own drugs and sloe gin). x "

Now you're talking. A rousing rendition of Oysterband Bells of Rhymney should get things going, then gentle it down with Roddy Woomble's My Secret is my Silence. More Sloe Gin in your coffee? (Actually, mine's Damson Gin.)

Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
From: s&r
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 06:04 PM

The English are not alone in having Folk as a fringe interest. We were on our third trip to Ireland before we found any Irish folk music. In Athy a pub landlady told us there was music all over the area, but none of the bloody diddley dlddley stuff. In Wales we have found music in pubs that is Pop - and none the worse for it. Don't know about Scotland.

I like and play folk music but not to the exclusion of other forms of music, and I think most people are the same.

Stu

Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 05:50 PM

how can you say that?

Because (and note this well) FOLK is only relevant to a TINY PROPORTION of the ENGLISH PEOPLE. To the VAST MAJORITY it is of NO RELEVANCE WHATSOEVER. Go study the nature & history of The Folk Revival. FOLK is a FALSE cultural CONSTRUCT - it is a FANTASY - it is NOT and NEVER HAS BEEN our own good culture, rather it is a MINUSCULE part of it - albeit REVIVED and of VERY LIMITED appeal. You might see this as a BAD THING; whereas I see it as a REALITY. The ENGLISH PEOPLE have their Own Good Culture, and, for the most part, IT DOES NOT INCLUDE FOLK MUSIC. Sorry, but that's just the way it is. My kids hate it; most of the people I know hate it; even I hate 78.6% of it.

If people like any aspect of FOLK, it is down to PERSONAL TASTE and not some FATUOUS CRUSADE to do with NATIONAL PRIDE. If it is, those people, like YOU, are SORELY MISTAKEN. FOLK MUSIC is about the people who play it and love it; it is NOTHING MORE nor indeed ANYTHING LESS than that. Thus do I say FOLK IS NOT OUR CULTURAL HERITAGE - any more than RAILWAY MODELLING or CROSS STITCHING is our cultural heritage. FOLK is a HOBBY - it is a FUN THING TO DO but only for that tiny proportion of the English people WHO LIKE IT. For those who don't like it FOLK is HELL ON EARTH.

So - like folk by all means, but DO NOT have the bare faced TEMERITY to assume THE ENGLISH PEOPLE are in ERROR for not sharing your PERSONAL TASTE.

Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 05:46 PM

Heh! No Rave yet then? Mmmm not very English is it?

I'm feeling verrrrry suspicious of this thread...
and will be WATCHING YOU.

GET WITH THE PROGRAMME fellow citizens! Demonstrate your eccentricity, elaborate your eclecticisism, detail your anarchic disrespect for law and order, dot your affectionate indulgence of inaffective same, prove your delight in Dahlias. Or you will, sadly be, EXTERMINATED! (in an amusingly ideosyncratic Aunty Beeb robot voice!)

Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 05:38 PM

This time I will copy/paste my words to save you going to another thread where S. has replied with the same point: Several people at the Durham Folk Party singarounds (which we have both enjoyed, S), including Jez Lowe, can play instruments but CHOOSE to sing unaccompanied. It's not a sin to agree with me on something.

Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
From: Jamming With Ollie Beak (inactive)
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 05:31 PM

what Suibhne O'Piobaireachd actually said was....

FOLK is NOT our Cultural Heritage - it is a MINORITY REVIVALIST HOBBY. In the KNOW? Bollocks! Folk is down to the individuals who do it & love it & enjoy it for what it is,

WAV took one single line, right out of context "FOLK is NOT our Cultural Heritage" and once more got on his English Nationalist nonsense high horse.

There were two collectors who definitely had classical training, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Percy Grainger.

Charlotte Olivia Robertson (Ms)

Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 05:22 PM

"FOLK is NOT our Cultural Heritage" (S)...how can you say that? Trad. folk songs HAVE been passed down, in England, over several centuries, by the oral tradition, before being recorded and notated by, often classically-trained, song collectors.

Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 02:39 PM

Jayzus... this village needs a scalding coffee enema.
The resident herbalist prescribes a totally illegal early morning Rave!
Please post random musical selections for top volume listening (bring your own drugs and sloe gin). x

Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
From: mandotim
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 02:19 PM

That's fine, WAV, but it doesn't answer my question. You have frequently said in absolute terms that people of a particular culture should not perform music from another culture. If you had the power, how would you stop them? What measures would you take? Education merely encourages people to act in a particular way, with varying degrees of success. Your imagined world of each culture sticking rigidly to it's own mores and folkways implies that there must be a much greater degree of control. We have some fairly rigid rules in our culture, and these are generally enforced by legislation. Your approach is also rigid, and I would therefore like to know how you would enforce the rules. Oh and by the way; as demonstrated ad nauseam on this board, you don't play the flute, you play the recorder.
Now the academic bit; you have extrapolated from the attendance at a single event in one part of the UK, with no supporting evidence, and used this suspect data to make a wholly spurious link between the age profile in the room and the effect of a non-existent national education policy decision to 'explain' the decline of English folk music as a part of national culture. If I was peer reviewing this argument WAV, I'd be calling your alma mater in Australia and checking your alleged qualifications. I'd expect a better standard of academic rigour from my children when they were at secondary school. Surely you can see the huge holes in the logic?
Want to have another go at answering the question? I'm going out now to play music. It's American Bluegrass, and you can spend the evening condemning me if you like. I don't really care; I'll be playing to a pub full of urban English people, and chances are they'll be having a great time, not knowing how wrong they are to enjoy such alien music.

Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
From: Jamming With Ollie Beak (inactive)
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 01:44 PM

"Why?" Will - to do our bit in keeping our world nice and multicultural."
- WalkaboutsVerse

should have finished the quote off, WAV...but make sure that multiculturalism isn't in England doesn't infect the good old "English Tradition"...or something like that...
Well me and the band, using electric instriments and American guitars, rehearsed some music composed and played by Canadian musicians, now THAT'S what I call multiculturalism *LOL*

Oh and the vocals were handled in part by a Welshwoman..

Charlotte Olivia Robertson
(token N. American native)

Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
From: Jack Campin
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 01:34 PM

The only problem was, I, at 43, was probably the youngest singer there - because this aspect of our cultural heritage is no longer given a fair go at our schools, etc.
At Durham you'll find a lot of very fine old singers who haven't been singing very long actually, largely thanks to Folkworks etc. They don't play instruments because they're not musicians! This has nothing to do with Tradition - so don't be fooled. I'm invariably a decade or more younger than any of them, but when it comes to Traditional Song I am a veritable veteran in their midst.

The book by Lajos Vargjas I was reading while recovering from my heart attack described a phenomenon I found rather surprising. He was talking about the transmission of Hungarian folksong in the years 1900-1950, mainly, but implied the same processes had been going on for several generations. This was an immensely vital song tradition with a vast corpus, so you'd expect it was passed on from old people to the young, right? Wrong. Almost all the songs in the repertoire were generationally specific. They were transmitted from one area to another, modified very fast, but between people of similar ages. Some kinds of song were considered inappropriate to sing if you were too young or too old for them, others drifted in or out of fashion. When you got old enough, you looked around for people a bit older and learned the songs appropriate for your age. These Hungarian peasants would have regarded the idea of teaching young-adult, middle-aged or old people's songs in schools as in appalling taste or just insane.

Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 01:12 PM

The only problem was, I, at 43, was probably the youngest singer there - because this aspect of our cultural heritage is no longer given a fair go at our schools, etc. (and, by employing those who KNOW, that's where I'd focus).

At Durham you'll find a lot of very fine old singers who haven't been singing very long actually, largely thanks to Folkworks etc. They don't play instruments because they're not musicians! This has nothing to do with Tradition - so don't be fooled. I'm invariably a decade or more younger than any of them, but when it comes to Traditional Song I am a veritable veteran in their midst. This is the Second-Life Wave of New Folkies - fine singers all & long may they thrive!

So - nothing to do with any shortcomings in schools & education; the fact is that Traditional English Folk Song is healthier now than it ever has been. Celebrate this fact, WAV - don't think it should be otherwise because that way lies Cultural Fascism. FOLK is NOT our Cultural Heritage - it is a MINORITY REVIVALIST HOBBY. In the KNOW? Bollocks! Folk is down to the individuals who do it & love it & enjoy it for what it is.

Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
From: Jack Campin
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 12:55 PM

a Turkish G clarinet
Drool. Is it a metal one? A metal G Clarinet is about #3 on my wish-list presently

Yep. I got it about ten years ago in Mugla, it's the second one I've had. You can now get them from on-line retailers in Turkey quite easily - google "sol klarnet". The quality control has improved so you are unlikely to get a lemon (not true when I first got into it, you really had to shop around in person). Mine seems to have the brand name "Kor" but I don't think that means a lot.

Fabulously flexible instrument, and fits into a whisky presentation tin. (So do most clarinets, but my Peter Eaton B flat is a squeeze).

Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 12:34 PM

Mandotim: I'll try an example - 2 years ago, Sean and I were the only ones with musical instruments of any kind at the Saturday night Durham Folk Party singaround (I did an intro. with my English flute; and he used some electronic drone and his crwth, I think); I got the feeling/took a hint if you like, and left my flute in my bag this year, such that it was 100% unaccompanied singing this year - and very enjoyable, too. The only problem was, I, at 43, was probably the youngest singer there - because this aspect of our cultural heritage is no longer given a fair go at our schools, etc. (and, by employing those who KNOW, that's where I'd focus).

Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 11:27 AM

a Turkish G clarinet

Drool. Is it a metal one? A metal G Clarinet is about #3 on my wish-list presently, though I'm more than happy with my 1920s wooden simple-system Bb, high-pitch, wide bore, and a chalumeau register to die for - in fact, rarely do I use it for anything else.

As far as bass guitars go I'm saving up my pennies for a Fender Jazz; on the recording there I'm playing a cheap copy (with very crackly pots) that the proprietor offered me for well under £100! Not bad at all really but when my dream comes true it has to be the real thing. So that's #2 on my wish list...

#1 - Pontic Lyra
#4 - Wooden Garklein
#5 - SM57

Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
From: s&r
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 11:18 AM

Alstonfield following a ceilidh on the Saturday for the First Responders. They've just boght a new response vehicle, and the ceilidh was to dedicate it.

Good fun.

Stu

Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
From: mandotim
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 11:10 AM

Hey Stu; I live in the next valley to Dovedale, in a real, not Imagined Village! Where was the session? Sounds like a good do.
Tim

Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
From: theleveller
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 10:52 AM

"Have you read Evans-Pritchard on the Zulu culture, TL?"

No. I read The Washing of the Spears by Donald Morris and Shaka Zulu by E A Ritter while I was living in South Africa.

Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
From: s&r
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 10:46 AM

We had a wonderful session in Dovedale with flute guitar mandolin bouzouki octave fiddle Anglo concertina melodeon recorder melodeon and bodhran. An eclectic mix

Stu

Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
From: Jack Campin
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 10:40 AM

I'm currently giving very serious thought to buying an electric bass

Check out the Ashbory if you can find one - a tiny electric fretless, with weird fat translucent white plastic strings that look like roundworms. Lovely sound, highly portable, great value for money, and works great for music where you need microtones.

I could add that it's not the hardware that makes things English, but the software of culture. The Northumbrian Pipes, for example, may have originated on foreign shores, but the actual musical vocabulary is unique to the region [...]

I've found the Transylvanian double whistle (ikerfurulya) in A works great for Scottish pipe tunes. It's got a built-in drone.

The Highland pipes were an English invention, more than 500 years ago. Wouldn't be much music for them if the Scots hadn't seen the potential.

On Sunday I was playing mostly Scottish music in a session in Edinburgh. The instruments I used were the green plastic Yamaha recorder you can see in the photos on my website, a Turkish G clarinet, the ikerfurulya, G sopranino and G alto recorders made by Susato in North Carolina, an oud from Syria in classical Arabic tuning, and a washboard adapted by yours truly from one bought in Peebles a few years ago and which I think might possibly have been made in Scotland originally, using thimbles which might have been German or American. Nobody told me the result didn't sound Scottish.

Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 10:14 AM

I could add that it's not the hardware that makes things English, but the software of culture. The Northumbrian Pipes, for example, may have originated on foreign shores, but the actual musical vocabulary is unique to the region. The bass guitar may well have been invented in America, but it has found its place in many musics the world over, including England with the musicians I've mentioned and a lot more besides. The hardware of the Saxophone may well have been invented by a Belgian, but it was the African-American jazz musicians who give it a musical voice, which then goes out - England, Africa, Scandinavia, Scotland - and people find their own voices on the instrument, giving it the unique and diverse cultural flavours one finds in Jazz the world over.

Only WAV would suggest that only Belgians should play the Saxophone; only WAV would suggest that Jazz is an American music - purely because his only interest in music is as a means to justify his evil Fascist & Racist ideology. He refuses to take facts on board because to do would mean he'd have to change his embittered misanthropic world-view, the manifesto that is his wholly idiotic Life's Work, which to him operates as an absolute universal law. I don't know about a crippled intellect but it's certainly a twisted one - one that openly celebrates ignorance and refutes learning and ongoing development as being somehow contrary to the common good. Still, when you've got your head shoved as far up your own arse as WAV has, it must be difficult getting a clear view of things.

Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
From: mandotim
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 10:11 AM

Quite right WAV, you shouldn't really answer a question with a question, unless of course you are trying to avoid answering. Yes, I do know how MacColl and others policed it; by having strict and inflexible rules and virtually ostracising anyone who failed to stay within those rules. It was on a very small scale, it didn't last, and proved so exclusive that there are those who argue that the policy did more harm than good to the cause of folk music.
Now back to the question, which wasn't about what MacColl did, it was about what you would do in your proposed world order. I say again; I'm genuinely interested in how you would go about this. You've always been very keen on regulating behaviour, usually citing the UN as your enforcing authority, but I'm not sure the UN would be keen on patrolling pubs late at night to check what sort of music is being played on which instruments, and I guess you would need some sort of local enforcement. How will this be funded? I assume you would need to legislate in some way; do you see playing the wrong music as a civil or criminal offence? What would the sanctions be? The evidence seems to be that regulations without sanctions are generally ignored completely, so I think you ought to be clear about what the penalties are for cultural infractions of the kind you seem so keen to stamp out.
Stu reckons that you will answer by referring to your website, but since I've read it all and not found any realistic and detailed answer, I think you probably need to come up with something new to answer these detailed questions. I look forward to your reply; I have a lot of other questions to follow.

Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
From: Stu
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 10:02 AM

Ever read Brave New World WAV?

Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 09:50 AM

bass guitar

I'm currently giving very serious thought to buying an electric bass, which is the first real instrument I played before going acoustic some thirty-two years ago. Over the years, however, I've indulged my bass needs (as it were) in music shops - as I did in a Preston on my birthday a few days ago when I took my Zoom H4 along and recorded an improvisation I'm calling Mausoleum 22-8-09 which you can listen to at The Ha-Ha Space. My idea is accompany Traditional Ballads with such music, though maybe not in folk clubs...

I'd say the bass guitar is a good deal more relevant to English Popular Culture than the Cittern ever was, or is, or is ever likely to be. Certainly more relevant to me anyway, and the musicians who inspired me by making this instrument truly English - namely Colin Hodgkinson, Hugh Hopper, Richard Sinclair, and Chris Squire - not to mention one or two Europeans, such as Jannik Topp, Bernard Paganotti, Peter Fromader...

Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 09:41 AM

Have you read Evans-Pritchard on the Zulu culture, TL?

And, we shouldn't answer a question with a question, Tim, but for something different from me, Stu, does anyone know how the 50s and 60s perform-your-own-culture folk-club organisers policed it?...

Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
From: s&r
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 09:32 AM

Bet you get a cut and paste or a link to his website...

Stu

Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
From: mandotim
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 09:24 AM

Just a thought WAV; let's suppose for a moment the world was as you would like it to be, and everyone only played the music from their own nation and culture; lets also suppose that you are in a position of authority in this world. What would you do if someone transgressed, and played music from somewhere else, perhaps on an instrument not on your list of approved ones? What would be the sanction or deterrent you would apply? I'm genuinely interested in how you would propose to ensure the survival of your monocultural idea in the face of human nature and free will.
This is a genuine question; I'd like to understand how you see the mechanics of your world view in operation.

Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
From: s&r
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 09:21 AM

I did suggest in a post some time ago that WAV was a computer program locked in a loop while attempting to prove that it was really a human being.

Stu

Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
From: theleveller
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 08:59 AM

"He's locked in that boxful of fatuous stereotypes until he dies"

Sounds like a variation of the torture once practiced by the Zulus whereby a person was locked in a hut with a hungry jackal.

I like English instruments but play the ones that suit me best. So, I have an English cittern (Fylde), an Irish acoustic guitar (Lowden), an American electric guitar (Gibson) and mrsleveller plays a Yorkshire mandolin made by a Scot (Buchanan) and an English mandolin (Hathway) - plus other assorted whistles and recorders from god knows where.

Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 08:49 AM

"WAV ties the Union Jack to it and salutes." (Jack)...ridiculous - I try to be a positive English, NOT British, nationalist; as is "crippled intellect", etc. - check the summary of my CV just above.

Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
From: Jack Campin
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 08:43 AM

I've just spent the morning playing the tune "Neil Gow's Lament For His Second Wife" on my violin, and playing the chords for it on my guitar.

Oh fuck - just realised that I'm an Englishman and that I shouldn't be playing a beautiful Scottish melody

It's basically Irish. Gow nicked the idea from an Irish song, "Kitty Tyrrell". Bizarrely, the Gows published the lament for the first time in the same collection as its original, so anybody playing through the book could see the connection. (They did the same thing with at least one other tune).

There's very little point in debating with someone so mentally incapable he thinks any instrument with "English" in its name must ipso facto *be* essentially English. For sure the recorder isn't in its place of origin - it seem to have been invented in the Ukraine or the Balkans, and was played all over Europe before we have any record of it in Britain. (The earliest mention of it in English is from Scotland). But because a handful of people called it English for a few years nearly 300 years ago, WAV ties the Union Jack to it and salutes. Why on earth would anybody want to treat the assertions of such a crippled intellect as something to refute? They're just pathology samples. He's probably got some variant of Asperger's syndrome - his brain runs on mechanical routines which nobody can change into genuine thought by any external input. He's locked in that boxful of fatuous stereotypes until he dies.

Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 08:08 AM

"Why?" Will - to do our bit in keeping our world nice and multicultural.

Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
From: Will Fly
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 08:03 AM

let's appreciate others but perform our own

Why? No sense in this whatever. You're flogging a dead horse, cock. Give it a rest.

Over and out.

Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 07:47 AM

Will, in my book, you are English and, as such, should enjoy, as I do, Scots playing their Scottish tunes, plus, as you are also a musician, playing English ones yourself - perhaps to be enjoyed by others, including Scots...

"There are more than enough good English songs, tunes and dances
(plus instruments) for anyone's lifetime – let's appreciate others but perform our own!" (here).

Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
From: Will Fly
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 07:31 AM

And I claim 700!

Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
From: Will Fly
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 07:30 AM

I've just spent the morning playing the tune "Neil Gow's Lament For His Second Wife" on my violin, and playing the chords for it on my guitar.

Oh fuck - just realised that I'm an Englishman and that I shouldn't be playing a beautiful Scottish melody or playing instruments that aren't English. Oh well, another avenue of fun closed to me.

Hey - hang on, though. I do have g-g-ggrandparents from Kinross in Scotland, and others from County Kildare in Ireland, plus some Dutch blood which came to Norfolk in the 16th century - and god knows what else from several hundred years before that - so it might be all right after all! Hurray!

See, WAV, how stupid you look with your nonsensical pronouncements as to what musicians should or shouldn't do?

Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 06:40 AM

...no they are mostly "INSTRUMENTS OF (OR CLOSELY ASSOCIATED WITH) AMERICA", Ron. If we are not American we should not Americanise but, rather, love our world being multicultural.

Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
From: Sailor Ron
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 06:36 AM

WAV, fair enough, you did say that, so can you add electric guitar,Wurlitzer organ, bass guitar and full drum kit with cymbals, as all closely associated with England [& English music].

Subject: RE: The re-Imagined Village
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 25 Aug 09 - 06:29 AM

Ron - I posted "Instruments of (OR CLOSELY ASSOCIATED WITH) England".