English folk is 'world music'?

Subject: RE: English folk is 'world music'?
From: Tug the Cox
Date: 13 Oct 09 - 11:42 AM

thanks for that, Guest Ed

Subject: RE: English folk is 'world music'?
From: Banjiman
Date: 13 Oct 09 - 11:31 AM

Dick. OK so the marketeers turned it into an inferno then......

This might be unfortunate, but for people to tune into (and start playing) something, they have to hear it first.

I absolutely know that is (promoting & marketing) what Froots and Mr Anderson are doing. What is wrong with tryiing to brng (potentially) good music it to a wider audience? I don't understand your gripe?

I repeat Dick, I had not heard of you (or the other excellent artists you name) until I got really involved in the folk scene and started running a folk club. I struggle to understand how you can claim to have created the new wave of interest..... half of the people on the Froots disc have never even set foot in a folk club, do you really think they are more likely to have heard you or Eliza C and Kate R?

Subject: RE: English folk is 'world music'?
From: The Sandman
Date: 13 Oct 09 - 11:18 AM

Paul, no.That is incorrect.
what happened is that Rusby and to a lesser extent Eliza Carthy were marketed,and that is what is happening now.
thats what this article is about,some people have decided to market English music,and they are promoting part of it.,the parts that they think might be more commercial.
I was there[DOING IT] ,I am not going to sit back and let history be rewritten by the promoters and marketers.
Eliza Carthy is very good,Kate Rusby has a very good voice.

Subject: RE: English folk is 'world music'?
From: Folkiedave
Date: 13 Oct 09 - 11:17 AM

Goole Folk club,run by Goff and Eileen Sherborne,their son Danny is now a deservedly recognised ANGLO PLAYER

Just a couple of minor corrections - its "Sherburn" and the son is called "Chris" not Danny.

Subject: RE: English folk is 'world music'?
From: Folknacious
Date: 13 Oct 09 - 11:15 AM

Dick Miles said: history being re written,it was not a process started in the nineties by theses artists, most of the artists I mentioned above,were young and doing it in the seventies,and eighties, that is my point.Colin Irwin undoubtedly knows this.

I expect he does. He refers to "Those inspired by the early British folk revival pioneers of the 1950s and '60s to champion the music through the barren years." Which I'd interpret as being the 70's and 80's since he then refers to the 90's. Does he have to namecheck you specifically to avoid "history being re-written"?

Subject: RE: English folk is 'world music'?
From: TheSnail
Date: 13 Oct 09 - 10:06 AM

artbrooks

We in the US always appreciate the music you foreigners play.

No, no, Art. You don't understand. There are two sorts or music, "English" and "World".

Subject: RE: English folk is 'world music'?
From: DonMeixner
Date: 13 Oct 09 - 09:53 AM

World music is a term made up for marketing purposes. It allows people to homogenize African and Celtic music, Cajun and Mexican, Klezmer and throat music,.... into interesting styles and still be able to fit as a word or two on the CD dividers at Barnes and Noble.

I'm sure to the record buyers in Mombassa, English and American Folk is World music to there own musical experience.

Don

Subject: RE: English folk is 'world music'?
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 13 Oct 09 - 09:51 AM

"We in the US always appreciate the music you foreigners play"

And some of us in the UK appreciate the music that you foreigners play too, Art! :-) :-)

Subject: RE: English folk is 'world music'?
From: Banjiman
Date: 13 Oct 09 - 09:48 AM

With respect Dick, I fall into the category discussed by Froots and Pete above (despite being brought up a folk kid in the late 60s/ early 70s).

I'd never heard of any of the artists you mention until I totally immersed myself back in the "folk world" about 3-4 years ago. I had very much heard of and owned albums by Eliza Carthy and Kate Rusby.

People like yourself may have kept the flame burning...... it was artisits like Eliza C. and Kate R. who turned it into an inferno.

Subject: RE: English folk is 'world music'?
From: artbrooks
Date: 13 Oct 09 - 09:43 AM

We in the US always appreciate the music you foreigners play.

Subject: RE: English folk is 'world music'?
From: The Sandman
Date: 13 Oct 09 - 09:43 AM

I turned professional in 1976,aged 25,here is arecording made in 1981[I was30]this recording was mainly [95percent] traditional material.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boqwtu3xPzU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boqwtu3xPzU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItcBocS_x_M&feature=relat
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGoYfU2-A54a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmqpgT0ClK4">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmqpgT0ClK4

Subject: RE: English folk is 'world music'?
From: Mavis Enderby
Date: 13 Oct 09 - 09:40 AM

Being relatively new to what could be called "folk" or "world" music, I wouldn't want to get too hung up on categories & definitions, or whether history is being re-written. But, the statements:

It was as if, almost imperceptibly at first, a generation decided that enough was enough and started to rebel against the homogenised pap it was being force-fed by the unholy coalition of mainstream radio and major record labels

and

For others, their growing interest in what we now call 'world music' inspired them to seek out the equivalent in our own backyard: surely if others could be proud of and fascinated by their own roots and culture, then so could we?

describe my own experience very well.

Pete.

Subject: RE: English folk is 'world music'?
From: The Sandman
Date: 13 Oct 09 - 09:31 AM

n bullishly fine fettle courtesy of a thrilling explosion of mainly young artists taking it to new places and making it modern, relevant and vital. The process may have been started in the 1990s by artists like Eliza Carthy and Kate Rusby.[quote froots]
history being re written,it was not a process started in the nineties by theses artists, most of the artists I mentioned above,were young and doing it in the seventies,and eighties,
that is my point.Colin Irwin undoubtedly knows this.

Subject: RE: English folk is 'world music'?
From: The Sandman
Date: 13 Oct 09 - 09:23 AM

Damien Barber is a good performer and a good friend of mine.
I can remember of the many clubs I played in the eighties,repeatedly playing Goole Folk club,run by Goff and Eileen Sherborne,their son Danny is now a deservedly recognised ANGLO PLAYER,but it was the likes of NicJones Dick Miles, Steve Turner,Gerry Hallom,Keith Kendrick,Roy Harris,Nic Dow Johnny Collins,Pete Coe,Pete Castle and others,that were playing the folk clubs at this time and singing traditional songs.
just to get the record straight.

Subject: RE: English folk is 'world music'?
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 13 Oct 09 - 09:22 AM

They are marketing categories. I wouldn't try too hard to make them fit reality.

Subject: RE: English folk is 'world music'?
From: SteveMansfield
Date: 13 Oct 09 - 08:56 AM

fRoots described English music as 'the last undiscovered outpost of world music' back in the 90s, and it was a comment made with tongue very firmly in cheek then, so this isn't a new development on their part.

Looks like a good compilation: I might even buy a copy of fRoots for the first time in ages to get a copy of the CD.

It nearly made it to double figures before the inevitable happened, but I confidently predict this thread will now descend into

(a) people criticising the choice of artists
(b) stuck records grinding anti-fRoots axes
(c) repulsive little-Ingerlander nationalism

in 5 ... 4 ...

Subject: RE: English folk is 'world music'?
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 13 Oct 09 - 07:52 AM

And your point is, Dick?

Tug, this post should help you italicise.

Humans have, for whatever reasons (some of them helpful no doubt), tried to categorize things. Whether it's trees, rocks, people or music it never works.

The question is just another blind alley that will help nobody.

Subject: RE: English folk is 'world music'?
From: The Sandman
Date: 13 Oct 09 - 07:45 AM

ha ha.well I was playing folk clubs and festivals and beavering away along with people like the Wilsons,and Steve Turner
when Damien Barber and some of the others was still at school,Of course as usual the people who were out there doing it[folk clubs and festivals] in the seventies eighties, nineties,[and even now get no mention].
funny old game the folk scene,its like history is being rewritten
http://www.dickmiles.com

Subject: RE: English folk is 'world music'?
From: Tug the Cox
Date: 13 Oct 09 - 07:40 AM

Crow sister said ( how do you italicise, BTW)
'For the English speaking world, it makes sense to define 'indigenous folk musical traditions', as being distinct from 'non-indigenous traditional musics'.'

Does it. There has always been fusion...sea shanties are a complete mix, with African, West Indian, European etc influences.

   Elsewhere in America different mucics blended in Texas, Louisisna, the Appalachians etc.
    categories are for libraries, not the real world.

Subject: RE: English folk is 'world music'?
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 13 Oct 09 - 07:34 AM

Sorry, cross posted with 'Speen'

Subject: RE: English folk is 'world music'?
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 13 Oct 09 - 07:33 AM

Define 'indigenous' please...

Subject: RE: English folk is 'world music'?
From: GUEST,Spleen sans cookie
Date: 13 Oct 09 - 07:33 AM

'indigenous folk musical traditions'

Ah... but then you'd have the triple whammy of trying to define 'indigenous', 'folk' and 'traditions'...

Local music from around the world does it for me. And congrats to fRoots on what looks like a great CD.

Subject: RE: English folk is 'world music'?
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 13 Oct 09 - 07:19 AM

Well I guess as far as every country in the world is concerned their indigenous traditional music is their 'Folk', and everyone else's is from the rest of the 'World'.

For the English speaking world, it makes sense to define 'indigenous folk musical traditions', as being distinct from 'non-indigenous traditional musics'.

Subject: RE: English folk is 'world music'?
From: Folknacious
Date: 13 Oct 09 - 07:09 AM

I don't understand what you're trying to say.

I was interested by Irwin's comparison between English traditional songs and the West African griot tradition, which I thought was quite a good example of why English folk fits in the 'world music' category. However I gather that its a contentious issue among some world music fans who don't want it included and among some folk fans who think that only our stuff is 'folk'. I've read that in the USA, the Grammies 'world music' definition excludes anything from the British Isles, so that would be music from our ethnic minorities as well as English folk. Really, it shows what a nonsense it is trying to define things carelessly.

Subject: RE: English folk is 'world music'?
From: treewind
Date: 13 Oct 09 - 06:34 AM

It's always been the policy of fRoots to include British (English or "Celtic") music as part of world music, and often publicised as such too - nothing new here.

It contrasts starkly with other definitions of "world music" such as "anything not sung in English"

Subject: RE: English folk is 'world music'?
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 13 Oct 09 - 06:31 AM

But what are we to make of the case put by Colin Irwin in the introduction?

Erm, nothing much. Of course English music is world music.

I don't understand what you're trying to say.

Ed

Subject: RE: English folk is 'world music'?
From: GUEST,synbyn no cookie
Date: 13 Oct 09 - 06:21 AM

Ha! About time, too... of course there were some of us for whom it never went away, and real credit to the people like Keith Kendrick who kept beavering away without fashionable recognition and to the keepers of many many small folk clubs which kept the thread going when televised football and pub closures removed many venues for singarounds. Of course it's world music- and personally I'm delighted to hear melody making a comeback after many years of exaggerated percussion!

Subject: English folk is 'world music'?
From: Folknacious
Date: 13 Oct 09 - 06:07 AM

This looks interesting, judging by the artists I've heard. But what are we to make of the case put by Colin Irwin in the introduction?