Music of the people..Don't make me laugh

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: GUEST,999
Date: 10 Feb 10 - 09:19 PM

I'm with you. But for me it's WC Fields.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Little Hawk
Date: 10 Feb 10 - 09:18 PM

For a good laugh, I recommend renting all of Charlie Chaplin's original films and watching them in chronological order.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: GUEST,999
Date: 10 Feb 10 - 09:00 PM

No man is an island . . . .

Well, there's the Isle of Man, but that's an exseptshun/excepption/exceptshun extenuating abnormality. And I ask why Antarctica is not an island but rather a continent? And where are women in all this? As for the thread starter's original choice of title for this thread? I wouldn't think of it.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Lighter
Date: 10 Feb 10 - 09:59 AM

Will, about the only way you'd know would be if the person has told you.

But what artbrooks says is true, though possibly most true in the Southwest. Are such things important over here? To many people, Hispanic and otherwise, yes. The reason is that areat many "Anglos" have always looked down on and discriminated against Hispanics - along with other non-British or Northern European ethnic minorities.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: artbrooks
Date: 10 Feb 10 - 09:54 AM

Colonial descendants most often have Spanish surnames. There are about twenty very common ones associated with the Spanish pioneers. They are not all dark haired, brown eyed and olive complected, either.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Charmion
Date: 10 Feb 10 - 09:31 AM

I live in Ottawa, the capital of Canada. It is the only major city the Ottawa Valley, a large district that extends from Lake Nippissing to the Saint Lawrence River and comprises some of western Quebec as well as eastern Ontario. Except for pockets of Polish and Finnish settlement, its rural areas resemble Nova Scotia and New Brunswick in both poverty and ethnic make-up.

Here in the Valley, "Anglo" or "English" typically means "The Man" -- the well-dressed members of the managerial class. It means the people who ran the paper mill that closed and threw the bread-winner of your family out of a job. It means the banker who won't extend your equipment loan. It means the people who make the government policies that seem carefully designed to prevent you from collecting pogey.

The actual ethnicity and personal history of those individuals is irrelevant; in fact, eastern Ontario managers are often bilingual francophones from blue-collar backgrounds who are themselves only two pay-cheques from deep trouble. The source of friction is not their language or their heritage, but their access to opportunities that others want and cannot quite seem to grasp.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Will Fly
Date: 10 Feb 10 - 08:23 AM

Here in Albuquerque, a Polish immigrant who speaks no English would be considered an Anglo, while a descendant of the original Spanish colonists, who speaks only English, would not.

How on earth would you know whether a man speaking colloquial American English in Albuquerque was a descendant of the original Spanish colonists? Is it considered important over there? Not trying to be controversial, Art - just genuinely curious.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: artbrooks
Date: 10 Feb 10 - 08:17 AM

Spleen Cringe, an "Anglo", to someone in the US living in a Hispanic or Hispanic-tinted culture, is anyone who isn't Hispanic. It has nothing at all to do with the language spoken. Here in Albuquerque, a Polish immigrant who speaks no English would be considered an Anglo, while a descendant of the original Spanish colonists, who speaks only English, would not.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Mr Happy
Date: 10 Feb 10 - 07:51 AM

......kind've squeezeable innit?

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 10 Feb 10 - 07:47 AM

i later learned that this is a feature of anglo culture, the blowhards whao are completely full of shit

...dotcha just love sweeping generalisations? And WTF is an "Anglo"?

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: ollaimh
Date: 09 Feb 10 - 11:50 PM

th trouble which "the model" is we gaels have been doing the real thing whether or not the nice bourgeoises deighned to notice or not. same with the french and probably many others. the bourgeoise however stake out ownership in other peoples music. i used to be refgularily told that what i sang wasn't folk. i was young and stupid and comming from the sticks of guysborough county i had never met anyone face to face who was completeloy full of shit. i later learned that this is a feature of anglo culture, the blowhards whao are completely full of shit. i didn't understand then and ii don't understand now why they are evn interested in folk music, but thye are amd they OWN IT.

and the bourgeoise have stesdy jobd and can show up every wednesday night, and they getb to make the rules and the travelling worker--as i was much of my life--shows up to sing and in most clubs never gets a chance . i could get the gigs though. after a few years i got a kick out of seeing them at my gigs from northwest folklife to the berkely folk festival. but the truth is very few folk clubs in the north american anglo world will let working class people from living folk traditions participate unless we brown nose fiercely as demons. and i wish i n=new how to brown nose ,i really do, i would have had a much easier life,but i grew upin a culture where people mouth off what theythink about the evil classes and empires ruling us. out jkes are disrespectfull and we were alway suspicious of any authority. i never learned to shpow the proper deference.so if i stayed in the same town for a while i could go again and again and slowly get to participate but never without nasty attacks and gossip.

this is the big bigotry, class bigotry. much of the rest of bigotry is now subsumed in class bigotry. the bourgeoise folkies can always seem to "get "their enemies on their "bad behavior" never admitting that that behavior is normal in another culture. i maintain that anglo culture is still suffering from the imperial hangover. the worst is not counting the dead in iraq or vietnam, but the least is still bad. never acknowledging the experience and knowledge of those who haven't graduated through the anglo cultural experience. well makeing people graduate thus does colour and pollute the folk tradition. but i may be a fool nut i'm a slow learner.i don't call what i do folk anymore. i call it celtic music or acadien music which ever i'm playing..

remember   je me souvien, or as milan kundera said:

"the fight to remember is the fight against tyranny"

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: mousethief
Date: 01 Feb 10 - 06:04 PM

Meanwhile real folk music was going on in valleys and hollers up in the Ozarks and Appalachians. Occasionally a collector would pass through and steal some, and occasionally somebody would make it to the low lands and take some out with them (Carter family most famously). But this didn't even rise to the level of "blue collar" -- which presupposes industrialism. Black collar, more like, for the coal mining.

O..O
=o=

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: GUEST,TJ in San Diego
Date: 01 Feb 10 - 02:22 PM

Beginning with the Weavers' era in the U.S., labor and left-of-center politics were never far from those most associated with "folk music." In the main, that is probably as true today as then. When I first got into the coffee house scene, in the late 1950's, many of those I met were fellow college students and professors. There were also some working people, mainly sales and clerical folks. There were a few "blue collar" types as well. There were also several "regulars" who played chess, engaged in discussions about songs, instruments, etc., and whose means of support were indeterminate. We didn't ask, generally. Most, frankly, were white and likely middle income people.

I have not hung out in coffee houses for a very long time. My son, who has done so, being the current working musician in the family, describes the crowds as very similar in makeup, though with much more racial and ethnic diversity.

It appears logical that people with some academic background and intellectual curiosity are most likely to delve into the research, collection, performance and preservation of traditional music. You could make the case that they are best equipped to do so. I don't know if there is anything inherently wrong with that model. Keeping the flame burning is more important than who tends it. The music itself comes from both oral tradition and formal composition.

That said, no one should feel excluded and all people who are truly interested in folk music ought to be encouraged to join in. There should certainly be no intellectual or academic arrogance brought to bear. This is supposed to be the "people's music," someone said.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: ollaimh
Date: 01 Feb 10 - 01:28 PM

i should say that i was in london a few months ago and went to a folk song group and they were great. no entrance tersts as far as i couild see. i just sang a few songs and people were very recptive. i suspect that the english folk scene is much more mature and focused on the music and has many people with a real knowledge of class and etghnic issues. the songs of others seemed to show that.

in anglo canada folk like everything else is still neo colonial. john raulston saul(a leading canadian intellectual) wrote a book rec ently baout6 the failure to launch of canada. in addition to folk class and elit5es we still export our resourses with ut significant royalities , happy with the incidental jobs< we still follow blindly the american or british foreign policy and we still have ninetheenth century courts and parliament when the uk has long moved on.

the truth is just as englishmen can never seriously examine their imperoiaol heritage without reall world view changes, canadians a=cannot really examine our colonial heritage of genocide against the natuves. so here we are stuck pretending the elephants are not in the room

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 24 Nov 09 - 02:28 PM

David,
Glad you're enjoying it - hope it stays with you as long as it has stayed with me - pass it on.
No, you haven't missed it - hasn't come up.
Best
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 24 Nov 09 - 01:44 PM

I know, Jim. Happens to me too:-)

Just remembered - I was enjoying part of the collection you sent me the other day. Surely a grand example of 'Music of the People' - and lots of English music to boot! Suprised you have not mentioned it here. Or have you and I missed it?

Cheers

Dave

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 24 Nov 09 - 01:20 PM

D el G
Sorry - couldn't resist
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: The Sandman
Date: 24 Nov 09 - 12:45 PM

I dont care who else likes the music or whether the majority of the people of the 21st century like the music or whether they prefer Daniel ODonnell, I like it.
Jim,and Steve, I think you are both right[TO SOME EXTENT] and neither of you has yet managed to prove the other is ENTIRELY wrong.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 24 Nov 09 - 12:08 PM

Don't go there Jim - see the Eddi Reader thread. Try to keep this one sane!

D.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 24 Nov 09 - 11:41 AM

"It's protected by Radar & Rules to keep the ordinary peasants away.."
Taking my courage in both hands- would you care to explain this radar and these rules and and to whom do we owe our gratitude or otherwise for them.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 24 Nov 09 - 07:33 AM

Shhhh
Don't wake the child
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: melodeonboy
Date: 24 Nov 09 - 05:08 AM

.....zzzzzzzzz!

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 24 Nov 09 - 04:49 AM

Folk music is the music of the people, it's just that....as I've discovered...in England, you have to be one of **THE** people to be allowed to love it.

It's protected by Radar & Rules to keep the ordinary peasants away..

:0)

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 24 Nov 09 - 04:19 AM

JIM - FWIW I do not regard this as in any way a 'tiresome' argument; I regard it as absolutely basic. & I am with you in it 100%. The idea of broadside hacks, professional or otherwise, being the creators of a widespread corpus of that kind is patently ridiculous. Of course print helped — as have all other more recent techno-'advances' — in dissemination. & or course much passed on from pleasure gardens, music-hall &c, via such media. But the thought that such are the sole, or even the main, originators of our entire folksong heritage is clearly an absurdity.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 24 Nov 09 - 04:06 AM

Steve and all
No - neither of us can prove anything, but Steve is challenging and, I believe, attempting to undermine the whole premise on which our concept of folk song has been built on.
It is important to me whether or not our folk song repertoire came from the 'ordinary' people and reflected their lives or experiences, or was a commercial product.
That people find the discussion tiresome evokes the same response from me as does the often heard complaint that "ballads are long and boring" - tough - go and listen to something else!
While Steve continues to suggest that 'the folk' didn't make folk music I will continue to seek clarification on his (I believe) reactionary claim. I really don't feel it is something that we can agree to differ on.
Steve hasn't begun to address any of the real problems - literacy (not the lack of but the attitude to), the likelihood of non sailors, farmworkers, spinners... et al producing songs on subjects that took hold and spread all over the English-speaking world (and beyond), lasted for centuries, and were claimed as Norfolk, or Clare, or Suffolk, or Traveller... or wherever they ended up, by the people who sang them.
Or the (claimed) ability of commercial writers having such a grasp on folklore as to interweave their ballad 'compositions' with folkloristic references.
Or the skilful use of the vernacular... or technical terms... or the or the geographic or social reality.....
In my opinion none of these, and many other questions have been answered, or even approached.
Above all, Steve continues to claim that, unlike most of the world's peoples, the English 'people' alone did not reflect their lives and opinions in song, but left it to the 'professionals' - pleading 'special case' for the bothy songs in order to do so.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 24 Nov 09 - 02:09 AM

Some ambiguity, Effsee, as to which you think is & isn't winning the argument — reread your own previous post & I think you will see what I mean: not entirely clear whom you mean by 'you', with that initial double-apostrophe — 'Steve,..."Jim,'...

Please elucidate.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Effsee
Date: 23 Nov 09 - 10:34 PM

Steve,..."Jim,
This must be getting as tiresome for you as it is becoming for me. "...
as it is to us all probably...but I know who is winning the argument, and it ain't you.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: GUEST,Betsy
Date: 23 Nov 09 - 07:55 PM

I like this Subject matter, but, the depressing thought is, that the music of the people is THAT exhibited on X Factor.
I have honestly never seen this programme and consequently , am unable to join-in or hold a conversation about it , but constantly asked for my views.

For my part, I feel inextriacably linked to the Irish and Scottish songs and music , in addition to my native English, but let's face it ,music today ,it is only wanted ,for the amount of public attraction and MONEY it can generate.

You must all know the rise and decline of the Roman Empire and THIS period which Brits are going through. We've reached the age of decadence !!

I remember - and it wasn't too long ago , that Irish folkies couldn't get a decent money-paying gig in Ireland. The Tory London press picked upon the Chieftains coupled with the Dubliners ,and the main stay of the Irish scene the show Band - disappeared ,and fortunately Irish performrs started to be in demand at home as much as hey were abroad

Time will tell if if there is a desire for "British" people to embrace their roots in a similar way to the Irish-but for the meantime don't get carried away - Johnny J's motion is full of rightful concerns, and folk music a generally performed today cannot be conider as "Music of the people".

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 23 Nov 09 - 05:07 PM

Sue,
Absolutely!
Those hunting songs that usually tell of a day's hunting with a catalogue of participants, places passed and hound names, yes, but most of these are not part of the corpus we have been discussing (Dido Bendigo allowed for). Those flowery pieces about bright Phoebus rising are mostly the product of the London pleasure gardens of the late 18thc. We were discussing the common repertoire of the English-speaking world, those songs found in England, Ireland, Scotland AND America. I have various books of hunting songs from all the major hunts and most of the songs in them are LOCAL pieces with little or no currency out of the area.

Jim,
'Denizens of Seven dials'? Every town had its own printers and hacks.

The political songs you mentioned, How many of these made it into the general corpus of traditional song?

Jim,
This must be getting as tiresome for you as it is becoming for me. We both have very strong opposed views on these origins. Neither can prove the other wrong or right.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: The Sandman
Date: 23 Nov 09 - 01:04 PM

well, I am a person.
my grammar isnt very good, that is because I left school at 16 with one o level, art,
however I can play a few instruments and sing a few songs,I dont think I qualify as a middle class intellectual,and I like traditional music, do I get a prize?am I one of the people,or am I lumped in with chongo chimp.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 23 Nov 09 - 12:55 PM

Just been re-reading my way through Wimberly's 'Folklore in The English and Sottish Ballads' and wondering; if it is true that the ballads were the products of the broadside presses - where did the Seven Dials denizens get the folklore to put into them? They must have been great researchers, especially those making songs prior to the folklore collections being published (mid 19th century)?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: GUEST,Sue Allan (cookieless at work!)
Date: 23 Nov 09 - 11:40 AM

Steve - what about hunting circles (especially the fell packs) ... Cumbria's hunting fraternity certainly had a strong tradition of song making, and indeed are still doing so (although probably less than before). None of that is with any intention of commercial gain -except competitions and the like to raise funds for the hunts. Granted, printers have later sometimes taken up some of the songs(notably John Peel)and published them commercially, but they were never written with that intent.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 23 Nov 09 - 11:32 AM

It would appear that the Irish people made their own songs, the Scots made their own songs, the English weren't up to it so they paid somebody to do it for them.

That is blatantly untrue. Everyone knows that all songs are derived from American country music!

:D (eG)

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 23 Nov 09 - 10:03 AM

Jim, I think it's probably a waste of time and effort trying to have a serious discussion with a hardy son of the soil, who firmly believes that anyone who stayed at school long enough to read the Beano is a middle class intellectual.

I grew up with an abiding love of the English language, and learned to use it well, and you wouldn't believe the hassle I received at the hands of people like the OP, simply for being well spoken.

I have earned my living by sweat and callouses all my life, but just try telling him I'm working class.

Don T.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 23 Nov 09 - 05:42 AM

English songwriting:
I neglected to mention the hundreds of songs submitted to the 19th century radical papers during times of political upheaval.
I nearly ruined my eyesight in the 60s poring over microfilm copies in Manchester Central Library.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 23 Nov 09 - 04:04 AM

"I certainly didn't intend any of what I wrote to be patronising. In my experience it's just a fact."
Steve;
Your whole theory oozes patronising condescention.
"The vast majority of the people simply haven't got the motivation or the time to be creative in this way. The vast majority are passive and happy to have specialist people do it for them."
Really? The enclosures, transportations, the shift from countryside to city, from field to factory, from hand weaving to factory manufacture, the virtually permanent wars, the press gangs and forcible recruitings, the struggle for trades union recognitions and for the vote.... - none of this was enough to inspire the English people to get up off their bums and make songs recording their experiences and feelings? What an indolent and complacent lot we English are! Ah, but we did have a team of "specialist people " slaving away on our behalf, didn't we?
The Irish and the Scots were no different than the English, yet they recorded their lives, experiences and opinions in their songs, often in ther minutest detail, the non-literate Travellers (including the English) did so - but the English working man chose to contract the work out to the experts, if your theory is to be given any credit.
"I recently recorded an old farm hand who had written some of his own songs...."
I'm not talking about people who write songs - many of the old singers did - I think Harry Cox penned a couple (but I could be wrong). I am referring to songs composed in the communities which were taken up generally and became traditional - we recorded dozens which must have been made during the lifetimes of the singers who gave them to us; there are around ten examples of these on our 'Around The Hills of Clare' C.D. and a few on 'From Puck To Appleby' (there would have been more of the latter but in some cases the songs in question were about people still living who might have taken offence - so we were asked not to use them).
Walter Pardon gave us a number of local songs which rose directly from the re-establishment of the Agricultural Workers Union and I am sure that, if they had been sought actively there would have been many more from other areas of England - I really don't believe that the English 'people' or their circumstances were any different to the rest of the world (song-making is an international phenomenon).
"Bothy ballads of NE Scotland are a very special case. "
You've said this before - apparently on the basis that if it is repeated often enough it will become an accepted 'fact'. How are they a special case; how does the description you gave earlier differ from, say, life on board ship (you've put our sea repertiore into the hands of hack-writers), or the farming communities of England in the more remote areas over the last few centuries.
You are asking us to accept (and reject) a great deal on the flimsiest of evidence - that a few professional writers who, as you said yourself, we know nothing whatever about, laid claim to some of our folk songs.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Effsee
Date: 22 Nov 09 - 10:46 PM

Apologies, that was me as Gueust at 21 Nov 09 - 10:51 PM
.
Lost me cookie somehow.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 22 Nov 09 - 06:21 PM

Forty seven years of organising and performing in folk clubs, and forty seven years of work which included Oxy/acetylene burning, Carpentry, taxi driving, caretaking, bus driving, and cleaning shit from sewers, and in all that time I never realised that I am a middle class denizen of the professions.

Thank you for the information, but I really don't have any inclination to discuss such inverse snobbery.

Don T.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 22 Nov 09 - 03:43 PM

Ollaimh,
You have my deepest sympathy. That's a real eye-opener.

Jim,
I certainly didn't intend any of what I wrote to be patronising. In my experience it's just a fact. Obviously things ARE/WERE very different over in Ireland. I wrongly assumed things were similar to over here having looked at the flourishing Irish broadside scene, but I suppose I should have taken into account more the books of Henry and Glassy as opposed to Healy and O'Lochlainn. I'm sorry but I know of nowhere in England in the last 2 centuries where there is any strong tradition of songmaking that hasn't got commercial interests at the bottom of it. A few odd individuals have sent me tapes they've made of their own songs and I recently recorded an old farm hand who had written some of his own songs for his own amusement, and then there's John Greaves on our website, but to what extent he is/has been influenced by the folk scene is debatable. But two or three people hardly constitute a thriving scene. As I said before the Bothy ballads of NE Scotland are a very special case.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: ollaimh
Date: 22 Nov 09 - 02:11 PM

do make me laugh.

i'v benn thinkng along these lines for a while although it took untill a few years ago to really intellectualize them.

in anglo canada folk has been a totally artificial creation west of the ottawa river for decades. run by midle class and acedemic who have all the nasty bigotry they live by. i used to wonder why it was so strange at folk clubs from toronto and vancouver but just shook my head and went and got a gig.(i'm from rural nova scotia,a quarter acadien and three quarters highland scott--we spoke more gaelic than french).

i just posted how stan rogers opened the doors for us.before him folk out betond the ottawa river was ruled by people who dismissed us as ""country"".probvably because the only inroads for maritime music up till then were blazed by john allan cameran in nashville and a bit by hank snow before him(snow was from nova scotia and did record the odd traditional down east song).those inroads were because the country scene didn't have the class and ethnic bigotry of the folk scene and if the music was good the tapped theirs toes and bought the records.

i recently talked to a friend who said of the vancouver folk song society:they broke my heart", and i had to agree they did ot often, she like all thos they humiliated was from a working class background, part prarie french and did thei traditional stuff and they drove her out. she could get major gigs at international events to play prarie folk and not be accepted by the vancouver folk ss as i call them. they used to show up in bib overalls and sing harry bellafonte songs and put down the working class people who woud try to dress up.

my very first visit to vancouver back in the seventies i went to their coffee house and asked to play(i just hitch hiked in and didn't have a bean) the fat bastard at the door said i could get in for free but i coulon't play that maritimes country music. he royally announced"we do real folk"

so i walked up the street and busked.i thought with the folkies going by i might make a bean or two.it was gangbusters.(the fat bastard kept peering out and frowning while id did it) so a few hours later with fourty bucks in my pocket i thought i could be one of the big important people and payed the two dollars to get in.they were singing the banana boat song!!!! day o day o

i didn'tthink of the real implication for yearsi just bthought "gee i never met anyone like that in guysborough county, but they wouldn't say those strange things if they didn't have a reason" what i realized was the reason was class and ethnic bigotry, they wanted a folk to be a secular curch and replace the religious ethics their parents and grand arents had.
this isn't entirely over.in toronto and vancouver they have their "official maritime musicians" of course from toronto or vancouver. and won't allow the real thing without a lot of brown nosing or unlkess you are acceptable middle class. i was aked to gototheir folk song circle many times.i busked in toronto full time for a decade and met a lot of folkies.but when i phoned or e mailed people they always said this is a closed group. a couple repeated the "we don't have maritime country music.

even in the busking scen in the transit system there were torontonians playing maritime music as their schtick who would regularily threaten me,because they were the maritime act and i had no busniss taking the work from ontario musicians.

now i should acknowledge thatmy expeciences in the uk and the us were better. they are more aware of real roots music.i got picked up busking on a berkley california street tppl;ay the berkeley folk festival when i was down there twenty years ago. the guy who offered me the gig siad he recognized i was playing celtic music but he had never heard those songs so he wondered where i was from.AND I GOT PAID.tho american folk is a pop/folk genre..

and in the uk when i have gone to folk clubs i sing canadian folk and they seem to love it. i sang at the cecil sharphouse this year while on vacation and met a lot of very nice people.i supose there werea lot of acedemic types but they seemed tolove to hear something rootsy and new. that's all i ask.

but folk in anglo canada is a show business term.its about making careers on influemce and not knowledge nor realmusical ability.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Billy Weeks
Date: 22 Nov 09 - 01:20 PM

Jim: Many thanks. As I suspected, Ireland was the place to see the last of the booth theatres. Only sorry I never did! Historian Ann Featherstone has done a lot of work on booth theatres in England, but not in particular relation to song.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Billy Weeks
Date: 22 Nov 09 - 01:13 PM

MtGM: I knew the Festival as a costume store and was briefly involved in the proposal to revive it as a theatre. Too remote for this thread!

William Wilkins the younger has a long list of fine designs to his credit, including Downing College, King's College New Buildings(1828)and KC Bridge, (all in Cambridge) and University College London. He was also a keen theatre man and I think he must have been the only architect to have a controlling interest in a theatre circuit.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 22 Nov 09 - 11:10 AM

Billy, again thanks for some fascinating information.
Up to the end of the 1950s there were still travelling booth theatres (along with mobile cinemas) here in Ireland.
They appeared to take two distinctive forms - the professional groups with extensive equipment, costume and props, (Eoin(?) McMasters was one of the leading actor/producers in these), and the occasional ones, extremely basic, with the minimum of equipment and usually organised by Traveller families.
I am interested in both, (theatre as a whole in fact) but the Traveller fit-ups are part of our collecting work. One singer's sisters were part of one in Kerry at the end of the 1940s. This was run by Christie Purcell, who, along with his daughter Lal Smith, was recorded singing by the BBC during their mopping up project.
I'm trying to find out some of the titles of the plays presented - so far I only have 'Willie Reilly and Collen Bán'.
There was a television programme devoted to McMasters earlier this year and also a 15 minute early documentory film on the fit-ups in general.
Thanks again
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Billy Weeks
Date: 22 Nov 09 - 09:09 AM

I stupidly failed to acknowledge that when Jim says 'here' he means Ireland. Ireland, as usual, is the exception to every rule, but fit-ups were presumably as common and made for the same reasons as elsewhere. But I should, in this connection, have mentioned travelling booth theatres, which were active in Ireland (are they still?) decades after the last was seen in England. Their effect on song transmission was, I suspect, not dissimilar to that of the circuit theatres. But I am now venturing too far outside my comfort zone!

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 22 Nov 09 - 08:54 AM

Thank you, Billy. Am I right that one of the Wilkins was also responsible for the present frontage of Kings College Cambridge?

There was an attempt a few years ago to reopen the Festival in Cambridge as a theatre — one of that year's regular university productions [Marlowe Soc?] took place there & I remember reviewing it [I have many times reviewed productions in BStEds] - but I suspect it would just have cost too much, & that was when the Buddhists took it over. For many years, as you will know, it belonged to the Arts Theatre Trust [possibly still does, & is rented from them?], & was long used as a costume store.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Paul Davenport
Date: 22 Nov 09 - 08:51 AM

Hi Snail, My web address is www.hallamtrads.co.uk the paper is in there somewhere on the research page but feel free to delve about.
Paul

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Billy Weeks
Date: 22 Nov 09 - 08:45 AM

MtGM: The Cambridge Festival. formerly Barnwell Theatre was built in 1814 by William Wilkins the Elder, a plasterer who ran the Norwich circuit. The Buddhists, I have been pleased to see, have treated it with great respect. The Bury St Edmunds Theatre Royal, which became the HQ for that circuit, was built in 1819 by his son, the younger William Wilkins, an architect, who also designed, incidentally the National Gallery. It has been superbly restored by the National Trust.

Jim: I'm not sure I can answer for Scotland, but in England until the 1780s, practically all small country town theatre was in the form of 'fit up', since the legal standing of theatre performance was too dodgy to encourage anyone to build a permanent theatre that might be used, with permanent risk of enforced closure, for only a few weeks in the year, during the annual fairs, race meetings, Christmas, the assizes etc. Some larger towns had a theatre with a Royal warrant (a 'theatre royal'), but the general picture was one of ad hoc provision. A strolling company who, if lucky, might have a local patron among the gentry or military, would sweet-talk the local magistrates into allowing them to give performances in fitted-up barns or tavern club rooms.   In 1788 the licensing powers of the magistrates were clarified by statute and a new sense of certainty led to a rush to build little circuit theatres, which, unsurprisingly tended to be rather barn-like.   Every theatre on a circuit had to be identical in dimensions, since the company travelled with its scenery. They also had a very little time for rehearsals. Rehearsals and performances needed to take place on a stage that felt familiar in every respect. Remains of such theatres are dotted about the country, but there is only one (among former hundreds) that has been fully restored and made operational in its original form and that is in Richmond, Yorkhire.

The performers also had to be extremely versatile, not only to act in 'The Vampire' on Wednesday, a musical version of 'King Lear' on Thursday and 'Black-eyed Susan' on Friday. Nearly all of them also had to be capable singers and some were competent dancers. I like to imagine a comfortable middle-class gent in the box tier, noting a particular song as a good one for his private after-supper harmonic meetings and hoping to find a printed copy, while the illiterate coachman in the gallery is imprinting the whole song on his memory, to be reproduced later, with variations, at a free-and-easy.

The fit-up survived where there were no theatres and in the mid-twentieth century, when most country theatres had disappeared, a few companies were formed to take simple productions to theatreless regions.   I went to irregular pub performances, when they were no longer common, as late as the 1950s in suburban London.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: TheSnail
Date: 22 Nov 09 - 05:40 AM

Thanks Paul, just what I was looking for. I have been nibbling round the edges of this sort of thing for a while with the hope of writing some software to do it, mainly for dance tunes rather than song. I might start another thread on the subject when I've done a bit more thinking. I don't think your points (i) and (ii) are quite as staightforward as you thing and the process might not be quite so easy to do as all that. Could you give me a link to your website please?

Next! Schenkerian Analysis!

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 22 Nov 09 - 04:10 AM

"The vast majority are passive and happy to have specialist people do it for them."
Sorry Steve; I find this the most patronisingly destructive sentence I have ever read in the field of folk song; but it does bring this argument down to where it should have been in the first place.
It would appear that the Irish people made their own songs, the Scots made their own songs, the English weren't up to it so they paid somebody to do it for them.
"Are you sure you aren't misquoting 'ascending'"
This is Emrich's piece of mystical (and also patronising) nonsense - remembering that it is an analysis of one of the most beautiful tragic ballads in the English language - the Lake of Coolfinn (Col Fin):

"FROM Lilith, the wild woman of perilous love, and Morgain la Fée, to the mood of a street ballad about one of the many Irish youths who have lost their lives in fresh water, is a long leap. But "The Lakes of Col Fin" takes it. Irish singers understand the lore of the ballad perfectly: Willie was not "drowned"; he was taken away to Tir fa Tonn, "Fairyland-under-wave," by a water woman who had fallen in love with him. Legends of similar content are frequent in Middle Irish literature and have survived into modern popular tradition. We may compare Motherwell's, "The Mermayden," whose "bower is biggit o' the gude ships' keels, and the banes o' the drowned at sea"—a grim picture of the supernatural woman's cruelty in love, which the poet nicely caught—and Leyden's "The Mermaid of Corrievrekan," with a happy ending wrought by a clever hero who inveigles the mermaid into taking him back to bid farewell to his former love, "the maid of Colonsay." Both poems were based on local traditions and legends.
Popular tradition, however, does not mean popular origin. In the case of our ballad, the underlying folklore is Irish de facto, but not de jure: the ballad is of Oriental and literary origin, and has sunk to the level of the "folk" which has the keeping of folklore. To put it in a single phrase, memory not invention, is the function of the folk."

Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Nov 09 - 10:51 PM

Bejaysus Mr.Weeks, your post has just recalled a long forgotten incident from my childhood.
When at a summer camp in Scotland in the 1950s we were encouraged to make up a song.
The teacher informed us that the "Head" had a car, which he referred to as a "Flivver".
The song started as I recall "Mr.Knoll's's Flivver has a puncture in it's tyre...." and it went on to be mended by chewing gum if I recall correctly!

I just Googled "Flivver" and ....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Model_T   

Thanks for the memory!