Grammy Best Traditional Folk Alb 2010

Subject: Grammy Best Traditional Folk Alb 2010
From: Brakn
Date: 06 Feb 10 - 08:52 AM

Congratulations to GRAMMY Winner, Loudon Wainwright III! - for High Wide & Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project - Best Traditional Folk Album.

Here.

Subject: RE: Grammy Best Traditional Folk Alb 2010
From: GUEST,Silas
Date: 06 Feb 10 - 09:51 AM

Tradiotional Folk - do they use the same criteria as the BBC?

Subject: RE: Grammy Best Traditional Folk Alb 2010
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 06 Feb 10 - 10:09 AM

Does American folk fall under the jurisdiction of the 1954 definition? American tradition has a somewhat shorter history than Great Britain.

Subject: RE: Grammy Best Traditional Folk Alb 2010
From: artbrooks
Date: 06 Feb 10 - 10:12 AM

Why should folk music in the US adhere to a UK definition? Even Mudcatters, who are all involved in folk music in one way or another, cannot agree on what "traditional" means.

Subject: RE: Grammy Best Traditional Folk Alb 2010
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 06 Feb 10 - 10:15 AM

Art

I was trying to be instructive to Silas, without being sarcastic. I don't like labels or restricting definitions.

I still wish the Utah Phillips CD had won.

Subject: RE: Grammy Best Traditional Folk Alb 2010
From: GUEST,Kendall
Date: 06 Feb 10 - 12:16 PM

So do I.

Subject: RE: Grammy Best Traditional Folk Alb 2010
From: Dan Schatz
Date: 06 Feb 10 - 01:17 PM

Me too. The night before the award was given out, Loudon and I gave kudos to one another for great projects, said under other circumstances we'd wish each other well, and hoped for the best.

If you're going to lose, it's good to lose to a worthy project. Cheers to Loudon!

Dan

Subject: RE: Grammy Best Traditional Folk Alb 2010
From: Suzy T.
Date: 07 Feb 10 - 12:57 PM

I believe that it's meant to encompass music that is closely aligned to, or actually is, traditional music in the sense of: music that's been handed down over generations, is connected with a particular culture, etc. Not singer-songwriters, unless they are closely aligned with some sort of culturally specific group. It's meant to make space for traditional music that doesn't fit into the other categories, like Irish reels, old-time ballad singing, etc. There was a lot of discussion amongst the folks who organize the Grammies about this over the past few years, largely because of the lobbyists for Americana. What has happened now is that there are 2 "Folk" categories, one for Americana/singer-songwriters/contemporary folk, and the other for "traditional" folk.

All you Mudcatters who play traditional music and put out a CD, please consider joining NARAS and submitting your CD for a Grammy! If they don't get more submissions in the traditional folk field, NARAS (the Grammy organization) will simply discontinue that field. Remember, even if you don't stand a chance of winning, submitting will mean that your CD will get noticed by the experts in the field who sit on the sorting and nominating committees, and those experts do include record company executives, radio folks, and other movers and shakers in the folk music world. You can find more info at the NARAS website: http://www2.grammy.com/Recording_Academy/Member_Services/FAQs/
Best,
Suzy

Subject: RE: Grammy Best Traditional Folk Alb 2010
From: Howard Jones
Date: 07 Feb 10 - 01:50 PM

The 1954 definition is not a UK one. It was agreed by the International Folk Music Council, and I believe the conference was held in Brazil.

According to the definition, folk music evolves through a process of variation during oral transmission. Age has nothing to do with it. It can apply to any culture.

Subject: RE: Grammy Best Traditional Folk Alb 2010
From: Suzy T.
Date: 07 Feb 10 - 02:15 PM

Yes, that's a good definition. But remember, for the purposes of the Grammys, the NARAS people make the definitions, and they are not necessarily the same definitions that we might choose. Certainly their definition of what constitutes "folk" is very different from that of an academic folklorist, for example.

Also, if you look at the Grammy categories, you will see that there are separate categories for certain genres of traditional music, such as Blues, Cajun & Zydeco, Native American, and Hawaiian. The "Traditional Folk" category is meant to cover those kinds of traditional musics that fall between the tracks -- for example, the bluegrass category people won't accept old-time music, so that would go into "traditional folk". There's no "Celtic" category, so records of traditional Irish music go into "traditional folk".

It's not a hard and fast rule, because if there's cross-cultural stuff (say an Irish fiddler records an album with an Indian sitar player) it goes into "World" music (which I think of as "Whirled" music).

If you care about the Grammys recognizing actual traditional folk music, it's important that there be more submissions in this category. Otherwise, it will disappear. This won't make much difference to the survival of traditional music, that's for sure, but I think it helps the musicians if they get this kind of recognition.
Suzy

Subject: RE: Grammy Best Traditional Folk Alb 2010
From: Phil Cooper
Date: 07 Feb 10 - 07:34 PM

I agree with Suzy. Margaret and I belonged to NARAS for awhile, having signed up at folk alliance one year. It's easy to submit a recording and nothing stops you from nominating yourself. I submitted one of ours and it did make it to the big catalogue of what people vote for. So, I can say I'm a grammy nomminee. We got beat out by Bob Dylan or someone like that. Sometimes the folk categories make me wonder "what were they thinking, so and so is a traditional artist?" But I can also figure that's just me. And I also agree that the category ought to not disappear.