Subject: RE: Is traditional song finished?
From:
GUEST,Tom Bliss has left the building
Date: 11 Mar 10 - 05:19 AM
Jim - as before I'm going to have to leave you to this as I realise you're never going to understand me.
Why? I can only guess. Everybody else does.
But I want to make my position clear for the record.
I'm sticking with song as that seems to be your main concern. Will's comments about tunes are spot on.
Let me start by saying that actually, privately, my own personal definition of folk song is almost exactly the same as yours. Where we differ is that I respect other people's different use of / definition (Bryan, the latter is merely a formalisation of the former) of it, and you don't.
My list A-Z is not MY idea of what constitutes a folk song, it is a comprehensive list of ALL the types of song that a significant community of people believe constitutes a folk song, and which therefore club organisers (and artists when doing promotion) have to deal with. You asked what definitions existed other than the '54' and the 'Anything in A Folk Club', so I gave them. Personally I think most of them are way off the mark, but these are genuine, common-usage definitions, so I don't get angry with people who use them. I might debate, advise, encourage - but I don't condemn as you do because I respect these people and their definitions because I know they were honestly acquired.
I understand and applaud your motives in wanting to separate out 'proper' traditional song and give it a space where it can flourish. But I think you are doing exactly the opposite in attacking honest, reasonable, hardworking club organisers and artists. And that's what I want to stop. The attacks. It's your method I abhor, not your objective.
I've tried really hard to understand why you reject outright my suggestion that these wider uses of the word are commonplace in the UK and US. All of the posts since I joined seem, largely, to support my view. I hesitate to say this, but I fear you might be a little out of touch. I wonder if you have spent so much of your life deep inside the 'expert' core if the folk scene that you simply don't know what's happening outside? Perhaps the fact that you live in Ireland and mainly communicate with others who are also deep in the core might be part of it too? I can't think of any other reasonable explanation.
By contrast, I have spent most of my life outside folk, in popular music and in the media. I live in Leeds and have a wife and teenage children with broad musical interests. But as a former folkie I have always noticed any references to folk. I've seen what the general public and the mainstream media thought about it. Then when I rejoined the fold I quickly acquired a comprehensive idea of what's going on in the UK scene today. So my suggestions are based on a very broad ranging cultural experience, rather than an expert 'folk' one.
I think you are setting yourself up for a fall in equating folk music with quantum physics. Jim, It's just some songs. There's no need to attack people over them.
I have met and frequently stayed with club organisers who do the things you decry. These are genuine souls who care about live music and about folk, and who give up a huge amount of time and effort to keep their clubs going, and they struggle to meet and manage people's expectations all the time. Many of them also care about traditional music and do what they can to promote and protect it. Many are expert in one or both subjects. For you to set up a conspiracy theory which has these good people, aided and abetted by charlatan song-writers like me, deliberately setting out to trick the public, to pollute the tradition, to promote poor standards in the name of what exactly - is not only bonkers, it is severely out of order.
I, and lots of other people, have told you that traditional music, (and by that I mean ALL the music that is ever called traditional), is alive and well in the UK - and the future looks pretty good too. If you are basing your arguments on a handful of recent visits to UK clubs and a few posts on Mudcat, then you are misinformed.
It seems to me that you have an almost religious fixation on the overriding validity of the 54 - or rather of your somewhat looser interpretation of it. Given your very dedicated career in the field I can understand why that should be, and I respect it. After all I share it, for the same reasons you do. But being an expert on a topic it doesn't give anyone the right to fling out insults at people who are just going about their normal legitimate business bumping alongside your subject, and who in fact may be doing much to further your own objectives.
I'd say we are no longer only dealing with a Revival. The Folk Revival continues, but alongside it and overlapping with it is something else, as yet unnamed (unless we allow 'folk music'), which has at its core the promotion of live acoustic music in both construction and performance, in a social setting among equals. This movement is not necessarily interested in Folk / Traditional Music for its 'heritage' or 'antique' values, but mainly because it works well for the purposes they require, and because the words and tunes are great.
I support this movement as much as I do The Revival - because I think society really really needs it.
Now, it is both a strength and an inconvenience that these two movements occupy, at times, the same territory. It is a strength because it means there can be healthy cross-fertilisation of ideas, knowledge, expertise and values, but it is an inconvenience because there is some risk that the second movement may swamp the first (which is the thing you seem to fear). It is a balance that most club organisers tussle with every week (some more than others). But I don't see much evidence of failure, and even if it IS happening, then surely the only way to stop it is to demonstrate the strengths of traditional music at every opportunity, and if that means setting up more 'trad only clubs' or trying gently to convert 'anything goes' clubs fair enough. But you HAVE to take people with you. You can't force anyone, and to attack people for not doing it just plain wrong.
It is fair to say that in the overlap the second movement may rob the first of its uniqueness, but that is just life. If this discussion teaches us anything it is that it never was possible to draw a line round Traditional music in the first place.
But even if we did, Jim, I want to to understand one thing which you have consistently failed to do.
Let us draw that circle on a piece of paper. Inside, let us describe the songs you believe may legitimately be called folk song (A-E of my list, was it?).
Now draw a much bigger circle which completely encloses the first one. Into the space between the two, copy most of my list D-Z (your division).
Now write the word FOLK inside the smaller circle.
Then write it again in the larger one.
See what happened? NONE of your jotting D-Z suddenly jumped into the smaller circle, did they? The inner circle remains unpolluted, showing only A-D.
But, yes, there may now be some confusion. We seem to have one circle with all of A-Z inside it.
So now, strike out the word FOLK from the inner circle, and write instead, TRAD.
All meanings / definitions A-Z are still in the same place, each in the correct circle. But anyone seeking one or the other has a clear label to guide them. FOLK means all of it, TRAD means just the middle bit.
Problem solved.
Ok, it's not perfect - but I want you to understand that no-one has written D-Z in the inner circle. Your definition is safe and you can relax.
OK, that's me. I'm out.
Tom
Dvorak is played on cellos in folk clubs too infrequently to matter in this discussion (it was Sean who answered you question, not me).
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sj
