Do purists really exist?

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Will Fly
Date: 18 Jul 11 - 11:00 AM

We have a monthly village singaround in a pub near Gatwick. It's always a great night, and the Nepalese landlord and his family make us very welcome, arranging chairs and bringing us free snacks. One of our best nights was when, after some persuasion, we got the landlord and his family to come out from behind the bar and sing us some Nepalese songs - to tumultuous applause. We didn't understand a word, of course, but the music was so good it didn't really matter at the time.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 18 Jul 11 - 10:43 AM

Thanks for the confirmation of the set-up, Will, but in all fairness in all the years I ever went there I never once saw any of the residents pull faces. Poker-faced doesn't come close, but they were always respectful, whatever the standard of the hapless turn - be it lofty guest or lowly floor singer. We are, after all, talking about some of the finest singers in the country here, which makes the set-up all the more baffling!

Southern wankers sounds like a Northern joke gone wrong, as often happens when Folkies attempt to be funny on such matters. Such prejudices aren't funny in the first place, let alone trying to make jokes of them. More seriously, I once saw (not in The Bridge) an Geordie-born Asian singer introduced as Not being from around these parts. Despite cringing apologies and pleas of the I'm not a racist variety, she never went back, and neither did I. Such issues run deep, making jokes of them only serves to make them worse, especially as the only non-white faces you get in Folk these days are due to the recent fashion for Morris Dancers to blacken up.

That said, I didn't take offence at a Scottish booking I did once where the MC urged the audience to show me patience, that being a Geordie I wasn't in fact English, rather just a Scot with his brains knocked out.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Will Fly
Date: 18 Jul 11 - 10:11 AM

From S'oP earlier on:

At one of the first Folk Clubs I used to regularly sing at, floor singers would face the audience (as is the norm) but in doing so would be standing with their backs to a panel of exalted residents. If that wasn't bad enough, the residents would on a raised stage, whereas the floor-singers would be (as you'd expect) on the floor. I often pondered the mindset that lay behind such an inhuman arrangement and hope we will never see it's like again. That was The Bridge Folksong & Ballad, back in the early 1980s, when it was in the basement, and was accepted as perfectly normal.

Coincidence, coincidence. I'm just back from the Bradfield Trad Music Weekend where, in conversation over a pre-session pint at the Royal, an experienced old-stager was reminiscing about various northern clubs. And out of his memory came The Bridge at Newcastle, where - according to him - the residents not only sat in a semi-circle behind the performers, but used to pull faces if they didn't like what he or she was performing. Furthermore, one south country singer and accompanying band were introduced as "southern wankers". The name of the offender and the name of the offended were mentioned, but I refrain from posting them here.

An inhuman arrangement indeed...

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Don Wise
Date: 18 Jul 11 - 07:38 AM

There is, or used to be, a Traditional Music Club (I've been out of the country for 30 years now...) in Nottingham. Very clear,'purist', policy on what was acceptable and what not. Then they booked Nic Jones.....Two sets of 'straight down the line' traditional songs and tunes. Then came the encore....Chattanooga Choo-Choo! As related two days later in Derby,-and not without a certain relish- there were some red faces on the then NTMC committee after Nics gig.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 17 Jul 11 - 06:22 PM

I have a beard; I even wear sandles (with socks in winter) but I've never been a member of EFDSS. Maybe I was never communicant in the first place?

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 17 Jul 11 - 06:19 PM

... & for that matter, Sean, what form would this 'excommunication' take. Will a ceremony be held for the public confiscation of one's EFDSS badge [I haven't been a member for years] ~~ or for trimming one's beard and cutting the buckles off one's sandals [mine are velcro-fastened]~~

~~ or what????

{;~)

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 17 Jul 11 - 06:19 PM

Which is probably why I go to folk clubs and not miners' social clubs ... ?

Moot point, Shimrod. Which pill would you take - the red or the blue? Though I hear tell of an historical enounter at a WMC in Tow Law when Ewan MacColl and A L Loyd were giving the Miners a Concert of Their Own Songs. It was at this event they first met Lomax. Apocrypal? Maybe so, but it has a certain hoary romance lingering still o'er those bleak and blasted moors of Tow Law where the turbines wave from valley to hill, even unto Stanley and beyond. In my dream I hear Paul Robeson adding his voice to the struggle, but did he ever sing The Colliers Rant I wonder?

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 17 Jul 11 - 02:03 PM

Sorry - something went badly awry there!

Anyway." ... if one wanted to define Folk Music according to the Living Creative Music of the Folk of the Northumbrian Coalfield then it would take in everything from Tommy Armstrong to the New Blockaders and pretty much everything else along the way, but your actual Folk Music would be barely noticable. For some reason though actually saying this sort of thing is held to be heretical and apt to result in excommunication, ..."

Which is probably why I go to folk clubs and not miners' social clubs ... ?

And who, exactly, is going to 'excommunicate' you, Suibhne? I've told you a million, billion times never to exaggerate!

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 17 Jul 11 - 02:01 PM

I have a beard and I wear sandals. I don't think they say any more about me than that I hate shaving and like to have comfortable feet, and now I am retired I see no reason not to indulge myself to such an extent.

~M~

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Musket
Date: 17 Jul 11 - 01:23 PM

When I worked down the pit, folk music was something I heard on records, down the the local folk club etc. At work, the baths had the local radio station (Radio Hallam as it was called then,) the lamp room had Radio 2 and down the pit? Those over 50 were whistling Slim Whitman or Jim Reeves songs, those under 50 were whistling whatever was current in the charts, (us young 'uns) or whatever the turn was singing down the welfare the other night. (Living next door to Alice, American Trilogy, You've Lost that Loving Feeling etc etc.)

I was I suppose a singing miner. I sang about herring fishing mainly. (And having lover's balls for somebody, about the only types of song I wrote for many years, mainly as I could use a slow acoustic version in folk clubs and an up tempo rock version with the rock band.)

As I and others have pointed out many times, those who sang about mining tended to be teachers, social workers etc. I don't mean that in a bad way, after all I sang about anything but my own experiences and if a workmate sang about how hard it was, I would be taking the piss forever more, and rightly so. Perhaps one of the reasons I find the purism that this thread has unearthed a bit of a farce really. Sandals and beards don't make you authentic, they give you wet feet and soup to enjoy later.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 17 Jul 11 - 12:54 PM

i think given my family background, and the rural nature of my upbringing - Ithink I would have been aware of the tradtions growing up if they had existed.

I'm from a mining background & feel pretty much the same way. Like I said earlier (in this thread?) if one wanted to define Folk Music according to the Living Creative Music of the Folk of the Northumbrian Coalfield then it would take in everything from Tommy Armstrong to the New Blockaders and pretty much everything else along the way, but your actual Folk Music would be barely noticable. For some reason though actually saying this sort of thing is held to be heretical and apt to result in excommunication, even for a devoted Traddy like me. I grew up in mining communities near Seghill and Delaval & knew lots of singing miners old and young, but never heard of The Blackleg Miner until some Macrame Beat teacher sang it at school. Thus do I say Folk is more a Religion than a Science; it takes faith to believe in something that just ain't there...

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: TheSnail
Date: 17 Jul 11 - 09:14 AM

I don't rubbish traditional music.

Never said you did, Al.

If pointing out the similarity of the way Mike Seeger and Peggy did a Ralph Stanley tune to Martin Carthy's guitar technique is sacrilege

Did anyone say it was? Nobody lives in isolation but we are all influenced by what we here. I have heard that one of Martin's major influences was Big Bill Broonzy. maybe the Seegers were drawing on the same tradition.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 17 Jul 11 - 08:37 AM

... or, Al, as Tom Lehrer remembered Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachewski saying [in a slightly different field] ~~

Plagiarise
Let nobody's work evade your eyes
Why you think the good lord made yer eyes?
So plagiarise, plagiarise, plagiarise ~~
   - But be careful, please, always to call it
    "Research"

~M~

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 17 Jul 11 - 07:45 AM

I don't rubbish traditional music. I'm just VERY suspicious of it. Mainly i suppose because - i think given my family background, and the rural nature of my upbringing - Ithink I would have been aware of the tradtions growing up if they had existed.

As it is the traditions that I did grow up with, are routinely rubbished by 'traditionalists'.

At this point in time. I hold no brief for anybody. If you're ears are unreceptive to country and irish. That's fine. But maybe you should be aware that in the last century - many English and irish folk artists dabbled and made a living, in some cases, with country music.

If pointing out the similarity of the way Mike Seeger and Peggy did a Ralph Stanley tune to Martin carthy's guitar technique is sacrilege and and impugning the sacred reputation of MC, so be it. i think it was TS Eliot who said, only mediocrity is influenced - real genius actually steals!

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 17 Jul 11 - 06:49 AM

macrame is making things out of string.

For sure, on one level, it is making things out of string, or rather (and more properly) jute. On another, however, Macrame has come to typify a certain 70's Folksy-Crafty Zeitgeist not altogether unassociated with the rhythmic contrivances of Steeleye Span and June Tabor (et al). I hardly think it's in any way disrectful or unreasonable to call this Macrame Beat. Tabor's While Gamekeepers Lie Sleeping is a Macrame Beat classic, as is Steeleye Span's All Around My Hat, both of which force hitherto natural Traditional Songs into all sorts of unnatural contortions in a way that only becomes evident on seeking The Source of such material to see the extent of such perversions.

Another example is Carthy's Rufford Park, the Macrame Beat of which is so insistent I had to stop singing it because every time I did it came out all jerky.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,folkiedave
Date: 17 Jul 11 - 06:25 AM

Macrame using cat hair was a workshop at Blitherscrum one year!

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 17 Jul 11 - 06:14 AM

Suibhne, what on earth does ' rollicking macrame beat ' mean ? macrame is making things out of string.

Big Al just seems to be pushing his favourite Country & Irish singer again.

Dave H

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: TheSnail
Date: 17 Jul 11 - 05:57 AM

It would be lovely to know which moron first came up the idea that you have bigger balls as a folk music fan if you reject some other kind of music.

I know what you mean, Big Al. Some people really seem to get a kick out of rubishing traditional music.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 16 Jul 11 - 05:27 AM

(I'm sorry, I'll type that again.)

You've got that right.

(Actually there's a syntactic ambiguity in there which is quite relevant here, depending which of the last two words gets the stress... either way & in both senses - right as noun and adverb.)

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 16 Jul 11 - 05:19 AM

folk chooses you.

You've got right.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 16 Jul 11 - 05:13 AM

Carthy's jerky rhythms came to typify New Testament Folk in so many ways; be it in in Steeleye Span's rollicking macrame-beat or else in the singing of June Tabor, where her rendering of Gamekeeper's Lie Sleeping comes out sounding like a Victoria Wood parody - unlike (say) Bob Robert's who just hangs it up there on the wall by way of an old print. You still hear it; hell, we even use it ourselves - once I think, in the Jew's Harp off-beats of our rendering The Trees They Do Grow High, but back then, with bands like Gentle Giant having fun with all sorts of jerky rhythms & folk/prog crossovers Cultural Arythmia seemed to be very much the order of the day. Thank Christ for the Amen Beat (which never did impact of folk much, did it?). You still get a lot of that guitar thing these days by way of convention, but listening to the early recordings of Carthy & Swarb locking horns on Byker Hill (or better still watching them on YouTube) is still very special for me, and not just by way of Chops Awe either (much less Chops Envy which is a different matter entirely...).

Folk doesn't have to be dazzling; in fact one of the things I loved about Folk in the early days was that along with Punk and Free Improv it's musicality was never dependent on vituosity, and the people doing the best music weren't necessarily the best musicians. The manifesto remains engraved in my heart: This is a chord (A). This is another (E). This is a third (G). Now Form a Band.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 15 Jul 11 - 11:23 PM

folk chooses you.

as for the purist thing. someone has revived the irish Coutry Music thread. I was struck by the relevance of my comments back then in 2008.

'It would be lovely to know which moron first came up the idea that you have bigger balls as a folk music fan if you reject some other kind of music.

The relationships between different kinds of folk music is so obvious, to even a person of average intellligence. But it really does defeat these wooden eared zealots.

The relattionship between The Unfortuanate Rake and the Streets of Laredo and Gold in the Mountains and St James Infirmary is well documented.

The cross fertilisation between Whisky in the Jar, The Irish Rebel Ballads, The larrikins of the Australian Bush ballads, Jesse James and there ain't no good chain gang, and I fought the law leaves the average person with deja vu.

That jerky guitar rhythm in Carthy's Famous Flower of Serving Men and Peggy and Mike Seegers Clinch Mountain Backstep, and presumably The Stanley Bros. How could anyone except the tone deaf miss it?

Yeh you're right Irish Country Music - many mudcatters have swapped their listening ears for a mess of pottage - namely the companionship of a lot dull snobs. people who can't value a guy like Johnny MacEvoy - someone who can switch from Shores of Amerikay to Hickory Wind effortlessly and with the grace of the truly talented.'

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: John P
Date: 15 Jul 11 - 04:39 PM

I do wonder whether folk isn't sometimes a similar career choice for a talented musician.

I doubt it. Someone with high-level skills who is choosing a type of music to play as a career choice instead of choosing the type of music they love to play would probably choose something that pays better.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: glueman
Date: 15 Jul 11 - 03:29 PM

"Lots of dazzlingly talented young folkies around these days, but as I said a while back - where are the un-dazzling ones?"

I fear you may be on to something there, virtuosity has never been my cup of Tetley's. It's said that bright young things at Oxbridge sometimes approach their tutor with the question, "which political party should I stand for" and I do wonder whether folk isn't sometimes a similar career choice for a talented musician. 'Dare to be bad' is always good advice and 'the bad should dare' is close on its coat tails.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: John P
Date: 15 Jul 11 - 03:13 PM

Purists do not exist, they cannot, because to be a purist,one cannot accept influences on traditions

I like that. I've always thought that too many people, many of whom consider themselves purists, confuse the concepts of "traditional" and "historical" when it comes to music. Learning, in an academic way, everything there is to know about a tradition at some particular historical point and then playing the music in that way in order to lend it historical accuracy is, for me, almost the opposite of traditional music making. The only time that's a problem for me is when they step out of the purist role and into the obnoxious prat role by trying to tell others that this is the only appropriate way to play the music.

I've been to Irish sessions in Seattle where everyone was told very clearly what is traditional in Ireland and what's not. Never made much sense to me, from a traditional music standpoint. To me, traditional music is local music. For a Seattle session, I'd be much more interested in how Irish music is played in Seattle than how it's played in Ireland.

I've been told more than once that a guitar isn't appropriate for music that came to be in the years before guitars were widely used, or for places where the guitar never caught on. Oddly, I've never been told that about my cittern. Since I play music spanning 600 years and two continents, in order to be completely traditional historically accurate, I'd have to drive around with a large truck full of instruments and an instrument technician.

That situation is MUCH worse in the Early Music scene, where one pretty much has to be a pedantic academic in order to play Early Music. I've heard some amazing ones there -- like that you shouldn't play a harmonic on a stringed instrument because there is no hard evidence that any string players back then did that.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Musket
Date: 15 Jul 11 - 01:05 PM

Yes, McColl did damage a few fragile egos. He also insulted many people who were just there for the enjoyment. A true case of with me politically or fuck off. During the strike, he and Peggy played Kiveton and I had to sit there listening to how the noble cause etc. Disillusioned me, I can tell you. I was like most of my mates, piggy in the middle of two political egos.

I enjoy what I call folk. A bit of a bugger when people tell me it isn't folk after all. A bit like Peoples' Popular Front of Judea if you ask me.

Folk is, (for me, not you) a nostalgic journey to recapture my youth. Upstairs rooms of pubs, candles on the tables, Fred Foster's teeth flying out during Jones Ale, a reel on pipes followed by a Bob Dylan song. My mate Mitch summed it up in his parody of English Country Garden;

One'll sing a dirty song,
One'll get the words all wrong,
One stands supping beer with his finger in his ear,
And then softly croons out of key and out of tune,
In an English country folk club.

And then visit a nearby club to be told they only want traditional singers. Fine, your club mate. Oh, sorry, when did you fold? How sad. Never mind, ours accepts the odd traditional singer...

Method; Get a lift, turn up, drink beer, sing a song with complicated guitar bits, drink, give them a slightly less complicated guitar bit, drink, toilet, drink, drink, oh shit, me again? Err, sing unaccompanied, drink, drink,

Now that's what I call folk.

Must be a type of purist then?

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 15 Jul 11 - 10:20 AM

My un-dazzling enquiry was largely rhetorical; the New Testament generation of undazzling folkies were part of a very different wannabe zeitgeist to that which we now (the Apocryphal Generation?). I still hear 60-something Shirley Collins, Tim Hart, June Tabor and Martin Carthy impersonators (and many of them new-to-Folk Second Lifers) and whilst the Rusbyesque Head-voice & Northern vowels is pretty much ubiquitous amongst female singers of a certain age, it doesn't seem to be as imitative as it first might appear, but characterfully distinct in and of itself. I was wary of The Unthanks at first, but their track on Oak Ash Thorn won me over completely. Is there a male equivilant? Certain Younger Male singers - not just in folk - seem content without adopting the affectations of yore, so a more natural voice begins to emerge which can sing the material afresh and very much uncluttered, like Jim Causely for one and Jon Boden for another, no matter where they're coming from. You seldom hear extreme voices in pop & folk these days, not in these parts anyway, just good natural wholesome singers.

Jim Eldon is still my favourite living Folk Singer though; one wishes his approach was the norm rather than the exception.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Jul 11 - 09:43 AM

Mmm, looks like I don't know how last.fm actually works - artists linked to not correct.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Jul 11 - 09:39 AM

"Lots of dazzlingly talented young folkies around these days, but as I said a while back - where are the un-dazzling ones?"

Probably not occupying more traditional folk zones? Possibly creating interesting sounding folk fusion rather than perfecting their fiddle technique?

I found this obscure fellow today: http://www.last.fm/listen/artist/Wukir/similarartists

I'm also rather fond of Jenny Hval: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_6kxYSwTwg
And Brethren of the Free Spirit: http://www.last.fm/listen/artist/Brethren%2BOf%2BThe%2BFree%2BSpirit/similarartists

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 15 Jul 11 - 08:52 AM

Lots of dazzlingly talented young folkies around these days, but as I said a while back - where are the un-dazzling ones?

Bloody hell, there's no pleasing some people...

(PS I agree.)

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: theleveller
Date: 15 Jul 11 - 08:22 AM

Hey! Who are you calling folky?

Anyway - what have you go to be envious about?

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 15 Jul 11 - 08:18 AM

I'm not old, and thoug we'd known each other 5 years or so years previously my wife was 24 when we got together in that distant summer of 1999 (Durham Folk Party as it happens, who says Folk Romance is dead?) - and being married to someone as beautiful as they are gifted as you are then I doubt you know the meaning of this word envy, much less the 1954 Definition. Never been to clear on it myself actually...

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Banjiman
Date: 15 Jul 11 - 07:55 AM

What is it with you strange old folky guys with your cradle snatched wives?????

Envious .......moi?

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 15 Jul 11 - 06:18 AM

49? - you're nobbut a lad!

I have a 37-year-old wife as well as a 30-year-old daughter; I am now 19 years older than my father was when he died; I became a father myself at 19 to a woman several years my senior; I was a young man, I was a rover - or was it Maggie May? The older I get, the younger I feel...

*

PS: Well said, GSS!

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 15 Jul 11 - 06:17 AM

"Ewan MacColl told me that many years ago in the same way he had a pop at many younger people coming through."

Ah yes, the wicked MacColl! I think that the main trouble with MacColl was that he spoke his mind and damaged a few very fragile egoes as a result. I doubt that he was "having a pop" at anyone but, rather, trying to make them think - but a lot of people don't like thinking, do they? After all:

(1) Thinking can be hard work.

(2) Sometimes the thinker has to abandon his/her precious preconceptions - and we can't have that, can we?

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: The Sandman
Date: 15 Jul 11 - 06:06 AM

Purists do not exist, they cannot, because to be a purist,one cannot accept influences on traditions,
A purist is one who desires that an item remain true to its essence and free from adulterating or diluting influences.to quote John Donne, no man is an island unto himself.
No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: theleveller
Date: 15 Jul 11 - 05:59 AM

"The Age Thing"

I can recommend Boots Anti-Ageing Serum - at 62 I've the face and body of a 47-year old (it's called mrsleveller).

49? - you're nobbut a lad!

Seruoisly, though, I do get a huge vicarious pleasure from hearing my 11-year old daughter singing and playing cello and keyboard.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 15 Jul 11 - 05:42 AM

Now there's a point - The Age Thing - which we've touched upon here. Never thought of it quite that way before though. When I saw 4square and the various younger musicians who filter through the Fylde (there was one lot from Chethams who were around a few years back who created quite a stir; I think their percussionist had won Young Musician of the Year, but their name escapes me. Anyone??) I just feel Very Old, which is weird because, at 49, (for the next 5 weeks anyway), I'm actually very young in Folk Years. Of course, anyone younger that 35 views me as positively antique, and one punter recently called me The Old Man Who Tells Stories. He'd first seen me in his school fifteen years ago when he was nine. The other day I found an old piece about me in The Sunderland Echo; it features a charming picture of a five-year-old girl having a go on my crwth. By my reckoning she'll be about 21 now. Wonder if she remembers or was in any way affected by the experience?

Kids grow up; storytellers never do...

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: theleveller
Date: 15 Jul 11 - 05:29 AM

"I got into folk for the stank and seance of the thing"

Plenty of that going on in pubs, singarounds, fields, front rooms, back rooms, public toilets (some mates will be singing this weekend in a Gents in Hull until they get thrown out) and under the willow tree in my garden - usually accompanied by large quatities of liver-crippling draughts and various illicit substances. It's just that kids like 4Square, Lucy Ward, The Old Dance School, Kat Gilmour and Jamie Roberts etc., make me, in the words of the Eurythmics, "feel like I'm 17 again" (I wish!).

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 15 Jul 11 - 04:50 AM

Yeah, we had 4square at our club a few years ago (hope I didn't freak the drummer out too much with my warnings of anthrax from untreated skins) and very fine they were too. Lots of dazzlingly talented young folkies around these days, but as I said a while back - where are the un-dazzling ones? In the Old Music dazzling technicality was less of an issue than the functional craft of the thing - if I have one complaint about a lot of young folkies it is thsat they seem too good for the music! It's akin to listening to the original Mothers of Invention really playing theit balls off on Uncle Meat and hearing Zappa's later bands playing the stuff like it was nothing. So it's not just a Folk Issue, but a Muso issue in general. Much of what appeals to me in Music (be it early Zappa, Harry Cox, The Fall, Leadbelly, Jim Eldon, Don Cherry, Pharoah Sanders, Rene Zosso, Michael Hurley etc.) is the discernable Human Craft of the thing which isn't about dazzling technicality which tends not to reach my soul. I'm not an advocate of GEFF, just find Muso Folk / Jazz / Classical often a little bland for my palette. Hell, I got into folk for the stank and seance of the thing, and in my other life have worked with members of The Portsmouth Sinfonia and once performed a Violin Sonata in which four people demolished a violin to sawdust (don't worry, it was only a Skylark which had been nailed to a tree for most of the previous winter - all part of the concept for which the Arts Council paid us very nicely) so technique was never uppermost in my list of musical requisites!

Again though, each to their own & more power to them all.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: theleveller
Date: 15 Jul 11 - 04:12 AM

I'd say that the majority of folk that I listen to is neither trad nor the psych- acid- or whatever-folk of the 70s. Individuals and bands - many of them youngsters - are using the folk idiom to create something that is new, vibrant and exciting but still contains enough of the folk elements to be a continuum rather than a reinvention. That makes an old folkie like me very happy indeed. Here's an example, average age around 18:

4square

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 15 Jul 11 - 03:57 AM

Thing is though, all this has just happened; an unfortunate turn of events for sure, but there's been no obvious coup as such, much less any conspiracy. Call it - entropy. Perhaps one sad fact of life is that more people enjoy Jasper Carrott than enjoy Peter Bellamy, thus necessitating a more pragmatic approach to what other genres we might think of as being Folk. Then again, the Folk Revival (both Old & New Testament) is awkwardly placed with respect of The Old Songs Correctly Known as Folk Songs and the Feral Context in which they originally existed, which is about as different from Old & New Testament Revival Folk as you can get. Folk was, in effect, invented as One Thing, re-invented as another, and over the last 60 years or so has become a whole bunch of other things by logical extension. These days many Folk Clubs (most? God knows it certainly seems so) function as Open Mic Nights without the mics where pretty much anything goes - just as long as its not one of those bloody Border Ballads! Bizarrely, I've been to well-attended singarounds in which 1) I have been the only person accompanying myself on a musical instrument and 2) I have been the only person who sang a Traditional Song. How weird's that? An unnacompanied singaround where all the songs are MOR self-penned Folk Style rather than Pure Trad.

Just making observations here though; people can, and will, do what they like. As we can see by the diversity of music discussed here on Mudcat, Folk is a mutable beast and depends not on some God-like tradition as such, but the bent of the people in the room at the time. If I set up a singaround and get a load of Dylan-heads along (it has happened) then I can hardly complain if they sing Bob Dylan songs can I?

As for the Furniture Analogy - I'd say these days Folk is not even as specific as chairs (what sort of chairs? stools, armchairs, settees, sofas, benches, recliners, crackets, milking stools, park benches (I had one in a room once; one of those ones with cast iron iron snakes), pews, misericords &c.); rather Folk is as general as furniture, and even then is in need of further refinement according to taste and provenance. Are we walking Ikea Flatpacked Folk or some hand-carved Folk settle from a Victorian farmhouse? Or is it more akin to the beautifully inlaid wooden miners' cracket that has been in my family for generations - a perfect piece of Traditional Northumbrian functional folk-art? Or is it (WCS) a craft-stall modern replica of such a thing that doesn't bear too close an examination as to its construction methods much less the intention of the maker in calling it Folk Art or even Traditional? In the Manchester Gallery there is an early 19th Century chair on display of mostly Gothic influence, though in the fore-legs at least you may detect something more Classical going on. I love this chair as much I love the Thomas Toft slipware plates with which it shares the same space. I also love it because we have a Very Similar Chair which we bought in the Preston Antiques Centre for a mere £20. Thing is, do we want our Folk Clubs to more like Antique Centres or branches of Ikea? For sure we might frequent both upon occasion, but hardly with equal relish, for (perhaps ironically) only in the Antique Centre does the Humanity of the thing truly come alive - at least it does for me...

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 15 Jul 11 - 03:29 AM

Yes Pip, I agree with you that a lot of the alt-folk around is pretty retro (the ISB influences and so on are near-compulsory) and chances are that in a few years, it will sound as quaint as some of the stuff that Al bangs on about. The point I was trying to make is that if you want non-trad folk it is out there, but thankfully has nothing to do with dated comedy or cheesy light entertainment. A good thing in my opinion, but then I've always liked the ISB... and have found myself capable of listening to a whole set without needing it broken up with mother-in-law jokes and card tricks, or whatever constitutes a top quality night out.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 15 Jul 11 - 01:07 AM

"Descriptor" ··· Thanks, John P. That is the word we want; or maybe "referent". I once wrote in Folk Review, "If every article of household furniture were called a chair, we shouldn't know where to park our arses". Peter Bellamy liked the formulation so much that at one time he went around quoting it at practically every gig. And in a review for The Times Ed, I wrote "The syllogism 'I like folk; I like John Lennon; ∴ the Beatles are folk' won't work: I happen to be very fond both of eating and of the novels of Jane Austen; but that doesn't make me think that Mansfield Park is a chip butty". The Arts Editor headlined the column "Not a Chip Butty".

The point is that every time a word is over-defined in this way, the effect is to diminish the language as a communicative medium. When "folk" as a term for "the sort of music I happen to like" is diminished to the equivalent of the use of "bourgeois" by a marxist to mean simply "someone I don't happen to like", it isn't any particular person who suffers, but the language. One is reminded of Bert Lloyd's point that. if we are to call, say, Big Yellow Taxi a folksong then we shall need a new term for, say, The Seeds Of Love; and hence, if we are to say, as quoted above, "traditional singers like Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell", we shall need a new term for Joseph Taylor and John England and Harry Cox {& Martin Carthy too, for that matter}.

It's a free country, you can call it all 'folk' {or 'food'} if you like. Who's to stop you? Choose your own parameters.

But Mind Your Language!

I would urge that this is not 'purism' or 'pedantry' or any such pejorative; it's just logical sense.

~Michael~

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 08:47 PM

As we used to say in the studio, and still do, "You can ALWAYS tell a 'purist'..they're ALWAYS out of tune!"

GfS

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: John P
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 07:00 PM

who think they are right despite there being no right or wrong.

Yes!

What have I learned? Maybe that I am a singer of folk songs rather than a folk singer

Yeah, I've heard that one too. That type of distinction never made much sense to me. Someone who sings folk songs is a folk singer. Can you imagine telling a rocker that they are not a rocker, but a player of rock songs? After all, REAL rockers only existed in the 60s . . . :^)

Another one that's never made much sense to me is the idea that people should only do songs from their own locale. There was a club here several years ago that had a policy that traditional folk music could only be performed by people from the country the music came from. At the time, I was doing almost exclusively English, Irish and Scottish music. Since my cultural heritage here in the US is English in origin, they were just saying that I couldn't come there and play music from my cultural heritage. I wondered what difference it made if an ancestor of mine left the farm in the 1800s and moved to American while some London bloke's ancestor left the farm in the 1800s and moved to London. Both of us were probably brought up on American and English pop music and got into traditional folk when we were young adults. What difference does it make what country we were born in? That's making something other than the music itself and the skill of the performer be the important thing. Pedantry on a pedestal. I honored their right to do whatever they wanted in their club, but I thought it was a stupid policy.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 06:50 PM

PS "And no bloody Comus either! Sick, I call it. Bloody hippies, I don't know."

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 06:48 PM

live music events where the music has a very folkish vibe
...
and a lot of this stuff is generational

What if the "folkish vibe" is generational as well? Maybe it's just what I've heard, but it seems to me that if you went shopping for nu- psych- alt- whatsit-folk with the sole proviso that you didn't want to hear anything that sounded like Hunting Song or Reynardine you'd have a pretty thin time of it - and if you said to your nu-folk personal shopper "and nothing like the String Band either" you'd be going home empty-handed. These are records - and styles - that are 40 years old now, if not more. I'm not denying that there's lots of music being made & appreciated out there, but I wonder if what's basically a retro style is going to have the staying-power of old songs.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Steamin' Willie
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 06:27 PM

Thanks I shall.

And I will call it folk on the basis that folk clubs seem to be my haunt of choice and in my case tradition.

A bit concerned that I read what you reckon isn't there but no matter, I can't help your sense of reality. When Jim says he doesn't go to folk clubs because if isn't folk I take that a wee bit personal because folk it most certainly is. It's my folk. Perhaps not his but it is mine. And it is the folk of those who enjoy it.

All a bit moot because purism hs been flogged adequately here and we have unearthed a few definitions.

Some describing those who lament the founding ideas and some that describe those who think they are right despite there being no right or wrong.

What have I learned? Maybe that I am a singer of folk songs rather than a folk singer. Ewan MacColl told me that many years ago in the same way he had a pop at many younger people coming through. So sad that I can still put him on a pedestal and at the same time remember him as a purist prat.

My money is on Mick Jagger. It's the singer not the song.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: John P
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 06:22 PM

Oh, one more thing for Steamin' Willie -- I agree that someone trying to give you proper folky credentials for being part of a mining family is really silly, unless you are singing mining songs you learned from your dad who learned them in a mine. I might even agree with the prat label in that case. I think people should get accepted by organizers and audiences for being what and who they are.