Do purists really exist?

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 12 Jul 11 - 04:38 AM

Since it's not, it just sounds like an over-active imagination.

Overly facetious maybe.

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.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 12 Jul 11 - 05:10 AM

"I often pondered the mindset that lay behind such an inhuman arrangement ..."

Did you try challenging it, Suibhne, or just brood darkly about: "holy writs, sacred cows, holy families, gangs of fours, volkish fantasies, cringing deferences, immovable feasts, entrenched hierarchies, absolute correctness and summary excommunications ..."?

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Jul 11 - 05:19 AM

"I often pondered the mindset that lay behind such an inhuman arrangement"
Which, presumably, you have decided was deliberate, rather than a thoughtless or unavoidable making do with the space to hand.
The first jazz club I ever attended (The Liverpool Cavern, in those halcyon pre-Beatle days) was laid out so "the performers would face the audience (as is the norm) but in doing so would be standing with their backs to" - record sleeves of past performers.
It seems to me this thread is made up of such presumptions, the only evidence of there ever having been "purists" being based on an animosity towards those not prepared to 'go with the flow' backed up by apocryphal tales of a far-distant, ill-remembered past.
The validity (or otherwise) of these claims is underlined for me by the tendency of those making such claims to ignore challenges and to scurry off to other threads when asked to put their money where their mouth is.
"Do purists really exist?"
Based on the 'evidence' presented here, no - and they probably never did to any significant extent, other than in the minds of those who feel it necesary to create straw men in order to give vent to their own likes and dislikes at the expense of other peoples' choices.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 12 Jul 11 - 09:25 AM

Oh, it was very deliberate, Jim - make no mistake about that. And no, Shimrod, to my eternal shame I didn't challenge it, but had a notion that one day I might stand with my back to the audience and face the residents instead - but, sadly, I never did. Instead I sloped off in search of a more human club instead wgich I eventually found at the Wylam Ship and latterly The Colpitts in Durham which provided the blue-prints for my perfect club. Even these days I generally just slope off if I find a club too entrenched in its attitudes and residencies and other such redundant and counter-productive hierachies.

In my experience the more openly human the set up, the better the music, to the extent where our current club (at which we're named residents!) is a jump-in come-all-ye where no-one is favoured above any other and the music is second to none.   Not that we weren't in stellar company at The Bridge back then of course, but I hated it so much that one night I passed on what would have been my debut encounter with Peter Bellamy in favour of staying upstairs and drinking with my BTCV mates. I met PB that night though - when he came up to the bar to seek me out looking for a doss. Imagine that - the great Peter Bellamy, circa 1983, reduced to scrounging a doss from a complete stranger - albeit one recommended from on high, no doubt on account of my liberal approach to dope at the time. One often heard tales back then of staid folkie hosts being horrified on saying yes to PB's request 'Do you mind if I smoke?' In the event he stayed with someone else closer to Newcastle, but well I recall feeling deeply embarassed for the man that no-one 'down below' was prepared to put him up or find him someone who was, just make random suggestions and expect him to make the arrangements himself. Some booking! Read that how you will, but taken with all the other attitudes to PB I've come across over the years I'd say it was pretty unambiguous myself.

Getting back on track...

It seems to me this thread is made up of such presumptions, the only evidence of there ever having been "purists" being based on an animosity towards those not prepared to 'go with the flow' backed up by apocryphal tales of a far-distant, ill-remembered past.

In which case, I'd say you've missed the whole point of the thread, much less the sheer joy of it. The emergent feeling here (one that I abide by myself) is that as far as they exist at all, the Purist is self-styled pedantic jerk who knows SFA about anything. The ones I've met have been misanthropic nerds hung up on notions of correctness so rigid that you knew to them Folk was less a music than it was an OCD. Let's hope they got the help they obviously and so desperately needed. Those who do know and love Folk realise pretty quick that Purism is a complete anathema to the nature of The Beast.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: John P
Date: 12 Jul 11 - 10:21 AM

I agree about the self-styled jerks, but I see no reason to equate them purists. False purism is just the jerk's avenue to jerkiness. I imagine they are equally jerky in non-musical aspects of their lives as well.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: theleveller
Date: 12 Jul 11 - 10:55 AM

Whilst looking at another thread a Soundpost Singing Weekend in Sheffield in October was mentioned and I noticed one of the talks is this:

Derailing the tradition: The cost of 'de-bunking'
John Boden
The advent of internet discussion groups has made it infinitely easier for people to track down the lyrics of songs and discuss their origins in a public forum. Whilst this is in many ways a great development, it has also led to the rise of the professional de-bunker, dedicated to dissecting the assumptions and romantic fallacies of other users. Generally they are in the right - but that does not necessarily mean they are right to do so. Folk songs are more than a set of lyrics with a 16 bar tune, they are the evolving common-imaginative possessions of the people. The reductionist instincts of the debunkers are in danger of stifling the imaginative legacy of traditional song and curtailing its future evolution by nailing specimens of song to the immovable tree of fact. Jon Boden speaks up for folk romanticism. (And fully expects to be shouted at.)

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,livelylass
Date: 12 Jul 11 - 11:09 AM

Fascinating stuff Leveller.
As for Folk Romanticism, Boden appears to be pleading the case for 'suspension of disbelief' about real world history? The intersection of fantasy and reality, however romantically desirable, is one we simply are not able to sustain in the contemporary world (which means there will be no more "histories" like Homer for example) it is an intersection which is for the arts to explore independently of the sciences and vice versa I would say - until such time as we all realise we are living a superreal dream (as Bill Hicks down below might argue) perhaps.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: theleveller
Date: 12 Jul 11 - 11:26 AM

I hear what you're saying, livelylass. Maybe I should have posted this on the Steamfolk thread ;)

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 12 Jul 11 - 11:27 AM

but I see no reason to equate them purists

I only speak of those who actually used the term Purist themselves, usually when confronting me over some aspect of my work or another. One asked me if my 3-string Black Sea Fiddle was a Bowed Psaltery (an entirely modern invention BTW) and when I told him it wasn't, and told him what it was, he said that as a Purist he was offended by my use of a non-Traditional Instrument to accompany Traditional Song. He himself played the guitar. I pointed out the fallacy of his argument, but didn't take too much pleasure over it because I could feel his world crumbling away as I spoke. No bad thing, eh? But is it really their fault? Like the Folkier members of the BNP, Folk Purists have fallen for the Folk Myth hook line and sinker. These are the people who will tell you that the Black Leg Miner is a true folk song with a thousand variants...

My Steamfolk Thread is but one attempt at embracing what Jon Boden refers to as Folk Romanicism, which I feel is a Very Good Thing and has given us much to be cheerful for over the decades and it continues to do so. My aim is keep cheerful, and keep loving it and enjoying it even though there are times I might slip into serious crisis. Take a deep breath, take time out, then enjoy it all afresh..

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Jul 11 - 03:01 PM

"Oh, it was very deliberate, Jim - make no mistake about that. "
Then perhaps you'd like to explain why it was done?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: BTNG
Date: 12 Jul 11 - 03:06 PM

"(Jon) Boden appears to be pleading the case for 'suspension of disbelief' about real world history'

it does require a bit of an imagination, but it can be done, unfortunately some folk do lack an imagination

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,livelylass
Date: 12 Jul 11 - 03:26 PM

"unfortunately some folk do lack an imagination"

In point of fact, as a proper mad person (not the official clinical term) I don't lack any amount of imagination! But what I do lack is the desire to bullshit real human people out of their real human histories in order to indulge some cosy little modern middle-class romance about the olden days and "the tradition". All props to the assiduous work of the debunkers and the disabusers of such fanciful indulgences I say, they do the songmakers and indeed their communities (which are not ours), a service in righting certain errors of the revival. That is not to say that I am not in emotional sympathy with the poetry of Bodens take (or what has been presented here of it at least) just not dishonest enough to buy it, at least without knowing much more...

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 12 Jul 11 - 04:39 PM

Then perhaps you'd like to explain why it was done?

How the hell should I know? It was never explained or accounted for, least of all to me, and they certainly never asked me about it - and neither did I ask them - it was Just The Way it Was, and no doubt always had been since the club's inception back in the Folk New Testament Dawn. Even as late as 1989 (or was it 1990?) I remember feeling the eyes of The Bridge Folk Club Residents burning into my back from on high as I droned my way through Binnorie and Wee Wee Man on my hurdy-gurdy. Weird - the experience that is, not the music, though come to think of it...

My ideal folk club is egalitarian and leader / resident free; my current club has its resident regulars (myself & my wife included) but it's small enough to function on the Crack alone,and all hierarchies are born of total and mutual respect and a love of great music. I hate the idea of resident groups opening the night with a surfiet of songs and singarounds where someone is 'in charge' - just kick it off, watch it run; talk about a piss-up in a brewery.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: glueman
Date: 12 Jul 11 - 05:27 PM

Re. Jon Boden's quote, I reckon the internet as a whole is a very mixed blessing.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 03:25 AM

"How the hell should I know?"
I am tempted to ask, then how did you know it was deliberate rather than poor judgement and thoughtlessness, but please don't bother.
Excuse my scepticism, but your description of the club sounds like many of the folk/jazz/C&W venues I visited at one time or another, and your Nineteen-Eighty-Four analysis sounds.... well.... odd, to say the least.
Most organisers I knew, me included, after a days work and a bolted meal, found ourselves with barely enough time to rush down to the pub, set the chairs out, organise the float for the door, pin up the record sleeves and the ads for albums for sale... not to mention the in-between work of knocking our songs into shape, sorting out accompaniments, planning our lists - especially when we did feature evenings, publicity, booking guests and arranging accommodation for them...
The idea that we should give any time or thought to laying out our club-room like the 23rd Congress of the CPSU in order to intimidate our audiences, just in case they harboured any notions of coming back the following week...... wellllll...... seems as fanciful as the other claims of "purism" dotted all over this thread.
"I hate the idea of resident groups opening the night with a surfiet of songs and singarounds"
That surely, is your own choice, just as a reasonably organised club with a set policy, a selection of residents of varying abilities, experience and repertoires, feature evenings, facilities to encourage and develop inexperienced singers, archives and libraries to enable the building of repertoires..... has been, and occasionally still is the choice of many of the clubs I have visited and enjoyed.
Personally I detested the policyless, anything-goes goes singaround clubs that didn't have a pool of competent residents to keep things moving and guarantee - or at least, aim that the proceedings never fell below a certain level, but instead based themselves on whoever turned up on the night - I avoided them like the plague and still do.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 03:38 AM

Ah yes Jim, but no one expects....... The Spanish Inquisition!

You've got to admit there's some odd coves and wild cards in the pack. Seems our friend got dealt one in his first game. Scarred for life!

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 04:31 AM

I am tempted to ask, then how did you know it was deliberate rather than poor judgement and thoughtlessness, but please don't bother.

The Folk Song & Ballad Club in Newcastle was never so casual, much less spontaneous. When I used to go it was held in a featureless basement room (rather than the characterful upstairs clubroom it was held in originally & in which a Bridge Folk Club still meets, but it's nothing like the old one) which was laid out with very specific intention as detailed above. This is not some malicious rewriting of history for some dark nefarious ends; I have no agenda here, other than to report on the most ghastly folk club set up I have ever encountered, and one that was hardly formative of my love of communal music-making based around a shared loved of the Old Songs and Shanties. Despite the stellar calibre of the residents, the set-up was hardly conducive to either fostering an interest in their various idioms (which, to be honest, I doubt was on the agenda back then anyway) or reflecting the egalirarian political ends which were always a prominent aspect of the New Testament Folk Revival. I heard some very good singing there, and grat music, which is why I used to go, but remain eternally baffled by the set up. As to why they did it, I've no idea. I'm not even sure if anyone else felt intimidated by it; as I say, it was an accepted aspect of the club.

That surely, is your own choice

Indeed so, one born of long years of bitter experience. The more openly egalitarian & essentially rule-free a club is, so more encouraging it will be on any number of levels and the more potential there is for reaching Trad Nirvana (in my experience, certainly I've never reached it in any other sort of club). In my current club there is no Trad Only policy as such, but that tends to be the way things happen. Not even sure if you would call it an Unwritten Rule - rather it's just the consequence of what happens when you get a few like-minded souls gathered together who just want a good old blow. It effects the rest of the pub too, and kicks off in rare old style on a regular basis.

Back on thread.

These days the Folk Remit is very wide, even on Mudcat, and I've tried to be accepting of this but (in the words of one old storyteller I one had the privilege of getting drunk with) it's rather like shoving your own shit back up your arse: as unpleasant as it is, ultimately, impossible. Does that mark me out as a Purist? Thing is, I often get called a Purist myself on account (I suppose) of being fond of Old Songs & Old Singers. I once even said to one young singer-songwriter (thus paraprasing Peter Pan) for every new song you sing, and old one dies. Granted I was very drunk at the time, and her repertoir of Old Songs was impressive (and she couldn't have been that offended because she would later become my wife) but in my heart I still carry this notion that Folk is all about the Old Songs, and that the new ones are somehow missing a very essential point. I own, however, that this is very much My Problem, and that to dictate to others is rather like King Cnut (careful with that spelling there) trying to turn back the tide.

Tides are a good thing.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 04:49 AM

King Canute [don't be precieux about the spelling, Sean dear] was not trying to turn back the tide ~~ he was demonstrating that it couldn't be done, in order to deflate his flattering courtiers' fulsome assessments of his powers. My late wife Valerie summed it up in her novel Culture Shock [1988]: "History has given Canute the wrong footnote".

~M~

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 04:58 AM

You know, I took out the sentence in my last post which read even as I write this I sense some nit-picking purist will be along presently to tell us all what KC was really up to in his tide-stunt though little did I realise it would be you... Anyway, in terms of Typical Usage and genuine Folklore the KC Metaphor is just as I've used it here, regardless of the historical facts of the case. I like nothing better (whilst wandering the beach at low tide anyway) than drawing KC in the sand and watching the tide wash him away just to remind myself of that very important, though in all events apocryphal, demo.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 05:03 AM

the KC Metaphor is just as I've used it here, regardless of the historical facts of the case····
,,,,
Exactly ~~ just what Valerie meant by the wrong footnote! Not like you to denounce getting something right instead of wrong as 'nit-picking purism' ~~ surprised at you!

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 05:12 AM

In common usage the KC Metaphor is simply to do with the futility of turning back tides; he is cast as Graves' Caligula in this respect, waging war with Neptune. Maybe the historical Caligula was like that too. I confess, many mistaken Common Usages do irk me - Green Men for one / Ring a Roses for another - but both of these I fear are the consequence of Folkloric Wonkiness finding its way into the mainstream rather than any feral-thang in and of itself. The Common KC Metaphor (however so mistaken) is totally feral; the others are just bad folkloric-factoids gone awry.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 05:16 AM

"common usage" a dangerous concept. Accuracy matters more than commonness [in any sense]. Do not try to turn back the tide of accuracy, or who knows what Pandora's Box will be opened, can of worms stirred up?!...

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 05:42 AM

You see Jim, he was irked by a common usage at an early age - no getting over that....

sounds bloody painful!

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 05:46 AM

"You've got to admit there's some odd coves and wild cards in the pack."
There are indeed - but when such a club, with such a (real or imagined) agenda is presented in a thread discussing a genre of (also real or imagined) folkies it needs to be qualified, especially when it accompanied by a preference for a type of club that would have been as far away as you could get from the norm 20-odd years ago. The do-as-you-please singaround type venue would have been a rare enough bird to have a conservation order put on it in those days, and its proliferation in later years has contributed much to the present situation of our no longer being able to choose our 'folk' music, hence the disappearence of our clubs etc IMO.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 05:48 AM

I cherish common usage. I first encountered King Canute (if you insist) in the wilds of collective commonality long before he made his ceremonial entrance into the hallowed halls Educational Correctness. It went something like this:
Pedagogue: "Can anyone tell me who King Canutes was?"
30 eager kids with hands raised: "I can! I can! Me! Me!"
Pedagogue: "Okay then - Suibhne - enlighten us."
S O'P (aged 6): "He was a king who thought he was so powerful that he tried to command the very tides but only got wet feet for his troubles."
Pedagague: "Wrong, you malnourished oik!" (lobs blackboard rubber at hapless pupil knocking him to the floor on which he lies, bloodied, but still conscious) "King Canute was not trying to turn back the tide ~ he was demonstrating that it couldn't be done, in order to deflate his flattering courtiers' fulsome assessments of his powers."
And so the nourishing maternal warmth of common usage was betrayed by the dictates of cold hard fact.   

Similarly Ring-a-Roses was a game we played in all innocence before being told (no doubt by the same teacher) that we were, in point of fact, re-enacting the symptoms of the Black Death. Now, whilst I'm pepared to accept the Canute Disparity as being a genuine instance of folklore simplifying history if only to make a more compact analogue, the Ring-o-Roses IPOF I regard as the worst possible sort of myth-making. Indeed, such mythconceptions take hold like Grey Squirrels, choking the life out of our more delicate native Reds, hence the need for a more rigorous approach to the management of the ecology of our cherished Folklore before it too is pushed to the brink of extinction by facts both real and imagined. This is why I continue to draw King Cnut in the sand, to keep common usage alive, at least until the tide comes in.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 05:56 AM

Agree re Ring-o-Roses ~~ one of those pieces of Folklore About Folklore, as the great Peter Opie said in an interview I did with the Opies for Folk Review.

BUT one who feels that cannot, with consistency, go along with that vulgar Canute concept.

Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim, you will remember, based his life on the important precept that nice things are nicer than nasty ones. My principle-of-being is that right things are righter than wrong ones.

~Michael~

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: theleveller
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 06:00 AM

"Tides are a good thing."

Indeed they are! They wash away the dross and deposit new and wonderful treasures on the shoreline. The "folk process", as I understand it (probably imperfectly), is a not a tide but a slow-moving stream or, at times, a man-made canal.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 07:49 AM

My principle of being is that for every person who says something, there'll be another saying the opposite; they can't both be right, but they can both be wrong. Opinions are all very well, but seeking for the provenance of those opinions is even better. That said, for every kid who goes to drifts into innocent slumber on Xmas Eve with comforting thoughts of Jovial Santa Clause leaving gifts of Subbuteo and Action Man beneath the Xmas Tree, there'll be a Folklorist feverishly tossing in his wanking pit about bloodsoaked Siberian Shamans and how Xmas Tree tinsel, baubels &c. are the vestiges of the still warm viscera of sacrificial reindeer (hence the old song Run, Run, Rudolph presumably). I live in avoidance of overly Prescriptive Pagans eager to tell me what things Really Mean, from the Phallic Maypole to the Green Man to Hares to Blacked-Up prattish Morris Dancers.

However - when after many years of genuine blissful Ignorance I discover the real reason that Peter Alolph called his innovative table-top football game Subbuteo (probably on QI) I rejoice at the pure genius of it. But that is different. Unlike Folklore, that is both real and relevant, to my culture, my life, and my times; my community, my folklore, my past and in many ways my future too; it stands as Very Essential Ethnography.

*

The Folk Process is the water that makes my Indian coffee grounds drinkable; it is the rain on my window; it is the stinking stagnant water in my washing up bowl; it is The Tees (the chilly slow brown Tees); it is the Tyne; it is The Wyre; it is The Thames; it is the ice in my whisky; the water on my knee; it is both the clouds and the face of Harpo Marx I once saw therein as a child; it is the bottles of Sparkling Spring Water we buy from Aldi; it is the surging floods now so typical of a British Summer; it is the melt water of the Polar Icecaps that will dilute the Gulf Stream; it is the blizzards of another ice-age; it is the erstwhile permafrost of a million mammoth graves; it is the Holy Water from Lourdes in a plastic bottle shaped like the BVM; it is the leavings in the Baptismal Font; it is the noctural dripping of a distant tap; it is the water off a duck's back...

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,raymond greenoaken
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 07:51 AM

Suibhne's description of the Bridge at Newcastle in the 70s-80s chimes closely with my own memories of the club. As a performer, having the residents arrayed behind you could be quite intimidating (you half felt they might hold up score cards at the end of your performance...). On the other hand, there was also a feeling that, while you were up there, you were somehow part of this glittering company yourself. You might even call it empowering!

On guest nights, the booked performers would sit among the residents too, and then step forward when their time came. When Ewan MacColl was booked guest, he naturally enough brought his chair with him the to the front and swung it round so he could lean his elbows on the backrest. There was some merriment at this, for some wag had earlier chalked the word "God" on the backrest. Apologies if you've heard this yarn before. I wasn't present on that occasion, so it may be as apocryphal as King Cnut and his wet sandals.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 08:42 AM

Empowering, eh? Maybe it was, up to a point anyway. It wasn't everyone who got to sing though & I recall the club was certainly friendly enough, for the most part anyway, though certain residents often refused my requests for a spot. Back then though one never felt in any way encouraged, so much as tolerated, be it by policy, or because you must have been doing something right, however so - unwittingly. The current gaffer of The Bridge Folk Club tells a tale of me getting up in an Afghan to accompany a 40-verse ballad on a one-string fiddle to the choreographed jaw-dropped horror of the residents behind me, but as I never owned an Afghan I think he must be confusing me with someone else. Also one of my regular employers remembers me from those days too - and yet has consistently employed me these last five years or so.

One thing I do remember is leaving the Bridge Folk Club with my batiked viola to go up to the Anglo-Asian Club (nothing to do with concertinas) on the West Road to do a gig with Rhombus of Dooom, Newcastle's premier Space-Punk band at the time. I've recently received copies of a CD of the gig featuring photos of the band at that time, two of whom are sadly no longer with us.
Here's one: Rhombus AA - 1986 it says. That's me beind the girl on the floor, the late Sue Sayles, reciting her poetry, and the chap standing at the back in the stripey jumper is our bass player Pete who now plays for The Baghdaddies. Och, whit a necht thet wiz!

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 10:05 AM

Now i remember the old days when if you sang about anything that happened more than 10 yards away, Ewan macColl would come and sort you out with a set of knuckle dusters, and then Peggy Seeger would come round with a rubber truncheon.

And you know what we loved them for it!

Mind you we had it tough. When people talk about being traumatised by the seating arrangements at a folk club. I think this feng shui bollocks has gone too far.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Steamin' Willie
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 12:15 PM

Jim Carroll wrote,

... The do-as-you-please singaround type venue would have been a rare enough bird to have a conservation order put on it in those days, and its proliferation in later years has contributed much to the present situation of our no longer being able to choose our 'folk' music, hence the disappearence of our clubs etc IMO.
Jim Carroll

Available from K-Tel records, "Now that's what I call purist!"

Thanks Jim, knew you would get there in the end. Who are the "our"?

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 01:05 PM

"Who are the "our"? "
The several thousand folk fans who drifted away in the eighties because they couldn't find the music they had been listening to at folk clubs any more - along with the radio programmes, magazines, specialist labels and shops...... who else?
Thought fora minute you were coming back to qualify some of your pronouncements - nah - perish the thought - far easier to pin on labels.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Steamin' Willie
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 01:29 PM

Ah but is that because the music was no longer folk or that folk music had evolved into something they didn't get?

They wouldn't perchance be purists would they / you?

You see, we are trying to see if purists exist if the thread was ever worth the effort you and others put into it. You describe people who saw folk and decided it wasnt folk. All we have to do is think of a word to describe these poor frustrated people. Any ideas?

I've got one.

But there again, I would have to qualify it and I can only do that by reading your threads Jim. Actually, I have no intention to qualify simple objective observations. If you disagree, fine, but asking me to qualify them can only be in order to disagree even more strongly. That seems a bit indulgent if you don't mind me saying so.

There we have it folks, (or folk?) a purist can now be defined through Jim's assertion that many people said "That's not folk" when faced with evolving folk.

All we need now is M'Unlearned Friend to give us some big words to use for the official 2011 definition and we are laughing.

Or at least I am, I'm about to board a plane to Singapore, and shortly be quaffing my champagne in Raffles class, listening to some folk music via the iPad and wondering if I am allowed to enjoy it because some prat keeps saying folk is about the trials and tribulations of the working class. Not fitting your stereotype doesn't alter my enjoyment of the abstract entertainment I call folk.

At the risk of repeating myself, I reckon Sir Thomas Beecham got it in one when he said "The English don't understand music but they love the noise it makes.".

Quite.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 01:40 PM

Perhaps purists don't really exist.

Perhaps they are a fiendishly clever hologram.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 01:45 PM

Any ideas? "
Yeah - define the music you think I will find if i ever drag my arse to a folk club again.
As I said, I've been long enough at it to think I know what folk music is, and if I'm in any doubt, I can always buy the book or watch the movie - now tell me what you think it is - have asked before, but you scurried off before you could answer.
Enlighten me.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: glueman
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 06:34 PM

The trick in the Newcastle club would have been to put yourself at the back of the raised dais and perform from there. Singing to the backs of the heads of the great and good who were in turn observing the hoi polloi below them would have been a delight. Of course these things tend only to occur to you in later life when you realise our elders and better not only have feet of clay but brains of the same material.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,livelylass
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 06:38 PM

"Ah but is that because the music was no longer folk or that folk music had evolved into something they didn't get?"

Or it devolved into something that younger generations couldn't give a shit about, namely tired acoustic covers of sixties pop/rock..

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 06:52 PM

"Or it devolved into something that younger generations couldn't give a shit about, namely tired acoustic covers of sixties pop/rock"

I like it!

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 06:56 PM

'tired acoustic covers of sixties pop/rock'

you'd be tired if you'd been listening to traditional music. Of course its allright fou holograms of purists. You don't exist and don't have to listen to all those cyber ballads and all the jigs and reels on your internal hard drive.

Real folksingers like us , who are part of a living tradition and come from singing families that pass on their Beatles cds from generation to generation - we have to put up with all this cybernetic folksong from holograms of purists that don't really exist. Its when the traddies get up to sing and ruin the evening for everybody in decent folk clubs - that's when most people go for a wee - in my experience.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 07:08 PM

you'd be tired if you'd been listening to traditional music.

I really wouldn't. I've left folk clubs tired, bored and thoroughly depressed, but never after an evening of traditional music.

I've just looked back at Folknacious's original question, and I think it's a good one. The question is, does anyone actually complain about accompaniment / guitars / electric guitars / drum machines / etc because they're different, or is this a myth put about by musicians who use these things & want to look like rebels?

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: TheSnail
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 07:10 PM

I know I'll regret this but...

Jim Carroll

I was part of the English scene for thirty five years; I cut down on my folk-club intake when it became all but impossible to go to a folk club and hear a folk song and when the standards plummeted - the right for me to liten to the music I wanted to listen to played half decently was taken from me (thousands of others felt the same and pissed off with me around the same time).

The logic of this has always escaped me. Hundreds of folk clubs were attended by thousands of enthusiasts for real (i.e. 1954 definition) folk music until they were overwhekmed by a deluge of stand up comedians, do-as-you-please singarounds, and people singing Music Hall, Beatles, Dylan, pop and their own songs that (for unexplained reasons) didn't fit the "written in the tradition" style. The clubs were left empty or not playing any actual folk music.

Sorry, don't get it.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 07:29 PM

Stick around, you will get it!

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 03:19 AM

The trick in the Newcastle club would have been to put yourself at the back of the raised dais and perform from there.

That would have been from behind the wall then, thus out in the old Castle Garth somewhere with the ghost of my Great-Grandfather - an Irish Tailor fetched up in Newcastle & running a tailors shop on the old stairs, as mentioned in the old Tyneside Folk Song which simply states: The quayside for sailors / The castle Garth for tailors.

namely tired acoustic covers of sixties pop/rock..

Or music in the Tradition of Tired Acoustic Covers of Sixties Pop/Rock, which is what most people seem to think of as being Folk these days - Easy Listening Singer-Songwriter Style sung by some fat old bloke with a guitar who insists on entertaining the audience with a mix of 90% comedy to 10% music. I'm not thinking of any one person here, just a General Averagee of the 60-something folk-style troubadour who does folk clubs (never without a PA) because a real WMC would eat him up bones and all. At least we holographic traddie purists know our place & would rather be singing to the dead in graveyards or else to the ghosts in ancient ruins, or keening our plaintive minstrelsy midst the shrill cry of fox and hawk 'pon some bleak & blasted heath...

a myth put about by musicians who use these things & want to look like rebels?

Rebel folkies? Help ma kilt! Just the thoughts, although I have met a few of these too in my time - and a merciful few at that. The one thing they have in common is their lack of staying power. During their brief flirtation with folk the Purist is a Strawman based on a handful of accumulated in-cliches and hardly backed up by reality, though a few of the posts here run perilously close to confirming the stereotype. Whilst the Young Folk Rebel is similarly elusive, a fight between these Twa Strawmen would make for a good scene in a Mummers Play, maybe in a few hundred years or so when the technology exists to project these things hologramatically with dazzling CGI special FX so we might watch them, interactively and in life-size hard-light 3D, in the comforts of our own homes.

(for unexplained reasons)

Ceaselesy debated maybe, but hardly unexplained, or even unaccepted...

*

Maybe the bottom line here is that all Folk is boring anyway, year in, year out; hardly the wonder there's always some vampirish thread on Mudcat calling out for young blood. But tedium is Folk's very essence; repetition, nostalgia and (yes) Tradition; those self-same festival spots in the self-same venues to the self-same audiences listening to the self-same songs & laughing at the self-same jokes, year in, year out; even these wee natters on Mudcat have an almost scripted feel about them, like Mummers Plays with hearty announcements of in comes I.... To some it will be This Year's Exciting New Fashion, they'll stop by, have look around, and, if they have any sense, they'll move on; but to others they'll be wearing it for the rest of their lives. And how soon that happens... Think of them as The Permafolk.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: theleveller
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 03:40 AM

"... would rather be singing to the dead in graveyards or else to the ghosts in ancient ruins, or keening our plaintive minstrelsy midst the shrill cry of fox and hawk 'pon some bleak & blasted heath..."

Ha! Best thing I've read in this thread. Thank f**k I'm not the only one! Can't think of anything better than sitting in Rudston churchyard with my back against the monolith singing songs about the surrounding landscape and its people. My folk amongst my folk - sense of place par excellence.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 03:46 AM

If only they'd stay in the graveyards, leave the arts centres and folk clubs and BBC2 for sentient human beings.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,livelylass
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 04:26 AM

I'd go to a gig in a graveyard! Supernatural ballads and gory songs for All Hallows Eve please. Bring your own blanket and white cider..

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Will Fly
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 04:33 AM

Al - you sound like I was when I was aged 9. I was bitten on the hand by a mongrel dog - which so enraged me that, for years afterwards, any dog that growled at me got kicked to Kingdom Come. (I managed to contain my temper after that).

Were you, by any chance, bitten by a folksinger at an early age? :-)

Well, I'm off to the Bradfield Traditional Music Weekend today. 4 days of wall-to-wall sessions. Will I emerge unscathed, or will I get back to sunny Sussex with an uncontrollable urge for a free reed?

Only time will tell...

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 04:37 AM

"Sorry, don't get it. "
Sorry Bryan - what don't you get?
Are you saying what you describe didn't happen, that the clubs didn't become a dumping ground for any type of music, and the audiences could no longer find what they were looking for (not an "unexplained reason"), or are you claiming that everything that that was performed at a folk club became folk because it was it was performed at a folk club - as has been claimed?
None of this has anything whatever to do with dictionary definitions; it would be "purism" if anyone were to insist that only songs conforming to a definition were performed - never happened in my experience.
People stopped going to the clubs because the term "folk" ceased being a guide to what they would find there; the term never evolved, was never re-defined; it became meaningless (to most of the clubs); it retained its meaning in its literature, documentation and research; that remains the same - it is basically a club phenomenon.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,livelylass
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 04:41 AM

"Or music in the Tradition of Tired Acoustic Covers of Sixties Pop/Rock,"

Titter..