Do purists really exist?

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 05:52 AM

'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.'

The general consensus amongst people I knew was this series of events:-

1) the folk clubs were packed
2) mr and Mrs Joe Average read Karl dallas's accounts of how wonderful Carthy, Bellamy etc were
3) Mr and Mrs Average turned up at the folk club expecting a sort of superior Anglicised version of peter paul and mary and John Denver and the Spinners and the Corries and 70's TV folk stars.
4) Next week the club was empty.

There are still plenty of folk clubs doing the trad thing. More than enough to cater for what is a very minority taste. Also they get huge chunks of media exposure - they've got that tied up very nicely. Most weeks they piss away more creative opportunities than come the way of ordinary English musos in a lifetime.

Nah Will! Never bitten. But i tick all the boxes that traddies hate. I was a pro musician, used variable accents when I sang (probably none very convincing!), used synths, synthetic handclaps, anything i wanted,knew the words of the songs and generally went down quite well - this last one really pissed them off . (Oh well anybody can write silly songs and do gutter entertainment! - i have been informed occasionally)

So its hard not to take personally some of the 'the Tradition of Tired Acoustic Covers of Sixties Pop/Rock" comments.

Stll a space man from mars couldn't tell the difference between me and Bob Dylan or Martin carthy. Take the larger view - we're all in it up the neck.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: theleveller
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 06:34 AM

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

This seems to highlight the difference of how we perceive folk music. For me, the context is crucial. I'd much rather sing for my own amusement in a place that has a resonance to the music, or with a couple of like-minded people, than perform it to an audience from a stage. Nowadays, it seems, the emphasis is all too often on performance rather than context, with performers looking more for quantity of audience than quality of individual experience. The music can change perceptibly when it is taken out of, say, a singaround in a local pub or what Suibhne calls 'feral' performances (and I call ruffian music), and is honed and perfected to provide a slick, uniform presentation for mass consumption. Now, all too often, the goal seems not to be the integrity of the music but getting your photo on the cover of fRoots. That's fine, but it doesn't mean that the grassroots 'artisan' side of the music has lost its relevance.

Don't get me wrong – I love watching professional performers, but prefer smaller, more intimate venues where there is a rapport with the audience (last weekend's Moonbeams Festival was a perfect balance, with artists like John Jones of Oysterband jumping off the stage to mingle with the audience and later joining in the late-night singaround).

So don't knock the solitary singer in his/her own little world. I'm just reading Peter Ackroyd's biography of William Blake and am surprised to find that the works which now have worldwide acclaim were often produced in editions of single figures – individually printed, hand-coloured and bound. Very few people 'got' Blake at the time, but how things have changed.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 07:25 AM

'Very few people 'got' Blake at the time, but how things have changed.'

reminds me a little bit of the Max Beerbohm short story Enoch Soames - about an unsuccessful poet who sold his soul to the devil to visit the British museum in fifty years time and see if people 'got' him yet. When he looked hismself up, it just said Enoch Soames - character in a Max Beerbohm short story.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 07:56 AM

"The general consensus amongst people ...."
Nope - 'twasn't the way it happened - the decline was pretty well documented at the time, particulary with the correspondance following Fred Woods' article 'Crap Begets Crap' in Folk review - it was the core audiences that left; we never really managed to attract enough curious outsiders in - when your lot moved in big-time, the regulars left.
Quality certainly came into; Alex Campbell's "near enough for folk song opening line ceased to be a joke and became a reality, and now, to some clubs, seems to be an essantial part of their make-up, "so as not to frighten away the laess talented".
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 08:11 AM

So its hard not to take personally some of the 'the Tradition of Tired Acoustic Covers of Sixties Pop/Rock" comments.

It's never either / or in folk; it's always all, and there'll invariably be dialogue arising from it born ultimately of human respect. We all have our own take on such things after all, our various burdens and crosses to bear, but one would hope it never gets hostile. In the context of this discussion we can be frank about such matters, but at the end of the day it's only music no matter how seriously we might take it.

If every Folky dreams of getting on the cover of fRoots then that's cool by me; it's like everyone who does the lottery dreaming of actually winning it. It's a community thang all the way down the line really; celebrity comes, celebrity goes, but the music keeps on going. We mutter, we complain, we rejoice; hell, all human life is here if you look hard enough.

One of my Editors recently urged me to be more controversial in my writing - like I am on Mudcat. Thing is, on Mudcat people have an instant right of reply to anything anyone says, which isn't the case once something is published. To me dialogue is all; the crack and blether of the thing, and even though I'm given to polemicising from time to time, I'm not wanting a fight as such, just a natter, a discussion, a bit crack, which is what we have here. And that's something to cherish I think...

*

My problem is, I never got Dylan, and was always moved more by music than I was by words. Still the same today really, I'd rather listen to instrumental music or stuff in a foreign language, or a lot of other Popular English Language Idioms where you can make out the words anyway. I suffer from ADD; have done all my life: it's embarassing but even when I listen to an unaccompanied ballad I'm hearing the music of the thing first, then maybe one or two images, with the story hardly a consideration at all. Am I unique in this? Maybe I am, but in terms of Human Music I'd say that was hardly uncommon at all. I love listening to Gaelic stuff, or raw Scots where you just pick up the odd phrase; and counsel strongly the Folk Myth that Song Accompaniment is there to support a song and not drown the bloody thing out entirely. Indeed, I recently did a version of Over the Hills and Far Away for an aborted project. It was only after removing the vocal track entirely that it made any musical sense to me. Listen here:

HEADLAND (OVER THE HILLS) (21st April 2011)

Music to me exists in terms of landscape or else just pure sound; I like folk for its modes, rhythms, histories, drones, inner aesthetics and cultural possibilities. When working with my wife my extremes are tempered, my enthusiasms curbed, but it was always Folk and it remains Folk, in my heart at least, telling it's own story as all music does... Do it in a Folk Club? No way; this is where the internet comes into its own.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 08:19 AM

I took folk Review for several years. the trouble was - you had to be either Jasper Carrott or martin Carthy - nothing much in the middle - a less simplistic view of folk music, was tolerated.

The picture i painted jim was was told to me by folksingers who had been making their living on the folk club circuit since the 1960's. In the 60's - they felt they had a secure living. they thought folk clubs and folk music was going to be constant feature of the post war music scene. these were pe0ple travelling the length and breadth of Britain. Not just in isolated places.

the doctrinaire view of the traddies was not the view of folk music that ordinary tv watching English people had. I don't why you're bitching. you won. you had the only two folk journalists in England batting for your side. There was a civil war, you won it.

'the taste was not as sweet' i imagine.   all that shouting the odds and being rude to everyone didn't win very much. I suspect.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 08:41 AM

"The picture i painted jim was was told to me by folksingers"
And the picture I painted was watching the clubs in the greater London area dwindle from around 100 to its present (maybe) dozen.
Given the choice of viewing the situation deteriorate gradually - as we did as regular vistors to clubs - or taling the word of booked guests who might turn up - what once a year......
But as I say, the situation that arose was well documented; whatever you might think of any particular magazine they did provide an overall view.
In the long run - a bit of a applied logic should serve to persuade that if regular punters were not given what they paid their pennies to listen to, they were bound to go away - wouldn't you? There was no argument that this was happening.
We were organising bookings for traditional singer Walter Pardon and being told "no we don't do anything like that - we're a folk club".
None of this alters the fact that the music, as far as the clubs were concerned, was being de-defined to the extent that there no longer exists a concensus, even within the present club scene, as to what you would find if you turned up at a folk club - Magicical Mystery Tour rules OK, so to speak.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,livelylass
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 09:44 AM

"they felt they had a secure living. they thought folk clubs and folk music was going to be constant feature of the post war music scene."

Perhaps their mistake was in believing in notions that the revival would be as enduring as the very tradition of folk song that it sought to emulate and revive?

As for the evolving or otherwise of "folk" into non-traditional acoustic 60's pop, unlike traditional folk music itself (which came from and belongs to another world in time altogether) what "folk music" became during the 60's, was inevitably forever destined to be "60's acoustic folk"

Most modern styles of music become dated very fast and while 60's acoustic folk was "modern folk music" in it's day, it's now simply dated 60's folk music. A thing of either cringing embarrassment or misty eyed nostalgia for those who were there depending on their perspective, but of little interest to anyone who came after bar music nerds who enjoy trawling through back catalogues. Same deal with 50's rock'n'roll or 70's prog rock or 80's new wave..

So overall, as for what folk music has "evolved" into and those various "folk" activies I've been to If I had a hammer, someone else would be leaving with a fucking head injury...

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: theleveller
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 09:48 AM

When I fetched up in London in 1967 from Yorkshire, where, from the age of 16, I had been playing in between 3 and 5 folk clubs a week (to the detriment of my education), I went to a few clubs and found them generally pretty dour and unwelcoming (with the notable exception of the Cousins) - with the result that I confined my playing to busking and pretty soon fell out of the folk scene altogether in favour of underground rock. I didn't return to folk until the early 90s, by which time I was back living in Yorkshire. There I found quite a few of the old faces plus a great many new ones - and a folk scene that, although different, was and is vibrant and exciting.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: John P
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 10:44 AM

Steamin' Willie says: . . . 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 . . .

This is one of the biggest things that bug me about these discussions. No one has ever had anything to say on the subject of what you should listen to and enjoy. In fact, the exact opposite has been said many, many times. When you say things like this it indicates that you don't get what's being talked about, and that you are having a conversation with some imaginary "purists" in your head. It sounds like you are so pissed off about being told that many people don't consider singer-songwriter to be folk music that you are willing to tell lies about them.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: TheSnail
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 11:39 AM

Jim Carroll

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")

My experience is that, in the seventies, I was going to clubs on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights which varied from trad through tradish to electic/contemporary. the latter had acts that you might well call stand up comedians but I also some excellent traditional performers there as well. They were all prospering. None of them changed their format, but as time passed, the audiences began to decline in all of them.

There seem to be three versions of events going round. According to Big Al, real folk music was doing fine until the traddies drove it out; according to you, real folk music was doing fine until the anything-goes crowd drove it out; according to me, all styles were doing fine and went into decline together. Who is right? Will we ever know? Unfortunately, I have never seen Fred Woods' 'Crap Begets Crap' article. Is it available anywhere?

My problem with your description is that I just can't see how unpopular acts could drive out popular ones. Did the organisers of the day (of which you were one) deliberately choose performers that drove their audiences away?

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?

No, Jim, I'm not Sweeney.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 12:35 PM

No, Jim, I'm not Sweeney.

Objection!

My earlier stance regarding the issue was based on the empirical evidence at hand; the fact in most Folk Clubs these days you will indeed hear a surfiet of - er - other idioms shall we say, all of which are regarded as being Folk in common usage of the term. From this I deduced that in modern parlance Folk Music meant any music regardless of idion, fetched up in a Folk Club and performed by hearty amateurs, inclusive of all others. I believe, M'Lud, that I produced a list of different idioms in support of this claim, all of them experienced being performed (perhaps approximated would be a better word) over maybe three nights at my then local Folk Club. I tried to accomodate this general unpleasantness for the sake of my own sanity as much as anything else, but in the end stumbled upon our present Holy of Holies Folk Club where things are (to say the least) rather better all around. So - whilst I would still recommend a more pragmatic and indeed empirical approach to both the phenomenon of Ye Folk Club and the very vexed issue of What You Might Expect To Hear Therein (and, indeed, How That Impacts on One's Own Repertoire) (as much for the sake ones sanity as anything else) I can say (heart on sleeve) that if it doesn't meet with my exacting requirements based on long years of bitter/sweet Folk Experience then I won't be darkening its doors again.

I trust this clears up my feelings in the matter. To sum up: 1) Yes I accept that Folk Clubs these days aren't places where one is likely to enjoy a heart night of (shall we say) Traditional Song and Ballad, much less be welcoming of those who wish to perform such material. And 2) My idea of the perfect Folk Club is one which is 100% Proof on the Trad Songs, Music Ballads and derivations / familiars thereof, the heartier the better, as, by Jove, such music is apt to facilitate.

S O'P (still not a purist, honest...)

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 12:41 PM

I stopped listening to folk in 1976-7 and got into it again 25 years later, so I basically slept through the Great Decline that people are talking about. But what's struck me recently, particularly from browsing the vinyl at the Oxfam shop in Manchester city centre, is how huge the scene was in the 70s, at least relative to what it's like now. An album by a local band called the Wassailers had a sleevenote describing them as "one of the hardest-working bands in the County Palatinate". I don't think there are enough active folk groups in Lancashire now to make that kind of comparison - it'd be like saying that silver is one of the best Olympic medals.

On balance I think I suspect Snail is closer to the truth of it than either Jim or Al, for two reasons. Firstly, I don't think that you can judge if a club is likely to get cliquey and stale, or that it won't be able to counter the appeal of the telly, from the style of music it offers. Where I live there's an anything-goes FC where standards are very variable indeed & self-composed stuff is the norm, and (as Jim would predict) it's pretty much driven the traddies out. However, it's still packed out week after week - and the traddies are fine, as we meet somewhere else on a different night. Which is my second reason for thinking that Snail is closer to the mark: in my experience things just aren't as bad as both Jim and Al are making out.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 01:18 PM

One other thing. I'm only dipping in and out of this thread - it's too long to catch up with properly - but I wanted to give a M3 T00 to Suibhne's comparison of POW with TBPWM. My first exposure to TBPWM was when I saw the lyrics written down; I was looking at it with my sister, and when she got to

"And as the ship drew into Circular Quay
I looked at the place where my legs used to be"

she read it out and we both burst out laughing. After that I heard it sung - poorly, well and by June Tabor - but I never lost that first reaction. Faced with songs like that, part of me is still the snotty kid at the back of the class thinking You're trying to impress me, and it's not working!.* (As opposed to my reaction to, say, June Tabor singing POW or Waly Waly, which is what the f___ was that and how the f___ did you do it?)

To this day there's a whole class of songs which I sit through with a frozen smile of polite appreciation for somebody taking the trouble to make a mildly pleasant noise - and then there are songs that stop me in my tracks even when they're done badly, and pin me to the wall when they're done well. What baffles me isn't so much that you can hear them both in one evening as that they're both called 'folk'. But there you go, it is what it is.

*This is what's wrong with the 'legs' line, IMO - it's not a million miles away from 'My Son John', but the understatement seems sleeve-tugging & sentimental where MSJ's is grimly comic.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 01:52 PM

What the hell - it was a long time ago.

The point was, you couldn't trust a traddie with a three song spot - not to demolish your audience to a place where they would never return.

I went tofolkclubs from the 60's . then i got married in 71 and I started taking my in laws round to folk clubs. An ordinary guy who'd worked as a miner and in the hosiery factories of the midlands plus his wife. Just guys who could entertain them - Murf, Brimstone, Lockran, pete Quinn, Jasper, Alex Campbell, ian Campbell's group.

They went explorong on their own and encountered Bellamy and Carthy, Bob Davernport and never darkened the door of a folk club again.

That's okay. these guys were challenging and confrontational in their style of presenting folk music.

But without a significant interface with humankind - whatever the 1954 committee says - in my book, it ain't folkmusic.

Now that makes me a purist of one sort. There are purists of the other sort - who say what is writ large on the temple wall is folkmusic, because it is - lots of terrific reasons. None of them good enough for me. But they satisfy some folk.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Howard Jones
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 02:27 PM

I think Big Al has put his finger on a crucial point. Was the role of folk clubs simply to be an aspect of light entertainment, a middle-class version of working men's club, or should it be a place for people who want to get into the music at a deeper level?

There's no reason why the latter shouldn't also be entertaining, but it's inevitably going to be more challenging and difficult. It's the same in any genre of music, and probabaly in most activities. Someone whose idea of jazz is Kenny Ball is going to struggle when taken to a jazz club playing modern jazz, just as someone whose idea of classical music is Classical FM will be challenged by John Cage.

It doesn't seem unreasonable to me for people with a deep interest in something, whether its folk music or model railways, to want somewhere they can pursue that interst. However its inevitable that a version which is more accessible will have a wider appeal, which can very easily crowd out the minority specialists - the purists if you like.

Whether that was responsible for the initial decline is debateable. As Brian pointed out, once the rot set in the decline affected both types of club. I suspect it was largely due to the ageing folk club population having less time and money to spare due to family and professional commitments (I know that's what reduced my folk club attendance). When you're left to draw both audiences and performers from a much-diminished pool it is more likely that the format with the widest appeal will win out, leaving the specialists/purists with nowhere to go.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Steamin' Willie
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 02:29 PM

Sorry John P I fail to see your point.

If you care to read the many entries on this thread you might notice that people are defining folk in order to define purist. I assume there must be purists amongst stamp collectors and bridge club members but the usual subjects keep slogging away with their definitions of folk yet again. The 1954 nonsense is cited on the basis that there are precious few others, or I suspect because if is about working people having chips on their collective shoulder.

That's why I mentioned listening to an abstract music form whilst not exactly fitting the stereotype. I find it somewhat pathetic that when I write and perform a song about having a hard on for somebody (or love song as it is referred to) those folk club organisers who know me introduce me as an ex miner in order to give some weird credentials to my ability to sing, play guitar and get lovers balls over an imaginary woman.

You see in my mind purists do exist. Their linking music to situation in order to make if pure shows them for what they are. Hence the demise of clubs.

I have played in, got pissed in and enjoyed being in upstairs rooms of pubs and under canvas at festivals with good mates and had the time of my life for many years. Then somebody tells me this 'folk' I have been participating in isn't really folk at all.

Yes it is.

Ruddy purists.

Middle of the night here, just got my 3 dongle roaming so if I can't get to blessed sleep your attempts to get me to shut up may be in vain. I know the point Joe Offer shakes his head at and I for one haven't reached it yet. At least I try to address the thread.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 04:03 PM

At this point we come to a parting of the ways; take your pick, otherwise the two appoahes don't seem to be able to co-exist. This results in partition, which has already happened, long ago (imagine anyone liking Jasper Carrot's MOR comedic fluff to dig the chthonic depths of Peter Bellamy; it's rather like expecting people who like Mrs Mills to listen to Cecil Taylor) hence these occasional ceremonial border skirmishes on Mudcat. Weird thing is that all this might co-exists at all, but it does, respectfully on my part too; I've got lots of musical pals who do all shades of Folk from Wacky Folk 'n' Fluff MOR to Deep Macrame Owl Demonic Drones. But then I've got lots of other musical pals too, from Early Music Professionals, to Free Jazzers, to Modern Classical Musos, to ageing Metal Heads, to DJs, Drum and Bass crews, and Psychedelic Stoners, to Japanese sound artists and Circus drummers. Crucially, we dig; with much joy and much respect.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: The Sandman
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 05:26 PM

When you're left to draw both audiences and performers from a much-diminished pool it is more likely that the format with the widest appeal will win out, leaving the specialists/purists with nowhere to go.
incorrect, it will be clubs, where clubs are clubs and people socialise and where people make their own entertainment, where guests are not booked every week, where singers are so plentiful,
That guests are not wanted, in some ways this is good, in one way it is not, GUEST SINGERS HELP TO RAISE STANDARDS, yet before the revival, this was how it was, people made their own entertainment

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 05:35 PM

imagine anyone liking Jasper Carrot's MOR comedic fluff to dig the chthonic depths of Peter Bellamy

Well, yes and no. Imagine anyone who liked Tony Capstick's gags about strippers and Irishmen, and also liked Tony Capstick's precise and pitiless readings of "The Scarecrow" and "Red Wine Promises". Personally I go very much for one and not the other, but there was an audience for both on the same night, for a while back there - you can hear the applause. (I don't think Does a turn is available anywhere anyhow, but it should and could be.)

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: John P
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 05:49 PM

Steamin' Willie, my point, which I made very clear, is that you were complaining about being told that you shouldn't enjoy the music you enjoy. Here's your quote again, for you to contemplate: . . .wondering if I am allowed to enjoy it because some prat keeps saying folk is about . . .

I'm not saying that purists don't exist. I'm saying that the idea that anyone gives a damn about what you enjoy listening to exists only in your head. I'm saying that making that kind of comment indicates that you don't get what we're talking about and that you are setting up a straw man so you can have something to bitch about. Also, calling someone a prat because they define the word "folk" differently than you do is uncalled for.

I'm also not trying to get you to shut up (another conversation that's only taking place in your head?). I'm trying to get you to talk about what's actually being talked about. The fact that someone disagrees with you about the definition of folk music doesn't mean anything except that someone disagrees with you about the definition of folk music. One of the big reasons that discussions about the nature of folk music often turn nasty is that people like you apparently believe that people who disagree with you are trying to control you in some way.

While not a purist in any pure sense of the word, I regret that singer-songwriters refer to their music as folk. I understand, however, that the world has moved on and that "folk" now refers to multiple genres of music and is therefore less useful as a descriptor than it used to be. I switched to "traditional folk" for a long time, but found that this caused people to think I'm a traditionalist, which I'm not. Also, I've heard young songwriters talk about enjoying "traditional folk, like Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell" (!!). I've started using "ethnic folk" when I have to give a description of what I do because it separates it adequately from the generalized folk label but doesn't carry as much connotation of me being some kind of hide-bound traditionalist.

Please continue to enjoy whatever music you enjoy!

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 06:08 PM

Just as there were plenty of people doing non-trad folk back in the day, so there are now. Its just that they don't play in folk clubs and they don't tend to feel the need to tell jokes or present as all-round light entertainers. The modern day equivalent of those folk-lite groups who appeared on Pebble Mill at One and TV Variety shows don't exist anymore, at least not unless they are over 50 and still doing the rounds. But there are plenty of people outside of the folk club scene putting on live music events where the music has a very folkish vibe. You won't hear many covers, sixties or otherwise (though you may here the odd traditional song) and the bands and artists won't be trying to please all of the people all of the time (still less someone's mother-in-law who got dragged along) but you will hear some excellent new music.

Lots of things have changed. Less folk clubs, less working men's clubs, no Sunday Night at the London Palladium or Wheeltappers and Shunters. As a kid I always thought that sort of stuff was aimed at my mum and dad's generation anyway - and a lot of this stuff is generational. Nowadays, if you want to do covers, you'll go to an open mic night or find that kind of folk club - or you'll get serious and form a tribute band. If you want to do your own songs, you do what people have always done - get out there and play and hope you find your audience. It you want to do trad, you go to your local singaround and do it for fun or you take your chances with everyone else. The art centre gigs and festival spots don't come on a plate and there are increasing numbers of people who include trad material in their sets who rarely set foot in a folk club.

Back on topic, I reckon The Snail hit the nail on the head earlier. Things move on. Things change.

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.

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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - 05:59 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: 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: 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: 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: 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 - 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: 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: 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: 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: 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,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: 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: 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: 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 - 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.