Do purists really exist?

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 29 Jun 11 - 05:52 AM

Related, almost. Rachel did this guitar thing the other day that reminded me of Tony (TS) McPhee, so I played her Earth Shanty on You Tube and she had to switch it off because I was blubbing like a baby! That's heart, soul, sentiment, landscape and just plain beautiful too... Even the 2 minute mellotron intro!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymbzfOOx8AA

I hope The Unthanks will have it as their by-now obligatory Prog Cover on the next album, then people will start singing it in Folk Clubs, as someone did recently with Sea Song, having never even heard of Robert Wyatt, let alone the mastery of Rock Bottom or the version from the 1974 TRDL concert, which is also something I can't listen to for cracking up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66obirsT8hI

Christ, Dave Stewart's solo is just so - er - pure! Ah, sweet nostalgia... but you can't write Folk Songs about Prog Rock organ solos - or can you? Only write about that which moves you... like Sid (?) from Wigan who sings this amazing thing which he introduces as not a rock 'n' roll song, but a folk song about rock 'n' roll...

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: glueman
Date: 29 Jun 11 - 06:05 AM

A purist is anyone who sets out to annoy someone. A traditionalist is someone who does it accidentally. A folkie is someone who doesn't notice.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: theleveller
Date: 29 Jun 11 - 06:20 AM

Bloody 'ell, I've got people agreeing with me – must be losing my touch!

But seriously (folks) - I think the comments above underline why people get so heated in discussions like these – it's the intense personal relationship that we have with "our" music, whether we're listening or performing, defending or condemning it. You can't define that relationship, classify it or put in any box that didn't have a very curious shape (and even then you'd never get the lid on). It just IS (isn't it?).

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Steamin fluids etc
Date: 29 Jun 11 - 07:05 AM

Ah, but the art of trying to entertain is to play to the crowd. So the accusation that I may do what I like and if you don't like it stuff you, is not a description I would be comfortable with.

As you ask, respecting others' views is part of the tapestry so a club that is known for liking traditional rather than "contemporary" isn't going to get somebody like me singing a song I wrote last week just to wind them up. Or I take it you feel I might? That's what I mean by you looking for monsters under the bed.

Consistency and logic are difficult to articulate when the issue is how they are perceived.

Mind you, you are right to question one thing, even if you are questioning your perception rather than something I or others wrote. I am not pissed off at purists, I am pissed off at hearing purism as a putdown to people who don't exhibit their view of what "folk" is. Even somebody with your rudimentary grasp (as you portray it, I'm not insulting for the sake of it) should be able to spot the difference. The problem here is that if you care about an aspect of what we call folk, you feel others are calling you purist as an insult. Methinks we are talking two different uses of the word purist here. But we know that, some people, me included, just like to argue the toss.

I still say folk cannot be defined because any definition I have ever looked at doesn't include an aspect that is covered by another definition. I stand my my point.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: theleveller
Date: 29 Jun 11 - 07:47 AM

Blimey, folk music as entertainment? That's a new one. I thought it was a matter of life and death (and shagging).

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: glueman
Date: 29 Jun 11 - 07:54 AM

It'll never catch on.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 29 Jun 11 - 08:53 AM

Folk might be about life, death and shagging - unlike rock 'n' roll (and Jazz) which is life, death and shagging. Folkies are just too polite, though one of the Colpitts Regulars (and a very fine singer of aforementioned Harry Robertson songs & photographer par excellance) used to publicly tell everyone of our mutual acquaintance that he hated me. Why he hated me I never found out. He would be very obvious about handing everyone personal invites to his parties - and be just as obvious about not giving me one. Weird. As an under-graduate Rachel was a particular favourite of his and we still have one of his signed posters on the wall. Indeed, we were even considering paying him good money to use one of his photographs for the cover of our forthcoming album, but then we found a better image - more suitable anyway, not better, because his photographs of non-human subjects are about as perfect as you can get. I tell you, not much shit goes down in Folk Clubs, but when it does it's of a very fine quality! He wasn't a Purist though, far from it; a master of traditional song, he was also uber-ambassador for one of the North-East's numerous song-writing talents whose songs he'd sing to perfection along with the Harry Robertsons and all manner of other stuff. Strange times. Maybe I should write a song about him?

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 29 Jun 11 - 09:12 AM

Ah, but the art of trying to entertain is to play to the crowd. So the accusation that I may do what I like and if you don't like it stuff you, is not a description I would be comfortable with.

When I go a classical recital I see an ensemble playing music and I'm in the audience listening intently. When I've done such recitals myself, it's pure heaven. Naturally, I expect the same decorum at a folk club - ideally I'd like to see performers dispense with the chat altogether, saving a brief mutter regarding provenance, where applicable, but even then you could dispense with too much detail. Usually you have to wade through so much comedic 'audience engagement' before e'er a song is sung - and some performers will happily preface a 3 minute song with twenty minutes of jokes. Not my idea of fun at all. Shut up and just sing, if you see what I mean. Stagecraft is forgetting there's an aufience there and singing as naturally as you would in the bath.

I once saw Robin Williamson do an unbroken set of 50 minutes segueing from one song to the next without stopping the once. Amazingly, his guitar stayed in tune throughout... Spell binding!

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Musket
Date: 29 Jun 11 - 01:25 PM

I must admit, a singer who spends a bit of time telling us about the provenance of a song gets my vote, and then I also see how you might enjoy a singer just getting on with it. If you are in a club that is stuffed to the rafters with regular folk type dudes, they may not need reminding of the background to Sir Patrick Spens / Spense / Spence. But conversely, never assume your audience.   I reckon you are describing enjoying it as entertainment and that, as leveller attests, will never do...

In a similar manner, your take on classical recitals. There are some types of music that a person may enjoy listening to but not perhaps performing and vice versa. I have always said that jazz is not really a spectator sport, and when I played violin classically as a youth, I loved the string quartet I was part of for a short time, but found the college orchestra a chore rather than a pleasure. (Just had a thought, imagine somebody spending time introducing Wagner's Ring Cycle????)

I'm out tonight in a local club. Just for the hell of it, I will find a song about, love, a song about death and a song about shagging. If there isn't time for three, I'll just trot out Matty Groves anyway...

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: The Sandman
Date: 29 Jun 11 - 01:40 PM

why not matty groves, but better still thomas the rhymer

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 29 Jun 11 - 01:56 PM

[Insert Knight] wooed the brown girl but [insert lady] had the land. 40 minutes and 129 verses later all 3 and the unborn child were dead.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Jim Knowledge
Date: 29 Jun 11 - 03:27 PM

I `ad one of them purists in my cab the other day; beard, pipe, leather covered tankard and a well thumbed folder.
We were doing a gig that night at the "`arrow Inn" and I was just going over the words of "`enry, My Son".
`e said, "`ere Jim, you`ve got loads of words wrong there."
I said, "Says `oo?"
`e Sa

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Jim Knowledge
Date: 29 Jun 11 - 03:32 PM

I beg your pardon, I `it the wrong button.

I said, "Says `oo?"
`e said, "That Cecil Sharp, that`s `oo."
I said, "You must `ave good `earing. `es been dead for years!!"

Whaddam I Like??

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Goose Gander
Date: 30 Jun 11 - 01:03 AM

Based upon some of the posts above, I would say that a purist is a species of Abominable Strawman designated to Native Folk Contexts in the British Isles.

I'm a trap purist; I only use snap traps baited with peanut butter.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 30 Jun 11 - 08:58 AM

I must admit it's not only English Folk Purists who object to my use of the Turkish Black Sea Fiddle (Karadeniz Kemence) to accompany Traditional English Songs - certain of the comments on my YouTube film of Long Lankin come from Turkish people, which I find a good deal easier to take somehow...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVzsWVuDMm0

Hey - almost 11,000 hits on there! Not bad - in 4 years!

Anyway Read the comments though - I leave them all on - the good and the bad. I'm Sabrina Eden too by the way...

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: glueman
Date: 30 Jun 11 - 09:22 AM

A strawman is any caricature of a position that's too close to the actually position for comfort.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Goose Gander
Date: 30 Jun 11 - 11:38 AM

Next you'll tell me that Yeti doesn't exist.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: glueman
Date: 30 Jun 11 - 05:21 PM

There are a number of relic hominids on this forum alone.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 30 Jun 11 - 06:48 PM

Oh FFS GG, get real, no it isn't.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Goose Gander
Date: 01 Jul 11 - 12:13 AM

Richard Bridge suffers from irony deficiency.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Goose Gander
Date: 01 Jul 11 - 12:21 AM

But seriously, for a 'purist' to exist, then pure forms must exist. They do not, no more than Plato's Republic exists in any form beyond the written word. I suppose what some folks call a purist is someone who prefers older forms of any given art form. Which might make me a purist, except I play old ballads on a ukulele, not exactly traditional. I go to the older recordings for material, but I can't flatter myself that I'm capable of reproducing those sounds, so I do it my own way. So I'm a pure bastardizer, or maybe I've just had too much beer.

Good night, folks.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 01 Jul 11 - 05:07 AM

I can't flatter myself that I'm capable of reproducing those sounds,

Music is never a matter of reproduction, and always one of interpretation. Even the recreation of classic arrangements exist in the area of specific hommage, but one thing cannot possibly be another, not yet carry the same weight or significance, no matter how exacting. Elvis Impersonators take note. This Stars in Your Eyes approach to folk, however, is not uncommon, nor yet is it entirely without value, for tonight, Matthew, I'm going to be Shirley Collins singing Glenlogie...

*

Another aspect of Purism is Folk Faith and Folk Belief. In another thread we are being invited to believe that following his untimely death in 1695, certain aspects of the music of Henry Purcell were Folk Processed. The term exists as a Folk / Mudcat Truism - an article of a particular faith that underwrites the Reliosity of Folk, much as a Roman Catholic accepts the reality Transubstantiation. But to the inquisitive outsider both Transubstantiation and the Folk Process must (after long years of careful deliberation, about 35 in all) amount to what the Good Doctor would call ineffable twaddle*. Indeed, the very belief in Folk as being distinct in essence from any other type of music - popular or otherwise - is a very particular Purism which only confirms that religiosity. Likewise a wafer is only ever a wafer, and crap red wine is only ever crap red wine...   

And Folk is only ever a particular style of music - any one of dozens of idiomatic genres which have become the aesthetic signifiers of The Colonial Revival these past 60 years or so. There is nothing pure about any of it, and none of it operates in a way that is any different from other type of music. And yet the religiosity of Folkies persists, ad infinitum, and for any number of reasons...

Folk says: Give me your tired, your Pure, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door

The Folkie says: But I, being Pure, have only my dreams. I have spread my dreams under your feet; tread softly, because you tread on my dreams..

S O'P (with a wink and a smile after drinking more beer last night** than was strictly necessary...)

* Watson that is, upon reading Holmes' article on the science of deduction in A Study in Scarlet; the irony being that Holmes proceeds to trounce him thoroughly. Myself, I still await a satisfactory explanation of The Folk Process that isn't agenda driven fiction, then I will consider myself well & truly trounced.

** The Golden Dream - A Celebration of Fleetwood's 175th Anniversary in words, pictures and folk music although, tellingly perhaps, our esteemed compere introduced it is The Golden Dawn... Anyway, we were packing them in to the ball-room of the North Euston - and we're doing it again tonight. Fylde Goers might look forward to the show on the Sunday...

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Brian Peters
Date: 01 Jul 11 - 06:49 AM

"Another aspect of Purism is Folk Faith and Folk Belief. In another thread we are being invited to believe that following his untimely death in 1695, certain aspects of the music of Henry Purcell were Folk Processed. The term exists as a Folk / Mudcat Truism - but to the inquisitive outsider [amounts to] ineffable twaddle."

We've been here before of course, Suibhne, but that doesn't make response unnecessary. When I look through dozens of collected variants of an old ballad or song, differing subtly or spectacularly in lyric or melody, I'm staring 'folk process' right in the face. It's true that re-interpretation exists in many forms of music, but widespread dissemination by oral transmission over decades and centuries allows far more fluidity than exists for music defined by a score or a sound recording. I don't know about 'purism', but to deny that kind of process sounds a lot like flat-earth-ism to me.

The Purcell example is slightly different, not least because many village musicians of 200 years ago were musically literate. However, some insight into the absorption of classical music into the repertoire of village musicians can be found in the case of 'Michael Turner's Waltz', derived as it was from Mozart's German Dance #2. Whilst acknowledging that its current popularity in the folk canon owes much to The Sussex Tunebook, Malcolm Douglas wrote in 2005 that "The MS version is a little different, but not much; it looks as if Turner heard it at the local Assembly Rooms or some such, went home and wrote it out from memory; accidentally incorporating a little of the second violin part into the melody line."

Vic Gammon's interesting article on Turner includes the following:

"A musician such as Turner might well have been important in the process of tune dissemination. There are a number of ways a new tune might get into circulation among rural communities, but one that seems quite likely would be where a musician like Turner copied a tune from print and then played it in his community where natural musicians would pick it up."

Both writers are speculating about the details of the process, but again any study of village music manuscripts brings out the essential tension we find in folk music between continuity and evolution. The very tension, in fact, that's at the root of the arguments about stylistic purism of the kind that this thread set out to explore.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 01 Jul 11 - 08:25 AM

Hardly flat-earthism, Brian; indeed, not recognising that such processes are an integral aspect of all music and the very palpable consequence of what musicians do as a matter of course might well be. Is Mozart's famous memory feat regarding the Allegri Miserere part of the folk process I wonder? For sure, one can't accept that it remained in any way unchanged in the process - & the removal, by whatever means, of music from one context to another seems an essential part of what is being suggested here. Things change and all things are the consequence of change; nothing exists that remains unchanged. I suppose it's all a matter of detail, or else willingness to accept the fluidity in which all things exist; or even the implication that the opposite must somehow also be true - that there exists in this universe of chaotic flux at least something that remains permanent!

The widespread nature and diversity of the old songs evidences human creativity in an oral-culture; so what? The making, hearing and remaking of songs is the very waters of music to a greater or lesser extent. Musicologists might speak of such fluidities and traditions in the interpretation of Chopin; Jim Carroll has said on various occasions that especially skilled ballad singers could free-style such stuff on the spot. Indeed, in other Traditions, they do - one hears of bardic competitions in Croatia where they have needles between their lips to limit their vocabulary - one bi-labial slip and they're pierced! Certainly in comparing various old field-recordings one gets the feeling that this fluidity existed not just from one version of a song to the next, but from one singing of a song to the next. Maybe our understanding of this Folk Process doesn't go far enough, or maybe it only works in comparison; like Flan O'Brien's De Selby examining a reel of film frame by frame and dismissing cimematography as tedious. What is surprising to Folkies, is par for the course to Jazz buffs, who just accept it.

All things are the consequence of what proceeded it; nothing comes out of nowhere, and all things must change, or pass, and even those rare songs (folk or otherwise) we might find in single versions had to come from somewhere. Whilst examining the Misericords in Bristol Cathedral the other week I found myself looking at a medieval carving of a story I'd hitherto only been familiar with in the 19th century collections of eventyr of Asbjorsen and Moe (I see it's also in Mike Harding's Little Book of Misericords as a vignette on P. 44) - a variant of anyway, because all things are but variants and analogues of something else.      

And all this, mark you, in the unchanging reactionary and ultra conservative realms of The Colonial Folk Revival in which I might accept the notion that some things might as well be written in stone but out here in the real world those processes are part and parcel of the very thing we think of as being Music, or life, or anything else for that matter. I might conclude that it's only to the Folk Religious that The Folk Process appears so remarkable, because they, like De Selby, refuse to see the wider picture that Folk is, in essence, no different from another other music, all of which exist in a myriad diversity, and all of which have their Traditions, Processes, Conventions and (perhaps, God forbid) their Priestly Purists too.

*

Remember Back Door? I (like many) hold them in great esteem as being one of the true greats of English Music; this tight little trio who drew on the traditions of Jazz, Blues, R & B etc. to make a music quite like no other, not least for their fondness for minimal durations and virtuosic economies. It's Popular Music in the classic sense - something Anthony Braxton might call restructuralist; but even in the split-second tightness of a Back Door performance I well recall smiling at the variations, nuances and spontaneous references that peppered their songs*. Indeed, in 2003 they returned to the studio and made an album largely comprised of new recordings of their classic repertoire. This has pride of place on my CD shelves alongside the old (as well as the variant BBC sessions from the early 1970s issued by HUX) to stand as vivid testimony to musical fluidity and creative tradition. Likewise, when the Clemencic Consort re-recorded their landmark 1976 Carmina Burana originals in 2008. At the other end of the musical spectrum I was listening recently to an early jam by Yes essaying an embryonic Siberian Khatru, and even Saint Hillage running his power-trio to their limits in an embryonic Salmon Song. Embryonic in retrospect that is; now they stand as classics in their own right - as documents of musical process which is part of the culture of popular music & continues to be so with sampling, remixing and increased emphasis on using the medium of recording to enhance the very nature of musical fluidity.

Shame that such things are rare on Folk album re-issues though: no extras on the new OA&T and MIOG CDs, but maybe that speaks volumes too??

S O'P - Heliocentric to the bitter end!

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 01 Jul 11 - 08:35 AM

PS

* Songs in the Jazz sense that is; only very rarely did Colin Hodgkinson actually sing in a Back Door performance...

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 01 Jul 11 - 09:09 AM

And an udder thing, not wishing to over-egg this, but can the performance of any song said to remain the same even for the duration of its performance? Something may only exist in the moment, after which it ceases to be, and we're making choices all of ther time, even whilst we're singing. Now, if this Multiverse of infinite realities is true, then who can speculate on the amount of variations we might spawn even as we interpret the phrasing of a single line, let alone allowing for the random factors...

Now that's what I call a Folk Process!

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: theleveller
Date: 01 Jul 11 - 09:51 AM

That's not a Folk Process, that's entropy!

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 01 Jul 11 - 10:27 AM

Musical process isn't entropy; despite it's essential fluidity, its prime motivation is human genius without which there would be no music anyway. It's always a matter of creativity, of building, working, of taking something and making it one's own - be it a Purcell hornpipe or a Young Marble Giants song (we're currently working on The Man Amplifier for banjo & fiddle, purely for personal pleasure) or else making something new, but never out of nothing, because Tradition resides in the genre of the thing, and never is anything entirely new. Precedence is always part of due process & it's laughable when anyone things they're doing anything new with any form of music, much less thinking that fusing Zydeco with Chris Spedding (was that right Brian? I think it was you mentioned that...) is breaking new ground.

One of my Folk Passions is breaking old ground, so much of which just comes natural anyway; like baking bread and roasting chickens in the fine old style. For sure, I'm no purist in this, but in a world of constant flux, I feel it's healthy to remain suspicious of Faux Progress. It's like moving into an old Victorian house and getting rid of all the modernisations of the 60s, 70s, 80s & 90s - bricking up the uniquitous arch, knowing that the next people will just knock it through again, which is, of course, entirely up to them. In my younger, healthier days, I'd like nothing finer to spend a day laying a hedge. Even now I might look at some recent efforts at hedgelaying and shudder, but hey, that's just me; no perfectionist either mind, just when it comes to Craft, and Music, it takes more than just a bill-hook or an old concertina. There's tradition right there...

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: theleveller
Date: 01 Jul 11 - 11:45 AM

You're right, of course, Suibhne, "entropy" was my little joke - "continuity" would have been better. To take your house restoration analogy - I've spent the last 9 years restoring a 1847 station house. When I took the wallpaper off the bedroom wall, underneath were signatures of some of the Station Masters who'd lived there, going back to the 1880s. So each new Station Master had moved in, changed the wallpaper and signed the wall so the next one would know he'd been there. The dilemma was, not being a Station Master, should I sign as well? Well, I did - and then, after putting back a cast-iron fireplace, put up one of Willam Morris's more restrained designs.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 01 Jul 11 - 01:02 PM

Classic post, theleveller - I'm feeling a tad green right now, but although we always buy old houses we never live in any of them long enough to do too much, although thanks to Negative Equity we've been here for three years now - and I still haven't opened up the old kitchen chimney for our wee stove. Hell, there are still boxes unpacked off when we moved the time before last!

Anyway, back to this Folk Process, the evidences that Brian presents there aren't in the least bit surprising; what would be surprising if two songs were found in the Oral Tradition that were exactly the same, albeit otherwise completely independent. Now that would be remarkable! But it isn't remarkable at all - it's just as we'd expect it to be.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 01 Jul 11 - 01:14 PM

But it is empirical evidence that the folk process did occur.

And no, folk music is not defined by style.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 01 Jul 11 - 06:43 PM

Folk Music was defined initially by the academics who peceived it in the first place in a grand act of cultural condescension - although one would hope they'd be a bit more cautious these days with respect of defining anything, much less condescending to do so. Folk Music can only ever defined by idiom, genre & style; or rather idioms, genres & styles - an innumerable plethora of the word o'er, though in The Colonial Revival it's mostly defined by context and the people who love it and play it. The 1954 Definition is of marginally less use than the 1954 Dandy Book, a copy of which held my words tonight in the Feetwood 175 Show of Folk Songs, all of which were written & arranged by the people involved - so Style/s and Context, no horses, and plenty of folk character - and characters - and not one of them taken over by the community and left unchanged.

If I were a religious man, then I might be tempted to believe otherwise. But as I'm not, I must look at the empirical evidence at my disposal - thus do I conclude that all music is the consequence of all manner of traditions and processes, thus to call it The Folk Process - thus claiming it is somehow unique to Folk - is sorely mistaken. Unless all music is folk music after all...

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: ripov
Date: 01 Jul 11 - 07:45 PM

If folk music exists as a seperate body at all, surely it lives in the minds of "folk", and is the music, whether repeated from previous knowledge or spontaneously composed at the time, that "folk" want to sing or play. It cannot be defined from outside.
The fact that there may be traditional forms is really irrelevant to this, and if those forms are used in performance to others (as in folk clubs or other concert setting), then DURING THE PERFORMANCE that music ceases to be folk music, and becomes "art" music. (Thats why you rehearse)
And the fact that we are musicians doesn't give us the right to say what music "folk" should like. We just have to accept it, if it fits in with our scheme or not.
"Folk" love to sing their music at Karaoke sessions. Sorry!
If you have a guitar or fiddle they may ask YOU to play while they sing. But you had better know the songs folk like!
One of the oldest forms of entertainment is the recitation of poetry to a rhythmic musical background (Beowulf, Renard etc).
Currently this is called Rap.(I don't think much of the poems though)
None of this is to suggest that we shouln't keep playing the tunes we know and love, and have done for the last 5/10......./75 years. These are own personal folk tunes, even if Purcell wrote some of them.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,roderick warner
Date: 01 Jul 11 - 07:58 PM

Musicians do not, in my experience, tend to be purists...

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 01 Jul 11 - 09:48 PM

If folk music were a matter of style then there could not be folk music of different countries, for the styles in different countries differ. Thus if one is folk, the other is not.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Steamin' Willie
Date: 02 Jul 11 - 01:08 PM

There couldn't be jigs if reels exist either, and where protest singers fit in?

Why by country M'Unlearned friend? Surely beards, ethinc skirts and sanctimonious outlooks exist all over?

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: ripov
Date: 02 Jul 11 - 04:03 PM

I know where I'd like to fit some of them who sing their songs extraordinarily slowly! Why the devil didn't Dylan mark his stuff allegro?

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 02 Jul 11 - 06:14 PM

(I had this ready to post earlier today but Mudcat went down, so, after a diverse cultural day in Manchester - inclusing CDs of Alfred Deller Folk Songs, Caravan Live and the Fairfield Halls, the new Gillian Welch album and a few other oddments...)

*

No one's suggesting one Folk Music can possibly be another, just that, empirically, Folk Music is a heading for any number of styles of music - everything from the Transylvanian Dance House (calm down Goth Clubbers!) to the Northumbrian coal house (close that door on the way out, will you?). Like I say, Folk is a matter of different Idioms the word o'er and was, initially anyway, defined by academic outsiders. These days the considerations are a little different with everyone from The International Folk Music Council (now the International Council for Traditional Music) to Folk Roots (now fRoots) downplaying the Folk Factor owing to uncertainty of definition, or association, or both, or more besides, though it could well change as Folk regains credibility but not on account of Purism - on the contrary, more on account of Marling & Mumford et al!

*

I'd agree with what ripov says too; Folk Music in the context of The Colonial Revival has very little to do with its Popular (As In People) Roots, much less the music of The Folk today, but it is really is too early in the morning to stomach that particular can o' worms. I'm content that, these days, by and large, Folk Music is far from Popular (in both senses of the word) though I did smile when I heard Bellowhead booming through from the hi-fi of my clubbing non-folkie neighbours next door (although they were recently thrown out by their landlord for lowing the tone!). That said, I doubt they'd be any more inclined to become regulars at our local baby-boomer folk club, any more than buyers of the Fisherman's Friend CD, or any one those thousands sure to be enjoying The Wilsons at The Proms this year.

*

Is the Folk Mission an aspect of this Purism we hear about? Time and time again here on Mudcat (where the vast majority of the music discussed, fawned over and ignored is not, strictly speaking, Folk at all if we follow the letter o' my lady's law) we hear someone talking about Our Kind O' Music. It's a Religious thing, one of many Religious things about Folk which make me feel that it's a Religion (to misquote Laura Nyro - looks like music, feels like a religion...) with people feeling the need to Convert others to the Cause. I often say (only because it's true) that you have to walk many miles in the Real World before you meet a Folkie, which is fair enough, but you meet an awful lot of Folks, each of whom have their own unique experience of life, the universe, and everything, music included, which is bound to contain a little Folk, be it Riverdance, Celtic Woman, Fisherman's Friends...

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: bluesunsets
Date: 02 Jul 11 - 10:53 PM

As a twenty-something female and a relative newcomer to the traditional sea music scene (apologies to those of you who are English folkies; I'm from the other side of the pond.), I came to the realization long ago that I will never be a "purist singer/player" of my chosen folk niche. It's impossible, based off of my gender and the realization that, Jackaroes and other anomalies aside, the astounding majority of sailors aboard ships were male. As such, for me it's not so much about what is the "purist" version of the song (although I love looking at the many variants extant, both published and non-published), as what version works well for me as a performer and also as a listener.

I also was introduced to the folk music scene at The Gris in CT, which I've been told is a bit of a different atmosphere from the norm. On an average night in the summer especially, we're encouraged to sing loudly, spontaneously harmonize (some nights we're more successful than others), and various random people have been known to start up a chanty during the breaks in a fit of drunken recall. This has also led to instances of mis-hearing lyrics in the caterwaul of the background conversation that then have gotten into common in-jokes among segments of the regular population ("Crooked Dan" instead of "Crooked Jack" for instance).

That isn't to say that I don't have my biases and preferences about music, but as someone who migrated to Folk from the comparatively rigid Classical music world, one of the things that I love about the tradition is that unlike Classical music, which has been written down in increasingly rigid form from the Middle Ages on, any sheet music that you find for Folk generally acknowledges that it came from an oral tradition. So whereas when I play Mozart's Clarinet Concerto at an audition heaven forbid I don't do the cadenza from his Clarinet quartet (forgive me if I forget the exact origin; it's late here) in the second movement, if I decide to make up my own verses to "Blow the Man Down" the next time I'm at a singaround I probably would be applauded for it, or at the very least people would be familiar enough with the tune to sing the correct replies. Or maybe I want to sing the older tune to Walzing Matilda.... Didn't go over well in my General Music class as a music ed major in college, but I could see people appreciating it in the Folk world.

In short, folk is folk because people have a license to interpret and change it. I don't have to like your version, but it's arguably as legit as the Seeger or Lomax recording in the LoC records from 80 years ago. There's a place for both the new version and the version that tries to recreate as closely as possible that 80 year old recording.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 03 Jul 11 - 05:04 AM

There couldn't be jigs if reels exist either, and where protest singers fit in?

Why by country M'Unlearned friend?

Actually, some might take it further than by country and point to regional styles.

Jigs and reels exist in the traditional repertoires of several countries but can be played in national/ regional styles. One might for example be able to hear whether the same reel was played in a Scottish or Irish style.

I'm not sure that protest singers really fit in with this as there does seem to me to be a sort of universal protest song style.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 03 Jul 11 - 07:08 AM

(apologies to those of you who are English folkies; I'm from the other side of the pond.)

I now always refer to The Colonial Revival to emphasise that both it and the folk-song / ballad tradition that preceded it were phenonemons of the English Speaking world as a whole. One of my versions of The Debry Ram comes from Australia, and Bellamy was getting round to Henry Lawson; his setting of Glass on the Bar is a corker. But still you speak of the freedoms of The Tradition (!?) and the rigitidy of Classical Music; I know a lot of classical musicians who put forward the opposite argument most convincingly!

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 03 Jul 11 - 12:51 PM

Some purists exist, and can be found enjoying Wendy Arrowsmith' s "Annachie Gordon" on YouTube

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 03 Jul 11 - 01:10 PM

Jim.....!

You accuse people people of schoolyard taunts....you, the man who said earlier in the thread that in England we spent all our time in folk clubs scratching our bollocks!

Well all right we do scratch our bollocks, its traditional in our house. even the women do it. in fact some of them are quite good at scratching bollocks - though I've seen it in a floorspot - I've never seen anyone do a complete gig.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 03 Jul 11 - 09:59 PM

Blessed are the pure in heart - for they shall see God,

Not regularly, not on a one-to-one basis.......just a clear enough vision to feel they have the right to persecute the shit out of all human kind.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Jul 11 - 03:20 AM

"You accuse people people of schoolyard taunts...."
I pointed out that if you want to discuss other peoples' music, perhaps you might make some headway if you did so on the basis of fact and not by inventing non-existant entities like 'purists' to make your case, any more that I would choose equally dishonest and insulting terms terms like 'snigger snogwriters' or 'talking horse' to make mine.
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). Not a matter of "purism" - I couldn't find the music I liked and had been listening to for decades any more, so I restricted my visits to where I could, and continued to do so until even they disappeared.
In the end, the proof of the pudding.....
Can't get too involved in the discussion at present; I'm attending our annual traditional music summer school (now in its 39th year). Our one-street town is crammed with singers, musicians and enthusiasts who have come to play, sing, listen and learn.
All this week there will be classes, sessions, organised recitals, talks, topped off with a huge concert of some of the finest singers and musicians in Ireland. A growing percentage of the attendees will be youngsters who will take the music back to where they came from.
Hopefully they will end up with four or five regular weekly sessions in their home towns similar to the ones we enjoy here all the year round.
There has been a lot of whingeing, on this thread and others, about "not telling others what to do" - yet it is precisely those whingers who are doing exactly that by slagging others off for not liking the same things they do.
"Purists" my arseum; come back when the English scene is flourishing, when the clubs are drawing reasonably sized audiences, when the standard of playing and singing is rising, when youngsters are flocking to the music in their thousands and when you can turn your television and radio on and listen to programmes of traditional music and song most nights of the week.
Must go - music calls.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 04 Jul 11 - 03:54 AM

Well done Fluids - you have joined in in demonstrating that "Folk" cannot be defined by style.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: The Sandman
Date: 04 Jul 11 - 09:18 AM

with respect,Jim, the standard of the singers may be very good, but I bet they are all unaccompanied.
I like good unaccompanied singing, I also like good accompanied singing,Ilike you believe musiuc should be shown respect and listened to, that it should not be treated as wallpaper, but I would like to see on the IRISH singers clubs circuit a relaxation of the strict unaccompanied rule.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Brian Peters
Date: 04 Jul 11 - 09:56 AM

"The making, hearing and remaking of songs is the very waters of music to a greater or lesser extent. Musicologists might speak of such fluidities and traditions in the interpretation of Chopin"

When you can point me towards feral versions of Chopin Etudes co-existing happily and unselfconsciously in three or more different musical modes, or perhaps renditions of his Lieder with texts that are substantially different but still contrive to put across the same idea, then I might start to take this argument seriously. We are talking of a difference in kind here: music defined by the score evolves differently from that which is not.

"I might conclude that it's only to the Folk Religious that The Folk Process appears so remarkable"

Well, I adhere to no religion, and certainly not to this mythical 'Folk Religion' that you keep trying to persuade us is so widespread. But I must confess that when I listen to Phil Tanner's Henry Martin alongside Sam Larner's Lofty Tall Ship - so different, yet so clearly the same - or work my way through those 97 alternative tunes and texts for Two Sisters, then 'remarkable' is exactly the word that comes into my head.

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 04 Jul 11 - 10:35 AM

When you can point me towards feral versions of Chopin Etudes co-existing happily and unselfconsciously

What I can point you to is the fact that no two readings of Chopin are ever going to be exact and to the fact that each interpration is part of any number of traditions that have developed over the years be it in concert halls, academies, universities and record labels. The parameters (in the Folk Terms you mention) might not be so blantantly simplistic, but are still pretty feral when you get down to the details. You can see that much on Young musican of the Year.

then 'remarkable' is exactly the word that comes into my head.

I get the same vibe contrasting readings of Purcell Sonatas or Back Door performances, or classic Soft Machine bootlegs, or Hip-Hop mixes and remixes and samplings etc etc. I'd say it was par for the course myself, born from the simple fact that nothing can ever happen the same way twice - scored, oral or otherwise. Also - I've never seen two oak trees that were alike, much less two human beings; or even two grains of sand. If we look closely enough then all is uniqueness. It is for sure, a glorious thing, but hardly in any way, shape or form remarkable. Thing is, Folkies get exited over collected specimens - examples of taxidermy isolated from any context rather than things still living in their natural habitat. It's like a biologist trying to deduce the behaviour of the Dodo by examining imperfectly stuffed specimens in the back room of a museum. Even with recordings we're dealing with mere glimpses of the thing.

And, as for Folk Religion, see the recent Steamfolk thread which openly muses on a recent epiphany...

Subject: RE: Do purists really exist?
From: Brian Peters
Date: 04 Jul 11 - 12:26 PM

Nothing there to convince me, Suibhne. Holding a top C for five as opposed to four seconds could be classed as a 'different interpretation' by those interested in counting angels on pinheads, but I'm talking about a completely different class of variation. 1970s jazz-rockers reprising their own back catalogues don't hack it either.

"(in the Folk Terms you mention)"

Which were the 'Folk Terms'? And why the capitals?

"Folkies get exited over collected specimens"

More pejorative generalisations. I get excited about songs, about live performances, about recordings. None of them is a 'specimen' in my book.