Help needed for a blog series

Subject: Help needed for a blog series
From: ranger1
Date: 31 Jan 13 - 02:52 PM

I blog on a video gaming website and a bunch of us decided to dedicate one day a week to a different music genre, mostly to share music that we like with others. I went with Folk Music Friday, I figure a few younger folkie fans can only be a good thing. Anyway, I have some ideas about what I want to do with different entries, but I may need some help finding videos on Youtube. I figured I'd start with the folk music revival in the 60s, some Clancy Brothers, some Pete Seeger, some Peter, Paul, and Mary, but I'd also like to include some artists who aren't so famous. Any suggestions would be welcome, as well as links so I can include them in the blog. Also, I'm not a fan of Pete Seeger (yes, I know, heresy!), so any suggestions about some songs I ought to include would also be helpful.

Thanks in advance!

Subject: RE: Help needed for a blog series
From: wysiwyg
Date: 31 Jan 13 - 04:28 PM

Ranger1, please remember to include African American Spirituals (and work songs) in your blog. Mahalia Jackson, Harry Belafonte are easy... and there are other links in the Spirituals permathread....

A couple others:

Bessie Jones & The Georgia Sea Island Singers - Daniel in the ...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wDUWVO_6_A
Recorded by Alan Lomax on May 5, 1960 on St. Simons Island, GA as part of his Southern Journeys ...

Bessie Jones & the Georgia Sea Island Singers: Sink 'Em Low (1959 ...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiRetIBwKu4
Bessie Jones leads a work song she first heard sung by a road-crew chain gang in Georgia in the nineteen ...

~Susan

Subject: RE: Help needed for a blog series
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 31 Jan 13 - 04:42 PM

My kids and a bunch of their friends, plus many of the younger librarians at work, are into games and have for a long time realized that the music and the art in games are to be taken seriously.

Are you sharing various sorts of non-game music with a group of gamers, or are you hoping to share game music with others who tend not to be into the gaming community? (Like me - I always enjoyed hearing the music on their games but I've never sat and played any of them.)

SRS

Subject: RE: Help needed for a blog series
From: ranger1
Date: 31 Jan 13 - 04:49 PM

SRS, I'm looking to share non-game music with gamers. And Susan, I'd planned on including gospel, work songs, etc, but not until a later blog entry.

Subject: RE: Help needed for a blog series
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 31 Jan 13 - 04:52 PM

I hope, while you're thinking of it, that you might suggest some great game music to the rest of us neophytes. More and more of it is making it into mainstream venues.

SRS

Subject: RE: Help needed for a blog series
From: ranger1
Date: 31 Jan 13 - 05:08 PM

SRS - check out the soundtrack for the game "Journey", composed by Austin Wintory. It is one of the few game soundtracks I have ever wanted to purchase just for the music alone.

Subject: RE: Help needed for a blog series
From: ranger1
Date: 31 Jan 13 - 05:36 PM

Journey Soundtrack

Subject: RE: Help needed for a blog series
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 31 Jan 13 - 05:42 PM

Suggestions that may be questionable in the eyes of some (purists?) would be Burl Ives who "popularized" quite a few overplayed well known folk songs, at least in the US.

Also a little off the mainstream, Marais & Miranda achieved a degree of popular recognition for some songs with a degree of "faux international" appeal in the late 50s(?).

I'm not sure either of these would be worth specific mention/discussion, but the songs they sang might be source material for figuring out what songs might have been at least transient fads the general population might recognize as "folk."

Most of Ives' repertoire pretty much mirrors what was in typical midwestern US grade school "music" books in the 40s-50s, while M & M were perhaps a little closer to what the brownies/girl scouts might have thought folkish 3 or 4 decades back. (The cub scouts I knew then didn't sing all that much. Burping rude words was about their limit.)

In the US, the idea of "folk" doesn't extend back much beyond the late 1700s for most people, even if some lore was "inherited" into the traditions from earlier origins elsewhere, so there likely would be some difference in approach for that audience than for others with longer roots. It may or may not be significant to recognize this difference(?), depending on how broad your audience is.

John

Subject: RE: Help needed for a blog series
From: ranger1
Date: 31 Jan 13 - 05:51 PM

My audience is mostly under 30 and pretty international. I'm not looking to do a thesis, just introduce some people who don't know much about folk music to some folk music. And I'm not getting into a discussion on what is or isn't folk music, lol. I want them to find something they like, not scare them away!

Subject: RE: Help needed for a blog series
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 31 Jan 13 - 06:35 PM

The "under 30" crowd may think "folk" is what Phoebe Buffay (played by Lisa Kudrow) on the US TV show "Friends" pretends to do. Supposedly a "self taught musician" she fancies herself a folkie, a.la. Baez.

Quite a hurdle to overcome.

My sympathies if you run into that!

John

Subject: RE: Help needed for a blog series
From: bobad
Date: 31 Jan 13 - 06:45 PM

Check out Patrick Sky on YouTube.

Subject: RE: Help needed for a blog series
From: ranger1
Date: 31 Jan 13 - 06:53 PM

Thanks, bobad! JIK, the under 30 set is too young for Friends, so I think I'm safe.

Subject: RE: Help needed for a blog series
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 31 Jan 13 - 07:07 PM

I had to look up the show. I think I saw the "singer" once by accident, and wondered why anyone would watch the show; but it's supposed to be one of the top rated ones recently. Looks like a soaper to me, just at a different time slot.

I'm pretty sure I don't know anyone who would admit that they watch it.

John

Subject: RE: Help needed for a blog series
From: ranger1
Date: 31 Jan 13 - 07:11 PM

I used to like it, the first couple of seasons were pretty funny. But Phoebe as folksinger was a running joke on the show, she was never meant to be taken seriously.

Subject: RE: Help needed for a blog series
From: ranger1
Date: 01 Feb 13 - 08:11 PM

Susan, SRS, and Bobad: Thank you for the help and support. The first installment went up this AM and over 150 people have read it so far. Many of whom had never heard of Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Phil Ochs, and the other youtube vids I put up. I have them asking questions about the musicians and singers I included and asking for more. This was what I'd hoped to achieve.

As for the rest of you, I'm sorry I bothered asking for your help in getting younger people interested in folk music; it's kind of obvious to me that a lot of you just don't care if the music dies with you. You ask where the young folkies are, but I don't think you really care. I pointed a very talented young singer (16 years old) who loves old ballads to this site, and she told me later that she tried getting involved in a couple of threads, but didn't appreciate the condescension and general snarkiness that she encountered. You might want to think about that for a few minutes - what happens to the music when you're gone if you've driven the young ones away?

Subject: RE: Help needed for a blog series
From: Beer
Date: 01 Feb 13 - 08:36 PM

Well said ranger.
BTW, Gordon Lightfoot should be in your blog. And a young one from the Chicago area (I think.) "Joe Pug". He is on you-tube.
Good suggestion Bobad. Love Patrick.
Adrien

Subject: RE: Help needed for a blog series
From: ranger1
Date: 01 Feb 13 - 09:34 PM

Oh, and JohnInKansas, I didn't mean to tar you with the same brush. Thanks for your help.

Subject: RE: Help needed for a blog series
From: katlaughing
Date: 01 Feb 13 - 11:47 PM

I don't know if anyone has thought of these folks:

Jean Ritchie, Art Thieme, John Hartford, Carolyn and Sandy Paton, Loretta, Frank Hamilton. I know some started before the 60s but they were there, AFAIK.