Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Will Fly
Date: 25 Oct 13 - 04:50 AM

I've always felt that London is actually a set of villages, each with its own scene. When I lived there, I had a flat in Bayswater, used to walk down to Notting Hill and Portobello Road of a Saturday morning, had friends in Battersea, friends in Muswell Hill, friends in West Hampstead, friends in Putney, etc.

Each of these places had its own vibe, with its own character - and its own musical shape, - and anyone who's lived in London, or still lives there, will understand that. That vibe was created by the people who lived in the area. They made the music; they made the scene. The pubs and clubs were the spaces where the music could happen and - yes - much depended on a sympathetic landlord.

In my pub-playing days - and I still do the odd gig in one from time to time - the common saying was that a pub landlord had to take over the bar three times what the band were paid, just to break even. (I've never gone into the actual economics of that, but I can believe it's basically right given a landlord's overheads). So, he/she gets in music which pulls in the punters - whatever that music might be in the particular London "village" in which the pub is located. Those punters probably won't be tourists, and the music probably won't be traditional music.

All of which has very little to do with traditional music per se.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 25 Oct 13 - 05:01 AM

"Jeez! That's the f***ing Wild Rover"!
Happened to me in a singaround in Miltown a year ago
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 25 Oct 13 - 05:18 AM

(while at the same time wishing he'd turn down the rhetoric and stop banging on about being a socialist as if it was a bad thing).

The crucial thing with both Fakesong & The Imagined Village, is that neither author resorts to 'rhetoric' or 'banging on' - they simply give clear accounts of the social & cultural history of Folk which is pretty much self-evident anyway, I would have thought.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 25 Oct 13 - 05:44 AM

(I'm sorry - I'll post that again...)

(while at the same time wishing he'd turn down the rhetoric and stop banging on about being a socialist as if it was a bad thing)

The crucial thing with both Fakesong & The Imagined Village, is that neither author resorts to 'rhetoric' or 'banging on' - they simply give clear accounts of the social & cultural history of Folk which, I would have thought, is pretty much self-evident anyway. From the imperialistic paternalism of early folklorists to the middle-class middle-English hobbyists & apologists of today, Folk is a fabrication born of a disparity which rests at the very heart of our island's history both ancient and modern. Its appeal to intellectuals of the Left and Right is easy to figure, but its almost total rejection by the working class is a crucial factor in our understanding of its nature & purpose.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Brian Peters
Date: 25 Oct 13 - 06:37 AM

'Fakesong' presented a useful resume of the work of the 19th century ballad collectors as well as the Edwardians, and was no doubt a necessary corrective to the previously uncritical acceptance of the ideas of Sharp and the first Folk Revival. However, it's undeniably agenda-driven, to the point where a notion presented on one page as a possibility (i.e. speculation) is stated as proven fact a few pages later - the kind of logical jump, ironically, that Harker accuses Sharp of. I also remember with some amusement Harker's attempt to depict an unnamed 19th century community (which, after a bit of digging, turns out to be Stony Middleton) as some kind of suburb of Sheffield.

Though some of the late Mr. Bearman's wilder outbursts did him no favours, I've yet to find a rebuttal of his analysis of Harker's figures and textual claims regarding Sharp.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 25 Oct 13 - 06:39 AM

Sorry again : it's THE crucial factor... likewise it's pure white demographic. The only black face you see at a folk festival is on a morris dancer with feathers in his top hat. And that's a relatively recent morris fashion...

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 25 Oct 13 - 06:51 AM

The only black face you see at a folk festival is on a morris dancer with feathers in his top hat.

Never saw the late Johnny Silvo then?

DtG

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 25 Oct 13 - 06:57 AM

I'll say more when I've reacquainted myself with the actual books, but speaking as a Marxist I'd rather have patient, nit-picking scholarship from a grumpy Tory than a good story with the edges shaved off from someone whose politics I share - just as I'd rather have The Young Tradition singing it like it was than The Imagined Village doing Guardian-friendly rewrites. (A contemporary "Hard Times of Old England" with a verse against the Countryside Alliance? Really?)

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 25 Oct 13 - 07:03 AM

As ever I defer to your superior learning on the minutiae of this matter, Brian - (I'm a folk dilettante at best) - but the gist & soul of the thing is all present and correct. As I said earlier once I managed to track a copy of Fakesong down I was amazed how mild & straightforward it was - but it is an OU book after all!

Anyway, I'm in a cool mood - my new pills are working wonders (blood-pressure! Moi!) and I've just received a braw wee bundle from Jim stuffed with A L Lloyd radio programmes, so I'm battening down the hatches as winter (supposedly) brews without with a vengeance. And me with a braw new bike on order... The thoughts of riding along the prom to Cleveleys listening to Bert on my MP3 player is just too much.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Brian Peters
Date: 25 Oct 13 - 07:04 AM

"its almost total rejection by the working class is a crucial factor in our understanding of its nature & purpose."

Even if we were to accept such lazy generalisation and terminology, the same could be said of jazz, prog-rock, classical, most of the bill at Glastonbury and any number of other minority-interest musics. Not all of which, I imagine, were born of 'imperialistic paternalism' or 'fabrication'.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Will Fly
Date: 25 Oct 13 - 07:06 AM

Never saw the late Johnny Silvo then?

Or the chap from the Spinners... But the proposition about a mainly white demographic is broadly true - the exception proving the rule.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 25 Oct 13 - 07:22 AM

Did the Young Tradition sing it like it was? Or was that just more middle-class revisionism? Not that it matters. What was was; and what is, is - the rest is down to personal taste. Ultimately, in matters of art, we're only answerable to ourselves, not some namby notion of The Tradition which is simply a matter of not seeing the trees for the wood.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Brian Peters
Date: 25 Oct 13 - 07:26 AM

"As ever I defer to your superior learning on the minutiae of this matter, Brian - (I'm a folk dilettante at best)"

Enough of the self-deprecation, Jack, you're as much as an enthusiast (for the music, if not the concept) as I am, and you think about it a lot more than most. I claim no superior learning, but I do think it's worth paying attention to detail, and that flaws in that can throw suspicion on the greater whole.

I hope you enjoy Bert's radio programmes - I certainly did. Jim is very generous in sharing his (often rare) traditional song resources. Nice to see the spirit of co-operation between such regular antagonists. I much prefer my vituperative arguments to be grounded in some kind of mutual respect, or even friendship.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,Allan Conn
Date: 25 Oct 13 - 07:33 AM

"but its almost total rejection by the working class is a crucial factor in our understanding of its nature & purpose."

Whilst it is true that in my area the bulk of the working class (whatever exactly that is) are not folkies it is also true that the a good proportion of the folkies are of the same said working class. We have factory workers, window cleaners, paramedics, domestic helps, shop workers etc. Even those who maybe some wouldn't describe as working class often come from a solid working class background. I run my own financial services business so am I working class? My mother was a dinner lady and my father a hosiery worker. I see no need to throw up false divisions. The truth is that the vast bulk of the people who attend our club are just ordinary folk.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 25 Oct 13 - 07:38 AM

the same could be said of jazz, prog-rock, classical, most of the bill at Glastonbury and any number of other minority-interest musics

Not true. Those idioms are born of the bourgeois social elite. Not co-opted & reinvented by them on the backs of proletarian art & creativity, which is in any case diminished by notions of anonymity & traditionalism. Like I say - a case of not seeing the trees for the wood.

Of course we can see the phenomenon of Prog in terms of it being a collective cultural tradition, but to really understand it's history & development, we have to address ourselves to the lives & times of the individual geniuses (specific musicians, bands, promoters, entrepreneurs, graphic artists, pharmacists etc.) that were involved in its creation, as oppose to its perception and definition. Prog, Jazz, Pop, Classical etc. are musics defined by the people who make it. Folk, OTOH, was a music defined by the people who perceived & collected it. A very crucial difference.

Talk about lazy generalisations, Brian - yours is positively narcoleptic.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 25 Oct 13 - 07:58 AM

Enough of the self-deprecation, Jack, you're as much as an enthusiast (for the music, if not the concept) as I am, and you think about it a lot more than most.

The concept, and the study thereof is integral to the appreciation of the music. Can you have one without the other? I doubt it. Problem is I was invalided out of academia 20 years ago & I've never quite recovered my nous in all that time. One thing I still carry though is that whilst LINGUISTS study, account for & celebrate the feral phenomenon of language, only PEDANTS insist upon correctness.   

I hope you enjoy Bert's radio programmes - I certainly did.

The Folk Music Virtuoso is a classic I cherished for years but never did think to make a copy of it, alas. Now I can enjoy it afresh - but not before backing it up!

Nice to see the spirit of co-operation between such regular antagonists. I much prefer my vituperative arguments to be grounded in some kind of mutual respect, or even friendship.

I take that as a given!

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Brian Peters
Date: 25 Oct 13 - 09:00 AM

"Prog, Jazz, Pop, Classical etc. are musics defined by the people who make it. Folk, OTOH, was a music defined by the people who perceived & collected it. A very crucial difference."

Yes, I do get that, in fact it was exactly my point. Folk is one minority interest music amongst many, but its minority status has nothing to do with Cecil Sharp or alleged bourgeois imperialism.

NB Alan Conn's comment about the folk demographic in his locality. There were several regulars at Manchester folk clubs who would have punched anyone who called them middle class.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Lighter
Date: 25 Oct 13 - 10:26 AM

> LINGUISTS study, account for & celebrate the feral phenomenon

Linguists don't "celebrate" anything. They just study and try to account for it.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 25 Oct 13 - 11:12 AM

but its minority status has nothing to do with Cecil Sharp or alleged bourgeois imperialism.

I'd go so far as to suggest it's a likely sort of legacy - and all the Traddies I know are middle-class. Working-class Folkies tend to view E. Trads & Ballads as anathema to their popularist cause - something Big Al has pointed out on various occasions. With exception, of course (I am one such - a Working Class Traddy who does not get along at all well with singer-songwriter idioms) but exceptions prove rules, do they not?   

*

Linguists don't "celebrate" anything. They just study and try to account for it.

Oh I don't know, Lighter - I've known & read a lot of very celebratory & cunning linguists in my time. Even in the hushed halls of academia it always felt as if were celebrating the phenomenon of language as a priest might celebrate Holy Mass. I remember the gleam in our professor's eye (a former student of Chomsky) as he told us about Grimm's Law. I came away jubilant!

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Lighter
Date: 25 Oct 13 - 04:52 PM

> Even in the hushed halls of academia it always felt as if were celebrating the phenomenon of language as a priest might celebrate Holy Mass.

Not in my class, unless you count describing language in a hopefully interesting manner as "celebrating" it. I also taught composition, and if I hadn't insisted on "correctness" there (meaning, of course, established conventions), parents would have complained, I'd have been fired, and my students would have been left at a disadvantage in the "real world."

BTW, one's favorite sociopolitical or psychological or literary theory doesn't seem to have much to do with discussing what was actually collected. (Or what wasn't, which to some degree we can guess at.) Such theories could make for diverting conjecture about the collectors' conscious or unconscious motives, or the folkies', but that's a different issue.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: The Sandman
Date: 26 Oct 13 - 02:42 PM

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Jim Carroll - PM
Date: 25 Oct 13 - 05:01 AM

"Jeez! That's the f***ing Wild Rover"!
Happened to me in a singaround in Miltown a year ago
Jim Carroll
good to hear you are singing, jim,

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,Jack Campin
Date: 26 Oct 13 - 03:04 PM

the late Mr. Bearman

I missed that. Was his death reported here?

The impression I got of him from forums he appeared on was that he was a raving paranoid reactionary crank whose only interest in the folk scene was as a source of people to make enemies of. Did he ever do anything positive?

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 26 Oct 13 - 04:41 PM

He made some pretty damning criticisms of Dave Harker's work, and (if you want 'positive') contributed to rehabilitating Cecil Sharp.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,Wally Macnow
Date: 26 Oct 13 - 06:10 PM

I've recently moved to Asheville, North Carolina where there is a thriving old time, bluegrass, and ballad singing tradition. I believe that traditional music gets past along here through family and community gatherings. You go to a festival here and its jammed with local people of all ages listening to or playing and singing the music and songs.

You can take trad music and play it in clubs and concert halls all you wantg but you'll never preserve it there. If you want it to continue, you have to catch the kids before they're consciously aware of it. A six year old will find a 12 year old doing trad music cool. And a 12 year old getting praise for doing it from a 20 or 30 or 60 or 70 year old who's also showing him or her technique is probably going to continue with the tradition.

That's my thought on it. And my observation.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 26 Oct 13 - 08:58 PM

1. Usual pretentious bollocks from Blandiver (or is it Sedayne under another name?).

2. "From the imperialistic paternalism of early folklorists to the middle-class middle-English hobbyists & apologists of today, Folk is a fabrication born of a disparity which rests at the very heart of our island's history both ancient and modern. Its appeal to intellectuals of the Left and Right is easy to figure, but its almost total rejection by the working class is a crucial factor in our understanding of its nature & purpose." -   see what I mean?

3. "Sorry again : it's THE crucial factor... likewise it's pure white demographic. The only black face you see at a folk festival is on a morris dancer with feathers in his top hat. And that's a relatively recent morris fashion..." Try again, wanker. Look for the best dancer in the border side from Crayyford "Gong Scourers". Her biological father is from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

4. CS - if you so dislike the singaround and join in format, am I to assume you won't be at the Lower Stoke Winter Sings this winter. Odd, in that you seemed to enjoy them.

5. Various above seem to assume that the fact that a song is traditional (or "folk") means that its performance is set in aspic. I suggest you tell that to Steeleye Span or Fairport Convention or many many others - and then retracy your suggestion that performances by June Tabor and the Oyster Band can not be folk, not performances of traditional song.

That petrol emotion.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 27 Oct 13 - 12:06 AM

Richard - you're a great bloke -but calling someone a wanker - it doesn't help the debate its not engaging with the argument.

I agree with much of what you say about the necessarily ever changing nature of a living artform.

my views on the nature of folk music - is I guess well known and has irritated enough people on Mudcat.

I think maybe I was wrong to state my opinions. I don't want to disrespect a set of ideas that enables a great musician like Brian Peters to accomplish what he does.

I suppose I am hoping for abit much for people to understand that my vision of folk music which takes its inspiration from the jazz and cowboy music, blues and music hall songs which my parents sang and danced to - I perceive as MY roots. Nothing can stop me being English.
Nothing can stop anyone who is English being English.
For example - compare how Wizz Jones plays a blues - compared to Blind Lemon Jefferson.

Just as Brian and Martin Carthy have the ideas which form the basis of how they express themselves I have my set of ideas. And it sustains a vigorous strain in English folk music.

English folk music is more multi faceted artform than many people can take aboard.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 27 Oct 13 - 04:21 AM

I do hope Richard's getting the help he obviously needs.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Will Fly
Date: 27 Oct 13 - 05:46 AM

... music which takes its inspiration from the jazz and cowboy music, blues and music hall songs which my parents sang and danced to - I perceive as MY roots.

Exactly, Al. If that's what you grew up with and what percolated into your consciousness as a child, then so be it.

The same for me - influences as a small child from the radio, from the wind-up gramophone and stack of 78rpm records at my grandparents' house up the road, from their next-door neighbour who played a chromatic Hohner harmonica, from my aunt who thumped out tunes on the piano of a Saturday night. And then, later in life, more radio, 45rpm records, rock'n roll, jazz, skiffle, classical music at school, a dazzling array of musical influences while working at the Beeb.

And so for all of us - we make conscious choices of music to dig into. The question that keeps coming back to me is: what's so precious about traditional (define your own terms) English folk music that we have to discuss what's going "wrong"? If it's sung, it's sung; if it's not, it's not. In this era of recorded music, archives, libraries, etc., it's never going to get lost. Like all music, its popularity will wax and wane with fashion. So what? Just play the music you love - from the heart.

Richard - I second Al's admonishment. Simple abuse is no argument and does you no credit. I've always found Sean's writing to be fun, stimulating and interesting - whether I agree with the sentiments or not. And - as I said earlier - one or two black faces in English traditional music at the moment (it may well change), is still the exception that proves the rule - that the music is currently largely a white demographic.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 27 Oct 13 - 06:54 AM

What Will says is right - and it's important - which goes back to something Brian said a few days ago which, like I said in response, is something I take as a given : Nice to see the spirit of co-operation between such regular antagonists. I much prefer my vituperative arguments to be grounded in some kind of mutual respect, or even friendship.

I don't know what Richard's problem is. I confess to firing off the term tosser in a post to someone I know & respect very deeply, but the issue (long since blown o'er!) was very personal, though I still regretted it. This topic isn't personal in the slightest - it's a discussion on the nature of Traditional Folk Music and how we feel it relates to wider English / British culture as a whole. We all have ideas and opinions on that, which we come here to throw into the pot because we just happen to care about this stuff enough to be involved with it, on whatever level. This is rare & uncommon earth we're treading here - best we do so with care & respect.

*

Otherwise : I suggest you tell that to Steeleye Span or Fairport Convention or many many others - and then retracy your suggestion that performances by June Tabor and the Oyster Band can not be folk, not performances of traditional song.

There is a world of difference between (say) Bob Roberts' timeless rendering of When Gamekeepers Lie Sleeping on 'Songs of the Sailing Barges' and June Tabor's 70s Macrame Beat rendition on 'Airs and Graces'. The tradition of the latter has little to do with that of the former; the latter is defined by a particular Zeitgeist which even now might be considered charmingly retro in an almost Clappisonesque folksy sense, whereas the former is almost numinous in its perfect purity that defines an entire idiom. One sounds terribly dated, the other is on a par with The Eternal. In other words, The Revival and The Tradition are two very different things and - as I've said here before - we conflate them at our peril.

I must stress that I love the late, great John Clappison as much as I love June Tabor, which is to say very muchly, though times I might wonder about their choice of material, but ultimately defer to their respective genius & cunning in so doing. That is the difference between Folk and Traditional, and why The Tradition is, and must be, set in aspic with a severe preservation order slapped on it least it ripped out and modernised, which, for many, it already has been. I'm thinking of those hapless singers who still source their singaround efforts to their favourite revival groups & singers rather than traditional ones - and don't know, much less care, what the difference is.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 27 Oct 13 - 07:11 AM

PS - I might add that what they do with them thereafter is entirely their own business. That much is a very good thing! Here's my own singaround version of When Gamekeepers Lie Sleeping, sourced from Bob Roberts but I certainly make no attempt to sing it like him. To point is to find your own relationship with a song whilst acknowledging the sanctity of the source, not just to copy something off a Martin Carthy or June Tabor LP however much you love them.

https://soundcloud.com/sedayne-fiddlesangs/b-gamekeepers-26-1-12

Note : I started singing this after I played the LP (Songs from the Sailing Barges, on Topic) to my old maritime-loving mum & she said 'Your father used to sing that!'. I never knew my father - he passed when I was 2, 50 years ago this Christmas - though I often ponder what he was doing singing old folk songs, and where he got them! So I guess it's in the blood after all.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,Big Al Whittle
Date: 27 Oct 13 - 08:11 AM

What's going wrong with traditional music is that your link to soundcloud doesn't seem to be working Jack. I confess i only know June tabor's version of the song - never been keen to mess with it.

I DO however hate and despise the practice of capital punishment. Have hated it with a passion all my life, and recently I found a song which expressed my utter loathing. Blind Lemon's Electric Chair Blues. A recording which until it got cleaned up a little was almost inaccessible.

What can I say I tried with this piece. It was SO great. It told the story from a thousand assats all at once. Like Turpin Hero - sommetimes the gallows bird is first person - sometimes third. We hear the voice of the fiend who sat alongside his wife in the electrocution chamber. His family who receve the electgrocuted body for burial.

So I took a toot at it. And rushed at it, and gotit wrong as per usual. My version lacked the hatred and intensity of Blind lemon. he was perhaps someone who had seen a friend's child electrocuted for some Jim Crow reason.

Having no one except a few lusty sailors and pretty ploughboys and the occasional sleeping gamekeeper with which to discuss it. I asked Bobert for his reaction. Bobert reckoned I had made it too technical, but on reflection I'm not sure. The real trouble is though BLJ's guitar style is similar to mine - I've learned tenth hand from Stefan Grossman, Wizz, Bert, Derek and others. There bits of Blind Blake in my version, Dave Van Ronk and others. Distances as far away from Texas as we from Spain. Whereas Blind Lemon plays a very pure and localised version of blues guitar.

What I'm saying is maybe we sound like navel gazers and pseudo yanks to you - but we are part of the warp and weft of traditional music amd care quite as intensely about our perceived traditions as you do.

Try and grasp this and you will make the tradition more unified and stronger.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 27 Oct 13 - 09:16 AM

Hmmmm - it's working okay from here...


My position on this is that we are all of us individual music makers in a great tradition of human music making that began at least 50,000 years ago & will only end when there are no human being left on the planet to do it. Within that Great Tradition, there are billions of smaller traditions - indeed, each single one of us is a tradition is their own right. We each learn, pay our dues and adapt accordingly : From each according to their ability, to each according to their need. The process is, essentially, a creative one, even with people who have dedicated their craft to playing other folk's music - be it baroque oboe players or Pink Floyd tribute acts. Things change because that's the nature of the Tao.   

The Tradition of English Speaking Folk song is a finite & definable tradition - though NOT by the fecking 1954 Definition which just so much horse chocolate to be fantasised over by bozos like my friend Bridge. We understand it by rational musicology / ethnomusicology that acknowledges the individual / idiosyncratic & very ordinary geniuses who were part of it, same with ANY musical tradition.

All musical idioms are born from & function via tradition - it's what music is. Folky Fantasists persist that there's is the only one - that this Tradition somehow makes their music unique. On the contrary, it's the Tradition that makes it just the same as any other music. What makes it unique are the musicological & ethnomusicological factors that make every music unique - and, ultimately, make every musician unique. Be it Sun Ra, John Coltrane, Miles Davies, Tony (TS) McPhee, John Lee Hooker, Martin Carthy, Nic Jones, Davie Stewart, Harry Cox, John Lennon, Dick Miles and even Richard Bridge. Just like real people, musicians are complete one offs operating to enrich their tradition. Their finger prints are very different.

The Tradition of English Speaking Folk Song operated in a very different era from our own & died out long ago. It does not survive in The Revival because the Revival is a very different thing - a very different tradition entirely. Just as the tradition Big Al's talking about is very different too. All I have ever said here comes down to simply respecting those differences and reverencing the source in whatever you do, same as you would anything else : give credit where credit's due. I would hope anyone who wants to sing (say) The Wagoner Lad having heard Joan Baez sing it, would be curious & respectful enough to seek out Buell Kazee's singing of it. If not they are missing the point entirely.

Let The Source be the inspiration and we maybe have a Revival Music worthy of the Tradition it claims to represent, not just a load of sloppy Carthy copyists & Shirley Collins soundalikes for whom listening to source recordings is anathema, as oppose to the deep spiritual joy it is for a lot of us & ought to be for everyone who dares call themselves a Folky.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Bobert
Date: 27 Oct 13 - 09:18 AM

Not sure that "too technical" is what I was talking about, Big Al... Maybe too much filler when Blind Lemon played more simple with less filler... The ol' "when in doubt leave it out" lesson applies to the "country blues"... Chicago blues??? Different story...

I learned the blues from Sparky Rucker and he learned 'um from Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi "country blues" which is played more simply so that the stories can be told without having the music overpower the story, many of which dealt with some very serious subjects...

Yes, you want the rhythm and beat to have that Southern slashing "thang" going but you want to keep pretty close to your chording structure, be it 1-4-5 or 4-1-4-1-5-4-1 or 1-1-1-1-1-1... The "turn arounds" even need to conform to that structure... In other words, if you are playing "country" blues you should be able to sit down with other "country blues" players and everyone is pretty much on the same page with not much deviation in structure... You should know where you are supposed to be at any given time in the song...

I know that makes me sound pretty traditional and in that sense I am...

B~

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 27 Oct 13 - 10:11 AM

Continuing to find this thread interesting.

Quote: "Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi "country blues" ... is played more simply so that the stories can be told without having the music overpower the story, many of which dealt with some very serious subjects..." ... " if you are playing "country" blues you should be able to sit down with other "country blues" players and everyone is pretty much on the same page with not much deviation in structure... You should know where you are supposed to be at any given time in the song..."

Also just wanted to say thanks to Bobert for his personal insights into 'country blues', something I know dick about. It'd be nice to see more discussions on topics like this here.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 27 Oct 13 - 10:20 AM

PS those quotes in particular I found highly pertinent to what I understand as an important part of the original function of any form of traditional folk music; the communal sharing of stories of importance within a particular community.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 27 Oct 13 - 10:25 AM

One place we are definitely going wrong is the pompous idiocy of "Blandiver". Much as I love to be able to state the Child or Roud number of a song my band does, and preferably some collection detail including the source singer - (a) it's a battle with my band every time and (b) unless the audience are interested in that aspect it drives them away - it's part of what we are doing wrong. If it's not a folk song then I may well credit the composer. And if I've been "at" the tune or words I probably mention that to a folk audience.

At least twice we have been told "Oh, if that's folk, then I like it, must go to a festival to hear more". Once the remark came from an ambitious policeman. The point is that it's NOT art music nor pop music, and if you can understand that then the concept that there is an international common aspect (not one of form) makes sense. Which is why the 1954 definition (which is NOT ethnocentric), although maybe needing some fine tuning/updating, is still the best working definition we have. You don't have to reach for the bafflegab/managementspeak thesaurus, blind to the irony of using obfuscatory academic language to accuse others of blind academic obfuscation.


I think the first thing "Blandiver" has ever said that is correct is "The point is to find your own relationship with a song whilst acknowledging the sanctity of the source, not just to copy something". Denying that there is "folk music" is precisely the denial of that sanctity, and to set the tradition in aspic is to deny that relationship with the song. The language in which Blandiver's argument is couched makes it pretty obvious that his perspective cannot be due to stupidity, so it must be malice.   Perhaps a novel application of the concept of creative destruction.

Despite his obvious musical skill and knowledge it also seems that his sometimes deliberately pretentious choice of arrangement/accompaniment is rooted in a desire to obstruct access to the song, rather than facilitate it - just as much a conceit as the antics of Rihanna or Miley Cyrus. If you want to enable people more readily to relate to folk music a kaossilator (or even wavedrum) is a barrier not a gateway.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Bobert
Date: 27 Oct 13 - 10:36 AM

You're welcome, CS...

I remember lots of discussions back when I was a regular at Archie Edwards Barber Shop Saturday afternoon jam seesion about the blues... Some folks feel that all blues are the same... Even blues players and, I guess if you strip all the layers off then I kinda see that thinking...

But to me, it's the layers and the rhythms that make the different styles different... I kinda but the blues into several different categories that vary from region to region...

*Chicago Blues: Lots of horns and with them a jazz feel... B.B. King, Little Charlie and the Nightcats, Buddy Guy...

*Piedmont Blues: Played mostly in the Mid Atlantic with more intricate finger picking style and less emphasis on a hard back beat... John Jackson, Mississippi John Hurt, Cephas & Wiggons

*Delta Blues: Mississippi Blues with strong slashing beat played mostly on metal bodied resonator guitars with a slide (or not) with generally 1-4-5 chord structure... Son House, Johnny Shines, Muddy Waters, Lighnin' Hopkins

North Mississippi Hill Country Blues: Similar to Delta Blues but with foot stomps and less 1-4-5 structure... Some are just one chord "Miss Maybelle" by R.L. Burnside... Some 2 chord 1-4-1-4-1 like "Catfish Blues" that lots of folks have recorded... Some with 1-4-5 like "Good Morning Little School Girl"... Mississippi Fred McDowell, T Model Ford, R.L Burnside

Texas Blues: Hybrid of country rock and blues: Stevie Ray Vaughn, "Waymore's Blues" by Waylon Jennings, Joe Richardson...

Then there are a number of blues players who kinda hybrids of the above styles: Elmore James, Little Walter, Lightnin' Slim...

Hope this is helpful but it might just "muddy the waters"... lol...

B~

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Will Fly
Date: 27 Oct 13 - 10:58 AM

If you want to enable people more readily to relate to folk music a kaossilator (or even wavedrum) is a barrier not a gateway.

Well, why should it be a barrier? Depends entirely on your musical taste. And, for heavens sakes, why should I or anyone else be in the business of enabling people to like anything, including whatever you feel folk music should be?

You just do your own thing and, if people like it, so much the better. As it happens, I bought Sean's last CD on the Folk Police label (as Sedayne) and I think it's excellent - original, interesting, inventive, entirely musical, personal and fascinating. If you don't care for it, that's none of my business.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Will Fly
Date: 27 Oct 13 - 11:06 AM

"Songs From The Barley Temple" is the album I meant - perhaps not the most recent from Rapunzel and Sedayne. Excellent stuff, though - and it got rave reviews, by the way.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 27 Oct 13 - 11:23 AM

If there is a problem of too few people doing or listening to folk, then the cure is to enable them to listen to it.

Relating only to the cognoscenti was what killed prog-rock and gave us punk, which gave form to the mass rejection of the artsy-fartsy.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Will Fly
Date: 27 Oct 13 - 11:40 AM

If there is a problem of too few people doing or listening to folk, then the cure is to enable them to listen to it.

This is just another variation on the proposition that there is something inherently "wrong" if folk music only appeals to a relatively few people. "If there is a problem" you say - well, whether it's an "if" is a matter of personal belief, as is the concept that there's some sort of cure. If you really want people to like the particular form of music that you perform and which engages you, then just perform it well, and confidently and with feeling. There's no other way.

But the main point I'm getting at is this: however you might feel about anyone's statements and arguments and concepts of folk music/traditional music, the proper way to reply is with reasoned argument and discourse. Not with unreasoning insult, and not with snipes at that person's actual music, which - for all you know - may appeal to precisely the sort of person who might be utterly bored with some conventional takes on "folk music".

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 27 Oct 13 - 11:51 AM

"Barley Temple" is a wonderful piece of work - one of my favourite albums in the last few years: Sedayne & Rapunzel in great & relatively restrained form. Anyone who hasn't heard it is missing a treat.

It doesn't make me agree with Sean any more, though!

You just do your own thing and, if people like it, so much the better.

This is, always, sound advice. As Graham Bond said to Peter Hamill, right back at the start of the latter's career, "you've got to do what you've got to do".

But I think Richard's on to something, too.

The point is that it's NOT art music nor pop music, and if you can understand that then the concept that there is an international common aspect (not one of form) makes sense.

We fancied a meal out last night and ended up in a 'roadhouse'-style pub, which did some decent beer and some excellent meals of the "hunk of meat and some chips" variety. The music on the PA was a bit of a downer - the needle seemed to be stuck somewhere around 1957 ("Diana", "Kiss me honey honey"), with occasional excursions into the early 60s. Mostly it was too quiet to make much out. Anyway, in the middle of all this I heard "The light dragoon". It wasn't, obviously - presumably it was something with an American folk influence, possibly by Burl Ives - but the style and shape of the tune just stood out: it was clearly more different from, say, "Unforgettable" and "Da doo ron ron" than they are from each other.

Which is why I think Richard has a point about it being a good thing to bring more folk music to more people (although I don't think weird instrumentation is a barrier). I can only go on my own experience, and my experience is that of hearing a few traditional songs and liking what I heard, and then discovering quite suddenly that there were lots of them. That second experience was what really did it for me - not only did traditional songs sound good, but you could sing them until your voice gave out without repeating yourself. It was an amazing, life-changing experience, and I'd like more people to have it. I don't want people to discover 'folk' as an optional extra in the great popular music fruit salad, like the token folk album on the Mercury list or the occasional John Peel session from June Tabor - I want people to discover 'folk' as an ocean of song, a world in itself.

Having said all of that, I think "where are we going wrong?" is a thoroughly useless and misdirected question. "Traditional music - are we having fun with it?" would be more like it.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Will Fly
Date: 27 Oct 13 - 12:00 PM

the needle seemed to be stuck somewhere around 1957 ("Diana", "Kiss me honey honey")

Wonderful! Though I would sincerely disagree that "Unforgettable" and "Da Doo Ron Ron" are relatively indistinguishable... :-)

I'm glad you had a Pauline conversion moment, Phil - but, of course, it needn't have been a pearl of a folk tune among the Gadarene swine of late '50s juke box stuff. It could equally have been a pearl of a 1950s rockabilly bash in the midst of a Gadarene hoard of folk songs.

Both forms have merit - it's just what gets your own personal booties tapping.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 27 Oct 13 - 12:20 PM

It's not the quality but the difference. I'd rather listen to Phil Spector than Burl Ives, but the latter just stood out.

Mind you, a bit later on they put on Arthur Conley's "Sweet soul music", and that sounded pretty different too (also in a good way).

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 27 Oct 13 - 12:32 PM

Just recently I've been listening to Josh White Jnr's tuition record. josh senior was the first fingerstyle guitarist i ever heard apart from John Williams. Josh had a TV show in England in the 1960's.

Josh could play a lot of different styles. He used to have this great upstroke with his index finger a bit like a flamenco guitarist - but it gave this great fractured beat in amongst his picking. I couldn't identify the style it comes from - although it sounds it a little bit like Leadbelly. so maybe Louisiana.

You've done it again Richard - calling Mr Blandriver a pompous idiot!
It actually obscures the point you are making.

I think it was Kingsley Amis who accused Ezra Pound and Eliot of creating poetry that sounded like the ramblings of a maniac in a museum - so littered with references and allusions to obscure bits of literature and world culture were the works of the two poets.

I think this is what I am trying to say - we treat 'the tradition' as a ragbag of techniques we can delve into. Whereas the cogency of Blind Lemon's message came from having spent thirty years in a small Texas village learning his craft cut off from other sources. Really we can only tip our caps to the greats of yesteryear, Thankfully we have not lived the impoverished lives that they led.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Will Fly
Date: 27 Oct 13 - 12:38 PM

It's interesting - while you were having your roadhouse supper last night, I was out with the ceilidh band, playing at a party in a large village hall down here in Sussex. Our band line-up comprises guitar/mandolin, bass, drums, fiddle, mandolin/guitar & melodeons/saxes. It's fairly in-your-face and loud when occasion demands it, but the repertoire is a solid diet of English, Scottish, Irish and some Cape Breton tunes. It's actually a rock band playing solid traditional tunes - and I don't mean in the Fairport Convention or Steeleye Span style.

Our audience was composed of several groups of young an not-so-young ladies comprising *stoolball teams in the area - and the occasion was their annual gala get-together. And could they drink! The evening was wild. When Tony (our caller for last night) said, "Now the bottom couple make an arch", some of the young ladies were making arches with their tits... Wild screams, leaping dance steps - ladettes at the ready - with just the right kind of rocking music to get them sweating.

Now, that's what I call an evening of folk music!

*stoolball: a sport that dates back to at least the 15th century, originating in Sussex. It may be an ancestor of cricket (a game it resembles), baseball, and rounders, in fact Stoolball is sometimes called "Cricket in the air". Traditionally it was played by milkmaids who used their milking stools as a "wicket".

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 27 Oct 13 - 12:44 PM

Oh no, this time I played by the rules. I didn't say he was a pompous idiot (ad hominem, see) but said that what he said was pompous idiocy. Criticism of content, not the man.

Go on, take one of his posts full of gratuitous philological exhibitionism and see if you can put his point over in plain language. And without saying "Zeitgeist".

BTW, if you look them up on Youtube you'll find a man far ruder about their playing and particularly singing (indeed perhaps unjustly so) than I.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: The Sandman
Date: 27 Oct 13 - 01:15 PM

to get back to the op ,we are not going wrong, we are going right, all the time we sit down and sing and play we are going right, any time spent on here name calling is going wrong, just sing and keep on singing and playing.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 27 Oct 13 - 02:27 PM

Thanks for the nice words, Phil & Will. And I never expect anyone to agree with me! Barley Temple is our last album but we're working on Barley Temple Phase Two just now (working title : Scampi & Tarot) now that we're sorted with a label who will actually talk to us!

*

Meanwhile:

If you want to enable people more readily to relate to folk music a kaossilator (or even wavedrum) is a barrier not a gateway.

That's not why I do it. What I / we do which has it roots, but most people who like it have an encyclopaedic knowledge of folk music anyway - and forms maybe 8% of their total love of music. A bit like me. Folk is just part of a far bigger picture.

And I've never used a wavedrum. I remember the first time I treated a folk audience to the Kaossilator was on board the Jacinta for a pre-Fylde Festival gig in which we were sharing the bill with a stellar lineup including Spitting on a Roast, Red Duster, Scold's Bridle and the Alan Bell Band. Once I started laying down my rippling Kaossilator loops beneath my wife's banjo there was an audible 'Oooooooh!' from the audience.

*

BTW, if you look them up on Youtube you'll find a man far ruder about their playing and particularly singing (indeed perhaps unjustly so) than I.

YouTube really is idiot land comment wise. There was a nice one once on my Long Lankin film from a few years back. I can delete these comments but that's half the fun of posting on YouTube:

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

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 27 Oct 13 - 07:13 PM

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