Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 28 Oct 13 - 04:27 AM

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.

Unless of course you mean the troll on our Come Write Me Down whose comments reveal much about the inherent idiocy that one often encounters in folk when people can only cope with things being done in particular way and assume it's somehow 'right' or even (gulp!) 'traditional'. It's a shame that he (it's always he) evoked the sacred name of Shirley Collins in support of this claim. But, as I say, that's what you get for posting on You Tube! The first time I've threatened to delete further comments...

Anyhoo, no Kaossilator here, Richard, as it's out of tune with Rachel's lap-top harmonium (now retired) which is in 'Indian pitch' - if such a thing exists; all Indian things tend to be in an old military pitch several cents sharp of concert. A legacy of the Raj?   

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IJQzcyDTQI

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 28 Oct 13 - 04:45 AM

I quite like laptop harmoniums and am interested in your comment on Indian pitch. I have seen more than once one Indian duo who used to use an instrument somewhat similar to a laptop harmonium (might have been a shruti box, I think) to accompany her singing, but now she uses her i-phone. I infer accordingly that perhaps it is possible to set the pitch on such digital instruments sharp of A=440.

I have consistently argued that the fact that something is "folk" leaves it form-free, so at least in that we agree, but if (that's IF) we are going wrong in what we do with traditional music (not necessarily a synonym for "folk") and if (that's IF) the measure of that is bums on seats then part of the cure is making it accessible. If one speaks only to the immersed and learned and adventurous (not always a happy combination), one does not reach out to those who are not.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 28 Oct 13 - 05:58 AM

I think I once worked out that Indian instruments are tuned around 40 cents sharp of concert - this applies to brass & woodwind as well as harmoniums, I've got a very wayward pocket trumpet which I just get down to concert by pulling the tuning slide to its maximum, which makes the intonation pretty wayward. This is more or less the same as old military high-pitch as my old military C clarinet works fine with India instruments, so hence my thinking about the Raj Legacy. Perhaps Jack Campin knows something about this?   

The lap-top harmonium is rare beast in that it uses a similar bellows arrangement to a shruti box & doesn't have a wind chest unlike other Indian harmoniums. Consequently it's pretty hard work & requires a lot of setting up before each performance - sounds great, but it looks like it's been made by a monkey. Rachel found it too much of a bother so we sacked it and bought a MiniNova instead...

*

One of my earliest forays into music making was using a VSC3 Putney to make outer-space soundscapes at an experimental arts workshop in Whitley Bay when I was 12. I was into folk at this time too so the two things went hand in hand by way of the general - er - Zeitgeist. It was 1973 / 74. Lots of things were happening, even for a kid of my age, but commercialism & popular appeal was anathema to the occult cultural vision which was bestowed upon me in childhood & which has been by guiding light ever since. I liked Folk because it was Cult. Back then I could go along to our Local Folk Club (then in a filthy back room of the Grey Horse in Shiremoor) and see people like June Tabor and John & Sue Kirkpatrick singing to an audience of ten people AND I could buy their LP afterwards. I could see Derek Bailey or Lol Coxhill or Ivor Cutler performing to similarly small gatherings and this intimacy was a factor that drew me into the left-field micro musics that I've regarded as my natural home ever since. That's the best of it for me, that sort of knowing intimacy which isn't about small numbers necessarily but it does assume that the audience are of a similar sort of cultural cunning, which, for the most part, I'd say they are.

In a word of mass blandness & X-factor tedium, singing a few traditional ballads with an almost exclusively improvised / experimental electronic accompaniment becomes a celebratory act of affirmation in itself. Not going to get bums on seats, but it keeps us sane - and we're not the only ones...

https://soundcloud.com/rapunzel-and-sedayne/long-lankin

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 28 Oct 13 - 06:32 AM

A lot of Indian music uses a basic pitch of C#. Traditionally there were so few instruments of fixed pitch (ghatam and nagaswara in the South, can't think of anything in the North) that this standard is probably quite recent. Old British military pitch may well have had an influence.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Will Fly
Date: 28 Oct 13 - 06:47 AM

I see where you're coming from, Richard, but - accepting for a moment and for the sake of argument that there has to be a "cure", wouldn't you say that it's a dubious proposition to go for the "accessible"? And how do we define accessible?

When I went to a Bellowhead concert a few years ago in Lewes town hall, which was packed to the rafters, I would say that the greater part of the audience was well under 40 years of age, and was bopping away like billyo by the end of the evening. So would we call Bellowhead's slightly off-the-wall and eccentric take on folk tunes and songs to be "accessible"? I really couldn't say!

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,Rahere
Date: 28 Oct 13 - 12:49 PM

After nigh on 20 years out of the country, there are a number of items needing correction.
Firstly, Richard Bridge commented on the death of the Concept Album in 1975. Mike Smith resigned as Program Controller of University Radio Loughborough to go and work for Dave Kettlewell collecting All The Tunes That Ever There Were for hammered dulcimer, and I succeeded him in post. Mike had been instrumental in promoting Mike Oldfield and Kraftwerk before ever Radio 1 made them popular. Nick Philips was the Prof in charge of the laser lab, so we had the bands coming - he was the man behind the laser effects of the 1970s, and part of his price was the bands had to gig, so I I got to SM (notionally!) Queen the weekend Bohemian Rhapsody hit, one week before the Hammersmith recording, performing to 500 in the hall and an innumerable mob outside. Loughborough in those days hosted one of the top folk festivals. What actually happened is that the US recording companies decided that there was too much autonomy in the industry and that all promotion for every form of music was to be cut, or rather reapplied to hip-hop and punk. It was not just progressive rock, nor folk rock, it was everything.
Secondly, what has happened is that commercialism has set its roots in the folk world too. That means too many people are making their livings from what should be the music of the people, and are shutting people out. Read it carefully, it establishes exactly what Katy Spicer is actually doing in her interpretation of her responsibility in promoting the interests of the folk world. The last Minutes published by the EFDSS Board are almost a year old, and were woeful reading: it is not therefore any surprise that the link to them has been suppressed in the redesigned site. Suffice it to say that so short are the funds and so tatty are Kennedy Hall's curtains they had to call upon the Choir to fund-raise the £50,000 they need to replace them. That's asking ordinary joes about £800 a head: perhaps if they'd bothered to record the Choir they may have had some income to pay for them.
Thirdly, the worked example of what's been going on is that the music industry was crying out for input from the folk world these last two years. None was forthcoming because it threatened the established names. It's why the EFDSS has still not recorded its Choir. It's why I've left and am doing something useful: I've moved to a Community Choir, because it's truly the music of the people, we're gigging about twice as much as CSHC does, and with far less experience. I'm supporting the foundation of a new Choir too, I'm working in my own voice once a month, there are gigs out there, not enough to make a living, but enough to move the industry. People are sick and tired of commercialism, and that's all you get on the scene these days. If you set aside the elder statesmen of these pages, who are too busy telling you what you can't do and not busy enough getting out there doing, then perhaps you'll find you're able to go right.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 28 Oct 13 - 02:00 PM

Mike Smith resigned as Program Controller of University Radio Loughborough to go and work for Dave Kettlewell collecting All The Tunes That Ever There Were for hammered dulcimer, and I succeeded him in post. Mike had been instrumental in promoting Mike Oldfield and Kraftwerk

I've still got my Dave Kettlewell book from 30 years ago, though I never did get the dulcimer to go with it! Kraftwerk are my heroes; and Mike Oldfield the fallen angel who graced us with a quartet of exemplary LPs born of a truly English visionary & pastoral eclecticism. Hergest Ridge should be our national anthem, all 40 odd minutes of it.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,Rev Bayes
Date: 28 Oct 13 - 02:45 PM

A=452? Though that was too late, surely.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 28 Oct 13 - 02:49 PM

I see. Occult cultural vision. I really really see. Damn it man, bits of you were starting to make sense and then you have to go and say that!

I don't remember saying anything about the death of the concept album in 1975. I do remember writing to Melody Maker a couple of times in 1974, once to point out that "sit and listen" prog-rock was in conflict with the mating rituals of the young that were often centred round dance, and once to coin the expression "Shamrock" to describe electric music connected to Ireland (for example "The Tain" by Horslips). I got a T-shirt for the latter, but some hardcore celtic rock enthusiasts were very upset. I think I'd disagree with the current Wikipedia page and assert that the "true concept album" was pretty well dead after "Tommy" and "Ogden's Nut Gone Flake". That is however an off the cuff view and I reserve the right to vary it.

Yes, I've got some Kraftwerk vinyl, but I don't admit it to just anyone.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,Big Al Whittle
Date: 28 Oct 13 - 02:50 PM

Mornington Crescent!

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,Rahere
Date: 28 Oct 13 - 03:49 PM

Nearest stop to CSH

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Oct 13 - 04:47 PM

Occult Cultural Vision? That's Common Porpoise for you, meets Arts Council, and guess who's part of the operation?

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 28 Oct 13 - 04:50 PM

bits of you were starting to make sense and then you have to go and say that!

Hey, I was only 12 at the time.

As for concept albums in folk - there's The Transports, and Alan Stivell's overblown (but still wonderful fun) Celtic Symphony. I'd argue that Bellamy's LPs of Kipling's Puck Songs were heavy on Occult Prog Wyrd Concept too - 'Oak Ash & Thorn' and 'Merlin's Isle of Gramarye' - does it get any more prog? Then there's Anthems in Eden of course, and Bob Pegg's Ancient Maps & Bones, even Liege & Leif..

Folk is concept heavy, man! Getting heavier...

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 29 Oct 13 - 05:25 AM

"good to hear you are singing, jim,"
Thanks Cap'n - thoroughly enjoying the experience, sort of like being a born-again something or other.
Can't guarantee it's not part of 'Where are we going wrong" though.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Lighter
Date: 13 Nov 13 - 03:42 PM

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 13 Nov 13 - 03:54 PM

Just come home from a fundraising concert for the Irish Traditional Music Archive in Dublin
The Abbey Theatre, venue for Ireland's National Theatre, was packed to the gunnels - some of Ireland's best traditions performers on stage - at least one third of them no older than mid - thirty - great performances, great music, great evening.
Jim Carroll