Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Suzy Sock Puppet
Date: 03 Oct 13 - 10:59 AM

Gross generalization? Lazy stereotype? I have a son who has listened to rap for years, which means, I have heard plenty of it myself. Gross Generalizations and lazy stereotypes result from limited exposure. That is not the case with me. I was not the kind of mom who made him turn it off because I didn't want to hear it (maybe I should have). I am also extremely open-minded about music. I don't love all genres equally but I respect most - all but rap and punk or speed metal where the "vocalist" basically screams in your ear the entire time.

Rap has become an international expression of popular resistance? I have to disagree Jack. It's an international expression of cynicism, nihilism or something along those lines. If there were in fact anything that could be characterized as an international expression of popular resistance, it would be not broadcast everywhere. It would not be mainstream. It would be underground. Anything that can't be co-opted and thus neutralized, gets suppressed. Trust me.

What solutions does rap propose to the injustices of the world? It encourages youth to use injustice as an excuse to act out violently and get thrown in jail, use and abuse women, make it your life's priority to buy more bling... Have I left anything out? In other words, it mirrors and reaffirms the in-the-toilet values of the current establishment (as reflected in the mass media) - in a musically bankrupt "art" form.

And btw, you don't need Nazis, Greek or otherwise, to shoot rappers. They do a fine job of that themselves.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 03 Oct 13 - 11:31 AM

Anything that can't be co-opted and thus neutralized, gets suppressed.

It doesn't get much more thoroughly suppressed than what happened to Killah P.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 03 Oct 13 - 11:47 AM

you don't need Nazis, Greek or otherwise, to shoot rappers

Except in Greece a rapper, Killah P, has just been murdered by a member of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn.

Can't say much about speed metal, but the other two forms you single out, rap and punk, are riddled with examples of radical politics. If your views about rap are solely based on what you son plays, do you not think that reflects more on the sort of rap he likes than the genre as a whole?

The Goats - Burn the Flag

The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy - Television, the Drug of the Nation

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,Allan Conn
Date: 03 Oct 13 - 12:14 PM

My main issue with Rap (and I know it is personal taste etc) is that I find it incredibly boring and repetative. I know there are exceptions, and the Television link above is one of them, but I just find so many of the tracks sound exactly the same with the words being spouted out in the exact seem rythm etc. Then people say it is all about the words but quite honestly on many of the tracks I can hardly make the words out anyway. Not a clue what they're talking about. and it isn't an old fogey thing. I was still quite young when Rap music first came on the scene and initially I was quite keen. Just didn't think that many of the songs would still be sounding exactly the same 30 years on. I do like some tracks and on many of the more commercial R&B tracks you get catchy choruses (more often than not from older songs) that are the only bit of the track worth listening to as the rest is just the same old monotonous sound of undecipherable muttering! I know many folk would disagree but just my view.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Lighter
Date: 03 Oct 13 - 12:28 PM

> riddled examples of radical politics

Surely you don't mean shootin', killin', rapin', and I almost forgot braggin'.

But you do seem to assume that "radical politics" automatically means "benevolent politics that would enhance the lives of all (or at least all whom we think deserve it)."

Rap (even more than other recent pop music genres) became fantastically popular largely because of zillion-dollar advertising and marketing campaigns aided by cynically eroticized images of the performers (often with harems).

If rap had really been propagandizing some kind of coherent, appealing, beneficial social agenda insistently and repetitively for the past 25 years, I think we'd have noticed some positive results by now. And presumably that would be true even if you mean non-commercial, unrecorded, street-corner "folk rap."

Like other words and lyrics, it basically goes in one ear and out the other, leaving various attitudinal residues. And do you really want teens, oppressed or otherwise, learning their agenda for social change (in whichever "radical" direction you prefer) from rhymers who declaim their love for violence? (Radical neo-Nazis can rap too, though maybe not in Greece.)

I also have a problem picturing thinkers like Jefferson, Marx and Engels (to take the most obvious examples) as choosing the hip-hop idiom to advance their extensively thought-out radical positions.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 03 Oct 13 - 02:12 PM

This is how far from unthinking violence the rap idiom can get. A group of peasant women in eastern Turkey protesting against the damage caused by a hydro-electric scheme and demanding the authorities listen to them:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xfq9tz_kadin-rap-grubu_people (mostly in Turkish with some bits in English and some bits bleeped out).

You could multiply examples like that hundreds of times. It's a thoroughly democratized idiom that long ago escaped the control of the American media industry.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 03 Oct 13 - 03:33 PM

This is how far from unthinking violence the rap idiom can get.

Exactly, Jack. CAN being the operative word. But not often enough. Yes, you may be able to multiply that hundreds of times. But for each one of those I would hazard a guess that 100 are of the other type and more. Anecdotal evidence is not a good argument I'm afraid. Show us what percentage of rap music is an 'international expression of popular resistance' compared to that that is simply violent, misogynistic or raking more cash in for those covered in gold already. I then may believe you are right but until then I can only go off the facts I know.

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Suzy Sock Puppet
Date: 04 Oct 13 - 07:22 AM

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,SteveT - PM
Date: 03 Oct 13 - 04:39 AM

I have often wondered whether a "pride" in your folk culture is the product of oppression. Oppression can result in the obliteration of a culture or it can drive it underground where it gains strength. You tend to be more likely to value things if they are being taken away from you. Both Ireland and Scotland, for example, suffered from years of cultural oppression; England hasn't really been oppressed by outsiders since the Norman invasion. So, are we going wrong by not being oppressed and not having any "foreigners" telling us to stop playing/singing?

****************************************************************************************************
ABSOLUTELY! Steve, you may not have developed these thoughts to any great extent but what a brilliant thesis! IMHO, it would hold up. Also, the romanticism of oppression mentioned by Lighter is another brilliant line of thought that fits right in with this thesis.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Rumncoke
Date: 04 Oct 13 - 07:54 AM

Ah great - now we aren't allowed to sing, play or dance without a licence maybe people will rebel against council control of their right to keep the old traditions.

I'm not holding my breath though.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Lighter
Date: 04 Oct 13 - 09:00 AM

> to keep the old traditions

Underlying the whole discussion is the apparent fact (sad, neutral, or rilly cool, depending on your POV) that only a quite small - even minuscule - part of the English-speaking population has much interest in doing so.

Even a total modernization with discernible traditional roots like Riverdance, which is more "accessible" to pop audience, is just another transient "entertainment option" for 99% of the people who like it.

They don't phone their Top-Forty stations demanding a trad line-up, and they'd be thought of as just a little bit wacky if they did.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Suzy Sock Puppet
Date: 04 Oct 13 - 09:49 AM

I think also Steve that it doesn't necessarily require "foreigners" in the strict sense. I think the same phenomenon would occur in the case of class warfare.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Lighter
Date: 04 Oct 13 - 10:53 AM

Another point about rap. Let's not confuse two issues.

Rap may be a fantastic outlet for "political" expression (not that I think it is) and still be execrable as a form of music or even as a way of declaiming verse.

The medium isn't really the message; or, if it is, it's a tedious, diffuse, and very limited message.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,Spleen Cringe
Date: 04 Oct 13 - 11:34 AM

A weird tendency is emerging to state opinions as if they were incontrovertible facts.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 04 Oct 13 - 12:06 PM

I'm starting to draw a few conclusions from the discussions:

(1) What I saw being promoted and performed while I was on holiday in Ireland is not necessary the best representation of Traditional Irish music and song, but it is what visitors expect to hear and it pulls in the punters and sells the pints! However, in my view it is still folk music, and it does give folk music a visible presence. Those who want to delve deeper into traditional music can still do their own research on where to find it.

(2) There is very much a chicken and egg situation oversupply and demand. If the demand is there then there would be greater provision and promotion, but the demand (from visitors) probably would not happen until there was more folk music to be easily found, and for it to be more widely promoted.

(3) That Irish music is played much more openly as, for as suggestted by the various theories it is much more part of the national 'psyche' - I can think of the right word, than English music is.

(4) That in England there are far more diverse forms of music speaking to young people.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Lighter
Date: 04 Oct 13 - 12:19 PM

Spleen, that's just your opinion.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 04 Oct 13 - 12:24 PM

That in England there are far more diverse forms of music speaking to young people.




I doubt very much that is the case. As I suggested earlier, different types of music are not mutually exclusive.

I could point out young musicians who are playing electric guitar in their local prog rock band one night and take the stage as the finest young piper/traditional player in the country the next.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,giovanni
Date: 04 Oct 13 - 03:58 PM

I'm eclectic in my tastes and always have been, and over too many decades of listening to music, Mike Skinner is one of very few who can make me well up with his music.

So don't frap the rap.

g

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Suzy Sock Puppet
Date: 04 Oct 13 - 07:56 PM

SPB-Cooperator, good assessment.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Eldergirl
Date: 05 Oct 13 - 05:07 AM

Some English people are/were ashamed of/apologetic about their culture, thinking it would be associated with the British Empire, international bullying, ... etc.(e.g.apologising for The Crusades. No the crusades weren't a good thing, but will apologising now make any difference?)
Other English people thought that as they were now Educated and Improved, they no longer needed that old hokey folk music stuff.
Some English people were Upper Class and didn't rate old folky stuff anyway.
Some English people are proud of the wrong stuff; don't we have the most unmarried teenage mothers, the worst football hooligans, the most litter-filled streets in our cities.. And a number of youngsters who take pride in being ignorant and stupid?
NO NOTALLOFTHEM!! This is just what seems to make the news and TV. Does someone out there want us to sling our culture out with the bathwater? NB I'm saying ENGLISH, have we not been oppressed? The Lower Classes have, for centuries, this is where the folk music bubbled up from, mostly.. so is England's problem that it's full of snobs?
Er, this seems to have been a Rant. Oh dear, now nobody will speak to me Ever Again..
X el :-\

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 05 Oct 13 - 05:49 AM

Rap may be a fantastic outlet for "political" expression (not that I think it is) and still be execrable as a form of music or even as a way of declaiming verse.

Spoken like a true Folky!

FYO : Rap is far more complex / exciting / sophisticated / rooted / involved / traditional / dynamic / relevant / diverse / wondrous & musically satisfying than the bland retrograde easy listening pre-digested toothless excreta that gets passed off as Folk these days, which is well and truly execrable and a disgrace to the bucolic joys of the traditional song / music forms which it claims to revive and revere.

Folk is heritage hobbyist comfort-blanket banality created by & for a select elite of comfortable middle-class graduate escapist nerds; Rap, OTOH, is actually happening and celebrating the human condition in all its filth, depravity, pride, yearning and struggle. It speaks from the human core eternally.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Eldergirl
Date: 05 Oct 13 - 06:30 AM

Trouble is, the rap getting most publicity is the rap glorifying violence, abuse of women, etc etc. Yes there is rap that doesn't , but how much of it gets through to the general listener?
OTOH, a list of Victorian songs held at the British Library has lyrics about bankers, factory owners, lords of whatever manor, grinding the faces of the poor and otherwise disadvantaged, which could have been written early this morning.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 05 Oct 13 - 06:36 AM

Blandiver - Why then are you posting to and, presumably, reading a folk music forum? :-)

To be serious though, you are being as guilty as others of gross generalisations. SOME rap is far more complex etc. SOME folk is heritage hobbyist etc. Can you not see that when you tar all with the same brush you are bound to rub some people up the wrong way?

I have said quite categorically that I don't particularly like a lot of the rap music that I have heard but I would not dream of saying it is all created for an 'select elite of comfortable middle-class' of white teenagers wanting to be black 'gangsta's'. I have not heard it all. There is some I do like. Even the stuff I don't like, some people do, so it must therefore have appeal to others.

Same with folk music. A lot is to my taste and some is not. I don't particularly like a lot of the Irish music I hear and find a lot of amateur songwriter stuff overly self-indulgent. But again I would not dream of saying it is a disgrace. Nor do I believe that one particular music speaks 'from the human core'. As humans we are all different and the music I feel speaks for me is, most likely, far different from the music that speaks for you.

If your post was meant to alienate 'true folkies' (whatever they are) you have most likely succeeded. If, however, it was meant to be a serious analysis of the situation them I'm afraid, to my eyes anyway, it fails to convince. Just try to see that we are all different, not only in musical tastes, but in levels of sensitivity :-)

Cheers

DtG

BTW - Eldergirl. I will speak to you. Exactly the same points I was making earlier.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,Rev Bayes
Date: 05 Oct 13 - 06:55 AM

Well, then, let's talk about the folk music that glorifies rape and trivialises domestic abuse.

Some crackingly ignorant posting going on here.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Oct 13 - 06:56 AM

Why proselytize ?

Not having to drive as far to a session or a concert venue that could sell enough tickets maybe. But what else ?

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 05 Oct 13 - 07:23 AM

glorifying violence, abuse of women, etc etc.

You listened to any Traditional Folk Songs / Ballads recently?

Why then are you posting to and, presumably, reading a folk music forum? :-)

Because I am cursed with a partially active & wholly imperfect Folk Gene & have even been known to participate from time to time... BUT I'm under no illusions as to Folk's nature & purpose, much less its origins. I'm not seeking to rub anyone up, just tell it like it is : Folk is born from a bourgeois fantasy of proletarian culture and carries on in essentially the same vain to this day. It's music for & a white middle-class graduate demographic because of its essential academic / theoretical status. This includes all the Folk Music I've ever taken part in.

Rap is alive and thriving internationally; Folk, OTOH, is the esoteric dreaming of a privileged few.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Eldergirl
Date: 05 Oct 13 - 07:31 AM

Guest Rev Bayes is thinking of the folk music that speaks from the human core eternally.
Lucy Wan, or Down by the Greenwood Sidney..oh this bloody spell checker!!
Apologies to Sidney,whoever he is!
Any trad music should contain all aspects of life in the nation/country/neighbourhood from which it springs? But it won't always glorify the crap.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Lighter
Date: 05 Oct 13 - 08:07 AM

> Rap is alive and thriving internationally; Folk, OTOH, is the esoteric dreaming of a privileged few.

So what?

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Eldergirl
Date: 05 Oct 13 - 10:36 AM

'Folk' round our way looks like an attempt by many musically enterprising younger people to break into the music biz and maybe even become Stars..
I say Looks Like. Appearances are not everything.
BTW, cheers DtG, ah'preciate it.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,Allan Conn
Date: 05 Oct 13 - 10:50 AM

"Folk, OTOH, is the esoteric dreaming of a privileged few"

A few of those who attend our club are pretty well off. One or two are what you might call at the bottom of the rung financially. I think the vast bulk though are just ordinary people. Certainly not overly privileged or particuarly wealthy. I don't understand the above comment.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 05 Oct 13 - 11:57 AM

It's music for & a white middle-class graduate demographic because of its essential academic / theoretical status.

I am white, middle-class and while lacking in said academic certification I do believe I belong to that demographic. Is this supposed to be wrong somehow? Are we all supposed to be black gangsta's? Why, in your opinion, is one kind of music inferior to another?

Don't delude yourself that you are 'telling it like it is' either. You are simply one opinion amongst many. One that is, in the main, entirely ignored anyway. Still, I do like the idea of a 'partially active & wholly imperfect Folk Gene' so I will accept that you may be one or two sandwichs short of a picnic:-)

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Eldergirl
Date: 05 Oct 13 - 12:03 PM

Allan, I guess they come along to enjoy the music for its own sake, which is what a lot of us do. Much like my home town folk club, in fact.
As for being overprivileged; the description surely applies to most of the western/developed world, compared to the rest. Not just a few folk enthusiasts.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,Jack Campin
Date: 05 Oct 13 - 12:32 PM

You know the genre has got something going for it when a rap version of Hamlet manages to annoy the Tory Cabinet into making a national issue of it:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-24351371

The storyline of Hamlet includes the hero doing a completely random killing (Polonius), sexist abuse of Ophelia driving her to suicide, sneakily engineering the murder of two guys with Jewish names, and finally setting off a bloodbath that kills every developed character left on stage. And we're supposed to sympathize with him. Is any character in a rap lyric as gross as the one Shakespeare created?

For that matter, how many rap personas can match Don Giovanni, Turandot or Mr Punch?

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,Mick G
Date: 05 Oct 13 - 12:42 PM

Maqy be of interest. About 4/5 years ago I was in Great Yarmouth as a member of the 'Grand Turk Press Gang Singers' (Gt Yarmouth Maritime Festival - Grand Turk sailing ship (Indefatigable from Hornblower series) we went to a local folk club to perform (with Johnny Collins, Sue and John Griffiths of the Mollyhawks) When we got to the folk club it was full of members in jeans and stetson hats doing line dancing. The hired act had a break and we manged to inveigle an invitation to perform our shanties. The locals were amazed and wanted to know why they couldn't have music like this every week. A question we couldn't answer. We were made very welcome. When the hired act came back on they started with 'Rolling Home' the John Tams classic and the locals really appreciated that also. I think it's all down to how it's presented. Pity Johnny Collins isn't about any more.
It was a very enjoyable evening and not what we were expecting when we went in (I don't think it was what the locals were expecting either, but they enjoyed it also)

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Manitas_at_home
Date: 05 Oct 13 - 12:49 PM

More stereotyping? European doesn't necessarily mean Jewish. The names Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern are those of aristocratic families.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Oct 13 - 01:14 PM

"Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern"
They're dead, you know?
According to Tom Stoppard anyway!
I suppose everybody is aware of 'Oor Hamlet' - Adam McNaughton's magnificent take on the finest play ever written?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 05 Oct 13 - 01:18 PM

I am just picturing line-dancing to sea shanties. What a blast :-) Thanks for that image Mick.

Haul around the capstan
my achy-breaky capstan...

:D tG

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Rumncoke
Date: 05 Oct 13 - 05:56 PM

All was explained on BBC Radio 4 today - we aren't supposed to be doing it out there in the community - we're supposed to put folk music on the internet.

Yeah - right.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Eldergirl
Date: 05 Oct 13 - 08:32 PM

Not sure that when Shakespeare wrote Hamlet, he was telling the audience Go, and do thou likewise.
Am totally sure that Johnny Collins was one of the most Inclusive performers ever, he made jolly damn sure that people joined in, which is one of the main reasons for folk music, surely?
Rumncoke, I'm sorry, but I must admit to having been a folkie on internet radio.. It was fun, but I've no idea if more than 3 people were listening!! Maybe that's why we're being told to do it that way. Another method of diluting our musical input.
Incidentally, title of OP has the words Traditional Music. why are we wittering on about rap? That's from another tradition altogether, W African I think. Not that many W Africans on this thread?

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 06 Oct 13 - 05:52 AM

Don't delude yourself that you are 'telling it like it is' either. You are simply one opinion amongst many. One that is, in the main, entirely ignored anyway. Still, I do like the idea of a 'partially active & wholly imperfect Folk Gene' so I will accept that you may be one or two sandwichs short of a picnic:-)

WAY too personal (and potentially insulting) a response to an entirely impersonal discussion, DtG.

My 'opinion' is simply the facts of how folk came into being. You can read all about it Dave Harker's 'Fakesong' and Georgina Boyes' 'The Imagined Village' and elsewhere. That Folk is born of social & cultural apartheid (& must define itself in such a way as to secure its position in what is a terrible case of cultural plunder & misrepresentation in which the working-class are effectively denied their creative heritage and are selectively screened for their potential as genuine authentic pure-blood traditional song-carriers depending on the degree of contamination from less savoury popular influences, like hip-hop) is hardly a secret. You can even read about it in 'The Ladybird Story of Music'; there's even an illustration just to drive the point home:

Cecil Sharp's Folk Epiphany

In 40 years of folkin' I've become aware of the prevailing social, cultural & ethnic demographic of punters & perpetrators alike, which is entirely consistent with its essentially theoretical / visionary / religious / cultist / academic nature. All of which, I have to say, is fine by me because that's what folk is. What isn't fine by me, however, is Folkies assuming that their particular brand of specialised easy-listening revivalism is somehow superior to other living / breathing musical traditions - such as that much maligned 'Rap Music', which, sadly, is a recurring theme here on Mudcat.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Andrez
Date: 06 Oct 13 - 06:17 AM

Hmmmmmm methinks it takes all colours to make a rainbow. Think about it, and just play or listen to whatever takes your fancy!

Cheers,

Andrez

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 06 Oct 13 - 06:55 AM

WAY too personal (and potentially insulting) a response to an entirely impersonal discussion, DtG.


Not intentionally so at all, Blandiver. Tell me which bit(s) you find too personal and potentially insulting and I will happily address them.

The works you refer to are history books written from a specific view with the point, it must be said, to make money for the authors. Again, nothing wrong with that but there are as many differing conclusions as there are books! There are no 'facts' about how folk music came into being just as there is no single agreement on what folk music actually is. Only opinions, and let's not go there again! Like the question I asked before about why is one music better than another, that still remains unanswered btw, why is one authors opinion better than another? Unless, of course, it happens to coincide with your own :-)

I do like the plate in that Ladybird book BTW - Wonderful stuff:-) I don't understand what point it drives home though. Unless you are saying that 'folk' as perceived by Cecil Sharpe and his contemporaries is the plundering of working class music. Which I would entirely agree with. I think we have moved on somewhat since then though.

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 06 Oct 13 - 07:40 AM

The works you refer to are history books written from a specific view with the point, it must be said, to make money for the authors

These aren't works of popular fiction, DtG - they are seriously researched works of social / cultural history by authors who remain essentially, and impressively, impartial throughout. One hopes their efforts earned them a working wage, but I doubt the authors were looking to cash in on that academic folklore market which has attracted so many with its allure of filthy lucre.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Lighter
Date: 06 Oct 13 - 08:23 AM

"Fakesong," at least, has been discredited (by C. J. Bearman and others) as tendentious and inaccurate.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 06 Oct 13 - 09:34 AM

I can't see how such basic observations & essential truisms can be 'discredited'; maybe 'disagreed with' might be more accurate. A lot of people around here might 'disagree' with it, but the basic historical substance of the thing is sound. Likewise The Imagined Village - and The Ladybird Story of Music if it comes to that (although it neglects to name the 'Gardener' from whom Sharp plundered 'The Seeds of Love' from which he made his nice parlour Trad. Arr. to perform for his posh pals during their postprandial soiree (presumably as a mere Tradition Bearer Mr England was not invited) thus establishing a precedence for such misappropriation / misinterpretation of so-called Traditional Folk Song that endures to this very day.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Suzy Sock Puppet
Date: 06 Oct 13 - 10:50 AM

This is a great thread. I have nothing to add at the moment but keep talking. I'm listening.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 06 Oct 13 - 11:18 AM

""Fakesong," at least, has been discredited (by C. J. Bearman and others) as tendentious and inaccurate"
And others, including (indirectly) after the first wave of criticism, by the author himself who refused to discuss it publicly
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Eldergirl
Date: 06 Oct 13 - 11:32 AM

I'm with you, Suzy S-P.

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 06 Oct 13 - 11:32 AM

Like I said, Blandiver. The works, although seriously researched, are extremely subjective views as the above comments prove. If you insist on relying on one set of experts you can only expect others to quote another set of experts. Authority is one of the more serious flaws of logical argument.

I am still worried by your feeling that I have been too personal and potentially insulting. Can we get to the bottom of that to settle my mind at least.

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: GUEST,Allan Conn
Date: 06 Oct 13 - 12:00 PM

"Folkies assuming that their particular brand of specialised easy-listening revivalism is somehow superior to other living / breathing musical traditions - such as that much maligned 'Rap Music',"

The fact is though that everyone has personal taste. I have actually a reasonably wide taste in that I listen to most genres but it is just that as a genre I find rap boring and repetative and lyrically undecipherable most of the time. I'm not saying that because I don't particularly like it that it is then inferior to folk music. I've just said why I don't like that much and given the reason why. We are all free to like what we want!!

Subject: RE: Traditional Music: Where are we going wrong?
From: Lighter
Date: 06 Oct 13 - 12:06 PM

Don't take my word for it:

http://www.mustrad.org.uk/enth36.htm