The Daftest Inclusion in 'Folk' Music

Subject: RE: The Daftest Inclusion in 'Folk' Music
From: Clinton Hammond2
Date: 06 Aug 00 - 05:50 AM

The best part of "teen-angst" is when they grow out of it...

Sorry, Mbo... I was firmly on yer side along this thread until that one small point... Then I just had to pick that nit...

Things change, yer right... They have to change or they die... The kids of today that are into 'celtic' music think it's all like Kilt and The Mahones... 2 bands that I couldn't possible care any less for... But that's what they like and more power to 'em... So, when I'm at a fest and that stuff starts up, I go elsewhere...

And well, only time will tell but I suspect that a lot of the "Singer-songwriter crap" (as quoted from antoher thread of late) of today is the folk music of the future... So if ya don't like that, either stay away from it, or get busy gettin' out of the way, 'casue I'm lettin' Mbo blaze the trail on this on! Let's hear it for innovation!

Besides, isn't this why you get the line-up for a fest before you order your tickets?? Then if it's not to your liking, you're casting you vote against by not supporting it...

I think this thread needs a bran muffin!

Subject: RE: The Daftest Inclusion in 'Folk' Music
From: Callie
Date: 06 Aug 00 - 09:12 AM

There are Izhorian Runic folk songs which are at least 1,000 years old. I've got music if anyone is interested.

Subject: RE: The Daftest Inclusion in 'Folk' Music
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 06 Aug 00 - 09:31 AM

Carol...interesting, but it's really Earl you should be speaking to. I>/B> was just being difficult about one particular example!  I'd make a distinction, though, between a documented song of proven antiquity (and they do seem usually to be liturgical, and therefore "art" rather than "folk" music) and one found in living tradition.  The question might be whether "O adiutor" is still being sung as part of a continuing tradition, or whether it is only performed as an antiquarian piece in Early Music recitals?

Callie...that sounds interesting, too; are they part of a living tradition, or are they archaeological finds?  Please tell us more!

Malcolm

Subject: RE: The Daftest Inclusion in 'Folk' Music
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 06 Aug 00 - 09:31 AM

Please excuse my sloppy formatting.

Subject: RE: The Daftest Inclusion in 'Folk' Music
From: RWilhelm
Date: 06 Aug 00 - 09:51 AM

I honestly don't know if there are 1000 year old folks songs still around, it just doesn't seem likely.

As far as the festival is concerned I will stay away but it is my right as an American to bitch and ridicule.

I'm going to a Beethoven festival headlined by Limp Bizket

Subject: RE: The Daftest Inclusion in 'Folk' Music
From: katlaughing
Date: 06 Aug 00 - 09:54 AM

I would suspect the Tuvan throat music, which can be found in living tradition today, goes back a long way. I will check out my booklet on it and see.

Subject: RE: The Daftest Inclusion in 'Folk' Music
From: Jeri
Date: 06 Aug 00 - 09:57 AM

Mbo, we've been telling you you're a winner for months - when are you going to BELIEVE IT!?!? People have different opinions, and none of us are losers because of that. You quoted someone from Oasis: "F*** 'em all, and play what you want." That's what we do. I play and sing things that are old, or sound like they're old. All of us who do that have fought most of our musical lives against people who want us to think like them.

I DO like traditional music; I DO like some rock and newly composed songs, but I refuse to let anyone tell me I'm wrong about what I like or don't like. I like the different types of music because they are different. If traditional music started sounding too much like rock, if one rock band started sounding exactly like another, if it all starts sounding the same, what is left to love?

Folk music has almost always been the "alternative music." I hope we always have the alternative.

Subject: RE: The Daftest Inclusion in 'Folk' Music
From: Callie
Date: 06 Aug 00 - 10:32 AM

Warning: somewhat of a thread creep ...

Between posting the above and finding the actual music, I have to report an inaccuracy. The Izhorian Runic songs date from around 2000 BC.

The language is now extinct - a close relative of modern Estonian . The songs were collected this century and written down for the first time.

The songs I have include "A Spell Against the Adder" which is mainly spoken, "My Lips are Singing But My Heart Is Heavy", and a Runic Epic which describes the beginning of the world as the breaking of a swallow's egg. The Epic is similar in sound to the most famous part of Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana".

The texts are all in Ukranian script, so I can't read the descriptions of all the songs. I have to rely on memory of what I learnt when a Ukranian conductor taught them to me.

As for folk, jazz and pop - well, there's good and bad in all kinds of music. It's a good thing there are still "purist" outlets for those who want to stick with the one genre. As someone who has thought a lot about what "jazz" is and isn't, I can say that I'm dismayed that often at jazz festivals they slip in lots of popular but non-jazz acts: groovy stuff, lounge etc, that isn't what the festival is for. I can understand folkies' disappointment when trad festivals are infultrated by new forms. Vote with your feet!

Callie

Subject: RE: The Daftest Inclusion in 'Folk' Music
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 06 Aug 00 - 10:51 AM

Being Devil's Advocate again...if the songs were first collected in the 20th. century, how can anybody tell how old they are?

Malcolm

Subject: RE: The Daftest Inclusion in 'Folk' Music
From: Callie
Date: 06 Aug 00 - 11:00 AM

Wish I could remember our conductor's reasoning. And wish even more that I could read Ukranian! Dunno - references to the songs in other forms? References to landscape or cultural practices? I really can't answer your question. I might do some net-surfing and see what I can find out. How are folk-tales dated?

By the way: I assume that if they were collected this century they would have evolved a fair way since 3000 years ago (in keeping with oral/folk traditions). However, I have them in a language which is now extinct, so some parts of a version of the original might be intact.

Callie (1am, but now intrigued)

Subject: RE: The Daftest Inclusion in 'Folk' Music
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 06 Aug 00 - 11:35 AM

Folksongs and folktales can only be reliably dated to the first known recorded version, though obviously they are often considerably older than that, and a tentative earlier date may sometimes be arrived at from things the source says, such as "I learned this in (date)" or "from (identifiable person)"; the point is that, beyond the available historical evidence, all else is just guesswork, sometimes educated, all too often sheer fantasy.  That doesn't mean that there aren't songs or stories still (or recently) current that are very old indeed; just that it's usually impossible to prove.

Malcolm

Subject: RE: The Daftest Inclusion in 'Folk' Music
From: Ferrara
Date: 06 Aug 00 - 11:53 AM

I try to avoid discussions of "what is folk music" partly because, being married to Bill D, I hear a lot of 'em. But I suspect the real subject of this thread is the modern tendency for so many venues to become choked with hybrid folk-rock and singer-songwrite stuff **to the virtual exclusion of genuine traditional music.**

The definition wouldn't matter wouldn't matter so much if it weren't for the fact that gatherings started by people with a taste for old, traditional music, often change their emphasis to new, more popular music and another good festival is lost to the twin gods of ego and money.

I'm real glad there are people out there who are bringing a feel for folk music to the younger generation by making it more like the music they hear on the radio. But must they drive out everything else? The National Folk Festival and the fourth of July Festival on the Mall feature a variety of music, but there are a lot of genuine traditional singers who sing the stuff the old folks sang. They aren't headliners. They may not even be performers. They are folks.

Where are the folks at the Newport and Philly festivals?

Subject: RE: The Daftest Inclusion in 'Folk' Music
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Date: 06 Aug 00 - 12:28 PM

Some wold say the studious have got the folk muse right
Some would say the sexy can, sing but true delight
Some will change the context, when playing songs by sight
But folk musicians, fountainheads, play into the night

Innovation turns on some who have to change the tune
These ones do dilutions well with water and a spoon
In this world thats changing fast, we need to find the source
Whats more we want it as "it was", collected from the horse

And then the teens come rolling in to reinvent the wheel
with capital at every step, running at their heels
Business crafts a deafened ear for many trendy things
And love the ones who say they will, while hanging from their strings...

Subject: RE: The Daftest Inclusion in 'Folk' Music
From: Jeri
Date: 06 Aug 00 - 12:46 PM

I am an old folkie, if the truth it be told
I like my men young and my songs very old
For cheese that is ripest is covered with mold
And you'd better join me on the chorus

Subject: RE: The Daftest Inclusion in 'Folk' Music
From: GUEST,Rich(stupidbodhranplayerwhodoesn'tknowbetter
Date: 06 Aug 00 - 04:58 PM

I just heard that Chicago's Old Town School of Folk Music is running ensemble in The Grateful Dead, the Beatles and The Clash. I think the last of those has GOT to win th "Daftest Inclusion In Folk Music"

Rich

Subject: RE: The Daftest Inclusion in 'Folk' Music
From: GUEST,CarolC who will re-set her cookie later
Date: 06 Aug 00 - 09:05 PM

For Malcolm Douglas or whoever is interested;

I think it can be pretty clearly demonstrated that folk music that is found in living tradition can pass down for many centuries fairly unchanged.

When I was younger, I played nothing but renaissance and early baroque music. We considered this type of music to be a sub-category of classical music. On more than one occassion since I started playing traditional and folk music, while attending folk and traditional music jam sessions, I have heard some of the music I used to play from the renaissance period being played and labled as traditional music.

Also, I have been told that in Ireland, O'Carolan's music is considered too new-fangled to be called traditional. I believe he composed during the sixteen hundreds?

(Not picking on anyone - just having fun) Carol

Subject: RE: The Daftest Inclusion in 'Folk' Music
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 06 Aug 00 - 11:04 PM

Not so much new-fangled, perhaps, as "classically" influenced.  Carolan was certainly influenced by the fashionable Italian composers of the day.  I suspect that whoever told you that he was too modern to be "traditional" was having you on, or possibly didn't really know what they were talking about; he worked within a traditional idiom but incorporated outside influences where it seemed appropriate to his market.  He had a living to make, after all.   If Carolan is too recent to be considered to belong to the tradition, then so is almost all of the instrumental music being played in Ireland at present!

Malcolm

Subject: RE: The Daftest Inclusion in 'Folk' Music
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 06 Aug 00 - 11:55 PM

"FOLK" is NOT a value judgement, GODAMMIT! It can be good, and not be folk, or bad and be folk or anycombination thereof.

MBO- Please stop worrying about age and self-expression; neither have anything to do with the subject. he difficulty, for many of us, was stated by Bill D, if you read his posting carefully: If I go into a Thai restaurant, I don't want the menu to be beased on tortillas, or spanikopita or bagels.

As far as boycotting festivals featuring music you don't want to hear, I can only raise two points: a) that approach means that you never will hear any performer who's unfamiliar to you, and b) that's just what's happening to folk festival! Ask a festival promoter about dwindling attendance.

Subject: RE: The Daftest Inclusion in 'Folk' Music
From: CarolC
Date: 07 Aug 00 - 12:06 AM

I must say, Malcolm Douglas, it sure is fun to have you around here on the Mudcat.

On the thread called "BS Does CELTIC music really exist?", I related the story of how I heard what I did about O'Carolan, and the context in which it happened. I've refreshed it for you, so you shouldn't have to look too hard to find it.

I'm thinking maybe you know some of the people in my story. It sounds like you get around.

Carol

Subject: RE: The Daftest Inclusion in 'Folk' Music
From: Kim C
Date: 07 Aug 00 - 05:35 PM

Y'all be sweet, now.

I say, that's an interesting lineup for a "folk" festival. There are lots of artists there I like, but I wouldn't necessarily call them "folk."

I love the Battlefield Band in the new incarnation because I love that guy that used to sing with Ceolbeg because I used to love them too. I like loud fast stuff. Drive my husband nuts playing it in the car as loud as I can stand it. (So I usually do that alone.)

But I also like sweet slow soft stuff, too. In a previous life (like 15 years ago) I was a classically trained pianist. I am still a huge sucker for a good Chopin nocturne.

Me, I like everything. Except jazz. But I kinda like that Diana Krall.

Subject: RE: The Daftest Inclusion in 'Folk' Music
From: Mbo
Date: 07 Aug 00 - 05:46 PM

The guy from Ceolbeg (another one of my favorite bands) is Davey Steele. Davey is terminally ill now, being diagnosed recently with an inoperable brain tumor. It's very sad. I'm going to miss him a lot. "And this will be his last trip home..."

--Matt

Subject: RE: The Daftest Inclusion in 'Folk' Music
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 07 Aug 00 - 08:31 PM

Carol:  Thankyou for that; I knew that you'd mentioned this recently, but couldn't for the life of me remember where.  Carolan's music underwent quite a revival in the late '60s and early '70s; it was a novelty in Scotland and England, and spread like wildfire.  I can't speak for Ireland, but I suspect that the same sort of thing happened there, though a little earlier.  It's probably fair to say that the current popularity of his music is, in the main, a deliberate revival rather than a continuous tradition, so my earlier comments were likely a wee bit over-cynical.  Having said that, it ill behooves Scottish musicians to be too sniffy about "new-fangleness", given the very serious influence of "classical" techniques on Scottish fiddle music in the last hundred years and more...I still suspect just a touch of snobbery in their attitude!  On the other hand, I'd go with their definition of a "session".  I've never heard sessions described as blood-sports before, but I do see what you mean...

Malcolm

Subject: RE: The Daftest Inclusion in 'Folk' Music
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 08 Aug 00 - 05:40 AM

I've been looking around for more information about this Estonian Runic Song business.  I wasn't aware that these are made in "Kalevala metre" (used by Longfellow in his Song of Hiawatha); if I have understood correctly, it's the form that can be dated back two to three thousand years, rather than individual songs themselves.  That makes a lot more sense to me.  The  FAQ at SOC.CULTURE.ESTONIA has this to say:

"The most original part of Estonian folklore, the runic folksong, originated in the 1st millennium BC, as a result of interaction between primitive Balto-Finnic singing (warbling, keening) and the songs of the Baltic tribes. Runic songs are based on the alternation of long and short syllables. The basic runic verse line is the trochaic tetrameter, with each line generally forming a conceptual whole. A song is constructed by the repetition of the concept of a line of verse in subsequent lines. The words are tied within the verse by alliteration and assonance. There are approximately 3,600 runic song types and 133,000 variations. The tunes have limited scope, but are rich in variations. The oldest are songs with myth themes, keenings, spells and family ballads; when agriculture became established, work and ritual songs with a magic function developed. Most of the surviving songs are from the serfdom period, when the singers were mainly women, and the content female-oriented. Due to the conditions of serfdom, the songs were mainly elegy-style and satirical, rarely is joy or love expressed. In the l9th century, folksongs with rhyming lines became prevalent. These were more male-centered, and there is frequently even some comedy. The tune was more complicated, often accompanied by a musical instrument (zither, violin, concertina)."

There is a scholarly article about the verse-form here:  LANGUAGE AND POETIC METRE IN REGILAUL

There are allegedly some sound samples  here,  but only in the Estonian language part of the site, so I couldn't find them...

Malcolm

Subject: RE: The Daftest Inclusion in 'Folk' Music
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 08 Aug 00 - 06:13 AM

Aha!  There appear to be some here:  Isuri rahvamuusikast

Subject: RE: The Daftest Inclusion in 'Folk' Music
From: CarolC
Date: 08 Aug 00 - 06:22 AM

Malcolm D.

I can't find anything to disagree with you about re: Carolan and the Scottish musicians, but I surely do appreciate the information. I'm going to save it for some people I know who play the fiddle, Scottish style.

Is there some kind of Malcolm-shaped spotlight that I can shine into the sky if I need more of your wonderful music information?

Carol