Does Trad music have a future?

Subject: RE: Does Trad music have a future?
From: The Shambles
Date: 13 Sep 01 - 01:42 AM

It will be OK as long as horses still sing.......

Subject: RE: Does Trad music have a future?
From: Stewart
Date: 12 Sep 01 - 08:27 PM

When I was in Ireland last May at the Fleadh Nua festival in Ennis and heard the young people from the traditional music schools perform (Aos Og Concert) I was convinced that the traditional music is in good hands with the next generation.

And at the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes in Port Townsend, Washington (USA) last July I witnessed young people eagerly soaking up the traditions of much older musicians.

The traditions are being passed on. And with recordings now available they will have a much better chance of survival. In music the best always survives, although sometimes it has to be "rediscovered."

Cheers, S. in Seattle

Subject: RE: Does Trad music have a future?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 12 Sep 01 - 07:11 PM

"They don't write them like that anymore" - and the irony in that very fine and very widely sung song is that in writing it in the 1970s (and I assure you, that is relatively recent), Pete Betts demonstrated that they do indeed still write them like that.

And that will continue to be the case. The water changes, but the river still flows.

Subject: RE: Does Trad music have a future?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 12 Sep 01 - 07:10 PM

- and the irony in that very fine and very widely sung song is that in writing it in the 1970s (and I assure you, that is relatively recent), Pete Betts demonstrated that they do indeed still write them like that.

And that will continue to be the case. The water changes, but the river still flows.

Subject: RE: Does Trad music have a future?
From: The Shambles
Date: 12 Sep 01 - 05:46 PM

Well how am I going to find the music that I like in the record stores if it hasn't?

Subject: RE: Does Trad music have a future?
From: GUEST,Boab
Date: 10 Sep 01 - 01:26 AM

Gnu---try "wan canna Lager---just wan canna la=a=a=a=ager---" Sorry----wrong thread!!

Subject: RE: Does Trad music have a future?
From: gnu
Date: 09 Sep 01 - 04:35 AM

Superman... definitely. Besides, he can do so many things, whilst the Hulk is a one hit wonder.

Excuse me, late session, early morning... more tea might help.

Subject: RE: Does Trad music have a future?
From: GUEST,Ned Ludd
Date: 09 Sep 01 - 04:14 AM

As a folk club m.c. this is one I always think about. I think live music has a future. The traditions ? As has been said, many people now learn from c.d. which dilutes regional changes. The internet, whilst brilliant, means that there is easy access to much of the worlds music. People have to make a concious effort to keep traditions The General.

Subject: RE: Does Trad music have a future?
From: GUEST,Boab
Date: 09 Sep 01 - 12:36 AM

Aye, Shambles has a fair point about the "evolution " of some material regarded today as traditional.I can assure you however that in my own personal experience [!!!!!] Barbara Allen hasn't changed in Scotland for seventy years! [Ye trapped me intae that y'b-----r!]I know the rightness of your statement, however, regarding many old songs and ballads.The work of Robert Burns is an example; fairly recent research [Hovey and Jean Redpath, for instance] has shown many of the melodies now accepted are in fact NOT the music preferred by Burns.

Subject: RE: Does Trad music have a future?
From: katlaughing
Date: 08 Sep 01 - 11:18 PM

Thus sayeth Murray.**bg**

Lovely and heartening messages, all! Exciting to hear about, too.

Shambs, that was beautiful.

kat

Subject: RE: Does Trad music have a future?
From: Murray MacLeod
Date: 08 Sep 01 - 08:01 PM

If there is indeed a current fashion for playing traditional music at breakneck tempo, then it is not really an innovation.

Silly Wizard were fiercely criticized (and justifiably so IMHO) in the 70's for playing jigs and reels at undanceable speeds. Just because they could.

But they have all grown older and wiser now. So will the young musicians of today. 'Twas ever thus and so 'twill ever be.

Murray

Subject: RE: Does Trad music have a future?
From: AliUK
Date: 08 Sep 01 - 07:35 PM

weellllllll...this is one of those questions like "Who's stronger Superman or the Incredible Hulk?" a perennial, and the answers are always excellent. My two penn'rth is that good music always goes on. Here in Recife a group of young rock musicians created a fusion of traditional dance and singing styles with rock, rap and more recently electronic music. It goes by the name "Manguebeat". The main force behind the movement was a guy called Chico Science, who unfortunatel died a couple of years ago in a car crash going from one venue to the next during carnival. The music actually was a shot in the arm for the traditional styles ( Maracatú, ciranda, coco et al) and many centres for traditional music were set up. It's not the music that goes away, it's the people who let it die.

Subject: RE: Does Trad music have a future?
From: ard mhacha
Date: 08 Sep 01 - 07:23 AM

Correct, Derrymacash, when I was very young in the late 40`s early 50`s Irish Traditional music and song was just hanging on. I find that to-day the revival is complete with such diversities. The young musicians in Ireland are a wonder, when I hear the talent around my County there is no fear for the future. And Gnu, you couldn`t have chosen a better selection of songs, no wonder the young `uns were impressed. Slan Ard Mhacha.

Subject: RE: Does Trad music have a future?
From: The Shambles
Date: 08 Sep 01 - 06:08 AM

My point is the linking of too quite distinct words, with entirely different meanings, to make a concept that we seem to understand and dicuss, but which make no real sense together.

Music is always (and can only be) made in the present.

Tradition, opinion or belief or custom handed down from one generation to another esp. orally; handing down of these. According to my dictionary.

I would argue that what is being handed down is simply the custom of making music..... Not the style of that music. Which will and certainly has changed. Would Sam Pepys recognise "Babara Allen", now as the same song he heard then?

Would he seriously have asked himself if people would still be continuing the custom of just making music? I doubt it.

You can't hand down the air. The air in which the music is alive, only for that moment.

It is possible to write down something of its nature and now to record only the sound of it very accuratly......... You need to smell it too however, to get more than an image or a shadow of the magic moment.

Subject: RE: Does Trad music have a future?
From: GUEST,Boab
Date: 08 Sep 01 - 03:20 AM

Wonder if Sam Pepys, the great English diarist who mentions having heard "Barbara Allen" in Scotland, ever asked himself that question-----

Subject: RE: Does Trad music have a future?
From: Aidan Crossey
Date: 07 Sep 01 - 08:38 AM

Actually ...

Thinking further about it, I think it might have been more difficult to be optimistic about the answer to this question at the turn of the last century than now, at the turn of this one.

Subject: RE: Does Trad music have a future?
From: forty two
Date: 07 Sep 01 - 08:32 AM

There are so many muicians in the tradition in Ireland that I am sure that the music is safe. One small worry though. In the past tunes were handed down at sessions - as also happens nowadays. But a lot of music is learnt today form CDs.

The effect of this is that regional styles of playing are in danger of becoming watered down. Just a caveat!

Subject: RE: Does Trad music have a future?
From: bob jr
Date: 07 Sep 01 - 01:53 AM

well i am young but daily growin and i still like to dig out old traditional songs as i find em ,maybe on some dusty old record (the joys of working in a used record stroe) or on various sites round the net and i still like to learn em and they often they become my favorites . latest one was that red rosie bush ! now thats a song i can sing for hours plus i heard it done a mess of different ways so i kinda have my own style of doing it so i dont think trad is gonna die people (like me) are still discovering the joys of it !

Subject: RE: Does Trad music have a future?
From: gnu
Date: 06 Sep 01 - 05:36 PM

Done well, it's all beautiful music. I was at my new house today, dusting after the hardwood floors were refinished. The place is empty and it reverberates. While I was working away, I was singing stuff like May Morning Dew, The Parting Glass, The Wind That Shakes The Barley to take advantage of the venue... several young people (shite, young !!! in their twenties) from the apartment complex next door, complimented me and asked about the tunes while I was taking a break on the back steps.

Does it have a future ? Yes. And it has a past. And it is beautiful.

Subject: RE: Does Trad music have a future?
From: GUEST,Frank
Date: 06 Sep 01 - 05:14 PM

The traditional instrumental music of Ireland has a strong tie to dance. This is true with the traditional music of the U.S. I think this may be the key to it's continuance.

You can't dance to bluegrass, but you can to old-time music, the great body of Irish music and other traditions.

I see the connection as being important to it's contiuance.

Frank

Subject: RE: Does Trad music have a future?
From: mooman
Date: 06 Sep 01 - 04:48 PM

Even Coleman and Morrison were innovators in their time!

Even though I like to mix genres and "jazz up" things according to my whim and mood, I often return to a much more sedate and "traditional" way of playing...I guess it's just in the blood. I'm probably one of the slowest players in the local session now and getting slower still as time marches on!

I think the "future" of traditional music is very safe in the hands of some of the truly outstanding young musicians coming along mow even though it's bound to evolve to encompass the soul and essence of their playing and interpretation.

All the best to all

mooman

Subject: RE: Does Trad music have a future?
From: radriano
Date: 06 Sep 01 - 04:21 PM

Seems to me that there might be room for all concerned.

I am also frustrated by the current trend of breakneck tempos so I don't go to many sessions. I tend to play music with friends that have similar tastes to mine.

Keep in mind that others have the right to interpret traditional music in different ways. I've been to concerts where the band has the audience dancing in the aisles with glee while I make a quiet but quick exit.

Maybe you should create a new session and run it your way.

Subject: RE: Does Trad music have a future?
From: katlaughing
Date: 06 Sep 01 - 03:18 PM

Johnny, check out the Mudcat Radio page and watch/listen to Episode #84 where can see our own Bill Sables, Ian Stephenson, and Sam Pirt "Bridging the Gap," as they've called their CD, and you will see an excellent example of how trad music is alive and well between the generations.

Thanks,

kat

Subject: RE: Does Trad music have a future?
From: Jim Krause
Date: 06 Sep 01 - 03:10 PM

Johnny, Traditions evolve and change. Once upon a time, Barbara Allen was a pop song. Maybe it's hard to believe but some or maybe all of the ballads collected by FJ Child were sold on the streets of London, or Dublin or some other city in sheets called broadsides--hence the term broadside ballad. That sort of commercialism sound to me much like the way we attempt to sell our music today.

I'm reminded of a comment that fiddler Tommy Jarrell made one time. He played a tune called Backstep Cindy and he made a point of playing it the "old way" some of the old-timers had played it. Then he played it the "new way" his father and his picking pals had reworked it. There was quite a difference. It was still recognizable as the same tune, however.

Who knows what traditional music will be in say 250 years? Maybe the songs of John Lennon & Paul McCartney will be considered traditional folk songs. Maybe there won't be any difference in that far-off age between rock'n'roll and folk music; that the songs of Buddy Holly will be considered folk.
Jim

Subject: RE: Does Trad music have a future?
From: GUEST,djh
Date: 06 Sep 01 - 01:16 PM

I agree with most posts, everything that is alive changes.But, We do live in a strange world , all of man's history put together hasn't seen as much change as the last century and it continues accelorate. All you can do is KEEP THE LAMP TRIMMED AND BURNING. I think traditional music will prove to be an indispensable link to our past and our humanity as the world gets even more nonsensical and complicated.

Subject: RE: Does Trad music have a future?
From: Art Thieme
Date: 06 Sep 01 - 12:47 PM

As Bruce U. Utah Phillips is fond of saying THE PAST DIDN'T GO ANYWHERE. It arrived and has stayed here in US, in books, in librarys and on the Internet. The recordings that we have left are our footprints on the proverbial sands of time. (Hopefully, CDs will last better than recording tape did.)Yep, the future hasn't happened yet and is unknowable. If traditional music, as we knew it, is valuable to us, then it's our job to showcase it in the correct way as we see that in order to show the sparkle on the diamond. That gets done by putting it in proper settings like one would in a beautiful ring. People will notice it and want it for their own and the process will continue to roll on because it is home-made music we are talking about. And everybody loves a good story. If it has a great tune, that's all the better.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: Does Trad music have a future?
From: M.Ted
Date: 06 Sep 01 - 09:49 AM

Guest Johnny,

What makes you think that the music that you grew up with hadn't taken a big turnaround from what had come before, and that there wasn't some 40ish or 50ish or whatever type standing in the corner muttering about how "its all jazzed up nowadays"? The way I remember it, there was a lot of pop sounding "fakemusic" in the good old days, mostly because it appealed to the young people--the real stuff has always been a bit elusive--

Anyway, when you peel off the paint, what's underneath is still good, and can be repainted or restored, or (as is the current tendency) over-restored--and sooner or later, people do get a bit curious and peel off the paint to see what's underneath--

Subject: RE: Does Trad music have a future?
From: GUEST,Russ
Date: 06 Sep 01 - 08:57 AM

Cannot speak for Irish traditional music, but American trad is alive and well. Spend a week at Clifftop and you'll see it all. Hot kids playing at break-neck speed and beyond. Geezers doing what they've done for decades, often with the same hot kids in worshipful attendance.

Subject: RE: Does Trad music have a future?
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 06 Sep 01 - 08:36 AM

It would have no future if it was purely preserved in a glass cage - experimentation helps keep it alive. If it means changes in the tradition, so be it - there is nothing new in that.

What is probably most interesting though are the observations of many posters above - that the "real" stuff seems to last and much of the experimentation is rather more temporary.

Also, John P's observation that new tunes are played in old ways is probably a good indication that the tradition is very much alive.

Jon

Subject: RE: Does Trad music have a future?
From: KitKat
Date: 06 Sep 01 - 08:17 AM

I'm not sure how traditional music may be usefully defined. Things become assimilated and come to be regarded as traditional. Is music hall 'traditional'? What about Dylan's early music? Or do you have to go back several centuries? My feeling is that the presentation of the material may need to change to reflect current tastes, but the material (if it's any good) stands the test of time (IMHO of course)

Pat

Subject: RE: Does Trad music have a future?
From: Aidan Crossey
Date: 06 Sep 01 - 06:21 AM

Do them the way you first learned them ... that way you'll ensure that, at least until you pass away, they'll remain!

Few of the attempts to "modernise" traditional music seem to me to have had much of a shelf-life. At the end of the day, people who want their music uncut return to the Colemans and the Tuohys and the Ennises, the Dorans, the Dennis Murphys and the Paddy Fahys, the Joe Burkes and James Morrisons ... these people will always remain at the heart of the tradition. The music's on a bit of elastic ... at times it pulls away from the core, but it always returns!

Subject: RE: Does Trad music have a future?
From: The Shambles
Date: 06 Sep 01 - 05:57 AM

No.

It does not a past either.

It does, like all other music have a present.....The moment the note is made and only ever that glorious moment.

All we have to do is to keep on making those notes.

Subject: RE: Does Trad music have a future?
From: Peter Kasin
Date: 06 Sep 01 - 12:59 AM

Within Irish music, the revival(s) go in waves of innovation and then return to older, more traditional approaches. There is a trend now in Irish music, with many young musicians taking part, of returning to "the pure drop." It's like they're saying "Ok, we've gone through our synthesizers and conga drum accompaniment period, now we're returning to the more traditional approach, which now has more meaning for us." So, fear not, Guest Johnny - I think there'll probably always be periods of experimentation, innovation, and then a return to purer interpretations of traditional instrumental music and song, with, in some cases, keeping the innovations which best complement the traditions and discarding those that don't.

-chanteyranger

Subject: RE: Does Trad music have a future?
From: John P
Date: 06 Sep 01 - 12:44 AM

There are lots of people playing the old music in the old ways. There are lots of people playing the old music in new ways. There are lots of people everywhere in between. There are even people playing new music in the old ways. The future of traditional music is not in danger. Don't worry.John

Subject: RE: Does Trad music have a future?
From: nutty
Date: 06 Sep 01 - 12:24 AM

You are obviously going to the wrong places Johnny. Not all traditional music venues rely on "diddly diddly" music although if the session is predominantly Irish then I'm afraid thats the fashion these days

As regards etiquette ........ a well run folk club will always ensure that singers/musicians get proper order and is worth patronising even if you have to travel some distance to get too it.

As for your hankering for the past ... there have been many similar threads but no definitive answer .... young/new enthusiasts will always interpret a tune or a song in their own way and life would soon become boring if there were no variations

Subject: RE: Does Trad music have a future?
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 06 Sep 01 - 12:05 AM

What does not change, dies...

Subject: Does Trad music have a future?
From: GUEST,guest Johnny
Date: 05 Sep 01 - 11:31 PM

I don't mean to be the messenger of DOOM, BUT, the traditional music I grew up with seems to have taken a great turn around, like the POP of the 60's and 70's (or even the 80's and 90's)all has run its course and moves with the times. Then evolves!(to what?) The point I wish to make is -- Traditional music... song / dance / or instrumental.. it's all 'jazzed' up now-a-days. Few of the old songs remain like I first learned them, isn't 'traditional'music supposed to stay as it was all those years ago? Sessions are like a work out! every tune is likened to a JIG!! slow airs are at break-neck speed. I know in the past, when I went to a session if someone of age sang a song that was of an age and was of interest, you (out of respect)kept quiet and applauded. Now a-days it's as quick to get them a seat, a drink and get on with the REAL music, mad / hell for leather notes! anyone wish to comment? or am I just OLD? (at 40'ish)

johnny