Which Trads are disappearing?

Subject: Which Trads are disappearing?
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 05 Jun 04 - 08:41 PM

Folk music(traditional) may be moving on/progressing/changing/but most of all disappearing. Which songs can you remember that seem to be no longer sung at Clubs/pubs/concerts/festivals...................
Do they need reviving???????????
Be Blessed.

Subject: RE: Which Trads are disappearing?
From: GUEST
Date: 06 Jun 04 - 12:10 AM

Which songs are disappearing?

NONE!

It is best to live in the present and not morn the passing of the past.

Subject: RE: Which Trads are disappearing?
From:
Date: 06 Jun 04 - 01:26 AM

Don't know. I THINK I'm still hearing many of the old time songs.

Of course, sometimes I'll request something, and that might bring something up which might fall into the "lost in time" category otherwise.

Subject: RE: Which Trads are disappearing?
From: The Shambles
Date: 06 Jun 04 - 01:59 AM

The 'tradition' is continuing to sing/dance etc.

The actual songs and dances may change (and always have), but there appears to be little danger that singing and dancing will ever dissapear.

Subject: RE: Which Trads are disappearing?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 06 Jun 04 - 02:18 AM

I think there are songs that get "sung to death" and are not sung for a time - but if they're good songs, they come back.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Which Trads are disappearing?
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 06 Jun 04 - 03:31 AM

Songs may drop out of use at a particular club or in a particular area and seem to have disappeared, while still being alive in others. I have certainly heard songs that were "re-discovered" although I never knew they were lost. The singer then took credit for having re-introduced them into the repertoire

Doug C

Subject: RE: Which Trads are disappearing?
From: Strollin' Johnny
Date: 06 Jun 04 - 04:19 AM

Personally, I mourn the passing of people's ability to spell correctly - especially simple words like 'mourn'. Or even the apparent inability of some people to spell their own name, seemingly, so they're incapable of including it in a post.

Subject: RE: Which Trads are disappearing?
From: Rt Revd Sir jOhn from Hull
Date: 06 Jun 04 - 04:36 AM

i agree, proper spelin is importunt.

Subject: RE: Which Trads are disappearing?
From: Strollin' Johnny
Date: 06 Jun 04 - 04:46 AM

I don't include you in my comment jOhn - I'm aware that the People's Independent Socialist Republic Of Kingston-Upon-'Ull not only has its own telephone system, but it's own language too! LOL! :0)

Johnny :0)

Subject: RE: Which Trads are disappearing?
From: RichardP
Date: 06 Jun 04 - 04:53 AM

Fashion seems to raise its ugly head in folk music as much as other walks of life. There are certainly songs that were all-pervasive only a year or two ago, which never seem to get sung in my hearing nowadays. However, there is a steady stream of long unsung songs that blossom forth after being "discovered" on old unplayed recordings. The only songs that truly disappear are the new dross that doesn't make it on to a widely distributed recording. They deserve to be lost. This is no different from the old-time dross that didn't make it into the broadsheets or the orally passed on tradition. Little is more certain than that someone in the future will regard todays less known recorded songs as a great future revelation. That is what traditions are made of.

Richard

Subject: RE: Which Trads are disappearing?
From: Leadfingers
Date: 06 Jun 04 - 07:33 AM

When The Kippers first appeared on the scene a lot of Dyed in the Wool old Trad folkies said that the songs they were parodying would disappear , but we still hear Dido Bendigo more often than Didi Fido Dont we ? As previously stated IF a song is a good song it will survive and only the dross will disappear forever . Its always nice though when somone sings a song you havent heard for a year or several .

Subject: RE: Which Trads are disappearing?
From: The Shambles
Date: 06 Jun 04 - 08:13 AM

Do they need reviving???????????

In my opinion, it is always a mistake to sing or otherwise promote something for any other reason than its merits (as a song/dance etc).

It is a bit like pickling or preserving a fruit that no one ever much liked the taste of. Or of making someone to clear their plate of vegatables that are not to their taste, because they may be considered as being good for them.....

Perhaps the way is to find a way to cook it up in a different way or add some spice to it? That then may make it a more attractive or more relevant proposition, in the way that Fairport Convention (and others)did with traditional songs and tunes, in the 1960's.

Subject: RE: Which Trads are disappearing?
From: Tig
Date: 06 Jun 04 - 09:21 AM

I think one thing which is affecting which songs seem to have disappeared is the fact that songs we learnt at school eg drunken sailor are now no longer part of 'singing' and have been replaced by Disney and the current 'pop' favourites.

Whereas I am all for keeping up with the times it seems a shame to totally ignore this early introduction to a DIFFERENT type of music for most children. At least then they have heard it even if they reject it!

Subject: RE: Which Trads are disappearing?
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 06 Jun 04 - 10:20 AM

All things pass...

thankfully!

Subject: RE: Which Trads are disappearing?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 06 Jun 04 - 10:53 AM

Indeed and as Dick Gaughan says in Sail On, "Only a fool breaks his heart for what is gone". What we have is a living tradition. There's absolutely no point in 'reviving' something that was crap in the first place.

Subject: RE: Which Trads are disappearing?
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 06 Jun 04 - 11:17 AM

Subject: RE: Which Trads are disappearing?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 06 Jun 04 - 11:38 AM

The assumption that the songs that haven't survived were rubbish just doesn't stand up.

The element of chance and luck enters into it. There are too many examples of great songs that have only just made it through - collected from one singer, for example, or found long after in a single copy.

Subject: RE: Which Trads are disappearing?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 06 Jun 04 - 12:00 PM

What Joe Offer said about "done to death" songs that get dropped but come back later if they're good is right. And I agree with Shambles that it is counterproductive to sing or otherwise promote a song other than on its merits. Pickling springs to mind. There are quite a number currently languishing on the compost heap that I hope fervently no-one ever tries to revive. Of course, there may well be some, as McGrath suggests, that haven't survived but deserved to have done. Never mind, if they were that good, someone's bound to write them again...

Subject: RE: Which Trads are disappearing?
From: Kagan
Date: 07 Jun 04 - 10:07 AM

I'm less worried about songs disappearing from the trad. as the clubs where they are sung. It seems like every year we lose another 2/3 or more and fewre new or replacement clubs are starting.

Subject: RE: Which Trads are disappearing?
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 07 Jun 04 - 10:25 AM

Our local session has lost a few songs due to the singer working night shift! We've lost others in the past too when the person who knows it moves away, or dies. Unless someone else picks it up, it leaves the repertoire.

When Naemanson sang NorthWest Passage at our folk club in November, it was the first time since we'd heard it since a memorial concert in 1997 or 8. There were shivers up & down spines as we listened & joined him.

sandra

Subject: RE: Which Trads are disappearing?
From: InOBU
Date: 07 Jun 04 - 10:32 AM

Well, as spelling is a morned tradition passed by some, I will lament the passing of the simple song of kindness.
Cheers
Lary

Subject: RE: Which Trads are disappearing?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 07 Jun 04 - 10:36 AM

There's nothing traditional about folk clubs. They sprang up as venues in the wake of the 60s revival just as jazz clubs had done before them. Cutting edge in their time, they are now - with a few notable exceptions - cliquey backwaters of resistance to musical development.

Traditional music came from the community, from people in their social situations, and it's on its way back to where these happen today. Tonight I'll be seeing Uiscedwr (past BBC Young Folk Award winners) at the Spitz, an East London nightclub where cross-genre performances are the norm.

What determines the booking policy is whether the music is good. No "floor singers" who've been attempting the same song for the past 20 years and not yet learned the words or tune, no "old mates" bookings that have been recurring since 1966 complete with the same sets. Just good music appreciated by open-minded, unpredjudiced punters.

Subject: RE: Which Trads are disappearing?
From: GUEST,eoin o'buadhaigh
Date: 07 Jun 04 - 04:09 PM

not only spellin but gramor as well John. I got a text from my daughter the other night, it took her all of thirty seconds to send and I spent the next hour trying to understand just what she was on about. PROGRESS? n e way bak 2 ur coment. Joe is right, the singer usually gets fed up with a song if he has been singing it for a long time and gives it a good rest. I used to sing one song in particular and after a year or so I noticed quite a lot of other singers were singing it as well. I decided to put it to rest, that was some ten years or so ago. I was asked to sing it earlier this year at a singing weekend and felt the old pangs of passion again that I used to feel when I first sang it. A good song NEVER dies but some singers do.
          eoin

Subject: RE: Which Trads are disappearing?
From: GUEST,Russ
Date: 08 Jun 04 - 09:06 AM

For me the problem is not the disappearance of particular items like tunes and songs but of entire styles. Homogenization is the real enemy of truly traditional music. When I am listening to a "traditional" ensemble and cannot even guess what country, region, or tradition they represent, that's a serious problem.

Subject: RE: Which Trads are disappearing?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 08 Jun 04 - 09:32 AM

What do you want Russ? Apartheid? Ethnic cleansing? Airtight glass cases in museums? The tradition is alive and is a reflection of changing demography. As long as traditions - ours and those of other cultures - are respected, conventions can and should be broken.

Subject: RE: Which Trads are disappearing?
From: DonMeixner
Date: 08 Jun 04 - 05:57 PM

Did I miss something here? I unserstand and agree with Russ's post entirely. Countess Richard's post has me confused as to the meaning in the reply. Could you elaborate on the this Countess?

Don

Subject: RE: Which Trads are disappearing?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 08 Jun 04 - 06:50 PM

Real traditions evolve continually and progress. It's like pinning a butterfly into a case to put arbitrary boundaries on a tradition. So that was how it was in 1901 (dominated as it was by European, especially German, influences)? So you want to bottle it? That's nonsense. What you'll do is kill it. Tunes and styles were different 20 or 50 years before that. They had changed again by the mid 20th century and have continued to do so up up now. Dance music in particular reflects the changing ethnic mix of our multicultural society; instruments, rhythms and countermelodies from other lands, cultures and genres are incorporated and adapted to fit our own traditional dance figures.

Don, I'm talking obviously about the British scene here but are things so different in America?   I know you have your contra dance snobs as we have our Playford ladies, My feeling is that they're best ignored. In upstate New York I've met native Americans who are incorporating not only white American musical styles in their repertoire but Afro and Latin American influences too. It doesn't mean they don't respect their roots, as we in England do too.

Russ complains that he cannot tell what country, region or tradition and ensemble represents. Well, no-one actually knows where morris dancing came from but I don't suppose that stops him claiming it as a "truly English tradition". It's not of course, We all live in one world. Let's celebrate that.

Subject: RE: Which Trads are disappearing?
From: DonMeixner
Date: 09 Jun 04 - 12:35 AM

All things have their time and them they are gone. This isn't news.
But I think fusion music is good and bad. It is good if it opens new people up to the pure form who might never know it but for the fusion with something they already know. BUt it is bad if the fusion is all that survives and the pure form is lost forever.

I reference Cecil Sharpe's discovery of music in the US that survived nearer to it's pure form that the same tunes did in the UK.
If thos songs and melodies had remained in isolation in the Sea Isles or the Appalachians we would have lost a major part of the folk traditions of two countries.

Just as the island and the mountain breaks have become open to the world at large traditions and ways of life and living those traditions have begun to disappear. It is sad but that is the nature of change.

There is no reason to lose the pure or near pure form of any folk tradition now with modern recording abilities.   And there is no reason not to allow traditions to fuse and create new, and exciting variations.

I think the reference to apartheid and ethnic cleansing is a little over the top however. Perhaps valid insofar as the point that was made but still a bit much.

Don

Subject: RE: Which Trads are disappearing?
From: The Shambles
Date: 09 Jun 04 - 02:09 AM

The term fusion is a problem I think. The natural process of change and the incorportaion of different instruments and cultural ideas inot others, is possibly not best described by this word.

I think that maybe it should be reserved for intentional attempts to fuse different syles and cultures. Not all of these are successful, perhaps largely because thet are conscious or forced attempts, rather than those changes that take place over time?

Subject: RE: Which Trads are disappearing?
From: Ian
Date: 09 Jun 04 - 03:54 AM

If it is the song that is important.

There is no reason why you should lose any song from a folk club. In line with gov't policy and the PELS act. Why don't we arrange for all clubs to have a CD/Tape player and performers MIME to pre-recorded songs. That way we get to hear a wide range of songs and each mime artist can present their favorite songs and they can either perform to recordings of their own voice or someone elses.

Subject: RE: Which Trads are disappearing?
From: GUEST,padgett
Date: 09 Jun 04 - 04:03 AM

I have found that many of our Uk younger professionals are excellent musicians on a wide range of traditional instruments such as guitars, flutes, pipes and squeezeboxes

The difficult area is that of traditional song ~ traditional song is probably best performed by singers who have 'been around a while' and are able to understand life concepts and experiences and express those values within the song performance.

I know that the younger musicians/singers are desperate for material which they can use and arrange

The concept of mentoring and grooming by other performers may have some merit?

Subject: RE: Which Trads are disappearing?
From: The Shambles
Date: 09 Jun 04 - 05:03 AM

There is no reason why you should lose any song from a folk club. In line with gov't policy and the PELS act. Why don't we arrange for all clubs to have a CD/Tape player and performers MIME to pre-recorded songs. That way we get to hear a wide range of songs and each mime artist can present their favorite songs and they can either perform to recordings of their own voice or someone elses.

A sort of mimed FOLKEOKE, you mean?

Subject: RE: Which Trads are disappearing?
From: GUEST,noddy
Date: 09 Jun 04 - 07:30 AM

Is the claim that some music to be traditional music is just plagiarism ,you know it was written by some one but claim you do not know who!

Subject: RE: Which Trads are disappearing?
From: GUEST,Russ
Date: 09 Jun 04 - 07:38 PM

What do I want?

Just a little variety for a little while longer.

I don't doubt that the world is moving towards globalization and homogenization. I certainly can't stop it. But I can and will mourn the passing of the musical diversity that I have gotten so much pleasure from for so many years.

Not meaning to get too melodramatic, but losing a musical tradition is like losing a species.

I suppose that if you like Big Macs and such (I do) you might not think it a big deal when the arrival of the chains signals the disappearance of local restaurants.

When one can no longer hear a clear difference between a Pike County, Kentucky, fiddler and a Clay County, West Virginia, fiddler the world has been dimished.

Subject: RE: Which Trads are disappearing?
From: Seamus Kennedy
Date: 10 Jun 04 - 01:15 AM

I lament the passing of the traditional game of marbles. Seriously.

Samus

Subject: RE: Which Trads are disappearing?
From: The Shambles
Date: 10 Jun 04 - 02:05 AM

Marbles! What a load of balls. :-)

The world may have diminished due to the absence of the dinosaur, but there is no going back (even with Steven Spielberg doing his best). this is a natural change. When things evolve over time, we lose things yes but it is a case of swings and roundabouts.

I think I would have always willingly traded my marbles for a computer console, and games on it, where I could run away from realistic looking and sounding dinosaurs.