Folk Genius?

Subject: RE: Folk Genius?
From: Grab
Date: 26 May 05 - 08:22 AM

Chris, Dylan definitely did things with songwriting that hadn't been done before. But they'd been done before in other areas. Stream-of-consciousness writing was already well established in literature and poetry, so if Dylan hadn't done it then someone else likely would have.

Mind you, if another incredibly talent guitarist from the British tradition had gone touring Europe and North Africa, maybe they would also have come up with the same kind of stuff that Davey Graham would have. But it's doubtful - I think he was as original as Django or anyone like that.

Renbourn is more dubious - although he was talented, arranging old tunes for guitar had been done many times before (and often recorded better - Renbourn's recordings are often pretty ropey). Bert Jansch is another in the Renbourn vein - talented but not unique. Carthy is probably more deserving, in polishing and reconstructing a coherent whole from the enormous "back catalogue" of pre-Victorian English folk, which is a concept that might not necessarily have been done otherwise.

Graham.

Subject: RE: Folk Genius?
From: freda underhill
Date: 26 May 05 - 07:58 AM

Folk is a genre like any other - and we have our brilliant talents. as well as those who have shone out and changed the world, like Bob Dylan & Joni Mitchell, I think of people like Andy irvine and Judy Small. To be in the company of a great musician and songwriter, to hear them perform a great work - is an irreplacable, magic experience. Like a poet or an artist - a great songwriter can use words and music to communicate   a powerful moment, idea or experience.

It does not take complexity to make a genius - yes, Bach's music is incomparable. But so is Andy Irvine's "Never Tire of the Road".

Subject: RE: Folk Genius?
From: GUEST,Allen
Date: 26 May 05 - 05:14 AM

It does too care who performs it! A rotten performance can ruin a good piece of music.

Subject: RE: Folk Genius?
From: GUEST,Clint Keller
Date: 26 May 05 - 02:16 AM

I'll concede that Wolfgang is a genius & Bob isn't, if you like.

But so what?, as Hunter S. Thompson used to say. People are worth listening to or they aren't. Dylan & Joni Mitchell speak to me more than Mozart and I'd rather listen to them. Why should I listen to someone because he fits some definition?

A question like "Is he a genius?" is an intellectual excercise & the answer is of only academic interest and has nothing to do with the music.

The music don't give a good goddam who wrote or performed it.

clint

Subject: RE: Folk Genius?
From: GUEST,Allen
Date: 26 May 05 - 02:07 AM

Actualy, the same genius that applies to Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, et all, can be applied to folk martists. The above composers started within a certain idiom which had standardised forms, and borrowed lots of ideas, indeed phrasings from other stuff, including folk tunes which they reworked.
So if they can be considered geniuses, surely we can't limit ourselves to a narrow definition.

Subject: RE: Folk Genius?
From: GUEST
Date: 25 May 05 - 10:30 PM

Genius? A very overused word. Mozart, Beethoven we can discuss, but folk music and songwriting in the folk idiom is not the field for genius. For excellence, for brilliance, for many things certainly, but genius is given to so so few.

Subject: RE: Folk Genius?
From: fat B****rd
Date: 25 May 05 - 04:26 PM

Geniuses (Geniae ?) Charlie Parker, Django Reinhardt and all of the above.
There'll be a few more nominations hopefully.

Subject: RE: Folk Genius?
From: GUEST,Joe Moran
Date: 25 May 05 - 04:03 PM

Genius? Joni Mitchell fills all the criteria mentioned above. She was so different. She seemed to be composing songs using a radically different set of ideas than her predecessors. And her influence has been massive.

Subject: RE: Folk Genius?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 25 May 05 - 03:16 PM

The Isle of Arran, Scotland
The Aran Islands, Ireland
Giok.

Subject: RE: Folk Genius?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 25 May 05 - 02:58 PM

don't leave it like that, where are the two aran/arrans then?

nearly all the people mentioned have given me a lot of pleasure with their music. its a sort of genius that decides to make people happy with music, rather then screw things up. if they all want to call themselves geniuses, thats cool with me.

Subject: RE: Folk Genius?
From: greg stephens
Date: 25 May 05 - 02:51 PM

Pedant alert: ignoring how I may or may not have spelt the word in a previous post, they are in fact Aran sweaters. Arran is another place altogether.

Subject: RE: Folk Genius?
From: GUEST,Nelson
Date: 25 May 05 - 02:15 PM

But betcha none have stylish Arran sweaters.

Subject: RE: Folk Genius?
From: chris nightbird childs
Date: 25 May 05 - 02:01 PM

I can think of more Blues singers with 12-strings than Folk singers.

Subject: RE: Folk Genius?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 25 May 05 - 01:01 PM

You may be confusing him with either The Clancy Brothers and Tommy makes them, or Val Doonican.
Giok ¦¬]

Subject: RE: Folk Genius?
From: greg stephens
Date: 25 May 05 - 12:53 PM

Not a lot of English singers that I can think of with Arran sweaters and 12-string guitars. Especially ones with sufficient proficiency to play the guitar with a hand on one's ear.

Subject: RE: Folk Genius?
From: GUEST,Allen
Date: 25 May 05 - 12:50 PM

"The hand-on-the-ear-Arran-sweater-strumming-a-12-string-guitar stereotype."
Martin Carthy invented THAT stereotype? Hardly think so.

Subject: RE: Folk Genius?
From: greg stephens
Date: 25 May 05 - 12:46 PM

Bob Dylan, yes. Nobody else connected with the folk revival in Britain, ireland or north America. And of actual traditional folk performers, none. Pretty much by definition. The folk create perfect music that reflects society. Genius creates revolutionary art that attacks and changes(though the art may be constructed from folk ingredients). Different things.
Genius always seems to be separated by a generation or so from the folk from which it springs. Dylan stood away from his folk background, as did Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, the two shining examples of jazz geniuses. jazz was a folk music in New orleans in 1900, but the time Armstrong and Ellington had given it a bit of a going over in the 20's, it wasnt folk any more!

Subject: RE: Folk Genius?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 25 May 05 - 12:37 PM

Girl from the North Country?
Fennario?

Brilliant writer yes, original, not totally, a genius, almost.
Giok

Subject: RE: Folk Genius?
From: jonm
Date: 25 May 05 - 12:24 PM

On the English folk scene, I would suggest Martin Carthy for recognition. It's only when you dig into the source recordings and books that you realise that all those versions of folk "standards" that have been repeatedly recorded are actually Carthy's versions - with tunes written or amended by him, additional verses written by him etc. Although not the most attractive singer, his guitar technique has spawned more imitators than Davey Graham and John Renbourn combined, and surely the number of imitators reflects your influence.

If we ignore the hand-on-the-ear-Arran-sweater-strumming-a-12-string-guitar stereotype of English folk music, the typical material and treatment you would consider would be Carthy. It's just that he created that stereotype as an original.

Subject: RE: Folk Genius?
From: alanabit
Date: 25 May 05 - 12:01 PM

This word "genius" is the problem. Obviously Dave Van Ronk could see Dylan's limitations as well as his sources and influences. On Dylan's side, he has produced a very large body of work, which many of us see as stunningly original. That is as a new type of songwriter though, because he penned popular songs which were more subtle and textured than anything which had preceded them. If you don't like him, he comes over as a pretentious show off.
Woody Guthrie had a lifestyle and an idealistic commitment, which made him exemplary in the eyes of many. His songs were much simpler than Dylan's and I see them as being far less ambitious. I felt quite up to writing a dissertation about Guthrie (which I admit was nothing special). However, I would not even have attempted to write about Dylan. You would have to know a whole lot about a whole lot of subjects to write anything about Dylan which was not superficial.
I don't really think that folk music lends itself to producing a genius. It is a field of human activity which tends to focus on participation and taking the best of many rather than picking out just a few of the best.

Subject: RE: Folk Genius?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 25 May 05 - 10:05 AM

Woody Guthrie was a genius of a songwriter as was Ewan MacColl.

eric

Subject: RE: Folk Genius?
From: farmerj
Date: 25 May 05 - 10:02 AM

I can imagine that Van Ronk was highly aware of Bob's musical indebtedness to people like Jack Elliott, Cisco and Woody, old recordings of blues and so on. If you pay a lot of attention to an artist's connections to existing streams of music, it can divert you from the unique way they create. I do think Bob is a genius, and I am stingy with that kind of judgment. But I grant "genius" the right to come from somewhere; I don't need "genius" to stand alone and entirely unique. There are many great Navajo weavers, e.g., but only one may be of the highest artistry and inventiveness. That person could be a genius, drawing on tradition.
--
Skip James over John Hurt any day, and I love John Hurt.

Subject: RE: Folk Genius?
From: English Jon
Date: 25 May 05 - 09:46 AM

Leon Rosselson?

Subject: RE: Folk Genius?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 25 May 05 - 07:52 AM

Frank Zappa!

Subject: RE: Folk Genius?
From: chris nightbird childs
Date: 25 May 05 - 07:44 AM

There are people who've done certain things with music/songwriting that have never been repeated, and never will.

Bob's one of 'em.

Subject: RE: Folk Genius?
From: Grab
Date: 25 May 05 - 07:19 AM

If Bach was a genius, I'd class Davey Graham (and maybe John Renbourn) well up there alongside. Definitely revolutionary.

I guess one problem is that it's difficult to point to a genius songwriter, because there's rarely a revolution in songwriting. Revolutions tend to happen in the music and prose/poetry fields, and songwriting merges them.

Graham.

Subject: RE: Folk Genius?
From: Deskjet
Date: 25 May 05 - 04:14 AM

I've sometimes wondered about this one.I suppose I would place the concept of genius alongside that of revolutionary. To be a genius, one must also be a revolutionary. By revolutionary I mean the breaking of traditonal (tried and trusted) modes of expression, and the creation of new ones. In this context I would place the early Bowie in the genius category ahead of anything Bob Dylan has ever written.(But I'm with Bob!)

Subject: RE: Folk Genius?
From: chris nightbird childs
Date: 24 May 05 - 08:18 PM

Hell, Bob didn't even consider himself Folk. He just needed some songs to sing 'til his first good one came around.

Subject: RE: Folk Genius?
From: GUEST
Date: 24 May 05 - 07:49 PM

For that era Burt Bacharacht

Subject: RE: Folk Genius?
From: PoppaGator
Date: 24 May 05 - 05:35 PM

If Dylan doesn't make the cut as a "genius," I'm not sure anyone else of his generation would. Maybe Dave knew The Bob too well, and too early, to ever see him as anything more than a very bright young con artist.

Dave knew Mississippi John Hurt pretty well, too, and doesn't mention his name, not even dismissively, in this discussion of "genius." John would fall into a different category of "folk artist" than Bob or Joni ~ less self-conscious, more "folk" or "naive" or "primitive" ~ but he is certainly as strong a candidate for "genius" status as any comparable artist of his peer group.

But Dave's criteria were, apparently, just really high. Nobody but Bach and the Duke, huh? Pretty esteemed company...

Subject: RE: Folk Genius?
From: GUEST,Russ
Date: 24 May 05 - 05:07 PM

Depends on what he means by "genius"?

Did he happen to eludidate?

If we had his criteria we could argue about that instead of posting our own nominations for folk genius.

Subject: Folk Genius?
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 24 May 05 - 04:06 PM

Just finished reading the Dave Van Ronk's book. Towards the end of the book, Dave muses over the talent that emerged during the 60s and concludes that the folkscene never produced a genius. JUST quality writers. He singles out Dylan and Joni Mitchell, in particular. Dave refers to Bach and Duke Ellington as examples of genius. What do we think about all that?