Where are the kids?

Subject: RE: Where are the kids?
From: Alice
Date: 20 Jan 99 - 01:54 PM

I was thinking of this yesterday, as I rehearsed with the pianist on the four Robert Burns songs we will perform. I chose four songs that most people would have never heard before. I was talking with her about future performances I want to do with her in our town. My goal is to perform the folk songs... as well as Ladino, arias, and whatever is appropriate for my voice and personality that people may not hear anywhere else. They hear the standards at the session... Star of the County Down, Wild Rover, etc., but my goal is to perform pieces that I hope the audience here has never heard before, live or recorded. That is why I look for old books, like Herbert Hughes, which is filled with songs people have not repeatedly recorded. That is why I will mix in songs like Caro Mio Ben, because people in this area are rarely able to hear live singing, unless it is country/western bar bands or an occasional performer on tour.

Subject: RE: Where are the kids?
From: Animaterra
Date: 20 Jan 99 - 01:30 PM

90% is exposing the next generation, and the next, and the next. I look 30 -50 years hence and I see the few devoted middle-aged folkies going around to nursing homes and retirement communities with their tape recorders, frantically recording the last vestiges of living folk music before it dies out again. Who will be the Alan Lomax or Cecil Sharpe then? Those who will have heard Sandy and Caroline, or Art, or Alice, or any of us and liked it enough to care to preserve it!

Subject: RE: Where are the kids?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 20 Jan 99 - 01:27 PM

I have one son who is trying to make a living as a musician, and two who would like to - all are in their twenties now. I suppose their preferred form of music is punk rock, but they have explored every kind of music you can imagine. My eldest son even recorded an album of instrumental surf music that sounds kind of like the Ventures. I tried to get into a Doc Watson - David Grasman "Doc and Dawg" concert last year, but it was sold out. I stood outside the theater to try to buy a ticket, and watched as people in their teens and twenties streamed into the building. I was disappointed because I've always wanted to see doc Watson, but I was encouraged to see all the young people going to see this type of music. I think young people have broader interests than we give them credit for. If we preserve the tradition, they will carry it on.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Where are the kids?
From: Barbara Shaw
Date: 20 Jan 99 - 12:52 PM

We can expose our kids to our music, but then it's up to them to develop their own taste. My younger son went to bluegrass festivals from the time he was in diapers, and still goes with us to Winterhawk, but he's going to major in Jazz Studies at college next year.

He's heard it all. Maybe he'll be back. I wasn't ready for Folk/Bluegrass at his age either. I was a rock 'n roller and then moved on as my taste changed.

Here again, the important thing is to introduce them to music. Let them experience the joys of any kind of music. Then let them be. Folk will stay around, as long as there are folk.

Subject: RE: Where are the kids?
From: To Alice
Date: 20 Jan 99 - 12:46 PM

Very well put, Thank God that there are some small independant labels trying to preserve music as an art form, not as a means to a fortune.

My brother told me the other night that it dawned on him that "Easy Listening" is an oxymoron.

Subject: RE: Where are the kids?
From: Alice
Date: 20 Jan 99 - 12:29 PM

I think the difference between now and the past is the way the music business markets music. There is a profit strategy that relies on 'hits' and volume of sales, which are sometimes related to a movie soundtrack, to an extensive performance tour, to the latest gimmick, etc. The idea that music is what Mudcatters all seem to think it is, does not translate into the way music is marketed to the public on radio and CD's. Music to the masses (young people) is the latest 'new' sound, not the old sounds. There are some, like the Beatles, who could compose original music that will stand the test of time, but how much music from the 90's will still be sung in 20 years? Music used to be handed down from generation to generation by personal contact. It is now a product. Young people are exposed to the music product more than they are exposed to traditional music. Fighting the tide of mass marketing is a challenge, but it is fighting the good fight.

Subject: RE: Where are the kids?
From: Steve Latimer
Date: 20 Jan 99 - 12:11 PM

When I was in elementary school in the late sixties I was listening to the Beatles, The Monkees and anything else that A.M. Radio gave us. One day we had a special visit to our classroom by a couple of guys who called themselves "The Original Sloth Band." They amazed me by making music with things like a jug, a washboard, I believe I recall them having a washtub bass and it was the first time I had ever heard bottleneck guitar, which I have come to love. It was a small setting and very interactive, we were able to ask several questions and I think we were allowed to try some of the instruments.

The way I listened to music changed that day. I am forever grateful to "The Original Sloth Band" who turned out to be the Whiteley Brothers, who are still quite active and successful on the Canadian Folk/Blues scene.

Perhaps if the performers among Mudcatters would do something along these lines with their local schools the kids would realize that there is an alternative to The Spice Girls, Backstreet Boys and all the rest of the fabricated 'music' that they are being bombarded with.

For what it's worth, my eight year old daughter is learning "Willow Garden" on Guitar. My sister performs it, my daughter heard her practising it and asked to be taught it. Alas, she also listens to the Spice Girls, but there is hope.

Subject: RE: Where are the kids?
From: KingBrilliant
Date: 20 Jan 99 - 11:43 AM

They are definitely at the various festivals we go to in the UK over the summer. Sitting around playing and singing and sounding really good. So they must be getting together regularly somewhere

Kris

Subject: RE: Where are the kids?
From: catspaw49
Date: 20 Jan 99 - 11:15 AM

Art...you may have your "jingles" back (see condom thread). Well stated...well done! catspaw

Subject: RE: Where are the kids?
From: Art again
Date: 20 Jan 99 - 11:11 AM

See the condom thread for talk of Harry Cox. ;-)

Subject: RE: Where are the kids?
From: Art Thieme
Date: 20 Jan 99 - 10:52 AM

Dan,

You are correct! It used to bother me---until I realized it was only depressing me--so I let it go and simply figure that what will be will be---just a part of the cycles. My answer for it, professionally (and when my health dictated that I tour less), was to link up with a steamboat on the Mississippi where I could play music & tell jokes/lies for almost a decade while I watched the music I cared about lose it's audience. Now I see, with much less anxiety, that the law is whatever the Supreme Court says it is (USA) at any given moment (to metaphorically view this). And I joyously participate in the sorrows o' the world (as Joe Campbell pointed out the Buddhists try to do).

And I gave my main lap dulcimer to a 12 year old kid who definitely was very interested. Any time a youngster shows real interest (or even before) I'll show 'em what I can. I kept my fees very low for shows I did in the schools of the 8 counties in and around Chicago for 22 years for this very reason. This allowed the inner city students (along with the more affluent suburban kids)to be, at least, exposed to this music they'd never hear otherwise.

The fellow I gave my dulcimer to just came over to show me the electric guitar he bought. That's O.K.! He'll take the dulcimer off the wall and start playing it 20 years from now, and then he'll posess the wisdom of age that is so often needed to enjoy our music best. Where I came to the music first out of youthful rebellion, he'll come to it out of intellectual and spiritual need born of a nostalgia for the old bearded guy in his past who took him aside and gave him a gift of the music.

Art

Art

Subject: RE: Where are the kids?
From: AndyG
Date: 20 Jan 99 - 10:14 AM

Now this is personal experience but I have noticed that if I go to a Folk Club the audience definitely fits the desciption offered by Dan, but if, say, I go to a Waterson:Carthy gig in a non-Folk Club environment, the average audience is considerably younger.

I don't believe it's the clubs actively rejecting youth, but it could be youth rejecting the "old ways" (just like I did by going to folk clubs).

In the UK the music is in good young hands already (Rusby, Carthy, Cutting and many, many more) and has been for the last ten years (Morton, Hancock etc. I could go on.)

Youth is playing, singing and listening already, they just don't go to folk clubs very often, which I think is a shame but I don't know how to change it.

AndyG

Subject: RE: Where are the kids?
From: Big Mick
Date: 20 Jan 99 - 08:51 AM

Hi Dan,
I have been pondering this one for a bit, and I don't think I am anywhere close to the answer. I will say this. Upon reflection, it occurs to me that this is just part of the great wheel. At various times, throughout history, other styles of music have come into prominence and the folk arts moved to the fringe. At times like that, our spiritual forebears, gathered in the music and protected it until the young ones came back around. Think about our own lifetimes, and the generation just before us. There was a golden age of folk music that got interrupted by the big band sound and early rock 'n Roll. We had a revival in the late 50's and through the 60's. Then comes Disco, back to the fringe. And so it goes. I guess I feel that our bardic task is to keep it going, until the next Woody or Pete or Bok, Muir & Trickett comes along. And he/she will. We have a lot of interest right now, which allows us to preserve more of it for posterity. I must admit to having the same concerns as you. But each time I play some venue and my 20 and 22 year old daughters show up with their friends; and the friends ask me about the music and tell me how much they like it, it helps me to understand that we couldn't kill the music if we tried. It has appeal, and only needs us to expose it to 'folks'.

All the best,

Mick Lane

Subject: Where are the kids?
From: Liam's Brother
Date: 20 Jan 99 - 08:14 AM

In some regards folk music is very healthy. Many people can't get enough Riverdance; Irish pubs proliferate all over Europe and beyond; there's a session just about everywhere in the States. Bluegrass continues to be very popular, etc.

When I look at the audience for what Americans and Brits would call [generic] Folk Music, I get shivers. Everyone I see is my age (not especially young) or older. Where are the kids?

I don't mean your kids or my kids - who would be used to hearing folk music in the house - but other people's kids! Someone we know professes to being part of the Next Generation; that person is 33!

Give me stories about groups of teenagers singing sea shanties, doing the Woody-Cisco-Sonny thing or committing Harry Cox's repetoire to memory and I will be heartened for sure. However, the median age group for folk music enthusiasts is rising by about 11 months every year.

As the sooner-than-we-think Mantle Passers, what are we doing wrong or, rather, what can we do better to make the music of our lives and the lives of singers long since buried more appealing to younger folk?

Any thoughts?

All the best,
Dan Milner