|
08 Apr 03 - 04:23 PM (#928917) Subject: Robin Hood ballads From: Hester I know that the earliest extant medieval Robin Hood ballads (i.e., the Potter, the Monk, & the Gest) were probably spoken-word pieces, rather than songs. However, I wonder if some of the later ballads associated with tunes, (e.g Arthur a Bland, etc), have been recorded in a collection by anyone? I'm aware of Bob Franks' modern "talking blues" of "A Little Gest of Robin Hood". Also, I have the Estampie CD "Under the Greenwood Tree"; however I find the arrangement of the ballads there to be far too influenced by classical music conventions. In the same vein, I also have The Sherwood Consort's performance of "Le Jeu de Robin et Marion". I'm looking for earthier, folkier performances of the traditional Robin Hood ballads -- something in the style of Anne Briggs' version of Thorneymoor Woods: A poacher's life is the life for me, A poacher I will always be Fol de rol, tu ra la, dae! Can anyone suggest particular recordings? Oh, and while we're on the topic, Raggytash (who has a much different view of Robin than I) is looking for another Robin Hood song: >>>A more recent song which is possibly quite accurate had the line "the dirty robbin' bastard that he was" possible a good deal more accurate than him fishing out of Scarborough! Sorry I cannot recall more of the song perhaps a separate thread might bring it to light. I heard it in folk club in manchester in the 70's<<< Cheers, Hester |
|
08 Apr 03 - 04:55 PM (#928936) Subject: RE: Robin Hood ballads From: GUEST,Lighter Steeleye Span does a folk-rock version of "Robin Hood and the Pedlar" on the album All Around My Hat. Fun for all. |
|
08 Apr 03 - 05:42 PM (#928971) Subject: RE: Robin Hood ballads From: GUEST,Q A lot of good old Robin Hood songs, 17th-19th century, in the Bodleian Ballads. One, from 1893, is called "Robin Hood Up to Date." Enter robin hood in search. Robin Hood |
|
08 Apr 03 - 07:03 PM (#929046) Subject: RE: Robin Hood ballads From: Leadfingers The 'Dirty Robbing Bastard that he was' is sung by Fred Wedlock I think-But dont quote me. |
|
08 Apr 03 - 07:51 PM (#929088) Subject: RE: Robin Hood ballads From: Hester Wow! Thanks for all those suggestions. Anglo, I'm heart-broken to see that the Ed McCurdy album is not in print. I guess from what Stewie said about the Tony Rose album, it's a common problem with folk music recordings. Oh, and I almost forgot to invite all of you to my Robin Hood discussion group, called "The Greenwood" , where we explore every aspect of the legend, from the ballads and the May Games to movies and comic books. Cheers, Hester |
|
08 Apr 03 - 10:47 PM (#929170) Subject: RE: Robin Hood ballads From: masato sakurai Wallace House recorded some 10 songs on Robin Hood Ballads (Folkways 10" LP) in the 1950s(or 60s?). ~Masato |
|
09 Apr 03 - 07:35 AM (#929375) Subject: RE: Robin Hood ballads From: mandomad And this one, ROBIN HEAD. (try that in Google) Sorry, still can't do Blue Blickerties mandomad |
|
09 Apr 03 - 08:44 AM (#929433) Subject: RE: Robin Hood ballads From: alanabit I also posted it to the Keith Christmas thread a few weeks back. It's a gem, isn't it? |
|
09 Apr 03 - 11:47 AM (#929595) Subject: RE: Robin Hood ballads From: Hester Art Thieme wrote: >>>I recorded "ROBIN HOOD'S DEATH" on two albums.<<< Art, that's one of my favourite ballads too! I've even written a little cyber-essay about it, using a structuralist analysis to compare it to the crucifixion gospels and several other stories/rhymes/songs: The Dying Hero And Rick Fielding wrote: >>>Hester, I love your site. Checked in a number of times. I recorded "The Birth of Robin Hood" on my Folk-Legacy album "Lifeline". Still one of my favourite songs.<<< Wow, Rick, I listened to a sample at Barnes & Noble, and what a lovely voice you have: a cross between Stan Rogers and Gordon Lightfoot. Glad you enjoyed visiting "The Greenwood". I've posted a link to your album and Art's album on the message board there: "The Greenwood" And I have one more Robin Hood web page, this one exploring the concept of pagan survivals in the legend. Some of it needs revision, as I've lost some of my naive Gravesian perspective with further research, but any Frazerians out there, reformed or not, might get a kick out of it: The Legend of Robin Hood: An Exploration of Pagan Themes Oh, and Dan: As a Canadian, I'm very interested in the idea of a Nova Scotian tradition of Robin Hood ballads. The archive will give me more incentive to take a much-dreamed-about trip to the east coast. And Ed: You're right, the Tennyson/Sullivan operetta was not, sadly, the best work from either artist, but that "web-opera" site is such a nifty concept that I think it deserves its own blue clicky: The Foresters - Robin Hood and Maid Marian Really enjoying the thread! Thanks everyone for your suggestions Cheers, Hester |
|
09 Apr 03 - 12:59 PM (#929651) Subject: RE: Robin Hood ballads From: nutty A goodly number of the Robin Hood Ballads are in the Bodleian Library, having been printed by F. GROVE of LONDON between 1623 and 1661 Robin Hood and the Bishop Robin Hood and the Beggar Robin Hood rescueing Will Stutley Robin Hood's Golden Prize Renowned Robin Hood Robin Hood's Progresse to Nottingham Robin Hood and the Jovial Tinker Robin Hood and the Butcher Robin Hood's Preferment Does anyone know exactly how many Robin Hood Ballads there are? |
|
09 Apr 03 - 01:16 PM (#929667) Subject: RE: Robin Hood ballads From: nutty also ........................... Little John and the Four Beggers Robin Hood and the Shepheard Robin Hood's Delight Robin Hood Newly Reviv'd Robin Hood and the Curtall Fryar I'm sure that I would find more given a more dilligent search |
|
09 Apr 03 - 01:41 PM (#929686) Subject: RE: Robin Hood ballads From: Malcolm Douglas Location references for Creighton's sound recordings can be seen at Nova Scotia Archives: Helen Creighton: Robin Hood |
|
09 Apr 03 - 03:39 PM (#929816) Subject: RE: Robin Hood ballads From: Hester Malcolm: Thanks for the Creighton link! Nutty: Wait! Before you get too diligent in your search: it's very kind of you, but I'm actually quite familiar with the various on-line sources for Robin Hood ballad texts, including the Bodleian. At the moment, however, I'm specifically interested in finding sound recordings of the songs (preferably available for purchase by the public on CD). I don't know how many Robin Hood ballads there are (rather difficult to know how to count, given all the later variants), but the major ballads in their earliest known forms (and plays & some novels) have been collected on the University of Rochester's excellent "Robin Hood Project" site, many with commentary by academics Thomas Ohlgren and Stephen Knight. Cheers, Hester |
|
29 Oct 11 - 05:11 AM (#3246534) Subject: RE: Robin Hood ballads From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray I worked an a Robin Hood ballad project many years ago and got pretty mired in their general awfulness (with a hey down down a down down...). There some nice ones (like Michael's 15 Foresters) but the one that really stands out is Child #102 - The Birth of Robin Hood, AKA Willie and Early Richard's Daughter, which (being without a traditional tune) I set to one of Adam de la Halle's (d. 1288) melodies from his very wonderful Jeu de Robin et Marion. We still do it & have a versions (and a remix!) featured on the 1st & 3rd volumes of John Barleycorn Reborn. Volume 3 coming soon, featuring our Lily Flower Remix, but here's the basic vocal track: The Birth of Robin Hood - Child #102 The concluding verse is one of the most beautiful things in the ballad tradition. |
|
29 Oct 11 - 06:06 AM (#3246555) Subject: RE: Robin Hood ballads From: MGM·Lion Thank you, Sean. That is beautiful. |
|
29 Oct 11 - 07:26 AM (#3246588) Subject: RE: Robin Hood ballads From: GUEST Don't forget the recordings listed here. The only ones I've managed to get my hands on are Sherwood Rise's recordings of Robin Hood & The Tanner and Robin Hood And Allen A Dale on their album From the Wood. |
|
29 Oct 11 - 10:37 AM (#3246663) Subject: RE: Robin Hood ballads From: kendall The best Robin Hood song I have ever heard is Lonesome Robin by Bob Coltman. |
|
30 Oct 11 - 03:45 PM (#3247161) Subject: RE: Robin Hood ballads From: GUEST,Guest, Friar Tuck ...and then there's 'Robin Hood and the Chiropodist of Acaster Malbis'... |
|
31 Oct 11 - 04:54 AM (#3247463) Subject: RE: Robin Hood ballads From: GUEST,raymond greenoaken Off to work – will respond on my return. |
|
31 Oct 11 - 06:15 AM (#3247485) Subject: RE: Robin Hood ballads From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray but then they lose their identity as ballads. What is the identity of a ballad? Or indeed a Folk Song? I would argue that that identity must always be entirely subjective. In the present case it came from The Rymes of Robyn Hood - An Introduction to the English Outlaw by RB Dobson and J Taylor (Sutton 1989) that turned up remaindered in the old SPCK in Durham circa 1991 when Thor Ewing & I were working on a project of Robin Hood songs and ballads. I read them all, but the only one that really moved me was The Birth of Robin Hood from Jamieson's Popular Ballads and Songs 1806. As no traditional tune was extant, I set it to the medieval Adam de la Halle melody from his Play of Robin and Marion (which doesn't concern Robin Hood as such) and so the song came alive - for us at least, because that meant we could sing it. Rachel and I revisited it in 2002 when we were doing a wee tour with Julie Tippets & Martin Archer and it evolved to more or less the way we do it now; which is to say Rachel added a harmony and the whole flow of thing then hung on the dynamic of the narrative with respect of that harmony, and how we sing together anyway. Note here, Jim - this ballad does not exist as part of anything you would think of (or recognise) as a Tradition. There are no field recordings of anyone singing it, much less any record of what the tune might have been, nor, indeed, how it was sung. I had heard no revival reconstructions nor anything else that was in any way Folk with respect of it. All I had was an unsullied text from 1806 which I set to a melody from the 13th century, thus the Identity of this particular ballad is 50% creative process & discovery and 50% the joy that comes in singing the thing afresh each time we do it. Living with a ballad for 20 years it becomes part of your creative soul; it becomes a vehicle for all sorts of interpretations, not one of them is ever definitive; it lives, it breathes, in all sorts of ways. That is the identity of the ballad. And nothing is lost. * Discussion of people's work is not telling them what to do, it's part of the to-and-fro of the learning process Absolutely; I agree with this 100%, and strive to facilitate such discussion as a broader part of the learning process, both personally and generally. However, comments like: which is apparently why you have learned nothing. contradict that learning process and reveal a more reactionary & reactive agenda on your part. You are not qualified to be a Folk Policeman, Jim - nor even a Folk CSO - rather you are the mindless bouncer on the door of your ideal fantasy folk club, refusing entry to anyone who fails to meet with your highly selective & ill-informed criteria. As I have always said, I'm not bothered about being cutting edge, much less breathing new-life into old songs. For me it's the other way round - the New Life is already in the Old Songs - it's part seance, part communion - and whatever happens, happens. With this in mind, and on this the 31st of October, I give you my latest Post-Folk solo take on this old chestnut which is all about the narrative: The Wife of Ushers Well (Child #79) |
|
31 Oct 11 - 08:08 AM (#3247525) Subject: RE: Robin Hood ballads From: kendall If everyone liked the same thing we would run out of chocolate ice cream in 5 minutes. |
|
31 Oct 11 - 04:31 PM (#3247888) Subject: RE: Robin Hood ballads From: GUEST,raymond greenoaken Don't burn 'em, Jim. I'll take them off your hands. |
|
01 Nov 11 - 06:40 AM (#3248218) Subject: RE: Robin Hood ballads From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray Jeannie Robertson, Harry Cox, Sam Larner, Joe Heaney The Stewarts of Blair, Walter Pardon, John Strachan..... These are the people I listen to & revere - and more. May I point you in the direction of Ollie Gilbert and Mrs Pearl Brewer over at the Max Hunter archive? However, I wouldn't say Traditional Singing starts with them any more than I would say it ends with them. And whilst they inspire me - and whilst I rave about them endlessly to my various folk friends - I mostly acknowledge their idiosyncracy, individuality and the fluidity of their respective styles and repertoires. I regard them as individual artists rather than evidences of some mythical Tradition - the notion of which was invented by early revivalists to bypass very real issues of indivual creativity. People are, first and foremost individuals; I'm drawn to Folk as an eccentricity; I listen to Davie Stewart and I hear a creative artist who uses Tradition Song as his medium much as Picasso used paint - in this respect he's on a par with Captain Beefheart or John Coltrane. That is the nature of Musical Tradition as an essential cultural process - it is dependent on individual human creativity without which it wouldn't exist, much less have survived some 50,000 years down the line in the myriad ever changing genres, styles and idioms it does today. That's all down to individuals doing what's right for them to do & I very much doubt it was ever any different. Although maybe it's different in Ireland; I don't live in Ireland; I have never been, although I have an Irish name and Irish ethnic and familial roots. I do have a small smattering of Irish Songs in my ready repertoir (Denny the Piper, Blue Eyed Mountain Queen, An Bunnan Bui (in English from Paddy Tunney), Turfman from Ardee, Katie Kay etc.) which I regard as very essential to my personal ID. Likewise my Northumbrian songs, though my status as an ex-pat Geordie is more crucial somehow, but even so certain individuals look at me askance when I do my version of The Colliers Rant because it doesn't suit their received notions of Orthodox Folk Style, which I suspect is half the problem here really (even though what those people have actually said is that it's too traditional for their tastes). Fact is, as with Child 102, there is no traditional precedent for the song, much less its performance. My source is Bell's Rhymes of the Northern Bards from almost 200 years ago and I've no doubt the song was very old then. So sing it how the hell you want to sing it. Myself, I sing it by way of Holy Communion with the lost landscapes of my childhood spent in the South-East Nortumbrian Coal-field; it's a bitter lament for a lost world, and lost potential. I live in England, where Folk is very different from the state-funded TV-evangelised All Singing All Dancing All Traditional Emerald Idyll Jim describes as existing in Ireland; where Musical Traditions are alive and well and a constantly cropping new Pure Blood Genuine 100% guaranteed Travelling Traditional Singers to ensure the music remains unchanged and untainted for another few millenia yet; where every school kid is playing pipes, fiddles, bodgrans, penny whistles and singing Sean Nos with the best of them. In England, there is no state funded concensus on how 'it' must be; we are a multi-cultural country where people are free to do pretty much what they like in the name of creative expression and musical experience. In spite of this, Engish Popular Culture continues apace, and the English Population (unlike their State-Funded Cousins over there in Folk Utopia) really have better things to worry about than Traditional Music, which is the reserve of a dwindling bunch of grizzled old Folkies on one hand, and a sprightly bunch of university educated BYTs on the other. There's not much middle-ground - like me - aged 50, I'm both too young & too old because Folk skipped a couple of generations so in my Folk Life I'm talking to people 10-20 years my senior (and older), or 20-30 years my junior (and younger). Either way, it's minority stuff, a rare sort of specialism very much on the wane despite the enthusiasm of its various and diverse protagonists, amatuer, professional, semi-pro or whatever. It exists because of the passions of individuals, maybe individuals like Jim Carroll, who really ought to curb their enthusiasms when it comes to musical possibility. I must say that I LOVE the various and diverse aspect of this. Whilst we had fey-folky teachers in their braless early 70s Laura Ashley clad glory slipping us the occasional ballad at school, we also had sythn-obsessed wild-eyed experimentalists and crumhorn weilding medievalists to put another spin on things. To me it was all part of the same Folk Zeitgeist that had gangs of skinheads terrorising local pensioners by chanting Gaudete out of dark bus-shelters on dark December nights in 1973 when I was 12. Mostly, we listened to each others record collections, and learned that Music is very much a matter of Doing What Thy Wilt - even Folk Music, because that's what the old guys were doing. When I think of my own cultural history and how that diversity of experience informs my cultural creativity, then I really balk at some state-funded Folk-Fascist thug telling me I'm somehow doing it wrong. There is no wrong, even if people don't like it, they are free to listen to something else, just as they're free to do it as it suits them. As musicians & singers we are charged to be true unto ourselves, not to some state-funded fantasy off-the-shelf identikit nationalism which (thank God) doesn't exist over here - and certainly not in this house. As a kid I sought out records by Willie Scott, Billy Pigg and Phil Tanner with the same enthusiasm as I did those by Neu! Sun Ra and Daevid Allen. These are my cultural and musical roots & traditions; and it's as common as it is unique to each and every one of us, just as it was common to Walter Pardon and Sam Larner; it isn't PURE, but sure as hell it's REAL - and long may that reality continue. |
|
01 Nov 11 - 08:30 AM (#3248285) Subject: RE: Robin Hood ballads From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray but that's exactly what I call a singing tradition, a concept you don't accept. Any tradition is but the consequence of the individuals involved with it; The Tradition is consequent on the creativity of those individuals in making and changing the music and songs. As far as it can be said to have existed it all, it did so in a fluid state consequent on the people who did it - same with any music. The bit I don't accept is the Folklore thing, which has people as a passive medium for something they have no undertstanding of simply because it was subjected to a xeno-methodology by way of taxidermy and taxonomy. It is is this secondary stage that not only defines and perceives The Tradition, but later insists upon both it, and it's purity. We can see any artist as an indivual or part of a causal tradition, be it in terms of their roots, or the effect they had, if any, on later artists. Take John Coltrane, from his early work through to the wunderkind of the first classic Miles Davis quintet, through to the classic quartet and his later explorations with Rashied Ali and Pharoah Sanders - none of that came of nowhere, and yet he rewrote the book for every saxophonist that came after him. A few of us might mutter that he ripped most of it from John Gilmore, who was mostly content to stay in the ranks of the Sun Ra Arkstra - and then we go on to subject Gilmore's art to a similar analysis. Piece by piece, we build up a comprehensive picture of The Jazz Tradition, even though in doing so we end up with an archive so vast we'll never get through it it in a lifetime, much less reach any sort of concensus on what really happened and why - or any sort of understanding of what it must have been like to be there! The Folk Tradition is likewise vast and complex; we access it through songs and singers and sources, but its nebulosity defies absolute understanding without serious affecting its true worth. The closer we get to it, so the bigger and more wondrous it gets, but that closeness is only in terms of individual human beings who are so much more than just a part of it, but, as I say, creative artists on a par with any. I'm not suggesting they were all far-out restructuralists, but the evidence would suggest that they weren't content to leave things alone. No one controls the movement of any given song from one singer to a next, much less how that singer then chooses to make the song their own, or then change it with each subsequent performance. As I suggested elsewhere, even if we had a crack team of time-travelling musicologists to record every single utterance of every single song sung by every single singer and then subjected the data to a programme of high powered meta-analysis I'm sure we'd still be missing something - the pure joy of thing probably! I love cultural process, just times you can't see the trees for the wood, but there is a beauty in a swarm too, and in ever-changing organic fractals. My main problem with The Traditional Hypothesis is when it becomes the basis for pure-blood correctness, elitism and exclusion which, I think, is a complete anathema to the nature of The Folk Beast which has always been about individuals doing things as it suited them. If it wasn't, then I'm sure there'd only be the one version of Barbara Allan, and so-called Folk Art would look bland and mass produced. * Loved your Colliers Rant, mind. Cheers. It's odd that we only have one set of words for it, although there are other verses that would fit. Some years ago my mate Clive Powell set Ca the Horse, Me Marra to an old pipe tune, but those would fit Colliers too - and could well be contemporary. I sing Ca' the Horse to Clive's tune, but think nothing of altering the odd line here and there (I've lately started to sing he digs his coals thick, me lads - and drives the lasses wild; the original is drives the boards wide; I'm sure you can see how I got there!). With Collier's, I wouldn't consciously change a word of it; it comes from my grandfather's old copy of Crawhall's Newcassel Sangs, 1888, which reprints Bell from 1818. Is that the earliest?? I take heart that coal was the main export of the Tyne right back in the late middle-ages, so The Colliers Rant becomes a seance with a potent non-corporeal something or other which these days you might find rusting away in some old ditch-back or other, but even in my recently young day defined the steaming long-vanished landscapes which were once my home. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsqsWmNqWYU Sair fyeld, hinny! |
|
01 Nov 11 - 09:18 AM (#3248328) Subject: RE: Robin Hood ballads From: MGM·Lion I meant, of course 'the word' ~~ tho 'the sword' might make a crazy sort of sense in this context!... |
|
01 Nov 11 - 07:32 PM (#3248835) Subject: RE: Robin Hood ballads From: Brian Peters "I can sing most of Mekanik Destrictiw Kommandoh" I feel a duet coming on... |
|
02 Nov 11 - 05:38 AM (#3248973) Subject: RE: Robin Hood ballads From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray Anyone spot the goalposts just moving? I thought we were talking about passing songs on - i.e. what 'tradition' consists of - not arguing over compositional credits. Can you seperate the two things? The flux and fuidity of Traditional Song from one singer to the next is part of its nature; be it the re-making of songs to suit, or the way a singer might sing a different version of a song each time - as Mrs Pearl Brewer did on the two occasions Max Hunter recorded her singing The Cruel Mother. Theorectically - and philosophically (depending on your parameters) - any given song exists in a different variant each time it's sung, any one of which can be passed on... Look at the scope and range of the melodic and rhythmic variants to some well-known folk songs. The result of many individual interventions? Yes. Genius, every one? Stretching it. But all part of a process (not a 'process'), undoubtedly. I don't think it's unreasonable to think of these variants as the product of a singers whim, or mastery of their craft, or even examples of it. If people are conversant with that 'tradition' then they'll be able to extemporise at will, for better or worse, as in The Legend of Knockgrafton, or people who will readily approximate a melody to suit. My grandmother could out-whistle Ronnie Ronalde and regularly amazed us by improvising in this way on any number of melodies. But only in the kitchen, mind. No, most music is performed by 'musicians'. Anyone who even dabbles is a musician; some dabblers will even become great musicians, but it all starts with the dabbling, or being moved to dabble in the first place. Like on that fateful day in June 1976 when the Sex Pistols played at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, thus moving many audience members, to go forth and dabble. Within three years many of them had rewritten the book, like Peter Hook, a non-musician hitherto, and now hailed as a crucial stylist on the bass guitar. He's still not a great musician - I saw him playing solo last year at The Lowry and it was pretty dire to be honest, despite being bigged up by Howard Marks as the greatest bassist of all time, which is quite beside the point because he made great music as part of his particular tradition. * I feel a duet coming on... I'm reminded of this which I'm sure no one else on Mudcat will find amusing in the slightest; it might even mave relevance to the discussion with respect of mondegreens & mishearings... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWsFWdqLmNM |
|
02 Nov 11 - 09:03 AM (#3249051) Subject: RE: Robin Hood ballads From: Brian Peters "Anyone who even dabbles is a musician" On reflection, I was mistaken in embracing your term 'dabbling'. A dabbler is one who makes a self-conscious decision to dip a toe in the water of a particular musical style. Folk song, on the other hand, was perpetuated for generations by individuals who had simply grown up with the stuff and to whom it was as much a part of life as eating and breathing. There's a difference in kind between the kid bashing out the chords to 'Wonderwall' on a cheap guitar, and the parent singing to their child a song that they learned by osmosis from their own parent or grandparent (not something that happens too much these days, I would guess). Your cart is before your horse. The concept of folk song was devised, according to your amusing parody of Dave Spart, in a spirit of 'Imperialistic Class Condescension' (never mind that several of those you've criticized specifically celebrated it as working-class culture). You don't approve; therefore the very essence of the thing must be denied, regardless of all supportive evidence. That said, I did enjoy the Magma clip. For a precis of the 'Fakesong' controversy, go here - but surely it's about time somebody said something about Robin Hood Ballads? |
|
03 Nov 11 - 07:07 AM (#3249581) Subject: RE: Robin Hood ballads From: Richard Bridge 100 |
|
03 Nov 11 - 07:18 AM (#3249584) Subject: RE: Robin Hood ballads From: MGM·Lion With my 'legendary pedantry, accuracy matters' hat on ~~ Harker: Fakesong 1984. Scarcely ½-century; barely ¼ ~M~ |
|
03 Nov 11 - 10:41 AM (#3249673) Subject: RE: Robin Hood ballads From: GUEST Sorry Mike - slip of the typing finger (tough I did say I'd read it 25 years ago Jim Carroll |
|
03 Nov 11 - 12:17 PM (#3249722) Subject: RE: Robin Hood ballads From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray Richard - don't dare to presume to tell anyone that they're wrong, much less insist that you might be right, whatever sort of absolutist logic you might insist upon. Folk is all about the Zeitgeist; it is all about subjective perception (as if there was any other sort) and aesthetics pure and simple. Folk is the beauty in the eye of beholder; it is the mutable wave of collective fashion that we each see very differently indeed. There are no rights and wrongs, only personal opinions. Jim is only right in saying what he does because that's the way he sees it; it's certainly not the way I see it, but then again my Atheism is more inclusive than that, but that's just me, even though we both love the same things. How do I see it? I've already accounted for Child 102, but generally the term Folk Balladry can mean pretty much what you want it too. This isn't a case of the Humpty Dumpties, just a more pragmatic acknowledgement that in music there are no correct procedures, much less terminology on which we might agree upon with severe qualification. For sure, any given A might equal 440, but as to what the relative Major Third then equals very much depends on your temperament. So if I sing a Traditional Ballad then it's Folk by default, like the recording I did last week of The Wife of Ushers Well in which I freely intone Childs's A text (from memory) whilst freely improvising on my 5-string violin (AKA The Accursed Viol - you can add Lovecraft to that list too). Whilst the whole thing is anchored to a drone, it is is otherwise completely atonal, though I think of this as amodality rather than atonality per se. And just as the performance is essentially non-rhythmic, I've added a xenochronous rhythm track on a frame drum which randomly and organically aligns with the voice / viol / drone track. Whilst I'd never attempt anything like this in a Folk Club, or any other Designated Folk Context, I nevertheless think of it as being Folk for reasons of Zeitgeist and resultant aesthetic sensibilities which are as much the consequence of collective cultural circumstance as they are the individual experience of those circumstances. Folk and Free Improvisation were the Chamber Musics of my childhood and adolescence, and it seems only right to bring them together from time to time, for whilst I'd never do anything like this in a Folk Gig, I'd certainly do it in a Free Improv gig. That said, even in my more orthodox folk ventures, there will always be a significant amount of improvisation going on purely because my personal understanding of The Tradition of English Speaking Folk Song is of a phenomenon that was highly fluid and infinitely mutable, in which songs were constantly being remade and changed even from one singing to the next - not out of sloppy dabbling or failing memory, but because such a fluidity is integral to the mastery oral culture and the genre which Folk Song. That one may only stay on top of such improvisation through rehearsing your tits off is one of the supreme ironies of the craft; use it or lose it, as they say. In the collected & recorded annals of Folk Song, I see little evidence to suggest that it was ever any other way. Again, I'm rambling again; I'm actually in the middle of a review I'm doing of the new HUX edition of Heavy Petting which already runs to over 1,300 words and I still haven't mentioned the music. Instead of getting down to editing, I procrastinate over here on Mudcat... Word count: 621 (before editing). |
|
03 Nov 11 - 01:04 PM (#3249750) Subject: RE: Robin Hood ballads From: Richard Bridge I didn't. And there you go again. |
|
03 Nov 11 - 01:10 PM (#3249757) Subject: RE: Robin Hood ballads From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray Machen, Rolt, La Fanu, Baring-Gould, Poe, Blackwood, Edward Gorey, Mark E Smith; so many great writers, so little time. And I love Phil Rickman too - his Merrily Watkins mysteries are Pure Folk, genuinely creep and beautifully written from the heart of darkest Herefordshire... |
&id=24963.gif&seq=1&size=0){kind=link}
&id=24969.gif&seq=1&size=0){kind=link}
&id=24976.gif&seq=1&size=0){kind=link}
&id=24978.gif&seq=1&size=0){kind=link}
&id=24312.gif&seq=1&size=0){kind=link}
&id=24313.gif&seq=1&size=0){kind=link}
&id=24966.gif&seq=1&size=0){kind=link}
&id=24967.gif&seq=1&size=0){kind=link}
&id=24314.gif&seq=1&size=0){kind=link}
&id=24975.gif&seq=1&size=0){kind=link}
&id=24964.gif&seq=1&size=0){kind=link}
&id=24980.gif&seq=1&size=0){kind=link}
&id=24971.gif&seq=1&size=0){kind=link}
&id=24965.gif&seq=1&size=0){kind=link}