Old-Timey Music as "Outsider" Music
Tribe
It's at http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/10/arts/10HAGA.html.
Anyway, it appears that it's essentially music that is "amateurish," and the
stuff from which jokes are made, sort of like a few levels "below" karaoke
(i'm trying to describe it, not rendering judgment). The article describes
it as:
"made by those who appear to have slipped between the cracks of glossy
modernity, taking with them that desperately yearned-for authenticity. They
seem to confirm the existence of something like the long-lost regional, the
agrarian and, ultimately, the utopian. At least for the listener. After all,
the performers themselves are often isolated by psychosis, senility or an
unusual naïvete that rarely serves them in workaday life. Certainly none of
them sells records in any significant quantity. For that reason, it's a
delicate effort for outsider enthusiasts to avoid the taint of exploitation
with some of these artists. Consider Wesley Willis, a schizophrenic who
rants about McDonald's and World Federation Wrestling over karaoke-style
music. Is this a folk art gem or just awful music?
Devotees of outsider music like to say that this music is "so bad, it's
good." Maybe that's just postmodern relativism come full circle. Maybe it's
ironic condescension to people who are less than savvy. But considering the
heartless stuff heard on modern radio, outsider music also offers a
mysterious and therefore refreshing reprieve from the glare of entertainment
culture. Doug Stone, a friend of mine who is making a documentary about Ms.
Snowden, recently recalled the first time he heard another outsider, Shooby
Taylor, a scat singer who babbles as if he's speaking in tongues over jazz
accompaniment. Mr. Stone offered this: "It was like a drug. I couldn't stop
laughing. I thought it was genius. Does that make it inauthentic? I'm
responding to it; he's teaching me something. I'm laughing out of joy. He's
not an idiot; he's just really weird!""
Later in the article, the author posits the following:
"Erik Lindgren, the founder of Arf! Arf! Records, which released Mr.
Mudurian's record, "Downloading the Repertoire" (AA- 057), said that the
test of outsider music was simple: does it have the power to elicit a
response like "What were they thinking?" from slack-jawed listeners?
Interestingly, many critics had a similar reaction when they assessed the
recently unearthed "Anthology of American Folk Music," a collection of raw
1920's and 30's regional music compiled in the 1950's by an archivist named
Harry Smith. As the author Geoffrey O'Brien wrote in 1998 in The New York
Review of Books, reviewing that collection and measuring its sounds against
the squeaky-clean folk revival of the 1950's: "What folk were these? The
mood was not necessarily either collective or warm; more often it conveyed
isolation, fear, even madness." Performers like Bascom Lamar Lunsford, who
bleated "I wish I was a mole in the ground" while plucking a monotonous
banjo line, exhibited what Mr. O'Brien called an "almost freakish
individuality." Wistfully, he concluded: "Go back as far as possible and you
find already only an echo of some unknowable music, wilder and richer."
Like Mr. O'Brien, those of us searching for a thread of that rich,
unknowable music often lament the loss of some idyllic and un-
self-conscious world. Whether it ever existed as we conceive it is
debatable. But with our well-documented musical canon and codified
entertainment industry, it's hard to imagine discovering anything akin to
Lunsford in the present day."
From my perspective, which is forty plus years of pop and rock and roll,
there is an element of "weirdness" in old-time music which was my initial
attraction to the music. But still, the performers are anything but
amateurs; if I laugh during a song, I'm not laughing at the performer or the
songs, but laughing with it because of its intentional sense of humor. In
my mind these men and women were accomplished musicians and perfomers...not
stuff to be made fun of out of some sense of superiority.
Any thoughts on this?
Tribe
Robert Palasek
> Any thoughts on this?
Those writers and critics don't play enough banjo. Really.
You should play more banjo too.
Macromed5
> have the power to elicit a response like "What
> were they thinking?" from slack-jawed listeners?
Hmm... but that's what happens when I watch most music on TV...?
Regards,
John Dowdell
Tribe
"Robert Palasek" wrote:
> You should play more banjo too.
I play plenty. Just not as well as you do.
Tribe
Paul Tyler
> There's an article in today's NY Times about so-called "outsider music."
>
>
> From my perspective, which is forty plus years of pop and rock and roll,
> there is an element of "weirdness" in old-time music which was my initial
>
> Any thoughts on this?
The outsider in question here is the journalist. The weirdness is that modern/post-modern people
have allowed music making to be commodified and removed from the daily lives of their families
and communities. And then critics arise to explain music to those who have no longer have any
music inside their homes or hearts or fingers.
But I will grant you that old time music is incredibly attractive, even (or especially) when it's not
pretty. I'm glad that young people, and aging young people, raised on rock and roll get hooked on
old time because it's so alternative, so authentic. But to fully understand it, they have to make it
part of their lives and through away all their Rolling Stone preconceptions of what music is.
Paul "the obstuse" Tyler
Dan Prescher
connotation, but I prefer the actual definitions of the word as
supplied by Webster's Ninth New Collegiate: 1) devotee, admirer 2) one
who engages in a pursuit, study, science or sport as a pastime rather
than as a profession.
I think that pretty well describes most of the old-time musicians I
admire. They seemed to be folks trying to scratch out a living in
"old, weird America" the best ways they could. The music they sang and
played on the porch or putting children to sleep or breaking rocks or
at house dances or in church got caught on recordings for a variety of
reasons, and we're darn lucky a few of those recordings survived.
As far as being "outsider" music -- that's just a result of time and
taste. When it was actually being done by the people who were doing
it, it was about as "inside" as music gets.
--
Dan Prescher
Roughwriters -- Smooth Communications in All Media
www.roughwriters.com
"What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?"
--
"Tribe" <johnc...@sprynet.com> wrote in message
news:9g154i$gnn$1...@slb2.atl.mindspring.net...
Ericplatt
many folks participating in it. Outsider music, in own personal definition, is
something that no one else would even want to attempt. I'm a more recent
convert to old-time, but I don't see the Harry Smith anthology as being that
outre'.
I'd more likely believe that the standard pop fare is "outsider" music because
in 5 years (let along 50 or 100 years) no one will remember it
Eric Platt
St. Paul, MN
Tribe
"Ericplatt" wrote:
> I'd more likely believe that the standard pop fare is "outsider" music
because
> in 5 years (let along 50 or 100 years) no one will remember it
Were that only the case. I know people who still listen to Terry Jacks'
"Seasons in the Sun."
Tribe
The Martins
> Were that only the case. I know people who still listen to Terry Jacks'
> "Seasons in the Sun."
I just heard a slobbery pee-on to U2 on public radio. Groan.
Bill Martin
Lang Thompson
> It's at http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/10/arts/10HAGA.html.
>
> Anyway, it appears that it's essentially music that is "amateurish," and the
The Times article somewhat misrepresented outsider music. Irwin Chusid
sent a response to the Times that I don't think was printed. Though
some outsider music is produced by amateurs, much of it isn't, and "so
bad it's good" is more for smug dilettantes. Old-timey music rarely
qualifies as outsider in this sense. For more information or to sign up
for the Outsider Music Mailing List see
http://wlt4.home.mindspring.com/outsider.htm