trad music by non-trad performers, your opinion?
Jane Peppler
following question: how do you feel about people performing music
from outside their own ethnic background? I have witnessed frequent
put-downs of people who sing Cajun music but are not Cajuns, sing sea-
chanteys but are not sailors, sing old-time music but are not southerners,
etc.
Two separate groups of performers may warrant separate responses:
those who sing music from many traditions (I would qualify here for
instance, having performed many genres of British Isles and Eastern
European music though hailing from Chappaqua, New York) and those
who have chosen to identify with one particular culture and its music
and have stuck to it fervently. One might also distinguish between those
who do it well and those who do it poorly, of course, but how do YOU
PERSONALLY make a judgement on this matter?
Also, please answer: if you think non-natives (like we poor ex-
suburbanites with no intrinsic musical heritage of our own) have no
business singing the traditional music of others, then what music
SHOULD we sing?
Please post replies. Thanks in advance.
Anna Peekstok
>how do you feel about people performing music
>from outside their own ethnic background? I have witnessed frequent
>put-downs of people who sing Cajun music but are not Cajuns, sing sea-
>chanteys but are not sailors, sing old-time music but are not southerners,
>etc.
I'm biased, since I perform music from all over the place and don't even
pretend an ethnic connection with those places, beyond common humanity.
But here's my two cents' worth: I think outsiders can strengthen and
enliven a tradition by injecting "new blood." There's plenty of room in
the world for both types of performance -- "do it EXACTLY the way it has
always been done before (including by people of the correct genotype and
cultural background)" AND "let's take a little of this and a little of
that and see what happens". Without the former nothing is preserved, and
without the latter you have a sterile museum exhibit, not a living
process.
>Two separate groups of performers may warrant separate responses:
>those who sing music from many traditions (I would qualify here for
>instance, having performed many genres of British Isles and Eastern
>European music though hailing from Chappaqua, New York) and those
>who have chosen to identify with one particular culture and its music
>and have stuck to it fervently. One might also distinguish between those
>who do it well and those who do it poorly, of course, but how do YOU
>PERSONALLY make a judgement on this matter?
>Also, please answer: if you think non-natives (like we poor ex-
>suburbanites with no intrinsic musical heritage of our own) have no
>business singing the traditional music of others, then what music
>SHOULD we sing?
Try this: whatever you come in contact with IS your musical heritage. It's
just not as limited geographically as it might have been in centuries past.
So by the way, is this Jane Pepplar as in Skylark? If so, hi!
Anna Peekstok
(as in Telynor)
Ugo Piomelli
In article <12...@news.duke.edu>, jpep...@acpub.duke.edu (Jane Peppler) writes:
>I'm very interested in all opinions from lovers of traditional music on the
>following question: how do you feel about people performing music
>from outside their own ethnic background? I have witnessed frequent
>put-downs of people who sing Cajun music but are not Cajuns, sing sea-
>chanteys but are not sailors, sing old-time music but are not southerners,
>etc.
>
Well, I certainly qualify, too. I am Italian, and sing Irish, Scottish and
English folk, as well as material from contemporary folk singers (from
Dylan to the Indigo Girls).
First of all, I do not agree with the statement that it's important to
do it well. Playing well determines whether one can make a career of
music or not, quite independent of what one chooses to play.
Personally, I am a competent guitar player, but I sing quite poorly.
That means that I'll think twice before abandoning Mechanical
Engineering for a career on the stage. That is completely independent
of the type of music I play: I sing Irish ballads just as badly as I
sing traditional Neapolitan songs (which happen to belong to my ethnic
background).
Back to the original question: is it legitimate for, say, someone of
non-Irish origin to play Irish music. I think so, with a few
constraints:
1. One should know the language. I don't sing songs in Irish or in Gaelic,
because I could not re-interpret them according to my own sensibility,
but only blindly mimic the sounds, as I hear them from some record.
2. It helps to know about the history and customs. This is particularly
helpful to enhance the appreciation of ballads with historical
backgrounds. I am thinking of things like "Arthur McBride" or
"The boat to Skye".
This applies, I think, both to amateur and to professional performers.
I have heard Andy Irvine (Irish) play some beautiful ballads by Woody
Guthrie, and Planxty play one written by Norman Blake on a gunfight in
Oklahoma. And Dave Swarbrick plays some Irish fiddle tunes quite well,
although he is English (I think). The list could go on forever.
Those are my two cents of wisdom. And now, it's almost time to go
home and play some ballads from Appalachia. Even though I was not born
and raised at the mouth of the Hazard Holler....
Ugo
*************************************************************************
Ugo Piomelli "Teachers, are my lessons done?
Associate Professor I cannot do another one"
Dept. of Mechanical Engineering They laughed and laughed and said
University of Maryland "Child, are your lessons done?"
College Park, MD 20742 Leonard Cohen
*************************************************************************
Dean
>jpep...@acpub.duke.edu (Jane Peppler) writes:
>
>>how do you feel about people performing music
>>from outside their own ethnic background? I have witnessed frequent
>>put-downs of people who sing Cajun music but are not Cajuns, sing sea-
>>chanteys but are not sailors, sing old-time music but are not southerners,
>>etc.
>
>I'm biased, since I perform music from all over the place and don't even
>pretend an ethnic connection with those places, beyond common humanity.
>But here's my two cents' worth: I think outsiders can strengthen and
>enliven a tradition by injecting "new blood." There's plenty of room in
>the world for both types of performance -- "do it EXACTLY the way it has
>always been done before (including by people of the correct genotype and
>cultural background)" AND "let's take a little of this and a little of
>that and see what happens". Without the former nothing is preserved, and
>without the latter you have a sterile museum exhibit, not a living
>process.
The biggest joke is the blues purists. There are scores of these
40something people performing boogie woogie music with pathetic mediocrity.
The Beatles tried to play rhythm and blues, it was awful, but eventually
they made music that was their own. Sting and the Police, same deal.
>
>>Also, please answer: if you think non-natives (like we poor ex-
>>suburbanites with no intrinsic musical heritage of our own) have no
>>business singing the traditional music of others, then what music
>>SHOULD we sing?
Sing whatever you want but, I think it's a mistake to try to concentrate
too much on reproducing one specific traditional style and then to
take it yourself too seriously. You can't really reproduce it, but that doesn't
mean the product generated at the attempt is worthless.
>
>Try this: whatever you come in contact with IS your musical heritage. It's
>just not as limited geographically as it might have been in centuries past.
I think it has a lot to do with all the music you heard before you
were even able to turn the knob on the radio.
clancy
Duane E. Collicott
>I'm very interested in all opinions from lovers of traditional music on the
>from outside their own ethnic background? I have witnessed frequent
>put-downs of people who sing Cajun music but are not Cajuns, sing sea-
>chanteys but are not sailors, sing old-time music but are not southerners,
>etc.
Ah, but you would have to be more than just a sailor, though. You would have
to work on a large ship which requires a team of hands to haul on a line or
stamp around a capstan. You would also have to actually be doing the work
in order to sing it as well, with a bona-fide shanteyman leading it. If
that were the case, then nobody would ever sing them and they would be lost.
I forget who it was, but somebody (Stan Hugill?) credited Archie Fisher (I
believe) as being the "last true shanteyman." I've read that he actually
worked on ships, but after him should we just let the music be forgotten?
Many sailing tunes were actually written by land-lubbers when the music was
very popularand the general public was enjoying it, and some of it was taken
up by the sailors. "Broadside Ballads" I believe they're called. People
in places such as New York would go down to the pier to listen to a crew
sing as they would haul anchor and set the sails... therefore, they (the
non-sailors) became part of that music.
I'm researching factual and fictional stories of shipping on the Great Lakes
so that I can write songs with that content. I've lived in Michigan my whole
life, and what happened on the Great Lakes over the last 300 years helped
shaped the economy and people of the area I live in. The freighters of
the Great Lakes carried iron ore my grandfather dug out of the Minnesota
ground. I didn't actually participate in that, but I'm a part of it and I
want to spread the lore of this part of the world to others. People want
to hear it, too (maybe from someone with a better voice, though!).
Do you have to be a slave to sing what we call "negro spirituals"? When
I listened to John McCutcheon sing the song that starts, "We're stole and
sold from Africa / Transported to America," (I forgot the title), I learned a
little more about that experience and that time in history.
Or combine those two... several sea songs were adapted from songs that
sailors learned from slaves ("Roll the Cotton Down") or wrote about
slaves ("Shallow Brown").
I am thankful that people have perfomed music that was not aligned with
their ehtnicity or heritage... otherwise I would probably never have known
the music exists. For example, I can't afford to travel to Ireland, and
local venues usually can't afford to host many groups from Ireland. So
should everyone just keep to themselves and those of their own lands and
not share their music?
The process traditional music follows knows no rules... traditional music IS
what people make it. It has forever been the case that one type of music
influences the next, and so on from the first time somebody thumped a stick
on a hollow log, and that will continue. Cajun music has French and other
influences; sailing music has German, English, Dutch, French, Spanish,
African, South American, Carribian, and other influences (many other).
To place rules on music goes against the purpose of music, just as ratings
and "Top-<n>" lists do.
On the other hand, while there is not "should" or "should not", they definitely
is a quality issue... could I write or perform Scottish music AS WELL AS
Margaret Crystl? Certainly not, and I hope she keeps it up.
That's my 4 cents worth (inflation, you know). Might sound a bit harsh, but
that's not intended... perhaps just my writing style. Comments?
_______________________________________________________________________________
Duane Collicott
coll...@brutus.aa.ab.com
_______________________________________________________________________________
Andrea Aldridge
>
>how do you feel about people performing music from outside their own ethnic
>background? I have witnessed frequent put-downs of people who sing Cajun music
>but are not southerners, etc.
In certain cases, in particular the cited example of sea chanteys, if the music
is not sung by those "outside" the genre, it will almost surely never be heard.
I crew on a square-rigger, the Lady Washington, when I have the time to do so,
and am sometime chanteyman on same. However, I do not consider myself a sailor
as I cannot put the time and major focus of my life into it that the full-time
crew does. However, that full-time crew does not make a habit of coming ashore
and spreading sea chanteys about to eager audiences (thank God - I've heard
them sing ;-)). Those who do not go aboard would not be likely to be made
aware of nor enjoy this music if those "outside" the genre did not pick it up
and carry it to other venues. People who put down such "transmitters" perhaps
forget that it may be such as they from whom they first heard such music.
By the way - the crew of the Lady generally don't KNOW a lot of chanteys until
I bring them aboard and teach some to them. The Zodiac, a beautiful 1924
racing schooner with an even more legitimate need for chanteys (by virtue of
her rigging) to coordinate work efforts, doesn't have a chanteyman at all - the
crew say they learn them from the passengers. Those outside the genre are
preserving the songs for those IN the genre.
--
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
<> Andrea Aldridge IRC: Folkie E-Mail: n904...@henson.cc.wwu.edu <>
<> WWU - 452 Edens Hall North/Bellingham, WA 98225-5971 (206) 650-2647 <>
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Dorothy Westphal
You left out a few: should Gregorian chants be chanted only by
Gregorians, should songs of slavery be sung only by slaves, should
the WWII Army Air Corps song be sung only by members of the
(non-existent) Army Air Corps, etc.? :-)
Or to put it another way: I feel that anyone should sing anything
they want, as long as it does not offend the listeners unreasonably
as for example racist, sexist, etc. when the listener has no choice.
I do think that performers who do traditional songs from different
areas have some obligation to find out the whys and wherefores of the
song and the traditions associated with it. Many songs are like
other aspects of diverse cultures, and need some background to understand
what is actually going on.
--
Dorothy Westphal, Sunnyvale, Calif. % Always expect the good. %
west...@iscnvx.lmsc.lockheed.com % %
Rosa Michaelson
idea of 'community' and 'place'? The only time a musician needs to
justify themselves is when they set up to educate or earn. 'traditional'
music suffers from the commercial aproprations of all genres. For example
pre-recordings music and musicians had a more 'local' aspect for both
'art' and 'popular' music. Migrations of peoples/people seems to have
taken many aspects of the home life lock, stock and baggage and then
perhaps like the evolutionary effect of isolation changed the music
to fit the needs of the new places.
Can a career musician ever maintain links with the home tradition? In
Folk music circles, for example, most work for a living is done outside
the native sphere(in recession filled Scotland anyhow). See Alasitair
Fraeser and his slightly out-of-line comments on scottish fiddling and
dance music. He lives in California and has done for over 10 years and was
never seen at a session in Scotland for about 20 - still doesn't play at
my local dances/ceilidhs/sessions. So the commercial traditional musician
in Scotland is often forced away from the community to make a living and
looses touch with what is realy happening 'back home'.
Or Aly Bains comments about the lack of fiddlers in the 1970s - there
where actually hundreds of fiddlers in Scotland then (well 1000s) and
still are - but they did not play in folk clubs. The type of band that
says (and my band does too(:-)) 'based in the tradition but making new
changes to the direction of' well - is that trad or not?
Add to this the 'saleable' commodity of 'genuine' and what does it say
about the very enjoyable gaelic music which comes from those who do not
speak the language as the mother tongue but have learnt it for mod
competitions - it reflects the sad demise of gaeldom and current fancies
but is that really what the us, say, market wants to believe?
Personally despite having played in an earlyish cajun & old timey band
in Edinburgh from 1973-1978, I have gone of Cajun as sung by us Brits,
and the american accents adopted by many UK country, blues etc singers.
The people who like hearing my fiddling in Scotland prefer scottish/irish
mostly with the occasional cape breton/french/american oddity thrown in -
but do not really want to hear chinese, chicago blues, or even english
country dance music.
So if there is any test - check what the person says about their music -
and if they still actually play for the community which they claim to
represent.
Al Stavely
>
>You left out a few: should Gregorian chants be chanted only by
>Gregorians, should songs of slavery be sung only by slaves, should
>the WWII Army Air Corps song be sung only by members of the
>(non-existent) Army Air Corps, etc.? :-)
>Or to put it another way: I feel that anyone should sing anything
>they want, as long as it does not offend the listeners unreasonably
>as for example racist, sexist, etc. when the listener has no choice.
>I do think that performers who do traditional songs from different
>areas have some obligation to find out the whys and wherefores of the
>song and the traditions associated with it. Many songs are like
>other aspects of diverse cultures, and need some background to understand
>what is actually going on.
I agree with all of this. I'd add the following:
Please DON'T try to imitate the accent of the people who originally
sang the song, or of the person you got the song from. Not unless
you can do it well enough to fool a native, and maybe not even then.
Others disagree, some strongly. But you'll see what I mean the first time you
hear someone do a really bad job of it: an American faking an Irish or Cockney
accent, a Scot singing country-western in fake Texan, or a Japanese bluegrass
band doing fake hillbilly. A few weeks ago I heard my mother's church choir
rehearsing "Joshua Fit de Battle ob Jerich" and almost lost my lunch.
Of course, if the song is in a foreign language, you should try to pronounce
it correctly. And it's probably debatable what to do with dialect words --
sometimes you need to leave them in to make the song scan or rhyme decently,
or to avoid a total rewrite. But my preference is to sing a song in as close
to my own voice as I can manage it.
My view is that you are just singing the song, not impersonating the person
who wrote it. Everyone knows you're not a Gregorian or a slave. It's like a
female ballad singer doing one about "I met a fair maid and rolled her in the
hay" etc. People don't assume that she's a lesbian, or at least they don't
once they are familiar with the convention. It's understood that this was a
man's song, and the woman is singing it because she likes it and sings it
well, nothing more.
If you think a song sounds strange when you sing it in your own voice and
dialect, then just leave it for someone else to sing. Far better than trying
to play stage Irishman or whatever.
--
- Allan Stavely, New Mexico Tech, USA
robert john williams
it becomes a part of YOUR culture. If you want to say, for example, that
non-Scots people shouldn't sing Scottish songs, how much of a distinction do
you want to make. Should someone from the Highlands not sing a lowland song?
I was born in the US, just like Woody Guthrie, so is it OK to sing his songs,
or is it wrong to because I'm not from Oklahoma. How about my roommate from
Tulsa... Can he sing Woody's songs? Of course, Woody was from Okemah, so I
guess my roommate is from the wrong part of the state. You can bring it down
to whatever level you want to, and even go so far as to say that people should
only be allowed to sing songs they've written themselves. My personal opinion
is that anyone is justified in singing ANY song that they feel like singing.
Just another random firing in my grey matter,
Bob Williams (rj...@midway.uchicago.edu)
Mary Loveless
>In article <1993Apr6.1...@iscnvx.lmsc.lockheed.com> west...@iscnvx.lmsc.lockheed.com (Dorothy Westphal) writes:
>>
>>as for example racist, sexist, etc. when the listener has no choice.
>>I do think that performers who do traditional songs from different
>>areas have some obligation to find out the whys and wherefores of the
>>song and the traditions associated with it. Many songs are like
>>other aspects of diverse cultures, and need some background to understand
>>what is actually going on.
>I agree with all of this. I'd add the following:
> Please DON'T try to imitate the accent of the people who originally
> sang the song, or of the person you got the song from. Not unless
> you can do it well enough to fool a native, and maybe not even then.
*****RIGHT ON, ALAN!!!!!******
This goes for country music, also. I have a difficult time with otherwise
sensible performers who think that they must assume an imbecilic twang and
act as if they are uneducated and ignorant, to sing a Hank Williams song.
Very offensive.
>
>Others disagree, some strongly. But you'll see what I mean the first time you
>hear someone do a really bad job of it: an American faking an Irish or Cockney
>accent, a Scot singing country-western in fake Texan, or a Japanese bluegrass
>band doing fake hillbilly. A few weeks ago I heard my mother's church choir
>rehearsing "Joshua Fit de Battle ob Jerich" and almost lost my lunch.
>
>Of course, if the song is in a foreign language, you should try to pronounce
>it correctly. And it's probably debatable what to do with dialect words --
>sometimes you need to leave them in to make the song scan or rhyme decently,
>or to avoid a total rewrite. But my preference is to sing a song in as close
>to my own voice as I can manage it.
>
>My view is that you are just singing the song, not impersonating the person
>who wrote it. Everyone knows you're not a Gregorian or a slave. It's like a
>female ballad singer doing one about "I met a fair maid and rolled her in the
>hay" etc. People don't assume that she's a lesbian, or at least they don't
>once they are familiar with the convention. It's understood that this was a
>man's song, and the woman is singing it because she likes it and sings it
>well, nothing more.
>
>If you think a song sounds strange when you sing it in your own voice and
>dialect, then just leave it for someone else to sing. Far better than trying
>to play stage Irishman or whatever.
>--
>
> - Allan Stavely, New Mexico Tech, USA
I agree with all of the above. I know I have probably thrown a monkey
wrench in the discussion by introducing American country music (20th
century Grand Ol' Opry style) into this discussion. (see above)
I have some qualms about some of my favorite songs in which the writer, a
middle-class (apparently) White American, writes about other cultures. I
really like what these folks (Fred Small, Libby Roderick, etc.) have to
say and the songs are great, but I sometimes wonder if the people about whom
the songs were written ("The Heart of the Appaloosa" Small; "Rosa"
(Parks) Roderick, and others) feel as excited about the songs as I do.
Mary Loveless
Fred Bulger
>In article <1993Apr6.2...@nmt.edu> a...@nmt.edu (Al Stavely) writes:
>
>> Please DON'T try to imitate the accent of the people who originally
>> sang the song, or of the person you got the song from. Not unless
>> you can do it well enough to fool a native, and maybe not even then.
>
>*****RIGHT ON, ALAN!!!!!******
>
>This goes for country music, also. I have a difficult time with otherwise
>sensible performers who think that they must assume an imbecilic twang and
>act as if they are uneducated and ignorant, to sing a Hank Williams song.
>Very offensive.
>
Me too!! I generally dislike country music, due to what has been mentioned
above. I guess I find it to be such a put on; Vanilla Ice with an acoustic
guitar :) I like some singers/musicians who are considered country: Willie
Nelson, Hank Williams, Hank Snow, Mary Chapin Carpenter, and others. It's all
business I guess ... don't see too many new country artists who are unattractive
nowadays.
This reminds me of a Garnet Rogers show I caught a few months back. He
was explaining that when he first played one of his songs for a friend, the
friend said it's about time he wrote a country song. Garnet was taken a-back
by this comment, as he had never considered it a country song. Anyway, Garnet
went on to express his distaste for country music. As he put it, "I know many
of you here have a Garth Brooks record at home, but I've a real problem with
country music." Then Garnet explained that if you're in a rut all you have
to do is take a country record and play it backwards; then the truck starts, the
dog doesn't die, and your wife comes back. He also added that if you play
'newage' music backwards you get ... newage music. It was a very good show
indeed!!
--
Fred Bulger | 1-(902)-429-3057
6137 Charles St. | bul...@ug.cs.dal.ca
Halifax, Nova Scotia | fbu...@ac.dal.ca
CANADA B3l 1K8 | bul...@moon.sba.dal.ca
robert blackman
This has been a very stimulating thread. Thanks, Jane, for getting it
going. I agree with many of the other postings. In general, people
should sing whatever they please if they can relate to its beauty,
humor, message, emotion, etc. If we get real purist about it, songs will
die as the few surviving members of various cultures/occupations die.
I think of singers as actors, who present a character or a scene; what
counts is not that the actor really has the same background as his
character, but that he a) can reasonably accurately portray that
character and b) can feel the same emotions as that character and convey
them. Likewise, if a singer can convey the emotion (joy, sorrow, anger)
that they respond to themselves in a given song, that makes him a
successful singer in my book.
However, just as an actor can misinform an audience by getting the
details wrong, so can a singer. I would hope that a good singer
would put a song in its proper perspective for the audience by
explaining obscure terms or the song's background, and by somehow
communicating how he is or isn't presenting it authentically. It's
a valid artistic decision to sing sea shanties at a fast tempo for
the sake of a recording or a concert, but audiences should ideally
be told that in real life they were sung at a much slower speed to
match the pace of the work.
The issue of foreign languages (even accents) is interesting. I love
hearing your various groups sing in Bulgarian, French, Spanish,
etc., Jane, and to my untrained ears most of it sounds very authentic.
Your recordings (and those of other groups) have introduced me to
types of music that I otherwise wouldn't have heard because the
"authentic" stuff isn't as widely recorded or distributed in the U.S.
Then again, I cringe slightly when I hear English singers/bands doing
Jimmie Rodgers and cajun music because the English accent just doesn't
sound right with that music to my ears. Still, if the primary
audience (probably other British listeners) like those singers and
get turned on to American cajun or country music as a result, I
have no complaint.
Sam Hinton wrote a great little essay for Sing Out! magazine many
years ago, justifying his tinkering with traditional songs and
changing the lyrics. He said that his goal was to invoke the same
emotions in his contemporary audience that the original version
would have evoked in that version's audience (sailors, lumberjacks,
whatever). I have always thought of that as a pretty good yardstick,
as long as (again) the contemporary audience doesn't come away with
a false impression about the song's original context.
Thanks to all the previous posters for very interesting and articulate
responses. I look forward to reading more.
Bob Blackman, WKAR Radio, East Lansing, MI
Duane E. Collicott
> a...@nmt.edu (Al Stavely) writes:
>> west...@iscnvx.lmsc.lockheed.com (Dorothy Westphal) writes:
>>>
>>>as for example racist, sexist, etc. when the listener has no choice.
>>>I do think that performers who do traditional songs from different
>>>areas have some obligation to find out the whys and wherefores of the
>>>song and the traditions associated with it. Many songs are like
>>>other aspects of diverse cultures, and need some background to understand
>>>what is actually going on.
>>I agree with all of this. I'd add the following:
>>
>> Please DON'T try to imitate the accent of the people who originally
>> sang the song, or of the person you got the song from. Not unless
>> you can do it well enough to fool a native, and maybe not even then.
>>
>> - Allan Stavely, New Mexico Tech, USA
>
>*****RIGHT ON, ALAN!!!!!******
>
>This goes for country music, also. I have a difficult time with otherwise
>sensible performers who think that they must assume an imbecilic twang and
>act as if they are uneducated and ignorant, to sing a Hank Williams song.
>Very offensive.
>
>Mary Loveless
I know what you both mean... it annoys me as much as the use of fake
Australian accents in advertising ever since the movie "Croc' Dundee"
(a fine movie, but that's not the point).
Steve Goldfield
#>In article <1pvfg4...@shelley.u.washington.edu> hoos...@carson.u.washington.edu (Mary Loveless) writes:
#>>In article <1993Apr6.2...@nmt.edu> a...@nmt.edu (Al Stavely) writes:
#>>
#>>> Please DON'T try to imitate the accent of the people who originally
#>>> sang the song, or of the person you got the song from. Not unless
#>>> you can do it well enough to fool a native, and maybe not even then.
Of course, there are exceptions to every rule. (As my father puts
it, "That, sir, is a truism, and like all truisms, is fundamentally
false.") Some songs rely on accents to work and would make no sense
without them. One of my favorite examples is "I Belong to Glascow,"
as done by Ramblin' Jack Elliott. Without the Scottish accent,
it wouldn't work. Things like "under the affluence of ilcohol"
or "they point the skinger of forn at him, they do"
would hardly be as funny in an American accent. I think Jack
learned it from a British music hall performer.
For a different type of example, on one of their Folkways albums,
the Country Gentlemen performed "Blue Ridge Mountain Home" with
a phony British accent. But you'd have to hear it to appreciate
it.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Steve Goldfield :<{ {>: s...@hera.berkeley.edu
University of California at Berkeley Richmond Field Station
Jon Berger
> ...You can bring it down
> to whatever level you want to, and even go so far as to say that people should
> only be allowed to sing songs they've written themselves.
Naah. Then the same people who sneered at you for singing songs
you weren't entitled to sing will accuse you of being one of those
horrible singer-songwriter people, and tell you you're spoiling folk
music for everyone. You can't win.
As I understand it, the only _truly_ legitimate songs are those you
learned from your mother. (Fathers might or might not be acceptable;
I never really got that straight.) In my particular case, pure folk
music consists entirely of two songs: "Mairzy Doats" and "There's an
Old Spinning Wheel in the Parlor", which, unfortunately, I learned as
"There's an old Swimming Hole in the Parlor."
> My personal opinion
> is that anyone is justified in singing ANY song that they feel like singing.
What he said.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
-__ __ /_ Jon Berger "If you push something hard enough,
//_// //_/ jo...@ingres.com it will fall over."
_/ --------- - Fudd's First Law of Opposition
David Kassover
>
>You left out a few: should Gregorian chants be chanted only by
>Gregorians, should songs of slavery be sung only by slaves, should
>the WWII Army Air Corps song be sung only by members of the
>(non-existent) Army Air Corps, etc.? :-)
"Stand To Your Glasses"?
Oops, sorry, Lomax says this was sung during the Korean War,
mostly by those who flew ageing P-51's against new Mig-15's...
--
David Kassover "Proper technique helps protect you against
RPI BSEE '77 MSCSE '81 sharp weapons and dull judges."
kass...@aule-tek.com F. Collins
kass...@ra.crd.ge.com
Larry Clifford
>following question: how do you feel about people performing music
>from outside their own ethnic background? I have witnessed frequent
>put-downs of people who sing Cajun music but are not Cajuns, sing sea-
>chanteys but are not sailors, sing old-time music but are not southerners,
>etc.
>
Although it is understandable that someone might be protective of a tradition
that they love, and fear its reduction to an affectation or
a degraded product in the hands of an alien, I think that it is ultimately
absurd to accuse anybody of impropriety who is singing a song. Traditions
are not properties, nor are they immutable. If somebody steals from a
tradition and creates good music thereby, then more power to them. This
is how all forms of literature, including music, evolve new beauties;
through creative theft. While if somebody steals a traditional sound and makes
lousy music, then may they fall into oblivion, as lousy music should. The
quality of musical experience should be the main criterion, not authenticity
of the source. And of course even the question of musical quality will often
have different true answers for different people.
I think that it cheapens the ideals of cultural sensitivity and literacy
to fuss over authenticity. Living traditions will not be harmed by
the attention of outside bunglers (any more than the best restaurant
in town will be harmed by the grand opening of a K-Mart lunch counter
next door), and they will benefit from the attention of outsiders with
skill and passion.
A badly-done accent is another matter. That isn't so much cultural
stealing as it is simply bad art. As for a well-done accent, I would
be glad to listen to it, other things being equal. But it must be a
very hard thing to really do well -- most such attempts are ill-advised,
no doubt.
Inauthentic performers also sometimes create new fans for the
older traditions, listeners who travel upstream. I came to Irish and
Scottish music through Donovan, Peter Paul and Mary, and Fairport
Convention. And I don't despise those people for not making the
culturally correct music for 20th century urbanites!
Larry
witty but useless
Like a bolt from the blue, jo...@Ingres.COM (Jon Berger) wrote:
>As I understand it, the only _truly_ legitimate songs are those you
>learned from your mother. (Fathers might or might not be acceptable;
>I never really got that straight.) In my particular case, pure folk
>music consists entirely of two songs: "Mairzy Doats" and "There's an
>Old Spinning Wheel in the Parlor", which, unfortunately, I learned as
>"There's an old Swimming Hole in the Parlor."
Ah, but you've forgotten the wild card, which is the ever-popular
"folk tradition". This allows you to mangle that pure folk music
in any way you see fit. Thus, you are quite free to perform a cotton
field chant as long as you claim it to be a version of "Mairzy Doats".
-- Stewart
--
"We need a good bar and a whiteboard. In that order."
-- Chris Stuart (cs...@cornell.edu)
/* uunet!sco!stewarte -or- stew...@sco.COM -or- Stewart Evans */
Dave Golber
>I think that the whole point behind folk music is that once you hear a song,
>it becomes a part of YOUR culture.
I think this discussion has been entirely too amicable. Please allow me to
be disagreeable. To repeat the passage above:
>I think that the whole point behind folk music is that once you hear a song,
>it becomes a part of YOUR culture.
Hear it? Once? Yes, it's yours to sing, in your style, in your way,
any way you want it. Who's gonna stop you?
But there is (maybe) an enormous body of fine playing, distinctive style,
new musical ideas, etc, that maybe you didn't quite get when you heard it.
My feeling: there's too much of going out getting a few ideas, tunes, songs,
from some other culture, and singing, playing, etc, etc, them in OUR
style. And we loose a lot in doing this.
"Fusion" ... my unfavoritest word.
Dave Golber
Mary Loveless
>robert john williams (rj...@quads.uchicago.edu) wrote:
>> ...You can bring it down
>> to whatever level you want to, and even go so far as to say that people should
>> only be allowed to sing songs they've written themselves.
>
>Naah. Then the same people who sneered at you for singing songs
>you weren't entitled to sing will accuse you of being one of those
>horrible singer-songwriter people, and tell you you're spoiling folk
>music for everyone. You can't win.
>
>As I understand it, the only _truly_ legitimate songs are those you
>learned from your mother. (Fathers might or might not be acceptable;
>I never really got that straight.) In my particular case, pure folk
>music consists entirely of two songs: "Mairzy Doats" and "There's an
>Old Spinning Wheel in the Parlor", which, unfortunately, I learned as
>"There's an old Swimming Hole in the Parlor."
> //_// //_/ jo...@ingres.com it will fall over."
>_/ --------- - Fudd's First Law of Opposition
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ah, yes - my folk tradition is about 10 bars of "The Missouri Waltz"
hummed sub voce, as well as a whole raft of Ukelele Ike songs. Not to
mention "I Wonder How I Look When I'm Asleep" (I lost the sheet music
inherited from mother. Durn!) and "I Never See Maggie Alone." Sung with
an uncertain warble, accompanied by ukelele. Watch for my concert
schedules!
Mary Loveless
Jon Berger
> In article <1993Apr7.2...@midway.uchicago.edu> rj...@midway.uchicago.edu writes:
> >I think that the whole point behind folk music is that once you hear a song,
> >it becomes a part of YOUR culture.
>
> I think this discussion has been entirely too amicable. Please allow me to
> be disagreeable.
Oh, thank goodness. I was beginning to feel like we were all defending
ourselves against some sort of paranoid fantasy. It's good to know that I
disagree with a real person.
> To repeat the passage above:
>
> >I think that the whole point behind folk music is that once you hear a song,
> >it becomes a part of YOUR culture.
Hey, thanks! I could easily have missed it the first time.
> Hear it? Once? Yes, it's yours to sing, in your style, in your way,
> any way you want it. Who's gonna stop you?
That's beneath you, Dave. This is a silly quibble on a point of English
usage, more properly posted to alt.language.pointless.wrangling or
something. He didn't say "After you hear it once", he said "Once you
hear it [an unspecified number of times]". They're really different.
We use the word "once" in three very different ways in English: "on one
occasion or for one time only" (I heard the song once), "at some point
or period in the past" (I once heard the song), and "ever or at all"
(Once I heard the song I quite liked it). (Definitions courtesy of
the online Concise Oxford Dictionary at info.rutgers.edu.) I think the
meaning was perfectly clear, personally.
> But there is (maybe) an enormous body of fine playing, distinctive style,
> new musical ideas, etc, that maybe you didn't quite get when you heard it.
The subject of the discussion was, as I recall, whether it violates
some sort of ethical principle for someone who is not a member of a
particular culture to perform the indigenous music of that culture --
a middle-class American Jew performing Celtic music, just to take
one example. The subject you would apparently like to discuss is
whether it's reasonable for someone to learn a single folk song in
some style and then declare himself to be a performer in that style.
You've shifted the discussion from the general to a very specific case
and then attacked that case; there's a name for this rhetorical device,
which the years since high-school debate have erased from my mind,
but I definitely remember that you lose points for it.
I fully agree that there are many, many incredibly bad performers of
folk music, and I even agree that, in many cases, the badness is the
direct result of an insufficient grounding in the historical, social, and
cultural aspects of the music, but that's not the question. The question
is whether the fact that a performer is a non-native, regardless of any
other consideration, is sufficient grounds for condemning him or her;
for deciding, in effect, that the performer MUST be bad, no further
investigation required. I say not.
RJW3's (Richard's?) point was that it's possible to absorb the essential
cultural background without actually growing up in the culture -- in
other words, that there are devices which act as a suitable replacement
for the proverbial mother's knee. (I'm sure Mom would find it pretty
uncomfortable to have a cassette recorder installed in the middle of her
leg, but you get the idea.) Can you agree with that general principle,
with the proviso that lousy music is still lousy music no matter how
flippin' authentic it is or isn't? Or are you taking the opposite
position, that only natives have the right to perform the music of
their culture?
> My feeling: there's too much of going out getting a few ideas, tunes, songs,
> from some other culture, and singing, playing, etc, etc, them in OUR
> style. And we loose a lot in doing this.
My feeling: the definition of "a few" is pretty loose, and there is far
too much of going out and learning 150 tunes from some other culture and
then sneering at others who have only learned 125. "Oh, you've only
visited Ireland twice, and you've never even been to a session at the
Flatulent Pig in Connechloiadmh? And yet you call yourself a fiddler?
How terribly amusing." That sort of thing.
My other feeling: learning music incompletely, and repeating it
imperfectly, is the whole reason for the richness and variety that
is ultimately what draws us all to folk music. Why do you think,
for example, that there are eleventy-eleven different variants of "The
Silkie"? Because a whole bunch of different people just coincidentally
decided to write songs about guys who look like seals? A lot more likely
scenario is that each version results from someone hearing the song,
liking it, kind of remembering it, and reproducing it with changes
inspired by his own prejudices about what makes a song sound nice.
I think that's a _good_ thing.
> "Fusion" ... my unfavoritest word.
I believe mine is "committee", closely followed by "infomercial".
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lori Cole
> But there is (maybe) an enormous body of fine playing, distinctive style,
> new musical ideas, etc, that maybe you didn't quite get when you heard it.
> My feeling: there's too much of going out getting a few ideas, tunes, songs,
> from some other culture, and singing, playing, etc, etc, them in OUR
> style. And we loose a lot in doing this.
> "Fusion" ... my unfavoritest word.
Right you are. But this doesn't preclude the possibility of someone
from outside of the tradition but with direct access to it (after many
years of listening and study) mastering it. For example, one of the
best young traditional American fiddlers -- by all accounts, including
older musicians from within the tradition -- happens to have been born
in Bologna, Italy. But it takes years of absorption in one tradition to
understand its subtleties. And he spent the time and paid his dues
(along with having the talent).
Fusion isn't necessarily the problem (although it often _is_ if the
things that you are fusing are things you don't understand very well);
it's _dilletantism_.
Lori Cole
Dave Golber
Everything you say, I agree with.
More extensive posting follows (sooner or later).
Dave G
Dave Golber
Subject: Re: trad music by non-trad performers, your opinion?
> Jon Berger wrote
>>Dave Golber (dgo...@aero.org) wrote:
>> I think this discussion has been entirely too amicable. Please allow me to
>> be disagreeable.
>Oh, thank goodness.
> ....
Well, first of all, I really mean to apologize. I wrote a quick reply,
which ended up sounding mean and elitist. Sorry for that. Saying "you"
in particular is a way of sounding elitist. So here, I'll try to say "we"
as much as possible.
Part of the mis-communication here is that in a sense I'm in the wrong news
group. I really should be in something like music.ethnic or
music.traditional, since "folk" in the USA means a lot of things ... as has
been discussed here lots.
But there really was a point of view in this thread that I want to disagree
with: Namely, that this is "all part of the folk process and everything is
OK" (no, I'm not quoting anyone in particular).
When we, with a meager musical tradition of our own (several people mentioned
the two little songs they had learned from their mother) pick up a tune from
another culture, and perform it in a way put together from the odds and end of
musical culture that we get from the radio, pop music, American "folk" music,
and still other cultures we've heard a bit from ... well, I really don't think
that's just the good old traditional folk process going on.
At the other end of the stick: when we visit the old country and find that
more and more of the music is being international-pop-ized ... again, I don't
think that's just the good old traditional folk process going on. I think
that would be confusing drinking a glass of water with being washed down the
street by a firehose.
There is one statement that Jon made that I would like to reply to explicitly:
> My other feeling: learning music incompletely, and repeating it
> imperfectly, is the whole reason for the richness and variety that
> is ultimately what draws us all to folk music.
This I disagree with. Perhaps it's because I'm thinking of traditional or
ethnic music, but when we learn music incompletely, and repeat it imperfectly,
what we get ends up sounding like the music we are accustomed to hear around
us. We loose the distinctive sound, which drew us to the music of that other
culture in the first place.
I believe - somewhat from experience - that really getting the sound, feel,
rhythm, whatever, of another music is HARD. And hardest of all is creating,
improvising, whatever, that other culture's music. I've been in that
situation myself: I can play pieces that I've learned carefully, and rather
felt I've gotten the right sound ... but when I try to create, improvise,
whatever, it comes out sounding like something American - it's lost what was
important, what attracted me to that music in the first place!
So I meant it seriously: when we take too casually the real learning of
another culture's music, we loose the essence that drew us to that music in
the first place.
There is an analogy with paints: When all of the colors on the palette have
been blended, only mud is left and painting is impossible.
-----------
Finally: this newsgroup is about music, so let me point to some interesting
recordings:
Cassette SH-C-8502, Sugar Hill Records, PO Box 4040 Duke Station, Durham NC
27706, "Far North", the movie sound track. Several melodies are borrowed from
Norwegian Hardanger fiddle tradition:
Cut one side A, "Far North". The theme is "Fanitullen", "The Devil's
Humming". It's a tune that a lot of Norwegian fiddlers know, and has a good
story (and even a poem) to go with it, but not much recorded. The recordings
I have here are of a "lyrical" version of the piece. They are on the
following cassettes:
"Loendalstonar II/ Kjetil Loendal, hardingfele", Buen Kulturverkstad, 1984.
"Slaattespel og Fanitul", Knut and Hauk Buen, KBMC 1, Buen Kulturverkstad.
"Gammel meisterspelemenn paa 78 plater, IV", BKMC 18, Buen Kulturverkstad.
(Hey! This has gotta be good. It's from an old scratchy 78! ;-) )
Back to "Far North": Side A, cut 8, called "gangar", is a Setesdal gangar,
namely "Klunkaren/Neri Neset's minne" ("The plunker [ie: on the strings], Neri
Neset's memory"). An original is on cut 5 of the CD "Dolkaren", SYLVCD 3.
Was sometimes distributed by Qualiton (!).
"Far North": Side B, cut 2, called "Train Ride Through the Big Woods", uses
the theme from "Myllargutens bruremarsj" ("The Miller's Boy's Bridal March")
composed by Myllarguten, (Torgeir Augundsson) 1801-1872. Often recorded. I
recommend a recent CD: "Myllargutens minne", BKMC 2, Buen Kulturverkstad.
In the US, you can ask for these recordings from
Norsk, Ltd.
770 Linden Ave.
Boulder, CO 80304
(303) 442-6452
or
Haug Forretning
2428 NW 56th
Ballard, WA 98107
(206) 789-3620
By the way: you may have been trying to get "Rosensfole", with Agnes Buen
Garnaas and Jan Gabarek, FXCD 83, from Kirkelig Kulturverksted. This is
available from
The Norwegian Music Club
16688 Hamilton Dr.
Lakeville, MN 55044
---------------------------
So what's the point of all this? Well, most of all to invite you to listen to
some music which I love and consider exciting.
But also to look at a real current example of "borrowing", or whatever we want
to call it:
Well, there's nothing "wrong" with "Far North". It's nice music. (But did
they _have_ to use that big-drum sound? Can't there be music without
percussion?)
But what has happened is that they have taken _melodies_ ... and the sound and
feel of the originals has been lost ... it's now the sound and feel of the Red
Clay Ramblers. Nothin _wrong_ with that sound ... it's a good sound and
they're excellent performers. But there's another sound out there in the
originals, a really different and exciting sound. I invite you to listen to
it.
----------------------------------
Experiment: well, it takes a good while to go through the cassettes, find
things, names and numbers, and type all this in. I'd be curious if anyone
reading this actually goes and calls any of the distributors above to try and
get any of the recordings I mention. Do me a favor: if you do, send me a
note.
Dave Golber
Christopher J. Hoover
net lag from hell on our newfeed....
In article <1993Apr8.1...@pony.Ingres.COM>, jo...@Ingres.COM (Jon
Berger) writes:
>Naah. Then the same people who sneered at you for singing songs
>you weren't entitled to sing will accuse you of being one of those
>horrible singer-songwriter people, and tell you you're spoiling folk
>music for everyone. You can't win.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. A sentiment shared. Myself, I'm Minnesota
born and South Dakota raised, but I sing songs from all over the
English-speaking world, with whatever inflection or accenting seems to work
best for the song. Anyone who is offended by my lack of "authenticity"
needn't listen--I mostly sing in my own living room anyway....
>As I understand it, the only _truly_ legitimate songs are those you
>learned from your mother. (Fathers might or might not be acceptable;
>I never really got that straight.) In my particular case, pure folk
>music consists entirely of two songs: "Mairzy Doats" and "There's an
>Old Spinning Wheel in the Parlor", which, unfortunately, I learned as
>"There's an old Swimming Hole in the Parlor."
I love it. Gives me a mental image of myself, long hair, beard and all, with
my northern prairie inflections, singing "Ragtime Coybow Joe" and "Cow-Cow
Boogie"....
Mom knew lots of cowboy songs. She's more into Celtic nowdays (me too).
>> My personal opinion
>> is that anyone is justified in singing ANY song that they feel like singing.
>
>What he said.
What they said.
Chris
---
Christopher Hoover cho...@charlie.usd.edu
Network Coordinator for Student Life Disclaimer: Standard.
User Services, University of South Dakota
Some folks say it was a miracle. Saint Francis suddenly appeared and knocked
the next pitch clean over the fence. But I think it was just a lucky swing.
-- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
Rosa Michaelson
nice, I suspect that we all agree that:
<a> You can do what you want with music (and art and science).
with the proviso that whatever you do does not harm any non-consenting
sentient being - ah! spirit of 68, and the lemma that if you do it in
public others get to criticise you (maybe positively).
<b> That to define the 'folk process' is very hard. Actually this area
has been covered by the following academic subjects - and is really a
re-hash of the pigeon-hole problem implicit in human thought (east or west) -
social historians, social anthropology, semiotics, ethnomusicology etc etc.
And to define the 'folk process' when we think of industrialised and urban
'folk' is hard too..
<c> That the on-the-face-of-it smaller query 'am I part of the folk process'
is even harder and that the really hard question is
<d> What the hell is going on today anyway.....
Larry Clifford
>
>There is one statement that Jon made that I would like to reply to explicitly:
>
>> My other feeling: learning music incompletely, and repeating it
>> imperfectly, is the whole reason for the richness and variety that
>> is ultimately what draws us all to folk music.
>
>This I disagree with. Perhaps it's because I'm thinking of traditional or
>ethnic music, but when we learn music incompletely, and repeat it imperfectly,
>what we get ends up sounding like the music we are accustomed to hear around
>us. We loose the distinctive sound, which drew us to the music of that other
>culture in the first place.
>
Cultural evolution and biological evolution have more than a passing
resemblance sometimes, which comes out in Jon's original statement. There
are 2 key ingredients -- variation, followed by selection. At least in
traditional and folk music, broadly construed, minor and possibly
inadvertent changes in memorized music provide the ever-changing pool
of possibilities from which the cultural environment (listeners and
musicians) then selects. Speciation may follow -- new music, new
critters. As in biology, most variations are unfavorable and are
forgotten. Gross and sudden alterations -- like failing to even
understand the rhythm or "feel" of the music being learned, the
kind of failure that Dave talks about -- is usually a severe bungle
and dies a rapid death. (Genius may suffer the same fate, of course!)
The internationalized pop music business is another matter, and I
would throw out the Darwinian metaphors when speaking of it. I meet
many young people from Scandinavia, Germany, etc. who are not only
enamored of Peter Gabriel, Jane's Addiction, and Depeche Mode, but
have no feeling at all for the folk music of their home countries.
Crank the J's A by all means, I say, but let's have a bit of the old too
sometimes. It's their loss -- not a choice, but a loss, because they
don't even know of the existence of what they're not hearing. The
Slavs seem different -- a pretty high percentage of them are
ready to turn off the dance music late at night, pick up a
cheap guitar, and sing soulful old songs that they have in common. I
envy them that.
As for what constitutes folk process -- a musicologist will properly
distinguish, I think, between what goes on in musical circles in
today's protean, technicized Western society and what went on in
the villages of Ireland, Norway, and elsewhere a thousand years
ago. Music is changing in different ways now, and if the history
of music is your business, that's important to understand. But music
has always changed in some way, and it is good that it did, and it
is good that it continues to do so, although many of the modes of
change have themselves changed.
Larry
Robert Derrick
:
: > My other feeling: learning music incompletely, and repeating it
: > imperfectly, is the whole reason for the richness and variety that
: > is ultimately what draws us all to folk music.
:
: This I disagree with. Perhaps it's because I'm thinking of traditional or
: ethnic music, but when we learn music incompletely, and repeat it imperfectly,
: what we get ends up sounding like the music we are accustomed to hear around
: us. We loose the distinctive sound, which drew us to the music of that other
: culture in the first place.
I understand what you are saying Dave, but I agree with Jon, and the reason why...
: I believe - somewhat from experience - that really getting the sound, feel,
: rhythm, whatever, of another music is HARD. And hardest of all is creating,
: improvising, whatever, that other culture's music. I've been in that
: situation myself: I can play pieces that I've learned carefully, and rather
: felt I've gotten the right sound ... but when I try to create, improvise,
: whatever, it comes out sounding like something American - it's lost what was
: important, what attracted me to that music in the first place!
is that if you did capture all those things you were trying to capture, what
you will end up with is a very good copy of the other culture's music. You
will be doing a service by helping preserve something that may be on the way
to being lost. But if you take that original work, give it your own style,
a little bit of your soul, and maybe even mess it up a bit, you will end up
with something that is entirely your own. And that is folk music.
Take an old Irish jig about a dead cow, slow it down, syncopate it, make up
some new words about life and marriage, and sing it with a hard-drivin'
12-string rhythm-n-soul that comes from where you come from, and you've
got "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine", by Leadbelly.
Take a Czech song about [God knows what, it's in Czech!, and how the heck are
you ever gonna make sense of that, even if you could sing it; after all, you're
no Theo Bikel!], Americanize it, add some bear hunting words, and you've
got "Cumberland Mountain Bear Chase", written by Who Knows?
Of course, there is a big difference between making something good, and just
messing it up, but the natural process of folk selection will take care of
that. If these people hadn't been brave enough to pick and choose the pieces
that they liked, and understood, and leave the rest, think of everything
we would have lost.
As John Hartford says in one of his songs,
"I tried real hard not to make this song sound like some other song
some other singer/songwriter might have written before.
And if I did, it's because it's music, and music's based on repetition.
I tried real hard not to make this song sound like some other song
I might have written before
And if I did, it's because it's my style, and style's based on limitation."
And that limitation is what keeps everybody from sounding exactly alike, and
keeps the magic and wonder in music.
--------------------
"Twice five syllables
Plus seven can't say much but
That's Haiku for you."
--------------------
rob derrick ro...@cherry.cray.com
Jane Peppler
>
>Cultural evolution and biological evolution have more than a passing
>resemblance sometimes, which comes out in Jon's original statement. There
>are 2 key ingredients -- variation, followed by selection. At least in
>traditional and folk music, broadly construed, minor and possibly
>inadvertent changes in memorized music provide the ever-changing pool
>of possibilities from which the cultural environment (listeners and
>musicians) then selects. Speciation may follow -- new music, new
>critters. As in biology, most variations are unfavorable and are
>forgotten. Gross and sudden alterations -- like failing to even
>understand the rhythm or "feel" of the music being learned, the
>kind of failure that Dave talks about -- is usually a severe bungle
>and dies a rapid death.
Beautifully stated! As my partner Pat Sky says, "99% of everything is shit."
He used to be a singer-songwriter in the Olde Days but now is an Irish music
fanatic and detests the hordes of S-S's. Because they can crank out albums-
full of materials, some of which is nice, much of which is mediocre or worse
(see Pat's maxim). As nobody ever tells a S-S, "that's a lousy song," there
is no selection process.
There are millions of rotten traditional songs and tunes that have died a
lonely death as they deserved to (quite a few more could gasp their last
and nobody much would mourn them). And all those singer-songwriter songs
will fade when their composers get tired of trotting them out. But we would
all profit if the composers would try to apply a little natural selection to
their own output.
Richard Robinson
(Robert Derrick) writes:
>
>is that if you did capture all those things you were trying to capture, what
>you will end up with is a very good copy of the other culture's music. You
Isn't that the 'folk music' we're talking about ?
>will be doing a service by helping preserve something that may be on the way
>to being lost. But if you take that original work, give it your own style,
>a little bit of your soul, and maybe even mess it up a bit, you will end up
>with something that is entirely your own. And that is folk music.
-------------------------------------------^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
no it's not, it's something 'entirely your own'.
If you 'capture all those things you were trying to capture' *and* give it
'a little bit of your soul' (or more than a little if more is available)
then the tradition has been strengthened that people will then plunder
tunes from to present in whatever 'original' ways happen to take their fancy.
>
>Take an old Irish jig about a dead cow, slow it down, syncopate it, make up
>some new words about life and marriage, and sing it with a hard-drivin'
>12-string rhythm-n-soul that comes from where you come from, and you've
>got "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine", by Leadbelly.
Assuming that other people have kept the Irish jig alive for you to find and
do something else with.
I come from northern England, where most of the local real music is Irish.
Is that all right ? I end up with an Irish jig.
If you come from where Leadbelly came from, and do the stuff you talk about,
then you get Leadbelly ... is this a valid out-of-culture performance of
an Irish jig ? I don't think that's what you mean. What bearing would you
expect this to have on the traditions of Irish music ? any ?
>Of course, there is a big difference between making something good, and just
>messing it up, but the natural process of folk selection will take care of
>that. If these people hadn't been brave enough to pick and choose the pieces
>that they liked, and understood, and leave the rest, think of everything
>we would have lost.
>
The natural process of folk selection as I've seen it is that the tunes go on
and on being played and there is a whole procession of fashionable ways of
messing with them, which soon become unfashionable and get forgotten. The
tunes are still being played, and then another fashion comes along, a
different way of messing with the same tunes. this then becomes
unfashionable. the tunes go on being played ...
dead cows ? which jig's that ? I'm always a sucker for a good title.
folk music ... ever hear any horses ...?
world music ... ever hear any martians ... ?
----------------
Thanks to whoever re-posted the newsletter article, it seems very much to the
point I'm getting at
Nothing wrong with being a traditional stylist, nothing wrong with helping
yourself to anything and doing whatever seems good to you to do with it.
Nothing wrong with doing varying degrees of both at once, which is a bit
more like the way things actually happen.
What *is* wrong, I say, is not to be aware of the difference and which is
which. If a piece of music is going to claim any relationship to 'folk' or
'tradition' then we need to know what that relationship is.
Is a tradition still traditional if everyone thinks they invented it
yesterday ?
-------------------------------------------------------------
Richard Robinson, Leeds, UK ric...@beulah.demon.co.uk
// This space intentionally left half-blank
ghost
>Beautifully stated! As my partner Pat Sky says, "99% of everything is shit."
>He used to be a singer-songwriter in the Olde Days but now is an Irish music
>fanatic and detests the hordes of S-S's. Because they can crank out albums-
>full of materials, some of which is nice, much of which is mediocre or worse
>(see Pat's maxim). As nobody ever tells a S-S, "that's a lousy song," there
>is no selection process.
As Sky probably knows, he's got the last 1/2 of Sturgeon's Law here;
Theodore Sturgeon, science fiction author, in answer to somebody's saying
"99% of science fiction is crap!" and waiting for a witty rebuttal,
said "99% of everything is crap".
(Or maybe it really was "shit". Folk process at work here.)
With written material, though, you can always go back & revive something,
you don't agree is crap, providing 1 copy has been saved. What you can't
revive is the cultural milleu that it fit into.
Now that sound recordings effectively write music down, same holds.
Problem with the "folk process", though, is that until sound recordings,
stuff lost was gone forever, due to most folk performers not knowing how
to write music, and due to gross inadequacies in the existing system of
musical notation even for stuff that did get written down.
I'd like to think there is a fair selection process going on, but what
really happens is no more fair than "punctuated equilibrum",
the theory that has largely replaced "natural selection" in
population genetics circles. (I've been familiar with the theory for
years, but just found out a few months ago its officially called
PE. So much for keeping current. Its the theory that made
Stephen Jay Gould famous, if you're interested.)
Theory says that change happens in spurts, propelled by some "natural"
catastrophe, like earthquake or flood or comets hitting the earth,
on a small scale causing formerly homogeneous populations to get
seperated/isolated with some information lost & some recessive info
suddently dominant in each seperate branch (so far, this is still
classic population genetics), on a large scale wiping out
entire species, allowing other species to develop overnight
(via cosmic rays from mammoth sunspots? who knows) or crawl out from under
their respective rocks to prominence...during which they sail along,
changing only in the minute ways dictated by natural selection, until
the next comet hits...
Natural catastrophes, and war, and human nature serve quite well as well
for evolutionary punctuation to the "folk process".
For a human nature example, take "lets enslave a lot of people from different
parts of Africa, with differing musical traditions along with completely
seperate cultures, & ship them to North America where their overseers will
be mostly from impoverished Scots & Irish stock, likely to fondly remember
& play folk tunes themselves, and lets see what kinds of music the Africans
develop under these conditions. For that matter, lets see what kinds of
music the overseers develop on their own now that its hard to find someone from
the same county back home who plays the same tune in exactly the same style..."
>There are millions of rotten traditional songs and tunes that have died a
>lonely death as they deserved to (quite a few more could gasp their last
>and nobody much would mourn them).
I don't believe its all that rotten, the music that's gone forever,
more likely just unlucky enough to be out of style during the time slot
necessary for its survival.
What about wars that wipe out whole populations, incidentally taking their
music with them?
>And all those singer-songwriter songs
>will fade when their composers get tired of trotting them out. But we would
>all profit if the composers would try to apply a little natural selection to
>their own output.
Which is why I avoid singer-songwriter showcases like the plague they are;
I figure that the S-Ss who are really as good as they are prolific, or
who are smart enough to know they do no service to their few great songs
by mixing them up with original mediocrity, and choose to mix them up
instead with other great songs, current or traditional, will rise like
the cream they are to the level of whole evening solo performances.
Let somebody else endure that selection process for me...nothing is
more mind-numbing than an evening of mediocre music, offered with
utmost sincerity.
There doesn't seem to be an equivalent phenomenon in folk instrumental music;
I've never heard a set of rotten-but-original folk instrumentals.
Maybe the desire to show off how well you can play naturally leads to
material that actually shows that off.
You'd think the S-Ss would remember what drove them to public performance
in the 1st place; with at least some it had to be some kind of need to
communicate, rather than just that mysterious drive to make a spectacle
of yourself. You don't communicate much by boring people to death, even
if the material isn't boring to you because you're so close to it.
The selection process, such as it is, takes place when no-one else on
planet earth ever wants to cover your song...I guess that's how
singer-songwriters say "that's a lousy song" without having to lose a
friend in the process.
Gary Martin
( ghost ) writes:
Which is why I avoid singer-songwriter showcases like the plague they are;
I figure that the S-Ss who are really as good as they are prolific, or
who are smart enough to know they do no service to their few great songs
by mixing them up with original mediocrity, and choose to mix them up
instead with other great songs, current or traditional, will rise like
the cream they are to the level of whole evening solo performances.
Let somebody else endure that selection process for me...nothing is
more mind-numbing than an evening of mediocre music, offered with
utmost sincerity.
You'd think the S-Ss would remember what drove them to public performance
in the 1st place; with at least some it had to be some kind of need to
communicate, rather than just that mysterious drive to make a spectacle
of yourself. You don't communicate much by boring people to death, even
if the material isn't boring to you because you're so close to it.
The selection process, such as it is, takes place when no-one else on
planet earth ever wants to cover your song...I guess that's how
singer-songwriters say "that's a lousy song" without having to lose a
friend in the process.
Actually, a number of S-Ss I've spoken to complain that it's very hard to
get honest feedback. (These are up-and-coming songwriters who I think
are really good and sincerely want criticism, but I don't know how
typical this is. It's a tough business and egos can be fragile, so
most of what goes on is stroking rather than honest criticism.) And
it's got to be hard for anyone to judge their own work. I think it
was Carla Sciaky (in her WUMB interview a few days ago) who said that
she wrote a song that she didn't think was any good, and was going
to drop it from her repertoire, but audiences liked it and she eventually
came to like it as well. But admittedly it's usually the other way
around - the S-S keeps performing a bad song until the polite applause
gets faint enough.
--
Gary A. Martin, Assistant Professor of Mathematics, UMass Dartmouth
Mar...@cis.umassd.edu
Piers David Cawley
>
>There are millions of rotten traditional songs and tunes that have died a
>lonely death as they deserved to (quite a few more could gasp their last
>and nobody much would mourn them). And all those singer-songwriter songs
>will fade when their composers get tired of trotting them out. But we would
>all profit if the composers would try to apply a little natural selection to
>their own output.
>
I deny this wholeheartedly; if a new song is any good, it enters the
tradtion, *other* people sing it, not just the writer, and it becomes subject
to the `folk process'. If however the song is crap then it will die a quiet
death unmourned as it's writer stops singing it through lack of requests or
just boredom with the song. For example, how many of you can remember a bad
Richard Thompson song from 10-15 years ago? Unless you've got the album sat
at home you won't remember it. But you'll remember _Down Where the Drunkards
Roll_ or _How Will I Ever Be Simple Again?_ without a problem. Hell, I
remember them (I even sing some of them) and they're songs I've never heard
RT himself sing.
--
+------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
| Piers Cawley | |
| pdca...@cix.compulink.co.uk | THIS SPACE TO LET |
| pdca...@vernon.demon.co.uk | |
+------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
| Disclaimer: I don't speak for vernon, I don't even know who he is |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
Dave Golber
>you don't agree is crap, providing 1 copy has been saved. What you can't
>revive is the cultural milleu that it fit into.
>Now that sound recordings effectively write music down, same holds.
>
>Problem with the "folk process", though, is that until sound recordings,
>stuff lost was gone forever, due to most folk performers not knowing how
>to write music, and due to gross inadequacies in the existing system of
>musical notation even for stuff that did get written down.
>
I'd like to agree and emphasize with this last point. Instead of
saying that there are "gross inadequacies in the existing system of
musical notation", I'd rather say that the process of turning ink on
paper into sounds is a highly background-dependent process. Imagine
parachuting the score to Beethoven's 5th, along with a copy of Grove's
dictionary of music, down on Mars. What would their performance sound
like? And this is for European classical music, in which, at least in
theory, ALL the notes are supposed to be on the paper, and the
performer really isn't supposed to add any of his own (at least as far
as current practice.)
After a few sessions of (attempting to) transcribe music from other
cultures, we very quickly learn that there is NO WAY we are going to be
able to write down all those notes.
Dave Golber
ghost
>
>Actually, a number of S-Ss I've spoken to complain that it's very hard to
>get honest feedback. (These are up-and-coming songwriters who I think
>are really good and sincerely want criticism, but I don't know how
>typical this is. It's a tough business and egos can be fragile, so
>most of what goes on is stroking rather than honest criticism.) And
>it's got to be hard for anyone to judge their own work. I think it
>was Carla Sciaky (in her WUMB interview a few days ago) who said that
>she wrote a song that she didn't think was any good, and was going
>to drop it from her repertoire, but audiences liked it and she eventually
>came to like it as well. But admittedly it's usually the other way
>around - the S-S keeps performing a bad song until the polite applause
>gets faint enough.
Here's one place I differ...I don't think they should be relying on
feedback/criticism, honest or otherwise. I don't even think they should
countenance any. I don't think the audience should ever run the show
when it comes to for-lack-of-a-better-word, art.
If you really think the song you have written matches
up to the songs which have moved or entertained you, then perform it,
& if the audience doesn't agree, find the right audience.
Its the work of your mind, not theirs, for better or worse.
(Providing we're still talking folk music here, not show-business stuff;
otherwise, give them what they want, but be sure to collect a large fee
at the in-door.)
The catch here is that for some things, there is no right audience,
except perhaps the S-S's loving family/SO.
One thing I'd like to highlight is that I really meant mediocre when I
said it, not bad.
Bad songs are in a class of their own, highly memorable as to tune
or lyrics, usually both. That's what makes them so bad. If you can't get
it washed out of your memory banks with any known solvent, and its not for
lack of trying, its bad.
The stuff I consider mediocre has as its defining characteristic
an almost complete lack of melody. Usually it has enough going on
musically to call it music (I'd call it wallpaper chords, though), but not
enough to call it a song. A set of horrible lyrics to a really memorable
melody becomes a bad song, not a mediocre one, by my definition anyway.
A lot of these musings-about-life set to wafty strains are not bad writing
at all, taken only as prose, but they're not being offered as prose, and
that's the problem. I'd go even further and say that for a really
great song, the lyrics & the melody have to interact in some mysterious way
in which each relies on the other (not to say they can't stand alone,
though often the lyrics can't & shouldn't be expected to).
At some point these guys have to remember that its supposed to be music
they're performing, not poetry-readings-on-a-pogo-stick, or vocal
exercises.
I can't remember that part of Sciaky's interview..I listened to most but
had to work through some of it. I do remember her saying she was
retiring "I'm a wimp" because she was really tired of it. Which is as
it should be...up to her. I'd be willing to bet if Sciaky worked up any
song to the point where she ever felt it was ready for an audience,
but now doesn't want to sing it, its because she just doesn't relate to
it anymore & wants other songs in its place, not because it was ever
bad, much less mediocre, but that's based on everything else I've ever
heard her perform...
Miriam Nadel
>In article <MARTIN.93A...@lyra.cis.umassd.edu> mar...@lyra.cis.umassd.edu (Gary Martin) writes:
>>
>>Actually, a number of S-Ss I've spoken to complain that it's very hard to
>>get honest feedback. (These are up-and-coming songwriters who I think
>>are really good and sincerely want criticism, but I don't know how
>>typical this is. It's a tough business and egos can be fragile, so
>>most of what goes on is stroking rather than honest criticism.) And
>>it's got to be hard for anyone to judge their own work.
>
>feedback/criticism, honest or otherwise. I don't even think they should
>countenance any. I don't think the audience should ever run the show
>when it comes to for-lack-of-a-better-word, art.
>If you really think the song you have written matches
>up to the songs which have moved or entertained you, then perform it,
>& if the audience doesn't agree, find the right audience.
>Its the work of your mind, not theirs, for better or worse.
There's a problem with this approach, though. What if the piece is not working
because it doesn't communicate the artist's intention? I'm not sure
exactly how to explain what I'm talking about other than by example. I'm
a storyteller and not a musician but I don't think the basic issues are
any different. I know there are times when I'm working on a story and I
have a good idea in mind of what the point of it is but my audience gets
distracted by something extraneous to the essential point of the piece. That
can be worked around - indeed, it has to if I'm going to perform that story
successfully.
Now, consider the singer-songwriter who writes a particular song for a
particular reason - whether that be the intent to tell a story (e.g. a
ballad), communicate an emotion, inspire people to overcome obstacles,
whatever. If everyone gets off the point, the song won't work. Good
feedback could help in identifying what needs to be done.
Giving good feedback is by no means easy. It has to be directed towards
helping the artist discover his or her own way out of a problem. Done that
way, it won't be hard on the ego. Most of us work on a teaching paradigm
that feedback=criticism instead of feedback=coaching. That doesn't have to
be.
I suspect the way out of this for the singer-songwriter is similar to the
way I've found to get feedback on storytelling. I get together with 3
other storytellers on a regular basis for us to work on the problems.
A group of 2-6 people mutually coaching one another can be very effective
(assuming they're basically simpatico - I wouldn't want to work with someone
whose ego demanded they put the others down) and also helps with the
issue of artistic isolation, which is another risk for performers.
Miriam Nadel
Daniel Rosenblum
(Robert Derrick) writes:
>Take an old Irish jig about a dead cow, slow it down, syncopate it, make up
>some new words about life and marriage, and sing it with a hard-drivin'
>12-string rhythm-n-soul that comes from where you come from, and you've
>got "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine", by Leadbelly.
Except that the Weavers wrote the words. It was Leadbelly who
transformed the tune from its Irish form to its African-American
form. If this isn't the blending of cultures, it's certainly a
great example of what might better be termed cross-pollination.
As Pete Seeger says about this very example, why can't we have
both the Ballad of Dhrinnin Due (spelling? -name of original
tune) and the Leadbelly/Weavers tune? It's nice to know of and
to be able to hear both. Pete has lots more thoughts about this
topic in _The_Incompleat_Folksinger_. One of his nice analogies
on the ever-running conflict between pure traditionalists and
ardent innovators is the thought of what would happen if buildings
didn't last more than a few decades. Some architects would
advocate recreating every last detail of every building to maintain
styles. Others would want to blend and innovate. As long as both
are free to do what they want, and respect each others' motivations,
there should be room for both in the world.
>Take a Czech song about [God knows what, it's in Czech!, and how the heck are
>you ever gonna make sense of that, even if you could sing it; after all, you're
>no Theo Bikel!], Americanize it, add some bear hunting words, and you've
>got "Cumberland Mountain Bear Chase", written by Who Knows?
I'm not sure if this was borrowed, and if so which way the
borrowing went, or if it's a remarkable case of convergent
evolution (or independent creation, if you prefer), although
I kind of doubt the latter.
--
Daniel M. Rosenblum, Assistant Professor, Quantitative Studies Area,
Graduate School of Management, Rutgers University (Newark Campus)
ROSE...@DRACO.RUTGERS.EDU ROSE...@ZODIAC.BITnet
d...@andromeda.rutgers.edu ...!rutgers!andromeda.rutgers.edu!dmr
Daniel Rosenblum
>After a few sessions of (attempting to) transcribe music from other
>cultures, we very quickly learn that there is NO WAY we are going to be
>able to write down all those notes.
Somewhere in A. L. Lloyd's _Folk_Song_in_England_, he recounts
the story of Mme. Viardot in the 19th century taking an interminable
amount of time to transcribe a short phrase of French folk music
from hearing it on the musette (the French folk bagpipe), as an
illustration of using notation that is essentially designed for
(and grew up along with) Western "classical" music for other
traditions.
Steve Pope
is *extremely* rare, relative to instrumental, vocal, arrangement,
improvisational, and performance talent. Therefore,
most S-S's have very little compositional talent but
perform their own material, to near exclusivity, anyway.
There is a bias in the low-end of the music biz that says
one needs to do "originals" to escape the label of being
a "cover" artist. This has the unfortunate effect of
exposing the public to a lot of mediocre compositions written
by otherwise talented musicians.
An unique arrangement can represent far more creativity
than a "original" composition that is based on completely
standard musical idioms.
Steve
Piers David Cawley
>The major problem with S-S's is that compositional talent
>is *extremely* rare, relative to instrumental, vocal, arrangement,
>improvisational, and performance talent. Therefore,
>most S-S's have very little compositional talent but
>perform their own material, to near exclusivity, anyway.
I don't know if you've ever noticed this, but the truly great S-Ss don't give
a monkey's where the songs they sing come from; if the song's worth singing,
it's worth singing. The fact that they (as singers) perform a lot of their
own (as songwriters -- you don't have to be a songwriter to make a song `your
own', witness Joe Cocker's version of _With a Little Help From my Friends_ if
you don't believe me) material should make no difference to the way they
approach all their repertoire.
>There is a bias in the low-end of the music biz that says
>one needs to do "originals" to escape the label of being
>a "cover" artist. This has the unfortunate effect of
>exposing the public to a lot of mediocre compositions written
>by otherwise talented musicians.
By perpetuating this myth (in the folk music field at least) we are tending
to forget that the folk revival was, and is, about keeping the old songs
alive. If, once someone starts to get a modicum of success, they stop singing
traditional songs, then surely they are moving away from being truly a `folk'
singer, as opposed to someone who sings songs in the folk idiom. (Am I making
sense here?)
>An unique arrangement can represent far more creativity
>than a "original" composition that is based on completely
>standard musical idioms.
Hear! Hear! You only have to listen to things like Martin Carthy's
arrangement of _Scarborough Fair_ (available in a cover version on any
collection of the best of Simon and Garfunkel albeit with their harmonies
thrown on top), Swan Arcade singing _Paperback Writer_ or The Barely Works'
version of _Byker Hill_ to realise that.
Mike Neverisky
>There doesn't seem to be an equivalent phenomenon in folk instrumental music;
>I've never heard a set of rotten-but-original folk instrumentals.
>Maybe the desire to show off how well you can play naturally leads to
>material that actually shows that off.
The _Folk_ label may not be apt, but IMO _boring_ instrumental music
does exist. How many wandering-arpeggio-slap-the-fretboard-I-dare-
you-to-find-the-melody guitar solos do we need?
--
---------------------------+---------------------------+-------------------
Mike Neverisky | philabs!trintex!neverisk | Prodigy: KJRJ75A
Prodigy Services Company | 1-914-993-8228 FAX |
White Plains, NY 10601 | 1-914-993-2402 voice |
Don Coolidge
In article <1qv43a$o...@agate.berkeley.edu>, s...@zabriskie.berkeley.edu
(Steve Pope) wrote:
>
> The major problem with S-S's is that compositional talent
> is *extremely* rare, relative to instrumental, vocal, arrangement,
> improvisational, and performance talent. Therefore,
> most S-S's have very little compositional talent but
> perform their own material, to near exclusivity, anyway.
This is a valid point when talking about a local bar scene. By the time one
gets to considering artists of national or international prominence,
though, Darwinian forces have culled most of the compositional failures.
What's left may not all be deathless lyric and melody, but it's clearly
better than what you describe.
> There is a bias in the low-end of the music biz that says
> one needs to do "originals" to escape the label of being
> a "cover" artist. This has the unfortunate effect of
> exposing the public to a lot of mediocre compositions written
> by otherwise talented musicians.
It also has the beneficial effect of encouraging a number of new artists to
exercise and improve their creative powers, giving us a lot of marvelous
stuff that will someday be added to that body of work we call
"traditional". Remember, each and every one of those traditional songs was
created by a singer-songwriter at some time in the past.
> An unique arrangement can represent far more creativity
> than a "original" composition that is based on completely
> standard musical idioms.
You seem to overlook the pitfalls of doing cover material. The primary one
is that you have to do one hell of a job of interpreting it, else there's
nothing to differentiate it from any other bland interpretation of the same
song. Indeed, a strong argument can be made that all of the points put
forward as favoring interpretations of traditional material apply just as
strongly to singer-songwriters - a unique arrangement can clearly enhance
an original song's appeal.
In the end, we have Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crap. In a world
of uncertain economic future, this leads me to be extremely selective in my
choices of music to buy and patronize. While I tilt towards the
singer-songwriter side, I also cherish the many traditional pieces in my
collection and repertoire...
- Don Coolidge
Scott Killops
|> Interesting thread...
|>
|> In the end, we have Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crap.
|>
This is what it gets down to for me. When I first saw the subject of
this thread I thought, "You may as well say that's the trouble with
writers, never mind singer-songwriters". That only a relative handful
achieve great things bothers me not at all. The good ones are so good
that I don't mind sifting through a lot of material to find them. Besides,
you appreciate them more when you have to look a little harder to find them.
The trouble with Kate Wolf, Bill Staines, Greg Brown, Bill Morrissey,
Tommy Sands, Nanci Griffith, John Prine, Bob Dylan, John Gorka, Patty
Larkin, Michelle Shocked, Jesse Winchester, Townes Van Zandt, Jim Post,
Sally Rogers, Claudia Schmidt, Stan Rogers, Steve Goodman, ... (singer-
songwriters) is that they are so talented that eventually even the
unwashed masses notice them and then you can't go see them in intimate
venues like the East Avenue Tavern, The Ark, or The Freight & Salvage
anymore :).
Chow, Scott
--
Scott Killops Intel Supercomputer Systems Division CO1-01
kil...@ssd.intel.com 15201 Greenbrier Parkway
(503)629-4325 Beaverton, OR 97006-5771
Gary Martin
( ghost ) writes:
In article <MARTIN.93A...@lyra.cis.umassd.edu>
mar...@lyra.cis.umassd.edu (Gary Martin) writes:
>
>Actually, a number of S-Ss I've spoken to complain that it's very hard to
>get honest feedback. (These are up-and-coming songwriters who I think
>are really good and sincerely want criticism, but I don't know how
>typical this is. It's a tough business and egos can be fragile, so
>most of what goes on is stroking rather than honest criticism.) And
>it's got to be hard for anyone to judge their own work. I think it
>was Carla Sciaky (in her WUMB interview a few days ago) who said that
>she wrote a song that she didn't think was any good, and was going
>to drop it from her repertoire, but audiences liked it and she eventually
>came to like it as well. But admittedly it's usually the other way
>around - the S-S keeps performing a bad song until the polite applause
>gets faint enough.
[lots of stuff I wish I had time to comment on deleted]
I can't remember that part of Sciaky's interview..I listened to most but
had to work through some of it. I do remember her saying she was
retiring "I'm a wimp" because she was really tired of it. Which is as
it should be...up to her. I'd be willing to bet if Sciaky worked up any
song to the point where she ever felt it was ready for an audience,
but now doesn't want to sing it, its because she just doesn't relate to
it anymore & wants other songs in its place, not because it was ever
bad, much less mediocre, but that's based on everything else I've ever
heard her perform...
Here's a fairly accurate transcription of the tape I made of Carla's
interview:
I go through a kind of judging period with the songs
where I think maybe this isn't so good. Maybe I just
thought it was good because I needed to get it out. And
I'll start doubting it. With some songs I've gone through
periods of just hating it. How could I have thought that
was a good song? And then I'll finally perform it and
people will say "Oh,that's a great song," and I'll say
"Oh, I guess it's ok!"
This was just prior to her comment about "I'm A Wimp".
Some condensed comments on the stuff I deleted:
Re: absence of melody - I agree, and would add absence of rhyme, meter,
rhythm and harmony as common faults of contemporary "folk" songs. I'm
not arguing that it's impossible to write a good song without these,
only much, much, much harder and nearly everybody fails when they try.
Re: bad vs mediocre - mediocrity is precisely the flaw that makes a
song bad. A song that's really atrocious is often entertaining, and
hence good. I'm mixing levels, but I think we agree on the concepts
if not the words.
Re: whether songwriters should get feedback - if it makes their songs
better, I have no problem with it.