The folk thing...................

[Globaltruth]

Just noticed this thread.

I do have to point out, doubtless to the point of others irritation, but whenever any uses that phrase

However, in the UK is seems to be associated with grim tales of dark, satanic mills

that a certain William Blake was actually referring to churches.

Nowt to do wi'mills.

Maybe this would have been more appropriate

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLDVIViWW74

[Lateralthinking1]

Just noticed this thread.

I do have to point out, doubtless to the point of others irritation, but whenever any uses that phrase

that a certain William Blake was actually referring to churches.

Nowt to do wi'mills.

Maybe this would have been more appropriate
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLDVIViWW74

I like that sketch. Most of us in 2013 are probably too literal in our interpretations.

Some historians suggest that when Disraeli toured South London and remarked "what gorgeous palaces of Geneva", he may well have been referring to the Red Lion, the Ferret and Firkin, Ye Olde Ostrich and Bicycle Clips and the trusty Dog and Duck.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

dis here was cut in '61

[Ian Thumwood]

It's been interesting reading some of the comments and playing a few of the links but I regret that I haven't really been convinced by the arguments presented. More than anything of much musicial worth, the merit of British folk music appears to be more as a record of social history. I think my mistrust with folk stems from two levels. The first is from a technical perspective as I find that it is either a bit too simplistic or where the musicians seem to show an element of technical prowess, the results seem pointless. (As is the case with Irish folk music despite many violinists being good enough to have careers in folk and classical music simultaneously. There is never the sense of witnessing a virtuoso performance of real depth, whether it might be a Debussy piano prelude or a mammoth flight of improvisatory invention from someone like Coltrane. In fact, I get the impression that there is also an "anti-technique" nature about the music insofar that the more challenging the music is, the further away it is from being readily accepted by "folk."

The point about other people's folk music being better is very salient. To my ears, nothing matches the emotional clout of the likes of Blind Lemon Jefferson's blues which, for all intents and purposes, is folk music. I think there are plenty of examples of American hill-billy musicians playing the same repertoire as blues artists yet the latter's works always seem more heartfelt and genuine. The black musicians who sang these songs were living the lives described within their music. In some cases the music might be considered not particularly challenging, yet these records from 90 years ago still seem to resonate. As is the case with a lot of music made during the 20th Century, the black contribution has frequently outlived his white contemporary. (Odd to read the article in this month's BBC History magazine about important events in the history if music and the black contribution is almost ignored until Leona Lewis whereas black culture has been the dominant voice over the century of recorded music.)

For some reason, the folk music from the British Isles just seems rank no matter if it is Irish fiddle bands, Scottish pipes, Welsh choirs or the bloke with the push bike who sang Brigg Fair. I know that there are some jazz musicians like Huw Warren and John Surman who have commented favourably on the British folk heritage but although they may incorporate elements of this music into their art, it is the jazz elements which serve to make their music of interest. Take the jazz element away and the music diminishes. With bands from Hungary or Africa, I would have to saw that these "folk" musics are of interest in the own accord or even if you considered Gamelan music to be folk, it sounds so superior to anything produced in Western Europe.

As far as Benjamin Britten is concerned, it is disappointing that is music is being resurrected in 2013. At some point in the 1990's critics seemed to wake up and pour scorn on his compositions and it looked like his music would fall out of favour. It is amazing that he still has a few adherents and whilst he may have had lofty ambitions with works like the "War Requiem" it is almost unlistenable nowadays like so much classical music of the 50's and 60's. Small wonder that with competition like that, critics like David Schiff should place Duke Ellington on a pedestal as one of the major composers of the last century!

Here is a clip which beautifully illustrates just how shite Britten was :-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gHTw9XjKMc

For me, even if Britten had written something as wonderful as Bartok's "Concerto for orchestra" or Messaien's "Turangulila", I would have to say music as dreadful at that folk song setting would have damaged his reputation beyond repair. I would rather listen to Rap that this hysterically camp and dated peace of music. There are plenty of other compositions in this vein and I regret that the results are so wretched as to be undefendable. Fifty years later, this is almost a pastiche or a kind of joke which is no longer funny. I've heard a few string pieces by Britten which are ok at best but I would never have considered him a significant composer by anyone's standards and the setting of folk tunes diminishes everyone involved. I would be hard pressed to think of anything in "serious" music quite as dire as this or indeed something which has dated quite so shockingly. It is simply beyond redemption.

[handsomefortune]

i haven't read all this thread ....but personally i like jazz and folk,....as well as electronic, and improvisational, experimentalist music styles etc

But may be Engish folk is too far, poles apart in fact, from Jazz for there to be meaningful interplay (even though it may be argued Jazz is an amalgam of African plus German and French music). More promising it seems to me, listening to Late Junction Programmes, is interplay between mid-east, african and latin american folk music.

but what if a blues music root under pins folk though, as it often does/did? it's not 'poles apart' then!

in the uk folk typically seems to change its sources of influence according to who is doing it at any given time.

but it's always a nightmare attempting to generalise about a vast range of distinct musical hybrids surely?

there has been plenty of jazz/folk mergers, and probably will be for a long time to come, at a wild guess.

what was 70s folk icon, john martin doing, for instance, if it wasn't jazz, when he played his astonishing live sets and recordings with danny thompson on bass?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDPHCfOZ6wo likewise, similar applies to nick drake, from the decade before, ....though his particular habit of detuning, his use of dissonance, fused with an expressive but introspective/melancholic approach to lyrics (allegedly from his days reading wiliam blake etc at cambridge university where he read english lit) ... yet still the idea of 'artistic merit' and folk are scoffed at, or made light of! imo experimentation with different fusions is usually to be applauded ...and folk music is no exception, and the same applies to jazz etc.

i wonder if the rise and rise of 'the pogues' perhaps was a natural extension of john martin's rebellious, drunken irreverence? the latter approach proving universally popular, and perhaps sums up 80s music fasions in the west.....at least superficially. rebellion being the other side of the coin as far as 'a typical folk persona' has been concerned this far, to older melancholic laments and sea shanties.

'interplay between mid-east, african and latin american folk music'.

yes, many an interesting fusion may occurr, (especially on 'late junction'.......) the albert ayler track (last night) was a good example. but perhaps replace 'folk' with the word 'roots' and the usual cliches and prejudices about 'folk music' usually vanish? for instance, 'big muff' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gc7HqR21iQk... from way back when. nevertheless, a blues root unites several music styles with a common starting point.

the 90s saw the sustained revival of nick drake's pastoral inventions, new gens making up a large portion of drake's current fan base in europe and the US....who'll possibly be playing nick drake now, to their own kids, a decade or so later. consequently, drake albums fetch loads of £$s on e bay, despite no one taking any notice of his 'merit' within his short life span.

I would generally consider myself to have a pretty broad range of musical taste although I think the only extends to music that is of artistic merit.

and imo there is the (preposterous) answer to (most of) your queries as to the thread's beginnings pab music! erm ...how to decide if the pin barrel harp http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFFL6PsTklQ has 'artistic merit' .....and according to whom?

Moorish dancing ?
My Kurdish friends are real experts at that

i am impressed by new migrants' practical participation in group dances too.

music and dance that has been going on in parts of the middle east, regardless of interventions by russia, the uk, the US, or whoever .... and what exactly is wrong with ritual hanky waving anyway? if it makes displaced people feel 'at home' what's the problem exactly!? which places a slightly different emphasis on more familiar 'folk events', like this saturday's 'new year' 'wassail celebration', which simply is a ritual rejection against the changing of the yearly calendar, and the consequent loss of nearly two weeks of the year for 'britisjh folk'.....with the aid of hankies, ale, mysterious outfits that protect, in providing anonymity to 'rebels'.....so arguably, not that far off from 'pussy riot' objectives in some respects? and incidentally, perhaps a bunch of 'hysterically camp' folk performers seems to be more than likely over the next decade....so (thankfully) the many and various fusions, and resultant hybrids simply continue to multiply ....rather than respond to popular perception, commerce, or personal opinion supposedly about 'merit'.

[Lateralthinking1]

i wonder if the rise and rise of 'the pogues' perhaps was a natural extension of john martin's rebellious, drunken irreverence? the latter approach proving universally popular, and perhaps sums up 80s music fasions in the west.....at least superficially. rebellion being the other side of the coin as far as 'a typical folk persona' has been concerned this far, to older melancholic laments and sea shanties.

John Martyn is a very good example. The Pogues though were a hybrid with MacGowan's very English Irish roots - I think you have to look at the Chieftains and the Dubliners and it was a punk/rockabilly thing very early on - and then Terry Woods is a key figure. He linked it back to the previous resurgence and in many ways helped enable them to be musically coherent. Chevron was very important too. Even with MacGowan's considerable lyrical capabilities, I doubt that it would have worked nearly as well had they not had exceptional musicians. The band was the anchor to the lead singer's storm. That in fact was the key interplay - there was a tension between the two and a question there about direction and destination. Was it plausible? Could they make it? It strikes me that it was not in that sense entirely different from jazz. They were definitely pushing the boat out live. "Fiesta" for example.



One thing Ian that you don't mention is the way in which folk is arguably more likely to involve lyrics. They are often good words, strong stories, and there aren't many other places in music where that happens. It also means that the music doesn't have to make a point on its own. It is easy to say that the telling is only authentic in those who have experienced the situations, and that they are a part of history, but having next to no money, poor housing, alcoholism, "domestics", health problems caused by bad employers, the trials of the immigrant, war........all of these things are relevant to today. The way things are going, that will increasingly be the case. The above CD released in the 1980s is one in my collection. It underpins the point I have just made.

[Ian Thumwood]

Handsomefortune

I love the last track but I would never consider it to be folk. It is more like a surreal take on Kurt Weill. The mechanical contraption is amazing.

Ian

[Quarky]

Thank you for that post, handsomefortune, and for putting realism into this discussion. As you will have guessed, I know next to nothing about folk, and my post was an off the cuff reaction to the music played in Late Junction.
However there is a mountain of music available from the world music forum, via spotify, and I will really have to listen to some of that before venturing further comments.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

i do feeel afterreading this thread that the term folk is of little use as an analytical tool .... it is really just another cd rack label ....

now i do believe that traditional music from the north west villages would be different from music in the bigger urban sites in the 1650s ...how about you? oh in England of course .... but how about the Alpes Maritimes regions and Marseilles v the countryside?

might it all depend on exactly what you mean by folk music [apart from Louis Armstrong's simple resolution of terminology]?

Britten is an English composer, but surely not of folk music .... if you get my drift ....

theere is a clas issue here as well;; in the movie Master & Commander [go see it] a certain senior midshipman makes a profound and evcentually lethal faux pas as he sings with the crew wwho a5re working the capstan .... as an officer he may never be part of the 'folk'

folk music and early jazz were considered pretty close by the early critics who were communist in outlook and saw expressions of the class struggle in jazz ... they hated Charlie Parker so stuff them is what i says ...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Britten is an English composer, but surely not of folk music .... if you get my drift ...

No, not a composer of "Folk Music". But if the Music that emerges from the traditions and culture of a group of people and which provides several Musicians from those traditions and cultures with a pool of material with which to communicate their own "take" on how that material sheds light on their own experience, then surely it's not "forbidden" for Musicians from other traditions and cultures also use that material to communicate how it has affected and enlightened them?

I don't think IanT is suggesting that "Classically"-trained Musicians are barred from using "Folk" material; it's just that he finds Britten's response to the material unconvincing.

[MrGongGong]

I wonder, if I wrote a "folksong" extolling the virtues of bankers bonuses whether I would get a warm reception ?

This

is "folk" music IMV

This

I would generally consider myself to have a pretty broad range of musical taste although I think the only extends to music that is of artistic merit.

Does the thing that so many folk do
which is to conflate taste with value !