Re: [Harp-L] Folk disagreement (minimal harp content)

[Winslow Yerxa <winslowyerxa@xxxxxxxxx>]

The  Carter family would fit in some ways. Certainly their repertoire -
even some of the tunes for which A.P. Carter claimed authorship - was
taken from Southern folk tradition, and in fact Carter went on song
collecting trips.

The "Americana" label emphasizes American character but doesn't really
address the folk issue. You could characterize old Irving Berlin tunes
as "Americana," just as you could pow wow drum songs or Swing Low Sweet
Chariot.

In some ways the Carter family was one of the earliest folk acts - acts
in the sense that they were:

1) to some degree at a cultural remove from the source of their music. 
The song collecting trips attest to that - not all their music came
from their own community experience.

2) Presented commercially as a touring act, recording artists, radio
stars, featured in magazines, etc. - almost a brand name, even now.

Once I cooled down from my resentment at the source of the music being
characterized as a "subset" (sort of like Robert Johson and Howlin'
Wolf being characterized as a "subset" of Led Zeppelin), I started
thinking about how complex this topic really is.

How do individual creativity and expression impact the "folk" character
of music being played? Example: Robert Johnson, a gifted songwriter and
expressive artist. His music is clearly based in a folk tradition and
yet some writers complain when his lyrics fall back on folk "cliches".

At what point do creativity and individual expression mixing of
traditional not formerly associated, and so forth, take an artist and
his or her music away from the folk realm and into something else?

To what extent do intellectual definitions imposed by outsiders -
however well meaning - distort understanding of folk music and even
evince disrespect for its practitioners? The ridiculous idea that folk
music was magically generated by the group without reference to
individual effort or even identity (witness some of the field
recordings where the performers are not identified)held sway for a long
while and seems to embody a disrespect for the class of people under
study.

To what extent does presentation of the music outside its original
context distort it? The all-night kitchen ceilidh where you carry the
stove out into the yard to make room for dancing, with all its
immediate connection between musicians and dancers and the common
understanding that exists among people who know one another well,
cannot possibly be conveyed to an audience of strangers in a theater.

Of course, the only true folk music is not music you have known all
your life, learned from close relatives, and played only to those
within immediate earshot whom you have also known all your life, nor it
is always performed without the least hint of personal interpretation,
nor is it only that which has remained pure and unsullied by anything
introduced from the outside for the last three hundred years. But it
has the elements of all that, and anything else that comes on the scene
must be prodded with a long stick from a sufficiently safe distance, in
order to determine what sort of grunts it emits.

Winslow

--- moandabluz@xxxxxxx wrote:

> 
>     Winslow.. would you consider music from someone like, perhaps,
> the 
> Carter Family to be folk? I'm trying to think of others that I feel
> fit 
> that category. I think now, though, that type of music is being slid 
> into the "Americana" category.
> Steve "Moandabluz" Webb
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: winslowyerxa@xxxxxxxxx
> To: harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx
> Sent: Wed, 6 Dec 2006 11:18:37 -0800 (PST)
> Subject: Re: [Harp-L] Folk disagreement
> 
>    I'm going to chime in with Thurg here.
> 
> Folk as I describe it is not a subset of anything else.
> 
> It's the origin of the term "folk". This concept and this term have
> been around with this meaning for a good 200 years, maybe longer.
> 
> The practice, as opposed to the term, goes back into the mists of
> time.
> 
> Everything that Michael describes came along recently, and largely
> for
> commercial reasons, with only a tangential relation to actual folk
> music.
> 
> For some reason the music business fastened on the term "folk" in the
> mid-1950s and attached it to people like Peter, Paul, and Mary, the
> Kingston Trio, and other music business acts, and used this as a
> vehicle for selling a product to the public. This seems to have built
> on the practice started by Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger of
> repurposing
> (some would say hijacking) folk music as a vehicle for social
> protest.
> (This is not a commentary on their politics or the rightness of their
> goals, only on the distorted perception that they created of what
> folk
> music is.)
> 
> The good will created by the folk protest movement and its image for
> folksiness were ripe targets for commercial exploitation in a time
> when
> modernization was leading to alienation and nuclear destruction
> seemed
> to threaten from every side.
> 
> Later, both marketing threads came together in the person of Bob
> Dylan,
> who then added a third element - the singer-songwriter who plays an
> acoustic guitar. This further generated an idiom of highly personal
> songwriting that is the antithesis of the shared experience that is
> fundamental to the term "folk".
> 
> Along with this came a lot of bad rack harmonica playing that has had
> an unfortunate influence on the playing of harmonica by actual folk
> musicians (obligatory harmonica content).
> 
> Now it may well be that, as Michael describes from his own
> experience,
> that in the wake of all that politicizing and money making, people of
> good will have started doing things that they innocently refer to
> folk
> music even though it is not folk music.
> 
> This is not to comment on the honesty or good will of those people or
> on the musical or social value of what they do. Though clearly,
> Michael's "subset" description points to a distorted understanding
> that
> does not sit well with people who understand the origin of the term
> and
> who value what it means.
> 
> One of the results of the perceptions described above is that people
> involved with actual folk music now tend to use the term traditional
> music instead. Eventually someone will figure out how to distort and
> exploit that, too, and we'll have to find another descriptive term.
> 
> The weather is pretty nice here. Why am I being so crabby?
> 
> Winslow
> 
> --- Michael Rubin <rubinmichael@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> > Winslow writes:
> >   But it sounds like the singer-songwriter thing is what you're
> > thinking
> > of. For some reason a songwriter plays an acoustic guitar and some
> > people call it "folk" when folk is the opposite - songs that have
> > been
> > around and styles that have been around for hundreds of years and
> are
> > part of the culture.
> >
> >   I disagree.  I think that concept is one subset of the larger
> genre
> > of folk music as it is presented by major festivals, coffeehops,
> > clubs, record companies and musicians today.
> >
> >   I am very involved in the Kerrville Folk Festival.  Kerrville is
> a
> > small city 2 hours West of Austin.  Outside the city is a private
> > campground.  Twice a year, they have a festival, a small one for 3
> > days and a large one for 18 days.  Volunteers are known to live at
> > the fest grounds for 2 months both before and after the festival
> > insuring its success and improvement.
> >
> >   I go for 18 days straight (except for emergencies and big gigs),
> > camp out and play music till the wee hours, volunteer for 4 hours a
> > day for free camping 2 meals and 4 drinks daily and entrance to the
> > fest.  I see 3 to 10 folk acts a day.  Many of the acts accepted or
> > touted as folk have nothing to do with what Winslow is talking
> about.
> >
> >
> >   In my opinion, Folk is a style of music, a feeling, an attitude,
> a
> > way of life,etc.  This is very similiar to Blues.
> >
> >   Playing folk harp is a relevation, because  there are no hard set
> > traditions dictating what you play for authenticities' sake.  I
> play
> > in any position, bluesy, minory, campfirelike, use chromatic, use
> > vocal mics and amplifiers, etc.  I am a folk musician and therefore
> > anything I choose to play is folk music.
> >
> >   Now the original poster stated he liked the first position sound
> > but had to learn overblows to play minor.  It is true, to play
> minor
> > 1st you need overblows or a minor tuned harp.  I agree with Tim
> that
> > once you start overblowing, the feel commonly associated with first
> > position goes away.  I think 4th position is a great choice,
> > especially if you were to stay on 4 blow and above you will achieve
> > that straight harp sound.  Once you bend, all campfire style bets
> are
> > off.
> >   MIchael Rubin
> >   michaelrubinharmonica.com
> > _______________________________________________
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> >
> 
> 
> 
> 
>
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