[Harp-L] RE: Harp-L Digest, Vol 86, Issue 4

["Rick Dempster" <rick.dempster@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Bill Kumpe wrote: "Mandatory harp/musical content point no. 2, The "Beeb" producers
seem to not use nearly as much harp background as we hear in productions
from the US and other countries.  Maybe they're too highbrow?"

....no, I don't think that's the case Bill; lets not forget Max Geldray's great performances on the BBC's 'Goon Show'.
Also Ronald Chesney was featured on the Archie Andrews show, back around the same time.
However, these were chromatic players playing jazz and popular song, not blues inflected diatonic, which hardly suggests anything very British; arguably a diatonic might be used to suggest a Celtic setting, but it will more than likely lose out to pipes, whistle, fiddle or accordion.
In Australia, where musical traditions are thin and/or almost forgotten, confused TV producers are inclined to use harp, predictably for scenes depicting low-life, bar- scenes etc  and 'bikeys' (a word that continues to used here for what, in the US, would be referred to as 'outlaw' bikers, I believe) I was hired a couple of years back  to play on the soundtrack of a TV show with just that content. Also, there is a tendency here to use bluegrass banjo to denote a rural motif, even though the four string  was  more popular here, traditionally, than the five string, which, with the exception of Pete Seeger touring here, was barely heard till the advent of the Beverly Hillbilly's and the movie Bonny and Clyde.
Diatonic harmonica, particularly when played with bent pitches, will always tend to denote a North American landscape before anything else.
That's my take.
Cheers,
RD



>>> "Bill Kumpe" <bkumpe@xxxxxxx> 3/10/2010 8:49 >>>
Rick Dempster said:  The worst fake US accents can be heard on British TV
shows. Don't know why they bother; don't know why it is either.

I agree.  "Foyle's War" is one of my favorites from the "Beeb."  In one of
the last episodes to air on PBS last season, the tortured villian was an
American Air Force officer.  The accent was so bad that it nearly ruined
what was otherwise a well produced drama.  Mandatory harp/musical content
point no. 1, a bad fake accent does the same thing for a musical performance
for me.  Mandatory harp/musical content point no. 2, The "Beeb" producers
seem to not use nearly as much harp background as we hear in productions
from the US and other countries.  Maybe they're too highbrow?

Bill Kumpe
Tulsa, OK