Classic Banjo and Folk Music

[Russ Chandler]

Spinning this on from another thread where David Wade reported Robb Murch pointing out that the Classic Style has nothing to do with folk music.

I responded....


Rob is of course correct that Classic style has at heart nothing to do with the folk process. It was commercially produced and communicated via dots for one thing.

However as a folkie I feel that these days the style has a home in folk music. I run Walthamstow Folk Club and I find no problem in booking the likes of Rob or Elias Sibley.

Its a bit like Music Hall in that it wasn't anything like folk music in it's day but in 2010 it has become a specialised and non commercial amateur genre which really sits quite happily in the definition of folk music, or certainly within the booking remit of a folk venue.

Folk clubs make a great forum to promote the music and I'd encourage any Classic player to investigate their local.

What do we think?

[Jody Stecher]

One thing I think is that dots versus no dots is not the central definer of what is or isn't folk music. There have been musically literate Scottish folk musicians and singers for centuries for instance. Well over 90% of the fiddlers in Cape Breton Nova Scotia read and write music. Also I have observed (and lived) the following: some musicians are Musicians first, rather than emblems of any particular genre. Think of Josie McDermott, an Irish musician of iconic status. Because of his skill as a player of traditional Irish music on the wooden flute he became a symbol of "folk music" but he also played sax and trumpet, sang pop music and jazz, loved classical music and basically behaved more like a Musician than like a Symbol.
Part of the beauty of classic banjo is that anything can be played. "Anything" includes folk music.

[David Wade]

I agree in part with Jody, however the principle really is that "folk" even when written is essentially an oral tradition and subject to interupretation whereas "classic" banjo is transmitted through a detailed musical score - you don't need to hear the piece to be able to play it, all the information is given in the score. This is one of the principle reasons why I don't recommend the use of tab beyond the first stages of study.

[Joel Hooks]

I think that I just got it (well kind of).

I have thought of what I play as "old-time" because it is old and was written a long time ago. I guess I never saw the folk/OT connection.

The current OT musicians play many minstrel tunes and other "popular" songs using southern dialect. Among others, Foster's "Angelina Baker" is a popular choice, sometimes with a different title. I have listened to people play that at events and when I tell them I love Foster's work I have gotten the reply "Foster who?" Even Tin Pan Alley sneaks in there.

Not ten minutes ago I was playing with Horace Weston's arrangement of "The Liverpool Hornpipe." Now that it is dots for me , I have spent a lot of time sight-reading these types of tunes (fiddle?) to get to speed. There are tons of them in the tutors. The aforementioned Weston arrangement is a single sheet published by Stewart and priced at 10 cents.

I guess it has been all the spill-over, popular v. folk etc., that has had me confused.

I agree, dots v. illiterate does not determine folk status. Possibly for a different reason than Jody.

In this "living history" thing that I do, there is a great desire for many people to play illiterate. Movies always show cowboys "making their mark." Reading 19th century accounts of cowboys (Andy Adams Log of a Cowboy and W.S. James 27 Years a Mavrick [sic] for example) paints a different picture of the cowboy's education level.

This goes for notation too. The fact that the music in simplified methods was lousy, and dots are aplenty, seems to imply that a fair amount of people could read music.

Who's grandmother did not sing from a hymnal?

Speaking of that, how the heck did we get it into our modern heads that it is hard to read notation? I guess that is another topic.

Anyway, people like to think of back then as simpler times and , I guess, simpler minded people. But they were not idiots.

Where was I... oh yes! Because of the crossover, I seem to have fallen into this trap of thinking that a great deal of folk music is fake. Composed to capitalize on a market of nostalgia. I guess fake is not the correct word. Written for the masses longing for simpler times that never were.

"The young have aspirations that never come to pass, the old have reminiscences of what never happened."

To quote Ken Perlman, "it takes just three weeks to claim an established tradition, provided that the newcomer has only been around for two.

Perhaps I have had an epiphany... maybe not.

[Joel Hooks]

P.S., the "Mavrick" was deliberately misspelled by the author, he explains why in the book.

[Jody Stecher]

I agree with Joel on all points except for the generalization about current old time musicians "using" southern dialect. Southerners often sing the way they speak. Nothing wrong with that. Some self-described old time musicians who are not from the rural south are guilty as charged. Some of those who are not guilty avoid southern accents not because they prefer to sing as they speak but because they mistakenly believe old time music to be a vocal-free instrumental genre. It's complimacated, yessir.

[Russ Chandler]

Of course Jody is correct about the use of notation being very common in folk music over the years and I guess my comment is best used in conjunction with the idea that the music of the classical banjo was commercially produced and transmitted by standard notation which moves it away a fair bit from the tunes those fabulous Cape Breton fiddlers play!

Don't want anyone to get bogged down with that notation definition.

It seems to me the genre the likes of Grimshaw and Morley would have considered themselves working in would not have had much to do with "folk" music. They were writing for the parlour and recital hall rather than for playing down the pub. Or is that too much of a generalisation?

And a hundred years on as the cultural boundaries have shifted and the parlours and recital halls are few and far between but the pub still just about hangs on by its toenails where does the style sit now?

I have no idea what point I'm trying to make!

[Jody Stecher]

I got it into my head that reading notation is hard from trying to read Hard Notation. Playing the Liverpool HP up to speed at first reading is one thing. The patterns are clear at the outset and the melody can be readily hummed. Playing Fred Van Eps' arrangement of Ragtime Oriole in A flat (4 flats) is quite another. And reading some of Cammeyer's pieces where the component notes of the chords seem to be piled on top of each other in what seems to be improbable juxtaposition and unlikely fingerings (and turn out to sound gorgeous and worth the effort) is yet another. For me anyway it is pretty hard work until I've been through the piece a number of times.

deuceswilde said:

Not ten minutes ago I was playing with Horace Weston's arrangement of "The Liverpool Hornpipe." ( .......) how the heck did we get it into our modern heads that it is hard to read notation? .