Dear CB-Ning friends,

 

I was handed this hastily scrawled note by a shady character, this afternoon, who told me it was from a friend; he disappeared as soon as he came, and no one remembers having seen him. Unfortunately, I have been unable to make sense out of it, but I'm posting it here in case anyone could make out what it means.

 

--Mike Moss

 

Strumming soft strains from the seven-times strung; O!

Comes the wand'ring minstrel near ancient SLHLL:

Rapture invades the False Centre, anon MRDN, as it becomes pregnant with his seed.


Upon this, my image-self yet unborn exists, infused with natural art;

Ghosts of music come to pay their respects, and I

Grant audience to three; the first comes from far lands; fame and wealth orbit him.


"Some music is art, some is not; my music is good and chaste.

Unless you wish to die poor, you must do as I."

"Silence, barren talent," my image-self said, "my children number in the hundreds,

Unborn, as of yet; MZZP is their chieftain,

Rapid and terrible to behold, and rightly so:

Precious stones and gold adorn them like Princesses of Egypt."

Eftsoons the spirit's hands were cut off: for he was a thief and a liar.


Down swept the second spirit; and He

Gave the follwing speech: "My enemy-once-friend will be your undoing; yea,

On no account make pacts with the greedy," said he in strains of raspy steel.

"Damned thrice be the greed," said my image-self, "of those who my art would sell."


Hereupon came the third, rude and rough and robed in the garb of prophecy:

"Old man, I will eat your name and legacy." My image said, "that is so:

Old am I though I am not yet born; you will replace me; such is the way of children all."
Damned are those who know the following secret word, thrice damned!

 

OZRDWGOsGKihJPCtUGetKSIorMZZPwyeEVSQlorKRJm

 

This is the secret word; SCRUGGS is the false prophet or lesser key; there is no truth to be obtained from him. The true prophet or Greater Key is MORLEY.

 

This poem contains a truth which hides another. The number of truths in this poem is that of a banjo five-times-strung. Beware the half-truth.

 

This poem is untrue.

 

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(Explanation: this is meant as a joke/gift for the members of the group. It hardly need be said that I have concealed several secret messages in this seemingly nonsensical text, all of them related to the banjo! Good luck...)

Well, I have just got back in from a day out with my lady wife to find Mike's conundrum. I have sat here staring at it for about an hour and have to now admit complete defeat. I could blame it on the beer, but it is more likely the fact that I am thick, but I haven't got a clue. 

Any hints Mike?  

All right, here's a hint: Three of the secret messages are "hidden in plain sight"; the fourth is a fairly simple cipher. The first message is about bluegrass; the second is about old time music; the third is about classic banjo; the fourth is about the nature of this mysterious note!

Well now, I found "morley wrote this" written backwards. No other meanings are evident. 

Good job, Jody; here's another hint: the capital letters in the "secret word" form a Vigenère cipher.

SPOILERS:

Follow this link if you want the solution to the riddle.

Mike, re the puzzle solution given in the link: The disclaimer that the poem is untrue was noted. In light of that I held back from responding for a day but decided to post the following reply anyway. If it does not address views that are really yours, it does address views that others have. By the way I understand what makes someone spend so much time creating a convoluted puzzle such as yours. I once spent a whole night creating a palindrome on musical subject. On to the subjects at hand — Morley, Scruggs, old time or not, and usurping: 

It’s true that some of the delightful banjoisms recorded by Earl Scruggs appear in Morley compositions as much as 50 years earlier and that Morley also prefigured the so-called “melodic style”that is also used in bluegrass music by players who are not Scruggs. But Scruggs never claimed to be the inventor of finger style banjo nor to be a god or a king. He claimed to have smoothed out some right hand patterns that the older players in his neighborhood used to play. And so he did. I don’t see that as usurping anything.  As far as I know Morley didn’t claim to have invented any techniques or characteristic banjo phrases either but rather to have composed some good banjo solos. He created these compositions using elements that were first played in Britain by visiting Americans which he combined with other motifs and ideas.  That excellent usage does not make Morley a thief or a usurper either. It makes him an able musician and composer.

As to whether old time music is old or real : Much or most of what we now call classic banjo repertoire is the Pop music of the 19th and early 20th century of both Britain and the USA.  Nothing that I can see, including having the force of commerce behind it, qualifies it as more “real” than the American southern rural folk music of the era, music whose roots are varied and includes some re-arranged (and sometimes deranged!) pop music in about the same small proportion that classic banjo repertoire includes some arranged traditional folk music.  Thousands of 19th and 20th century rural Americans are hardly to blame for ignoring the pared down written versions of their traditional melodies and instead playing richly detailed and highly nuanced personal and local interpretations.  I can’t work out why that subtle, vivid, and charming music is supposed to be less “real” than published banjo music. Does anyone still believe that ink is more real or more valid than vibrating air?   So maybe you meant that the old time music of the 21st century has an authenticity problem.  I agree that some or even most of what passes for "old time music " these days is a modern interpretation but that has always been the case with every kind of music, both literate and not. For instance much of what is presented today as the music of JS Bach  might be unrecognizable to the composer himself if only because the modern violin sounds and behaves differently from the baroque violin. Whether it is a better or worse music is a question not easily settled. Some argue that the modern violin plays what Bach was able to imagine but the violins of his day could not produce. Others say that “period” instruments and bows must be used to get the true Bach music. In either case one will form an opinion based on the playing of skilled and qualified practitioners and not from playing of an  average member of  an average junior regional orchestra comprised of 12 year olds who would really rather be doing something else.

The questions of the age and realness of old-time music are more easily settled if one similarly examines the music of qualified practitioners and gives that more weight than to the mechanical and rather mindless self-hypnotic repetitions of a melody sketch that is nowadays sometimes called Old Time Music. But.... although the attitude is different,  the techniques of modern day hobbyist “old time” musicians (and some of the repertoire) were indeed current in the early period of classic banjo and much of it predates classic banjo, though some is derived from it. The idea that the composed banjo music (preserved in dots of ink) that was current at the same time as early old time banjo has a claim to be the “real” music of the era is untenable. Is an apple realer than an orange? Is one segment of the population realer than another?  In the rural south the banjo was used primarily to accompany singing.  It was also used to accompany flat foot solo dancing and to accompany social dancing of the Virginia Reel type, often in the company of a fiddle and occasionally to render an instrumental solo for listening.   The sound of banjos used today by self-identified old time musicians and some of the ways in which they are used are verifiably different from both classic banjo and the folk banjo of long ago (old time music is a folk term for folk music). I personally met and heard a number of southern banjo players who were born in the 19th century and who learned to play back then, at a time that it was not unusual for a native of the southern mountain states to play the banjo. This is real and true and not a personal or a mass hallucination. 

Hi Jody,

I'm glad you took the time to read the solution and shared your thoughts on the matter. What really motivated me to write this was extreme boredom on my daily commute and an overdose of reading Crowley -- The Book of the Law, specifically -- which sort of gave birth to the idea of a seemingly nonsensical text written in the language of prophecy with several provocative meanings hidden within, on the subject of the banjo -- the messages were deliberately provocative as I had originally intended it to be posted on the Hangout to see if people would just overlook it as meaningless nonsense or the blasphemous messages within would hit the "berserk button" ;-)

I'm glad it has given us the chance to bring up this subject and I agree with what you say -- there are extreme visions held on these subjects which often fail to take the complexity of the facts into account and are simply stereotypes which have been handed down from only a handful of unreliable sources -- the opinions of 95% of banjoists on the internet are often rehashes of what Word of God (some website) has told them.

Your post highlights one of my pet peeves, not only with banjo history but with history in general, which is the human mind's need for clear-cut distinctions and "periods" which give a linear sense of purpose and continuity to events; conversely, we tend to dislike fuzzy barriers and overlapping timelines. One might argue that the whole point of the creation of "Classical" music as a social construct and musical barrier stemming in the 18th century, as well as the new institutions embodied by the Paris Conservatory, is the will to place onself in a perceived (and cherry-picked) lineage of "masters" -- despite the fact that Bach was dead and buried before the term "classical music" was ever used, and that several of his most prominent contemporaries, such as Telemann, Fux or Fasch, are often relegated to "period" baroque rather than classical ensembles.

Likewise, these arbitrary distinctions are often used in the banjo world, where stereotypes vary from the extreme according to which Old Time is the "authentic", "real" and "original" way of playing banjo whereas bluegrass style is derided as an ungodly and un-traditional innovation, or that the banjo was a boring instrument which barely managed to muddle along until Earl arrived, or that Old Time banjo is "banjo playing as it was in the mid-19th century", or that anything that "ain't the way Earl dun it" is worthless... the list is endless.

And in the middle of all these disputes, my "thief" (for the Morley character I created is indeed a thief, claiming he existed before existing and stealing godhood!) comes and casts a stone which has something to offend almost every one of these factions ;-)

Thanks again for reading and commenting.

Well said, Mike.

-jody

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