Classic style composing and arranging

[Byron Thomas]

I listened to the Gordon Dando's Classic Banjo documentary a while back on Chris Sand's youtube channel and it's a real treat. Within the video at about 1:08:35 Horace Craddy plays his arrangement of Duke Ellington's Caravan. I'm having a hard time hearing Caravan in his arrangement. I know there are obviously more songs that have been interpreted into the classic style, but this is the only jazz piece that I have seen. Besides the styles of music that are clearly marked (Schottische, Waltzes, Mazurka, Polka, Marches, Patrols, Rags, etc...) what are the compositional rules of classic banjo that makes a piece fit within the medium?

[Austin]

I greatly respect other cultures outside the West, but Mountain Jazz is just appropriated black culture, same thing with rock and pop. It forced people to abandon what was their ancestral inheritance. So, I don't respect them very often and completely disregard them as valuable art most of the time. That said, there are exceptions and a true composer's mindset does show up from time to time. Usually in Rock and Pop, haven't seen any examples in Mountain Jazz.

The banjo should be transcended because it deserves to be the sacred instrument it once was before Europe set foot in Africa.

[Jody Stecher]

What is Mountain Jazz?

Austin said:

I greatly respect other cultures outside the West, but Mountain Jazz is just appropriated black culture, same thing with rock and pop. It forced people to abandon what was their ancestral inheritance. So, I don't respect them very often and completely disregard them as valuable art most of the time. That said, there are exceptions and a true composer's mindset does show up from time to time. Usually in Rock and Pop, haven't seen any examples in Mountain Jazz.

The banjo should be transcended because it deserves to be the sacred instrument it once was before Europe set foot in Africa.

[Jody Stecher]

Musicians have always freely stolen or borrowed or appropriated anything and everything that sounded good to them. It works in all directions and always has. This has always been the case and I have seen no evidence that the stealing is literal in the sense that those stolen from don't have it anymore.  The Kipsigi people in East Africa stole guitar licks from Jimmy Rogers records and played it on their own instruments. That did not force Jimmy Rogers to stop playing those phrases.

White steals from Black. Black steals from White. Greece steals from Turkey.  Ireland steals from Scotland. Scotland steals from Italy. India steals from Egypt. Egypt steals from France. These are actual documented instances. 

[Jody Stecher]

Austin: context suggests that by "Mountain Jazz" you mean bluegrass music.  That appellation  is off-target.

The shift from playing in unison in earlier music to taking sequential solos in bluegrass may have been inspired by jazz but bear in mind that black musicians made the same shift as the white ones.  Other than that there is nothing like jazz in the first 50 years or so of bluegrass music, which, bear in mind, was and still is primarily a vocal genre in which 90% of the instrumental music is a highly refined art of accompanying both singers and other instrumentalists. That is most of  what it is about. I should know. I’m approaching 80 years of age and have played bluegrass professionally since the age of 14. The repertoire is primarily songs of 3 chords. Nothing remotely jazzy about this. More recently jazz elements have entered the genre. 

As for mountains, I assume you are referring to the Appalachian range.The version of the Blue Grass Boys (Bill Monroe’s band)  that is considered the model for all subsequent bluegrass bands was made up of individuals from parts of Kentucky, Tennessee and North Carolina outside the Appalachian region, plus two more musicians from Florida.

The first band to use “mountain boys” in their collective name seems to have been the Foggy Mountain Boys. They used the name because their theme song in their early days was “If I Was On Some Foggy Mountain Top”.  It was not intended to indicate the geographical origin of the players.  There was a shifting membership in that group and I can think of only one member who came from Appalachia. That was fiddler Benny Sims who played in the style of Arthur Smith who was from a part of Tennessee well to the west of the mountains. Tennessee is 440 miles long.

To be sure, bluegrass music is popular amongst a portion of the residents of present day Appalachia both as a recreational participatory  musical sport and in a concert format but this is typically music of the three chord variety. 

The jazzy type developed elsewhere and thrives more outside the mountain regions.

[Joel Hooks]

Anyhoo, new arrangements or new compositions are things I am all for, provided they equal or exceed what we already have.  An, more importantly, they must be playable on the banjo (lay on the fingerboard) and written in such a way to be pleasing to look at (a huge part of my banjo enjoyment is looking at the fonts, engraved plates and typography of sheet music as well as "period" script handwriting). 

As far as arrangements, sadly we have decided that copyright should extend well beyond the useful life of a work and far longer than the life of the author. Because of this, new arrangements of anything published after (as of this post) 1929 (1930 or later) is still in copyright.  In January we will get 1930 added. 

Legally, anything in current copyright is intellectual property and arrangements require permission, licence or rights or it is subject to legal ramifications.

Many people will try to twist "fair use" to justify making arrangements of copyrighted work, but the fact is, what they are doing is stealing.  Giving it away is just stealing and giving away someone else's property.   This is a game I will not participate in. 

So, compose away!  Use whatever "rules" you want.  I may or may not look at it.

[Joel Hooks]

Hey Austin, you should go ahead and forget about anything you currently know about the "banjo" and focus on proto banjo gourd body instruments.  Current research shows that what we call a "banjo" took form and shape in the Caribbean as well as South and North American-- not Africa, though it was enslaved Africans who did the developing.  The "banjo" was heavily influenced by western and European music and design. 

I understand you are still in the discovery phase, and I remember how exciting that was, but currently there is SO much info that I strongly urge you to be hesitant in your quick and rash conclusions.  It seems to me that you might read one thing or get one idea and that becomes it, until you read something else.  Also consider your sources.  And when you read something check what the references are by reading the actual sources (most of which may be found digitized now).

[Austin]

Have you ever heard of Lucius Smith? His recordings, done by Alan Lomax, are the only surviving example of what the Banjo sounded like in Enslaved American hands. (In my opinion way better than the standard Bum Ditty watered down version that the escaped or newly freed shared on that mountain range) But most people have never heard of him due to the very erasure that led to Appalachia becoming an all-white area in the eyes of the public. 

Joel Hooks said:

Hey Austin, you should go ahead and forget about anything you currently know about the "banjo" and focus on proto banjo gourd body instruments.  Current research shows that what we call a "banjo" took form and shape in the Caribbean as well as South and North American-- not Africa, though it was enslaved Africans who did the developing.  The "banjo" was heavily influenced by western and European music and design. 

I understand you are still in the discovery phase, and I remember how exciting that was, but currently there is SO much info that I strongly urge you to be hesitant in your quick and rash conclusions.  It seems to me that you might read one thing or get one idea and that becomes it, until you read something else.  Also consider your sources.  And when you read something check what the references are by reading the actual sources (most of which may be found digitized now).

[Austin]

The point is erasure. No one credits that old time music was born in the same fields as spirituals. Or that everything that followed was from Spirituals and those same fields. No one in the music industry even acknowledges this. I'm not talking about them stealing from Jazz, but from the Black people in Appalachia. It's wrong. No matter how you slice it. The systems from 200+ years ago still affect us and our mindset. Racism and erasure of Black genius seeped into every facet of the U.S culture. This country was literally built on that hierarchy, and Bluegrass similarly cannot escape this.

Jody Stecher said:

Austin: context suggests that by "Mountain Jazz" you mean bluegrass music.  That appellation  is off-target.

The shift from playing in unison in earlier music to taking sequential solos in bluegrass may have been inspired by jazz but bear in mind that black musicians made the same shift as the white ones.  Other than that there is nothing like jazz in the first 50 years or so of bluegrass music, which, bear in mind, was and still is primarily a vocal genre in which 90% of the instrumental music is a highly refined art of accompanying both singers and other instrumentalists. That is most of  what it is about. I should know. I’m approaching 80 years of age and have played bluegrass professionally since the age of 14. The repertoire is primarily songs of 3 chords. Nothing remotely jazzy about this. More recently jazz elements have entered the genre. 

As for mountains, I assume you are referring to the Appalachian range.The version of the Blue Grass Boys (Bill Monroe’s band)  that is considered the model for all subsequent bluegrass bands was made up of individuals from parts of Kentucky, Tennessee and North Carolina outside the Appalachian region, plus two more musicians from Florida.

The first band to use “mountain boys” in their collective name seems to have been the Foggy Mountain Boys. They used the name because their theme song in their early days was “If I Was On Some Foggy Mountain Top”.  It was not intended to indicate the geographical origin of the players.  There was a shifting membership in that group and I can think of only one member who came from Appalachia. That was fiddler Benny Sims who played in the style of Arthur Smith who was from a part of Tennessee well to the west of the mountains. Tennessee is 440 miles long.

To be sure, bluegrass music is popular amongst a portion of the residents of present day Appalachia both as a recreational participatory  musical sport and in a concert format but this is typically music of the three chord variety. 

The jazzy type developed elsewhere and thrives more outside the mountain regions.

[Joel Hooks]

This has clearly gone off the rails.  First, “we must push the limits of the banjo”, now old time or something about original slave music. Weird.

[Austin]

Fine, to go back to the original point. I'll push the limits beyond the limits. By the time I'm done any Banjoist who picks up the instrument will bear witness to my testament and will be drained physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Joel Hooks said:

This has clearly gone off the rails.  First, “we must push the limits of the banjo”, now old time or something about original slave music. Weird.

[Ethan Schwartz]

If your goal is to be draining, you're off to a great start. 

[Jody Stecher]

I have not only heard *of* Lucias Smith, I have heard recordings of his playing. And I've seen his videos on Youtube made at his home in Sardis Mississippi in the deep lowland south.  Lomax was not the only one to record Smith, and I am by no means unusual in having heard him.

Some of his playing is quite complex and compelling.  My take  on his music is that it is a personal style based on deep south ways of banjo playing, learned in part from older traveling players from neighboring Alabama, from his own imagination and creativity, and from the local musical ways of his native Northern Mississippi, not far from Memphis.  I don't see evidence that his playing is a replica of Black banjo playing in slavery times although I can safely surmise there is an influence or a component in his playing from that way or ways. 

Do I have to point out that Mississippi is not in or near the Appalachian mountains?  

As for the white and black musicians who actually lived and live in the southern Appalachian region (don't forget the Appalachian range extends well into Eastern Canada) few if any limited or limit their technique to bum-ditty.

 Lucias Smith as a banjoist from the deep south was hardly an outlier. The banjo and its techniques was widespread and never confined to Appalachia.

Austin said:

Have you ever heard of Lucius Smith? His recordings, done by Alan Lomax, are the only surviving example of what the Banjo sounded like in Enslaved American hands. (In my opinion way better than the standard Bum Ditty watered down version that the escaped or newly freed shared on that mountain range) But most people have never heard of him due to the very erasure that led to Appalachia becoming an all-white area in the eyes of the public. 

Joel Hooks said:

Hey Austin, you should go ahead and forget about anything you currently know about the "banjo" and focus on proto banjo gourd body instruments.  Current research shows that what we call a "banjo" took form and shape in the Caribbean as well as South and North American-- not Africa, though it was enslaved Africans who did the developing.  The "banjo" was heavily influenced by western and European music and design. 

I understand you are still in the discovery phase, and I remember how exciting that was, but currently there is SO much info that I strongly urge you to be hesitant in your quick and rash conclusions.  It seems to me that you might read one thing or get one idea and that becomes it, until you read something else.  Also consider your sources.  And when you read something check what the references are by reading the actual sources (most of which may be found digitized now).