A Lark Ascending

There used to be folk clubs in Britain - one in Nottingham called the Nottingham Traditional Music Club - that had rules about authenticity that were almost Stalinist in their rigour. Only source songs/tunes, no Dylan songs or self-composed things, no guitars or new-fangled instruments. No revisionism! No deviationism! They were inventing the past.

Interesting choice of metaphors - the implication is that you have been 'saved' and if I would just follow your path I could be too! Sorry! Prefer to follow my own path! I do have a couple of Hemphill records - they haven't clicked yet, but in time they might, probably if I come at them from a different direction. But if that happens it will be because I somehow connect with their inherent qualities, not because they lie on the righteous path. **************** Around the time I got interested in jazz (mid-70s) I also got interested in English/Irish/Scottish folk music. Now this was already 15 years on from the 50s folk revival (and several decades on from Vaughan Williams and Grainger out there collecting source singers). What I heard was a vibrant, exciting, very different music from what was commercially available. But I recall hardcore traditionalists turning their nose up and insisting we should listen to the surviving source singers - there were still a fair few who had grown up learning music in the isolation of Sussex or Suffolk, supposedly unsullied by comnmerce (though it's interesting to read Bob Copper talking about his love of popular music on the radio and going up to London to hear Louis Armstrong in the 20s). Today we're at least a generation on from the musicians I enjoyed (and who were already considered derivative by the hardliners). And there's a whole new generation of young people singing those songs, playing those tunes. And still the hardliners grumble about how they are but a pale reflection of what went before. I hold to the view that the hardliners have invented much of the past (not the quiality of the music, just its near mythical unapproachability) and are now using that invention to besmirch the musicians of the present. There are plenty I don't care for; but also many who sing songs or play tunes that I've heard played many times before by older musicians, yet they still send a shiver down my back. There's a place for academic study. But when the chips are down I trust that shiver over grand theories. Of course, not everyone will hear or feel it. But it doesn't mean it's not there.

Some sort of medicine? Outside my cultural reference points!

Thus the rambles. They're the rambles I've chosen to take, often off on completely (for me) unbeaten paths, suggested by others or as a result of a chance hearing. Suggest to me an interesting ramble and I might well take it. Tell me I ought to be taking the ramble you favour over the one my instincts are leading me to and I stop paying attention. I recall my teachers telling me that I shouldn't waste my time listening to Led Zeppelin, I should listen to Beethoven. Eventually I learnt they were completely right about the second part, completely wrong about the first.

Love these records - at a time when Ellington records were not easy to come by I bought a couple of these. The sound isn't brilliant but much more than acceptable if you are used to hearing music from this era. I love the way they are paced - well known things, suites, fresh off the block short pieces. I don't need to replace what I've got, but anyone unfamiliar should buy without hesitation.

I just think it's a matter of how it is done. None of us likes to be told that we ought to listen to and ought to like X, Y or Z - either the latest Columbia signed blues revival band or a Document record of 1930s Georgia blues. Suggest we might find it interesting, and there's every chance I might listen. Tell me I shouldn't be listening to what my cultural background, experience, instincts, rambles have me listening to but should be listening to X, Y or Z and I'm likely to start snarling. Agree totally. But it's not an imperative, unless you are embarking on a study of musical history. Quite. I have virtually no musical theory and would always defer to those who do; my sense of musical history is pretty rough and ready and I would defer to the musical historian. But I trust my ears which have done a very good job in leading me to pleasurable music over 40 years. When it comes to what to enjoy, I'm on an equal playing field with even the greatest experts.

I think that's true...alongside the whole downsizing, small is beautiful agenda. Go to any UK folk festival and you'll find people dressing, easting, drinking in 'authentic' style, as an escape from reality. But that overlooks something else - that the sound of mandolins, banjos (or rock'n roll reverb electric guitar) might just sound appealing in a world of drum machines and synth washes. Authenticity be damned...it just has a good sound. Make no mistake: the industry behind these newer bands is packaging them as something 'real', 'close-to-nature', 'rooted'. But does that mean that there is little of substance beneath the packaging? 'Music from Big Pink' and the career of 'The Band' that followed was packaged as a return to truth after the excesses of psychedelia. Is that all there was (to misquote Peggy Lee!)? Well, I'm still listening to their records 40 years on, and not just because it takes me back to a warm, fuzzy time.

It's part of the dynamic of culture to forge forward...and then to move backward to somewhere familiar before moving on again. You could dismiss the whole neo-classical movement in classical music in the 1920s and 30s as 'Disnified' Bach or Pergolesi. Yet it produced enduring music that takes their music to another place (without being 'better'). If anything is 'Disnifying' its this projection onto the music of the past of an image of authenticity. I don't see it as 'authentic' but as part of an ever-evolving continuum. As things move on things change, which is what makes going back so pleasurable...whatever has grown from the past is still different from the past. It's fashionable to knock Eric Clapton's take on Robert Johnson. But I greatly enjoy many of his interpretations - they don't sound like Johnson, nor do they replace him. And if you can rid yourself of the excessive myth-making projected onto Johnson, well, you can enjoy both for the different but connected things they are. But some people need their Ur-texts...

Me too! I like the music...I'm not remotely interested in any 'gittin' back to what's true' spirituality or whatever. Strikes me as packaging. We get similar things in British folk music - endless wrangles over what is and is not authentic. The music of the Carolina Chocolate Drops or Otis Taylor or Corey Harris just sounds good to these ears (as does Robert Johnson, the Louvain Brothers or Skip James). The 'heritage industry' aspects pass me by.

Well, the emphasis was (intended to be) on the 'rejecting the music of the present'. I can understand your lack of interest; it's the universalising of your preference (and, dare I say, your projection onto the past of qualities that are not necessarily inherent, that I disagree with). Make no mistake, I greatly admire the way you've assembled the music of the past in your compilations (the best compilations of early jazz I've ever heard, without intending to be sycophantic...and I anticipate a similar reaction to the blues sets). Just completely disagree with you on this point. The music of the past and reinterpretation can live alongside one another (just as Rattle's Mahler can live alongside Walter's). Which doesn't mean anyone needs to enjoy both. [As a side point, I work in a typically working class school (despite being nouveaux-middle class myself). There is virtually no interest in 'old' music - it's the contemporary that excites the kids I teach. Enjoying music beyond the 'now' was something I learned to do as part of an aspirational, middle class education.)

I think that's nonsense, Allen. A classic 'upper class/intellectual' accusation to keep the newly comfortable at a distance. In the same way they used to sneer at their associations with 'trade' in order to keep a distance. Calm down about the 'insult' - all your posts on this thread are insults levelled at those who get genuine pleasure out of this newer music (and the thread is about recommendations for contemporary music, not what Allen Lowe doesn't like about it...I'm sure you are capable of starting your own thread about that!). You're suggesting we are only interested in the surface (with the implication that you explore the depths). Poppycock. I understand your passion for the music of the past and we all benefit from it. But you're trying to turn a personal preference into a universal statement. Whatever your intention, it comes across as arranging history to present yourself as a seer and the rest of us as mere dabblers. Not my point at all. It's the suggestion that those who do not accept your preferences are somehow only interested in the surface that comes across as posturing.

I used up this month's e-music credits on a bunch of albums in this area and that was one of them. Very impressive. Have to say I'm amused at the accusation made at revivalists for being 'middle class'. What could be more middle class than rejecting the music of the present in favour of obscure names (relatively speaking) from the past. Classic bourgeois posturing. Just enjoying this, Seeline: As you say, no-one has to like it, and if you've immersed yourself in the source material, it probably won't make much of an impression. But what the source obsessed forget is how people like to hear music played by living musicians in their own time. You can bore them to death about how sublime Glenn Gloud was but they are still going to turn out for Angela Hewitt in their droves.

http://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=289 I recall a buzz about them at the time as Italy's answer to Prog Rock but never had their records. Must have heard them on the radio.

This request from my original post seems to have been missed: "Please resist the temptation to explain how you only listen to this sort of music from West Tennessee before 1952...lots of other threads for that". Otherwise we're back to squabbling about Eric Alexander and jazz musicians coming out of colleges today. I think we all know where we stand in the 'where does authenticity/heart/soul really lie' debate. *************** Thanks for the contemporary recommendations above. The California Chocolate Drops have really caught my ear of late - one effect is that they'll be sending me back to the Harry Smith box with renewed interest. Neko Case I do know and enjoy. Just listened to a few clips from The Sadies - like what I heard.

Have you seen the video? Really quite eerie: YouTube Just watched it! Never associated it with vacuuming before! Believe me, there is absolutely nothing in the Church of England (or the English/Irish Catholic Church that I was raised in) that has anything like that mix of redemption and naked sexuality!

Will check out that Mindy link a little later (I've Van the Man on at present and don't dare interrupt him! He might shout out me and bring Keith Jarrett along to help!) Never really clicked with Ely or the Flatlanders, but I do like Jimmie Dale Gilmore. A good ten years ago I went to an absolutely awful 'Americana' festival not far from here - mainly Brit acts pretending to be cowboys. The audience was dressed in stetsons and carrying six guns. At 5.00 pm the women who'd been dressed in jeans and check shirts all day returned made up in florid dresses out of 'The Best Little Whorehouse ion Texas'. What redeemed the whole event (even compensated for George Hamilton IV doing a 'sacred' concert on Sunday morning!!!!) was the Saturday night performance of Jimmie Dale Gilmore with a line-up that included two lead electric guitars. One of the best performances I've ever seen.

I hope that didn't sound sycophantic, Jim. Just an indication of how much I've gained from your posts. When it comes to jazz guitar and things Brazil I know I'm going to be pointed the right way by reading what you've got to say (Seeline is my other Brazil touchstone).

Mindy Smith is another of those who sits on the cusp of the rootsy and the commercial. She's got the voice of an angel - the first song on her first album - 'Come to Jesus' - floors me every time. Sounds like all the cliches about 'high lonesome sound'. Wish she'd get rid of all the high production of late. I suspect its the usual thing of trying to break her into the highly lucrative pop-country market. I have a couple of Nickel Creek records but haven't played them for a while - I think they were riding high about the time I drifted away. Kim Richey is another one I really enjoyed - two great first albums and then the focus got lost as quality song-writing got replaced by experimenting with drum machines etc. I lost interest in Lucinda Williams for other reasons - the rootsy sound is there but there's a plainess to the song writing that doesn't hold my interest - melody lines repeated instead of being developed.

Please translate!

That must be the most unattractive picture of Stockholm ever taken. No wonder Gugge had the blues.

An economist wrote 'Paradise Lost'? Come to think of it, that makes sense. As for Little Milton...

First classical was Mahler 3 (late-74, I think) at the Royal Festival Hall - Pierre Boulez and, I think, the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Very exciting - I'd only just found a way into classical at the time and knew little more than some Sibelius, Mahler and Stravinsky from records.

You had me trying to recall that one! The Dankworth's home/concert hall is just outside Milton Keynes. I imagine the budget ran out and they had to take a quick snap of the nearest landmark for the cover. My parents used to live at Newport Pagnell, another fringe settlement to MK. Has to be one of the dullest places I've ever spent time in (though they did have riots in the town centre one Xmas!).

In which case: Think about it! What's an acute accent between friends!

Good lord, Jim. I always imagined you as somewhat older than me (based on your breadth of knowledge and even-handed judgment). Yet you seem to be about the same age!