Roots Music Fundamentalists

[Pete C]

You'd have thought that this kind of attitude would have died with the 20th century. I always cringe at the silliness of old-school cultural lefties. Here's a paragraph from a Songlines Article about the BBC World Music Awards:

Michael Church of The Independent has been a particularly persistent critic, accusing the awards of "complacent cultural imperialism" and favouring acts "coated in slick international gloss." Last year he damned the entire enterprise for supporting "global pop" over real world music (which he defined as music made purely on traditional instruments recorded in a strictly traditional context), accused the BBC of colluding in "the manufacture of second-rate stars" and castigated the winners (who included Tinariwen, Khaled and Youssou N'Dour) for "catering to debased tastes."

[Sergio Zamora]

I don't want to condemn Church without reading his comments directly, but assuming that paragraph is reflective, it seems to evoke two things.

First, it seems to be a modern extension of the worst excesses of proletkult: the concept of creating a purely proletarian culture that rejects any and all bourgeois artistic or musical development. I do understand how and why this concept came about, but it was definitely not progressive and it was worthy of criticism.

But aside from that, it also strikes me as being a bit racist. I don't know much about the Songlines awards or what their objective is, but Church seems to suggest 'world' music, in most cases music made in third world countries by people of color, should not change or expand itself (I'm trying to avoid the controversy the word 'advance' would entail) in any way in accordance with their changing culture and society. No, it's perfectly fine for western music to become more complex or to widen its pallet or its metholodogy, but those people making music in Africa better do it the same way their great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents did it. That sort of attitude, while apparently shunning western elitism, in fact strikes me as one of the worst forms of paternalism.

If I have misinterpreted Church's thoughts, I apologize in advance. There are others, however, who do hold these views.

Note: This is entirely independent of the fact that I probably wouldn't care much for the glossy pop music in question either. I don't, however, question its validity or the or the value it may have to its audience and performers.

I suspect that why he writes this is because he thinks societies are "basing" themselves on glitter/pop rather than their roots type music, which is understandable? Anyhow, if so,I can understand condemning "global pop" and preserving "real world music," if real world music encompasses everything but global pop; e.g. grassroots stuff, 20th Century music(Stravinsky, Bartok, et.al.) and jazz.

Everybody is racist, everything is indicative of race, by default. jesus q rist
Why don't we just come to the understanding that everything is racist and give that topic/influence some rest.

[Pedantic Wretch]

Originally Posted by Pete C

You'd have thought that this kind of attitude would have died with the 20th century. I always cringe at the silliness of old-school cultural lefties.

I think Church’s criticisms contain some validity, but they hinge on the basic paradox of the concept of ‘traditional music’, i.e. that by the time it was being formulated and documented by academics and cultural nationalists in late 19th/early 20th-century Europe, the actual musical traditions were already in decline. (One could even date it back further to the late 18th-century idealisation of the ‘noble savage’, and the vogue amongst European Romantics for tales of the wild Highlands of Scotland.)

‘Tradition’ is a slippery term to define, but the purist idea of a musical tradition has tended to be one which was socially, rather than commercially, orientated, and in which entire communities (usually rural) participated, transmitting material orally. According to one possible strand of argument, the death of such traditions was signalled by the first appearance of a gramophone or radio within their local communities, as industrialisation and the rise of affordable consumer technology gradually reached even the remotest of areas, supplanting social traditions with new commodified forms of entertainment.

Such purism is of course riddled with ironies, since those most earnestly concerned with ‘preserving’ or ‘documenting’ such traditions emerged from the educated urban bourgeoisie, who invaded rural communities with their recording technology in order to take audio snippets back to the library archives of the paternalistic establishment. I’ve been thinking more of the European context here, but the invention of ‘World Music’ is even more problematic.

In the 21st century there are very few areas of the world which have not been touched by industrialisation, but it was nonetheless true that throughout the preceding hundred years there were still relatively unchanged musical traditions to be found. Thus in the 1970s a label like Nonesuch could release untreated field recordings from regions which had not yet been flooded by Western tourists, just as in the 1950s Alan Lomax had found the vestiges of a pre-gramophone musical culture in the Appalachians. There is a significant difference between this idea of world music and one which takes place in studios and is primarily intended for commercial release.

In this sense I agree with Michael Church’s dismissal of pop-style world music award ceremonies as reflecting a kind of cultural imperialism (especially when the music becomes a form of glorified exotica, a Western pop blueprint with 'local colour'), but then so did the Western field recordists who went out in search of ‘purity’, which is where Sergio’s criticism of Church comes in. It is idiotic to maintain that traditions grounded in a certain stage of social relations can be preserved, as if in aspic, once those social relations are no longer present. On top of this, the purist argument is ultimately self-annihilating, since it follows that if musical traditions must be socially active, then only those who are active members of the societies in question have a right to have anything to do with those traditions. The self-congratulating purists who sit at home listening to Nonesuch or Rounder CDs thus become mere voyeurs, feeding like vampires on the digitally-reproduced carcasses of geographically and historically alien societies while (inadvertently) endorsing the same process of social atomisation which made such CDs available for purchase in the first place.

So while I agree with some of Church’s criticisms, they are ultimately both reactionary (as Sergio said, refusing to accept the inevitability of cultural change) and hypocritical.

[Gary Sisco]

If there's something that can be said to be a prol culture today it's not conscious of itself as one, and I don't think anyone here'd be much interested in the musical aspects if there is. I know that the music would not be any more "real" in the sense of not manufactured for people by the corporations, either. That's a concept (prol culture) that was always suspect in any case. And in the US, the most consuming culture (if it is one), you'd first have to locate an ever-shrinking proletariat, and when you had, you'd find it's a multiple one, culturally, anyway, so no musical questions could be generalized from it. A working class urban youth won't be listening to the same things or looking for the same things as a mining youth in West Virginia, and so forth.

To me, those are concepts tied to the past that were questionable in their own time, never mind now.

[Chris D]

Same kind of crap they said about "real" blues vs. the electric variety in the '60s. Tedious.

[Gary Sisco]

Not necessarily. A lot of the blues world, for example (not all of it, clearly, and thank goodness) settled into a 12-bar shuffle beat kind of tedium that suited (and still does, moreso now) a large part of its fanbase, which is really more a rock base than blues. It's not a function of the music so much as the music business. Call it giving the people what they want, but what they want and the real thing are often not at all the same.

Interesting how terms change meaning depending on who's using them, though. For me, roots music would be 20s-30s blues, jug band music, old-timey string bands, and so forth, and 40s/50s r&b, blues, and early rock and roll. In the context of this thread it seems to be what is too often called by the hideous name "world" music. In some circles what I'd call rock and roll is a roots music, now. Some people call the kind of stuff that I and my musical tribe play roots music. We always called it rock and roll, sometimes country, sometimes the blues. Some of us used "folk" to describe it. I shyed away from the term "folk music" for many years because it had taken on too many connotations in the 60s and forward that I didn't want to associate with my stuff, though lately I've decided to take the term back and try to restore some of its real meaning, ie, music of the people, from the people, rather than a genre-marketing term. Americana is another term I can understand but don't like, in this context. I'd rather just have it called American music if going that route. The "cana" thing makes me think of antique collectors.

That these terms can carry so many different meanings, depending on context, makes it difficult sometimes to even know what people are talking about or them, you.

[Pete C]

An interesting parallel argument to Church's (and also a counter-argument), also mentioned a while back in Songlines, is that much of what western critics find crass and tacky in contemporary African pop is actually to the tase of African audiences (cheesy synths, heavy beat, rap elements, etc.), and that calls for a more "traditional" sound are the true cultural imperialism. There was a trend among west African pop stars a few years back to put out acoustic, back-to-the-roots albums. First Baaba Maal, then Youssou N'Dour and Salif Keita put out beautiful albums, but they were embraced by western audiences and critics and largely ignored by audiences in Dakar and Bamako (as well as in diaspora communities) who wanted the dance tracks that, according to Church, cater to debased tastes.

[Gary Sisco]

That is one of the ironies, for sure. Another is that a lot of what people here in the US would call traditional is as informed by Cuban and American music as African. The world rarely works the way it would appear to on the surface. And why shouldn't people in African countries have changing tastes? What would make them any more "traditional" than anyone else, anywhere else? They're not supposed to have fashions or tastes that change over time?

Another irony is how reggae found an international audience, esp American and British, that has much more purist takes on it than any that would be found in Jamaica, where you're as likely to hear C&W on people's radios as anything else. Dub reggae in particular went just about nowhere in Jamaica, but is cherished by stoner roots purists the world over (myself included -- I most often pull out some dub tracks when I feel a reggae jones).

Root Doctor made a comment once when we were listening to records over a couple of pints about remembering that we would today experience a delta blues record in a completely different way than a black man in a Mississippi juke joint would have in the days. Same music. Different experience.

[Sergio Zamora]

Originally Posted by Pete C

An interesting parallel argument to Church's (and also a counter-argument), also mentioned a while back in Songlines, is that much of what western critics find crass and tacky in contemporary African pop is actually to the tase of African audiences (cheesy synths, heavy beat, rap elements, etc.), and that calls for a more "traditional" sound are the true cultural imperialism. There was a trend among west African pop stars a few years back to put out acoustic, back-to-the-roots albums. First Baaba Maal, then Youssou N'Dour and Salif Keita put out beautiful albums, but they were embraced by western audiences and critics and largely ignored by audiences in Dakar and Bamako (as well as in diaspora communities) who wanted the dance tracks that, according to Church, cater to debased tastes.

I have to imagine that there is a certain percentage of 'traditional' fans in their own countries, and I'll bet anything it's about the same percentage as that of 'serious world music' fans in the west.

I remember I used to ask all my Indian friends and acquaintances if they listened to indian classical music. I probably asked several dozens of people (around my age), and I recall only one said he did regularly.

I'm guessing that's the same percentage of Americans who listen to jazz or classical music or traditional blues or traditional hillbilly music or whatever.

I hate to state the obvious, but it boils down to the fact that specialized or niche areas of American music are as irrelevant to overall contemporary American culture as the 'traditional' musics are to contemporary [Insert country here] culture.

[Gary Sisco]

I'd likely agree.

[Pete C]

Originally Posted by Gary Sisco

That is one of the ironies, for sure. Another is that a lot of what people here in the US would call traditional is as informed by Cuban and American music as African.

Before Mbalax came along Senegalese pop was basically Afro-Cuban music. Then, in the 80s bands like Orchestra Baobab were forgotten untli the Buena Vista phenomenon led to their rediscovery (or their first discovery in the west).

[Pete C]

Originally Posted by Pedantic Wretch

I think Church’s criticisms contain some validity, but they hinge on the basic paradox of the concept of ‘traditional music’, i.e. that by the time it was being formulated and documented by academics and cultural nationalists in late 19th/early 20th-century Europe, the actual musical traditions were already in decline. (One could even date it back further to the late 18th-century idealisation of the ‘noble savage’, and the vogue amongst European Romantics for tales of the wild Highlands of Scotland.)

. . . The self-congratulating purists who sit at home listening to Nonesuch or Rounder CDs thus become mere voyeurs, feeding like vampires on the digitally-reproduced carcasses of geographically and historically alien societies while (inadvertently) endorsing the same process of social atomisation which made such CDs available for purchase in the first place.

However, while Bartok was documenting an endangered species the music did provide fertile material for his own work and that of other composers. In addition, years later these field recordings provided much of the framework for a Hungrarian folk revival (e.g. Muzsikas) that gained popularity in Hungary as well as in "world music" circles. The Muzsikas "Bartok Album" has really interesting illustrations of how the music was transformed.

[Pete C]

Originally Posted by Gary Sisco

Root Doctor made a comment once when we were listening to records over a couple of pints about remembering that we would today experience a delta blues record in a completely different way than a black man in a Mississippi juke joint would have in the days. Same music. Different experience.

Yes, we generally don't dance to it. Take a look at Alan Lomax's wonderful film, available on DVD, Devil Got My Woman, and watch the people dancing to Son House & Skip James.

[Gary Sisco]

Cool. I'll look that one up.

(I've danced to them, by the way. No film of such, thankfully. That music has plenty enough drive and rhythm for dancing, though.)

Another irony developed over the BVSC record, which of course sold to many, many people who hadn't listened to Cuban music prior. I was working in a record store at the time and of course we sold a buttload of BVSC. But when I'd try to steer people to other records they might like, say the Afro-Cuban All Stars, as soon as I'd tell them that the group contained BVSC guys along with younger Cubans, they'd lose interest and say something like they only want to hear the old stuff.

Needless to say there was plenty untraditional about the music on BVSC, with Cooder's slide guitar, his son's trap drumming, and so forth. Old songs, old players and singers, sure, but new treatments just the same.

I found it kind of a strange phenomenon, much as I loved that record and those that followed under various BVSC names. It was a kind of romanticism of a Cuba that wasn't, starring Cubans that had been and were.

[Chris D]

Originally Posted by Pete C

An interesting parallel argument to Church's (and also a counter-argument), also mentioned a while back in Songlines, is that much of what western critics find crass and tacky in contemporary African pop is actually to the tase of African audiences (cheesy synths, heavy beat, rap elements, etc.), and that calls for a more "traditional" sound are the true cultural imperialism.

This is the point -- and parallel -- I was trying to make, too briefly and brusquely, about the blues. There was a large segment of the Folkways fan base and Sing Out! crowd who thought any electrified instrument was a debasement. They liked their blues folk acoustic, country and, if it so happened, barefoot, trying to lock people into a time capsule for their amusement and their need to bask in the imagined world of "pure and unadulturated" blues.

True 'nuff that the electric game became its own trap, but you have to acknowledge this strain in fandom/collectorism/cultural imperialism.

[Gary Sisco]

Part of that also had to do with the mythologizing of prolkultur fantasized by urban lefties of the time who had nearly no experience with prol culture in fact (Seeger et al). Hence such absurdities as putting Woody Guthrie and others on stages in New York with haybales and overalls and such. They had a fantastic political element to their acoustic purity line. At the same time, real prols in Chi-town were having their ears blasted with electric blues in black neighborhood bars filled with prols. As if the prols of their time were sitting around listening to hillbilly music.

Go figure.

Goes back to my standard: Music is music. You dig it or you don't.

[Chris D]

That's it exactly, Gary.

[Pete C]

"[Lonnie] Johnson recorded as a soloist with Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington and in duets with Eddie Lang. He also made a great many blues records and had an R&B hit, ‘Confused’, in 1950; when criticised in later years for not playing a purer style, he complained about fans ‘trying to shove a crutch under my ass’."

http://www.musicweb-international.co...Fall/eight.htm

[mke]

Has anyone actually heard any of the specific records Church accuses of "catering to debased tastes"?

[Gary Sisco]

Truth is, cats in the good old days played all kinds of different stuff, being entertainers working for a living, and very likely just because they liked playing all kinds of different stuff as well, so there really wasn't, even in the good old days, a "pure" kind of anything.

We remember the blues men because blues records sold lots of copies and hence lots of blues got recorded, but most of them played all kinds of other things as well.

[Root Doctor]

Originally Posted by Gary Sisco

Truth is, cats in the good old days played all kinds of different stuff, being entertainers working for a living, and very likely just because they liked playing all kinds of different stuff as well, so there really wasn't, even in the good old days, a "pure" kind of anything.

We remember the blues men because blues records sold lots of copies and hence lots of blues got recorded, but most of them played all kinds of other things as well.

I highly recommend Elijah Wald's book on this very topic:

[Squaredancecalling Steve]

Originally Posted by Pete C

"[Lonnie] Johnson recorded as a soloist with Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington and in duets with Eddie Lang. He also made a great many blues records and had an R&B hit, ‘Confused’, in 1950; when criticised in later years for not playing a purer style, he complained about fans ‘trying to shove a crutch under my ass’."

http://www.musicweb-international.co...Fall/eight.htm

Lonnie Donegan (The King of Skiffle and Chris Barber's lead singer) was a huge Lonnie Johnson fan, and in 1952 he opened for Johnson in London under his real name of Tony Donegan. The promoter screwed up the publicity, and had Lonnie Donegan opening for Tony Johnson. Donegan loved it and always went by Lonnie after that.

[Pete C]

Originally Posted by Gary Sisco

Truth is, cats in the good old days played all kinds of different stuff, being entertainers working for a living, and very likely just because they liked playing all kinds of different stuff as well, so there really wasn't, even in the good old days, a "pure" kind of anything.

We remember the blues men because blues records sold lots of copies and hence lots of blues got recorded, but most of them played all kinds of other things as well.

It was the record execs of the time who insisted that the black "blues" musicians only record blues, despite their varied repertoire, partly due to royalty issues on other peoples songs, partly due to other control issues.

The Library of Congress recordings of Blind Willie McTell, Son House & others give a more accurate picture of the repertoire.

Another thing you notice in the field recordings is that delta blues musicians often worked with second guitarists, fiddlers & percussionists, though most of the commercial recordings are solo guitar--perhaps due to economic considerations.

So we generally have a skewed view of what blues musicians were doing in real life anyway.

[Tom Storer]

Then there's the great Doc Watson, who through the 1950's was playing rockabilly, country, and western swing in bar bands until, to his and our good fortune, he was caught up in the "old time" folk music craze of the early 1960's. It came naturally to him, since the old material was what he had grown up with in the North Carolina hills, but it was a career move on his part. He was (and remains) brilliant at "old time" music but I'd guess he was no slouch on electric guitar playing rockabilly hits, either.

[Pete C]

Robert Junior Lockwood was a great electric guitarist with a lot of jazz influence (e.g. on his recordings with Sonny Boy), but now he milks the Robert Johnson connection & plays the acoustic Delta blues of his youth.

[Gary Sisco]

Tom -- I hadn't known that about Doc Watson. I bet he was awesome to hear.

[Hudson Boy]

Originally Posted by Tom Storer

Then there's the great Doc Watson, who through the 1950's was playing rockabilly, country, and western swing in bar bands until, to his and our good fortune, he was caught up in the "old time" folk music craze of the early 1960's. It came naturally to him, since the old material was what he had grown up with in the North Carolina hills, but it was a career move on his part. He was (and remains) brilliant at "old time" music but I'd guess he was no slouch on electric guitar playing rockabilly hits, either.

I remember reading an interview with Watson, decades ago. He was asked if he'd play an electric guitar in public again, and he replied, with a wink, that he would not because, "it would ruin my image".

[Gary Sisco]

Pete -- True about the execs and business plans but it's the case nonetheless that the recordings most available from the time were blues simply because they sold sell well. There were more of them sold, so more still around to be found in later periods, in other words. We used to have trouble getting people to understand that concept at the record store when they'd bring in their lp stashes to sell. "But that was a huge hit!" "You're right. That's why it's not worth much. Millions of them were sold so they're common things for obvious reasons."

[Hudson Boy]

True. Caruso records are easily available in Salvation Army outlets, garage sales, flea markets, etc. Everybody's grandparents had a bunch of them. They were even given away with Victrola purchases.

They recently had a few on that Antiques Roadshow program that were signed by Caruso, so they were worth more.