Newsgroups: uk.music.folk
Subject: Re: Rolf Harris??
From: Dick Gaughan <dickg (@) dickalba.demon.co.uk>
Date: Sun, 04 Jun 2000 22:56:34 +0100

In <393A6B15.81F02966 (@) virgin.net> on Sun, 04 Jun 2000 15:43:34 +0100, Lynne Tann-watson <lynne.tann-watson (@) virgin.net> made the very sensible point:

>I still say that categories in music cause more problems and misunderstanding than they solve.

Amen to that!

The old cliche holds two kinds of music, "good and bad"

Having been brought up in a family of "traditional" musicians and singers, I've been a pro musician for 31 years and the longer I'm at it, the more I believe that all labels, including "good and bad", are ultimately highly subjective opinions based on amorphous criteria.

So perhaps the waters would get less muddied were we all to own up to being subjective and say, "There are two kinds of music - that which I like and that which I don't like."

I could well be being stubbornly myopic (my inalienable prerogative as a member of the most argumentative nation on the planet), but I'm damned if I can see any other purposes to pigeon-holing music than

a) keeping musicologists off the streets and away from frightening the horses (sorry for the troll-folk choice of metaphor) and

b) helping the music industry target its marketing so as to make loads of dosh from people who suffer from the terribly pernicious disease of brand loyalty.

Keep music live by keeping an open mind. Even better, open ears :)

Me? Hell, I just play whatever takes my fancy - old, new or anywhere in between - and if people want to stick labels on it, that's their business so long as they don't try getting me to accept them.

--
Dick Gaughan

Newsgroups: uk.music.folk
Subject: Re: Rolf Harris??
From: Dick Gaughan <dickg (@) dickalba.demon.co.uk>
Date: Wed, 07 Jun 2000 11:46:25 +0100

In <m3g%4.1637$oS5.25643 (@) news6-win.server.ntlworld.com> on Tue, 6 Jun 2000 23:52:43 +0100, "Alan - EntsWeb" <alan (@) entsweb.com> wrote:

>How will the never heard of new artist Mr Joe Bloggs find an audience if he did not say I play folk or jazz or whatever.

And how many promoters give gigs to someone completely unknown on the strength of them phoning up and saying, "I play folk" (or jazz or whatever)?

When I was a young inexperienced floor singer looking for people to play to, I don't ever recall going into a folk club and saying "I play folk". I simply arrived and asked, "Can I do a couple of songs?" I was judged and got booked on the basis of what I sounded like, not the label under which I classified myself.

>Likewise who is going to buy a CD if by not knowing the artist they do not know the style of music the CD contains.

How many people buy an album of someone they have never heard of on the strength of it being labelled with a particular genre? Do you regularly buy albums of people you've never heard of purely because they're in the "folk" bin in a record shop? I don't and I don't know of anyone else who does. The point I'm trying to make here is, I judge music by hearing it with my ears, not seeing a label with my eyes, and I suspect you and everyone else around here does, too!

And, having heard it, I decide whether I like it or not. I like some of the music labelled "folk", and I can't stand a lot of it. I like some of the music labeled "jazz", and I can't stand a lot of that either.

The label is completely irrelevant in helping me decide whether I do or will like something. My ears alone do that.

--
DG

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Newsgroups: uk.music.folk
Subject: Re: Rolf Harris??
From: Dick Gaughan <dickg (@) dickalba.demon.co.uk>
Date: Thu, 08 Jun 2000 01:39:58 +0100

In <393E8D31.F1CD612E (@) virgin.net> on Wed, 07 Jun 2000 18:58:10 +0100, Lynne Tann-watson <lynne.tann-watson (@) virgin.net> wrote:

>However, I still find it a bit tricky to know what to call my 'folk' weekend, so that people who don't already know it will come.

We're still in agreement :) I haven't actually proposed at any point in this discussion, "Don't call it Folk" or "Don't use labels" but a couple of people seem to have presumed that's what I meant. It wasn't.

My opposition to labels is not as general loose descriptions used to give people a clue as to what vaguely to expect; it is to the use of labels as attempts to make absolute definitions e.g., "this is Folk / this is NOT Folk". What would have been classified as "NOT folk" 20 years ago, with accompanying dismissive snorts, is now commonly regarded as "folk" without a quiver of a nostril. Got a wardrobe full of T-Shirts on that one, I have!

For a musician to attempt to conform to ever-shifting definitions of "Folk" is ultimately to spend your life chasing fashions and trends, and down that road lies artistic death. As I have said before somewhere, the history of all creative musical development is those doing things confounding those who said it couldn't/ shouldn't be done.

Music is not a series of neatly labelled self-contained boxes, it is a continuum and I would also propose that that continuum be regarded as circular, not linear. Although, given the high levels of cross-communication between musicians within the various "genres", perhaps a matrix would be a better description.

In my experience, labels tend to matter much less to the musician than to the listener. I usually know what I'm playing - but sometimes I can have a hard job explaining what it is to someone else :)

Especially taxi drivers, who see an instrument and automatically ask, "What kind of music do you play?" I can now recognise that dreadful question in several languages that I can't speak.

--
DG

Newsgroups: uk.music.folk
Subject: Re: Rolf Harris??
From: Dick Gaughan <dickg (@) dickalba.demon.co.uk>
Date: Fri, 09 Jun 2000 13:13:35 +0100

In <2%O%4.532$jX6.7830 (@) news2-win.server.ntlworld.com> on Thu, 8 Jun 2000 16:08:27 +0100, "Alan - EntsWeb" <alan (@) entsweb.com> wrote:

>The most successful musicians in history are the ones that have forced new labels from the taggers.

I think you put your finger on the real point here - labelling is, in general, a well-intentioned device used by listeners, journalists, musicologists etc and, less frequently, musicians, in trying to relate that which is innovative to an existing repertoire.

When used in a general way as a shorthand to describe something unusual - "Well, it's a bit like ......", it can be useful. Where it becomes dangerous is when it leads to people saying, "I don't like <insert label>" as in, "I'm not going to listen to <xxx> because they're <label> and I don't like <label>"

Personally, I'll listen to anything and ignore the label. I like some of the music normally labelled "Jazz" but a lot of it I find meaningless and boring. But that's not because it's "jazz", it's because I find it meaningless and boring. Substitute any label you like for "jazz" in the above.

The fact that I have had a lifelong love/hate affair with much of what is labelled "Folk" doesn't mean I am going to automatically be interested in or even like whatever is so branded - because I have no way of telling in advance how appropriate that label might be. In my experience, labels are applied in an arbitrary fashion according to the bias/prejudice/taste/experience of the one doing the labelling.

In common practise, anything with an acoustic guitar or a fiddle is in danger of being labelled "folk", anything with an orchestra of being labelled "classical" and anything with a saxophone of being labelled "jazz" etc. So, as an attempt to provide an accurate definition of any music, labelling is pretty inefficient - there are simply too many variables in the process, primarily the views of the one doing the labelling.

Who decided that Bob Dylan was "Folk"? The music industry - because he played an acoustic guitar and at that time everybody knew that anything with an acoustic guitar was "Folk".

Most labels are concerned with style and presentation, not with substance. And style and presentation are transient and in many respects superficial. To base concrete definitions on that which is transient is counter-productive.

Take the current in-vogue genre/style descriptor, "Celtic". James Galway is a Celt - when he plays Mozart, does that make it "Celtic"? When he plays "My Laggan Love" with an orchestra, is it Celtic or Classical? Big Country are Celts - but they play straight down the line American-type "Rock" music - so is it Rock? Celtic? Celto-Americana? Celtic-Rock? When De Danaan play a piece of Haydn, what's that? Celtic? Classical? Celto-Classical? Neo-Classical-Celtoid?

Does it matter?

To come full circle, the only labels which are trustworthy are, "what I like" and "what I don't like". And even these are problematic - as we might easily change our minds next week about what we like :)

--
DG

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