On Jul 17, 4:23 pm, JohnB  wrote:
> On 17 July, 15:32, William Black  wrote:
>
>
>
> > Gill Smith wrote:
> > > Time and again, on Mike Hardin's prog, acres of turgid dross, usually
> > > contemporary, are broken up by marvellous songs which, you be guessing
> > > it, are trad.
>
> > > And the reason they survived, unaided, was because people could - and wanted
> > > to
> > > - remember they
>
> > I've been saying this for a decade.
>
> > Nobody's listening...
>
> > I meet a lot of kids who study popular music and performance at college
> > and university and the decision to write and perform their own material
> > acoustically rather than in a band is just a career move.
>
> > But they call it 'folk'...
>
> They can call it what they like. Doesn't make it so.
>
> > Traditional 'folk' isn't technically challenging to either sing or play,
> > although you do have to emote with your material which some people find
> > difficulty,
> > and so the rather highly technically competent people playing for
> > money these days aren't terribly interested in playing it...
>
> The trouble with a lot of modern contemporary "folk" is just that
> there's too much of it. Also, many performers will take the fact that
> they get applause as all the evidence they need that they are the next
> great songwriting phenomenon. So they do more and more.
> The thing with traditional song is that it has survived the test of
> time which contemporary stuff obviously can't claim. Some of it will
> survive and who are we to say which will and which won't. Sadly some
> excellent stuff will get lost in amongst the dross and some lesser
> stuff will survive but that's the way it goes. What gets me is the way
> many young trad performers just don't understand what they're singing.
> It's as if a good voice and a modern arrangement is all that's needed
> - but it takes more than that to raise it above "passing interest".
> You have to listen and learn and then live inside the song - and that
> goes for contemporary songs too, though the trouble here is there is
> just too much that only the writer can live inside (and too much that
> has too little substance anyway).
> Both Cohen and Thompson have written songs (regardless of whether they
> are now considerred "folk") that I think will still be sung in their
> simplest form in decades to come. They are good enough I believe to
> eventually sit alongside some that we now call traditional though we
> have to remember that all songs must have been written by someone
> sometime. I couldn't say for certain which songs from their
> outpourings *will* last but I believe some will. As a songwriter
> myself, I wish some of my songs might survive longer than I do too but
> I am heard by far (far far) fewer people so my chances are not good :-
> (
> In the end what counts to me is that there are songs out there whether
> traditional or not that can be sung by people (whether folkies or not)
> well enough to move me - and it'll take more than a good voice or
> clever arrangement to do that.
>
> An aside: I once heard of a Thompson song being sung by an amateur who
> introduced it as "traditional Scottish" - I think it was "Withered And
> Died". There's another topic for the folkies!> --
> > William Black
>
> <snip>

For God's sake, can't you just revel in the fact that someone is
getting off their backside to perform - be it good, bad or indifferent
- without analising any criticising it to death?