tBS: Jam Session and other things which go bump in the night

[Carl E. Anderson]

> And let us not forget folk music, which had a brief time of glory in the
> late 80's, early 90's, with Suzanne Vega, Eddie Brickle, Tracy Chapman, and
> several other artists.

        Ach, it is blasphemy to my ears!!  No, no, no!  Death to False Folk!
(if using a Manowar reference in conjunction with the word "folk" was not
bad enough :)

        These people are/were singer-songwriters with acousticky type
instruments.  I firmly hold to the belief that music needs to either be
traditional or "traditionally-styled" to be labeled folk.  These artists
were seldom employing such techniques--they primarily performed self-penned
material with little influence from traditional American (or Anglo-Celtic,
or anything else) styles.  This is not to say that I didn't occasionally
_enjoy_ such material, or occasionally take in live performances from
some of the people mentioned above, but I refuse to acknowledge it as folk!

        So there!  Nyah-nyah-nyah! :)

        Even the reknowned Richard Thompson isn't really "folk".  SOmetimes
I even have my doubts about recent Fairport ... but there's always Tempest,
Wolfstone, June Tabor, Steeleye Span, the John Kirkpatrick Band, the Oyster
Band (no relation ;) , Clarion, Io ...

        Or we could settle on the technical definition that "folk" is the
contemporary musical expression of a culture ... which makes BOC folk
music :)  This tends to upset people who are even more finicky than me :)

Cheers,
Carl

************************************************************************
Carl Edlund Anderson                            * "Lever vi inte i ett
cea20 at cus.cam.ac.uk                             *  fritt land kanske?"
http://wjh-www.harvard.edu/~canders/hem.html    *
Dept. of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic, Cambridge *  -- Pippi Langstrump
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