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Nanohedron wrote: Ah, but there's me.

There's "landmark" and then there's "spray-painted graffiti on a rock"...

But seriously, I can see how that's please a crowd.

It's always very encouraging when you can do that.

But again, it was context. In that case we were there as entertainers, not as Trad musicians per se. Even an entertainer may have standards, but whether as entertainer or steward of tradition, snobbery belittles, so if you want more gigs, don't insult your audience. Otherwise, gigging in a purely traditional context, Danny Boy remains unthinkable. Just can't make up my mind...

Even so, I'd be lying if I said that the doo-wop trespass wasn't a bid to absolve us of our sin for doing Danny Boy at all.

bigsciota wrote:

benhall.1 wrote: The words were written by Frederick Weatherly, who was English. He wrote the words in 1910 - pretty recent compared with stuff normally associated with traditional music.

I agree with most of what's been said here, but I would like to quibble a little bit with this. While a lot of people do think of trad as being a fairly old genre, 1910 would predate quite a few tunes and songs that are readily accepted as "traditional." I'd go so far as to argue that the genre as it stands today is by and large a product of the first half of the 20th century, not the 18th/19th centuries as many people would place it.

I'm not so sure about this - although you have a decent enough point in general about the tradition not being just 'old'. For the dance tunes part of the tradition, I'd say that all those 'modern' compositions are mostly from the latter half of the twentieth century rather than the first half, when it strikes me that not all much happened in terms of tune composition. Quite a lot of the more modern songs are also from later in the twentieth century rather than earlier. Mind, my feeling on this is just an impression; I don't know for sure.

s1m0n wrote:I think there's a difference between songs that have either arisen within the tradition (Roisin Dubh), or come from outside and have been embraced (The Lakes of Pontchartrain) by trad artists. Danny Boy is neither. To the extent that traditional musicians resent it, it's because it has largely been imposed on the tradition by outsiders. There's a reason that the OP can't find a landmark recording by a famous trad artist: there isn't one. It's popularity came from touring professional "Irish Tenors" like John McCormack, as well as by Edwardian "parlour" musicians playing and singing from published sheet music around the drawing room piano. This is not traditional music. Not since 1910. Not ever. Lots of older songs than this aren't part of the tradition because they're not part of the tradition, not because of their age.

I think s1m0n has it right here. (Well, apart from the redundant apostrophe in the possessive pronoun "its" .)

Meanwhile, here's the seminal performance of Danny Boy for you.

benhall.1 wrote:

s1m0n wrote:I think there's a difference between songs that have either arisen within the tradition (Roisin Dubh), or come from outside and have been embraced (The Lakes of Pontchartrain) by trad artists. Danny Boy is neither. To the extent that traditional musicians resent it, it's because it has largely been imposed on the tradition by outsiders. There's a reason that the OP can't find a landmark recording by a famous trad artist: there isn't one. It's popularity came from touring professional "Irish Tenors" like John McCormack, as well as by Edwardian "parlour" musicians playing and singing from published sheet music around the drawing room piano. This is not traditional music. Not since 1910. Not ever. Lots of older songs than this aren't part of the tradition because they're not part of the tradition, not because of their age.

I think s1m0n has it right here. (Well, apart from the redundant apostrophe in the possessive pronoun "its" .)

I interpret s1m0n's quote as such: "To the extent that traditional musicians resent it, it is because it has largely been imposed on the tradition by outsiders." (Italicized slight rephrase is mine.) Or did I miss a joke there?

At any rate, this thread is making me glad I have never played a gig as a musician. (Truthfully, I still don't consider myself a musician.)

benhall.1 wrote: Meanwhile, here's the seminal performance of Danny Boy for you.

Quite so. Brilliant, that.

Dan A. wrote:

benhall.1 wrote:

s1m0n wrote:I think there's a difference between songs that have either arisen within the tradition (Roisin Dubh), or come from outside and have been embraced (The Lakes of Pontchartrain) by trad artists. Danny Boy is neither. To the extent that traditional musicians resent it, it's because it has largely been imposed on the tradition by outsiders. There's a reason that the OP can't find a landmark recording by a famous trad artist: there isn't one. It's popularity came from touring professional "Irish Tenors" like John McCormack, as well as by Edwardian "parlour" musicians playing and singing from published sheet music around the drawing room piano. This is not traditional music. Not since 1910. Not ever. Lots of older songs than this aren't part of the tradition because they're not part of the tradition, not because of their age.

I think s1m0n has it right here. (Well, apart from the redundant apostrophe in the possessive pronoun "its" .)

I interpret s1m0n's quote as such: "To the extent that traditional musicians resent it, it is because it has largely been imposed on the tradition by outsiders." (Italicized slight rephrase is mine.) Or did I miss a joke there?

No. What you missed was "It's popularity ...".

s1m0n wrote:

benhall.1 wrote: Meanwhile, here's the seminal performance of Danny Boy for you.

Quite so. Brilliant, that.

It's an emotional performance, that.

bigsciota wrote:

Nanohedron wrote: Considering the emotional investment some have in the Tradition's age, that's a brave statement that might raise some hackles.

Oh, I know. It amuses me when, sitting at a pub session with people on bouzouki, banjo, B/C accordion, and pipes in D, playing polkas and singing "The Auld Triangle" or "Sean South," people will wax on about the antiquity of the music...

I've had another think about this ... Why did you flag up polkas? In Ireland, they (together with mazurkas etc) date from the early part of the nineteenth century, which strikes me as well within the 'old' traditional era that we would think of for other tunes and tune types.

Dan A. wrote: I interpret s1m0n's quote as such: "To the extent that traditional musicians resent it, it is because it has largely been imposed on the tradition by outsiders." (Italicized slight rephrase is mine.) Or did I miss a joke there?

He's talking about the "It's" that starts the second sentence down from the it's you spotted.

~~

It's a debated point. The apostrophe is the least stable piece of punctuation in English, from its inception as the punctus elevatus in late middle english until the present day. The rule I learned in grade school was that the apostrophe marks A) contraction (as in the case you spotted) and B) possession (as "s1m0n's quote". The question, then, is whether the possessive "it's" is the pronoun "it" plus the possessive marker 's, or whether the word "its" is a stand-alone pronoun in its own right, like the pronoun "his". Historically, the word that became "it" was "hit", and the genitive (possessive) declension was ~es. The masculine pronoun "his" existed in its final form back in Old English (Anglo-Saxon). The neuter pronoun "its" was still in the form "hites" (nominally - it more often showed up shortened into "his", just like the masc pronoun). It arrived in it's current form (it's or its) during middle english, 3-600 years later, about the same time the punctus elevatus showed up.

s1m0n wrote:

Dan A. wrote: I interpret s1m0n's quote as such: "To the extent that traditional musicians resent it, it is because it has largely been imposed on the tradition by outsiders." (Italicized slight rephrase is mine.) Or did I miss a joke there?

He's talking about the "It's" that starts the second sentence down from the it's you spotted.

I know what he's talking about. I was pointing out that he didn't know what I was talking about.

s1m0n wrote:It's a debated point.

No it's not. An apostrophe in the neutral possessive pronoun "its" is simply wrong. The problem with its misuse is that the reader (me, for instance) is always pulled up short. I find that, whenever it's used incorrectly, in the possessive pronoun, I have to check and double check to make sure I understand what the writer is on about. That's not good communication, in any language. And it's certainly not good English.

benhall.1 wrote:

s1m0n wrote:

Dan A. wrote: I interpret s1m0n's quote as such: "To the extent that traditional musicians resent it, it is because it has largely been imposed on the tradition by outsiders." (Italicized slight rephrase is mine.) Or did I miss a joke there?

He's talking about the "It's" that starts the second sentence down from the it's you spotted.

I know what he's talking about. I was pointing out that he didn't know what I was talking about.

That's a crossed-post. I was draughting my response to Dan while you posted ahead of me.

It think you'll find, ben, that if you examine the writings of some of the best english stylists over the past few centuries, the issue is much less clear cut than you've been led to believe.

s1m0n wrote:It think you'll find, ben, that if you examine the writings of some of the best english stylists over the past few centuries, the issue is much less clear cut than you've been led to believe.

I'm perfectly happy to look them up. Who were you thinking of?

benhall.1 wrote: No it's not. An apostrophe in the neutral possessive pronoun "its" is simply wrong. The problem with its misuse is that the reader (me, for instance) is always pulled up short. I find that, whenever it's used incorrectly, in the possessive pronoun, I have to check and double check to make sure I understand what the writer is on about. [..]

Yep, that's exactly what happens for me too. An "it's" where it should be "its" interrupts my reading while I'm re-reading the sentence.
We're off-topic w.r.t. the OP of course. But it baffles me that so many native English speakers (writers, I mean) seem to write "it's" all the time, while non-native speakers rarely have a problem separating the two..

Addendum: https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-a ... 27s-vs-its

Tor wrote:

benhall.1 wrote: No it's not. An apostrophe in the neutral possessive pronoun "its" is simply wrong. The problem with its misuse is that the reader (me, for instance) is always pulled up short. I find that, whenever it's used incorrectly, in the possessive pronoun, I have to check and double check to make sure I understand what the writer is on about. [..]

Yep, that's exactly what happens for me too. An "it's" where it should be "its" interrupts my reading while I'm re-reading the sentence.
We're off-topic w.r.t. the OP of course. But it baffles me that so many native English speakers (writers, I mean) seem to write "it's" all the time, while non-native speakers rarely have a problem separating the two..

Addendum: https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-a ... 27s-vs-its

Good article. Thanks for that.