An excellent link, BQ, many thanks 
Why people world-wide try to protect endangered species from extinction is that they can have what humen dont understand,what even keep humen alive while they are doing unknown vital activities to the humen,the world.
This trial might not suit the cases of music realm.But I have no idea whether we can revive the missing link of music perfectly,whether we can revive the music which had once died,whether we want to revive them at all,whether reviving the missing link perfectly is important.I might be able to persuade someone to do something I want,but I can never prove wheter something is right or wrong(of course I am always trying to seek out the answer).
Then the question of how I can protect good thing from extinction not knowing what is right perfectly arises and the question leads me back to the case of endangered species.
The first thing I ought to have more than anything to protect good traditions world wide from extinction is âgenerousityâ with my best measurements at this stage and the âenduranceâ not to say like âomfg,your music stinks blasted!â to the successors of John CageâŚ(omg,what an enduranceâŚ).
Hiro Ringo wrote:
âThe first thing I ought to have more than anything to protect good traditions world wide from extinction is âgenerousityâ with my best measurements at this stage and the âenduranceâ not to say like âomfg,your music stinks blasted!â to the successors of John CageâŚ(omg,what an enduranceâŚ).â
I think we all could learn a thing or two from Hiro hereâŚWe all have our likes and dislikes, but they arenât always the same. Not that anyones has in this thread that I have noticed so far, but we should refrain from bashing stlyes, settings, origins, authors and performers of music (whether for profit or not) that we donât agree with or find suited to our tastes. Nobody forces one to listen to something they do not like.
Irish Traditional Music, in itâs purist form (somebody ougth to truly define that), is not endangered by extinction or threatened by dynamism. I like to believe that by taking ITM to newer and different venues, exposes it to a wider audience who eventually will find their way back to the source, and learn to appreciate itâs origins.
I am led to think of Bela Fleck, Dave Grisman, Howard Levi, Brian Bowers and others who have taken an instrument out of itâs accepted usage and made music that it wasnât âsupposedâ to make.
Howard Levi, a great jazz harmonica player, said he felt that a diatonic harmonica could be made to play a chromatic scale. He envisioned the notes as he would a keyboard and played accordingly. Of course Bela Fleck is THE banjo king. In all of these cases they had aquired a knowlede of their instrument that allowed them to expand.
Did they âhaveâ to expand? I donât know. Levi saw a possibility.
So innovation proceeds organically in a sense, within a tradition, not as some kind of trick or attempt to make something âup to dateâ or to exploit current trends, but as a necessity of artistic expression.
Jon
Though we accept modern bluegrass as a standard form of music it wasnât always that way. I think here is a case of organically developing styles. Bill Monroe and Earl Scruggs were true innovators in their day. They used a blend of traditions and created something new.
True. Others have said it far better than I:
âOnly those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.â ~Robert F. Kennedy
âWhat great thing would you attempt if you knew you could not fail?â ~Robert H. Schuller
âBehold the turtle. He makes progress only when he sticks his neck out.â ~James Bryant Conant
Ah, but it wasâŚalmost extinct, that is, until relatively recently. Perhaps thatâs why the âpure drop traditionalistsâ are today so ardent in wishing to preserve it, and to reject âdynamismâ.
After all, to continue Hiroâs analogy, if there were only a handful of breeding pairs of something left in the world today, wouldnât we all wish to preserve them and protect them from all harm until they flourished again? And even when they began to flourish once more, wouldnât those who were devoted to their care wish to continue guarding them jealously, remembering how close they came to irrevocable loss?
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I donât think there that many, ofcourse there are a few but overall I wouldnât come across many, musicians who reject âdynamismâ or modern forms [for example, from my own recollection, Martin Rochford during the 80s thought the Bothy Band was brilliant and concertinaplayer Kitty Hayes had a great night two weeks ago at the Lunasa concert in Glor in Ennis although she thought they had a couple of tunes not quite right]. What they do reject is the term applied to an outside element dropped in and have that proclaimed, usually by âoutsidersâ as dynamic, new and revitalising.
There was a big uproar when Riverdance was proclaimed the new lifeblood and itâs success âa vibrant sign of distinctiveness and innovationâ, not because people disliked Riverdance but because it was a totally different thing, great in itâs own right but without any bearing on traditional music. The music I see played is constantly refreshing itself, is as alive and dynamic as can be.
I see. well thenâŚnever mind. 
This conversation is being paralleled in my local circle of friends. We have a friend who might be classified as a folk/jazz singer/songwriter/guitarplayer. He is a very good guitar player technically. But he canât seem to get much further than the local venues.
So what makes someone go further? He has desire and he works at his music. But some argue that you have to have that onstage persona that puts you over the top - you canât just be a good musician, you have to be an entertainer. My friend bemoans that fact and asks why.
The one genre where you can just be a good musician without being an entertainer is classical music. Yoyo Ma has a wonderful personality but he could be a real jerk and it wouldnât matter - heâs still a good musician and thatâs all he needs to be in the classical world. That isnât to say that some dynamic personalities donât exist in the classical world. But playing Mahlerâs Symphony doesnât allow for much innovation.
Many of the older pure drop guys (who unfortunately seem to have been dropping like flies recently - see the numerous recent threads) just played their music. Sometimes it wasnât until the songcatchers recorded them that they were recognized and they surely didnât make much money. Maybe that is part of what makes the pure drop attractive; it is not fame- or money-seeking. It appears to have stood on its own without catering to capricious popularity (obviously it was popular or it wouldnât have persisted but Iâm referring to that consumeristic (?) popularity that continually shifts with each new thing). Perhaps it is this independence that makes ITrad (and others) cool.
What you can do is make and market your own CD over the internet. It helps if you can place it with a distributer sympathetic to your music. It helps a lot more if you actually do gigs since that is a good place to sell CDs. You might even be willing to do gigs for little money if you think your songs are good enough to sell. If they do sell you will soon be able to up your asking price since you will surely draw a crowd. Finally, a well made CD can be home-made these days, and is an excellent source of demos of your songs. Send them to famous people you think might be interested. Donât send the whole CD, make up a brief CD-R of the songs you want that person to hear. Same for promotional CDs. Promoters only listen to a few seconds of something unless it grabs them so hit them immediately with your best stuff.
Much as I admire the musicianship of Fleck and Grisman, I tend to prefer the results when they apply it to Bluegrass, adding innovations to the âtraditionalâ base, rather than starting over from scratch.
My problem is probably more with a lot of their original compositions, which I often find not quite up to parâboring shows of technical expertise, without sufficient âsoulâ. I contrast those with Grappelli and Reinhardt, playing mostly standards, or compositions within the tradition. On the other hand, Bela can really do justice to classical pieces and jazz standards.
Regarding Scruggs, I canât tell you how many famous âtraditionalâ Bluegrass muscians Iâve seen quoted as saying something like, âWhen I was 16 years old, I heard this song on the radio, and there was this banjo that played about 90 miles an hour, with every note crystal clear. When the song was over, the announcer said that it was Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys. Iâd never heard anything like it, but I knew I had to play that kind of music.â
I think this is an important point, thereâs a considerable difference between being a musician and being a âperformerâ. Ofcourse there are people who are both, who like the attention the concerts etc but there is an equal number of people who are just happy playing locally or the odd gig when they are asked, who are not in it for the money or the glory. And I am talking about musicians as good as or better than the professionals you all talk about.
From my own experience, people have been at me putting considerable pressure on me to do a solo piping CD but I always tell them not to count on it, it wonât be anytime soon. In another thread Bloomfield complained about the Gussie Russell memorial programme on Clare Fm having more of Micho and Packie. This was because Gussie was mad for music but he was also a very private person, he would have avoided at all cost being recorded, he loved playing if the time and the company were right but he wouldnât have gone out to tell the world he was great. And I think he wasnât a lesser musician for it, he just didnât become famous.
To move back a little toward Peterâs original topic, Iâm interested in the role of Irish musicians in the development of Anglo-American pop music. I can identify three American threads off-hand: Old-Timey (centered around Appalachia, but perhaps more Scottish than Irish), Western (Irish cowboys), and the sentimental commercial music of early Tin Pan Alley.
The first two seem fairly obvious. A lot of old Western music is clearly out of the Irish tradition: âStreets of Laredoâ, âBuffalo Skinnersâ, âSweet Betsy from Pikeâ, âNight Herding Songâ (not the one Ramblinâ Jack Elliot did, but the one that starts off âItâs dark and itâs raining, the moon gives no light/My pony wonât travel this dark road tonight.â), etc.
I was thinking about the style of the âcroonersâ, and that seems to result from a combination of the relative smoothness of traditional Irish singing, the attraction of maudlin, home-sick songs to folks engaged in public drinking, and commercializationâespecially after the invention of the phonograph and the radio, leading to some homogenization.
As Wombat mentioned, the crooner style infiltrated commercial Country music. There was also some blending with early jazz. I suspect there was some Italian influence â Enrico Caruso? (Sinatra, Como, Martino, and Lanza must come, at least partly, out of that.)
Any corrections or add-ons?