English Traditional Music

[Cayden]

And do you have a problem with hankies? Perhaps you feel a little threatened by them?

Not as much as by the guys wielding the sticks. Or the ones dressed up as horses.

[jemtheflute]

Being English myself and having had a fair amount of exposure to ETM in various guises, I think these kinds of generalisation and nose thumbing are pretty silly! Yes, ETM, dance music especially and Morris accompaniment in particular can be very lumpen. But it doesn't have to be and the good stuff isn't. The English song tradition very significantly overlaps with Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Breton, French and so forth, with many ballads existing in cognate versions in multiple languages and with related melodies, although regional singing styles may vary just like accents. Most have their own beauty. English dance music also varies regionally, as do the styles of playing it - Northumbria being the most obviously distinct. Since the 1970s, particularly influenced by Blowzabella, there has been a significant (but not uniform or overwhelming) style trend in interpretation of English instrumental music that reflects both Early Music (David Munrow etc.) and French trad ways of approaching tunes, (availability of good continental accordions/melodeons and the revival of bagpipes and hurdy gurdies in playing this music was important) and that has produced many lovely, highly listenable, flowing but rhythmically strong performances and recordings. Think Andy Cutting, for example. That trend I believe played a large part in reviving ETM when the lumpen aspect was a bad joke and many English players (like myself, yes!) were turning to the apparently greater, or at least better represented, more accessible and more facile (to the listener) pleasures of Celtic music - it may well not reflect a true continuous tradition, but it sure made something worthwhile of the material which has now become in itself a new living tradition growing out of those roots. That said, I've met old-timers in backwoods Gloucestershire pumping out lumpy old morris tunes on 1-row 4-stop melodeons absolutely wonderfully - the ETM equivalent of ITM "Old Geezers". Of course it is different from mainstream ITM, but so what? I wouldn't say either was better than the other, nor that anyone has to like both, but again, so what? There are many very fine younger ETM musicians playing to extremely high standards. I'd concede that the average general standard of musical accomplishment among Irish and probably Scottish players, young or old, who are actively interested in their native traditions (and the majority are not, sadly) is probably higher than among their English (or Welsh) counterparts (a more useful generalisation), as indeed is the level of interest in the populations at large. The fact that ETM and WTM are more revivalist than strong continuous traditions when compared to ITM and STM both reflects the histories and social trends of the different nations and is reflected in the current participation and the standards thereof. Many of the ITM "Old Geezers" that some folk here rave about are, to my ears, unlistenably poor performers, though they have some use as archival sources of tunes and regional style. Many otherwise competent ETM players fail to understand ITM and think it is all incredibly fast, so if they try to play it at all, they play it thus, and murder it. ETM is maybe less "twiddly", but ranges of tempi are probably pretty similar to ITM, and a surprisingly high proportion of the repertory, just like the songs, crops up in both ITM and ETM (and/or STM or WTM) maybe under different names and in variant versions, to an extent that determining national or regional "origin" is often not possible. There is so much in common, and surely we all would prefer to see ongoing popular participation in all the nations in their own traditions than otherwise? So why knock lumps off each other? Recognise and value both the links and commonalities as well as the variances and differences! This is ALL N.W. European music growing out of common, general N.W. European Renaissance roots in terms of dance forms, meters, modes and melodies.


I'll breath again now! The above is a bit of a scattergun outpouring of related thoughts rather than a well organised thesis, but.......

[avanutria]

......Regarding style, ETM isn't driven by the need for speed that is wrecking much of ITM (for me), maybe because it's mostly played by people who also dance and play for dancing.
......

Do you consider the Clare style ITM as a style not within the much of ITM which is in the "wrecking"?

I think Martin may have been referring to the sort of ITM we encounter at sessions in London (note: not Northern London, where many of the Irish communities are located) - the majority of the "Irish sessions" we have been to in west and central London seem to be more about going as fast as possible than about playing tunes with lift and style. I am sure that it is not like this everywhere (it certainly wasn't when I visited Ireland).

[talasiga]

Thanks for answering my sincere question. I hope your answer may incidentally serve to mollify Peter Laban.

So what are sessions like in Northern London?

[avanutria]

I haven't been to any...the problem is they start really late and it takes about two hours to get back home from North London - you have to travel south into the centre and then back to the west, no direct link. So if a session doesn't even start till 10 PM and I have to be at work in the morning it's not really feasible - plus the last tube train home on the Central line (the one that takes us west) stops running shortly after midnight.

[Walden]

http://lester.bailey.googlepages.com

[Geraint]

Well. An observation or two. I live in South wales, to set the scene (as it were)

I went down into Somerset and Dorset over Easter, took me pipes and whistles, and looked for a session. I was hoping to find a session where predominantly English music was played - sometimes I get to play Welsh music at sessions here around Swansea, and there are sessions in South Wales where ITM (probably more than WTM) is the mainstay. Also there are 'Acoustic Nights', of which more later.

I was rather disappointed not to find one 'session' per se, although we did locate one 'Singers Night' and one 'Acoustic Night'. I played a bit of whistle at the Singers night - they were very welcoming and friendly, fair play, and even sang a couple of Welsh songs which are evidently part of their normal repertoire. At the Acoustic night, I played a couple of tunes on pipes and whistle. However most of that night was composed of Singers/guitarists, and most the the songs they sang were American/Americanish covers, with some Christie Moore thrown in.

ONE woman there played some stuff from Playford on a concertina, which was great, and one bloke sang some traditional English songs. Ok, they never claimed to be a session, but it was disappointing - to me - that there was so little 'English' material. Incidentally, we went to Dorchester and I looked for maybe a book of Thomas Hardy-ish fiddle tunes or West Gallery music, or a CD of similar - couldn't find any. I was really craving some English trad... I think there are sessions down there, but I also gather that some are specifically or predominantly Irish although others claim to have a lot of ETM going on. Maybe my timing was wrong?

A lot of the 'Acoustic Nights' in this neck of the woods are mainly guitarist/singers dominated too, with the same sort of American or Americanised repertoire and some Irish stuff. I was at one last week, played a couple of what in theory are very well-known Welsh tunes last week and lots of the musicians had never heard of them.

It seems to me that there is often an association where Traditional Music = Irish Traditional Music, even in Wales or England. Therefore music which can sound rather different - like Welsh or English - can ironically sound unfamiliar to ears attuned to ITM, even to Welsh or English ears.

Not sure what the point of this post is. Perhaps, it'd be good to hear more WTM in Wales, and ETM in England. Not sure that there are many Welsh sessions out in Arkansas or ETM ones in Clare. This isn't to say that ITM shouldn't be played, of course - but if we don't play WTM in Wales or ETM in England, where will they be played? To me, an awareness of the tunes of a specific part of the world amongst musicians in that part of the world is a positive thing. If I go to an area or country, I like to get a flavour of the place. That flavour includes the music. And the beer, of course.

Discuss

Incidentally, you might want to check out the Old Swan Band. Bit of whistle with them, and a bit of swing!

[jemtheflute]

Cheers, Geraint. Glad someone else has some similar feelings to me on this/got the drift of my rant above. I used to live in Cardiff, BTW, and first got some involvement with WTM there, as well as ITM and trad stuff in general. I was brought up in the West Country of England (Dorset, Devon, Cornwall - the only one of the 4 counties I never lived in was Somerset, but I likes me zider! ), and apart from dancing the Flurry Dance through the streets of St Agnes in Cornwall (it is not solely a Helston tradition) as an 8 year old in the 1960s, encountered very little live or really indigenous trad music. It was only when I went to Uni in Cardiff that I began to come across very much. Even now I think in Devon and Cornwall (and West and Mid Wales) it is mostly tied up with post revival, post hippy, middle class trendy or drop out types - the weirdy beardies, yoga and reiki ginseng tea drinkers, magic mushroom munching djembe bashers and tree huggers (not casting aspersions , just trading on stereotypes for shorthand). Of course, if no-one revives it, it dies entirely, but it ain't the same as a strong continuous tradition. Is it "Folk" music when the tradition is carried on by arty middle class incomers because the indigenous folk aren't interested? (Guilty - unabashedly - I ENJOY it!) Similar argument applies to the Cecil Sharps, Peter Bellamys etc. - C18th, C19th & 20th collectors who "saved" much of the material in at least a quasi-academic research fashion.

Anyway, I get plenty of WTM by shuttling around N Wales these days - Bangor, Dolgellau..... and my main local session, whilst predominantly ITM, is by no means exclusively so and we often play a few Welsh, English, Breton, French, Scots etc. tunes. It is also fairly definitely an instrumental session, thought he occasional song is always welcome. I know exactly what you mean about those "acoustic" and "open mic" mights - sure, some of the performers may well be very good within their own fields/genres, but it is almost exclusively singer/songwriter + guitar, navel gazing and fluff-pulling sub-folk/soft pop, and/or unashamed covers of pop like Oasis - a favourite 3 student flatshare (bad) unison singing 3 chord guitar thrash source of material! I rarely go to such things anymore. When the wave of them started about 10 years ago I thought it was going to be a kind of replacement for the diminished Folk Club scene, which I suppose partly it was, and tried to support my local one, but as you say, there was no recognition or even awareness of trad instrumental music among most of the attendees, nor much appreciation - they just don't know how to listen if it hasn't got words! (A point I think reflected by the current tendency, especially among Americans, to use "song" when referring to anything that may still be called by others a "track" or a "number".... or in our case, to be accurate, a "tune"!) In folk Clubs of the 70s-80s, even if it was predominantly a singer-songwriter orientated one, they at least understood when someone got up and played a set of tunes!

[Dan Mozell]

The Barnes Book of English Country Dance tunes is a great tune source. In the U.S. anyone who plays for English Country Dances has it and uses it. One source for this book is http://www.cdss.org . The Village Music Project http://www.village-music-project.org.uk/ has transcribed into ABC notation tunes from numerous English tune manuscripts.

Chris Bartram wrote an extremely informative article about Southern English Fiddling. A version of it was in "Fiddler Magazine." You can probably get the back issue from them. He used to have it on his website. It appears he's removed all music from his site http://www.christopherbartramrfdesign.com/ but perhaps if you emailed him he would send it to you.

While none of this is specific to the whistle, it's all relevant.

[Dan Mozell]

The Barnes Book of English Country Dance tunes is a great tune source. In the U.S. anyone who plays for English Country Dances has it and uses it. One source for this book is http://www.cdss.org . The Village Music Project http://www.village-music-project.org.uk/ has transcribed into ABC notation tunes from numerous English tune manuscripts.

Chris Bartram wrote an extremely informative article about Southern English Fiddling. A version of it was in "Fiddler Magazine." You can probably get the back issue from them. He used to have it on his website. It appears he's removed all music from his site http://www.christopherbartramrfdesign.com/ but perhaps if you emailed him he would send it to you.

While none of this is specific to the whistle, it's all relevant.

[devondancer]

I find that there are a lot of bands playing extremely good English dance music - you only have to go the festivals to hear them (and dance to them) - but playing those same tunes as a set at a session is much less usual. Any English folk dance band will be using all the aforementioned source books, and the dancers will know those tunes and the related dances. It is playing the music away from the dance floor that seems less common. However, I have certainly been to impromptu sessions at festivals like the Sidmouth festival where English music of a very high standard has been played - and appreciated by the audience.

[jemtheflute]

I find that there are a lot of bands playing extremely good English dance music - you only have to go the festivals to hear them (and dance to them) - but playing those same tunes as a set at a session is much less usual. Any English folk dance band will be using all the aforementioned source books, and the dancers will know those tunes and the related dances. It is playing the music away from the dance floor that seems less common. However, I have certainly been to impromptu sessions at festivals like the Sidmouth festival where English music of a very high standard has been played - and appreciated by the audience.

Dunno about the sources/books, but I agree entirely with the rest of what you say.

There are English sessions, but we should remember that it is not a traditional part of the musical culture, even in and around the long standing, continuous tradition Morris sides, to have what we now recognise as sessions. Sessions a such don't even have a long pedigree in ITM, as has frequently been discussed. It is one of the delights and attractions of the ITM scene, resulting from the Irish diaspora plus the modern appeal of ITM, that one can often find a session wherever one travels. Other traditions are way behind in that regard, though a WTM session scene is gradually developing.