The Problem of Rootlessness

[st_brickworks]

3. A musician has to be comfortable in his/her own skin, to provide a performance that pleases a discerning audience and fulfills his/her own goals and needs. That doesn't have to involve adopting a persona that projects a false image, either musically or otherwise. People aren't generally either fooled or flattered by "phony" accents, costumes, songwriting, or performance style. But there's also an honest salute, hommage or respect-paying to those who have developed and perfected a genre, not just imitation, but absorption and continuation of that approach.

This is very reassuring, Allen. Now it's just a matter of beating back that 'impostor syndrome' and just try to write without getting in my own way, until I work out where I'm going with it all... That, and finding people to play with, because one can never be quite sure what'll happen, but every new musician one plays with - as well as having a musical voice of their own - can be like a new mirror to see different aspects of one's own voice.

[John Ritchhart]

I'm always amazed at how people who have never been anywhere think they know everything. When I go back to my rural Appalachian home where I grew up and talk to my old friends who never moved away, they seem have very fixed opinions about the world and how it works, none of which they have actually seen. So now I take the phrase, "You ain't from round here, are ya" as a compliment.

[jaycat]

This is very reassuring, Allen. Now it's just a matter of beating back that 'impostor syndrome' and just try to write without getting in my own way, until I work out where I'm going with it all... That, and finding people to play with, because one can never be quite sure what'll happen, but every new musician one plays with - as well as having a musical voice of their own - can be like a new mirror to see different aspects of one's own voice.

Maybe this'll help, I dunno: I've written stuff that, to me, sounded so derivative of some particular artist, that I would even hesitate to play it for anyone, thinking they would say 'oh that's a Richard Thompson (or whoever) rip-off.'

Well, it turns out, what often happens is that by the time the idea gets filtered through your own phrasing, voice, particular style of playing and lyric writing, that by the time you're done, what you heard in your own head as a knockoff doesn't sound anything like that to the listener.

It's a liberating realization.

[JeffD]

I heard a young boy, maybe 15, excellent picker and singer with a NC mountain drawl, say to an older guy in the session.."I jus cain't stand someone tryin ta be sompun nay ain't". Just food for thought.

There are small minded people everywhere.

[JeffD]

I'm always amazed at how people who have never been anywhere think they know everything. When I go back to my rural Appalachian home where I grew up and talk to my old friends who never moved away, they seem have very fixed opinions about the world and how it works, none of which they have actually seen. So now I take the phrase, "You ain't from round here, are ya" as a compliment.

I know what you mean. And you find the same kind of thinking in the big city. I know folks who have lived in New York City all their lives, and their parents lives, and would not think of moving or even traveling very much. Everything they know about the world outside is from television and the internet.

[mandolino maximus]

What, there are no very fixed opinions in New York, Paris, Moscow or Caracas? I notice the same thing when I return to my small blue state Midwestern hometown and everywhere else I go. Maybe I carry it around with me?

[Polecat]

...Now it's just a matter of beating back that 'impostor syndrome' and just try to write without getting in my own way, until I work out where I'm going with it all... That, and finding people to play with...

That, IMHO, is the way to go.

At 16, I was a "punk rocker", at 18, a "singer-songwriter" desperate to express how misunderstood I was, at 20 I wanted to be the "Charlie Parker of the mandolin", and failed in all these endeavors, because they were roles I wanted to play rather than an expression of who I really am, musically. In the past ten years (I'm now 50), I've realized that for me, it's a matter of taking something from all these genres (plus a fair few more), incorporating them in my own personality and trying to be honest in performance (whatever that means). Oh, and working, working, working on my technique. I understand only too well what you meant in your first post about "wearing someone elses clothes" - it's playing a role rather than being yourself, and in my experience, an audience recognizes that immediately. That does not mean that you cannot change how you sing and/or play - I'm willing to bet that none of the famous bluegrass singers spoke in a "high lonesome" falsetto voice, and Anthony of Anthony and the Johnsons sounds very different when he speaks from the strange crooning he produces with his band. But in context, they are valid artistic and/or cultural statements. When I sing a Tom Waits song I don't imitate his growl, but I use a different style from, for example, when I sing the scottish traditional "The shearings no' for you", when I imitate a lowland scots accent, because the song would sound ridiculous in the "received pronunciation" I was brought up to speak. I've sung the song in front of a mainly scottish audience, and no one has accused me of being an imposter. I'm writing a lot of "I do this, I do that", not to impress, but because I can only speak from my own experience; when I go to see a live band (which, I admit, is seldom), I often enjoy it more if the musicians give me the impression that they have got something to say than if they put on a very slick, "professional", show. Working out what that something is is, I think, crucial (and never-ending if you don't want to stagnate). But maybe that's just me.

[neil argonaut]

I'm always amazed at how people who have never been anywhere think they know everything. When I go back to my rural Appalachian home where I grew up and talk to my old friends who never moved away, they seem have very fixed opinions about the world and how it works, none of which they have actually seen. So now I take the phrase, "You ain't from round here, are ya" as a compliment.

While that may well be the case where you are, it's worth bearing in mind there's plenty of people who for whatever socioeconomic, cultural, family or other reason have hardly left their own neighbourhood who manage to remain open minded, and other folk who travel the world thinking they know everything about a place after a brief visit, who have reasonably fixed opinions and don't know their own neighbours.

[neil argonaut]

when I sing the scottish traditional "The shearings no' for you", when I imitate a lowland scots accent, because the song would sound ridiculous in the "recieved pronunciation" I was brought up to speak. I've sung the song in front of a mainly scottish audience, and no one has accused me of being an imposter.

That's the problem I find with having a Scottish accent and trying to sing american songs, trying to walk the line between on one hand sounding like someone putting on a fake american accent, or on the other hand sounding like the proclaimers covering stuff (no disrespect intended to the Reid brothers);

[John Ritchhart]

True as well Neil. I've met some very open and welcoming people in different places. Wisconsin and Scotland both come to mind.

[Polecat]

That's the problem I find with having a Scottish accent and trying to sing american songs...

I know what you mean, Neil - there are some songs that, although I think they are beautiful and express something with which I deeply sympathize, if I were to attempt to perform them I know I would be playing "dress-up" and it would be disrespectful both to the song and the audience, so I have to leave them to those better qualified to sing them ("I take my chances" by Mary Chapin Carpenter would be one example)

[Polecat]

Maybe this'll help, I dunno: I've written stuff that, to me, sounded so derivative of some particular artist, that I would even hesitate to play it for anyone, thinking they would say 'oh that's a Richard Thompson (or whoever) rip-off.'

Well, it turns out, what often happens is that by the time the idea gets filtered through your own phrasing, voice, particular style of playing and lyric writing, that by the time you're done, what you heard in your own head as a knockoff doesn't sound anything like that to the listener.

It's a liberating realization.

I don't write songs (any more), Jaycat, but I know just what you mean, and it reminds me of something T.S. Elliot wrote:

One of the surest of tests is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion.
(T.S. Elliot on Philip Massinger)
All you've got to work out is how to be a good poet

[Bertram Henze]

So now I take the phrase, "You ain't from round here, are ya" as a compliment.

I grew up in a part of Germany with a rather strong local rural accent spoken all around the countryside, but we lived in town where the accent was far less or next to zero; also, my father came from a completely different part, so I never really learned that accent. I tried it out once in a local baker's shop and was immediately lost because I couldn't understand the answer, the shopkeeper grinning all over her face. I was not too surprised, though, since the situation fit my never really feeling at home in the area, in its language or its music, and I left it with a light heart.

Now, Scotland and Lowland Scots was a totally different matter, and though my Scots is far from perfect it felt more natural to try. Therefore I am not ashamed of trying.

[belbein]

True as well Neil. I've met some very open and welcoming people in different places. Wisconsin and Scotland both come to mind.

I agree with you on this, at least about Scotland. The nicest, most open and welcoming people I've ever met outside of Texas.

[neil argonaut]

I agree with you on this, at least about Scotland. The nicest, most open and welcoming people I've ever met outside of Texas.

Well it's good to see yous both made it to Glasgow - most visitors stop at Edinburgh.

[Bertram Henze]

Well it's good to see yous both made it to Glasgow - most visitors stop at Edinburgh.

I found the most friendly Scots who craved my company the most were found in the Western Isles - they are so small you can hardly see them, so lightweight they can fly and they like the repellant lotion you wear...

[neil argonaut]

I found the most friendly Scots who craved my company the most were found in the Western Isles - they are so small you can hardly see them, so lightweight they can fly and they like the repellant lotion you wear...

After a particularly mild winter, I've got a bad feeling they'll be in full attendance at most of the festivals I'll be at this year. I'll have to work out a way of playing mandolin with gloves on!

[Petrus]

Authenticity is everything. If you can fake that, you got it made.

Then again, in regards to the "immersion" part ... the following is from John Kruth's biography, To Live's To Fly: The Ballad of The Late, Great Townes Van Zandt:

Worried about his credibility as a white, college-educated blues singing troubadour, Townes eventually blew off all the comforts and opportunities of his upper-middle class background, believing that real life experience was infinitely more valuable than a paycheck or emotional stability. He was simply not the kind of writer to observe human nature safely through a keyhole. Life in all its messy drama fueled his songs. He threw himself into the thick of it every chance he got.

His commitment to his art was so intense that it often frightened people. Anybody harboring delusions of grandeur was immediately set straight by Townes with the grim prospects of a songwriter's life: "First you have to get yourself a guitar or a piano. Guitars are easier to carry. Then you have to blow off everything else – you have to blow off your family, you have to blow off comfort, money, security, and your ego; everything except your guitar. You have to sleep with it. You have to learn how to tune it. And no matter how hungry you get, stick with it. You'll be amazed at how many people turn away."

[ambihl]

Just don't do the mock accent and it's all good to go.
We're blessed for outlets to play BG in the UK, with some amazing people to learn from/with, so it's a case of immerse yourself in the learning, respect it and the fact it comes from elsewhere, but make it your own too and live the music as you sing/play it.
I always think it's a bit like the 'Continental Ceileidh' for we Irish. There's few more rewarding things than to turn to a great fiddler leading a session and ask them where they're from and where they got the touch from, only to be told Dortmund. Awe and respect are what I feel when people really live in an adopted tradition.

And in that vein have you come across Hippy Joe from Essex yet?

Or Dave Hum from somewhere in the UK? As good as any bluegrass banjo player I've heard, and he's British.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoaItE17D1w

[Jim]

One of the great things about the Internet, Radio & Television is that we got to hear music from all over the world and be influenced by it. Thus I play Gypsy Jazz, Sambas , Blues and Scot/Irish/ Cape Breton fiddle tunes and have composed in all those styles. It has , however, homogenized music and taken away Local flavor. Now when I drive across country I hear the same thing no matter where I am, even in Mexico, just in a different language (sometimes) It's a mixed blessing.

[Bertram Henze]

It's a mixed blessing.

I guess it has always been. Most of the genres you mentioned originated from people leaving their home (for whatever reasons) and joining the music they brought with the music they found. It is still happening today, only faster. Purist tradition without influence would be stale and boring. He who plays the music from his heart needs no permission from authentic people - he is authentic by definition.