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Thread: The Emigrant's Adieu

  1. #26
    Registered User Richard Carver's Avatar
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    Default Re: The Emigrant's Adieu

    Thank you for these very kind words, Douglas. It was very well received at the festival last Friday. Attendance was not vast, but certainly enough to make it worthwhile. There was a lot of intelligent engagement with the video in the discussion. But the really encouraging thing has been the level of online engagement since then. Obviously, I am not a big name, even in the world of YouTube posting, but there seems to have been a lot of interest. I have noticed an interesting crossover, with both academics and human rights people engaging, along with those who are more focused on the musical side.

    Thank you, Douglas, for your encouragement in the later stages of this project.

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  3. #27
    Registered User jnikora's Avatar
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    Default Re: The Emigrant's Adieu

    Richard,

    At the urging of DougC, I just finished watching this amazing video. I was thoroughly engaged from start to end. I echo the previous posters' accolades to the content, production and performance of this film. Congratulations.

    I am a part of that "crossover" with deep interests in history, human rights and, of course, the music. Celtic music has been a part of my playing over the past 50 years. Initially Irish and, over the past 10+ years, traditional Scottish music. Tying it all together with the history brings more appreciation and richness to the musical experience.

    I love your definition of folk music which I paraphrase as made and interpreted over time by folks who play it. Thanks so much for making this available to this community of enthusiasts.
    Jim Nikora

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  5. #28
    Registered User Richard Carver's Avatar
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    Default Re: The Emigrant's Adieu

    Thank you, Jim. I'm glad you took the time and found it worthwhile. (Thank you also, Douglas, for promoting it.)

    I am a historian by initial training (though most of my professional life was spent doing something different), so I have a cast of mind that always wants to discover the history of everything. I agree with what you say about how this enhances the musical experience.

    I thought quite a bit about that definition of folk music, crystallizing something I had thought for a while but never quite put into words. It started from the assumption that all folk music is initially composed by someone, even if we generally don't know who that someone is. But even when we do know, that doesn't mean it is not folk music provided it has been taken into the tradition. Part of that is a certain lack of respect for the original - people take it, play it, change it, and make it their own. A prime example from the sort of music we play would be O'Carolan. We know exactly the provenance of that music, but I dare say most of us have never looked at an original harp score and we readily make our own adaptations, just as we would for any other tune. People like Eliza Carthy go to the other extreme and say that everything is folk music if someone is singing it, including last week's Top 20 hit. I think that is incorrect. As well as the tradition being mutable, it also has to be durable. I'm not sure what the threshold would be. Last week is clearly too soon. A century ago is too long.

    Oh, and the other thing is that there is nothing pure about the tradition. In the video I play at least three Irish tunes that are of English origin: Rights of Man, Kit O'Mahoney, and Star of the County Down. There are probably several more, just out of the 30-odd played in that hour. The test is how people treat the music, not where it originates.

  6. #29
    Registered User DougC's Avatar
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    Default Re: The Emigrant's Adieu

    I'm wondering how many others are combining interests like this for performances and documentaries and such. Human Rights/music, history/music, geography/music, family origins/ music etc. Certainly Ken Burns had a large influence with his documentaries on television. And it is now 'part of the story' and not just 'background music', I'm happy to say.
    Decipit exemplar vitiis imitabile

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  8. #30
    Registered User jnikora's Avatar
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    Default Re: The Emigrant's Adieu

    To the definition of folk music, or at least a partial definition, I attended a workshop almost 25 years ago with Robin Bullock on "learning to play by ear". His method was to pick out key notes of the melody - corners, he called them - and connect them as you like, and "that is folk music", which I took to mean a personalized version.

    And to the uncertain origins of tunes, I was inspired to learn Sitting in the Stern of a Boat by your presentation and looked it up on thesession.org where one member claimed, "Composed by the Rev. William McLeod in the late 1700s when he was assigned to a parish in Argyll and had to leave his native Bracadale on the Isle of Skye." But another chimed in with, "no, the author was a fiddle player from Struan in Skye and wrote the tune sitting in the stern of a boat as he sailed out of Loch Bracadale on his way to Argyll." They both agreed on the late 1700s, one claiming 1766. So... who would you believe? The story you like the best?

    As I watched the video it last night, I thought of a friend, a professor emerita of anthropology at the U of Minnesota and sent her a link. She also has a very active interest in music and its origins and I received this note from her this morning.

    Jim, thank you so very much for this magnificently intelligent and beautifully (and cleverly) crafted presentation! There's so much here I didn't know and so much to absorb; I'll have to watch it several more times to pick up on everything. And I love the way Mr. Carver managed to connect his scholarly and musical (and political) interests. (Plus, I have an ancestral connection to that Samuel Magruder fellow.)

    Gloria

    Hi praise, indeed.

    Jim
    Jim Nikora

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  10. #31
    Registered User Richard Carver's Avatar
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    Default Re: The Emigrant's Adieu

    Jim, thank you so much for forwarding this and thanks to your friend for her reaction. I am really touched that people seem to be drawing so much from this. (And the original Magruder arrived in the 1650s, so there are a lot of them about. I wondered if the notorious Jeb Magruder was one of them, but wasn't able to pin that down.)

    On folk music, I like the idea of corners. I am not, obviously, a musicologist but I read some of the literature in preparing this. What Robin Bullock said fits in with Samuel Bayard's notion of the tune family, which, as far as I can tell, is still broadly accepted among musicologists. He distinguished between the essential melodic structure of a piece and incidentals that were common to many different tunes (such as cadences). There is a parallel in the way that ballads may have common stories, which are the deep structure, and common phraseology ("It fell upon a summer's day"), which are incidentals.

    Sitting in the Stern of a Boat is a great tune. I actually recorded it separately and there is a thread at the Song A Week group with a lot more versions too. I saw that discussion at the Session, but I always thought that the McLeod authorship was canonical (as it were). Just proves the point, I guess.

  11. #32
    Registered User Richard Carver's Avatar
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    Default Re: The Emigrant's Adieu

    Quote Originally Posted by DougC View Post
    I'm wondering how many others are combining interests like this for performances and documentaries and such. Human Rights/music, history/music, geography/music, family origins/ music etc. Certainly Ken Burns had a large influence with his documentaries on television. And it is now 'part of the story' and not just 'background music', I'm happy to say.
    A very good question.

  12. #33
    Registered User jnikora's Avatar
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    Default Re: The Emigrant's Adieu

    To Doug's point on Ken Burns, I would love to know how he selects his music. He made Jay Ungar's "Ashokan Farewell" famous, though locals in the Twin Cities have been playing it for decades. He chose Peter Ostroushko's "Medicine Bow" for his documentary on the National Parks. (Another local musician, Bob Douglas, who played with Peter passed away in December, had requested that Medicine Bow be played at his memorial which was held last week. Burns has brought prominence to some of the finest folk music America has to offer.
    Jim Nikora

  13. #34
    Registered User DougC's Avatar
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    Default Re: The Emigrant's Adieu

    Very sorry to hear about Bob Douglas. I'd love to talk with Ken Burns too. As for choosing tunes, I have some experience with my own documentary.
    Decipit exemplar vitiis imitabile

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