...for real. Yes, I suppose the ultimate purpose of musicology is to study style from a particular culture, time, religion, political environment, etc. I guess knowing the difference between songs of some type of cultural persecution or play party songs is a nifty thing. And it is fascinating to study rhythmic foundation, or melodic contours, chordal progressions, scales, modes, etc. That's what makes us really love one type of music or another, those of us who enjoy folk music. We don't necessarily need to know the technical terms and rules followed by a type of folk music to enjoy playing it...I think the music dictates the rules, not the other way around.
But here's what gets to me: seems the penultimate purpose of musicology, possibly inadvertent at times, might be to place a burden of the need for explanation when a person decides to play the tunes. Of course, one never knows if his/her audience is aware of the history of a tune...so there ya go...from the start you don't know if you will inadvertently offend people by just playing the tune or if you will cause the problems by telling the history you are aware of about that tune before you play it. For instance, take My Old Kentucky Home...it's the state song and I've heard it played in a very nostalgic and emotional way my entire life before any event ever, of any size, that I attended as a child with much loved relations and friends. When I hear it today it brings tears to my eyes over the love and appreciation of the parts of Ky i've called home and all the relatives and friends from long ago. The tune itself is absolutely beautiful, aside from words and I guess aside from my own nostalgic feelings an love of the land and people...I think...lol, if I can divorce myself from those feelings and just hear the tune from a blank mind (not much of a problem for me? lol). But anyway, understandably, some descendents of the enslaved have hurt feelings about this song, because the unaddressed horrors of their past ancestry and its residual effects of their daily lives. I understand that. So what has Kentucky done? They've talked about changing their state song...not sure how that would go over...but in reality I don't think I hear that song played at events nearly as often as it was when I was growing up, so maybe today's population wouldn't care that much. Still, there are those who are opposed to that. The temporary answer thus far has been changing the words around to pretend Foster wrote the song about just happy times in Kentucky, not about the enslaved dealing with their lives in Kentucky and knowing if they offended their masters or if their masters had a bad year economically that they'd be sold down the river, where life was even more brutal and most died from the abusive treatment, not to mention the pain of family separation, etc. So yeah...the song is bruised up pretty badly by the inhumane conditions of bygone times. Yet it's so beautiful...and we don't need to even sing it if we can't find good words (the current words are kinda stupid sounding)...I'd be satisfied if we just sang the last line...play the tunes and then at the end sing, "We will sing one song for my old Ky Home, etc." Anyway, the history of what that song invokes cannot be forgotten, but it just doesn't work for everybody as piece of music minus those lyrics, minus those ideas. Same with Pear Tree...a fun fiddle tune. This is one you could play before an audience and most likely very few, if any would connect it with lynching. If you go out of your way to explain the history of that, you're gonna open a wound that might have been covered with enough bandages to just hear the tune, all the great melodic contours, rhythms, and harmonic possibilites minus the crappy history involved.
It's the same with Booth Shot Lincoln. I love that tune, I love the music. I don't love playing something about someone being shot, especially a great leader of our own country who managed to pull us all together at a very bad time and bring about the end of slavery.
There's also a lot of cruelty involved in our American folk tunes. I grew up with the Banks of the Ohio and never even heard the words I sang with my own mouth. I sang it to my own daughter at nights, among other tunes, to help her get to sleep. Then one day when I was the singer for a group of volunteers in our area of SE KY who had come from far away to help out people with stuff...I sang that song and people in the audience gasped out loud and looked horrified. I was shocked. After the song I had to ask the audience what was going on...they talked about the horrific lyrics of murdering a woman and how it seemed so nonchalant and normalized. That was the first time I EVER even heard myself singing that. I told them it was harmless...I heard it as a child and even sang it to my daughter at night...they were even more horrified. Then I was horrified...like...why did I sing a murder ballad, among many other murder ballads, to my own toddler to get her to sleep at night? I really never heard or paid attention to the lyrics. Then I felt I was on the spot there, in front of my horrified audience. I tried to explain to them that for me, it was the music, the tune itself, that I loved, not the ideas or words. They didn't seem to buy that whitewashing...although it was true. I remember telling them I could sing La la la and still enjoy the tune. Anyway, it was probably around 1985 or so when that happened...when I awoke to actually paying attention to the lyrics and possible history of the songs I loved singing so much...it wasn't just la la la...only to me...and it kind of ruined some of the songs. At that point I started kind of looking up some of the history of what I sang for the few and far between times when I got gigs...I attempted to weed them out some and make them less horrible...lol. Also, at the time, my only instrument was a guitar, no money for all the instruments I would love to have had...so leaving out words wasn't such a great option...I didn't have enough cool licks and solos in my bag of tricks to get me through an hour or two of playing.
So for a while I tried to explain that history wasn't always kind, culturally speaking, to all folks. But of course before the internet, I wasn't so sure I had the correct history to tell for one thing, and I didn't feel comfortable giving a cultural/history lesson before each tune...I felt it totally ruined the part I did love...the music itself.
It's not just music with words...it' like, when I attended jams with the little amateur (extremely amateur...lol) BG band I was in for three years or so...if I dared to play a tune someone in the jam would say I didn't do it like so and so...which made me feel like next their gonna call the cops to come and handcuff me. No, I didn't know the exact history of the tunes I loved...I loved for the music...and I've always loved sketching out my ideas on the fly...never in a way that conflicts with the other jammers...they can continue as they want because I never did anything that interfered with the gist of the tune as it was playing. But, I never got permission to play the tunes the way I loved to play them...even though, yes, we all know I'm a slowpoke and love them slow...I always did speed like a demon around the BG crowd because that's the way they like them. Anyway, no I didn' bother to find out exactly how the famous so and so that played that tune a lot did it...I listened only enough to get the gist, and then felt the liberty to love the tune for myself.
I guess multi track recording appeals to me so much for some of these reasons...I still have the lyric issue or culturally cruel and ridiculous things in our past to deal with...but I manage. I love multi track recording for the freedom it gives a person who just loves music...the sounds of the music. To me, it seems all the musicology digging, which in turn dictates to the musician how to play it instead of leaving some artistic license, just isn't very musical. Interesting, yeah, but not so sure how musical it really is.
So here I am being the oddball...the maverick...maybe unjustifiably so...yet...just two cents' worth of my thoughts at the moment, with a good cup of coffee...and always hoping my life circumstances will at some point give me back the chance to play the music again.
Just a thought on lyrics to old tunes. Long ago I had a radio show at the county station here. I frequently played old music I thought was interesting traditional Americana. This was in the early 90s when political correctness was morphing from an insider joke to a self-conscious judgement on various speech, including art and music. When I got negative calls about something like "Banks Of The Ohio" I'd basically tell people to get a life.
There's a difference between advocating violence in the present and sharing quirky art from the past. I have trouble with some rap lyrics now, but I allow the possibility those might ossify into a similar status of old folk in the future. Is there a moral distinction between modern raw expression and preserved works from the past that we now treat as safely curated? I feel there is, and that old folk music, almost by definition, shouldn't ever be considered offensive.
You seem to be lumping everything you don’t like in with musicology and ignoring what it actually is. Players telling you that you don’t play like someone else has absolutely nothing to do with musicology, and it’s something that players do whether they’re educated or not.
Musicologists study the history of music and its essential elements, typically the Western tradition of music and its various compositional styles. They’re not studying the music you’re playing, so anyone that makes comments on it is doing so out of personal opinion. Some of that may be informed by education, but when it’s commentary about similarity to certain versions, that’s coming from a personal understanding of the music and the genre, and since none of that is formalized, those opinions aren’t worth much because they’re often impossible to substantiate. Someone will complain that a tune isn’t played like a particular version, but just wait a minute, and then someone else will complain that the second version isn’t the right one either (that seems to be the gist of the bulk of one poster’s comments on FHO). If you don’t like that there are so many opinions, there either has to be a formal study to establish a finite answer to questions, or you have to find a way to accept that people are people and they will have opinions about everything.
It seems like your posts tend to put blame on institutions for formal learning and the very idea of being literate or educated, rather than on the concepts with which you disagree. I think that blame is misplaced.
Stravinsky said that the more music was constrained and carefully controlled, the freer it was. It worked for him, and it always strikes me that so much great music has come as the result of hardship.
On top of that, plenty of music written as assignment for music school or music written specifically for the purpose of study is excellent music, not unmusical and dull drudgery. Study does not make things unmusical. Learning is not a bad thing. Literacy should not be feared.
Edited by - The Violin Beautiful on 07/07/2026 10:14:43
A murder ballad should be disturbing.
One thing i'm very grateful for is my education...nothing fancy, and had to quit in the middle of grad school...but what I did study and learned in college I am very thankful to have had...I love education and respect all fields of study, and I'm not blaming people for what they study or for factual things that just aren't pleasant to know about.
I guess what I am saying is there are two separate arts going here...stories (mainly true stories or situations) and music. If the story puts a horrible stain onto the music, and the music itself is too beautiful not to play, what do we do? As I said before, I was totally numb to this for a long time even to the point that I actually sang murder ballads to my toddler as she fell asleep at night. It was someone who had not been exposed to such ballads who brought it to my attention how horrific the scenarios were. These were real events happening to real people. After that time, for a while when I played ballads for small audiences I'd usually preface it with how much more sophisticated our own society and culture have become since that time and how the acts of violence and cruelty seem so unreal, unlikely, even sorta silly, to us today. Sily to cut your favorite girl's throat or shove her head under the river. But we all know that's not a good excuse and it's not entirely true.
As to the music itself...yeah, when people insist the tune has to be just like so and so played it or it's flatout wrong...lol...I'm never convinced the famous guy who brought the tune to light by recording it for the first time has the "original" and true version anyway...even if so, why not accept current musicians who want to put their own spin on a folk tune? This is really big in local BG circles, from what I've seen...if you play Faded Love you gotta sound like Bobby Hicks...if you play something else it's gotta sound just like another one...you're no more than a living juke box. That ain't a lot of fun for me...lol. I'm pretty sure, just from common sense, that whoever recorded something first, unless they wrote the tune, just did it THEIR own way. Maybe it was just a lot more impressive than others, but it ain't the only way.
I can't put the music itself down though...well I have to put it down now to take care of hubby 24/7...but I can't willingly put that music down...it's the music I've loved so much throughout my life and feel compelled to play...I'm talking about the rhythms, the melodies and harmonies and all the stuff you can do with them. And sometimes I've just hoped people wouldn't notice the awful things or just wouldn't know about some of the stuff. Sometimes I just fudge on some words to fit the song...cheating to get around that. Why open up old wounds while playing beautiful notes and chord progressions?
There's a local ballad around here called something like The Murder of Pearl Bryan...during the odd gigs I"ve had here people wanted me to sing it...I just can't...maybe because it's so descriptive and graphic, or maybe I'm like the volunteers who hadn't heard my murder ballads before, the newness of this one hitting me in the gut pretty bad...I can't do it. With the old ballads I've known for years, I can't really notice the story because the beautiful music drowns it out for me...it's just "la la la," until somebody points out what I'm singing. With the Pearl Bryan song, I can't really notice the music because the horrific nature of the lyrics drown the music out.
Anyway...I'm just musing here, not trying to put down academia or deny factual things. Just telling of how it's been a conundrum for me for a few decades now. Now that I have no chance to play at all, I guess mainly all I can do is sit and think about stuff like this...lol. Not meaning to cut anybody else down...I think all musicians at every level have a right to do things they feel compelled to do. That's why we've all gone through the blood, sweat and tears of learning to play music in the first place. It seems an earned right, to me. I'm just sayin' what my thoughts for my own situation have become over the years.
I have a hard time understanding the sensitivity some people have to folk song lyrics when I see the ads on my TV for what shows and movies to watch. There's a serious schism when people don't react to the popular entertainment violence that's shoved at us daily, but need trigger warnings for actual news reports and murder ballads from the old days.
quote:
Originally posted by Brian WoodI have a hard time understanding the sensitivity some people have to folk song lyrics when I see the ads on my TV for what shows and movies to watch. There's a serious schism when people don't react to the popular entertainment violence that's shoved at us daily, but need trigger warnings for actual news reports and murder ballads from the old days.
I think it just comes as the result of the popular practice of denigrating history. It's common to see critiques of the "horrible old days" and the terrible and small-minded people who are supposed to have inhabited the past. A bit of study puts this myth to bed, but that takes effort. Effort is reserved for the gym, where you are supposed to put all your attention into criticizing anyone who walks into the frame while you're filming yourself pretending to work out.
People talk about the folk murder ballads like they're uniquely brutal, but an examination of popular music shows plenty of equally or more brutal pieces. Most people don't even realize what the lyrics are about. Songs about teenage suicide, drug use, murder, rape, and stalking are played at weddings with the full lyrics, but they fly under the radar because the melodies are catchy. Modern music is no less violent, but people convince themselves that they've become more evolved by passing judgment on people who aren't alive to be able to refute their ideas.
quote:
Originally posted by Old ScratchA murder ballad should be disturbing.
Well I LOVE "Mack the KNife", and only later did somebody tell me it was about a murderer...! WHat a great piece of music...
... uh ... what did you think it was about?
I dunno! I didn’t really listen closely to the words until pretty recently… :-) Thought he was a gangster or something.
Edited by - NCnotes on 07/07/2026 17:58:41
I never listen to modern day music if I can help it...I just don't like the music part of it, so whatever the lyrics...I don't know. I don't watch TV either...don't like anything I've seen in the past 30 years so the only thing I watch is the Black and White Andy Griffith reruns. So I have no idea what's going on with modern entertainment. I guess I'm lucky I'm just not interested. I'd rather read a biology book...lol...now, that's some excitement I can get into. Richard Dawkins has some good 'uns!
Musicology does not ruin good tunes. That’s like saying knowledge ruins things. We all need to face the facts that a lot of music is about horrible things. Tunes mentioned; My Old Kentucky Home, Mack the Knife, The Banks of the Ohio, are all about horrible things; slavery, murder, etc. I would add Pretty Polly to the list. You can play or sing these all you want, but taking them out in public or singing them to impressionable children is another thing. If you choose to sing an old Steven Foster song about slavery you need to realize that your audience is possibly going to think you don’t have a problem with it. If you sing Pretty Polly are you condoning getting a girl pregnant then murdering her and then being unrepentant about it and what will the audience think. (This said, I have a friend who says good people like to hear songs about bad people, which is interesting to think about) I don’t have full answers to this but think it is something to certainly consider when performing in public. What you do in your own living room is entirely up to you.
As far as playing music outside of your own background I think you can do whatever you want. I grew up with no musical background other than 4-part Mennonite church music (which sadly, I've never been all that great at) but for whatever reason I love folk fiddling from all over the place; Appalachia, Missouri, South Dakota, Ireland, Denmark, and even my home state of Indiana. I've got no cultural right to play any of it. So what? I've tried to figure out the attraction and have no idea why. It's what I'm drawn to and I've gone with it.
Edited by - pmiller510 on 07/08/2026 05:00:30
From my perspective a lot of what's being discussed here depends on whether you're someone who plays music for yourself (or maybe with a small group of similar minded folk) or you get paid for playing music for an audience. If you belong to the latter then the music - what and how it's played becomes MUCH more important. BTW, in this day and age the larger the audience the greater the opportunity to offend someone.
Edited by - RichJ on 07/08/2026 08:04:48
Good topic. Good discussion. Very nuanced subject.
I actually had to google the definition...lol
I see all sides of the discussion. Where it might not ruin it for one, it might for the other and vise versa.
History is history and in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy ( I can't recommend enough) I've learned just that.
History is History. There is no changing it. If you dig deep enough, there are HUGE beds of Racism, Turmoil, Murder, Sex, Drugs, Alcohol, Deceat, in some of the saddest music out there. Then there is the other side to many of those songs. I've been questioned for singing "Banks of the Ohio, Rock Sat and Nails and various other tunes that seemed to offend people. I look at music like attending a festival...If I don't like it, I don't listen to it! I go back to the camper to get a beer or a snack. I usually don't walk around the crowd telling people "I don't like this band" or sharing how they make me feel. I usually walk away.
I've attended many a festival too that involved racism. Seen the confederate flag flown high and wide. To me, it's there prerogative to do so.
I wasn't in support of it, but no one there knew what I felt about it.
I came into Bluegrass/Old Time through the Hippy Window and many young people this day are drawn to it. If they dug deeper into what some of those tunes Billy Strings plays or Booth Shot Lincoln, they might think a little different, maybe not?
The beauty of music is, that's it's there for anyone to play, listen, or ignore. I have trauma in my personal life that prevents me from performing certain songs but I don't blame the ones who wrote it. Nor do I care.
Speaking of new music. Played a show last week and another one this Friday with a band that's a rock band with material all over the place including, No Doubt, Pink, Mazzy Star, Concrete Blond, Sheryl Crow and many others. Pop music of my teenage years and it evokes a feeling when I play them. Despite the contents. I have found myself as a songwriter saying "Damn, these are some good songs" and in the end, that's what matters most me. Not what they are about. 9 times out of 10 they are about being in love, or losing love. Love is a part of most of them.
Good topic.
quote:
Originally posted by NCnotesI dunno! I didn’t really listen closely to the words until pretty recently… :-) Thought he was a gangster or something.
Well, yeah - he IS a gangster - who in the course of business, bumps people off ... !
NC, I hear ya. That's exactly what I'm saying...even if I'm singing, I pay little or no attention to what the words are saying. I'm just love to sing and play and if the music itself, on its own without a story, moves me...I'll sing it and play it. I sang all kinds of horrible stuff to my daughter as she was growing up, for heaven's sake...I never even noticed the awful things in the ballads I have always loved until that one time, when people from Iowa were visiting SE KY to volunteer for stuff...they would stay in the church dorm and after they had pizza at night the church would offer some form of supposedly relaxing entertainment after their hard day's work. On a night when I was that entertainment and people in the audience ( only about 25 or so people) gasped and reacted in a big way I couldn't ignore...that I actually asked them what was wrong after I finished the song. They seemed shocked that I seemed shocked that they would gasp and react to what was being sung by me...and I was totally numb and ignorant of the words...lol. I mean...I was shocked and have never been the same...I was about 30 years old and had been singing that stuff since I could remember...lol...and this was my very first time when I realized what I was singing about...not just la la la.
Gradually, more and more over the years since, I've wondered if people know what thinking even some fiddle tunes supposedly came out of...when I've had the rare opportunities to play in front of an audience...I have been torn as to whether I should explain away the tune or just keep my mouth shut and hope they don't know anything about it...lol.
And just to reiterate...I'm not opposed to academia or anything...I am opposed to Confederate flags...people say it's just a southern tradition...heritage or whatever...no, it's really similar heritage to Nazi heritage...like...put it in museums and drop it from daily life, is what I say. Any descendants of slavery or the Holocaust are deeply hurt and even feel threatened by people waving around and yellin' about this type of heritage. It's not innocent.
This is the conundrum I was speaking of...history is history and should be studied for the good of humankind and our ability to improve ourselves...but we aren't there yet culturally...we are still in a stage of humanity where wounds are fresh and threats are alive and well. So...I enjoy playing tunes for people, these days it's only YouTube, where nobody looks...lol...but if they do, I don't want to be associated with the cruelty of humanity.
Here's another example...even though I was raised in a very religious family and church and grew up to be a church musician in various types of churches, etc., for whatever reason, the ideas in any organized religion just do nothing for me...lol...I respect people's religious beliefs and try to help whenever I can, but I have to admit, not being a smarty when I say this, my belief in the Easter Bunny is about as far as my true religious beliefs go. Just not for me. However, sacred music and gospel music just hits my soul in a way that it's really one of my favorite types of music to play/sing. It's when I discovered music had actual flavors to me, when I was about 3 and singing my heart out in church...it was then I noticed singing, and the hymns and tunes we sang in church, were a tasty treat to me better than donuts...lol. I still feel that way about so much music..I do a lot of sacred stuff, with a lot of respect for that music, but I'm just not a believer...not anti but not a believer. But I love the music...and the words are la la la...lol. I mean no harm...I just love music more than I could ever describe, more than anything else.
And yes, I think when people say musicology shows they "own" tunes or styles because of where they grew up...I'm kinda like...no way. Music is free...it's here... we can all have it...I think we all have the freedom to take it and play it to our hearts' content. But in our day and age I do worry about words or histories associated with tunes that could be hurtful to some...I just can't figure out if I don't tell it if I think they don't know, or if I just tell it and hope it doesn't hurt or threaten. But that's the thing...the thing I'm thinking about now in my musical silence.
quote:
Originally posted by groundhogpeggy
And yes, I think when people say musicology shows they "own" tunes or styles because of where they grew up...I'm kinda like...no way. Music is free...it's here... we can all have it...I think we all have the freedom to take it and play it to our hearts' content.
Musicology isn't about making claims of ownership for various groups. That's perhaps the aim of ethnomusicology, which is really a separate field altogether. Musicology is a study of music, and it involves the honoring and sharing of musical knowledge that spans millennia. In that sense, it is the exact opposite of ascribing ownership to anyone--all who study are expected to analyze and further forms of music that came from cultures that are in some cases long gone. You don't have to dig Palestrina up and apologize to him and his contemporaries for singing a motet.
And the study of older forms of music is a catalyst for writing lots of new music or incorporating elements of old music and honoring it. Kurt Weill's song from the "Threepenny Opera" has been mentioned, as an example of an old song that was made into a jazz/pop standard. So many other examples exist, all referring back to music that wasn't from the same zip code. What a sad world we'd have if Bach hadn't succeeded in copying out Vivaldi manuscripts by candlelight at night so he could learn the Italian style.
I don't disagree with that...call it whichever name...but I've heard so many people feeling timid about playing music they don't feel they have the right to play, mainly because of geography. That's really a shame. I even heard a song about that one time...something like he can't move his thumb back and forth because he grew up in the north...lol...something to that effect...can't remember now.
Palestrina was a cool dude...music evolves like everything else as we stand on the shoulders of those who came before...no argument from me there.
I mean, I play a genre of music that’s not American…so I’ve thought about that!
To me it’s kinda like, loving to eat Italian food and getting into baking my own ciabatta, making pasta from scratch, perusing Italian cookbooks, etc. I like listening to Celtic music, so I learned to play it on my fiddle, peruse tunebooks, join groups that play the music…
HOwever I consider myself ‘just’ a Tourist, an admirer. IT’s different than having it as your heritage, i.e. cooking Italian as an Italian person who learned it from their grandmom. Or playing music that was passed down through your family and ancestors. This belongs to you, is part of you, in a way that it will never belong to me, an outsider. So I can respectfully enjoy playing and listening to Celtic music, but I do feel that it truly belongs to the Irish or Scottish players…
(but there are players who would totally disagree with this, I know - including maybe you, Peggy! :-)
Edited by - NCnotes on 07/08/2026 20:50:13
quote:
Originally posted by Old Scratchquote:
Originally posted by NCnotesI dunno! I didn’t really listen closely to the words until pretty recently… :-) Thought he was a gangster or something.
Well, yeah - he IS a gangster - who in the course of business, bumps people off ... !
Why did they have to write such a catchy tune about him?! BIg fan of the Louis Armstrong version, which is apparently in the Grammy Hall of Fame.
It did say there was resistance to playing the song on the radio, due to its lyrics which seem to glorify a criminal...
NC, my argument here is that everybody has the right to play and interpret music from anywhere, music that calls out to them. I love your cuisine analogy...seems everyone feels welcome to try foods from distant cultures...maybe because there's money involved? Or it's just easier to dig into some other country's noodles and whatnot than to bother to learn an instrument and then dig into the music. Don't know. But yeah, what I'm saying is, good for you, that you play the music that "resonates with you," (Dwight Diller's way of saying it) regardless of feeling maybe like you're not in the same culture. I say good for you...and I know you love to play it.
quote:
Originally posted by NCnotesI mean, I play a genre of music that’s not American…so I’ve thought about that!
To me it’s kinda like, loving to eat Italian food and getting into baking my own ciabatta, making pasta from scratch, perusing Italian cookbooks, etc. I like listening to Celtic music, so I learned to play it on my fiddle, peruse tunebooks, join groups that play the music…
HOwever I consider myself ‘just’ a Tourist, an admirer. IT’s different than having it as your heritage, i.e. cooking Italian as an Italian person who learned it from their grandmom. Or playing music that was passed down through your family and ancestors. This belongs to you, is part of you, in a way that it will never belong to me, an outsider. So I can respectfully enjoy playing and listening to Celtic music, but I do feel that it truly belongs to the Irish or Scottish players…
(but there are players who would totally disagree with this, I know - including maybe you, Peggy! :-)
I don't think having Irish blood gives me any special right to play Irish music that doesn't extend equally to you, and I don't think having heritage from a certain country gives me any exclusive right to cook that type of food. Something might be part of my heritage, and I can be proud of it and promote it, but I don't own it at your exclusion. I think that if you play a style well and understand it fully, you have more ownership of it than a native who can't play it well. I think bad players do more damage to their own culture than anyone who takes an interest from "outside" ever could.
I do think heritage is very important, and that heritage is honored by studying history and promoting the culture of the past. But part of that is also being willing to share it with others in various ways. I don't think you really give culture away when you share it; instead, in the act of giving to others and increasing the interest in it, you actually grow it. If you want other people to honor the traditions that are important to you, they have to be given the opportunity to experience them to find a reason to share in your enthusiasm.
Just yesterday I was listening to an interview with a biograhper who has written on some of the biggest stars in rock (as well as other major figures in modern history). It was interesting to hear him talk about the development of rock from the Blues. As he put it, the British were exposed to the Blues as a direct result of the American soldiers bringing that form over in WWII. All the stars in the British Invasion experienced that spread of American music into Europe in their childhood. The enthusiasm for American music fostered the appearance of genres like Skiffle. Then these same young musicians almost all went to newly developed art schools where their interest in these things was incubated. Then they all went on to form major bands that found legendary and enduring success in the U.S. That story is compelling because of the freedom of exchange of ideas.
One of the most frustrating things I've experienced was attending the Old Fiddlers' contest at Galax years ago. There were lots of entries, with skill levels all over the place. Most of the contestants were fairly local. But there were a few contestants who really stood out. A small group of Australians had flown in to participate, and every one of them that I heard was an excellent player. They all played circles around everyone in the competition. Their playing was articulate, their tunes were well chosen, their style was as much Old Time as any American fiddler, and they had the audience cheering. Not one of them made it into the top 10. The winners could barely even play. Seeing such good players slighted like that was a wakeup call that I've never forgotten. Since then I've heard stories of good players being shut out of competitions for fear of upsetting the usual winners. While styles have regional origins, I believe that their playing should be encouraged more globally.
I've been participating in an international music summer program as the resident luthier since last year, and I find it very exciting to see teachers and conservatory students flying in from around the world to learn from each other in masterclasses and give concerts daily. I don't see anything being watered down or taken away--quite the opposite, and I can completely understand why this program has been around for 30 years and there's enough demand that it's hard to get in. By contrast, I attended Galax again a couple years ago and was shocked by how much it had shrunk since I previously attended.
Edited by - The Violin Beautiful on 07/09/2026 08:15:56
groundhogpeggy "I do worry about words or histories associated with tunes that could be hurtful to some." If I were playing for a general audience, I wouldn't worry much about it - I might avoid several very well-known songs that have negative associations, and any obscure song that has horrifying lyrics. As for tunes - unless they are the melodies for those same well-known objectionable songs, I wouldn't give it a second thought. And if someone were to tell me that some tune I played in the middle of a set I should never play again because it's "actually" blah-blah-blah, I would assume they were are full of BS and "actually" know nothing much about that tune or any other, but are repeating some half-baked nonsense they got third-hand from some self-important grad student.
The one exception I can think of might be Garry Owen - if I happened to be playing in the Dakotas. I have no idea if it's even generally recognized there, let alone objected to, but why take a chance?
Edited by - Old Scratch on 07/09/2026 08:47:26
@Rich & Peggy -
I find it encouraging that you are both believers in the "open culture of music"! It's a heartwarming attitude, I wish everybody could be like you all.
Unfortunately Rich's story of the Galax competition is perhaps the brutal reality of it...
there are also Japanese players enthusiastically and brilliantly playing Bluegrass and OldTime but I think they are seen more as a novelty and not true representatives of the genre. Is this OK? I would prefer it to not be OK, but there will always be musicians defending their "Turf".
If thought about in the sense of musical history, lineage, musical development, etc then I can see where the feeling of having "Turf rights" comes from. So "musicology" is a part of our playing life whether we think about it or not ... (unless you happen to be one of the lucky people who is playing the music that your great-grandpa, grandpa, and dad played!)
What a great topic, so much to think about. Here's an article I read a number of years back that also deals with this sort of musical conundrum:
motherjones.com/politics/2017/...inefield/
INteresting article - Wow, even the hallowed Star Spangled Banner.
I don’t want to get into woke vs anti-woke (there’s too much of that conflict around me in real life now!) but yea…we need to acknowledge the contributions of black people to music AND the history of racism contained in the old tunes.
(And it just makes me grateful that most of the fiddle tunes I play don’t have lyrics associated with them, so I can avoid the whole issue…!) Peggy you opened a big Can :-)
Edited by - NCnotes on 07/09/2026 10:56:55
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