Uh, I totally lost track of this thread!

But, below is the web definition of musicology - I'm glad that people are studying it, it seems interesting. I play in sessions with a music professor (irish flute) who is an ethnomusicologist and a cellist who is getting her musicology degree in early music.

Does musicology itself ruin tunes, I don't think so... but finding out the historical context of favorite tunes/songs (i.e. slavery, rape, murder) can indeed put a damper on one's feeling about the music. We don't play music in a vacuum!

"Musicology is the academic and scientific study of music. Rather than focusing on learning how to perform or compose music, it investigates the history, theory, and cultural contexts of musical traditions to understand their societal impact and significance.

The field is generally broken down into several distinct sub-disciplines:
Historical Musicology: The study of the history of music, the evolution of musical forms, and the biographical context of composers.
Ethnomusicology: The study of music within its cultural and social contexts, often combining anthropology with fieldwork to understand world, folk, and traditional music.
Music Theory and Analysis: The study of the structural elements of music—such as harmony, melody, and rhythm—to understand "how" and "why" music is constructed."

I’m not sure I’d place a lot of stock in Wikipedia for an exact definition over a more definitive source, but even by that definition, musicology is NOT focused on policing performance practice but rather on the music itself and its various defining elements. The nonsense started because of a claim that musicology was causing people to police performance practice, as though only musicologists were critical of musicians. As usual, even within the OP this idea was contradicted by an observation that other players would point out the differences between a player’s performance and that of a popular recording. Unless the musical gatherings were populated by musicologists, these opinions were just the personal opinions of players, the majority of whom were unlikely to have studied musicology. Even if every player was a musicologist, personal opinions about performance were still just personal opinions, not some kind of concerted effort from institutions to minimize or destroy forms of music. So the premise that musicology was causing these comments to be made was completely illogical, as it could more easily be argued that it was common for people who had NOT studied musicology to make comments like “You didn’t play it like x.”

Various forms of folk music have received more attention as schools have begun to offer programs to study them. That seems like an effort to increase access and information to a wider audience. But the reaction to this from players is not entirely positive, as some are of the opinion that learning is dangerous and that music shouldn’t be shared with anyone who doesn’t fit the right description or express the right opinions.

Be-jaysus Rich do you ever give up!

martyjoe - You might appreciate this: I spent 1967 serving with the US Army in Vietnam. Towards the end of the year I was eligible for a week of R&R in a choice of locations. I picked Sydney. Upon arrival we were loaded into a bus for a tour of the available hotels. At one, our guide pointed out that it was near a civic arena in case we wanted to go see the "grapplers." He wasn't talking about this thread, but he could have been!
I had a great time, BTW - even snagged a paying playing gig to add to my continental resume.

I worked for a couple of years in a duo with Hugh Mc Donald. He had just left the band Redgum. He was their lead singer for a few years after their original singer (John Shuman) went solo. They had a big hit ‘Only Nineteen’ which was set in the Vietnam war. We used to perform it at most of our gigs. Great Song!

martyjoe - "Musical Adventures in Oz." On the bus tour looking at hotels I noticed a music store that was a Martin guitar dealer. I checked it out the next day and the owners turned out to be a couple from California, about my age. I ended up staying with them for a few days, and they hosted a nice party one night, complete with lovely actual Australian girls. That first day, or maybe the next, the owner and I were walking from the shop to their house, carrying a guitar and banjo in their cases. A guy came hurrying out of a restaurant and told us they were hosting an event that night and could we provide entertainment. I guess we just thought "Why not?" It turned out to be a banquet of the Retired Officers Squadron of the Royal Australian Navy. I don't remember what we played, or if we even managed "Waltzing Matilda," but it turned out OK.
Before I joined the FHO I was pretty active on a ukulele forum based in the UK. I became friends with a bass player from Melbourne(?) who had played for a time in The Saints. He was an excellent musician, and if people asked about the chords to a song, he would tell them to listen to the baseline, which is very good asvice.
Lastly, we have a member here who was reportedly the "last official member" of a noted bush band. I'll not "out" him, but I'm a fan.

Here's a bit of trivia for ya. I was at a party and Hugh was right in front of me trying out a fiddle, and he said something like.."this is good", and I thought he meant this was the first time he had tried playing a fiddle, he sounded pretty good for his first time. You probably knew Rick Vengeance, I played with him for more than a decade.

Yes I knew Rickie well. Last I heard of him he was hosting a radio program on one of the community stations. I’m pretty sure he is a Canadian. I left Melbourne in 2001 so I have lost touch with most of the guys. Poor old Hugh has passed on a good few years ago, he was a great guitar player and a pretty decent fiddler as well we would often do The Devil Went Down To Georgia, Hugh on fiddle and I’d play B&C button accordion. Of course he would lay down all the backing tracks. Great memories.

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Originally posted by martyjoe

Be-jaysus Rich do you ever give up!

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I hope I never do. 

I was an avid listener of the "Old Folk Show" long before I meet RickE, I used to tape record his shows while I was at work. It was a quit sad day when leaving 3RRR. I found out about Hugh's passing when I was teaching at a school. There was a visiting carpenter who worked at Hugh's place, I think he said it was at Kew.

Rich, you must be in tight with Santa Claus...you apparently know my intentions better than I myself did...judging who's naughty or nice. I guess I get coal for Christmas from you this year. Go ahead and imagine what my evil intentions aimed at a generalized collaborative of those in a particular academic field of study actually were, instead of just hearing the connundrum I was talking about...I won't judge you back for that...I'm sure you're an ok guy, except  you aren't ranking very highly in my special guest list at the moment...lol...I mean, I won't save a cup of coffee back for ya anytime soon.

Whether or not one approves of the title this is a pretty good thread. The fact that a topic wanders around some never bothers me if it's interesting. If a thread gets boring I just don't open it again. A little heat isn't bad either, as long as it doesn't go too far and become the point. There is a handful of posters I will always read when I see their names, whether or not I generally agree with them. Several are in this thread, and Peggy is certainly one.

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Originally posted by groundhogpeggy

Rich, you must be in tight with Santa Claus...you apparently know my intentions better than I myself did...judging who's naughty or nice. I guess I get coal for Christmas from you this year. Go ahead and imagine what my evil intentions aimed at a generalized collaborative of those in a particular academic field of study actually were, instead of just hearing the connundrum I was talking about...I won't judge you back for that...I'm sure you're an ok guy, except  you aren't ranking very highly in my special guest list at the moment...lol...I mean, I won't save a cup of coffee back for ya anytime soon.

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Just read your own posts over again. I suppose it's possible that you didn't mean or understand what you wrote and it was purely rambling, but what ended up in the first post did have implications and made extreme but nonsensical claims.

Here's one in particular:

"...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."

This claim, which does not describe musicology, is then used as a means to wander off into the woods to talk about political correctness and pat yourself on the back for feeling morally superior in your enlightened modernity.

Then you trash the other bluegrass players with whom you formerly associated for commenting that your renditions of tunes were not the same as their standard versions. You put them down for playing their way and for playing faster than your preferred tempo (why didn't those ignorant fools know better?). Then you describe willfully ignoring the protocol that the rest of the group followed so that you could be "free." Although it seems unlikely that these musicians were musicologists, you add them into the rant as targets of your misplaced ire. Are you suggesting that musicology is so insidious that it "turns" players who haven't even studied it? Or that when people start talking about music and not simply playing it, it dies?  Yet, are you not yourself doing the thing you think is bad: blathering on about history and correctness and how one should play instead of just picking up an instrument? Have you accidentally called yourself out as a musicologist using your own definition?
 

Then you accuse musicology of removing artistic license for musicians and making music somehow interesting yet unmusical. You praise yourself for being able to play more musically than all these unmusical people because of your use of multi-track recording. Then, to top it off with an extra serving of amour-propre, you claim to be a maverick.

The reason for your "conundrum" is that the whole idea is a convoluted  and self-contradictory mess that accuses musicology of making people unmusical, like administering a sterilization to one's musical sensibilities.

Yes, exactly...I meant every word, literally. I am morally superior and modern and I curse the ground that musicology stands on, and will forever despise the wonderful people I played with in the Bluegrass Band. You are correct...see? You know exactly what's going on in my little silly noggan. Good job. And thanks for that psychiatric evaluation. Ok? Telling you earlier I'm not chewing this cabbage repeatedly...extract the meaning or make up insulting stuff to accuse me of. Fine. Whatever floats yer boat.

How did Bob Dylan say it in Farewell, Angelina? "Call me any name you like, I will never deny it..."
youtu.be/jxHJT-9SFvI?si=fG_VNwpZHL8y7TGQ I hope Bob Dylan doesn't think I've got too much artistic license and modernity plus superior morality with this one. And I know how much you love for me to share my YouTubes. Maybe I'll save you back that cup of coffee after all.  You might need it after more groundhog freedom and political correctness  https://youtu.be/zvVr5377an4?si=7JYipfUAFukNKPiF   You know it's gotta be artistic license when the writing spiders are making those beautiful circular webs...or is that showing too much empathy and politically correct appreciation for our natural world?

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Originally posted by groundhogpeggy

Yes, exactly...I meant every word, literally. I am morally superior and modern and I curse the ground that musicology stands on, and will forever despise the wonderful people I played with in the Bluegrass Band. You are correct...see? You know exactly what's going on in my little silly noggan. Good job. And thanks for that psychiatric evaluation. Ok? Telling you earlier I'm not chewing this cabbage repeatedly...extract the meaning or make up insulting stuff to accuse me of. Fine. Whatever floats yer boat.

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I have no interest in what's going on in your head, just in what's written here. Parsing the comments is not psychiatry, it's just analysis of the written word.

You can be as flippant as you want in response to serious replies to your comments, but it's disingenuous to repeatedly claim that you're not invested heavily in arguing, especially when you keep taking potshots in multiple sections of the forum and starting new threads just to attack.

You've constantly used my background and education as a cudgel in arguments against education and literacy, but in so doing, you've made it clear that you know next to nothing about either. I am not of the opinion that you need to know those things--comments should be evaluated on their own merit--but if you wish to weaponize them, you ought at least to arm yourself with accurate information. As it stands, your posts resemble boomerang attacks. You aim them at targets but throw them in the wrong directions so that they miss the marks entirely, and you're angry that they end up coming back to hit you instead.

martyjoe and Henry - Haven't had a chance to check out Redgum yet, but here's a song about Vietnam that I appreciate. I produced/engineered two albums with this band - kind of a take on the blues from southeastern Kentucky, with a lot of originality. You can see from the comments that some people thought a lot of them: youtu.be/UAX6rNr25pU?si=cTr7IKlbltmA-e93
BTW - I lived in three different hotels during my year in Saigon. In the second, my roommates were three Australian noncoms. We were all working, so didn't spend too much time together, but they were jolly good fellows.

PS - Highway 15 in KY is an important, but mostly two lane road from Whitesburg through Hazard, Jackson, and Winchester at the outskirts of Lexington. It connects the southeastern coalfields to the Bluegrass and the bigger cities to the north.

Violin the Beautiful...I believe that you sincerely believe every word of that. I'm all for it. You have a right to think what you think. That's your right and I won't try to change your mind. I'm sorry for the times I may have been attempting to change your mind about my intentions and my word usage in just relaying on here an issue I've had since that day back in the mid 80s when people audibly gasped at my murder ballads...lol...you can think what you want of me. It's ok. I'm ok with letting people think I'm really a mean and nasty, anti-academia type person. Think it if you like...I just keep thinking the Bob Dylan line...Call me any name you like; I will never deny it. Farewell...I must go where it's quiet...and it rhymes! Hurray. Violin the Beautiful, I hope you and your loved ones will have a happy and relaxing day...and I hope one day you will share some of your fiddling so I can have the pleasure of hearing it...I'm sure you are a really good fiddler.

This was a long read.

Years ago there was a topic on Facebook about “Turkey in the Straw.” I have played the tune, don’t love it especially, but it is there and is played sometimes. The thread was talking about racist overtones of the tune’s history and how we should not play it. I suppose it was the younger "political correctness" folks who were digging deep into tunes and talking about it in this manner, but those of us who just play tunes, a series of notes without words, did not think much of the need, proffered by some, that we should randomly throw out some of our repertoire because they had researched it, or otherwise became aware of the insensitive nature of a tune or group of tunes. Basically, this was some folks telling others what to do because of their enlightened status or perhaps their new exposure to the old-time scene.

Those of us who just play tunes posited that we weren’t gonna do that, essentially. If every tune written and promulgated by a racist or person who has done evil were thrown out, there would be no Southern old-time music genre and fewer (if any) Northern tunes, no old English tunes and I won’t even begin to go into classical music, because I am not a student of the history of composers and musicians in the classical genre.

All of our society is based on the evil of slavery, from which we are trying to recover.

Regarding fiddle contests:

There was a old fiddle player named Donny whom I met at Clilfftop, 20 something years ago who said something to the effect, “The fiddlers playing nowadays sound good, but it sounds different.”

So when I have judged a contest, I am torn in trying to score someone whose timing and tuning are perfect, technically, but who does not sound “right,” who does not reflect any of the things about playing old-time that cannot be written down on a sheet of music paper.

I suppose it would be like going to a violin making evaluation forum, where there was a gold painted violin with stars on it that the public appreciated, but did not match the refined issues of violin-making that luthiers understood and looked for. So when the gold violin didn’t win, the folks complained that the person didn’t receive an award for such-and-such a reason.

So I suppose what I am saying is that I trust the people at Galax to honor their tradition and understand it, so if some folks from Australia came and played their gold-plated tunes, yet did not win, it would tell me that they did not understand the things that the judges looked for.

As far as talking during performances, when I first started going to a coffeehouse, I would save tape and batteries by turning off the recorder during the “chat time”, but I quickly learned not to do that, because it was 1) something the performer felt was necessary to describe the tune, and 2) I missed essential information that I would struggle to remember later.

I taught some group fiddle classes, and one of my students (probably one of the finest women I have ever met) also had enrolled her daughter, who would ask her mother when I was talking about this or that tune “Is it story time now?” The thing I was trying to relate was that these tunes do not exist in a vacuum, that these tunes can be written down, collections can be made, but the heart of the music is what it did for people.

If you find the introductions to tunes annoying, then I daresay that you are missing much of what it is about. The music is about connecting people.

P.S. I am currently reading a book, “The Warmth of Other Suns,” which is a hard thing to read, but goes along with the understanding the heart of people, and what they need to contend with. Life for the blacks in the South was extremely hard, life in Ireland was hard, or in Scotland, or wherever. It seems a bit insulting to not want to learn about the hard stuff and just wanting to skim the cream that these fine people had to create in order to cope with the pain and hardship of their lives.

I think competitions can be judged fairly well objectively. When you take phrasing into account for example, there will be little deviations in the timing to accommodate the phrasing that is fitting for a particular genre. The same goes for ornamentation, and also for variation. I’m preparing for the All Ireland final in Belfast in three weeks (two instruments). This will make my 5th final appearance. So I’ve been looking very closely at where all these parameters lie. So often someone will give an amazing display of virtuosity and lose track of the melodies direction adding borrowings from other genres or disciplines, and then wonder why they didn’t even get placed. It is very fine tightrope to cross but I believe it is absolutely judgable and getting the balance right is part of the skill. I see two strategies that people take. The first is to select simple tunes and show what you can do with them. The second is to go for powerful tunes and risk making any blemishes however small. Option 1 has the higher success rate.

For a competition to be judged "objectively", some individual or committee has had to have come up with an agreement that "this is what is valued within this tradition" and "this is what is not valued within this tradition". I really don't like that kind of thing (but then, I'm probably like the Woody Allen character in Annie Hall when he's ripping up the parking ticket and saying, "This is what I think of authority!"). I think that folk traditions should be allowed to live their own lives and go where they will, with the only "authorities" being those recognized as such, informally, within the tradition. I've too often witnessed and heard of "experts" telling people that the way they've been playing some sort of music for generations is "wrong". I actually won a few little fiddle contests ages ago, where I felt that it was only because my intonation was "better" than that of the others, who for the most part would be better able to fulfill the role of "fiddler" in their communities.

My fiddling background is in Cape Breton and Prince Edward Island, where contests, though not unheard of, are certainly not the norm. Far more common is - or was, anyway; I'm a bit out of the loop now - the "fiddle festival", where you just have a number of fiddlers get up, one after another, and play some tunes, often with one or two big names brought in from a little further afield. Any judging is being done silently, or in muttered asides, or saved for the drive home, but for most people, "judging" is not the point, which is to enjoy the music and the event as a whole. Anyway - that's what I like.

The Irish (Ceoltas) system is by no means perfect but it works very well. I see it as a collective body of thought by enthusiastic volunteers to uphold the folk arts tradition. The skills gained to compete in the Fleadh provides the foundation for each generation of musicians that helps to keep that tradition so strong. Coming in as an outsider I see a large degree of consistency. My experience has been that the knockers are ones that don’t have an understanding of how the competitions work.

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Originally posted by gapbob

So I suppose what I am saying is that I trust the people at Galax to honor their tradition and understand it, so if some folks from Australia came and played their gold-plated tunes, yet did not win, it would tell me that they did not understand the things that the judges looked for.

That would make sense if two things were true: 

1) The judges were experienced in musicianship and had a deeply rooted sense of their own culture and tradition 

2) The Australians were really just gilding the lily. Yes, audiences can be won over by antics that distract from playing ability (a very popular electric violinist made a major career by hopping around on stage just playing simple melodies all legato). But in this case, the audience is made up of a lot of musicians, as the majority of attendees are the contestants themselves and their families. And a lot of the people in the audience are good enough players themselves to be able to recognize good playing apart from showmanship.

The last time I attended, a fiddler showed up with a bow he'd made out of a gourd. It got a lot of cheers and laughs, and everyone enjoyed the gag, but it didn't make the audience think better of his playing. In fact, a guitar maker with whom I was sitting turned to me and commented that the player was a decent player (the maker knew and played with many of the contestants regularly), but that the improvised bow, while comical, was hindering his ability to render the tune well.

The Galax competition is hosted and officiated by the Moose Lodge. That means that the judges themselves are simply members of the lodge, and I've been told by many people that the judges are often not musicians but rather people who want the visibility of doing something official in their town. Their decisions are infamous for disregarding the playing and favoring the well-known names in the area. A lot of the players consider the contest a crapshoot, and some attend more as a social event. The competition is reaching its 90th year, and while they have announced an increase in prize money to commemorate the occasion, they're also acknowledging that the event is shrinking and awarding fewer prizes to a smaller field. 
 

As far as the political correctness in the music sphere, I don't see that as any part of musicology, but rather the result of a wider trend that shows up in every field. Just as the study of history existed before the trend of judging the past based on perceived morally superior modern values, musicology existed before the desire for its moral policing. Yes, there are plenty of books put out on the subject, but to me they are just opportunistically capitalizing on a trend and leaning on a shaky association with established traditions of musical study that are genuinely authoritative, something like claiming to be a doctor when someone is having a medical emergency based on holding a doctorate in divinity. Yes, both can be technically described as doctors, but only one is trained in the healing arts. 
 

As far as talking in between tunes, I can understand why players enjoy thr talking themselves, but I don't quite agree that the introductions are part of the music. I recognize that tunes are often written with themes in kind or are intended to evoke certain connections, but music has meaning in its emotional impact on us, not in a specific narrative. As a wonderful illustration of this, I highly recommend watching Leonard Bernstein's lecture in which he boldly declares that "music doesn't mean anything." He demonstrates by choosing a piece of music and telling the story that goes with it based on the composer's ideas. But then he takes the exact same piece and concocts a new story on the spot, using the exact same piece played the same way. The new story has absolutely nothing in common with tht original, but it makes perfect sense in its musical setting. Why? Because what really has meaning in the music is its emotional appeal--writing in certain ways pulls the listener in various directions. But this happens apart from any context. You don't have to know what the composer was thinking or all the social commentary around the writing. This is why music is often described as a universal language. As the famous saying goes, "Where words fail, music speaks." If a style of music were to truly be so reliant on all the contextual cues for meaning, I would consider it to be either non-music or at least very poor music. If a fiddle tune were played to one audience without introduction but to another preceded by a story about the tune's history, a famous player who championed it, and from whom it was learned, the second audience might have reason to think "Oh, that's nice to know," but it would not in any way make the playing itself or the tune better. You could find a collection of tunes from a place about which you knew nothing, and as long as the musical notation was clear enough that you could play the melody accurately, the music would have an impact in and of itself. A record was sent out into space with samples of things considered to represent humanity well, including musical selections. While there is text and speech to describe various aspects of humanity, the music is offered without commentary but rather presented as an indication of what the world has to offer. The belief is that the music will have meaning even if some alien life form listens to it without knowing much of anything about the planet, let alone the intricacies of regional cultural mores.

I don't think you really need to hear anything about Old Time to listen to it and appreciate it. That doesn't mean the study of its history and milieu isn't important, just that they have their own place (program notes and liner notes are great things). I agree that as far as jams and sessions you should follow the protocols of each one as much as you can and that you can simply look elsewhere if you aren't pleased with one. On the other hand, though, if your jams and sessions struggle to maintain their momentum, it's worth re-evaluating the protocols.