Guarding the Tradition Part 3 – What might folk music become?

Yes, you did read the title correctly. After the success of Part 1 and Part 2, I have finally got round to writing Part 3. Welcome to more of my ramblings on folk music, for the last instalment of this series.

Before we get onto that though, a quick plug again for my new album with There and Back Again. Sales are picking up, so if you are interested in some semi-improvisatory folk music then head over to the shop. And also, if you happen to be in Bury St Edmunds this Friday the 21st September then I will be playing solo at the Milkmaid Folk Club, supporting the superb Nancy Kerr and James Fagan. Would be fantastic to see lots of you there.

Tradition and Aspiration

I am still battling with my MEng report (up to 37 pages, not including Appendices because I haven’t written them yet), so haven’t had the time to do a proper blog post. I’m beginning to put together the third part of my “Guarding the Tradition” series, in part inspired by the Bolivian ethnomusicology that I’m learning about whilst writing my project report. But to keep you going, I thought I’d share this article written by the legendary Martin Hayes on tradition and aspiration. He manages to put into words much of what I’ve been pondering over the past 6 months. Hope you enjoy it.

http://journalofmusic.com/focus/tradition-and-aspiration

Guarding the Tradition Part 2 – What is not Folk Music?

Update – Part 3 of this series

Before I begin, a quick gig plug. I’m playing with Marianne Neary and friends at the Maltings Arts Theatre in St Albans this Friday the 2nd of March at 8pm, supporting Malcolm Hobbs. It would be great to see any hypothetical readers there! I will post about this after the event, as it’s something very different from what I usually do.

My last blog post in this series got a fair number of views and aroused a fair bit of discussion on melodeon.net and elsewhere. The purpose of this post is to propose a different definition to the one that I proposed last time and hopefully to challenge a few preconceptions along the way.

Guarding the Tradition Part 1 – What is Folk Music?

Update: Part 2 and Part 3 of this series

In my last blog post I touched on the current state of affairs in the English folk world, with regards to the relationship between contemporary and traditional folk music. I thought that I would expand on this a little, in case you hadn’t got the message. I’m splitting this up into a number of posts, for my sake as much as yours, hypothetical reader.