maninashed
Cheerfully Optimistic
Mad Farmer Liberation Front
Posts: 4,195
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Post by maninashed on Jul 16, 2016 6:40:53 GMT
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davewhite
Luthier / Guitar Maker
Luthier
Aemulor et ambitiosior
Posts: 3,544
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Post by davewhite on Jul 16, 2016 7:35:24 GMT
Good find It would be interesting to hear what gavdav thinks about this theory given the work he has done in the area of traditional dance music.
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Post by gavdav on Jul 18, 2016 13:50:22 GMT
Interesting. I got my MA from the same institution. It is certainly the case that the romantic notion that the music springs from an illiterate (musically and textually) peasant class is in no small part BS.
Most of the songs collected from the oral tradition are versions of things that 'originally' or very early in their history appeared in print. No particular reason why it shouldn't be equally true of melodies too. Unfortunately the 'agenda' of the folk music revival was very much anti-city, anti-industrial and constructed a narrative that suggested there was a wellspring of 'natural' and often nationalistic artistry that existed in an uneducated peasantry. For the most part it just isn't true. Lots of stuff originated among commercial printers, written by the same kind of hacks who went on to become Tin Pan Alley writers. It's also true that the same printers used writers like Purcell and his ilk to create tunes for books of dance instruction.
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