Cultural Preparations

[woodpecker]

If you just want graded music from anywhere (in the European tradition) from the Baroque onwards, you could do worse than Denes Agay's Classics to Moderns and More Classics to Moderns (volumes 1-6 in each case). Book 1 is the easiest, etc.

If you're interested in the old skool tunes, there are many old collections, such as the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, My Ladye Nevells Book, Elizabeth Roger's Virginal Book, Priscilla Bunbury's Virginal Book etc. Tunes are of varying levels of difficulty.

You can also find Bull, Byrd and many other composers of the time covered in the Petrucci Music Library/IMSLP database of sheet music, so lots out there for free, but you have to search by composer or tune.
http://imslp.org/

You can often check out how difficult a tune seems on Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5P41Aht7 ... re=related

[woodpecker]

On the other hand, if you're interested in an old-skool take on a pop chune, check out Detorri's fugal treatment of Bad Romance (Lady Gaga).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYFMgeBa ... re=related

[mobbsey]

It does strike me that the learning and performing songs, traditional or otherwise, is a bit of a dying art, as is sharing a traditional song together, even if it is joining in with a chorus.

Let's call this process what it is -- cultural imperialism. They take people's culture from them; modify, commodify and copyright it; and then sell it back to them in a form that fits within the general paradigm of consumption.

E.g., there's a big fuss at the moment about how bad regulation/red tape is for business. No one ever debates why the regulation/red tape of people's everyday lives -- from music copyright to Part P of the Building Regs -- has been developed as a systematic method to extort money from people and concentrate it in the hands of "the few" who finance and control consumer culture.

What's really sad is that the people who do bring instruments to our workshops are getting increasingly old and grey -- does anyone under 30 jam anymore? This isn't a crisis of culture, it's a crisis of control. This issue goes way beyond organic live music; whether it's iTunes or local licensing, unless the most exploited consumer generation -- the under 30s -- learn to step outside of those imposed controls and get back to the good old punk "do it yourself" idea then they're not going to get past the 'peak everything' crunch.

[emordnilap]

Let's call this process what it is -- cultural imperialism. They take people's culture from them; modify, commodify and copyright it; and then sell it back to them in a form that fits within the general paradigm of consumption.

Indeed. We choose to be victims of commodification of everything in our lives, or (rarely) not.

[extractorfan]

This Colin Hay song seems to tap into what you're saying. He has lost the commercial demand for his work, but regrets it.

It's funny/sad but also a nice song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvukKx68_yM

[mobbsey]

Grauniad article talks of "the dearth of protest songs" -- is it perhaps that they just can't play, or don't want their beloved instruments to get smashed by the police (certainly that wasn't a risk when I used to walk around protests with a guitar on my back).

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... test-songs

Billy Bragg and Johnny Flynn: where have all the protest songs gone?

As many young people become political and take to the streets, musicians Billy Bragg and Johnny Flynn reflect on the dearth of protest songs to accompany them

Emine Saner, Guardian On-line, Friday 4th November 2011


The young people involved in the student protests and Occupy movement are strongly political. But why is this not reflected in the music they listen to? Billy Bragg talks to folk musician Johnny Flynn, with Emine Saner.

Billy Bragg: When I started to make music, there weren't many ways for someone from my background to articulate ideas. There was no internet, I didn't have access to the mainstream media. The best way was to pick up a guitar, write songs and do gigs. The internet and social networking sites have replaced that urge – you can make a film, a blog.

Johnny Flynn: It's confusing to know where to put your energies now. I don't have a Twitter account, because I want to keep it a bit more how you had it, and put my creative energy into writing songs.

{SNIP}

[biffvernon]

Well it didn't actually work, did it?

[Ludwig]

Grauniad article talks of "the dearth of protest songs" -- is it perhaps that they just can't play, or don't want their beloved instruments to get smashed by the police (certainly that wasn't a risk when I used to walk around protests with a guitar on my back).

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... test-songs

Billy Bragg and Johnny Flynn: where have all the protest songs gone?

As many young people become political and take to the streets, musicians Billy Bragg and Johnny Flynn reflect on the dearth of protest songs to accompany them

Emine Saner, Guardian On-line, Friday 4th November 2011


The young people involved in the student protests and Occupy movement are strongly political. But why is this not reflected in the music they listen to? Billy Bragg talks to folk musician Johnny Flynn, with Emine Saner.

Billy Bragg: When I started to make music, there weren't many ways for someone from my background to articulate ideas. There was no internet, I didn't have access to the mainstream media. The best way was to pick up a guitar, write songs and do gigs. The internet and social networking sites have replaced that urge – you can make a film, a blog.

Johnny Flynn: It's confusing to know where to put your energies now. I don't have a Twitter account, because I want to keep it a bit more how you had it, and put my creative energy into writing songs.

{SNIP}

The article talks about the students being "strongly political", but I don't see this. Their concern is for their own private situations, not for society at large: not surprising after three decades in which individualism was "the only game in town". So there is anger, but not much idealism, no sophisticated historical sense of how we got where we are, and where we went wrong.

A friend who works in a university was picketing during the industrial action a few months ago. She told me that the students with her on the picket line weren't discussing seriously the political issues, but talking about how "cool" it would be if the police came along and there was a confrontation.

It comes down to one thing: young people generally don't really think any more. I know I keep banging on about this theme, but it's important: their attitudes are shaped by the entirely individualistic, materialistic society they've grown up in on the one hand, and by an undemanding and over-indulgent education system on the other.

[biffvernon]

Was it not always thus? When I was at uni in the 70s I was part of a pretty small minority to get involved in any political activity. There were one or two marches when a lot of students shouted something relatively mild about the milk snatcher but that was a rare event. We had watched Paris and carried on dancing.

[jonny2mad]

I find it amusing that billy bragg goes on about a lack of protest songs, hes a brand.

To me its a bit like seeing people dressing up as coal miners to sing poor coal miner songs, and none of them have ever worked down a pit or actually done even any laboring work

Or the wurzels dressing up in smocks and pretending to be somerset farm workers when none of them are from somerset, adge cutler their first singer was, I met him a few times as a boy but the rest are fake farm workers from places like London or Scotland.

[biffvernon]

I suppose people not in love should not sing love songs, or land-lubbers sing shanties.

[alternative-energy]

I find it amusing that billy bragg goes on about a lack of protest songs, hes a brand.

To me its a bit like seeing people dressing up as coal miners to sing poor coal miner songs, and none of them have ever worked down a pit or actually done even any laboring work

Or the wurzels dressing up in smocks and pretending to be somerset farm workers when none of them are from somerset, adge cutler their first singer was, I met him a few times as a boy but the rest are fake farm workers from places like London or Scotland.

There is always a danger of folk / traditional songs being seen as a pastiche. I have some sympathy with this opinion. However when's all said and done and you are included in a local pub session with local people having a few beers and enjoying each others contributions it does not matter about what job one does or the choice or quality of what is performed. Really it's all about whether put yourself up to do it or not.

[Catweazle]

If the part-time singers could only sing about their real-life experiences their output would be a bit limited.

There are only so many songs you can write about your life as an accountant or MOT tester.

[jonny2mad]

I suppose people not in love should not sing love songs, or land-lubbers sing shanties.

Well to a degree yes if you've never been in love, or never been to sea I don't think you can be a spokesman on the subject .

A lot of these fellow spend their time when not singing talking about how they are the oppressed working class when actually they are not.

If you dressed up as a cowboy sang cowboy songs all day, and talked about your life as a cowboy and how oppressed cowboys were, and you had never been near a cow and spent your life in a city, somehow I would think that somewhat odd

[Ludwig]

If the part-time singers could only sing about their real-life experiences their output would be a bit limited.

There are only so many songs you can write about your life as an accountant or MOT tester.

Indeed... There is such a thing as imagination!