dig on some clawhammer banjo!

venusinpisces

Well-known member
Joined
Dec 20, 2009
Messages
323
Reaction score
140
Location
California
Yeah, and unfortunately people sometimes have a tendency to forget their roots rather quickly. That's part of the appeal of old time music, since it's one of the few remaining links to early American culture, outside of museums and written history.
 

absurdtoast

Well-known member
Joined
Apr 20, 2010
Messages
74
Reaction score
106
Location
Rhode Island
what's even more interesting is the use of the example of rich white people rapping trying to act like a thug from the streets...HUGE level of inauthenticy....well rich white plantation owners would have jug bands made up of slaves to play music and entertain guests. The rise of minstrel shows saw...whites....literally mimicking blacks and black music....right down to putting on blackface. The African slaves were using unique instruments and creating sounds that attempted to recreate a very different musical style that differed from European styles but that they found aesthetically pleasing.

Medicine shows and traveling minstrel shows were made up of whites dressing in black face, using black instruments (banjo, washboard, washtub bass etc), mimicking black slang, and singing about primarily black topics...black stereotypes, slave hardships, the blues etc.......a lot of the famous old time performers actually got their start doing medicine shows and singing in blackface...and so this attempt to mimic black music and appeal to a greater white audience....was vital in the formation of "traditional" old time music

So when someone puts forth the argument of authentic old time music....it just doesn't make sense from a historical basis...you can say that's your opinion but in reality you are just disregarding and ignoring the actual history of the music. The genre was born from a huge level of in-authenticity (whites copying black styles) and mixing of different styles (Celtic, European, English Ballads) . People don't seem to realize just how important jug band music was to the formation of old time/folk and even the blues.


Also....you can't sing an old timey song about the hardships of coal mining authentically, or with passion, or...spirit.....without having worked in a coal mine yourself or having family that once worked in a coal mine.......(Earl Scruggs plays coal miners blues and yet never was a coal miner.....sooooo inauthentic!!!!) that's a silly argument...you can't sing the blues with spirit if you are white, you can't sing old time music with spirit if you don't come from a rural background...or have family that has come from a rural background??? I mean...its your opinion, you can truly believe that if you want...but its just a close-minded, hipster snob/elitist type mentality that is so divorced from what music is suppose to mean and from how the actual genres were created. Lots and lots of old time performers sung about the hardships of sharecropping/farm work and yet weren't farmers themselves...some were wealthy, some weren't.

sorry for these long posts.
 

venusinpisces

Well-known member
Joined
Dec 20, 2009
Messages
323
Reaction score
140
Location
California
I'm not discounting that racism played a part in early American cultures, even particularly with old time music. Of course it did, because slavery was intrinsic to every institution in colonial America. There is the danger in romanticizing that era that people will gloss over the prevalence of racism as well as the history of poorhouses and indentured servitude which were, for all intents and purposes, nearly identical to slavery in terms of the hardships endured by your average servant, who was overwhelmingly of Irish origins. As for singing about specific circumstances that a person hasn't lived through, that has always been a part of any story-telling culture.

Here is a clip of a program on an old-time festival in rural Virginia which provides college scholarships to local Appalachians. The thing a lot of people don't realize is that U.S. has always been a multi-tiered society, and many descendants of Irish immigrants never had anything close to the same privileges as the primarily Anglo-Saxon upper classes. Even today, there is the possibility of old time culture dying out because many of the people who kept these traditions alive are hardly being handed recording contracts. Anyways, here is some info about the clip from Youtube:

"American bluegrass music originated with immigrants from Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales beginning in the early 1600s. Those early settlers made their homes in the Appalachian Mountains in what's now eastern United States, and through their music told stories about their struggles and daily life. Americans living today in a section of the Appalachian Mountains known as the Blue Ridge Mountains continue that musical heritage."
 
  • Like
Reactions: absurdtoast

venusinpisces

Well-known member
Joined
Dec 20, 2009
Messages
323
Reaction score
140
Location
California
oops
 

absurdtoast

Well-known member
Joined
Apr 20, 2010
Messages
74
Reaction score
106
Location
Rhode Island
great post...I fully agree...that's my point. Bluegrass developed in accordance with all these different styles mixed together. African musical traditions...jug bands, instruments and the styling of songs were mimicked by whites....the mixing of other European styles creates in turn created this very unique genre.
Blacks at the time infused elements of blues which was vital in shaping bluegrass as a genre along with introducing the banjo. The first whites to play banjo were mimicking the styles and songs of the black slaves they watched.

You are totally right about hardships people faced...it wasn't very easy being a poor white either. Sharecropping exploited everyone, regardless of race...along with the various hardships of immigrants.

For me I view old time music as working class music. The struggles of living in Appachia, working coal mines, sharecropping, poverty, dust bowls, heading west, disease, starvation, slavery...etc etc.....are all interwined with old time music.

The best part is just how uniquely American it is.

This PBS special on the banjo is amazing..must watch


A great link on the history.
http://www.mustrad.org.uk/articles/appalach.htm
"ONE of the greatest influences on Appalachian music, as well as many popular American music styles, was that of the African-American. The slaves brought a distinct tradition of group singing of community songs of work and worship, usually lined out by one person with a call and response action from a group. A joyous celebration of life and free sexuality was coupled with improvisation as lyrics were constantly updated and changed to keep up the groups' interest. The percussion of the African music began to change the rhythms of Appalachian singing and dancing. The introduction of the banjo to the Southern Mountains after the Civil War in the 1860s further hastened this process. Originally from Arabia, and brought to western Africa by the spread of Islam, the banjo then ended up in America. Mostly denigrated as a 'slave instrument' until the popularity of the Minstrel Show, starting in the 1840s, the banjo syncopation or 'bom-diddle-diddy' produced a different clog-dance and song rhythm by the turn of the century.

Many of the African-American spirituals were discovered by mainstream America, particularly with the collection Slave Songs from the Southern United States published in 1867 and popularized by a small choir of black students from Fisk University in Nashville. With emancipation, black music began to move outside the South. By the 1920s a whole body of parlour songs known as 'race music' became popular. Many Appalachian songs sung today that allude to 'children' in the fields or 'mother' have been changed from 'pickaninnies' or 'Mammys'"
 
  • Like
Reactions: venusinpisces

nellie g

Member
Joined
Mar 26, 2012
Messages
23
Reaction score
10
Location
marshall, nc
wow, toastman, you gota relax a little. i dont know how much clearer i can say it. everyone else seems to get what i said but you. I could care less about the traditional 6r contemperary history of a musician, most of the time i dont know what the artists influences/background/state of origin are when i hear them for the first time. when i wrote about not hearing any authenticity or honesty in the music of old man seeger or old man honky pants, i'm saying that there music doesnt "feel" honest or authentic etc......(or to put it anouther way, its like the "feeling" i get when i go to a bar and see a middle age white guy from suburban anywhere usa trying to play and, even worse, sing robert johnson songs) i'm not even talking about all this historic shit. as an honest, authentic, not puttin on any fake overalls and pretending to be "Old Timey", type of musician, i can hear a fake a mile away.


but i'm glad your so excited about this, and your willing to get into it in a public forum. i hope we meet up some day and we can do this when we dont have to type it all out. i very slow with computers.


p.s. if you wana see something funny, you should check out the artical ray alden did in the Old Time Herald where he compared me to pete m.f.'n seeger. you can imagin how excited i was. not.
 

absurdtoast

Well-known member
Joined
Apr 20, 2010
Messages
74
Reaction score
106
Location
Rhode Island
hahaha don't worry, I've been relaxed the whole time....maybe the caps made it seem otherwise..that's the problem about having these conversations on here.

I didn't realize you had no interest in the history and background of the music you seem to love and know so well...I thought maybe you actually wanted to have some sort of discussion...but I was mistaken.

You just wanted to say "this sucks, its not authentic, I know what's authentic and real, I can hear it from a mile away, and this ain't it, and I don't like pete seeger"

Which is fine...its your opinion...despite it not having any historical basis or relevance to the topic...as nobody was tryin to pass this off as authentic, so don't worry. You have some grand knowledge of what sounds real, despite as you put it, not caring about the background/history/origin of the music...for whatever reason I thought you'd be into the history of the music..and you're not..which sucks but I'm not lookin to change your mind.

p.s. I understand now...I don't have to read any article about how good you are....your friend already set me straight. You are the real deal..you ain't one of them fake overall wearin, pretendin to be old timey suburban white robert johnson blues playin fakes...I believe you, you're a true old timey fiddle player that is in touch with the spirit n authenticity of old time music that you know so little about (historically?). I'll be sure to consult you if I need any future authentic verification with any music I listen to.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ped

ped

Glorified monkey
Banned
Joined
Apr 7, 2012
Messages
547
Reaction score
481
hahaha don't worry, I've been relaxed the whole time....maybe the caps made it seem otherwise..that's the problem about having these conversations on here.

I didn't realize you had no interest in the history and background of the music you seem to love and know so well...I thought maybe you actually wanted to have some sort of discussion...but I was mistaken.

You just wanted to say "this sucks, its not authentic, I know what's authentic and real, I can hear it from a mile away, and this ain't it, and I don't like pete seeger"

Which is fine...its your opinion...despite it not having any historical basis or relevance to the topic...as nobody was tryin to pass this off as authentic, so don't worry. You have some grand knowledge of what sounds real, despite as you put it, not caring about the background/history/origin of the music...for whatever reason I thought you'd be into the history of the music..and you're not..which sucks but I'm not lookin to change your mind.

p.s. I understand now...I don't have to read any article about how good you are....your friend already set me straight. You are the real deal..you ain't one of them fake overall wearin, pretendin to be old timey suburban white robert johnson blues playin fakes...I believe you, you're a true old timey fiddle player that is in touch with the spirit n authenticity of old time music that you know so little about (historically?). I'll be sure to consult you if I need any future authentic verification with any music I listen to.


I have no idea where he is getting it either. You definitely didn't come off not relaxed. If anything the poster before you seems to have thinly veiled hostility about it... lol
 

nellie g

Member
Joined
Mar 26, 2012
Messages
23
Reaction score
10
Location
marshall, nc
Man your even more of a judjmental smart ass than I am. You seem toe get alot of satisfactiom picking apart the history of poor southerners so you can truly understand them. You should go far in the Yankee ethnomusicology scene. Magee some day you"ll chill out and not get so pissed when someone has a different opinion than you.

Hope your not such a prick in real life.
 

absurdtoast

Well-known member
Joined
Apr 20, 2010
Messages
74
Reaction score
106
Location
Rhode Island
Sorry if I came across this way...I enjoy talking about the history of the music I like....and learning things...some people in here posted some great, interesting things...you werent one of them. I was getting satisfaction from talking about music I like with others who shared some great videos and knowledge. I didn't mean to come across as pissed off or whatever.

Anyway. Sorry. I'll repeat it one more time though...I posted this as "clawhammer banjo music"..its just folk music. Now if you wanna say it sucks, that's actually fine....I'm totally ok with that...we don't like the same thing. But you came in here unprovoked, on your high horse to defend the sanctity of traditional Southern Old Time music.....which I never claimed this to be. That was literally your first post...this sucks, this ain't real, I know what's real!!!!! Sorry...you came across as a "judgmental prick"...it was my fault for thinking you might want to talk more about the topic you brought up...you didn't, you just wanted to let everyone know that this didn't get your seal of old time authentic approval.

Just...I'll say it one more time....this was never meant to be a representation of old time music....nobody was attacking old time music or claiming that you were a fake overall wearin old timey player....so no need to defend your character or what have you. I was merely posting some music I found and enjoyed...thats it...nothing about North vs. South, Yankee vs. true southerner....that was you who felt the need to bring it up.

I'm not sure you actually even read any of my posts....I don't blame you...there is quite a bit here. So I posed the problem of ambiguity that is inherent in traditional old time music....a genre born out of inauthentic and mixing of various musical forms, in order to show how arguments about what is and isn't authentic old time music are by it's own nature ambiguous....I honestly thought you'd be interested and have something to add and teach. You don't. You just wanted do establish your old time credibility...and let it be known that you hold the gift of knowing what is authentic, can hear it from a mile away and don't waste your time on the history blah blah

and you did. I believe you..I'm sure you are an awesome musician and probably a really cool guy...with lots in common...but you didn't come across that way on here.

Anyway...we can stop now if ya want. This was kind of fun....hence why I kept posting and I actually did learn a lot from the other people.

So quick wrap up:

You: "this sucks, its not authentic, I know what's authentic and real, I can hear it from a mile away, and this ain't it, this is yankee northern crap and I don't like pete seeger, damn yankees, I ain't no fake overall playin old timey player, this music isn't real and I don't like it"

My new revised response (disregard all my other posts):
"ok"
 

nellie g

Member
Joined
Mar 26, 2012
Messages
23
Reaction score
10
Location
marshall, nc
You have real nack for quoting people out of context in a way that proves your points. But rest asured that we can all see through the self assured, confident, exterior you hide behind.
 

absurdtoast

Well-known member
Joined
Apr 20, 2010
Messages
74
Reaction score
106
Location
Rhode Island
"hope you find some good o.t. banjo music before you fall into the trap of cheezzzzzyyy northern crap.

These are different instruments, like the fiddle and the violin . But all I know is, you can hear authentic music, and you can hear when it's just some Yankee with a ________ trying to sound Authentic.

I just can't hear Any honesty in there music. Just My opinion dude .

I could care less about the traditional 6r contemperary history of a musician, most of the time i dont know what the artists influences/background/state of origin are when i hear them for the first time. when i wrote about not hearing any authenticity or honesty in the music of old man seeger or old man honky pants, i'm saying that there music doesnt "feel" honest or authentic etc......(or to put it anouther way, its like the "feeling" i get when i go to a bar and see a middle age white guy from suburban anywhere usa trying to play and, even worse, sing robert johnson songs) i'm not even talking about all this historic shit. as an honest, authentic, not puttin on any fake overalls and pretending to be "Old Timey", type of musician, i can hear a fake a mile away.

p.s. if you wana see something funny, you should check out the artical ray alden did in the Old Time Herald where he compared me to pete m.f.'n seeger. you can imagin how excited i was. not"


Please further explain yourself.....I'm not trying to prove anything or hide behind anything...I'm just some yankee who likes music...you are the real deal, not puttin on any fake overalls and pretending to be "Old Timey", type of musician. I get it. You come in here and set me straight...this is northern crap and ain't real authentic old timey music. Literally...that's the only points you've made.

I was sharing music and talking about music. That's it? Now you've exposed me to like...the 4 other people reading this thread...you got me!!!! I'm just some yankee judgmental asshole who likes talking and blabbing on about history and stuff. I get a lot of satisfaction picking apart the history of poor southerners so I can truly understand them....which is why I post banjo folk music in hopes to attract real old timey southeners to come set me straight about what's real and authentic and what's not.

Again...we agree....this music ISN'T, I repeat...ISN'T traditional authentic old time music. This is clawhammer banjo music...folk if ya wanna call it that.It may suck to you...I'm ok with that. I was really just looking for an interesting conversation haha
Whatever...I've been exposed now.
 

venusinpisces

Well-known member
Joined
Dec 20, 2009
Messages
323
Reaction score
140
Location
California
Hippies, step away from the banjos. Your jam band is not going to learn all about old time music in between bong rips.

anti-ha.gif

And please, do not take this post too seriously.
 

joaquim33

I'm a d-bag and got banned.
Banned
Joined
Sep 5, 2010
Messages
151
Reaction score
80
Location
western mass
well, really the problem with most of this old time music genre stuff is those old hillbillies could hardly play their instruments, sing in key, write their only lyrics, put on a good show and what-have-you... a lot of it was not very P.C. either! plus the primitive recording techniques from those days sound simply atrocious! that's why the folk revival was rightfully called the 'REVIVAL' people! its kind of neat to listen to those scratchy old 78 recordings for educational purposes, but you guys should not take it all so seriously! here is a good place to start if you really wanna dig on some good 'ole 'old timey music'. actually, these guys are the best selling old time band ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 

Cstar

New member
Joined
Apr 15, 2012
Messages
2
Reaction score
1
Location
Los Angeles, California
Love that you all at least are seeking to learn more and listen to anything other than mainstream corporate shit. so heres a few tracks i hope you all enjoy. Chris cutler gave a great talk about his concept of the new 21st century "folk" being more of a sampling/hybridization of musics through the proliferation of recordings and technology. It took me about a decade but I finally really grasped what he meant.(has to do with the banjo/ragga mixes i posted below)

In my band BOW+ARROW we play a "neo-folk" free improvised free meter sort of jazz/punk etc..
somewhere between CRASS and Beefheart (for those of you geeks/punks) also like a cross between sun ra and gwar(!) BOW+ARROW heres some vids(crazy shiz) BOW+ARROW live
I play all sorts of stringed instruments from mandolins/ukes/charangos etc..i even am trying to get a rabab(afghani instrument). But a string is a string...you can tune them however you like. In this way,even with a 1 stringed instrument a musician could really play any traditional form of music! i love it...its my silly "string theory"..but i think it Rings true.
So yea...there is an "authenticity" that comes from feeling a sound not parroting a style/sound. You just know it...or lets say some do. Others are suckers ;)
Long story short , heres my AUTHENTIC response to you guys volleys about authenticity.
If i'm buying some obscure ass mix of music at Amoeba(i live in LA) and the chick behind the counter tells me my Bill monroe cd (from 47?) is POP MUSIC! and that her boyfriend only plays OLD TIME MUSIC BANJO and doesnt listen to any music past 1940....then thats just great but i dont give a shit and you're a fucking dork that doesnt even get WHAT "FOLK" music is. my music here is the NEW TIME music, dumbass.
my take on a "new" "old time" music.
Mike Watt was nice enough to play it on his podcast(an orignial thats improv UKULELE+amen breaks)

PROGRESSIVE LIBERAL CORPORATE PUPPET THEME SONG (for Edward Bernays and D. Boon)
all of the music I have posted here is totally free (or you can donate if you like) but definitely meant to share if you dig! i work real hard to cook somethin real new for the world... check the rest of
(A​)​M​(​e​)​(​R​)​!​/​(​c​)​ON​/​(​a) NU​-​GRASS (B​.​MONROE "OLD CROSS ROAD" MIX)



DOC WATSON / DOCK BOGGS "COUNTRY BLUES" GOLDMANZ $ACK$ Nu​-​Grasstafarian throb​(​a​)​x​(​e) (HISTORY REPEATS LIKE SKIPPIN STONEZ SINK mix)
 
  • Like
Reactions: absurdtoast

About us

  • Squat the Planet is the world's largest social network for misfit travelers. Join our community of do-it-yourself nomads and learn how to explore the world by any means necessary.

    More Info

Latest Library Uploads