We need more appalachian old-time musicians!

MiztressWinter

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Thanks for the advice. I have absolutely no clue when it comes to purchasing a banjo. If I were to find something used in my price range would you be willing to tell me if you thought it was worth the buy?

Ooooh and that banjo link (ebay) doesn't look bad at all! It's gonna be a few weeks or so until I could afford anything though so it will prolly be gone by then unfortunately.
 
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Just recently some friends and I started up a bluegrass/jug style band. We're still in the early stages right now, but when we busk or play at a party we get real good receptions. Hoping to do some lofi recording soonish. Our current lineup is two banjos, a guitar and yours truly on washtub bass; we're all multi-instrumentalists with access to some items such as fiddles, cellos and accordions but we haven't gone down that road of experimentation just yet.
 

Saentis

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I've been DIEING to get my hands on a banjo for months now. I want to learn to clawhammer sooooo bad. I've been watching all these daily video blogs and online tutorials from this guy in Manasas VA for months now and I think I get the concept, I just need to put it to practice practice practice.
 

outskirts

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I can't believe this thread!
As I'm typing this there are two people downstairs practicing on a fiddle and a dulcimer.
I work in a Folk Music and Basketry shop! LOL My family's shop.
But I'm a basket weaver not a musician, I am trying to learn to play harmonica though.
Man I grew up on that stuff, my folk musician parents hauled my brother and I with them all
over the East coast when we were kids.
I'd go to school and have a Kentucky Music Weekend T-shirt on and the other kids would
have rock concert T-Shirts on... yeah I got my ass kicked a lot back in school, lol.
 

bcob

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I've been dying to get at my banjo but it's busted. Right when I was starting to get serious about clawhammer, too.

In the meantime I'm working on building a fretless gourd banjo, gonna try to keep total costs under $50. So far, so good, but you know how that goes sometimes. Tried whittling my own pegs but the wood ended up being too soft under tension, so I swallowed my pride and bought uke tuners for a buck each. Might end up doing a tackhead with goatskin but for now it's an old snare drum head.
 

plagueship

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tommy jarrell is great but i think ernie carpenter is my favorite. i love those scratchy old timey recordings where they have little interviews where some lady asks the guy if the fiddle is really the devil's instrument or he talks about how his grandpappy wrote the song or something. so good
 

elbowjames

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this is too funny cause jeez climb up outta the dust bowl

old time appalachian

i just love it when little shit city kids cling to their" country rural" roots and learn clawhammer and ragtime shit


listen to abner jay he said it best

most folk singers dont look like folk at all

i admire and play and live this music as do many of us here but its just fucking hilarious how many countless kids attach themselves to this shit without a clue what they are singing about

singing songs written by people you wouldnt come into contact with in todays worls even if they were there

theres more old time music in that old lady singin in piggly wiggly or the creepy drunk hooker in lexington than any one us.

also anyone can learn to wipe their own ass with enough practice just like the banjo

trying to explain old time and the why it wasnt contemporary is a joke because it was and it is today

thanks for turning culture into commodity
 

Mayor Cantrell

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Your response, while it does touch upon a common problem of a lack of depth in people trying to sincerely understand this kind of music, no offense, but your critique sounds more like an elitist affectation than a serious attempt to love and connect to this music. I know that the way I play this music is influenced by overtones of "modern" culture, but that doesn't matter. I know a lot of people acknowledge that too.

Most of us didn't grow up around this music, but if you love it, learn it.

I come from the Midwest where the fiddle tradition is not nearly the same as it is in the Appalachians. I'm not southern, I'm not Appalachian, but you know, why do we have to have these explicit boundaries between time periods and regional cultures? The process of culture works by breaking down and building up definitions of what an object or system of symbols (like music) is. We all participate in that, and by saying that it is impossible for "us" to play the music of another culture pretends that culture is a static force.

I think you just want to sound cynical and over it. Thanks for adding pretentiousness. Can you assume that your way of understanding this music is better? How are YOU not commodifying this music just as much as the next fucking kid?

You know what? I STUDY this music fucking hard, and that's my gig. I WANT to know the roots of it on an intimate level, because history is something inherently worth preserving. Does that mean I'm commodifying it? In some sense, perhaps, because that process involves defining a range of what constitutes old-time music, and thus making it an object available to be commodified. However, that process doesn't just involve archaic music. That happens to everything, including things that we make completely ourselves (which is a questionable concept at that) like punk.

You know what's punk about old-time music? Taking it and making your OWN. Those old-timers were not thinking about "How can I make this sound as old as possible?" they were and are thinking about how to play what they love. I'm not turning this music into some sacred artifact that must be preserved from the deathly influence of modern western culture, I'm subjecting it to those influences to make it relevant, and also, reciprocally, allowing myself to be influenced by the deep mystery of the difference between my way of thinking about music, and those subject's ways of thinking about music.

So thanks for that absolutely asinine post. I think you should think about this music a little deeper before making this joke of a generalization and furthering the sense that this music is only for a select group people (perhaps in your mind, just yourself and the few people you condone as worthy.)
 

plagueship

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crocodile... well said...

i'm not sure really what elbowjames was trying to say, it seems sort of like the equivalent of "i liked modest mouse before they were cool!" and also a bit like the traditional pc complaint about "cultural appropriation". i think i do share some of these concerns at least on a visceral level. then again, i don't imagine that tommy jarrell or whoever is spinning in their grave because grimy kids with septum rings are playing the same kind of music, in a very different context, in 2011. i would like to imagine that any true hearted musician knows that imitation is the finest form of flattery.

i'll say this for my own encounters with traditional music. i took up banjo, and later fiddle, after years of busking with guitar, playing folk, indie, punk, folkpunk, etc, songs... if you want to talk about folk as in the music you were surrounded with in a culture/subculture when you were coming up, i guess that comprises my folk music? anyway... i think this is true for a lot of people... i got interested in playing different instruments... first of all because another bearded white boy with an acoustic guitar isn't that lucrative. so i got into other instruments that i could carry.

i started playing clawhammer style banjo because i thought it was cooler than bluegrass, just personal taste. this led me directly to the canonical tunes of appalachian frailling, which led me very quickly to the fiddle. eventually i started to get really into traditional eastern european/jewish music because this is very relevant to my heritage. all through history all folk musicians steal from each other and experiment with whatever strikes their fancy. musicians who travel have come up with some of the most interesting stuff by being exposed to and inspired by so many local styles (just look at the roma!).

anyway my jewish heritage is very significant to me in many ways including my choice of music, but i would never tell someone else that they shouldn't play klezmer tunes because they're not jewish. i'm just happy that people are still playing it, you know? i don't believe in intellectual property rights, or that culture is an object that is the property of some group of people defined by their locality, lifestyle or ancestry. i think it's just an aspect of being human that is there for anyone creative enough to play with, borrow from and so on.

im rambling on a bit as usual but i hope this made some sense. i also think it's pretty cheesy sometimes the ways in which punx "appropriate" folk culture, but i'm not going to go around shitting on them to show everyone else that i'm so much more authentic (wtf does that mean anyway).

anyway i also suspect elbowjames, crocodile and myself may actually all have a little more in common than we might realize from our particular perspectives and ways of expressing them, but who knows.
 

bcob

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It takes about 30 seconds to tell whether someone is 'just doing it because it's cool' or if they have an actual genuine interest. Barely even worth complaining about, unless you're just trying to start a pissing contest with someone.
 

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