Folk Music For These Modern Times

Posted by Al Ross on May 21, 2010, 05:23 PM | #

And for the children, Sumner Redstone’s Viacom has this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8698065.stm

Posted by Robert Reis on May 22, 2010, 12:19 AM | #

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTW0y6kazWM&feature=player_embedded
We can’t make it here anymore

Posted by Lurker on May 22, 2010, 01:03 AM | #

Ive not been entirely successful fighting the culture war here at Lurker Towers. But young Miss Lurker has never been allowed to watch Dora the Explorer.

Posted by James Bowery on May 23, 2010, 09:58 AM | #

Robert, listening to that made me realize that if Woody Guthrie were playing during this depression, he’d probably be labeled a paleo-con—so far “left” has the establishment shifted since the previous depression.

Did McMurtry get any significant air time with that?

Posted by cladrastis on May 31, 2010, 09:15 AM | #

Not sure about you, but this version of Beowulf:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4BUkOjxuZo

speaks to me of the task at hand.

Posted by Guessedworker on May 31, 2010, 09:42 AM | #

I am not much of a believer in culture.  But I am a believer in genes.

Accordingly, this is ours and we are in this:

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UpF0MoyS0c

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUcJEgyzTJs

... the seminal track in 20th century folk music and the first ray of the progressive folk movement.

Posted by cladrastis on May 31, 2010, 11:25 AM | #

Cool GW; didn’t have you pinned as an admirer of psychedelic rock.  I’m not quite sure what it means to disbelieve in culture, but as you do believe in genes, you might enjoy Dungen:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXojCYfw6RM&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lazcRyy1jN8

Or perhaps you might enjoy this (as it speaks directly to our experience and struggle):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cBsWIpkuT0

Posted by Guessedworker on May 31, 2010, 04:07 PM | #

Clad,

What I would ask you to understand is that with this song Fairport broke the Judeo-American takeover of the British folk tradition in the name of “protest songs”, ie the culture of critique.  They dumped Dylan as the philosopher-king of folk-rock, and rooted everything in what is our own timeless English tradition, which is a tradition of man and woman, of love and loss, and soil and sea.  It was a creative act in the historical sense, and a living act in the ontological sense.  Compared to what they did on Unhalfbricking and Liege and Lief your guy singing about Beowulf is a specimen in a jar, and your carefree hippies are pure kitsch.

When you read PF and, perhaps me too sometimes, you should find behind the words a clear invitation to separate the existence we ordinarily know, which is a state of generalised psychological absence, from the rare, of course, and difficult but real possibility of being present now.  In fact, the latter is the only moment of experience in which life is fully real, and to a non-trivial degree it is apprehendable both through interventions of Self in history like Fairport’s - though that apprehension is considered and is therefore not direct - and in the collective realisation of Self which can, under certain circumstances, infuse a crowd right there and then.  That crowd, though, will need to be of one tribe, or its focus will unfailingly be elsewhere ... in having a good time, perhaps, or just being off its head!

Look for the authentic, which is a lived moment, perhaps the only moment.  Actually, there is no perhaps about it.

Posted by James Bowery on May 31, 2010, 10:02 PM | #

Thanks to all for the links they provided.  I enjoyed them all but most of all GW’s for the historic gap it filled in.  As for folk kitsch, I thought my burnt offering would appease that deity.

So, GW, did she bestow upon any children those precious genes?  Is there not more to it than a lived moment?

Posted by Guessedworker on June 01, 2010, 01:50 PM | #

The tragic Sandy Denny.  She suffered the same fate as Natasha Richardson.  She collapsed and died of a brain hemorrhage a month after falling down a staircase at her home.  She never bore a child.

Posted by James Bowery on June 01, 2010, 06:35 PM | #

Not quite the same:  Natasha Richardson had two sons by Liam Neeson.

Posted by Desmond Jones on June 01, 2010, 07:37 PM | #

Nothing beats the piper for folksy music, today, tomorrow or yesterday.

The Anglo-Saxon lament.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqY79y-SCbA&feature=PlayList&p=DB1FAE7BD3F09104&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=5

Posted by cladrastis on June 01, 2010, 07:59 PM | #

Beautiful, GW.  Your response epitomizes why I still come to Majority Rights.

Posted by Al Ross on June 02, 2010, 01:31 AM | #

A masterpiece of ambiguity, Desmond, and thank you for the link.