Results 1 to 11 of 11

Thread: How old and authentic is folk music around the world?

  1. #1
    Bantu Chieftain's Avatar Biarchus
    Join Date
    Jun 2011
    Location
    In your house
    Posts
    610

    Default How old and authentic is folk music around the world?

    I have listened to music from many cultures and a number of them seem copied/remakes of something that once was or still is. Some of them seem to have no precedent history at all. As example, some songs from Caucasus seem to be old entirely and yet they sound like they are from another time. All the greek folk songs from old Epirus area down to Achaea sounds like it was made after albanian folk songs. Only the island music is original in its own sense.

    Both songs here especially the second one sound very old.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQcdUEx0NO4

    Yet this one doesn't sound like it comes from history. Sounds too cinematic for me. What instruments would they have used to sing Kafa in the past?
    It reminds me of some medieval song at 4:10

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl9uWRu0fo4&t=136s


    This is blatantly modern but it still has the allure of something older from 0:04 to 0:35

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szbekc3RLtg
    Last edited by Bantu Chieftain; February 08, 2020 at 07:22 AM.

  2. #2

    Default Re: How old and authentic is folk music around the world?

    You seem to be conflating instrumentation and arrangement with composition. Despite a sort of traditional aesthetic, folk music isn't a snapshot of music of a particular period, it constantly evolves. The way a traditional composition is performed certainly changes over time. It's also really challenging to answer a lot the questions you ask, since we have no audio recordings prior to 1857, and very few prior to the Twentieth Century. Other types of evidence, even notation where it exists, are relatively limited.

    Here's an Eastern Mediterranean folk song for you:

    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
    Quote Originally Posted by Enros View Post
    You don't seem to be familiar with how the burden of proof works in when discussing social justice. It's not like science where it lies on the one making the claim. If someone claims to be oppressed, they don't have to prove it.


  3. #3
    Beorn's Avatar Praepositus
    Join Date
    Jan 2009
    Location
    Athens
    Posts
    5,327

    Default Re: How old and authentic is folk music around the world?

    @Bantu I can't speak for Caucasus/Russia, but the balkan bagpipe (called "tsabouna" in most places) has had this sound for millennia, unfamiliar it may be to most foreigners.

    Traditional Epirote songs are very similar in sound to the neighboring albanian ones, which is natural considering history. Greek Western Thracian folk music is essentially undistinguish-able from bulgarian music from the neighboring areas, only the lyrics language changes. Western macedonian folk music, in contrast to the rest of greece uses a lot of metal instruments incorporated into otherwise recognizable music patters as a result of a late ottoman attempt to modernisation and strong slavic influences etc

    How are these songs recorded and preserved? Modern/western music didn't begin to get widespread traction in Greece until well after WW2, and specialist gathered songs, dances, traditions and folk tales from elder people and musicians in time to preserve them in collective memory. A lot of them are mostly unintelligible to the average person, being sung in mostly extinct local dialects and almost all of them exclusively speak about person, and events taking place in 18th-early 20th century settings. So we have a pretty much good idea about how this music was performed in the middle of the 20th century, if not earlier.
    Last edited by Beorn; February 09, 2020 at 07:02 AM.

  4. #4

    Default Re: How old and authentic is folk music around the world?

    Quote Originally Posted by Beorn View Post
    but the balkan bagpipe (called "tsabouna" in most places) has had this sound for millennia
    I think the first solid textual evidence of the existence of the bagpipe is Dion Chrysostomos writing at about the turn of the Second Century. Although it's probably older than that.

    This is allegedly a Hittite bagpipe:

    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
    Quote Originally Posted by Enros View Post
    You don't seem to be familiar with how the burden of proof works in when discussing social justice. It's not like science where it lies on the one making the claim. If someone claims to be oppressed, they don't have to prove it.


  5. #5
    Praeses
    Join Date
    Nov 2006
    Location
    Australia
    Posts
    8,355

    Default Re: How old and authentic is folk music around the world?

    I bet a number of individuals emptied a wineskin and made it fart, then thought "how can we do that again, but make it sound worse?". It also gives the lie to Scots nationalists claiming kilts and bagpipes as their own.

    Music belongs to the wind and I have never seen a song with a passport: at best they have temporary visas. IIRC Hava Nageila has a traditional Rumanian tune but what's Rumanian? As mentioned the Balkan traditions overlap like dropped spaghetti, and itinerant musicians (eg Jewish, Rom, Vlach) were all prominent in creation and dispersal. Likewise Rom, Jewish and North Africans in Iberia, the waves of Italian French and German music masters from the Early Modern to the 19th century, etc. and there's the complex of cultures feeding into modern popular music (eg African traditions meeting Hispanic and British and French to form Blues, Jazz etc). Jazz used to be played by black men in black brothels, now its played by white men in expensive clubs.

    I've posted about Misrlou before, and the Don Dale connection is quite illustrative. He's a US citizen of Armenian descent playing a song first recorded in Athens by Constantinopolitan Hellenes in the Smyrnan dialect performed in a Levantine mode about an Egyptian girl, so what I'm saying is it's obviously Irish and I'll fight you.

    Just going to leave this here in case some thinks I actually want to fight



    Music, like food and fashion and national stereotypes are not naturally attached to some national territory. IIRC Polydore Virgil (a papal official in Tudor England) recorded that the English were all passionate and vain, giving to public kissing and flamboyant boasfulness, as opposed to the (then current) stereotype of reserved and tasteful Italians like himself: it amusing to see the reverse image of the 20th century truisms.
    Jatte lambastes Calico Rat

  6. #6
    realIK17's Avatar Foederatus
    Join Date
    Nov 2012
    Location
    Bangalore, India
    Posts
    36

    Default Re: How old and authentic is folk music around the world?

    The only true borderless subject is math. However, Iranians still use the Eastern Arabic numerals lol.

    Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk

  7. #7
    dogukan's Avatar Praeses
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Location
    Middle freaking east
    Posts
    7,777

    Default Re: How old and authentic is folk music around the world?

    Uh hi fellow folk-lover.

    Here is a sub for you then:
    https://www.reddit.com/r/musicofneareast/
    "Therefore I am not in favour of raising any dogmatic banner. On the contrary, we must try to help the dogmatists to clarify their propositions for themselves. Thus, communism, in particular, is a dogmatic abstraction; in which connection, however, I am not thinking of some imaginary and possible communism, but actually existing communism as taught by Cabet, Dézamy, Weitling, etc. This communism is itself only a special expression of the humanistic principle, an expression which is still infected by its antithesis – the private system. Hence the abolition of private property and communism are by no means identical, and it is not accidental but inevitable that communism has seen other socialist doctrines – such as those of Fourier, Proudhon, etc. – arising to confront it because it is itself only a special, one-sided realisation of the socialist principle."
    Marx to A.Ruge

  8. #8
    Copperknickers II's Avatar quaeri, si sapis
    Citizen

    Join Date
    Mar 2008
    Location
    Scotland
    Posts
    12,647

    Default Re: How old and authentic is folk music around the world?

    Quote Originally Posted by Cyclops View Post
    I bet a number of individuals emptied a wineskin and made it fart, then thought "how can we do that again, but make it sound worse?". It also gives the lie to Scots nationalists claiming kilts and bagpipes as their own.
    The kilt is the symbolic dress of Scottish men. There are no kilts in other countries. There are similar garments perhaps, but they are not kilts. Just as there are many high quality sparkling white wines, but only the ones from the region to the East of Paris are champagne. As regards bagpipes, however, I'm happy to let the Hittites take the blame.

    Music belongs to the wind and I have never seen a song with a passport.
    Wrong. Music belongs to the person who writes it, and those who keep their memory alive by performing it. Combining and developing music into new forms is of course crucial, but we should not forget where those songs came from, or allow fleeting modern fashions to erase our past.

    Jazz used to be played by black men in black brothels, now its played by white men in expensive clubs.
    Expensive clubs which many poor black men would be barred from entering by their income or even their skin colour. That doesn't sound to me like something to celebrate. On the contrary, it's theft. Don't get me wrong - music is an idea, and as with any idea, if one person shares their idea with another person, the giver still retains it. But the key word is 'share'. When it is no longer shared, it has been stolen.

    Music, like food and fashion and national stereotypes are not naturally attached to some national territory.
    They absolutely are. Or are you telling me you'd happily pay for Russian mozzarella, Saudi vodka, Canadian cigars and Cuban maple syrup...
    A new mobile phone tower went up in a town in the USA, and the local newspaper asked a number of people what they thought of it. Some said they noticed their cellphone reception was better. Some said they noticed the tower was affecting their health.

    A local administrator was asked to comment. He nodded sagely, and said simply: "Wow. And think about how much more pronounced these effects will be once the tower is actually operational."

  9. #9
    Praeses
    Join Date
    Nov 2006
    Location
    Australia
    Posts
    8,355

    Default Re: How old and authentic is folk music around the world?

    Quote Originally Posted by Copperknickers II View Post
    The kilt is the symbolic dress of Scottish men.


    Except very few ever wore it. It was a Highland garment worn approx 1600-1800 chiefly until the "Scots Revival" of Sir Walter Scott. Incidentally until the 19th century it was seen as the costume of a thief, and the Highlanders who wore it were called Erse or Irish. EG the oldest engraving I know of shows mercenaries in kilts and the German who made it calls them Irrlanders, although they were probably what we call anachronistically Highlanders.

    Have you watched Btraveheart too often mate?


    Quote Originally Posted by Copperknickers II View Post
    There are no kilts in other countries.

    Kilt is a term that can be applied to the traditional skirts of Hittites, Egyptians etc as the meaning is clearer than terms like shendyt. Don't have my OED on hand but I will lay long odds the definition includes other non-Scots gentleman's skirts.

    Quote Originally Posted by Copperknickers II View Post
    There are similar garments perhaps, but they are not kilts.

    Words mean what people use and accept them to mean and your definition is an isolated one.

    Quote Originally Posted by Copperknickers II View Post
    Just as there are many high quality sparkling white wines, but only the ones from the region to the East of Paris are champagne.


    Kilt is originally a Scandinavian term used by people called Irish (their own term might have been Gael or their clan name) that the people calling themselves Scots set out to conquer, convert and effectively genocide through Highland clearances. If you want to talk about legal protection for specific regional products please do but the kilt has a long and convoluted history for such a young garment, its production is not reserved to a geographic region and its meaning is not what you seem to think it is.


    Quote Originally Posted by Copperknickers II View Post
    As regards bagpipes, however, I'm happy to let the Hittites take the blame.

    We are all to blame.

    Quote Originally Posted by Copperknickers II View Post
    Wrong. Music belongs to the person who writes it, and those who keep their memory alive by performing it.


    Writing is not playing. If I write the words "Beethoven's Ninth" on this page does it become mine? Music is a shifting morass of theft, influence, borrowing, homage, unconcious effect and other words for pinching.

    Quote Originally Posted by Copperknickers II View Post
    Combining and developing music into new forms is of course crucial, but we should not forget where those songs came from, or allow fleeting modern fashions to erase our past.

    You want to bag and tag the wind son.

    Quote Originally Posted by Copperknickers II View Post
    Expensive clubs which many poor black men would be barred from entering by their income or even their skin colour. That doesn't sound to me like something to celebrate. On the contrary, it's theft. Don't get me wrong - music is an idea, and as with any idea, if one person shares their idea with another person, the giver still retains it.


    Yeah IP lawyers have tried to make an industry out of that, usually in favour of Disney and Sony. In real life musicians ferment ideas in their heads and no song is ever played the same way twice.

    So we should arrest rich white men unless there's a black man in the club listening to the jazz, because if the black man is playing it and getting paid its theft? Your thesis is pretty wonky.

    Quote Originally Posted by Copperknickers II View Post
    But the key word is 'share'. When it is no longer shared, it has been stolen.

    Its only stolen if some daft twerp claims it belongs to one person.

    Quote Originally Posted by Copperknickers II View Post
    They absolutely are. Or are you telling me you'd happily pay for Russian mozzarella, Saudi vodka, Canadian cigars and Cuban maple syrup...
    I drink Japanese Australian and Scots whisky as well as real Irish whiskey. Just because the Irish "invented" (by which I mean pinched) Uisce beatha by adapting a Near eastern perfume recipe that doesn't mean Laphraoigh is some inauthentic stolen item.
    Jatte lambastes Calico Rat

  10. #10

    Default Re: How old and authentic is folk music around the world?

    Quote Originally Posted by Copperknickers II View Post
    Expensive clubs which many poor black men would be barred from entering by their income or even their skin colour. That doesn't sound to me like something to celebrate. On the contrary, it's theft. Don't get me wrong - music is an idea, and as with any idea, if one person shares their idea with another person, the giver still retains it. But the key word is 'share'. When it is no longer shared, it has been stolen.
    Lack of sharing isn't the reason there aren't so many blacks in jazz clubs. Most of the big time jazz innovators are dead, their music wasn't stolen. Early jazz was created by modifying European derived musical genres with West African derived aesthetics. European marching band music (itself heavily influenced by Ottoman military music) and the music from French quadrille dances were interpreted by mostly black and creole musicians. Although there were white musicians and band leaders before the genre was even known outside of New Orleans, like Papa Jack Laine as far back as 1885. Bebop and its derivatives, so-called modern jazz, were mostly (though far from exclusively) developed by black musicians, but the compositions they were playing were mostly drawn from Tin Pan Alley and show tunes, written by composers few of whom were black. Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart, and George Gerswhin weren't black, but no one was stealing their music by playing it in predominately black clubs in Harlem. It's not hard to make a list of non-black jazz innovators from the genre's heyday. Off the top of my head: Stan Kenton, Juan Tizol, Joe Pass, Bill Evans, Art Pepper, Stan Getz, Dave Brubeck, Buddy DeFranco, and Herb Ellis. I could also mention non-Americans like Antonio Carlos Jobim and Joao Gilberto. Which is not to say that jazz wasn't predominately a black genre initially, just that it was always culturally syncretic and multi-ethnic.

    Quote Originally Posted by Copperknickers II View Post
    They absolutely are. Or are you telling me you'd happily pay for Russian mozzarella, Saudi vodka, Canadian cigars and Cuban maple syrup...
    Well, I can say for certain that Jordanian beer is pretty terrible, like watery lager with hints of rancid malt and isopropanol.
    Quote Originally Posted by Enros View Post
    You don't seem to be familiar with how the burden of proof works in when discussing social justice. It's not like science where it lies on the one making the claim. If someone claims to be oppressed, they don't have to prove it.


  11. #11
    Copperknickers II's Avatar quaeri, si sapis
    Citizen

    Join Date
    Mar 2008
    Location
    Scotland
    Posts
    12,647

    Default Re: How old and authentic is folk music around the world?

    Quote Originally Posted by Cyclops View Post
    Except very few ever wore it. It was a Highland garment worn approx 1600-1800 chiefly until the "Scots Revival" of Sir Walter Scott.
    Yep. The lower body kilt was invented in the early Georgian period (supposedly by an Englishman living in Scotland) and the clan tartan not until the late Georgian period. It's a venerable 200-year-old tradition. But apparently 200 years isn't long enough for some people. I always ask them - if these things had happened in 1400, would the kilt be a 'legitimate tradition'? 600 years? 400 years? Where is the cutoff? Every tradition is invented by an innovative human being or group, they don't just materialise out of thin air.

    Incidentally until the 19th century it was seen as the costume of a thief, and the Highlanders who wore it were called Erse or Irish. EG the oldest engraving I know of shows mercenaries in kilts and the German who made it calls them Irrlanders, although they were probably what we call anachronistically Highlanders.
    You're trying to define Highlanders by what outsiders thought of them. Why not ask what a Highlander thought of himself? They called themselves Scots (Albannach) or Gaels, and called the Lowlanders 'Sassenach' - English. Many of the same people in Glasgow who still call me 'Irish' today because of the football team I support, bear the surnames of the Gaelic-speaking Highland clans that migrated into Glasgow. Scots are a mixed bunch - the Lowlanders of the 19th century are heavily intermingled with the Highlanders.

    Have you watched Btraveheart too often mate?
    Never watched it, and never plan on watching it.

    Kilt is originally a Scandinavian term used by people called Irish (their own term might have been Gael or their clan name) that the people calling themselves Scots set out to conquer, convert and effectively genocide through Highland clearances.
    I've already explained why this is an awful and bigoted interpretation of Scottish history, but let me reiterate - you are defining the Highlanders by their exonym and the Lowlanders by their endonym. The truth is, both groups called themselves the only 'true' Scots, and both groups held vicious antipathy for the other group and called them foreigners and traitors - this is sadly pretty normal for Scotland, still as true today as it was in the past, even if the insults have changed. Despite the unfathomable decision of some people to accept 19th century Nationalist propaganda against the Jacobites at face value, the truth is neither group was more or less Scottish than the other, and today those of us with sense celebrate both sides of our joint heritage - which is all the more joint for being connected by blood after the great mixing that was the result of the Highland clearances, which were not the fault of the average man on the street of Stirling or Ayr, but of Highland landowners, many of them Gaels themselves.

    You want to bag and tag the wind son.
    Try that one with the judge if you want to pass off someone else's writing as your own. Won't get you very far!

    I drink Japanese Australian and Scots whisky as well as real Irish whiskey. Just because the Irish "invented" (by which I mean pinched) Uisce beatha by adapting a Near eastern perfume recipe that doesn't mean Laphraoigh is some inauthentic stolen item.
    I've no problem with other people making whisky. But if the Japanese whisky industry ended up destroying the Scottish one by moving production to Asia and then started selling it back to Scots at inflated unaffordable prices, I think that would be criminal.
    A new mobile phone tower went up in a town in the USA, and the local newspaper asked a number of people what they thought of it. Some said they noticed their cellphone reception was better. Some said they noticed the tower was affecting their health.

    A local administrator was asked to comment. He nodded sagely, and said simply: "Wow. And think about how much more pronounced these effects will be once the tower is actually operational."

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •