Frank: An icon of the traditional English folk music scene, Rod Stradling, recently told me about a place in Italy that had recently redicsovered its own unique traditional music and dances. They were said to be paticular to that reginalone. A small group of dedicted people wen tin search of the old players and dancer to preserve and revive their own distinct heriatage. Rod said that they proudly played a tune learned form one such old fiddler; a tune none of them had ever heard before. they were certain that it was one of those distint tunes unique to theri area. Rod had the unfortunate task of informing them that the tune was Redwing! I don't think that they were too happy about it. Brad
Frank Nordberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote (although not in this order): . > But as Hitler got power, he used the music to fit his scheme of > "Hitlerjugend", adapted the camps, the songs, nature games, everything > to serve his purposes. Yes, it's a sad fact that the symbols of various population groups sometimes have been abused that way. There actually is a relationship between the average folk singing citizen of (insert-any-nation-here) and the full fledged fascist but it's the came kind of relationship as between the guy who drives his car carefully to work every day and the bloke who gets roaring drunk and speeds past the local childcare center at full throtle. > But until now the musical link between generations by knowing the old songs > is non-existent. I don't really agree with you there Martina. Yes, the direct, obvious link to the songs sung by previous generations may be broken but a tune is just a tune and the essence - or soul if you like - of a country's music is much deeper than that. There is no noticeable connection between German traditional music and Kraftwerk. But even so, that band is so unmistakably German it couldn't possibly have come from anywhere else in the world. > The following young generation did not want to learn any "old songs", sick > of everything smelling like "German". Slight digression: This isn't just a post war phenomena. Jazz was very popular in urban Germany long before the average American had heard of it. > And "Rock 'n Roll" WAS cool, for sure. And if it wasn't for the thriving rock'n roll scene in early 60s Hamburg, Beatles wouldn't have happened the way they did. If it wasn't for Kraftwerk, we wouldn't have had rap. (Some may argue the world would have been a little bit better that way but that's beside the point.) The thing is, a nation - or any other cultural group - doesn't build it's music from scratch. It takes some old bits - childhood memories burned into people's mind - some new bits (but not *that* much of it) and lots of "exotic" elements from far-off lands. Something old, something new, something borrowed - oh and something blue as well since sentimentality always sells. ;-) The mixture is unique to each and every culture and sub-culture but the elements it's made from aren't. Take a really close look at the mix that made up rock'n roll in the first place and try to see how many German bits there are in it. You'll be surprised. Cross cultural influences run in all directions, even the most unexpected ones. At the end of the 19th century a German traveller in Japan fell in love with a stunningly beautiful piece of traditional Japanese poetry. He translated it into German and published it back home where it became an instant hit. It took quite a while before somebody realised that what he had found was actually a Japanese translation of one of Goethe's most famous poems. A much more modern example is the U.S. anthropologists studying an isolated tribe in the deepest heart of Africa. They recorded a traditional tribal song. Oh, the music was actally genuine and unique and all that (at least as far as we know) but the lyrics turned out to be about some gentleman named James Dean... I could go on and on with such examples but I've already posted one mega size rant in this thread and althoguh I don't it's off topic to the list it's certainly close to the borders. So I'll just finish it off with a quote from Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen. When asked what idn of music he and is band was playing, he replied: "What we play is what we play - when we play it." Frank Nordberg http://www.musicaviva.com http://stores.ebay.com/Nordbergs-Music-Store?refid=store To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html --------------------------------- You rock. That's why Blockbuster's offering you one month of Blockbuster Total Access, No Cost. --
