i posted this once before but, briefly, in a thread in the classical section of the mandolin.cafe site concerning the earliest, therefore most hip, spelling of the word "mandolin", someone contributed this:
"Personally, I'm not that much interested in this but rather the reality of the instruments as musical instruments dealing with musical matters, like making audible, intelligible and meaningful sounds." in the vernacular, the word "charango" ( this is only an example, guys, but i will talk your heads off about it if given the chance ) has several possible origins - "cheerful" and "dried tendon" among them. advocates of hip will no-doubt say that the vihuela de mano is perfectly acceptable for the playing of early music but the charango is doubtful. question is, what makes one instrument acceptable for hip and its direct descendent not? a word? some 17th cent. goat herder in peru calls his vihuela "cheerful" and renders it null and void as a valid instrument for early music? seems to me that the pillars of "hip" rest on such concerns. i'm with the perlmans and zuckermans on this one, howard. hip may be interesting but it's basically a costume ball. respectfully - (itzak, pinkus and ... ) bill
