My inlaws think that my liking bluegrass makes me a fan of the
banjo so they invited me to a Banjo Jamboree at the Grand Opry
House in Galveston, TX last year and it was mostly Dixie Jazz and a
couple classical and of course a few bob wills classics. All were
tenor and for some songs half broke out in Mandolins then half of them
broke out in Mandolas. It was interesting to say the least. It made
me think of How do you keep two banjo players in time with each
other? shoot one. I was ready to use that lone bullet on myself
by the end. That was a tremendous amount of oral stimulation. I
guess being married, one could overdose on oral stimulation rather
quicker than the single folks.
Later...
On Feb 18, 5:02 pm, mistertaterbug taterbugmu...@gmail.com wrote:
Oh, and I forgot to mention, if one ingests enough collards, you will
definitely move...
Taters and Greens
On Feb 18, 4:23 pm, mistertaterbug taterbugmu...@gmail.com wrote:
Aha, now I get it. Sorry, but it's hard for me to think about more
than one thing at a time like you young college whippersnappers. So,
New Jersey was a mecca for banjo enthusiasts in the early days? Cool.
Thanks for taking up for banjo players and trying to keep the
bubbatooth syndrome in check.You've got at least one attaboy for
that. I get as much mileage out of banjo jokes as the next guy, but I
know the reality is there's a lot of very complicated music played on
banjos, and not just by classical players. I reckon if anybody could
bring respectability to banjo culture it would've been guys like
Ossman and Van Eps (Aren't Fred Van Eps' recordings supposed to have
been one of Earl Scruggs influences?). But beings this comes up, I
wonder if so much minstrel and classical banjo music came from the
northeast because of business opportunities (publishing/printing/
licensing) due to the number of people and venues closer together, or
was it due to the most prominent players of the instrument in that day
being located there, which obviously would attract more prominent
writers/players? I know that there were a number of banjo
manufacturers located in the Northeast. Why would the North feel so
compelled to write romantic musical scenes about the South, however
unrealistic? How romantic was it for the blacks and the dirt-poor
whites? I doubt it had anything to do with climate.
I do find it funny that you brought up the NJ connection considering
Hartford said one time that you gotta be Jewish and from NJ to play
oldtime music these days. I think he was kidding, but still the
reality of it may not be too far off base.
Val, where could a copy of The Secret Lives of Banjos be obtained?
And yes, I do think that 27 banjos in one place is way over the legal
limit. There's probably an ordinance against it someplace.
puhtater
On Feb 18, 12:18 pm, Val Mindel vmin...@gmail.com wrote:
Mike H, if you ever get a chance to catch The secret lives of
banjos, you should. It's a show put together by Jody Stecher and Bill
Evans and includes a great story about Arctic explorations, banjos and
penguins ... It also shows the broad reach of the instrument. They use
something Iike 27 banjos in their show and demonstrate convincingly
that the banjo has a wild and well-traveled history.
Meanwhile, for my $.02, I think we can play outside our immediate
zones, just as we listen outside those zones, given sufficient will
and passion/obsession. It's a matter of relating to the underlying
emotion. Music really is generated from just a few main themes --
love, death, god, events, work -- mixed and matched as appropriate,
and we can relate to these themes, even if the specifics (collard
greens) are foreign. Granted there is music that is outside my ken
(Chinese opera, for example), but I suspect that if I wanted to and
had a spare lifetime to mess around with it, I could tackle anything
that moved me. But being moved by it is the key. Just look at some of
our Japanese old-time musician friends who play great, with scrupulous
regard for the channels the music has come through. Of course, the
farther you are from the source, the harder it is to pick up the
nuances, rhythmic and otherwise, but I don't buy the you-gotta-have-
been-born-there notion, nor do I think the music died with some past
generation. Many young people are playing it well, with great
attention to detail and history, and not-so-young people like me are
still working at playing it, and that's a good thing, I think. But
then I've spent much of my life in zones where the frost-free date
skated to the end of June (or where other climatic realities dominate)
so I'm hardly any sort of argument for regional authenticity. best,
val
On Feb 18, 11:19 am, Mike Hoffmann mikehoffma...@gmail.com wrote:
Tater tater tater tater tate-
Your post was about ethnic groups and then there was a
