Re: [tuning] folk musics

on 1/14/01 5:00 PM, tuning@egroups.com at tuning@egroups.com wrote:

> From: Robert C Valentine <BVAL@IIL.INTEL.COM>
> Subject: Re: folk musics (seth)

>
> This is exactly my feeling when listenning to the great rural blues players
> and singers (Lightnin Hopkins, Robert Johnson, Big Bill Broonsy) and some
> of the more gritty urban blues artists (Howlin' Wolf) compared to even the
> better of the contemporary players. The old cats didn't necessarily stay
> on a strict form, tune their instruments, agree on how much (or how little)
> swing on the eighth notes, and had systemic disagreements on what the chords
> were to certain sections (I mean systemic in that every time a certain point
> of the song comes up, the guitarist, and he alone, strums the IV chord in a
> sort of blurry polytonality).
>
> But MAN does that stuff express. Music poured out of the soul.

I love that poly chordal stuff. Also the non-metrical nature of the chord
changes. I had the good fortune a number of years ago to accompany country
bluesman John Jackson for a few sets at a festival. I was scrambling all
over the first set, trying not to get in the way while keeping up with chord
changes happening either earlier or later than the 12 bar format. By the end
of the weekend, I was recognizing the consistency of these changes, and was
noticing that they had their internal rhyme and reason in the way that they
followed and supported the lyrics. It was a great education to 'real' blues,
as opposed to a watered down, twelve bar I, IV, V version. Some of the
greatest tunes never go to the V at all, lots of songs sound really great
not bothering with the IV either.

>
> Yes. In the musics I was mentioning you certainly have many simultaneous
> definitions for the thirds and sevenths. Maybe there is a groove or swing
> for tuning as there is for rhythm.

I think this is true, and worth looking at in depth.

> I've been thinking of 'World Music' these days. I like the more traditional
> 'field recordings'. Then I was listenning to a few recordings of U.S. bar
> bands and realized that these too were 'field recordings', with the field
> being the US. [The recordings were Jimmy Rivers and the Cherokees
> which was a great Honky-Tonk swing band in Texas, Danny Gatton live at a
> bar in D.C. and Eric Dolphy live at the 5 Spot, where absolute geniuses
> are playing for about twenty drinkning patrons].

Most of my favorite world music is either field recordings, or reissues of
old 78s.

Seth
--
Seth Austen

http://www.sethausten.com
email; seth@sethausten.com

"Music is far, far older than our species. It is tens of millions of years
old, and the fact that animals as wildly divergent as whales, humans and
birds come out with similar laws for what they compose suggests to me that
there are a finite number of musical sounds that will entertain the
vertebrate brain."

Roger Payne, president of Ocean Alliance, quoted in NY Times