Kaylee was one of New Zealand’s periodic ‘pop ingenues’ from our vast and booming ‘manufactured pop music’ sub-industry. She covered ‘Broken Wings’ and for about two weeks it was inescapable. Then it was gone.
I loved that track. Her voice was so damn fragile and unprofessional – almost fit to shatter in the high bits – that it communicated more than proper-singer-type Hayley Westenra ever could, no matter how much she furrowed her brow. Of course, Hayley would have been trying, whereas Kaylee couldn’t help sounding like that. I didn’t care. (Still didn’t buy the single though.)
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So we took Chuck to a Ceilidh on Saturday night. Great fun. Held in an old stone church (NB in this country, ‘old’ and ‘stone’ are redundant descriptors for a church). You pay yer money to get in the door, and push through a curtain into the darkened shell of the church, with a stage up at the altar end and tables all around the periphery. The entire bodylength of the church is the dance floor.
The bar runs all night. A band strikes up the rhythms from the front, sometimes old-time traditional, sometimes (as this time) throwing in plenty of modern-rock/pop flourishes along the way. And everyone gets out in the dancefloor and dances.
The band usually call the dance in advance, walking everyone through it, but almost all the locals know almost all the dances. They’re the traditional dances, handed down through generations. Usually you’re in sets of four or five couples, sometimes all the couples are together in one big circle. The music strikes up and you’re off, spinning and moving in and back, ducking under linked hands and through arches, whirling each other around, moving from partner to partner. It’s awesome fun and great exercise.
If you watch the men in kilts carefully, the ones who *really* know what they’re doing, you can answer the question of what they wear under the kilt. At least, that’s what Cal told me.
And to finish, of course, Auld Lang Syne, all holding hands, starting sentimental and getting progressively rowdy until it’s basically a giant folk-mosh. Then out, grinning and turning into the chill night, and away.
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Caroline/Cal is my girlfriend. Or, according to certain medical personnel, my “partner”. Just by the way.
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My last ramble produced a lot of commentary. Which is always good. I’ll try and make some sense of it here. As usual, thinking this up as I go, so I might contradict myself and be just plain wrong. All part of the fun. All of this in the full entry…
Lots of Kiwi ‘folk’/trad songs are mentioned, ‘Ten Guitars’, ‘Taumaranui on the Main Trunk Line’, ‘Now Is The Hour’. This isn’t exactly what I was getting at. While wandering I’ve tried to stick my nose into local traditional music scenes – fado in Lisbon, flamenco in Spain, ‘folk music’ here in Scotland. This is the stuff I’m talking. It is older and more resistant to change and fashion than the examples cited. And there’s an ownership of it, a widespread cultural possessiveness. It is a tangible cultural link to past times.
Svend comments “Still, I think that there’s certainly a grain of truth to Morgue’s observation; the “jigs and laments” of Irish culture seem to be much more intrinsic to Irish culture than “Ten Guitars” is to NZ culture; though perhaps that’s just because there aren’t such strong stereotypes of what NZ culture is.”
Yeah! This is exactly the point I was trying to work out – the instrinsic nature is fundamental to the kind of thing I’m thinking of. If you asked New Zealanders to identify elements of NZ culture, music wouldn’t feature very strongly, except perhaps the haka.
New Zealand doesn’t have strong ‘stereotypes’ of itself. It’s (as Pearce points out) very new. But the settlers from the UK came from strong musical traditions that haven’t become strong in New Zealand – compare to the musical lineage of South American music, with such heavy currents of Spanish and Portuguese within them. I don’t think New Zealanders have enough shared cultural consciousness that any one musical tradition could be called ‘New Zealand’s. (This is what I was getting at with “New Zealand’s European-descended pakeha seem to be largely happy to let the musical traditions of their various forefathers fade to nothing.”) It’s part of New Zealand’s nature as a hodge-podge of different cultural backgrounds that no one cultural background’s music can really be adopted by the whole.
My comment about even Aussie having a style of its own doesn’t really fit with this. I think I’m confusing some other line of thought in there. But I’ll leave it, because I reckon there’s a style of music that’s recognisably Australian.
Andrew makes several other points. He identifies the fact that ‘traditional’ music is a bit of a have, an attempt to label music into one ‘proper’ form while ignoring the fact that it is constantly changing. All I can say in response is a sheepish “I guess I’m not talking about that kind of music then”, because he knows whereof he speaks.
I think the defining characteristic of kind of music I’m talking about is that which does have a ‘proper’ form of sorts – the kind of music where continuity to the past is direct, not generational. The kind of music your grandparents listened to, and theirs before them. I have an impression that this kind of music is seen as existing in parallel to what might be called current music.
Andrew also challenges my comment in the first entry that NZ’s cultural music traditions are “bounded into particular spaces and contexts”. What I meant there was that there are only limited circumstances in which such music is found – and, what I failed to say, because I hadn’t thought it through to the end, was that those spaces and contexts aren’t set up to encourage/allow the wider participation of the NZ community. Kapa haka is continuing on a decade-long upsurge in popularity, but it very definitely belongs to a subset of the New Zealand population. I’m not looking for a hypothetical fusion of our various musical traditions (that would defeat the point) – I’m just realising that a musical connection with our shared ‘New Zealand’ cultural history is not going to happen, because such a history doesn’t exist.
And, for the same reason, traditional music in the sense I’m talking about will always be a point of division in New Zealand culture – not a point of unison.
Which all seems startlingly obvious, put like that.
(Ahhh, I can’t be bothered reading over this. I hope I haven’t been too boring. I hope, additionally, that I haven’t made a fool of myself, but that’s the old vanity talking, and I’ll just pay it no mind.)
nech, I keep turning up. Send me a bullet 🙂
Passing fast, Kaylee is spelled “K’lee” – think txt mssg cltr… and I reckon what did for her was her followup single – too much of the kitchen sink, too many This-Element-Sells elements. Manufactured artists can be great, but you can only manufacture art so far. I bet I’ll prove myself wrong in minutes, but I reckon that’s the case for K’lee.
Meanwhile, I’ll get back to folk music. Just a little quibble, I swear – this one: that the stuff yr after is “older and more resistant to change and fashion than the examples cited.” And then the alt. examples cited: I honestly wouldn’t know fado from Fabio, but I think flamenco and scotto folko are happily flexibly-disposed to change and fashion. *Living* traditions tend to change, maaaan. But yeah, I guess these seem more “resistant” parked next to the contrary examples – they can take change and fashion on board and still be what they are and not disappear; while ‘Ten Guitars’ is fashion as much as a thing resistant or unresistant to it.
Though then we head into difficult terrain: ‘folk’ etc, can also be fashion in this way – the folk revival is that, and its bearing can be measured in the way that something that wasn’t thought of as ‘folk’ was appropriated by the revival when folk was as hip as your pelvis. Kinda like Neil Young being labelled “proto-grunge” when grunge was the pelvis. (Actually, is/was Neil folk?)
Of course, the next wee bit, that “there’s an ownership of it, a widespread cultural possessiveness. It is a tangible cultural link to past times” may be Mr Nub. Part of “ownership” involves the ability to dick around with the thing you own without some building inspector coming round to bust yer ass for wiring your entire house off a single fuse. Tho the culture industry is loaded with self-appointed “building inspectors”.
As for tangible links to past times it probably says a lot that (for example) no one is entirely sure where flamenco comes from or how old it is – “the middle east” seems to be part of the answer, but I’ve heard a lot of argument about the details. But in the end I don’t think it matters. You still connect with “past times” and get that buzz, in the same way that Italians did by imagining they were descendents of Troy. Origin myths etc…. (though please nobody talk about that arsehole Jung…)
Word (or possibly kupu), the self-qualified building inspectors, who grumpily disqualify:
“That’s not punk.”
or
“That’s not jazz.”
or
“That’s not folk.”
or best of all
“That’s not music.”
That’s not a comment!
I’d like the chance to yell this in a derisive tone:
“that’s not manufactured!”
Good Lord, it’s like reading a folk music text book! Up until Svend posted with “that’s not a comment!” Go Svend!
Uhm, Well this is waht I have to add. In 1990 when we had that huge Sesqui thing, I was ten. My school had to learn this song, the chorus went:
“New Zealand, Kainga Tu-turu
It’s a part of me that no one else can o-own
New Zealand, Deep down in my heart
New Zealand it’s my country it’s my ho-ome!”
It was fully manufactured, and it was trying to worm it’s way into the New Zealand music subconcsious. Obviously, like Sesqui, it just didn’t work.
And yet… I still remember the words and it still makes me cry a little when I think of it.
Cry for the sentiment or cry for the failure?
I was inside a Sesqui Bear costume for one memorable day. Damn that was hot work.
Svend, shush. If people want to post essays then I won’t stop ’em. I’m sure David’s bandwidth can handle it…
~`morgue
And yes, I know you were making a funny… I can hear the exasperated tones in my head right now.
Wow. I wonder if you can get a Sesqui Bear suit anywhere.
dammit, I don’t *like* folk music textbooks! That’s the whole point! And now I have to listen to Linkin Park, coz nobody understands me….
In a roleplaying game I just finished running, we ended up having a Linkin Park Memorial Hospital for Children and Midgets.
Well, it was actually Lincon Park Memorial Hospital in the game, in the children’s ward, but my players are pretty much out of control. (Hi, Jenni!)
It’s always interesting to see failed attempts to insinuate something into culture. Or failed viral marketing attempts – some of those are *weird*. Like, why would you think *that* would be taken up as cool?
And I think that one of the advantages of other people’s blogs over, say, the BBS, is that Andrew *can’t* delete the post he just spent 4 hours labouring over, and so I get to read them. 🙂
Yes I can. Look below, there’s a little button marked ‘cancel’. I’m not sure what the ‘preview’ button is for: does it give simulated incredulous reactions?
Ahmed Zaoui.
Stop putting politics in my folk music!
Much learned stuff I’m not qualified to respond to in this interesting discussion. I agree there is no “folk” music in the country. But I think this is solely a reflection of our age, and I think music IS an important part of our culture. Those big bands of the 30s -40s to the “10 guitars” party singalong, haka and waiata, all your mates in pub bands, our classical and opera scene, local dub and reggae, the interest and furore around the selection of “nature” by APRA…..I think whatever survives say 100 years from now may qualify as “our” music. Poi E, Pokarekare Ana, and yes Nature all are distinctively, exclusively kiwi. Somewhere in there is our sound, we just don’t have the perspective to see it.
yeah, I agree. The only thing I disagree with in the above is the bit about “I’m not qualified…” – okay, I’m probably the one giving the impression that qualification is everything (ho ho ho) but I think the point is to stop focusing on terminology and get on with seeing what is actually there around you, and appreciating it for itself, not its success/failure at meeting a set of definitions designed for another occasion.
Man. If only I’d said that to begin with… oh, maybe not, it still sounds academic…
Folk music is political. There’s plenty of folk songs about the Irish rebellion. The folk music revival in America in the ’60s was largely political, and was inspired by Woody Guthrie’s political folk songs. Protest songs are often lumped under the “folk music” banner.
So why wouldn’t a guy who’s been unlawfully imprisoned without trial and who runs the risk of being sent off to his death for political expediency be worthy of a folk song of his very own?