{"id":670,"date":"2012-02-01T10:50:05","date_gmt":"2012-02-01T17:50:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/normanstanfield\/?p=670"},"modified":"2012-06-04T17:54:30","modified_gmt":"2012-06-05T00:54:30","slug":"early-popular-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/normanstanfield\/2012\/02\/01\/early-popular-music\/","title":{"rendered":"Early Popular Music"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I prepare for my Popular Music course this coming spring, I see in my lecture notes that I occasionally triangulate pop music and Early Music. By \u201cEarly\u201d I don\u2019t mean the dawn of rock and roll in the \u201850s; I\u2019m referring to the popular music of decades like, for example the renaissance 1550s, the baroque 1660s or the classical\u00a0 era of the 1870s. Early Popular Music is derived from \u201ccommoners\u201d and is usually gentrified or imagined by court composers, often with instructions to play\u00a0a la pesante<\/em> (in the style of a peasant). From the 19th century onwards, music from the same demographic was called folk, a term that has endured up to the present.<\/p>\n

Before exploring this topic, perhaps one point needs to be clarified. Popular Music of the last 100 years or so has been heavily commodified, that is, created to sell\u00a0for profit, even if the songs began life as creative\u00a0inspiration. Early pop music songs, particularly ballads, were also created for\u00a0profit (like sheet music today) but the singers who bought the sheet music\u00a0never imagined that they could make a living singing the songs (unlike the entertainment industry today).\u00a0The creators of the songs were barely acknowledged, and never accrued fame by performing them, and the performances of\u00a0the songs seemed to have been motivated\u00a0only for\u00a0the sheer pleasure of\u00a0sharing\u00a0them\u00a0with near friends and relatives.\u00a0The unknown,\u00a0vast genres of\u00a0aural folk music (such as children’s games, and high day songs like\u00a0Christmas Eve wassails) and instrumental dance music,\u00a0seems to have only existed in the minds of\u00a0the performers, past and present, with no thought of creative attribution. In both cases, singing or playing\u00a0from memory ruled the day,\u00a0even when\u00a0some music\u00a0began life in printed form. The\u00a0repeated performances inevitably led to socially sanctioned\u00a0 and unattributed\u00a0variation, unencumbered by copyright.\u00a0Some would call this the heart of music authenticity. But that’s another story.<\/p>\n

Sources of Inspiration<\/h2>\n

My appreciation of Early Pop Music is not really surprising given my years as a musician in many Early Music ensembles, mostly playing flutes<\/span><\/a> from the repertoire of the French baroque (Cameron Hotteterre, A=392), the Italian baroque (Cameron Rottenburgh , A-415) and the renaissance<\/span><\/a><\/span> (Puglisi Verona, A=450). The repertoire in all these groups consisted of High Art from court and church, and Low Art from the villages and city market-places. The High Art could be sublime, but the Low Art was always rollicking good fun.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

At one particular twist in the road, I settled on a solo career. The impetus for this adventure began with a challenge presented by my friend and manager in the entertainment division of Expo 86<\/span><\/a><\/span>. The<\/span> organisation\u00a0had\u00a0commissioned me\u00a0to be an Artist-in-Residence for the entire 6 months of the fair. \u201cCould\u00a0you play\u00a0your music in a kind of virtual village context (i.e., the streets and by-ways of the fair), using theatrical conventions like costume and patter appropriate to the music-maker I was portraying?\u201d I had already experienced the rich depth of audience reaction when we Early Music musicians successfully used the concert performance model of re-enactment.<\/p>\n

I was eager to try out the same\u00a0mode of performance using the material I had gathered in my first venture into ethnomusicology – the sacred music of the Japanese shakuhachi flute. The music was originally \"\"<\/a>performed by the Komuso \u2013 peripatetic warrior-monks and occasional spies who used a flute(!) to realize their many roles and aspirations. Rather than play the music in the sterile atmosphere of a recital-hall stage, as I had done many times, or inflate the sound with reverberation and electronic pitch correction commonly heard on recordings, I would play the music live while I wandered the streets of the site as an actual komuso, complete with bee-hive hat disguise.\u00a0If you left your reality check at the gate, you\u00a0could almost imagine a\u00a0similar moment in the crowded byways of the Yoshiwara District<\/span><\/a> of old\u00a0Tokyo.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I was delighted at the success of the project. Not only did it attract the attention and wonderment of thousands of fair-goers, it teased the curiosity of the media. Much to my amazement, I even received alms, the original intent of the music, from Japanese visitors who seemed quite un-fazed by my presence. Best of all, everything I did as a komuso, and the music I performed, was authentic in every detail.<\/p>\n

“And\u00a0thereby hangs many\u00a0a tale,” perhaps for a future blog.<\/p>\n

For the\u00a0second half of the\u00a0fair, I continued to wander the streets of the Expo, but instead of a sombre Japanese monk, I was a \"\"<\/a>boisterous renaissance pipe and tabor player. My role model was Will Kemp, Shakespeare\u2019s comic \u00a0actor and his associate, Thomas Slye, seen on\u00a0the left. As you can see in the illustration, the player blows a three-hole recorder called a pipe (two Sweetheart<\/span><\/a><\/span> reproductions in G and D) with one hand while the other hand plays a drum called a tabor (Paul Williamson, small and large). And, in keeping with the tradition, I immersed myself\u00a0in the songs and dances of the\u00a0commoners of long ago, this time from the streets, theatres and public houses of the English renaissance, all drawn from sources and literature regularly used by those in Early Music. \u00a0Each day, I recreated the music accompaniment\u00a0for\u00a0Kemp\u2019s Nine Day Wonder, as he jigged his way from London to Norwich in 1600 AD. My costume, banter and music was\u00a0essentially a concert of Early Music in the round and on the run. Anybody who had more than a fleeting interest in my music\u00a0had to follow me around for 45 minutes\u00a0to hear my entire concert.<\/p>\n

Fast forward to my years as a passionate morris dancer immediately following\u00a0Expo 86. After an apprenticeship as a novice journeyman morris dancer and unusual pipe-and-tabor musician (a common sound among historical\u00a0Morris teams<\/span><\/a><\/span>, but now rather rare), I followed the team\u2019s tentative venture into group singing after practice sessions, a time-honoured custom among morris dancers in modern (and pre-modern) England. \u00a0The idea was introduced and promoted by the English ex-pats in our membership, one of the wonderful and unique features of the team. Again, rollicking songs about\u00a0seasonal pleasures\u00a0and adventurous lads filled my musical life, in addition to a host of jigs, hornpipes and reels, all drawn from “the people’s music”.<\/p>\n

Now that I am a practicing ethnomusicologist, I find myself again visiting the musical literature of commoners,\u00a0now called\u00a0the\u00a0folk. I discovered that an army of academics have devoted vast amounts of energy and creative thought to the music of western and non-western folk, especially narrative songs generally called ballads in the West. During the latter half of the nineteenth century,\u00a0some maverick academics\u00a0had given the repertoire of folk music\u00a0the same kind of\u00a0respect normally accorded to courtly songs and bourgeois lieder. The reverence for the musical art of the people was carried forward by songcatchers of the second revival who were motivated by left-wing politics and the call to grant power to the people<\/em>.\u00a0Now, when we look at the history of\u00a0Western art and folk\u00a0music, we see a divide\u00a0that began merely as a narrow\u00a0gap\u00a0in earlier centuries, only to steadily widen into the gulf that exists today.<\/p>\n

The “Top Ten” of Long Ago<\/h2>\n

Since I began teaching and researching modern-day pop music, I have come to realize that the early songs and dances of urban and rural folk that I so carefully learned in my Early Music and Morris Dance days can also be identified as the popular music or more specifically, the pop music, of those\u00a0distant times. Not \u201cpop\u201d as in the binary opposition to rock, but pop in opposition to art music.<\/p>\n

Imagine renaissance and baroque folk songs and dances driven by the enthusiastic needs of a historical youth culture in the courts and the villages, always on the look-out for new and exciting departures from the norm of a previous generation set in their ways. I am reminded of a wonderful bit of speculation I heard during an Early Music rehearsal. Apparently the pace of certain\u00a0historical dances (e.g., the minuet) slowed down over the course of their history. Why? As the people who picked up the dance in their youth began to age, their ability and enthusiasm to dance with vigour also waned. I acknowledge that the youth in historical demographics would not be nearly as omnipresent as they are today, given the modern consumer market\u2019s obsession with attracting the disposable incomes of young people. And the life expectancy in pre-modern Europe hovered around the 30 to 40 year mark, blurring the very meaning of the term \u201cyouth\u201d. But these are provisos, not rebuttals.<\/p>\n

If we apply some of the same critical theories and cultural studies towards Early Pop that have been developed by contemporary pop music scholars, we can bypass some of the hoary debates about orality versus print, rural versus urban, non-literate versus literate, vulgar versus genteel. I dare say we might even be able to apply the insights of pop music’s arch curmudgeon, Theodor Adorno<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Keeping Company<\/h2>\n

Of course, I am not the only one to re-cast \u201cfolk\u201d as \u201cpop\u201d. A hint of the accidental conflation of the two terms can be seen in the title of the first canonic set of ballads entitled The English and Scottish Popular<\/em> Ballads (1882-1898, my italics), compiled by Sir Francis Childs,. Also, William Chappell’s Popular<\/em> Music of the Olden Time (1859, ibid italics). Many modern Early Music ensembles have explored the idea of modernity in early popular music. One example that immediately springs to mind is the CD produced by the Baltimore Consort<\/span><\/a> (with Chris Norman) entitled La Rocque ‘n’ Roll – Popular Music of Renaissance France (Dorian Recordings, 1993). Then there is the entire output of the<\/span> City Waites<\/span><\/a>, founded in the early 1970s by Lucie and Roddy Skeaping. Jeremy Barlow’s <\/span><\/a><\/span>Broadside Band\u00a0in the ’80s.\u00a0There are many others<\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Early Commoner Music is explored in a marvelous, new book called Music and Society in Early Modern England<\/span><\/a>, by Christopher Marsh<\/span><\/em> (Cambridge, 2010).\u00a0 Following in the wake of social historians like Peter Burke<\/span> (Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe<\/span><\/a><\/em>: Ashgate, 1978; see Marsh, 2010: 15), Professor Marsh has presented the pre-modern English music of the people through the lens of the everyday, the everyman and everywoman. Pop Culture scholars will nod their head in recognition because\u00a0they know only too well the work of\u00a0Henri Lefebvre, the eminent sociologist of the everyday. (See his<\/span>\u00a0Critique Of Everyday Life<\/span><\/a>, <\/em>University of California Press; 3 edition 2011,\u00a0a translation of\u00a0the original\u00a0Critique de la Vie Quotidienne<\/em>, 1947\/58). Tia DeNora<\/span> (Music in Everyday Life<\/span><\/a><\/em>: Cambridge, 2000), Harris Berger and Giovanna Del Negro<\/span> (Identity and Everyday Life: Essays in the Study of Folklore<\/span><\/a>, Music and Popular Culture: Wesleyan<\/span><\/em>, 2004) and Susan Crafts et al<\/span>. (My Music: Music in Daily Life Project<\/span><\/a><\/em>: Wesleyan, 1993) have looked at the same question in the realm of today\u2019s amateur and pop music-makers. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Now the door is open to view Early Pop with the same eyes.<\/p>\n

More reading for the avidly curious<\/h2>\n

Newman, Steve (2007),\u00a0Ballad Collection, Lyric, and the Canon: The Call of the Popular from the Restoration to the New Criticism<\/em>\u00a0(University of Pennsylvania Press)<\/p>\n

Mullan, John and Christopher Reid, editors (2000), Eighteenth-Century Popular Culture: A Selection<\/em> (Oxford University Press; annotated edition)<\/p>\n

Reay, Barry (1998), Popular cultures in England, 1550-1750<\/em>\u00a0 (Longman)<\/p>\n

Harris, Tim, editor (1995), Popular Culture in England 1500-1850<\/em> (Palgrave Macmillan)<\/p>\n

Barry, Jonathan (1994),\u00a0The Middling Sort of People: Culture, Society and Politics in England<\/em> (Palgrave Macmillan)<\/p>\n

Hibbert, Christopher (1987), The English: A Social History 1066-1945<\/em> (Grafton Books)<\/p>\n

Reay, Barry, editor (1988), Popular Culture in Seventeenth-century England<\/em> (Croom Helm, 1985, reprinted Routledge)<\/p>\n

Underdown, David (1985), Revel, Riot and Rebellion: Popular Politics and Culture in England 1603-1660<\/em> (Oxford University Press)<\/p>\n

Briggs, Asa (1983), A Social History of England<\/em> (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)<\/p>\n

Malcolmson, Robert W. (1973), Popular Recreations in English Society 1700-1850<\/em> (Cambridge University Press)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I prepare for my Popular Music course this coming spring, I see in my lecture notes that I occasionally triangulate pop music and Early Music. By \u201cEarly\u201d I don\u2019t mean the dawn of rock and roll in the \u201850s; I\u2019m referring to the popular music of decades like, for example the renaissance 1550s, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6987,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[245631],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-m403j-pop-music-studies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/normanstanfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/normanstanfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/normanstanfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/normanstanfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6987"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/normanstanfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=670"}],"version-history":[{"count":96,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/normanstanfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":747,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/normanstanfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670\/revisions\/747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/normanstanfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/normanstanfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/normanstanfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}