Musical Heresy

Are The Purists Full of It?

by Tom King (c) 2011

I need to just start going to the Banjo and Flatpicker Hangouts everyday, sign up for the free banjo and then leave. I keep checking in on the forums and getting in the middle of arguments about musical orthodoxy. It seems that any discipline undertaken by human beings, whether politics, religion, science, art, sports, music or gardening, has the potential to divide into hidebound orthodoxies and cat fights among aficionados.

I'm not sure what that says about human beings - maybe that if we can't find something to fight about, we'll make up something. Every type of music there is has its snobs. Even old-time banjo music which is a rough-folksie music form if there ever was one has its purists.

To quote Rodney King (no relation), "Why can't we all just get along?".  Oh, well, I'll probably keep cruising the forums because I like the people there and there's a lot of fun to be had. And I can hardly resist puncturing the occasional purist, just to watch 'em pop!

Me, I find I like the original innovators of music rather more than the imitators. I think most people are more likely to prefer specific songs rather than specific artists. I find few artists that produce music I like 100% of the time. Two of my favorite songs are by Crash Test Dummies and Lyle Lovett, but I would not call myself a fan of either artist. I was listing favorite songs for a bio request for a profile piece that's being done on me. If was odd how few of my favorite songs were by artists that are represented by more than one CD or record in my collection.

That's one of the things I love about festivals - the opportunity to discover new songs I like. I ran across "She's In Love With the Boy" at the Kerrville Folk Festival - not by Trisha Yearwood, but by the author, Jon Ims. I liked his version better. It's more heart, less Nashville. I'm afraid if I'd pursued musicology instead of communications, I'd have been run out of the musicology business as a heretic.

I think, for instance, that Bob Dylan had some good songs in him, but wasn't the genius people gave him credit for being. Leonard Cohen's a heck of a poet, but way too full of himself to stand to listen to - which is why I'd rather hear someone else do his songs.  Earl Scruggs on the other hand is a decent, generous man and musician and it makes me smile to watch him play, especially when he's working with others. He makes them forget themselves and be better musicians. And then there's John Denver who tried so hard to be the second coming of Frank Sinatra toward the end of his career and always wound up still being a country boy and something of an innocent. His duet "Perhaps Love" with Placido Domingo was a brilliant contrast between the razor perfect, but overblown opera singer and the gentle country tenor. Willy Nelson did a duet once  with Joni Mitchell on "Cool Water" that blew me completely away. Of course, Willy always makes other singers sound better for some weird reason.

Great music is subjective - what appeals to you. I heard a two year old sing "Jesus Loves Me" once that was uttely beautiful - a combination of a perfect voice and a child's heart. I believe perfect music is, to a great extent, only what is perfect to you. What touches you, makes you laugh, cry or rejoice comes from the music, the lyrics, the time, the place, the performer and even your own experience and background. I've heard performances that "experts" told me were perfect examples of some musical discipline or other (classical, rock, big band, the blues, bluegrass and even folk). I found many of those so-called "perfect" performances to be tedious, dull or just plain irritating. At the same time, I've heard such genre twisting, heretical renditions of songs such as would send the purists screaming into the night and ran straight out to buy the record.  God bless every man, woman and child who sings or plays from the heart and doesn't give a blowfly's proboscis what the critics think.

If it weren't for such musical heretics, the world would be a poorer place indeed.

Just one man's opinion.

Tom King - Tyler, TX

Banjo Snobs

July 5, 2010 -

Snobs make me tired.

A gentleman I know on another banjo forum, recently complained that he had been 'schooled' by old-timey and bluegrass players about his unusual playing style his granddaddy used that a relation of his taught him recently.  He's getting older now and would like to teach someone else how to play this way so the style is not lost.  It's apparently the opinion of some banjo wags that the style has no value since it's not "authentic".  It uses an up pluck followed by a frail and thumb pluck variant similar to clawhammer, but with a different feel to it.

I told him he needs to find someone to teach the style to - preferably kinfolk, but at least leave someone behind who knows how to play it. There are lots of folks out there who would love to pick up a little known authentic style.  Even if it's a style that belongs to just one family, it's a valid and authentic way to play banjo.

Heck, if there's a group out in the hills of West Virginia that play the banjo with their noses while swinging naked from a tree, who's to say the style is not authentic?   If that's your style, find some kinfolk you can teach it to and tell 'em you'll leave them your banjo when you're gone - all they have to do is pick up the playing style and pass it on.

The folk purists make me tired.  They take an art form (folk music) and try to add rules as to what is correct and what is not when, in fact, any style of playing that produces interesting music is "authentic".  Bluegrass grew from a lot of traditions, plucking (if you will), the sounds from several old-time styles, adding some innovations by "folk" like Earl Scruggs and passing it along to a new generation. Really good musicians often learn a variety of styles. 

I encouraged Alex, to at least record some of his music on video and post it to Youtube so that it doesn't get lost.  He should record some "how-to" teaching videos so that anyone who wants to learn the style can look at his videos and learn to play the style.  Look how many great songs would have been lost if the Lomax brothers hadn't run around all over the countryside with a tape recorder.  "Home on the Range" for instance would never have survived to this day without them.  How many other songs and musical styles have been lost because they were never recorded.

Who cares if some tin-pot banjo tyrant says your style isn't authentic. I don't care if he is a musicologist.  There isn't a musicologist worth his salt that can know every type of music that's out there, much less tell you what style is right and what is "wrong".

If you've got a unique style or your family has their own songs or traditions, do what you can to preserve it. Get it all down on tape or video and post it in the great eternal Internet archives.  Save the videos on DVD too and get copies into the hands of as many sympathetic banjo players as possible. Make preserving your family's style of banjo playing (if they have one) your legacy to your family and to traditional banjo music.

Some of the anger that odd duck banjo players get, whether from bluegrass, clawhammer or old-time people is because some players get pretty snooty about their own "authenticity" and somehow come to regard themselves as the guardians of banjo purity.  They try to "school" bluegrass banjo players of clawhammer or old-time or independent backwoods plucky-frailers because their style is "wrong", "not authentic" (you're wearing the wrong hat while you play) or "too commercial".

When are people going to stop practicing this sad form of banjo socialism.  A Greek dictator (they called them tyrants back in those days) went to visit another dictator to find out how to keep his people in line.  The second tyrant took him into a field of corn and sent his slaves into the field with knives. The slaves cut off the heads of any stalk of corn that stuck above the others till they had mown the field to a flat uniformity.  The beauty of this method, the dictator explained, was that once the people became used to the uniformity, the "regular" stalks would start cutting the heads off the tall stalks for you - you'd no longer have to do it yourself.

When are we going to realize that the more different styles there are out there, the more banjo players there will be and the more new and innovative music you're going to hear. If we open it up to every old tradition and new-fangled innovation, we keep banjo playing from becoming an ossified, stuck in mud "art" form, hemmed in by pseudo-traditions about what we can and cannot do. Doesn't anyone hear how stupid we sound when we try to argue about what's right and wrong in banjo playing.

This is the banjo for heaven sakes. The thing started out as a string a stick and a gourd for crying out loud. The banjo's music has from the beginning been all about making it up as you go. It's the height of arrogance to get caught up in an argument over what's "right" and what's "wrong" about the way anybody plays the banjo.  It is enough that they play it and it's even more cool that they bring their own artistic sense to the playing.

Nothing kills a musical style or instrument faster than to hem it about with rigid rules about what is acceptable playing and what is not. I get just as excited about some grizzled old farmer flailing away on a ratty old fretless using a stile his granddaddy invented as I do about some so-called "authentic" old-timey band with the proper hats and shoes, or about Earl Scruggs, Bela Fleck or Roy Clark.  I even enjoy Rocky Top, Dueling Banjos and Cripple Creek. I've heard them done so many different ways I can't count and I never get tired of hearing what the next guy is going to do to them.

It's all cool.  What I say about it is simply, "Let them banjos ring!  (or plunk, twang, hammer on or roll like machine gun fire for that matter). 

I'm just sayin'.

Tom King

* We called this style "Hairgrass" - a variant of 70's hair bands only played while barefoot and wearing a tie with washtub bass, guitar, banjo and flute and gospel music.  It was early in the summer, so my hair hadn't grown out much yet, though I had a good start on my beard (I'm the banjo player).  I went to a Christian academy and we had to shave and trim during the school year.  So summers we all got hairy mostly because we could and also because it made our elders nervous.