----- Original Message -----
From: "Douglas Day" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, July 18, 2002 10:55 AM
Subject: Re: Virginia Roots Music
> The query about the Virginia Roots Music exhibit and municipal brass
> bands illustrates a common misunderstanding about the vague term
> "roots." We used to use the term "folk" and everybody knew that the
> term meant music in the oral tradition (which would exclude the brass
> bands, their music being all written and orchestrated in the Western
> European classical tradition), but then Pter, Paul and Mary (etc.) stole
> the term "folk" to apply to a branch of commercial popular music which
> may have been folk-derived, but was primarily college-educated
> singer-songwriters who had learned to strum a guitar or banjo. "Roots"
> is very inexact, and may sometimes include both folk and folk-derived
> non-folk music. "Vernacular" is exact but ugly-sounding.
Just as I feared. Folks that blow on things to make music don't get no respect.
But seriously, I think you would have great trouble with your definition if there were any history of Dixieland music in Virginia. That music comes from the heart, does not rely on any charts (i.e. is not written or orchestrated), and is an expression of the people. Where are the Marsellas family when we need them ?!?!?!??!?! I bet that your compatriots in Louisiana allow Zydeco (the oral tradition) and Dixieland to live together :)))
>
> Anyway, the Virginia Roots Music exhibit focuses on "non-learned"
> vernacular music, primarily in the oral or folk tradition---string-band
> music, gospel, blues, early bluegrass, worksongs, ballads, etc. The
> exclusion of the municipal bands from the exhibit should not be taken as
> a slight, or as some indication of its lack of historical interest.
> Indeed, though I am myself a folklorist by training, I am also the
> director of a local historical society that has done exhibits on the
> Charlottesville Municipal Band as well as on many other aspects of our
> community's musical heritage, folk and non-folk.
>
> I hope I haven't just muddied the waters further.
>
> D.
>
> --
> Douglas Day, M.A., Ph.D.
> Executive Director
> Albemarle County Historical Society
> The McIntire Building
> 200 Second Street, NE
> Charlottesville, Va. 22902-5245
> 434.296.1492
> fax 434.296-4576
> <avenue.org/achs>
>
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