Folkwrongica

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I got absorbed enough in this Guardian piece to miss my tube stop:

http://music.guardian.co.uk/folk/story/0,,2071468,00.html

A lot of its anecdotal material is good and I can't much disagree with the central argument (tho as they admit Tosches summarises it more neatly) but I didn't like the conclusion - even as a staunch poptimist "the inherent democracy of pop junk" is a MASSIVE handwave.

Comments

[koganbot]

As Mark says, anthonyeaston sent me and dubdobdee and Simon R a link to this review of the book. The review harps on the supposed debunking of the idea of "authenticity," which the book may do as well, but the article Tom linked to doesn't as much. Anyway, my response back to Anthony, Mark, and Simon was this, concentrating on the supposed debunkery:

Haven't read the book. Seems to be beating a dead horse, but that might be the reviewer's fault. Seems to me that my own book asks more penetrating questions than this one does, but again, the reviewer may not be presenting it well. I quite liked Elijah Wald's book about Robert Johnson, Escaping The Delta, but Wald wasn't setting out to show that Johnson's employment of artifice made him inauthentic (anyway, artifice and authenticity are not antonyms; in fact, they're not inherently related ideas) but rather that Johnson and his original audience's perception of what he was doing was very different from his later white rediscoverers' perception of it. That doesn't add up to inauthenticity; rather it's what allows Wald to point out that lines in "Me & The Devil Blues" about Johnson beating up his woman were likely considered funny in their time. (Though I also don't think one should necessarily privilege original audiences. E.g., I still think I get the Rolling Stones in a way that a lot of their original fans didn't.)

"Authentic" is a word that pretty much requires a noun for it to modify, though obviously lots of people love deploying/debunking the vague concept "authenticity." In any event, I see absolutely nothing wrong or deluded in thinking that there can be a genuine article (say "genuine critical thinking" or "real punk") and for criticizing the stuff that only pretends to critical thinking or punk.

But you guys know all that.