Okay, I’ve got a joke: What do you call an ITM poseur?
An ethnomusicologist.
With or without clothes on 
djm
Not even funny. Consider the number of excellent ITM musicians who are ethnomusicologists. Come to think of it, if you read the liner notes of many CDs, you’ll notice the extent to which the sources of tunes or settings are given credit. In a way, nearly every ITM musician is a historian, at least.
Tell you what, if you go back and edit your post to correct its content, then I’ll edit mine to remove the quote.
Kevin Krell
Sorry, I didn’t mean to be offensive. I really meant it more as a joke than a question, and not to be taken seriously.
Have you ever read, though, in Ciaran Carson’s Last Night’s Fun, the story of the people who would play their prized fiddle recordings on boomboxes out their windows? Sometimes people would gather around to listen, and eventually a big group would form, listening to these wonderful recordings, to the point that from the outside you couldn’t see that it wasn’t real people playing. Well once, anyway, Carson observed a young eager ethnomusicologist seeing one of these street “sessions” and putting up her microphone to record it. Somewhere exists in one of those “folk music archives” a recording of a recording.
Did you really think I was being serious? Sheesh.
I don’t think anybody thought you were being serious. You just chose the wrong audience for the joke. Jokes about activities parasitic on playing are mainly told by people who think of themselves as innovators rather than by traditionalists. Obviously, music critics get it from everybody since they have a make-or-break power that everybody resents a bit. But the traditional musician needs and respects the ethnomusicologist, just as much as the latter needs and respects the former.
Just the fact that you weren’t serious doesn’t get you off the hook. Ethnomusicologists can laugh at themselves and they do and every one is painfully aware that they will likely be the victims of a hoax at some time or another. That is funny. Your original joke wasn’t. Have you heard of Seumus Ennis, the Lomaxes or Bela Bartok for example? If not, find out. To mention poseurs in the same breath as these people won’t make you friends around here.
There are Jewish jokes that Jews laugh at and there are anti-Semitic jokes. The joke in the passage I quoted is more like the former; your original joke is more like the latter. Not as bad of course, but definitely veering in that direction. I’m sure that’s why Kevin got angry.
there are exceptions of course. case in point, a well known american itm fiddler on a trip to a northern county in ireland was playing at a session. everything was going fine until the fiddler dropped the name of an “ethnomusicologist”/huckster. an uncomfortable silence ensued. it was the fiddlers good nature and charm that warmed the local musicians again. itm will survive i’m sure, in spite of the marvelously intoxicating tripe that ethnomusicologist’s spout. what in the name of christ did they do without them?
I just thought I’d clarify for any readers of this thread:
“Ethnomusicology is the study of music in its cultural context”
I wouldn’t consider this an activity “parasitic on playing”, for instance (and I’m not sure you did, either). The ITM “experience” seems to of necessity include the cultural context. My point was that in ITM, maintaining and explaining the cultural context is often a responsbility of the players themselves, and each are, in a sense, ethnomusicologists. In a more academic and commercially useful manner, brilliant flute players Hammy Hamilton and Niall Keegan would be noted as ethnomusicologists. I was offended because I did not feel their efforts should be categorized as in the initial post. BTW, I see that that post has been edited to now indicate that it’s a joke. Why waste the edit? Why not just edit it to a blank message and we’ll pretend it never happened.
Kevin Krell
Right. I think what makes this case worrying is that the person whose memory upset the locals was probably a fraud rather than a serious ethnomusicologist. The trouble really starts when the frauds get more numerous than the genuine thing so people begin to associate the activity itself with fraudulence. But I bet if the fiddler had mentioned Seumus Ennis there wouldn’t have been that reaction.
I suppose I was just trying to point out that quite a few people here notate recordings, discuss styles, collect tunes and, in other ways, do the things ethnomusicologists do, and are neither poseurs nor frauds. Also, traditionalists who don’t have direct access to the living tradition are very dependent on this sort of thing for filling in what they can’t learn or experience directly. And even if you do have access, certain styles die out and it is nice to have a record of them and to have the stories of those who played in them.
This sort of thing is probably best done low key and always best done honestly. Perhaps anyone who has to announce that he/she is an ethnomusicologist probably isn’t. But when you think of the huge contribution of just the people I mentioned to our understanding of 20th century and earlier folk traditions, we owe a staggering amount to the people who knew what they were doing, cared enough to do it and had the tact and charm to do it well.
No I don’t. That’s why I went on to say that the activities complement eachother. The ethnomusicologist fills in for the outsider some of the missing details. But scholars also preserve and document aspects of the tradition that later players can revive so the association is very much reciprocal.
I agree with all of that.
Well, perhaps it is better to have this discussion since I bet there are plenty of people who don’t grasp the connection between the music and knowledge of the context in which it is made and who consequently don’t valure the efforts of those who put the time and effort into putting the two together.
It’s not really a big deal. The sharing of a joke on a forum of those who already take ITM seriously is not going to hurt the cause or devalue ethnomusicologists. After all, with all the Box jokes around, noone would actually want Box players to go away, well maybe some would! But the point is, it was not a serious attack or malicious remark. I thought it was kind of funny myself. Besides remember Bunting and their ilk in the old days, how many settings of tunes were butchered by those “Musicologists”?
Corin
There is nothing better for me, when a session winds down and the older ones start talking about the tunes and when they first heard them or learned them, or it’s played this way in Donegal or that way in Clare. For me it becomes living history of the music I love to play and the friends that go with it.
If in the smoke of dreams, I started at the music much, much earlier than I did, I could see myself becoming an ethnomusicologists just for the shear enjoyment of knowing where the music came from, who made it, who played and so on.
His jest via a bad joke, shows that the didn’t think it through and has no knowledge of ethnomusicology.
MarkB
I do see the point everyone makes. I too enjoy the stories of the histories of tunes. However I’d be willing to bet that the joke refers to non-specialist ethnomusicologists who aren’t neccessarily familiar with the “real world” of the music. There have been Ivory Tower types who’s examination of the music never involved going to the source. Blues would be a good example. It was some time before anyone who’d experienced it first hand and been with the artists to truly know what they were talking about. Ethnomusicologists of old rarely played the type(s) of music they were writing about. They attempted to dissect it the same way they would any other type of music, even if it didn’t conform to Western theory, they would attempt to make it fit their knowledge base. Hammy and others are more of a modern ethnomusicologist. So we’re all correct really. It’s not a black and white issue. And again, taken way too seriously. I’m not trying to start a flame war, just trying to make some points and play Devil’s Advocate.
Corin
Just thought I’d mention, I am quite familiar with the work of the great ethnomusicologists you speak of, I have listened to some of Alan Lomaxes’s recordings, I am greatly in awe of the playing of Seamus Ennis, his story-telling, and his field work. I agree with Meemtp, we are all here obviously smitten with traditional music, and none of us obviously take issue with the work of the great important intellegent enthomusicologists.
Now can’t we enjoy a silly stupid joke every once in a while without everybody acting as if I’ve just personally insulted their mother? :roll:
Hey, you leave my mother out of this!
OK, I’m done. Glad my points were taken into consideration.
Kevin Krell
I wasn’t carrying on because I wanted to beat up on you. I know you didn’t mean any harm. I was just trying to point out to you why your joke misfired. We aren’t a bunch of humourless old farts. It’s no biggie, but still seem to be shooting the messengers rather than taking the point.
I’ve had to learn the hard way—as does anyone who sometimes jokes as part of their job—that when a joke misfires, it’s never the fault of the audience. Sometimes I forget a necessary detail, sometimes my timing is bad, sometimes I misjudge my audience, sometimes I get a line slightly wrong and I end up the but of my own joke. So take it from someone who’s got into much worse trouble than you did—just think carefully how you tell a joke. If you put your foot in it, nobody will care if you mean well. It’ll save you heaps of embarrassment.
That’s “butt”, you butthead 
.
See what I mean?
Does this thread remind anyone else of the “anti-dentite” Seinfeld episode?
…I didn’t even get the joke… 