back to lurk mode...

Whistle
1

I think it’s time I STFU, if not actually GTFO, and I apologize to anyone I’ve offended lately with my very strongly worded (and felt) opinions. That said, nothing is going to change my absolute certainty, garnered over four-plus decades of obsession, observation, and involvement that, among other things:

  1. it isn’t the instrument, it’s the music you play on it. Building a cult around an instrument, and playing (or approving the playing of) anything on that instrument from trad to teeth-gritting atonal cacophony, is bizarre to me and smacks of teenage boys and Les Pauls sort of thing. Whistles are beautiful, but they are tools. Are you just an addendum to a tool, or is it the other way around? Don’t get it; definitely something inherent in American musical culture.

  2. anyone who fuses bits of styles from other cultures with pop or New Age sounds and instruments is committing a ghastly sin against that culture; p1$$ing on the graves of the people who built that musical culture and demonstrating a complete lack of respect for those people and their music. I tried to get involved in Hawaiian music for a time until I had it explained to me by someone in a position to know that I was playing bastardized versions of Hawaiian music, and that real Hawaiians find it offensive. I can understand that. “Music belongs to everyone” - what, because you say so? You might think of asking instead of telling.

  3. musos, whether amateur or professional who think that fusion, or bastardization, or Flavor Removal, or using trad instruments in pop forms, or adding pop instruments and stylistic elements to trad music means they are doing something “new” are buying into a definition of novelty created and disseminated by the (wholly unmusical) music industry. Evolution in art happens organically or not at all - doing something a million other musos have done in order to get noticed is not “new”. The fact that so many musos are so unself-aware that they don’t know how this inculcation into an industry-led musical doctrine has happened to them just saddens me.

It’s pretty clear that an awful lot of musos who dabble in trad need to do just one thing: get over themselves, get their egos out of the way, get over this puerile rock-star mentality. It’s not about you: it’s about what you do for other people with your music. How do you not get that?

Everything else is just a w*nk, pardon my French. And please: no follow-up comments about my blood pressure or similar snarly teenage-troll BS. We’re (hopefully) all adults here, and I have no intention of reading 'em anyway.

Take it easy, and thanks to all those who continue to provide such fantastic advice and direction regarding this wonderful instrument.

2

For real? So when Madonna had Lorne Cousins play on her world tour it was a sin against Scottish piping? Even though most of the Highland pipers who had an opinion though it was kind of cool?

What about when some unknown Highland Piper took Gioachino Rossini’s Green Hills of Tyrol, which is now one of the most commonly heard tunes on GHB? Am I sinning against Italians whenever I play it?

Musicians the world over have been borrowing (stealing) from one another since the beginning of time. It is neither American nor modern. In fact, you could say it’s traditional.

3

Well, there ya go. You’re (Michael Anderson) absolutely certain. And I’m absolutely certain you’re wrong. End of conversation.

FWIW at this point, h-p, fair point.

Thread now locked for Moderator consideration.