Thanks for the encouragement and comments which to some extent lessen my fear of retribution, which, I am bound to add, I firmly believe in.
However, it is not quite as Wombat put it ’ soul’ that causes me to hesitate, but something more concrete. I can only begin to explain what I mean by describing the creative process in non-Irtrad terms.
So if I hear a great Blues man or OT Banjoist the precise things which make the performance outstanding are nearly always the style, the spirit, and or the person themselves. What makes us want to duplicate, in this case, is usually the effect of that genius. Take for example the rock era and find one, with the exception of Jimmy Hendrix, who today is still respected for anything other than being a copyist. Indeed the lives of these people often bear witness - at least to me- what may follow from stealing from the dead. Divine retribution? maybe. Does the same apply to Itrad? Yes I think so.
Dubhlinn’s very incisive comment is indeed apt only if he read me right, but I don’t think he did. Yes the best form of flattery is ‘imitation’, but here I am talking something far far deeper and IMHO evil to the same extent, i.e. like unto murder in its finality and rape in its cruelty, to wit stealing from a dead person by enacting their being through some means or other - almost as if their soul may be material for the time it takes the thief to play the piece AND no other, but not giving the dead person the credit, lying as well Put another way it is as if we took the poetry of some great poet and called it our own.
Emmline, yes you have the general idea but this - when eventually you come on it, is something far deeper, and for that reason will make the hair
on your head to stand up! It’s another world so to speak from ‘mere’ aping note for note. If you play Violin and do a little classical training with a Maestro esp. one who is so severe that one’s own music is intoxicating and the only way to end it is to stop. I don’t know if you get what I am driving at here but it is a much deeper level of being alltogether from the usual conscious reflective evaluating state.
Of all comments Peter you sorta aimed well, but skidded off target. Yes everybody begins to learn folk music by imitating series of events and things that they call tunes; but this is NOT merely learning tunes, this is more complex and the only near thing I could use for an example that would help put the point over to you, is acting, but acting so well that there is no reality of the being of the person except that portrayed by a genius actor.
All in all, besides discussing the unique quality of genius itself, I should begin with the notion common among the visual arts which asserts that sometimes the image IS the reality and the original is the fiction. This is not so strange when you consider we often do examine reality and complain about its imperfections when compared to some ideal entity.
A great example of which, is the teenager who is foolishly bought an object of great immaturity such as a sports car. Very soon the spoilt monster must have ‘go-faster’ wheels, stop-quicker brake lights and so on. Like the whinging baby one thing leads to another till in the end the final stupidity is the only thing left.
Genius in opposition often and more commonly takes the simple and passes just that on to us. It isn’t that Dali was a great painter, he wasn’t, but he expressed something we could not! It isn’t that Coleman was a great Violinist, he wasn’t, rather it was/is that he often created simple but very original musical art which we treasure, and which Coleman rarely if ever repeated; it is as if, Coleman was aiming at some perfection and these little cameos are a by product of his being.
My point is that those who copy don’t get it, they use a few cameos and call that genius taking the reward as it may come but not suspecting the higher or deeper process that is there, and so missing it altogether. As Peter rightly says B Casey was a fine fiddler in his own (self) right, and did not need to ape Coleman as he did, but he did and that’s the crux of it. In fact he did this so well that he otherwise sounds average, his own music aiming again at the cameos not the deeper being which you still hear in the playing of the great genius of our times.
Perhaps we are talking about how far to take the process of copying, perhaps some take it that far that they begin to live the life itself of dead genius. For example, the Elvis impersonators who try to do everything as Elvis did. If so, then truly art becomes mere craft.
