Talk – 2 comments
The Transmission of Tradition
Why the Twentieth Century may just be a blip in the history of cultural dissemination.
The concepts of copyright and "intellectual property" are often spoken of as if they are immutable laws of nature. We used to talk about the divine right of kings in the same way.
Irish traditional music has been spread through aural—and later, written—means for centuries. The tunes are, quite literally, in the public domain. The idea of a jig or reel having a specific composer is the exception, not the rule. The situation with popular music is exactly the opposite. One of these attitudes lends itself well to the spirit of the Web while the other finds itself in constant conflict. Which mindset offers the greater chance of transmitting and disseminating these pieces of our culture?
This talk will look at the past, present and future of transmitting traditional Irish music from the dance to the digital, punctuated with some examples of the tunes. This will serve as aa starting point for a discussion of ideas such as the public domain, copyright and the emergence of a reputation economy on the Web.
2 comments
Canada
I've another friend, a fiddler, who lives on the south shore of Prince Edward Island here in Canada. He remarked to me, after returning from a trip to the Scotland, how it seemed like eastern Canada was a sort of time capsule of old Scotish and Irish fiddling traditions: tunes and styles that were in vogue in the "old countries" one or two hundred years ago came to Canada with immigrants where they've evolved (or not) in a sort of fiddlers Galapagos Islands. When he returned to Scotland to play these old tunes, they went full circle.
weaving
I've a couple of friends in Nova Scotia who, some years ago, started to look at the "DNA" of traditional Irish and Scottish tunes for patterns that might also be found in the traditional weaving patterns. I lost touch with them before I got to hear the results of their investigations, but the concept has always intrigued me.