What is the sound of 21st century folk music?

This is an excerpt from a final performance of a workshop held in January 2008. The workshop explored the notion of "folk music" and what means in the contemporary sense. Full information about the workshop can be found at: http://maaheli.ee/main/archives/186

Category:

Music

Tags:

• folk
• tartu
• rahvamuusika
• workshop
• experimental
• eesti
• estonia
• improvisation

[cooparia]

This not folk music. Folk music is rooted in a tradition. Future folk maybe - but at present this is collective improvised music

[jgrzinich]

@cooparia please read the description of the project. we were not concerned so much with labels but more with formative aspects of folk tradition roots and how it might look in the context of contemporary culture. Several highly skilled folk took part in the process and found it very beneficial for their understanding of folk traditions.

[videocintas]

Just respectfully: How can this be folk music? It seems more of a contrived intellectual exercise. Also the fact that it is done at a museum makes it far more detached from being folk. Folk is spontaneous and natural to society's every day life. What is needed for real folk music to re-emerge (resurrect?) is rescue music from being a commodity exploited and abused by corporations who just create a sick "consumer-producer" relationship. Sorry for the rant, not to be taken personally.

[jgrzinich]

@videocintas -I understand... this performance was the outcome of a workshop where we asked the question of what a new form of "folk music" would look like, something that is not determined by predefined traditions, but more what came out of our activities as a temporary group of people with a simple set of "instruments". It was a very lively and fruitful time. There was nothing commercial involved and I am very thankful that the museum was open minded enough to support this kind of experiment.

[sveeta]

I think voice gave the thing a lot - and a lot of folk feeling as well.

Thank you, John!