Picking around a campfire is perhaps the MOST authentic way to learn a folk song! Beer or moonshine, take your pick.Enjoyable, too! That's the folk process by definition, so "authentic" can only mean "did folk ever play it this way" and since we who play it are all folk (if we allow the trained professionals among us to be considered folk) then if we are playing it that way, it's authentic. Who is to say which one is the authentic version.įunny thing about "authentic" folk music is that by its very nature, it was constantly changed by the folk who passed it around. Same goes for Stagger Lee (Stack O Lee)-many different versions. In fact Kassie Jones (at least the one I learned is in open G) and the other in standard. If you listen to Casey Jones by Mississippi John Hurt and then to Kassie Jones by Furry Lewis (essentially the same song) the guitar parts are totally different. I am more familiar with guitar so I will use an example from that. They are adapted for whoever's own style. I think this is pretty common and hard to say what the "authentic" version of old tunes really is. Last edited by journeybear Jun-15-2009 at 9:08am.Īnd lastly - I do wish they'd taken the time to find a midi sound that resembled a mandolin.
That may be part of the problem - if you're recording a song, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to do it the same way it has been done before - unless your intent is to record for posterity the One True Authentic Version - and again, how is that determined?Īnd lastly - I do wish they'd taken the time to find a midi sound that resembled a mandolin.
I do see that some of these are transcribed versions of specific performances, as displayed at the bottom of the page of that particular tab. I suppose it would help at jams too, so that I don't sound like some rock 'n' roller pretending he knows something about bluegrass. My purpose in using the Mandozine tab offerings is to learn some of the well-known classics so that when Fearless Leader of the annual Cajun/bluegrass/country band wants me to play an instrumental so she can rest her voice for a few minutes, I can play something that sounds like a) I know what I'm doing b) other people recognize c) sounds right. That implies everyone either learned it or remembered it differently. As those who participated in the "Whiskey Before Breakfast Challenge" qv may recall, each version was different. Granted, this is an aftereffect of the oral tradition, but I wonder sometimes if there could be some way of determining a commonly agreed-upon standard. And the versions of "Soldier's Joy" are all over the map.
The other side of that coin, though, is how do you tell which version is the true authentic version? You know, the one which if you play it at a trad gathering you won't get run out on a rail tarred and feathered by an angry mob thrusting pitchforks and branding irons shouting "'Tain't the way it goes! Don't come back till ye larn it right!"įor instance, the four versions of "Whiskey Before Breakfast" are pretty close, but still different. It's pretty impressive - lots of tunes have different versions so you can pick the one you like. So I downloaded the program, and started poking around through their library.
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