The following is from a 1995 exchange between author and music journalist Jon Savage and Deep Soul/Northern Soul impresario Dave Godin:
J.S. Why do people become purist about this [black, soul]
music?
D.G. Maybe it[']s aesthetic. I find that when you get into a
passion about anything, you get into a refining process. If you were paid to
see every film… if you’re exposed to a lot of something, your taste becomes
refined. You become conscious of what you prefer, and with soul music, it is so
much more than just music. It is also part of black American history. It’s as
if some cultural thing had been developed in Grimsby, which totally reflected
Grimsby, and lived and thrived in Grimsby for two hundred years before it began
to seep out, there would always be a Grimsby authenticity, we would always be
able to tell what was just pretend.[1]
An Australian in Alice Springs once told me that Aboriginal
painters were becoming wise to the fact that visiting art buyers had absorbed
the basics of native Australian culture, and often wanted to know the story, or
"dreaming" behind an otherwise purely aesthetic dot
painting. It was suggested that, to meet this demand, stories were being mashed up,
or just invented. This was partly to encourage sales, but also to conceal from
the touristic mind the deeper content of native Australian culture.
Let's say that some of the men and women whose songs were
recorded by the great folk song collectors were also giving performances,
perhaps tempered for the visitor who was going to record their song.[2] I wonder
how the collector, dropping in for a day with notepad or tape recorder, was
able to distinguish what today's folk aficionados would like to call
"authentic" from that which was deliberately nuanced for the visitor's attention.
I was once a guest in the house of an Irish fiddle
player before, during and after the visit of a German fiddler who came to learn
some tunes. I can't make a detailed judgement of the music transmitted from musician to musician, but I remember that personas and behaviours were subtly
altered during the visit, and that some quite humorous things were said in the
house afterwards.
Typically, the process of distinguishing what's authentic
from what's not involves setting limits which reflect the rule of an interested
group. Dave Godin uses his 'Grimsby' example - in which only the insider can
make fully-informed judgements - to illustrate the importance of insider status
within musical tribes. A made-for-sale Aboriginal painting can be the authentic
work of a painter's mind, hand and eye, without necessarily being an authentic
part of what the buyer wants to think of as Aboriginal culture. A fiddler might
demonstrate some tunes for a visitor, but reveal little of the life he leads - a
life nevertheless said by the aficionado, later, to be intimately linked to the
authenticity of the music. If, twenty-five years on, I learn the tunes from the
German visitor, will I be acquiring authentic Irish folk music?
Authenticity is
questionable even at the founding level of an artistic category. It can't be
objectively established, because the preferences and arguments of an
authenticating group can be as influential as the defining forms. The category
of folk music may depend on the existence of long-established musical and
narrative forms, but it's maintained by various individuals and groups, many of
whom will set different criteria of inclusion. There can be forms and fans and arguments, but authenticity can't be settled.
[1] http://www.jonsavage.com/compilations/godin-1
[2] Many know of Cecil Sharp (re. U.K.) and Alan Lomax (re.
U.S.), but there are many more. Try
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Folk-song_collectors_by_nationality
