FOLK MUSIC
	What does this term mean? Is it just Pete Seeger and Joan Baez? (Younger readers might ask, "Pete who? Joan who?" Look them up.) Is it music without a drum kit? Is it music of the Third World? Is it diatribes or laments by singer-songwriters played in coffee houses? For this treatise it means what it says: music of the folk. That means us. In this definition, it can include any music originated _or_ adopted and adapted by members of a culture for their own musical purposes. It does not include music marketed to those cultures by large recording companies. The music marketing drive has resulted in millions of people relying on someone else's music, put on a little plastic disc, played through ear buds, for their musical needs. An effect of this is a loss of community, and since people seem to be fine with this system, and they're not forced into it, one might say there's nothing wrong with the death of community music-making. But one would be incorrect. Learning how to make music for oneself increases intelligence, and learning to do it in community improves one's social skills. In short, making music makes one a better person, and making music within a culture helps one's self-identification. We are social animals, and music is one of the main ties that bind us as tribes. In so-called primitive cultures, each group has its own music, which is different from any other group's. Here in the USA we seem to have a choice between pop, jazz, classical, rap, country, blues, heavy metal, easy listening, big band, Western swing, folk, Bluegrass, Gospel, and many other categories, but not Rhode Island or Ohio music, or New York vs San Francisco music. (Yes, Hawaiian music is a category, but it's really a primitive-culture music adapted to Western instruments, and the Hawaiians should be lauded for keeping this part of their culture alive in this way.) This is probably because this nation was settled by Europeans, displacing those who came here first, and so many of these categories will work anywhere in the country. You'll have pockets of culture in big cities where you'll find Greek or Polish music, but they don't touch the mainstream recorded material because the marketers don't think they will appeal to the majority. What the majority want to hear, according to them, is Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston, Sting and U2. But since we don't get to hear any of the other music unless we happen upon it locally or belong to one of those cultures that preserves a distinctive musical flavor, I assert that we're not given the choice by the big record companies to really know what we like. Here I am in "2003", 43 years old, and only in the past five years have I been exposed to the music of Kodo, Ondekoza, Huun-Huur-Tu, Mamady Ke•ta, Adama DramŽ and other musicians from Asia and Africa. How was I exposed? Kodo played Boston Symphony Hall, and after that I combed every record store for albums of theirs, then any Taiko drumming group, then African drumming groups. Around the same time I saw Kodo, I heard a piece on an album by the Kronos String Quartet that featured Tuvan throat singers. So I combed the record stores for Tuvan albums and eventually taught myself to sing that way, which oddly enough has greatly improved my opera singing. For the record, the companies that make most of these CDs are French, German or Japanese. You'll see Kodo much more often than Ondekoza because Sony makes Kodo albums. But Ondekoza are just as good.
	So what is American folk music? This being such a polyglot nation, it takes many forms. There is Appalachian stringband music, generally called "Old-Time" to distinguish it from Bluegrass which descended from it; there's New England stringband music, very similar to Appalachian but not called "Old-Time"; there's Bluegrass, Puerto Rican music, Afro-Cuban music; there's Blues, Polka, Mariachi, "Native" American music, and others I don't know about or don't remember at the moment- and then there's Rock 'n' Roll and Rap. These are folk music, indigenous to the Industrial World, and no less legitimate than dulcimer music from the Tennessee hills. We just don't think of it that way.
	There's also a belief that classical music is somehow better than folk music, or at least only for the upper class. This is tragic. I am classical-music trained, but I know that Hendrix and Scruggs were as good at what they did as Perlman is at the violin, and Frank Zappa was one of the best American composers who ever lived. Music is music. There should be no class distinction. Mozart is for everyone. Try listening to the death of Don Giovanni right after a U2 album. You might be surprised. But be sure to play it at full volume.
	Being in the music business I'm not trying to suggest the whole country stop buying CDs or downloading mp3s. I'm saying that you'll be a better person if you explore your own musical abilities, or if you have children, please encourage them in it. At the least you'll have a greater appreciation and respect for the great ones in this giant field of music, which is after all one of our chief means of expressing ourselves as humans. If you listen to music, you should also play or sing. Make your own folk music. It's not some museum exhibit where everything must be done the way it "always" had been done. It changes over time just like language. So when you do it, do it your way, because that keeps the music alive.
From: Adam Klein, 70242,3045
To: INTERNET:tamiswartz@earthlink.net, INTERNET:tamiswartz@earthlink.net
Date: Wed, Feb 5, 2003, 11:45 PM
RE: Part 2 of To Do List for the Website, etc.

Tami

here's some
Notice some _words_ are underlined. You can put them in underline or italics, whichever looks better and/or more noticeable in that font. By the way, did Windrow Hand font work in your system?
AK

Plainfield Curling Club
http://www.njcurling.org/
United States Curling Association
http://www.usacurl.org/
***
LEITHIAN
An Opera by Adam Klein. (c)1991 Adam Klein. Based on THE SILMARILLION by J.R.R. Tolkien, (C) 1977 George Allen & Unwin (Publishers)  Ltd. Used by permission.
Ten years before The Lord Of The Rings made it to the Silver Screen, I finished composing the music to one of the chapters in THE SILMARILLION, "Of Beren and Lœthien". I did it for myself, not for profit. I got permission to use the words, but not to mount a production, but I didn't care. I figured that was S.E.P. (somebody else's problem). I printed out the vocal score but never the orchestra score, which still languishes as a Performer sequencer file. Now with these lightning-fast machines I might get back to it. I think it's good music but the composer is the one person not qualified to judge her/his owr work.
	For the story, I urge you to buy the book, before someone makes a movie out of it. That way you'll have your own pictures in your head and not some producer's idea. For the record, I think movies made from great books rob one's imagination of the opportunity to create one's own pictures, and I think that's very sad. In my opinion the new movie series is surprisingly well done, but like the cartoon version made in the late "1970s" they've gotten Legolas all wrong. He's a Wood-elf, not a Noldorin elf. Wood-elves have dark hair. For purists like me who've read and reread the book, it's an insult. And Aragorn: I'm sorry, he just doesn't look like that. And now the publishers have plastered the movie stars' faces all over the new paperback versions, to remind us that we can't think up our own faces. Everyone should have their own personal Orc.
	Anyway, when (if) I finish the demo CD of LEITHIAN I'll put a few excerpts on this site. The nicest response I got from companies I sent the first demo to was from Lyric Opera of Chicago: "It's very impressive, but the likelihood of our producing an opera of four and a half hours in length by someone other than Wagner is pretty slim."
	"The unrecognized continue to die of striving." -Robert Ashley

GOLDIE LOCKS AND THE THREE BEARS
An opera for children by Adam Klein. (c)1994 Adam Klein.
People might not be aware that opera is very popular among children. Most large-city opera companies have school outreach programs, usually consisting of a soprano, a mezzo, a tenor and a baritone or bass plus a pianist, and they tour schools and put on little operas, often borrowing music from classical operas (Mozart is a favorite) and adapting it to stories like The Three Little Pigs. The ones that are newly composed usually have saccharin going-nowhere music that I assume the Powers that Be deem suitable for little kids to listen to. Maybe it won't scare them or something. I think these are mistakes. I grew up hearing Bach and Beethoven as well as the Beatles, and the sooner in life people hear such music the sooner they'll understand it, and they'll become smarter by just listening to it. So I set out to write a serious opera for children. The skeleton story is the familiar Goldilocks one, with some twists. The real subject of the opera is tolerance for those who are different, in this case Baby Bear, who is very smart for his years, and Goldie, who loves baseball and is better at it than most of the boys, which causes no end of ostracization. When they meet and the misunderstanding about the porridge and beds is cleared up, the beginning of a bee-you-tiful friendship is begun. Here I include Goldie Lock's aria, "Little League Cookies!" for your auditory erudition. The comments I've received from people I've show it to range from "I could never sell this in South Carolina because Mama Bear is played by the tenor" to "I had no idea the music would be so dark." To which I answer, Mama Bear is not a homosexual man, Mama Bear is a BEAR and adult bears have low voices. To think the kids wouldn't be able to make that leap of imagination is a pretty sad commentary on adults' attitudes towards children. (See LEITHIAN section about movies made from books.) The "dark music" comment is also unwarranted, because this opera won't be performed with a Steinway 9 Foot Grand, but on a Spinet or even an electronic imitation of a piano, neither of which has much bass sound at all. There were, however, some comments that I considered fair and useful; and some revisions have resulted from them. I hope you like it. If you want to produce it, contact me over email.
***
DELAYS
This is the name I use for delayed feedback-assisted improvisations, which I've been doing since about "1980". Robert Fripp is known as the pioneer of this tool, and I became aware of it through Art Scholtz with whom I played stringband music back then. In those days it was tape delay, where you string 1/4" magnetic tape between two tape decks, recording the signal using the first deck and playing it back from the second deck to the first, mixing that with the live signal. The periodicity of the repeat and the length of the tape were the only constraints. Nowadays, with Lexicon's Jam Man and similar "echo boxes" both those constraints have been removed, and I've done delays approaching four hours with on-the-fly change of the delay length. The new constraint is the recording medium's time limit. I hope with the new mp3 craze that I'll be able to make the longer delays available to the public on something other than multiple CDs or cassettes, since there should be no break in sound; but for now I can offer the best of the old ones and the one new delay I've done that was under eighty minutes. You can order CDs of any of the delays for which there are excerpts on this site, or if you're sure you'll like them sound unheard there are many others.
	Delays often are put in the category of "experimental music". I don't think that's correct for these delays. We know exactly what we're doing; we just don't know what's coming next, which is the hallmark of all improvisatory endeavors. But we know that we don't know that.
***
JUNK FOOD STORIES
	The Space Program brought us, among other things, Tang. Once in a blue moon they'd come out with some new "exciting" flavor but to this day in the USA the only one you're likely to see in the Powdered Drinks aisle of a supermarket, or in the Diet & Health Foods aisle, which is pretty funny considering how much sugar is in the stuff. (Tang shares with Wasa crackers the distinction of being among those commestibles which supermarket organizers have no consensus as to their best location. Then there's soy sauce, which I use as much as oil and vinegar but which is always in the Oriental aisle, as if only Orientals use it. Speaking of which, why is it not politically incorrect to call in Oriental food?) When I was in San Angelo, Texas, in "1992", imagine my surprise to find Mango-flavored Tang (or "Tang sabor Mango"-- it was a bilingual label) on the shelf right next to what they call "orange". I bought a jar, and it was the best artificially-flavored sugar drink I'd ever tasted. I went back to get more and they were gone! They had been put in a shopping cart with other products that they were trying to clear in a hurry. Imagine my worry that, having found this powdered ambrosia, it appeared that it had just been discontinued! I bought all 13 jars.
	Upon return to the East Coast I called the 800 number on the jar to ask about where to get it, and the young lady said they only marketed it in Hispanic neighborhoods. I said "what about Manhattan? There are plenty of Hispanics there." She said she needed a zip code from which she could give locations within a mile or two of the center of the zip code. I gave the zip code 10023, which is middle West Side Manhattan. She said there was nothing listed in that area. I gave up. Then a week later I got a letter from them listing stores in Manhattan that carried Tang Sabor Mango, including one right inside the 10023 zip code. I went and sure enough, there it was.
	A few years later I did a concert in Chihuahua, Chihuahua State, ESM (Estados Unidos MŽxicanos, which is the official name of the country, not just MŽxico. This translates as "The United States of MŽxico". This is important to know if you're crossing the border. You can't just say you're from the United States and expect to be let back in.) During our off time we visited the local market. Of course I went to the powdered drink aisle, and yes indeed there was Mango Tang there. But not only Mango, but also Lim˜n (lime), (spanish word for Apple) (apple), Jamaica (pronounced ha-My-ca)- a purple Mexican fruit, I think- and... Durazno (peach). (Oh yes, and the original flavor as well.) For my money, Durazno is even better than Mango. If anyone in MŽxico is reading this, please send me a large amount of Tang sabor Durazno, straight away.
	A year or so after that, I had a gig in El Paso, which is across the river from Ciudˆd Juˆrez, also in Chihuahua State, MŽxico. One night one of the local singers reserved a table at ÁViva MŽxico!, a restaurant with floor show in Juˆrez, in the Mexican analogue of a mall. Basically an adobe mall. There was a supermarket there, so I went to stock up on Tang, and discovered yet another, new, flavor, Mandarina (Tangerine). It's leagues better than the usual American flavor, but of course you can't get it north of the border. (I should mention that we do have another Tang flavor in the States, but it's not worth speaking about.) I noticed something else in that store: there is no Hi-C of any flavor. What seems to have happened, as in nature, is that Tang has filled the niche in Mexican markets that Hi-C had already captured in American ones- with the result that Mexicans, whatever other inferiorities there may or may not be in their standards of living, are enjoying some of the best artificially flavored powdered sugar drinks available to humankind.
	But the story doesn't end there! I was in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, after the El Paso gig, and strolling through The Real Superstore I chanced upon yet another Tang flavor unavailable south of that border: Grape. My memory holds that Grape Tang was in American stores for a while, but is no longer. With Welch's readily available, though, Grape Tang wouldn't be worth it. (I don't know if Welch's exists in Canada. Nabisco does exist there; however, in Canada it's called Christie's.)

	In Indianola, Iowa, in "1991", at a store called Pamida, I first saw a different kind of Tostitos: Lime & Chili flavor. (Be careful: this is _not_ the "Hint of Lime" chip now universally available.) This was Lime & Chili, and for a flavored salty fried food it was odd in that there were no artificial ingredients. It was the best chip I'd ever had. I came home with the empty pockets of my car stuffed with bags of it. I called _their_ 800 number to find out that they didn't market Lime & Chili Tostitos east of Chicago. "Our market surveys indicated that people in those areas didn't like them," she said. I kid you not. My girlfriend and I were in Indianapolis, just a few miles east of Chicago's latitude. I asked the local Cub Foods to buy some, which they did, and I was probably the only one who bought them. I ran into them in Dallas, Portland and Miami (which last I checked was way east of Chicago). Then a few years ago these "Hint of Lime" chips hit the shelves, and now Lime & Chili Tostitos seem to have been discontinued in favor of this chip with artificial green in it and no chili. So I write this as a eulogy to perhaps the best snack food ever made (and undermarketed) by a major coporation. The best part of it was the layer of lime and chili flavor that was deposited on your fingers while you ate the chips, which you then got to scrape off with your teeth. Mmm-mm.
	However, about the same time Lime & Chili Tostitos disappeared, I discovered Boulder Malt Vinegar and Sea Salt potato chips, which though different are as good as the Tostitos. Their distribution is peppery, though: only at health food stores and absent from many of them.
	I should mention that there is a Chili and Lime corn chip from one of the "natural" companies, available in health food stores nationwide, but it's nothing like the Tostitos variety. Too thick, not crunchy enough, and the lime flavor is odd.

	I learned from these adventures that corporations are very particular about where and how to market their products- and are often in error, and we consumers almost never hear about it.
***
FOLK MUSIC
	What does this term mean? Is it just Pete Seeger and Joan Baez? (Younger readers might ask, "Pete who? Joan who?" Look them up.) Is it music without a drum kit? Is it music of the Third World? Is it diatribes or laments by singer-songwriters played in coffee houses? For this treatise it means what it says: music of the folk. That means us. In this definition, it can include any music originated _or_ adopted and adapted by members of a culture for their own musical purposes. It does not include music marketed to those cultures by large recording companies. The music marketing drive has resulted in millions of people relying on someone else's music, put on a little plastic disc, played through ear buds, for their musical needs. An effect of this is a loss of community, and since people seem to be fine with this system, and they're not forced into it, one might say there's nothing wrong with the death of community music-making. But one would be incorrect. Learning how to make music for oneself increases intelligence, and learning to do it in community improves one's social skills. In short, making music makes one a better person, and making music within a culture helps one's self-identification. We are social animals, and music is one of the main ties that bind us as tribes. In so-called primitive cultures, each group has its own music, which is different from any other group's. Here in the USA we seem to have a choice between pop, jazz, classical, rap, country, blues, heavy metal, easy listening, big band, Western swing, folk, Bluegrass, Gospel, and many other categories, but not Rhode Island or Ohio music, or New York vs San Francisco music. (Yes, Hawaiian music is a category, but it's really a primitive-culture music adapted to Western instruments, and the Hawaiians should be lauded for keeping this part of their culture alive in this way.) This is probably because this nation was settled by Europeans, displacing those who came here first, and so many of these categories will work anywhere in the country. You'll have pockets of culture in big cities where you'll find Greek or Polish music, but they don't touch the mainstream recorded material because the marketers don't think they will appeal to the majority. What the majority want to hear, according to them, is Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston, Sting and U2. But since we don't get to hear any of the other music unless we happen upon it locally or belong to one of those cultures that preserves a distinctive musical flavor, I assert that we're not given the choice by the big record companies to really know what we like. If you've never heard koto, sitar, dunun, or igil, for example, how can you know whether you want to hear more of it? Here I am in "2003", 43 years old, and only in the past five years have I been exposed to the music of Kodo, Ondekoza, Huun-Huur-Tu, Mamady Ke•ta, Adama DramŽ and other musicians from Asia and Africa. How was I exposed? Kodo played Boston Symphony Hall, and after that I combed every record store for albums of theirs, then any Taiko drumming group, then African drumming groups. Around the same time I saw Kodo, I heard a piece on an album by the Kronos String Quartet that featured Tuvan throat singers. So I combed the record stores for Tuvan albums and eventually taught myself to sing that way, which oddly enough has greatly improved my opera singing. For the record, the companies that make most of these CDs are French, German or Japanese. You'll see Kodo much more often than Ondekoza because Sony makes Kodo albums. But Ondekoza are just as good.
	So what is American folk music? This being such a polyglot nation, it takes many forms. There is Appalachian stringband music, generally called "Old-Time" to distinguish it from Bluegrass which descended from it; there's New England stringband music, very similar to Appalachian but not called "Old-Time"; there's Bluegrass, Puerto Rican music, Afro-Cuban music; there's Blues, Polka, Mariachi, "Native" American music, and others I don't know about or don't remember at the moment- and then there's Rock 'n' Roll and Rap. These are folk music, indigenous to the Industrial World, and no less legitimate than dulcimer music from the Tennessee hills. We just don't think of it that way.
	There's also a belief that classical music is somehow better than folk music, or at least only for the upper class. This is tragic. I am classical-music trained, but I know that Hendrix and Scruggs were as good at what they did as Perlman is at the violin, and Frank Zappa was one of the best American composers who ever lived. Music is music. There should be no class distinction. Mozart is for everyone. Try listening to the death of Don Giovanni right after a U2 album. You might be surprised. But be sure to play it at full volume.
	In terms of the quality of music from genre to genre, I repeat that music is music, opine that there's a range from great to awful in each field, and offer the following: I hear that in Country Music at least, the record label executives take recordings of many new songs and play them for what I'll call focus groups. They then ask these groups to rank the songs in order of appeal. Then they throw out the songs deemed worst by the majority, _but_they_also_throw_out_ the ones deemed _best_, and only put on CD the ones in the middle. In other words, the music industry, at least in one sector, gives the public the mediocre selection from which to choose their own favorites. I don't know why they do it that way. I have this first hand from someone who knows people in that business. Think about what songs you're _not_ hearing next time you listen to a Top Forty radio station.
	Being in the music business I'm not trying to suggest the whole country stop buying CDs or downloading mp3s. I'm saying that you'll be a better person if you explore your own musical abilities, or if you have children, please encourage them in it. At the least you'll have a greater appreciation and respect for the great ones in this giant field of music, which is after all one of our chief means of expressing ourselves as humans. If you listen to music, you should also play or sing. Make your own folk music. It's not some museum exhibit where everything must be done the way it "always" had been done. It changes over time just like language. So when you do it, do it your way, because that keeps the music alive.