7 tips for classical violinists to unlock their inner fiddler
Colin Jacobsen from string quartet Brooklyn Rider has some advice for classically trained approaches to folk traditions
Sadly, like many languages and species of animals around the world, many folk traditions around the world are being lost to urbanisation, modernisation, globalisation, etc. The flip side is that those same forces have allowed more of us to know more about a greater diversity of folk music than at any other time.
Obviously, the problem with saying ‘folk’ as a general concept is that it is an impossibly large umbrella to describe a world with as many variations in style as there are languages, dialects and specific accents within languages. So for the purposes of this article, I will generalise ‘folk’ music in this context to mostly refer to Celtic and North American fiddling traditions, though some of these things I feel are applicable to things as diverse as Chinese or Persian folk music, the music of the Roma people, etc.
Here are the 7 tips for classical violinists to unlock their inner fiddler…..