'Cultivated' and 'non-cultivated' folk music: On music-making among traditional dance musicians in Bavaria

By orienting itself towards an academic-aesthetic sound ideal and thereby a lmost fully ignoring the musics original functions, the Bavarian folk music cultivation movement (Volksmusikpflege) has created, over the course of de cades, a totally transformed sound in contrast to the original models. In t he mid-1980s the own "Wilden im eigenen Land" (savages in ones own country) were discovered in the form of traditional village music ensembles. Such b ands were based on strong family traditions which, until recent decades, do minated in Bavarian music-making. Using the example of a meter-shifting dan ce, the author investigates, with the help of detailed transcriptions, what distinguishes such traditional groups from the newer folk music (in this c ase, particularly brass music) cultivation groups. The traditional form of music-making, with its almost forgotten vitality, must simply be judged by its own standards. This does not mean uniform ensemble playing but rather i t is the result of a unique musicality acquired over many years that each i ndividual musician brings to the ensemble.