Phoebe, my 2021 Collings MT mandolin
Dolly, my 2021 Ibanez M522 mandolin
Louise, my 193x SS Maxwell mandolin
Fiona, My 2021 GSM guitar-bodied octave resonator mandolin
Charlotte, my 2016 Eastman MDO 305 octave mandolin
And Giuliana, my 2002 Hans Schuster 505 violin, Nehenehe, my 2021 Aklot concert ukulele,
Annie, my 2022 Guild M-140 guitar, Joni, my 1963 Harmony 1215 Archtone archtop guitar,
Yoko, my ca. 1963 Yamaha Dynamic No.15 guitar, and Rich, my 1959 husband.
Well I was thinking more of an earlier era of mandolin popularity, when there were all those mandolin orchestras all over the country.
Mandolin seemed to be quite the fad, for a number of years.
It wasn't just limited to only classical stuff, either. The written mandolin scores of that era would seem to indicate that mandolins played a variety of music, including some dance music in the styles of dance that were popular at the time.
For an interesting insight into earlier mandolin popularity, there's this quote from MandolinCafe NewsFetcher, also discussed here:
"August 5, 1890, Lawrence, Kansas newspaper reports "late night trashy mandolin music" being played in the downtown park."
It almost had to be popular first, before it could become trashy, right?
None of us have any focus to stay on track. Mandolin players just wander around, and around, and around.
I think the problem might be that few other than drummers understand drum solos, as few (even among Highland pipers) understand pibroch ('Classical music of the Highland bagpipe'). It seems like the astute drummer seasons his/her solo with stuff the rest of mankind knows to clap at, like trick stuff, tunes, or accelerating to blinding speed. And who can blame them? There's nothing worse than silence after your best break, unless it's furious applause after a bad one
It depends on the audience and the genre of music. Non-players in the genre of music I play -- Irish and Scottish trad -- don't give a fig about what your mandolin looks like.
More importantly, the other musicians in this genre don't care either. There is no "Irish mandolin," aside from what others might occasionally say here. I have never been kicked out of an Irish or Scottish trad session for playing my F-style "bluegrass" mandolin. The only thing the fiddlers, pipers, box players, and others care about is whether whether you can keep up with the group tempo and know the tunes. Play a flat-top, an A-style old Gibson or a modern F-style, it doesn't matter. What matters is how good you can play it.
I find that refreshing, compared to some of the instrument-specific focus in Bluegrass. Not that there's anything wrong with it in that genre, given the history. It's just a different musical world.
It's like that in the Classical world too, as I understand it. There is a historical tradition for bowlback mandolins, but players like Mike Marshall and Chris Thile haven't been drummed out of Classical music for playing outstanding Classical mandolin music on archtop F-style mandolins.
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