Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. Bards familiar with my input within this discussion thread know that I am not one to shy away from controversy. You have my permission to call me “fool” and to ignore this post. That said, there is a recurring, annoying conceit which creeps into the SCA bardic community: The idea that only content which can be traced to period documentation should be used. While I am willing to live within this constraint for A&S competitions and when on “Enchanted Ground”, within the arena of performing, holding “period documentation” as an absolute standard is a flawed idea. This is not an attack on individuals within the SCA bardic community. This is a challenge to an SCA sacred cow which is a worthy concept but NOT a worthy absolute. I have great appreciation for the SCA bardic community … both for their insights expressed within this discussion forum … and for their individual abilities as performers. If my art were textiles, adherence to period documented techniques would make sense. The same would be true if I were a jeweler, metal smith, armorer, tailor, or tent maker. So, why is it flawed within the bardic community? Period documentation was produced within the small population of individuals with the ability to read and write (mostly monks and priests). There are no physical artifacts to provide another avenue of “documentation”. Maybe half of the bardic documentation related to church matters (including liturgy and music). The secular portion was produced for the benefit of patrons … for specific individuals within the 1 percent. If I were a modern story teller / performer, this would be roughly equivalent to limiting me to stories pertaining to Sunday school or to People Magazine … and to hymns and to songs from the top 100 billboard … While I will happily tell stories about my Queen, Mary Stuart, or my King, James VI, I prefer to celebrate the 99 percent (the ploughman, the farmer’s daughter, the butcher, the shepherd’s wife, the miller, the milk maid …). My art comes from the village tavern … from the everyday events of everyday people. With a few exceptions, such as Geoffrey Chaucers Canterbury Tales, such folk elements are remarkably absent from period documentation … and there lies the rub. The “documentation” community holds that by adhering to what is documented, we more faithfully produce a medieval experience. While this is true in many SCA arts, it is decidedly not true within the folk traditions, whether stories or songs. For the most part, the folk traditions of the common people were not documented until the 18th and 19th centuries (I find it amusing that some “documentation” bigots embrace the Child Ballads (which were published between 1857 and 1898)). I would have more latitude if my persona were Italian. Progressive ideas, including celebrating the folk traditions of the common people, first occurred in Italy in the 15th century. But, I am a Scot, and similar documentation within Scotland didn’t occur until the 18th century. My daughter and her husband quit a dance guild because the dance mistress unilaterally decided they could only dance documented period dances … which excluded almost everything except Italian dances. This was fine for the dance mistress, who had an Italian persona, but frustrated my daughter and son-in-law (1) because their personas’ Scottish dances were excluded for lack of period documentation, and (2) physical limitations prevented them from performing many of the Italian dance moves. Unless, as a bardic community, we wish to limit our performances to liturgical content and to celebrating the lives of the 1 percent … I advocate granting bards slack regarding “period”.
Posted on: Fri, 07 Nov 2014 23:56:39 +0000
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