Santu De Silva wrote:

>Chris Bonds wrote:
>
>>Of the motivations of SOME practitioners of HIP.  That they are more
>>interested in being cool and in the know than in the music.  Just an
>>intuition on my part.  I could be wrong.
>
>Chris, this sounds like prejudice.  In any case, HIP folk, in general,
>would probably be just as interested in squelching this attitude among
>their numbers as anyone.  At any rate, they *should* be.  That's the
>only way for HIP to grow up.

Sure, I agree.  I guess after seeing my words cast in my teeth from more
than one contributor I will let the cat out of the bag and simply say that
some people I know personally, who claim to have some expertise in HIP,
show the rest of us their nostrils, and it's not a pretty sight.  They are
either jealous of, or toady to, the people who have reputations and are
contemptuous of most everybody else.  On top of that they are lousy
musicians.  They spend so much time parading their expertise they don't
practice.  So I guess it's not really HIP I am down on, it's certain people
I can't stand to be around.  Show me a HIP musician who listens to another
HIP musician and says "Why, yes, it could be done that way TOO," and my
level of respect goes up immediately.  When ignorance puts on airs, I check
out.  Is that prejudice? Who said I have to like everybody?

And, btw, two people have pointed out to me that what I said about HIP:
"Somewhere along the line it's what the music has to say that matters, and
HIP is only worthwhile to the extent it makes the music happen"--is true of
all styles.  Yes this is true but I think familiarity with the traditional
middle-of-road performance makes it relatively easy to spot aberrations,
affectations and eccentricities.  Not that those aren't interesting at
times--more interesting that most "standard" performances, but nobody is
saying "this is THE way to do it"--just "this is the way *I* do it." I
think HIP would do well to adopt somewhat of that stance.

Chris Bonds