Tom Bourgeois

This record does have some limitations. In his accompanying comments, Savall notes the survival and vitality of oral transmission in Irish and Scottish music. Yet he has chosen many of his selections for this album from published collections which themselves filtered, altered, sanitized and 'improved' the oral tradition for a bourgeois audience increasingly interested in the music of 'the people'.

Banjo virtuoso Béla Fleck has certainly broken more boundaries than any other picker in recent memory, from his early days performing bluegrass-inspired folk compositions on Rounder in the late '70s to his quirky jazz freak-outs with the Flecktones throughout the '90s. In late 2001, this peculiar innovator released an album of banjo interpretations of classical works by Bach, Chopin, and Scarlatti. Before classical purists roll their eyes, they must remember that the banjo hasn't always been seen as the instrument of choice of backwoods musicians in the Appalachian mountains, but as recently as the 1940s was used as a primary rhythm instrument in all manner of parlor music.