How folk musicians of today learn to play their instruments is an over-all question in this article. One violin lesson and one guitar lesson were observed at Framnäs folk high school. Two research questions were formulated: What do the two lessons have in common? What are their differences? Furthermore, it was discussed how the folk music education of today could be related to the Swedish fiddler movement in the 1920s and other folk music traditions. Theoretically, the interpretation of the results was based on the mimesis theory of Ricoeur. Two teachers and three students participated in the study. The results showed that the lessons were structured in a similar way and dominated by master apprenticeship teaching. The violin teacher showed a more respectful attitude towards the tradition compared to the guitar teacher. Great parts of the manifest ideology of the fiddler movement seem to have become concealed into a latent or frozen ideology in the formal folk music education of today. There seems to be no big methodological difference between learning the music by way of visiting an older fiddler hundred years ago compared to the study of music today at a formal institution.

2014-04-30