Traditionalism is an ideology that regards certain past institutions as the most perfect and effective, and links them with truth. It is a modern ideology, first explicitly formulated in the political circles which, in nineteenth-century France, reacted against the ravages of the Revolution. The concrete forms to which they appealed were those of the Ancien Régime: throne and altar. Since then, traditionalism and Catholicism have been closely bound together, although tradition has been central to any anti-revolutionary conservatism. This ideology is therefore opposed to all those that affirm rupture, progress (whatever that may be), and the rest of the libertarian ideals. It is not the worldview of a traditional society, but one of the ideologies that form the counterweights of modernity. The so-called traditional societies — rural, tribal, and so on — are not traditionalist, because they have nothing to counterweigh, nor do they have any idea of tradition; they are practical societies for which conservation is an imperative of survival, but which do not hesitate to assimilate any novelty that brings improvements to their lives. Their apparent traditionalism is the false impression produced by their lower complexity and the slowness of their transformations in comparison with urban societies. Such social niches no longer exist within our capitalist democracies. Their remains have served to configure another niche, this time cornered into what we call culture — in reality, an industry that produces commodities for leisure and tourism. Our tradition is a traditionalism of folklore turned into folklorism: a commercial label that purports to refer back to a deep-rootedness, when what it really refers back to is an anachronistic construct elaborated out of the flattening of premodern ethnographic diversities. If certain customs have survived with relative dignity, not pawed over by politicians or by entrepreneurs, it is thanks to their capacity to adapt to modern technological and communicative realities — and therefore to transform themselves. In the case of trades, when they are no longer functional, they adapt under the “handmade” label to the craft market — often a luxury one — or they survive by being exhibited as museum performances. Musical practices are split between those caught in the typical and regional, subjected to a costume imposed by the “guardians of tradition” — who invent them almost as much as they guard them — and those that find some way out through a still living, transformative practice of both professionals and amateurs.
For an expansion of these ideas, see my doctoral thesis (https://raulsanz.es/archivos/raul_sanz_tesis_tradicion.pdf), in particular sections 4.2.3. Más allá del tradicionalismo y el folklorismo [Beyond Traditionalism and Folklorism] (p. 329) and 4.2.5. De la oralidad a los senderos de la práctica artística [From Orality to the Pathways of Artistic Practice] (p. 347), and to a lesser extent the headings devoted to Romanticism (2.1, p. 103) and to the traditionalist reaction (3.1.1, p. 201).