"But is it Folk?" - Mr Red

Why is the answer to this question so elusive? Any thread with the word "folk" is going to come to that old question stated when folk music was threatened into extinction at the turn of the twentieth century. 99.999999999% of the folk music that was ever made has been lost to us. No one named any person that lived previous to the advent of recorded music, except Gerry.

"Wouldn't at least one of the four spots have to be reserved for Anonymous" - Gerry

Gerry - I think all four spots should be reserved for Anonymous.

Stephen Foster is not named. And why not? Our conception of what folk music is has largely been formed by electronic media. And the names that were first mentioned in this thread come from a very tiny window of all folk music. And they are all English speakers.Why is John Dowland not on the list? To keep him or Thomas Morley off the list is to assume that you know what folk music was in the distant past. I say that likewise you may be displacing the folk music of the future.

The Lomaxes perceived folk music as a patchwork of genres from regions and cultural peaks. Folk Songs of North America is just that. It is a documentation of genres current at that time. Folk is not a style or genre. If you can accept Blues and Bluegrass and Country music such as Texas Swing as Folk , it is a small step to the admission of Rockabilly. I can easily replace Pete Seeger with the Everly Brothers or Chuck Berry.

The reason why people would begrudge Disco as Folk is simply intolerance. It is the music of women and gays. And an important cultural peak in the musical landscape of the world. These "folk purists" (really we should mark them as destroyers of the progressive Folk tradition) have no place for Punk because they did not like the music, the audience, the style of dress and behavior. That criteria that they want to apply in defining Folk is subjective. Since the Lomaxes accepted new styles and genres, what newer genres would the folk purists admit as folk music?

Anyone who is a faithful followers of Folk has heard singers of folk songs and folksingers break into Tin Pan Alley classics from the Cole Porter songbook at some time or other. I have no problem with someone singing an Irish tune (oh yeah, these Folk bigots have no problem if you want to admit Irish music - the same ones that had problems admitting the Blues was Folk) and then busting into Smoke on the Water by Deep Purple. Because they are both equally valid as Folk songs - if you would bother to learn what that song is actually about.

Folk Purism = Folk Bigotry

Something else at issue in defining Folk is the folk process. I think that is what is confusing things. We think of the folk process as being an oral tradition practiced in a community, focused upon work. Stephen Foster is hard to accept for some people because we know that in the 1850's there were rural communities in which folk song flourished. There were plantations where real people sang their hearts out. There were mountaineers who panned for gold and silver or cut timber for housing and miners who shipped out materials for industries.v And they sang about it. We recognize those communities of anonymous players as folk.

And that is where we get stuck in defining folk music. Because the process itself is in process and it changes. Folk music is no longer in the same process as back then. From Woody Guthrie to the Almanac Singers to the Weavers and culminating finally with Dylan, folk song became less of an oral tradition produced by communities and more of a written tradition composed by individuals. Dylan showed that you did not need the oral tradition any longer. The oral tradition was for illiterate people who seldom knew how to read and write. Because of their lack of literacy, they took several generations of songsters to refine the songs. Dylan showed that you could produce as fine or better work through a written process. You could read and write your way to better and faster songwriting. And you could do it alone. And that change of process was reject by the folk bigot. They did not realize that the process itself is in process.

In other words, the process is always changing. (If anyone wants to disagree with me on this point I am going to have to ask you to prove it. You have a community here and one that can communicate at near speed of light time. How much folk music has your community produced here together?) Most of the greatest songs today are made by loners. That is just one other way that the process has changed.

Another thing - since 99.9999999% of all folk music ever sung happened before modern recording techniques we do not have an actual record of the process. And now we do. So we can see who is in the process. But that point of view seems to throw us because we want to submerge the best artists of our day into anonymity. We want them to be as submerged as the Anonymous of the past is to us today. But I have to agree with the founding member of the Byrds, Roger McGuinn, who says that the circulation of recorded music is now in the place of the old oral tradition. So the process has simply changed and we need to alter our perception of what is acceptable. If you know how to listen to popular music you can hear an oral conversation going on between the artists. Remember when Neil Young recorded "Alabama" and "Southern Man" and the band Lynyrd Skynyrd replied with "Sweet Home Alabama?" The great conversation is still going on in recorded music today. What throws people is that these may be the minor contributors to the folk process. We you look at the folk tradition prior to recorded sound, these are the people in the process who are now lost to you. Now the whole process is laid out before you in detail and you want to say "That ain't Folk!!" Because you wrongly think of Folk as a genre rather than a collection of genres that represent cultural peaks. And genres change.

I don't think that the Folk tradition should be stuck and frozen in some tiny window of time carved out by the folk bigots and forced upon us. For them, they would be hard put to include anyone in the tradition who sang prior to the advent of the gramophone (simply because they would not be able to recognize what was folk and what was not) and they are unable to select the best artists who represent the folk of the future because the process is flowing right before their own eyes and they don't see it.

We also have to understand how community has changed. Punk was a community and a movement, just as Disco was for the Women and Gay movements. Those genres are documents of those communities. And I warn you to beware of bigots who have trouble with those communities. If they can't accept the choices of community expression, I hold them as false to the folk tradition, because the tradition is progressive.

Howlin' Wolf, Chuck Berry, The Everly Brothers and the Grateful Dead.

If that is not Folk, then nothing else can be Folk. I would rewrite the work of the Lomaxes to include Rockabilly, Soul Psychedelic, Heavy Metal, Disco, Reggae, Punk and Rap. And I am entitled to my opinion.

I have much more to say on this head, but there are moderators around here, and you may never hear from me again.