The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #155357   Message #3656124
Posted By: Jim Carroll
02-Sep-14 - 11:15 AM
Thread Name: What makes a new song a folk song?
Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
"there is none."
Yes there is and you have it.
There is a general recognition that the '54 is in need of a revisit, but in general, it is the one that has served since it was devised 60 years go.
The points you raised may be "very" inconsistent in your mind but it only takes a few hours discussion with singers who were a part of a living tradition to realise that they are not particularly problematical.
What happens in today's folk clubs is somewhat irrelevant nowadays - there is certainly no consensus of what constitutes folk music, there is probably no interest in the subject any more.
Many club organisers use the term as a catch-all to put on what they wish to - if challenged they might put up some sort of argument such as the tiresome 'talking horse 'adage' to justify their disinterest, but that is as far as it goes.
Usually it's the somewhat irresponsible argument that the prospective punter has no right to expect anything whatever from a club, no matter what it calls itself.      
Clubs have become little more than convenient hat-pegs to hang whatever puts bums on seats.
"There you have it, the 2014 definition."
Not until you have general agreement you don't - tapping it out on your keyboard in the privacy of your own home doesn't make definitions - agreement and usage does.
Try telling some of the people here that they what they write and sing has to be influenced by and respect "the tradition of their country or area of origin" - we've already has Al's "tail wagging the dog" hissy fit.
Most of your other points are covered by '54 anyway, but you continue to miss the point.
Although folk songs tended to follow certain patterns in their creation, how they were made and how they sounded had nothing to do with them being 'folk'.
Up to comparatively recently, children were making songs from the current hit parade, or from television ads - nothing to do with "their country or their area of origin".
Travellers were re-making Country and Western songs to sing about horse fairs, or deals, or life on the road - nothing much to do with "country or area of origin" there either.   
'Folk' isn't a form or style, it''s a method of creation, general acceptance, recognition of ownership, passing on, recreation, ownership again..... and so ad infinitum.
It is when a song is absorbed into this process to one degree or another by communities as a whole, that they become folksongs - and this is very much a case of "Don't call us, we'll call you" - the decision of whether a song is 'folk' is not our decision to make.
Personally, I don't believe the mechanism that once made folk songs
still exists outside the travelling communities, though I would very much like to be proved wrong on this one.
What you propose regarding modern folk songs and tunes might well describe songs created in the folk idiom but they still remain separate entities from the real thing - and you really are going to get up the noses of Al and hiss buddies by suggesting that new songs have to follow old patterns.
Jim Carroll