Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: GUEST
Date: 27 Mar 11 - 01:53 PM

' his songs of uxoricide which aren't really too different from Brian's masterful essaying of The Demon Lover'

Brian, what can I say ....no offence mate? A serious artist like yourself would not wish to be confused with a silly sod like myself, I can understand that.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 27 Mar 11 - 01:53 PM

Actually come to think of it, Al was late on the Saturday night in the New Boston & Brian was first thing Sunday morning in The Mount - but 9 hours sounds about right...

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 27 Mar 11 - 01:41 PM

That distinction is siginificant to me, even if it's hard to pin down, let alone define. I feel the difference is sufficient to justify giving them a different name -

I agree, but we can bypass the 1954 definition to say what that difference is can't we? It's a musicological thing - all about style, idiom & musical preference. In one breath the same singer might be singing Seeds of Love, in the next My Way...

Talking of which, and what Al said about being different to Brian.. They are indeed certainly different but on same day I witnessed both hold audiences spellbound a mere 50 yards and 9 hours apart; not the same audience I grant you, nor yet the same venue, but people were still talking about both performances the following year. That's the diversity of Folk - it's big enough to include Big Al having an otherwise civilised audience rolling in aisles with his songs of uxoricide which aren't really too different from Brian's masterful essaying of The Demon Lover, though of course no one was laughing.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: GUEST,Alan Whittle
Date: 27 Mar 11 - 01:05 PM

My imagination, did I not see you in the new city songster one time. Anyway I used to read your record reviews and think - wish i could write like that. You used to write for fred Woods magazine - didn't you. I always had you down as a bit george melly-ish in your approach.

You tell me - do you not write verse..... I always think of you as a recognised wit!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 27 Mar 11 - 12:04 PM

By my "urbane creations", Al, do you mean the Bogle & Bellamy, e.g.? I do no sort of 'creations' of my own, lacking the 'creative' gene to my great regret. Most I have ever managed is a good tune for Unhappy Bella ~~ which maybe I shall put on my u-tube channel some time, at that.

~M~

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: GUEST,Alan Whittle
Date: 27 Mar 11 - 11:40 AM

Well its nice to be included, but even I can see that I'm not doing the same stuff as Brian.

I'd like to think that some of my best stuff has a foot in the same camp as Mike's urbane creations - though obviously not his traditional stuff,

where we probably differ is that I think the debt all three of us owe to the 1960's songwriters - Tom Paxton, Bob Dylan, Donovan etc. is very great indeed. Ewan MacColl and his generation may have started the folk club business. But the the factor that spread it to every corner of this island, and captured the public imagination was the songwriters. I think it changed the meaning of the words folk music in common parlance and usage.

I occasionally mess about with pre-1965 folkmusic, but its not engaged me creatively like songwriting has. Most floorsingers can do a better job on traditional material than i can.

But do I belong to the folk movement? I believe so.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: Howard Jones
Date: 27 Mar 11 - 09:37 AM

The 1954 definition was intended for use by academics, to set out parameters for academic study. It was never intended to define what should be sung in folk clubs, or in which display rack to find albums in record shops.

Also, language has moved on and "folk" has a much broader meaning than it did in 1954. Nevertheless I still find it useful, if only as a guideline rather than a strict "definition" of a particular type of music.

I see a difference between, for example, "The Outlandish Knight" or "Seeds of Love" being sung by an old man in a pub and "My Way" being sung by an old man in a pub - even when its the same old man and the same pub. That distinction is siginificant to me, even if it's hard to pin down, let alone define. I feel the difference is sufficient to justify giving them a different name - whether that's "folk" or "traditional". Of course it's equally possible to see them both as part of the same thing - the two views aren't exclusive. I just don't think it's helpful to conflate "My Way", or jazz, or opera, into "folk" simply because they may be performed in a certain environment.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: GUEST,Alan Whittle
Date: 27 Mar 11 - 07:47 AM

I was speaking as an ex-schoolteacher who found it a difficult trick to pull off.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 27 Mar 11 - 07:36 AM

So... Not so much a dreary axiom as a truism, which is just as dreary.

So is the Folk Music of Yugoslavia mispackaged as Folk? To me Ethnic music would be a more suitable term; ethnomusicological documents, which is one approach to such things that wouldn't be appropriate to a Gary and Vera Aspey album, where Folk fits like a glove. Now that the IFMC are the ICTM then that fits, to a point. We might draw a line in the sand between Folk and Traditional Music - i.e. the Music of Revival and the music of Tradition - though the majority of Folkies I talk to don't think there's a difference, they think they're part of The Tradition, which seems a tad conceited to me, especially when the vast majority of the songs they sing aren't what we might think of as Traditional Folk Songs.

Even in singing TFSs I'm not carrying on a Tradition, I'm just singing Traditional Folk Songs which are products of a Tradition, just as any song is. I recently started a blog about this called An Oblique Parallax of English Speaking Folk Song which features examples of me performing TFSs in a way that would have me linched if I did it in a Folk Club but which comes vbery natural to my creative sense as an experimental / free improvising musician.

Another dilema you see, because as much as I love this stuff, I can't swallow the Folk Faith; all I see is genre, idiom, mastery and continuity, same as with all musical styles. Folk is just another umbrella for various stles of music which must include Big Al Whittle as much as it does Brian Peters or Michael Grosvenor Myer or...

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 27 Mar 11 - 06:35 AM

Hmmm - in which, however so less pithy the 1954 Definition must be ironic too then. From what I gather from a post some years ago from the sainted Jean Ritchie, Maud Kapeles sense of humour was either similarly sharp, or else entirely absent with respect of her inner volkish demons! Thus might we raise visions of esteemed Folklorists chastising the May-revelling villagers of Padstow for not doing it right...

Anyway - no one's answered what Bert Lloyd's Folk Music of Yugslavia has in common with Gary & Vera Aspey's From the North (or whatever it was) other than 1) They're both on Topic Records and 2) Neither of them were played by horses.

*

Getting back to something Brian said earlier...

1. The 'Folk Process' is demonstrable. Take a look at Bronson.

2. Nobody's believed in 'collective composition' for decades.

Was is The Folk Process if it isn't collective composition?

*

Getting back to something Al said earlier...

and i say good for him - its a good trick

We might nurture the light of wonder in kids eyes without subjecting them to bullshit & ruining our more all too fragile heritage in the process. Kids have a natural wonder anyway, I hate to see this exploited by those with a specious agenda as is the case with that Green Man story.

*

Off topic, I've just noticed an advert for Watermaster (Uniquely Versatile Dredging indeed) in the space below the Submit Message button. Check it out at http://www.watermaster.fi/ where you might access a promotional video, PDF Presentation and Newsletter promoting the miracle of Backhoe dredging, suction dredging and pile driving capabilities in ONE machine. Right on! We live in the age of miracles and no mistake. Is this another aspect of Mudcat's new Folklore Collection remit I wonder?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 27 Mar 11 - 06:10 AM

"Irony of Horse Definition" ···

Dreary rather than ironic IMO ~ "a dreary axiom" was Bert Lloyd's summary. Still, I suppose Satch, an intelligent man & wonderful musician, meant it ironically. But the trouble with irony is when people less intelligent than the perpetrator will take it at face value. Think of Warren Mitchell's story, when he was Alf Garnett in Till Death Us Do Part, telling of how he was always meeting people who thanked him for "having a go at the wogs", and replying "No, can't you see it's you I'm having a go at!" ~ but they still didn't get it. So would Armstrong have said it with all that :irony: if he had realised the misuse to which so many fools would put it, I wonder? (If it was Armstrong - also attribd to Broonzy). & what would he have said if taken up in such terms as "So is Swan Lake a folk dance then; I never saw a horse do 32 fouettés?"

~M~

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 27 Mar 11 - 05:20 AM

I don't know if Ra and Rah explore that and to be able to say anything more I'll give an example from ballet,

Start here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uRnvMwD6jM

Play loud; rejoice.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 27 Mar 11 - 05:10 AM

Folkus suibhneastrayus

Thing is, if Folkies want to abide by the 1954 Definition, if they find it helpful to do so, then that makes sense as long as they remain aware that all music can be defined similarly, bar none. Whilst this does not make all music Folk Music, it does mean that all music (and all human action, creative or otherwise) is rooted in what went before it (ad infitum) and is the consequence of cultural process, adaptation, change and continuity. A song - any song - is sung as a unique event in space and time, mutable according to a myriad factors which are themselves dependent on the occasion and the history of the community to which the singer belongs. That said, the impression I get from Sharps seminal encounter is that John England was singing his Seeds of Love alone as he went about his business; viridis digitus.

Folk might be seen a long running Fad integral to the 20th Century Zeitgeist. Whilst it speaks of Change, it is a reactive consequence to the modern era of Hyper Change, a seeking for the comforts of an imaginary unchanging past, bucolic, cultural, personal, traditional, and always perceived as beneficial to the believer. Maybe this is why Folk engenders the AOR / MOR safety zones and Mudcatters still fear rap music which is fair enough - we are mostly talking of an ageing demographic here: I myself will be fifty in August this year and can still count myself amongst the youngest in the room (and on the forum).

One can't become a Folkie without taking on a small amount (at least) of the academic mantle. Who doesn't love the enduring & erudite posts of the late Malcolm Douglas? Or else revel in the nitty gritty of hand-on research occaisionally detailed by the likes of Brian Peters and Jim Carroll et al? I know I do. As a lover & singer of Traditional Folk Song I'm seduced into the exploration of Source and Provenance espite being aware the shortcomings of Folk as a methodology. Thus I might question the usefulness of the 1954 Definition as a tool, and be wary of it as an article of a very particular (and at times very orthodox) faith, which is, I suppose, only natural too.

The very nature of the Folk Revival is, ironically, compounded by its own Folklore as objectvity remains as elusive as ever it was, much less any clear idea as to nature of the beast itself. Part science, part religion, part ritual cult, where the beautifully ironic inclusivity of The Horse Definition is routinely sneered by those who feel they are somehow In the Know. In its place we have the 1954 Definition, which basically tells us the samething as The Horse Definition, although to the Faithful, it's telling them just how different their music is from other musics. All music is different; all music is the same; all music is Traditional; all music is Human; all Humans are Folks; all human music is the consequence of community...

These days, with respect of What is Folk? then we can draw a few lines in the sand and feel quite safe therein, although nothing exists in isolation. It never did either as a look at the repertoirs of the Traditional Singers will reveal.

[Exhibit A: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sn2UTXDIDCA]

My own feeling is that anything sung by Folkies is, by default, Folk Music, especially if done so in the name of Folk in a Designated Folk Context. This is the stuff of Folklore - places, rites, rituals and occasions. Like - what happens on Cooper's Hill the rest of the year? And those bars and hotel lounges that are stuffed to Folk Overflow during festival time - what becomes of them? Folk is thus both Mutuable and Repetitious; it is the concensus of a community who by their very impermanance are perhaps forced into a more ordered conservatism than most (though I would argue that they're not alone in this). Maybe this is why a recording of the Spinners doing Whip Jamboree from 1964 sounds little different from how you might hear it done (with gusto) in any one of a thousand Folk Clubs today. Tradition? or ritual? Either way, you'll find me at the bar.

This then, is the essense of Folkus suibhneastrayus, it is that of the Godless Theologian who nevertheless believes unreservedly in Human Divinity and the Kiplingesque dictum of The People, Lord, Thy People in respect of an all inclusive music (bar none) which might never be defined to the satisfaction of all BUT we all know it when we hear it which I suppose is the main thing.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: Will Fly
Date: 27 Mar 11 - 04:58 AM

Jazz is an interesting music in many ways.

As a common-or-garden jobbing player in (say) a mainstream band, you're expected to know - depending on the style, of course - a large number of tunes ("standards") which form the repertoire. And, for ones that you don't know, you're expected to be sufficiently au fait with the form and harmonic conventions to be able to pick something up instantly. However, although the repertoire may be well-known, even conventional, every single performance of every single tune - if you're doing your job right - is different. Different improvisational lines from soloists, melodic links being picked up and tossed around between soloists, 'head' arrangements (group arrangements emerging spontaneously) are all the essence of jazz. And it's very easy to fall back back on repetition from performance to performance which makes some bands sound tired and old.

As for the roots of the music, the early churches were in New Orleans, Kansas City, St. Louis and Chicago, and one of the fascinations of the music is watching - over the years - the enthusiasms and counter-enthusiasms, the assertions and counter-assertions about the rightness and direction of the music. For the Ken Colyers of the jazz world, New Orleans was the shrine and the old-style bands weaving their continuous lines around the melodies were the gospel. Any deviation from that was heresy and that music, in its turn was scorned by the modernists, who called the traditionalists "moldy figs". And so on, and so backwards...

All this, of course, is a world removed from the individual geniuses quoted by Suibhne - Sun Ra, Kirk, Coltrane, Davis, Bailey, etc. - who were in a galaxy of their own, love them or not.

Whatever the standard, whatever the style, the enduring fascination, for me, about jazz is that it's a 'traditional' music which - to be worthy of its name - has to be different every time it's played.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: DMcG
Date: 27 Mar 11 - 04:11 AM

The rootedness of Jazz even at its most exteme is even more of an issue than it is in Folk. Just check on the work of Sun Ra and Rahsaan Roland Kirk

Thanks for the suggestion: I will certainly do so. However, there is a distinction between rootedness of the genre in terms of techniques and conventions and rootedness of the individual piece. As I freely admit I know nothing about jazz, I don't know if Ra and Rah explore that and to be able to say anything more I'll give an example from ballet, where I know a touch more. "The Nutcracker" is a critical work for most companies. On a recent BBC programme the English National Ballet said it accounted for about one third of their entire box office takings for the whole year, for example. So you have various options. The Royal Ballet have got a version that has been around for many decades and, within the limits of cast changes, costs, scenary decay, etc, they produce essentially the same version every year (it does gradually alter, nevertheless.) Other companies, such as ENB, Northern Ballet, Matthew Bourne's Adventures etc, try to get their market share by doing something less predictable. Even so, all these alternatives are 'true to' the classical ballet conventions and the story.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: GUEST,999
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 09:52 PM

This is the best discussion of the 1954 definition I have ever read, here or anyplace else. I used to disparage the Brit view, but since, I have come to appreciate the standpoint of those who hold to that definition. I'm a Canadian, and the history of my culture is likely rough around the edges for a folk who have a remembered-past that precedes all we have in this country, and that includes the Viking ships sunk near Channel Port aux Basque about 1000 years ago.

The British Isles (no offense meant to those who recognize Erse or Welsh as their mother tongue) had to deal with the government of William the Bastard (aka the Conquerer and the First) lived through the Romans, Vikings, French and Margaret Thatcher. Such cannot be said of others.

That in itself pretty much ensures that longevity isn't the problem. But looking at some threads and taking them to heart, I do see the change that takes place in song when left to the devices of common folk--which I perceive us all to be. Personally, the song that came first is the starting point for all that follows--good, bad or indifferent. Losing that starting point makes us penurious despite our protestations that that isn't so.

I love this thread.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 07:31 PM

the impression I get is that jazz seeks to have an original performance every time, so to that extent it eschews the inheritance component of the 1954 definition as far as practical.

The rootedness of Jazz even at its most exteme is even more of an issue than it is in Folk. Just check on the work of Sun Ra and Rahsaan Roland Kirk - two guys renowned for exploring the outer limits but both Ra and Rah were forever banging on about inheritance as the crucial factor of the music, Miles likewise - check the autobiography, where the inheritance component is celebrated almost as a sacred ancestral lineage. Rah did this most explicitly in pieces like The Seeker, whilst Ra would regularly eshew his outer-space raps to school the audience on musical inheritance and continuity.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: GUEST,Alan Whittle
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 01:19 PM

Brilliant! Folkus Whittleus!

My Uncle Ernie ( a keen trade unionist and lifelong devotee of Harold Wilson) used to say, 'When the barricades go up! Then you find out who's on your side!'

I don't think I'm too fussy who is in my species.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 01:09 PM

Guest,SteveT, I find your premise appealing, but inevitably the same conflicts would arise between the same splitters and lumpers, just as among biologists. And there's no genomics to save us, here...

We tune because we care... we argue because we care...

~ Becky in Tucson

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: GUEST,glueman
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 12:21 PM

Whoever said we need more threads like this - I agree. At least they have therapeutic value and people can get opinions off their chest.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: GUEST,SteveT
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 10:00 AM

The suggestion that the 1954 definition attributes a Darwinian evolution to folk music (DMcG 26 Mar 11 - 04:14 AM) got me thinking. Perhaps to extend the analogies further one should apply a Linnaean binomial classification to "folk". If I have my science right, the genus is an inclusive group but the species is an exclusive group. This means that the generic taxon looks for any similarities that may be shared and "things" get added to the group if they share enough common attributes. The specific taxon is exclusive and works by excluding "things" on the basis that they have something different from any other specific taxon.
Linnaeus decided that using local names (in our case English) for classification would not work because these meant different things to different people so he chose Latin, as a "dead" language, where word meanings did not change. Thus you have terms like "viridis" which was applied instead of "green" (e.g. Hydra viridis). As time progressed descriptive specific names were replaced by latinised versions of the person who first discovered/described that species (e.g. Spartina townsendii). {Apologies - I can't get the computer to do italics}

Thus all music could be generically "folk" but when you get to the specific bit you throw out the kinds of music/song that are not the same into separate taxa and then name accordingly. Your own version/species of music/song within the genus "Folk" can only join another "species" in that genus if all who are already in that species agree that it does not have anything different from their own versions; if they don't all agree you stay in your own species.
You could be "Folkus lloydii" or "Folkus donovaniensis" or even "Folkus suibhneastrayus" or "Folkus whittleus" (not an attack on these contributors' views, just names chosen for illustrative purposes of two here who seem to have fairly strong and clear views).

This classification system should keep everyone happy – if you want to you can be the only one in a species but if you want to join with a pre-existing species of folk music you would, by definition, agree with the others in that species. On the other hand, that might end the discussions and then where would Mudcat be?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 09:22 AM

Though far from perfect, the 1954 definition as a rule-of-thumb has worked for me for coming up to 40 years as a collector and researcher, and as a listener, 20 years longer than that as a guide to knowing which tins to open (no longer the case, sadly).
It is in much need of updating and improving with all the information that has been gleaned over the last half century plus, but as the only alternative on offer appears to be the abandoning of all definitions - tearing all the labels off all the tins - the original will probably see out my remaining days comfortably.
Suggesting '54' is a 'rule' is little more than tilting at self-constructed straw men; it never was, nor was it intended to be; a rule-of-thumb, no more.
As the fat geezer with the cigar once said about capitalism, "by no means perfect, but it'll do till something better comes along."
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: GUEST,Alan Whittle
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 08:42 AM

About 20 years ago, I did a guitar class in Sutton. As a climax to the course, about thirty of us turned up at a folk club and played all our two chord songs. Jambalaya, Skip to my lOU, sINGING IN THE rAIN, The manchester Rambler. Within 6 months some of my ex-pupil;s were running the club. A couple of them became pro musicians. It was one of the most successful clubs in Nottinghamshire and I suspect it still continues in some form and at some unknown venue - Maybe the The Staff of Life, for about 20 years, it was at the Royal Forresters. Hundreds of musicians, hundreds of songs - some of them folk - hundreds of singers getting a start... starting other clubs.

Not really folk though, eh...? Not in the 1954 sense.

Dear Suibhne.

I'm sorry i couldn't agree less. Theres this bloke saying he can light the excitement in the eyes of children with tales about a Green man, and i say good for him - its a good trick. Theres plenty of time later to learn that dinosaurs never really did chase cavemen. And if they're too dumb to understand that, its not going to impact greatly on their lives.

Also look at the wasteland by Eliot - where the legend of arthur and the Holy Grail gets mixed up with The Fisher King and God knows what else.

It remains a wonderful metaphor the knight coming to the stricken wasteland, for Eliot coming to England where Noyes AND LIONEL jOHNSON were writing English as a dead language and he came and reconnected us with our own poetic sensibility and its connection with street language.

And robin Hood and little John turn up for a guest appearance in the Hal and Tow song. If there were no mystery, we would miss out on the revelations that mysticism can bring us.

al

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: Smedley
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 06:12 AM

I love these threads!!

(And this one mentioned Sutton-in-Ashfield - surely one of England's grottiest towns! But I never knew it had a folk history.)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: Will Fly
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 05:52 AM

Suibhne - I had a look at the Green Man blog you mentioned. Very interesting. Your comments in it are quite right, in my view. The Cartmel Green Man story was initially presented in such a way as to appear to be a real legend, and it was only with the challenges posed in your replies that the OP admitted to mucking about with the story with the excuse of making it more colourful.

Nothing wrong with that - but only if he'd prefaced his tale with that time-honoured phrase "Once upon a time..." - the distinguishing point between the passing on of a legend and the telling of a fictional tale.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: DMcG
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 05:47 AM

Oops, the Guest above was me. Sorry about that.

I can't really comment much on jazz, as it is not something I've been very involved in, except to say jazz was one of the genres I had in mind when I said "by no means all" have an authorative version. But again, speaking as a complete ignoramus on the subject, the impression I get is that jazz seeks to have an original performance every time, so to that extent it eschews the inheritance component of the 1954 definition as far as practical.

The musical theatre one is certainly an area I hadn't considered before, but I suspect there is still the authorative version, even if it is rarely performed. I'm thinking of the "I've got a Little List" song in the Mikado, for example, which has been updated with topical references from the outset so the original is probably almost never performed and in a weird way it would be less authentic to do so.

I suppose the concept I have in mind is best expressed diagrammatically. Some genres have a central core - the authorative version - and all around it are performances, which are versions in their own right, so can be used as further versions. However, the overall structure is of a 'dense bush' with lots of branches off the centre and nothing more than a few steps from the central core.   The 1954 definition has a thin, treelike structure, with comparatively few branches off the root, then branches off branches off branches off branches ...

And of course, reality is such that examples of everything in between can be found as well!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: Will Fly
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 05:43 AM

You get an extended version of this chopping and cutting in seasonal and local pantomimes. I was recently MD for "The Pompeii Panto" - written by a professional writer called Jim Sperinck - and the script was littered with directions such as "insert local shop" - "insert local town" throughout. Which happened and, on the night, the players inserted off-the-cuff jokes about people in the audience whom they knew - forgot lines and had hilarious impromptu dialogues with the prompt lady, etc.

Great fun.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 05:39 AM

Even so, the written composition of Chopin or whoever has an authorative status of a kind that is not present in the 1954 definition

The beauty is that there will always be new interpretations whilst not a note of what Chopin wrote will change. Even so Chopin was part of a Tradition nevertheless and his pieces can be used for effective Improvisation, or just exploring their subtle nuances. The other beauty is that not everything in any given tradition has to change - if it changes fine, if it doesn't then that's fine too. The important thing is that it was the result of the change and mutability inherent in any musical tradition.

I mean, who's going to mess wityh Teo Macero's definitive edits of Miles Davis that comprise Bitches Brew?

*

I know a violist who has one beautiful old violin; when he plays classical stuff on it it is a violin, when he plays Folk on it, it is a fiddle; same instrument, but it becomes different depending.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 05:25 AM

To continue th etheme ...

As someone who has hung around theatre of all types, 'Broadway Musicals' are often rehashed, songs dropped or new ones written, verses added in midrun, and if there are any nonsinging dance routines, they are chopped around mercilessly. Also local topical references are often worked in for each new town in a run.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 05:09 AM

Yes, suibhane, each performance of a classical work reinterprets the concerto (or whatever) afresh and in, say, ballets, it becomes the convention to omit or reorder certain movements. Even so, the written composition of Chopin or whoever has an authorative status of a kind that is not present in the 1954 definition

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 05:00 AM

Where this definition is strikingly different to many (but by no means all) other genres that is that the concept of an 'authorative version' is apparently deliberately omitted.

I can't think of any music in which there is an authorative version of anything; each classical piece is interpreted afresh with each performance and the mutabity of Pop Songs is part of the fun. Every recording I've got of Purcell's 3 Parts Upon a Ground in D is very different as to be unrecognisable from any other. And as for Jazz...

Anyway; must go...

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 04:49 AM

It's all online for you to enjoy!

http://thecompanyofthegreenman.wordpress.com/2009/01/07/the-legend-of-cartmel-priory/

First you get the modified story, then my objections to it...

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: GUEST,Alan Whittle
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 04:45 AM

a fantasy green man grafted on to a local legend - done for nefarious reasons......

Okay, let's roll with it. What would be possible outcome of this heinous behaviour......? and which cur would stoop so low?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 04:15 AM

to fudge things to produce a 'saleable product' aimed at a 'researched market'.

Hmmm - I don't see the Folk Scene as being any different to be honest. Besides, I may not have been of the right gender to have ridden the Folkloric wave of the Bay City Rollers (though I knew plenty who were and the experience was real enough) BUT in all honesty my life would be the poorer is if wasn't for The Monkees. How could I live in a world without Last Train to Clarksville or the the supelative guitar playing of Mike Nesmith?

All music is manufactured, otherwise there would be any music; those hoary old Broadsheets to which we owe our precious Oral Tradition didn't grow on trees, just as I'm sure even the most subversive singer/songwriter has researched their market pretty thoroughly!

The more I learn about the Good Old Daze the more I'm glad I was born in 1961...

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: DMcG
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 04:14 AM

Compare and contrast the 1954 definition with the key factors needed for Darwinian evolution i.e. inheritance (the 'child' is like the 'parent'); variation (not identical to parent); and selection.   It is so similar that to me the author must have had Darwinism in mind, which would not be surprising given how widespread the idea was. Where this definition is strikingly different to many (but by no means all) other genres that is that the concept of an 'authorative version' is apparently deliberately omitted.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 26 Mar 11 - 03:57 AM

who pretends he knows what peasants of all nationalities of 200 years ago wanted to do with their music

All I'm saying is that whatever their intentions were, Paul you can bet your socks they did it as a Community.

Sweeney's attitudes are silly and destructive

Only to the Folk Fundamentalist to whom I grant they might seem a tad iconoclastic, but then again I despise the class-ridden bourgeois paternalism that rests at it's heart & feel its in need of serious revision. Otherwise Folk is as Folk does, which in my experience is very broad & wonderful church indeed despite my own niggling obsessions which are only part of it too.

viz his views about the immutability of the words

I'm a liguistic pragmatist, all words / grammer are mutable according to the underlying (Chomskian) notion of universal grammar which will out regardless. Mutability is all. Just look at how the word Community is used in the 1954 Definition and how it's used by Mudcat in respect of my seach engine: Traditional Music and Folklore Collection and Community. Now feed that back into the 1954 Definition and see what happens; and now do the same for all musical Communities, virtual and otherwise...

while allowing himself the latitude to make up the tune; just a refection of the fact that ballad collecors forgot to note the tunes)

Or maybe the tunes weren't there in the first place? But when I come across a ballad without a tune I might find one that fits (common practise) and in rare cases make one up myself in the Traditional Idiom (or even improvise one if I'm drunk enough). Ray Fisher set Willie's Lady to Son Ar Chistr; we sing it to something that came from a field recording of Swedish fiddle music. But hey, just because all music has ROOTS doesn't mean it's duty bound to sow seeds. Like anuy human activity, it's both Traditional as well as being an end in itself - very often a dead end too, unlike Ray's setting which is pretty much the norm these days. I set The Birth of Robin Hood to a melody from Adam de la Halle's Play of Robin and Marion which does the job too. Mutable you see; I'm not precious about these things though I might occasionally surprise even myself with my tenacious purism, which comes out in other ways too, like when people start grafting fantasy Green Men onto local legends to suit their own nefarious ends, rather than tending a frail tradition which is perhaps something a little different. The tunes I use for Lucy Wan and Long Lankin are my own too, at least they came about on my wee Kemence which does things like that from time to time, but whatever I do I'm always up front about both it & my methods for what its worth.

Anyway - off to Tyneside today, so won't be back in the Mudcat Community until tomorrow. Play nicely now, won't you?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 25 Mar 11 - 09:03 PM

To understand "Folk Music" let us think of the modern - and which came into existence ironically AFTER 1954 - 'industry' called 'The Music Industry' - an industry devoted primarily to making money for the shareholders of the industry companies, and sod the 'artists'.

Indeed, the 'faux-artists' promoted by the industry no longer need any 'music talent', because we can, as in the rest of modern capitalist society, subcontract that out to 'session musos', 'drum machines' or use gadgets such as 'autotune' to fudge things to produce a 'saleable product' aimed at a 'researched market'.

And if you think I'm making this up, remember 'The Chipmunks" LP records and the furore over certain groups such as The Monkees, and The Bay City Rollers, etc, accused of merely being font man puppets for studio musos? And once a 'performer' had to sing and dance at the same time, without amplification? And you have heard the fuss about Pop Idols who mime?

Current "Folk Music" in contrast claims abhorrence at such 'cheap tricks' and pretends to want to get back to 'The Good Old Daze' ...

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: GUEST,Paul Burke
Date: 25 Mar 11 - 08:39 PM

Nigel:

It's impossible to say without a pint between us. Sweeney's attitudes are silly and destructive ( viz his views about the immutability of the words, while allowing himself the latitude to make up the tune; just a refection of the fact that ballad collecors forgot to note the tunes)

It's not nastiness; it's surgery.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 25 Mar 11 - 08:31 PM

Paul Burke, why the random nastiness?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: GUEST,Alan Whittle
Date: 25 Mar 11 - 08:10 PM

Oh Paul, i'd love an irish soubriquet! One with long brown hair, like the girl in the come to ireland advert. Drinking whisky with her, all night by the fireside....just like in the advert.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: GUEST,Paul Burke
Date: 25 Mar 11 - 07:41 PM

2011 definition of poser: Englishman with an Irish soubriquet who pretends he knows what peasants of all nationalities of 200 years ago wanted to do with their music.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 25 Mar 11 - 07:21 PM

I think the ostensive definition works.

Q: What is Folk?
A: That is! (points at the mountain range comprised the sorts of music played, pondered over, discussed and enjoyed by fRoots readers, Mudcatters and Folkies the world o'er)

My Folk as Flotsam idea was an attempt at this in a way.

Q: What is Folk?
A: What is played in a Designated Folk Context by Designated Folkies.

In other words not all music is Folk, but all music can be Folk. I think that's the essense of The 1954 Definition when applied to the current Folk Scene all its wondrous diversity, though the actual musdicological criteria is pretty occult!

*

Here's a one with respect of Folk Arts & Folklore - is football folklore? If not, why not? What about Mountaineering and Tennis? What about flower arranging and gardening?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: Bill D
Date: 25 Mar 11 - 06:25 PM

folk? Why, that's easy! Whatever Dick Greenhaus & Susan of DT put in the database! ☺


(actually, that is one way to get an ostensive definition (pointing at numerous examples which we DO agree on)... as opposed to an "intensional" definition.( specifying all the properties required to come to that definition)

I MUCH prefer ostensive....

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 25 Mar 11 - 05:48 PM

Oh dear, Al ~~ Godwin's Law......!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 25 Mar 11 - 05:40 PM

I still like Anna Russell's definition of folksong: "The uncouth verbal utterances of the people"

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: GUEST,glueman
Date: 25 Mar 11 - 05:39 PM

"And Gg's obfuscations"

None intended Herr Bridge, I was simply pointing out that I have no idea what a word like community means in the C21st. The village community? The seafaring community? The black community? The gay community with boystown and high energy spreading its memes across the airwaves in 1978?
Not obfustication, simply a desire to take language back from Humpty Dumpty's no more or less than whatever he fancies it to mean. Repeat for 'creative', 'form' et al.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 25 Mar 11 - 04:42 PM

We've been out enjoying the sunshine today so I've rather lost the track of this one....

-Popular music. Music that a lot of people like.

Popular as in People; Child called his ballads Popular.

1. The 'Folk Process' is demonstrable. Take a look at Bronson.

Indeed, but what is the Folk Process? Is it random? Deliberate? Or the consequence of the fluidity in which the old songs existed in their Natural Habitat? According to Mudcat it seemds to be the sum total of bad memories and mondegreens.

4. All the evidence suggests that singing in communities of a hundred and more years ago was very widespread and not restricted to 'specialised individuals'.

All music occurs in communities; today, yesterday, or 40,000 years ago. Name the genre and there'll be a community of people doing it, and within that community some who are more dedicated / specialised / gifted than others and respected accordingly.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: The Sandman
Date: 25 Mar 11 - 04:31 PM

ah.. but now, its who you are in with,.
never mind some of us keep on gigging in folk clubs in the not so fashionable parts of london, still turning out decent nights, and we have got used to being ignored by the folk mafia.If I might quote the words of Tiny Tim , god bless us every one

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: GUEST,Alan Whittle
Date: 25 Mar 11 - 03:38 PM

Well i don't think I've ever impugned anyones right to do whatever folkmusic they like. Theres a lot I find unimpressive about the traddy agenda, and theres a lot they find objectionable and malicious in mine.

However this 1954 business really sticks in my gullet. Of course theres nowt wrong with setting out your beliefs, and parameters. But its how a law is implemented. Maybe some folk thought that Hitler really did plan to find nice homes for the Jews somewhere in the east. When a rule is used to exclude and treat as tenth class citizens another section of the community - then I say that law stinks.

Quite right there were folk clubs before the mid 60's Mike, but by the mid sixties there were three folk clubs in a little town like Grantham. the whole thing mushroomed then. And thats when the internecine stuff really kicked in. And its never really stopped.

Where to start. take the case of the late BBC Folkwaves radio programme. If you listened to it - you'd think there was a folk concert in Sheffield, one in Doncaster, another in Leicester, martin Carthy was on at Dave Sutherland's club, Singers night at The Carrington - and that was about it. In actual fact there was folk music going on all over at little pubs like the Pingle in Sutton in Ashfield, the Golden fleece in Nottingham - God knows how many places in Leicester(not for a week or two but for whole decades!) and they never got a mention cos they weren't part of the folk gang. (Dave S. can back me up over this cos I've seen him in these places!)

Add to that cds never reviewed, albums launched but never given a single trackspin. Prominent local artists never offered so much as a floorspot at festivals.

then theres the whole demographics business. In the early 70's when loads of brilliant irish folk musicians came over and started playing in the country bands that worked the miners welfare circuits. The Irish theme pub explosion - where (okay some of the old guard couldn't work in the noisy conditions, but plenty could.) Artists like Tommy Dempsey (ex Dubliners an album out on Topic) were gigging in these theme bars - but it wasn't reported or spoke about.

We were in the midst of all this. And none of it registered on the folk seismograph - cos why - well they could always quote that bloody 1954 nonsense - its not really folk! yes it bloody was!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Folk, 1954 definition?
From: GUEST,999
Date: 25 Mar 11 - 11:43 AM

Over the years after many fights with Jim Carroll and a few other what I then called anal-retentive old farts--a club to which I belong, although not that chapter--I have come to see the wisdom of their ways. It's a method of preserving and honouring the songs and traditions of lotsa anonymous writers (people with a story to tell or tales of events to laud, revel in or bitch about). It's admirable, imo, although it's not a definition I accept for the music of North America.