Is it permissible-to change a word in an old song?

Subject: RE: Is it permissable
From: catspaw49
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 01:38 PM

LMAO......If you went around correcting the "facts" in most "folk" songs, trad or otherwise, many of them would completely dissolve into NOTHINGNESS. Almost every disaster song would be gone because a very few bear any actual resemblance to the event they supposedly are describing.


Spaw

Subject: RE: Is it permissable
From: IanC
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 01:24 PM

My answer

NO!!! it's not permissable

it's permissible

;-)

Subject: RE: Is it permissable
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 12:41 PM

I might change a song for all kinds of reasons, mostly to do with memory slips or to help my tongue get round the words - but probably not in order to get facts right that the song has got wrong.

I rather like the way folk songs screw up history sometimes - "Santy Anna won the day" for example.

Subject: RE: Is it permissable
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 12:17 PM

In which case, thank Christ for The Folk Police!

One minute you're all raging about the sanctity of the 1954 Definition and the next your rubbishing the very songs you have elected to be custodians of. What a truly pityful of affairs. Still, I shall redouble mine own efforts with respect of Vigilance and Pedantry in such matters and make sure the next time I hear someone singing a Traditional Folk Song they can quote chapter and verse on its provenance.

Be warned, the Volkspolizei are listening in!

Seriously, do what you want, but to do so in the name of The Tradition or the Folk Process is, to borrow one of Richard's words, asinine.

Subject: RE: Is it permissable
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 11:48 AM

You bet it's permissible. You don't have to get a permit or even pay a tax. I do it all the time.

In your case, it sounds like you are changing a word back to what it was in the first place, so you are actually being noble.

Subject: RE: Is it permissable
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 11:47 AM

The folk police will always complain!!

Subject: RE: Is it permissable
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 11:33 AM

But no horses are permitted to make such changes!

Subject: RE: Is it permissable
From: ClaireBear
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 11:21 AM

I do it, when it wants doing -- after all, I'm a folk...

Subject: RE: Is it permissable
From: Jack Campin
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 11:16 AM

If nothing else connects with the misattribution, I'd say just correct it.

If the song takes off into an elaborate description of the captain's black handlebar moustache and sombrero, maybe making him a Norwegian might not work so well.

Subject: RE: Is it permissable
From: Midchuck
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 11:13 AM

In an honest-to-God oral tradition "folk" song, it is, as pointed out above, not only permissible but nearly compulsory.

If it's a song of known authorship, and the author is dead, and the song's gone into public domain, probably no one's going to complain.

If the song is of known authorship, and still under copyright, you'd better get permission from the author and/or copyright owner.

One of the things that bug me about "Rise Up Singing" is their love of changing lyrics to make them more politically correct, without worrying about permission.

Peter

Subject: RE: Is it permissable
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 11:08 AM

Not only isn't it ethical, but such ill-advised tampering has nothing to do with folk process - which, if analagous of Natural Selection (though I have my doubts), makes such tampering akin to Genetic Modification. In their natural context such changes were part and parcel of the life of a song, but now there're collected, stuffed, stamped, filed and indexed we really ought to treat them with all due respect and humility. It's the original error that's part of the folk process, the correction of that error is contrary to the tradition that gave us such songs.

That wouldn't be the same Mexico that was lost off Lancashire on the 9th December 1886 would it? Be nice to see the song anyway.

S O'P for Purist

Subject: RE: Is it permissable
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 10:57 AM

Damn. I'm going to have to agree with Don again.

Subject: RE: Is it permissable
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 10:49 AM

Folk process Mariner.

It's not just permissible, it's almost cumpulsory, especially if done to correct an error.

My opinion, for what it's worth.

Don T.

Subject: Is it permissible to change
From: MARINER
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 10:45 AM

I was wondering if it was permissible or even ethical to change a word in an old song? .For instance, I am learning a song where the captain of a ship is described as a Mexican when in fact he was Norwegian. The ship was the "Mexico" (from Songs of the Wexford Coast). This is a well known fact,although the song has always been sung as the captain being Mexican . I met his great grandson a few months ago and had the nationality confirmed .