Mediation and its definition in folk music

Subject: RE: Mediation and its definition in folk music
From: An Buachaill Caol Dubh
Date: 21 Feb 20 - 03:16 PM

A couple of points, first re. Jim Carroll paragraph; I agree with views arising from mention of these song-books and songs being "accepted" &c., and would only add here that "the Scots Musical Museum" of 1787-1803 is worthy of some consideration and study - extensive study. Not alone for its contents, but for the editorial work of Robert Burns, who did most of the scholarly work for James Johnson's publications (as well as a substantial proportion of their contents, of course). It might be interesting to follow up the names of Antiquarians David Laing, who has been mentioned in passing either here or in the thread about "source singers", and William Stenhouse, who as far as I can see has not. J C Dick, an American scholar of more than a century ago, is also important with regard to musical settings (not arrangements). Just some more authorities whose works are of value.

The imagining of the actions and characters of songs whilst singing them (and considering, privately and periodically, how to deliver them) is something I recognise very well, and consider indispensable to a vivid performance. I know that last word might be discountenanced by any who think a song should be passed on exactly as received. That's another issue.

So too are those issues about race and nationality and the "folk". These considerations go back rather further than is generally stated. In the eighteenth century, the crucial words are "character", "climate" and "costume". Herder has occasionally been adduced: a significantly earlier writer who addressed some relevant ideas is Allan Ramsay. His "Tea-Table Miscellany" would have been better known in his own day than his "The Ever Green", and contains a fair representation of the kind of Pastorals made by "ingenious young gentlemen", but the Preface to "The Ever Green" would, again, be valuable reading. Again, Ramsay was Scottish (died 1748 I think). Good Luck.

Subject: RE: Mediation and its definition in folk music
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 21 Feb 20 - 12:52 PM

@ Jag. Hello.

I think I am going to stick by my point about Sharp.

Your quotation is of course an accurate quotation. But it does not for me fully sum up the concept of the 'common people'/'peasantry' as described by Sharp, which has been discussed on the Harker thread. And when I look closely at your quotation, it says 'lower classes' not 'lowest class'. I think this is important. It certainly does not 'labouring class'. Sharp's view was also closely linked with theories of race/nationality.

So for me, the assertion that Sharp thought folk songs were the product of 'working people' and that there was a consensus dating back to Child about who produced these songs is an oversimplification. And I have seen this statement made repeatedly on Mudcat.

Subject: RE: Mediation and its definition in folk music
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 Feb 20 - 12:36 PM

"I meant 'put oneself between' as a conduit,"
Sorry - misunderstood
In our experience, that's the basis for mots traditional performances
Walter Pardon and Mikeen McCarthy both described at great length how they saw their songs while they sang them - Mikeen said it was "like sitting in the pictures"
Mary Delaney was intresting, even though she was blind from birth, she described appearance, even colours, presumably as sh imagined them (mental pictures)

"Without that the story stays in someone's head or on the page."
I'm not sure of this Jag - if a song is sung competently well, even with a lack of interpretation, the songs are clearly enough structured for any intelligent audience to make their own interpretation

"what period does he mean by the rather vague term"
Interesting point An Buachaill
I think this is the side of Sharp that has always needed discussing
In the end, it doesn't really matter whether a song originated in a print or not as long as it enters the process and becomes accepted as "ours to do with what we wish" - that's 'the folk process'
Nobody knows where these songs originated - some obviously came from print - but others scream - "this is who I am, (sailor, soldier, farmworker... whoever) what happened to me and what I think about it"
For me, this has been the most fascinating aspect of working with Irish singers on local songs

I've recently started attending a local history course here in Clare and find that so much that the tutor has been talking about it covered by locally made songs
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Mediation and its definition in folk music
From: GUEST,Big Al Whittle
Date: 21 Feb 20 - 12:07 PM

I suppose it depends on personality.

Some people will be happy to be the curator of primary sources.

Other people will want to interpret or use the source material as a departure point.

In a way, both types will 'put their stamp' on the 'folk experience'.

even if you do nothing to source material - by transplanting it to another place in history, you will change it - you give it another context.
The modern listener will have experienced Peter paul and Mary, Bartok, Brecht, steeleye, the watersons. The original listeners would have had different responses.

Its a sort of Jurassic Park syndrome.

Subject: RE: Mediation and its definition in folk music
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 21 Feb 20 - 08:57 AM

I meant 'put oneself between' as a conduit, not a barrier. Without that the story stays in someone's head or on the page.

Subject: RE: Mediation and its definition in folk music
From: An Buachaill Caol Dubh
Date: 21 Feb 20 - 08:42 AM

"As well search for a wild rose in a well kept garden, as for a folk-song in the song-books of the past".

Since accuracy and precision seem to be in fashion, what period does he mean by the rather vague term "the past"? Even an approximation would do.

Would a century previously count as "the past" to everyone's satisfaction?

Then if a "song-book" from c.1800 can be adduced which manifestly contains songs which might be/could be/are accepted, by The People Who Decide, as "folk-songs", the contention falls. I'll wait a while and see what happens.

Subject: RE: Mediation and its definition in folk music
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 Feb 20 - 08:13 AM

"'putting themselves between' their material and the listener?"
I think this is common to most forms of popular music which are based on a 'star' system in which the songs become secondary - even immaterial
Pop music fans I have discussed this with have summed it up perfectly for me by suggesting that folk song carries "a message" - not a term I would used, but fine by me for the time being
Not sure it needs a term to describe it
Music hall type performers seemed to need to 'act out' their songs which, at the very least, suggests a lack of confidence in them
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Mediation and its definition in folk music
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 21 Feb 20 - 07:37 AM

Is there a word for what a singer (or actor?) does when 'putting themselves between' their material and the listener? Does mediation get used for that? There must be vast amounts of discussion about it.

Subject: RE: Mediation and its definition in folk music
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 Feb 20 - 07:19 AM

"Peasant"
Perhaps it's time to understand what this word means
It is and has never has been an insulting term (as suggested by Harker and others here)
It defines a rural person's relationship to the land - at one time it had a solid meaning which legally elated a farmer to the landowner, but it lingered on long after feudalism disappeared to describe a landless farmer who rented land

Sharp used an archaic term, but his respect for the people as creative artists is made quite clear from this extract from Some Conclusions (Chapter 2 - Origins)
Jim Carroll

Whatever theory of the origin of the folk-song be accepted, it is not difficult to realize the causes which, in the main, have led to its genesis. But we are faced with a problem of far deeper complexity when we come to trace the course of its descent. Before, however, we embark upon this investigation there is a preliminary
objection which must be discussed.
In the preceding chapter we have defined the folk-song as “the song created by the common people ”. This definition involves the assumption that the folk-song is the unaided composition of the unskilled ; and this few, perhaps, will be prepared to concede offhand. To some it will seem fantastic to credit the unlettered peasant with the capacity to compose music, good, bad, or indifferent. For, by general admission, the technical difficulties with which the musician has to contend are at least as great as those which confront the sculptor or the painter; yet one may search in vain in the country village for evidences of the peasant image or picture-maker. Surely, it will be argued, it is far more probable that the folk-song is only the fashion¬able song of a bygone day, the composition of the skilled musician, which found its way into the country villages where, although long ago forgotten in the town or city of its origin, it has since been preserved. To put it in another way, the folk¬song, it is contended, is not a genuine wild-flower, but, in the jargon of the botanist, a “garden-escape”.
On the face of it, this looks the easier and more plausible explanation ; and it evades a very awkward assumption. But, unfortunately, it does not square with facts. For, if the music of the common people originated in the towns, the sheet- music and song-books of the past would surely bear evidence of the fact. And this they fail to do. To search for the originals of folk-songs amongst the printed music of olden days is mere waste of time. Moreover, there is a further difficulty. Composed music differs generically from folk-music ; it belongs to a different order. Folk-music, as we shall presently see, is distinguished by certain technical peculiari¬ties, which are absent from art-music ; while, on the other hand, art-music possesses many musical attributes which are not to be found in the music of the common people, or in that part of it which we call folk-music. But, apart from technical differences, the extreme naturalness, the spontaneity, freshness and unconventionality of folk-music are just those qualities which are conspicuously absent from the popular song-music of past centuries. Indeed, folk-music is as distinct from art- music as is the wild flower of nature from the gorgeous blooms of the cultivated garden. As well search for a wild rose in a well-kept garden, as for a folk-song in the song-books of the past.
These considerations force us to the conclusion that folk-music has in some way or other originated amongst those who play and sing it; that it is the product of the folk muse, and that neither the skilled musician nor

Subject: RE: Mediation and its definition in folk music
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 21 Feb 20 - 05:56 AM

@Pseudonymous. I think you are confusing what Sharp said and did with Harker's 'mediation' of that. First paragraph of Chapter 1 of "Some Conclusions" has, for example, "Indications, therefore, of those special gifts for which a nation is renowned will usually be conspicuous in the output of its lower and unlettered classes." We need to read the rest, of course, for the context.

Beware the mediator!

Subject: RE: Mediation and its definition in folk music
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 21 Feb 20 - 05:45 AM

Ah, now I see it the missplaced 'the' was part a of a failed edit of 'himself' to 'themself'

Subject: RE: Mediation and its definition in folk music
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 21 Feb 20 - 05:33 AM

"He has a peasant-based concept."

Blimey. Drivel.

Subject: RE: Mediation and its definition in folk music
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 Feb 20 - 05:28 AM

" I should not respond to your taunts as this is what you want. "
Nobody is asking you to
If you think Dave Harker's book isn't about the existence (or not) of a pPwople's Culture, that is your prerogative - I do and am entitled to say so
If you continue to interfere with my right as a member I shall request that ou be stopped
You are entitled to prove that what I put p is untrue - so far you have only made empty accusations
Please get out of my hair - Ive just about had enough of your appalling behavior

Subject: RE: Mediation and its definition in folk music
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 Feb 20 - 05:28 AM

" I should not respond to your taunts as this is what you want. "
Nobody is asking you to
If you think Dave Harker's book isn't about the existence (or not) of a pPwople's Culture, that is your prerogative - I do and am entitled to say so
If you continue to interfere with my right as a member I shall request that ou be stopped
You are entitled to prove that what I put p is untrue - so far you have only made empty accusations
Please get out of my hair - Ive just about had enough of your appalling behavior

Subject: RE: Mediation and its definition in folk music
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 21 Feb 20 - 05:27 AM

@ Jag. I disagree about Sharp. No it isn't. Sharp is speaking about common people and has quite a different concept. He has a peasant-based concept.

Subject: RE: Mediation and its definition in folk music
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 21 Feb 20 - 05:25 AM

subjecting not wholly coherent

should have put 'subjective and not wholly coherent'.

Subject: RE: Mediation and its definition in folk music
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 21 Feb 20 - 05:22 AM

"Its an artistic movement of the 20th century". Interesting point of view.

@ Jim: I should not respond to your taunts as this is what you want. But I would not be the first to point out your habit of misrepresenting what other posters have said on these threads. Indeed, I have concluded that this itself is one way in which you conduct the 'war' you have said you are fighting. Plain absurdity, such as denying that violent imagery is violent appears to be another.

I do not care how much 'information' you have put up: in my view you have put up a lot of stuff which turns out to be untrue or contentious and a lot of stuff which is subjecting not wholly coherent. Moreover, you tend to be a bit repetitious. So it is hard work sorting the wheat from the chaff.

Subject: RE: Mediation and its definition in folk music
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 21 Feb 20 - 05:20 AM

bad edit, putting 'the' in the right place "If someone uses the word 'mediation' for a singer putting himself between a song..."

Subject: RE: Mediation and its definition in folk music
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 21 Feb 20 - 05:18 AM

"folk being the 'recognized creative culture of English working people' or 'labouring classes' or 'working class' ... ...Not one piece of evidence suggests that Sharp believed it"

The first chapter of "Some Conclusions" is good evidence, unless you are going to quibble and suggest he didn't think it was 'recognized'.

If someone uses word 'mediation' for a singer putting himself between a the song (or it's characters, or its authors politics, etc) and the listener then they need find another word for what Harker used it for and mentally substitute the new word most of the times they read it. If they don't they will have trouble understanding what peaple are writing about.

Subject: RE: Mediation and its definition in folk music
From: GUEST,Big Al whittle
Date: 21 Feb 20 - 05:03 AM

I think Pseudonymous (bloody funny name!) a lot of us were socialists and wpouldn't have seen much to disagree with if there were a political agenda. If it was there , we missed it.

The overwhelming message was not really anything to do with the stuff that Johnson and Corbyn pollute our lives with.

more it was hymn to creativity, a celebration of some music and some people we were scarcely (if at tall) aware of.

Subject: RE: Mediation and its definition in folk music
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 21 Feb 20 - 04:42 AM

And the assertion that Lloyd's approach to folk was not affected by his politics would be so bonkers that for me you would have to question the integrity of anybody making it. It's plain to see for anybody who has read his work.

Subject: RE: Mediation and its definition in folk music
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 21 Feb 20 - 04:39 AM

"He did something far more fundamental in that he attempted to undermine was regarded up to then as the recognized creative culture of English working people by describing it as a “faked tradition”

Some posters have been spinning a leftist about folk being the 'recognized creative culture of English working people' or 'labouring classes' or 'working class' on Mudcat for years. I did not need to read Harker to know that the idea is nonsense.

I just needed a brain.

People have tried to argue that Child believed this was true. He didn't. Not one piece of evidence suggests that he did, and a great deal suggests that he did not. Not one piece of evidence suggests that Sharp believed it, either.

The idea appears to have come in mainly through a combination of the influence of left US people like Lomax and also through CP influence including Lloyd and MacColl.

I defer to Jim's expertise on derision.

Subject: RE: Mediation and its definition in folk music
From: GUEST,Big Al Whittle
Date: 21 Feb 20 - 04:38 AM

The problem is that folksong is so much more than 'part of the history' of anything.

Its a huge body of work. its a set of techniques. its a mode of expression. Its an artistic movement of the 20th century that spills out into the art, the drama, the literature, the performance modes, the politics and so many of the aspects of the life that we lived in those years.

Still if it gives you pleasure - looking at it that way, as something that can be contained in definitions - fair enough.

I always felt part of something bigger than that. I suppose it comes from a religious upbringing, you look for Jesus's face ever day in the margarine tub.

Subject: RE: Mediation and its definition in folk music
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 Feb 20 - 04:00 AM

"Are you sure picking at the bones of folksong in this manner is productive. deriding others efforts."
Simple question Al - define folk song
If you can, it isn't - if you can't "Ay there's the rub"
To some people, whether or not folk song represents part of the history of the working people and their culture is important enough to slog out
Doesn't stop anybody (including us) enjoying singing and listening to it, but for those like myself, it's an added bonus- maybe not everybody's bag, of course
Jim

Subject: RE: Mediation and its definition in folk music
From: GUEST,Big Al whittle
Date: 21 Feb 20 - 03:20 AM

It needs that splash of your spirit!

Subject: RE: Mediation and its definition in folk music
From: GUEST,Big al whittle
Date: 21 Feb 20 - 03:16 AM

a bit like Finegan's Wake!

Subject: RE: Mediation and its definition in folk music
From: GUEST,Big Al Whittle
Date: 21 Feb 20 - 03:12 AM

I'm not really sure you can avoid 'putting your stamp' on music.

Is such a thing to be avoided.
Someone like Brian, shows his passion and commitment for a piece - its obviously important to him that he imparts to his audience what it is that moved him and inspired his interest.

Surely this isn't a negative thing. admittedly the source singer never had a Martin guitar, a concertina, an accordion to accompany himself with.

Are you sure picking at the bones of folksong in this manner is productive. deriding others efforts.
'Mediator' sounds to much like 'medium' - communicating with the dead. When look! this thing is alive, it moves!!

Subject: RE: Mediation and its definition in folk music
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 Feb 20 - 05:46 PM

" Bronson as some sort of prophet/giant upon whose shoulders we stand who must be treated with reverence"
Not "reverence, but with the respect they have merited by their contributed to folk song and balladry, nest to whom most of today's academics are rats snapping at the heels of these - giants
Te work of these people says everything that needs to be said ot their contribution
The only "reverence" on display here is that handed on a platter to a long rejected work now resurrected by people who show little respect for or understanding of the art form being avouded

This continual deference of an extremely flawed work without addressing the many criticisms of it becomes tiresome and evasive
It is erecting a straw man to argue that Harker didn't claim “faked songs” "fake songs" - that has never been an issue
He did something far more fundamental in that he attempted to undermine was regarded up to then as the recognized creative culture of English working people by describing it as a “faked tradition”
He at no time discussed the songs or the singers, let alone the relationship between the two; instead, he targeted the collectors
A "very bright" person would have done what he attempted to do with a little more panache - his sledgehammer brutishness was unsubtlely brutal
His repetitively formulaic nature made it both distasteful and difficult to read - any good thriller writer knows the secret of a successful novel is to have your baddie kill off his victims differently each time

“On the contrary, the book sets out to set each person in his context."
No it doesn't - Harker lumps his victims together as a privileged class who, at best, patronise their informants - at worst, showed contempt for them as instinctive and gullible peasants
Far from being a good book, for me it failed on all counts - which is basically why it was rejected first time around

It seems that, to some people, being considered "very bright" requires only that you make the right noises
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Mediation and its definition in folk music
From: GUEST
Date: 20 Feb 20 - 04:07 PM

I noted Bronson had something to say about definitions, in the context of the word 'ballad'.

"In the end precise limits must set limits arbitrarily."

Perhaps any person who regarded Bronson as some sort of prophet/giant upon whose shoulders we stand who must be treated with reverence and not ever taken issue with on any account might usefully consider this quotation?

Hello Steve
Regarding your kind offer about the index to Roud, I have asked the library to get me a copy. When it comes, I'll scan or copy the missing pages myself. Your offer was very kind, but doing it this way seems least trouble all round. Thanks again!

People seem especially exercised by what was said about the Copper family, including a comment meant as praise from Joe Offer. I'm happy to stand by what I said about the Copper family. As it happens I have 'seen' them; they were on Jules Holland. I have a CD with them on, and my favourite song from it was howled down as 'not folk' by a usual suspect when I put it forward as a favourite.

Subject: RE: Mediation and its definition in folk music
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 20 Feb 20 - 02:52 PM

Mediating what has already been posted. Mediating the ideas of others by putting my stamp on it.

Subject: RE: Mediation and its definition in folk music
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 20 Feb 20 - 02:02 PM

"I am mediating in writing this post." Mediating what?

Subject: RE: Mediation and its definition in folk music
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 20 Feb 20 - 01:38 PM

All of the editors/collectors mentioned in Harker and here mediated their choices of songs, their publication of songs and their theories on the songs and their evolution, but in many different ways, and with some obvious overlap. How we respond to those mediations is surely a pure matter of opinion. Take Bert for example, I don't know of anyone who would say he didn't improve the material he passed on, but the problem for anyone researching is that we don't fully know the extant and the exact details, though it is possible to make informed guesses. In FS in England he mediated in all sorts of ways by overemphasising some aspects of the subject and playing down others. But then all writers do that. I am mediating in writing this post, but no doubt that will be emphasised by the responses to it very shortly.

Subject: RE: Mediation and its definition in folk music
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 20 Feb 20 - 12:42 PM

@ Jag, I think I can see what you mean, when you say Harker was trying to outline the development of a music genre. I think you are trying once again to dispel this false idea that the book is about people 'faking' songs which they pass off as coming from the folk (though some people plainly did call 'folk' material which in many senses was anything but).

However, I don't think Harker's focus is on a 'music genre'. To begin with, he isn't much concerned with the music side of things; this is not a musicological analysis. He is interested in ideas and concepts, in the different ways people through time have thought about and written about what people in England and Scotland were doing with music.

More generally, demanding simplistic definitions of complex concepts and then jumping up and down gleefully pointing fingers at people who don't comply with such demands or agree that they are sensible, implying via 'innit' that the demand is so obviously reasonable that only a thicko does not understand it is, put simply, not very clever. IMHO.

Subject: RE: Mediation and its definition in folk music
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 20 Feb 20 - 12:23 PM

Harker isn't an oddball at all. He is very bright.

"This isn’t helped by the fact that, where Harker felt justified in lumping together Percy, Scott, Child, Sharp and Williams (whose methods and aims were very different)"

As I said, Harker is very bright, and I feel that it misrepresents the whole book to describe what it attempts and what it does as simply 'lumping together' the people named above. One the contrary, the book sets out to set each person in his context.

Subject: RE: Mediation and its definition in folk music
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 20 Feb 20 - 12:07 PM

I think Harker was applying the term to the communication/description/invention/imagination/ or whatever (the subtitle of the book uses manufacture) of a music genre rather than individual songs.

Subject: RE: Mediation and its definition in folk music
From: Jack Campin
Date: 20 Feb 20 - 10:08 AM

Harker proposed a new definition of the word

He didn't. If anybody did, it was Adorno back in the 1930s. The term is very widely used in musicology, though no two writers use it in quite the same way. Which is why looking for a dictionary definition is totally pointless.

It's a concept that is extremely useful in understanding how the present klezmer repertoire got to be the way it is, even if the term isn't always used explicitly. Ditto with ANY situation where the music of an "outsider" minority gets adopted by a host culture.
Harker is anything but an oddball.

Subject: RE: Mediation and its definition in folk music
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 Feb 20 - 08:18 AM

"When words have clearly defined meanings I am better able to understand things"
Wise words indeed Stan - would that more people applied the same to the term "folk song" (as they once did)
Jim

Subject: RE: Mediation and its definition in folk music
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 Feb 20 - 07:44 AM

I totally agree with our summing up of 'mediation" - a method of communication and passing on, rather than the abusive way it has been misused by Harker and his disciples

"time to move on."
It has been for a while
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Mediation and its definition in folk music
From: Brian Peters
Date: 20 Feb 20 - 07:24 AM

Here’s my take – though I should say that ‘jag’ has been on the money with every post:

Every communicator is a ‘mediator’. Every teacher, journalist, TV presenter, orchestral musician or historian. As a blanket term it’s so non-specific as to be of limited use, so generally it’s reserved for cases such as a go-between in a dispute, while teachers are still called teachers, and so forth. Harker proposed a new definition of the word. The relatively anodyne formulation in his introduction has been posted twice already but, as two posters pointed out immediately, the coy phrase ‘might have been’ doesn’t begin describe what is to follow, and the devil is in the detail of the usage.

Of Scott, Fakesong reports that he “collated, 'patched up', 'made up' “ material, as well as cutting and expurgating verses. In doing this, we are told, Scott “did not deign to notice [workers’ culture], let alone allow its songs and music to appear unmediated.”

Regarding George Gardiner’s collection we read: “This self-censored material, collected according to Sharp's methods, then altered musically for commercial publication after a further filtering and privileging of modal tunes,.represented the highly-mediated product of the dominant cultural values...”

In both of these examples it’s clear that the ‘mediation’ being described is wholesale editing, and that it is being carried out according to a cultural agenda. That’s a long way from the usual sense of ‘mediation’. Although there is an occasional concession to the idea that not all ‘mediators’ were as bad as one another (“In the work of Ritson, too, we see the beginnings of a genuinely scholarly approach to mediation”), the general sense of the word is pejorative. Both Sharp’s and Baring-Gould’s ‘mediations’ are described as ‘doctoring’ with all the implications of falsification and deception that the word implies. And since the entire thrust of the book is the appropriation and misrepresentation of ‘workers’ culture’ by the bourgeoisie, it’s clear that ‘mediation’ in the Harker sense is a Bad Thing.

The word has thus acquired so much baggage that to bring it into any current discussion in our field is to risk ambiguity and controversy. This isn’t helped by the fact that, where Harker felt justified in lumping together Percy, Scott, Child, Sharp and Williams (whose methods and aims were very different), we now find the net spreading further, so that even a modern and meticulous collector like Mike Yates, or a singer who writes a memoir, such as Bob Copper, can find themselves described by a term that might be entirely innocuous on the one hand, or offensively derogatory on the other. The new usage was one of the Big Ideas in Fakesong, but it's now time to move on.

Subject: RE: Mediation and its definition in folk music
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 Feb 20 - 07:12 AM

"Sharpian mode as opposed to Marxist mode."
What a stupid generalism - I take it this is another gem from Harker
Politically, Bert was a very private man - his politics never surfaced in his work with folksong
Epithets like this are really not helpful
You people appear to make it up as you go along
The cliché "class struggle" was typical of Harker's half-digested Trotskyism - he appeared not to know too much about him either
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Mediation and its definition in folk music
From: Stanron
Date: 20 Feb 20 - 07:09 AM

@ Steve Shaw and Al Whittle, perhaps I should have made it clearer in the thread title. Thanks, by the way, to whoever completed the missing bit of the word 'music'.

In the 'Dave Harker, Fakesong' thread the word 'Mediation' was used a lot but not as in the standard definition. I tried a number of online dictionaries and my own ancient Collins to see if there was a music or musicology definition but I could find none. So I asked here.

I like words. I particularly like words to have specific meanings. When words have clearly defined meanings I am better able to understand things like wot this thred is all about. Innit?

Subject: RE: Mediation and its definition in folk music
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 20 Feb 20 - 06:43 AM

Regarding the question of whether it is 'useful' to use the concept of mediation to refer to interpretations of songs by singers:

Could we consider the possibility that it might actually be a positive thing? I ask this because some people complain that terms like 'tradition bearers' in effect factor out the individual creativity of the singers. I think that his phrase was one of Lloyd's when he was in Sharpian mode as opposed to Marxist mode.

Moreover, terms like 'song carriers' and 'tradition bearers' distract attention from the fact that if the song is old it will have been sung in a variety of very different historical contexts. You do not have to believe in a Marxist or Marxian theory of history as class struggle to agree that this is the case. The song is likely to have meant something different to each of the people who sang it or even discussed it. Changes made to the song may reflect the particular time they were made, or even more personally the attitudes, opinions and values of those making the change.

I think the same applies to the music chosen, as some tunes have acquired particular connotations.

Subject: RE: Mediation and its definition in folk music
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 Feb 20 - 03:27 AM

"Had you, I'd ask for my money back"
Much preferred the education of the Traveller sites and the West Clare farmyards - and you didn't end up with a massive student's debt hanging round your neck !!!!
They really did know more about these subjects than do many of the self-serving, self-appointed 'experts'
I often wonder what the 'Pop's' Johnny Connors and the Duncan Williamsons would have made of some of this nonsense
Jim Carroll

Two of my favourite analyses of a classic ballad by two masters of their trades:

Edward, (Child 13) What Put The Blood, 'Pop’s ‘ Johnny Connors, Wexford Traveller.

"I heard this song from my grandmother’s uncle again, Johnny Murphy, the brother of Mick Murphy, he’d dead now, both men is dead, they were very old.
My grandmother; well, she’s still living, she’s 106 –
Seems the Murphys, the Gommers, you know, they were tradition, they were poets, undiscovered poets, you know.
J. C. Where did he get it, d’you know?
P. J. God knows where he got it, probably from his great – great grandfather
But the song is anyway… I’d say the song, myself, goes back to.... depicts Cain and Abel in the Bible and where Our Lord said to Cain.... I think this is where the Travellers Curse come from too, because Our Lord says to Cain, “Cain”, says Our Lord, “you have slain your brother, and for this”, says Our Lord, says he, “and for this, be a wanderer and a fugitive on the earth”.
“Not so Lord” says he, “this punishment is too severe, and whoever finds me”, says he, “will slay me, “says he “or harass me”.
“Not so”, says Our Lord, says he, “whoever finds Cain and punishes or slains (sic) Cain, I will punish them sevenfold”.
And I think this is where the Travellers curse come from.
Anyway, the song depicts this, this er....
I call it Cain and Abel anyway; there never was a name for the song, but that what I call it, you know, the depiction of Cain and Abel.”

Dowdled verse
What put the blood on your hands my son?
Son, come tell it unto me..
It’s the blood ofa hare I killed the other day,
And I killed most manfully- ee.
And killed most manfully, idle-ee

That’s too red for the blood of a hare.
Son… etc
Well, it’s the blood of me youngest brother that I killed the other day
And I killed most brutefully - ee.
And I killed…. Etc

What will you do when the Lord comes around?
I will put my foot on board of a ship
And I'll sail to a foreign country - ee.

What will you do with your two fine horses?
I will take the collars all of their necks
And they’ll plough no more for me – ee

What will you do with your fine hounds?
Well I will strip then straps all off their necks
And they’ll run no more for me- ee

What will you do with your two fine children?
I’ll give one to me mammy and the other to me daddy
Sure, they’ll keep them company-ee

What will you do with your fine house and land?
I will it here to the birds all in the air
And they’ll breed in that for they-ee

What will you do with your beautiful wife?
Sure she will put her foot on board of a ship
And she’ll sail along with me-ee

Dowdled line

See ‘12c Henry My Son Pop's Johnny Connors’

Edward, Edward. A Scottish Ballad” (Child 13) Bertrand Harrison Bronson
"Edward” has justly held a place of honor among ballads ever since it was first given to the world, in 1765, in the Reliques of Thomas Percy. For many persons, indeed, it has come to typify the whole category, so that “Edward” is what they think of when the popular ballad is mentioned. Ballad-lovers who wish to win converts are likely to point first to “Edward” as exemplifying more strikingly than any other piece the peculiar merits of this kind of literature. No class in public speaking neglects it; no concert baritone but includes it in his repertory. All this is sufficient testimony to its universal appeal.
Its right to these laurels was confirmed by the great master, Francis James Child. “Edward,” he said, “is not only unimpeachable, but has ever been regarded as one of the noblest and most sterling specimens of the popular ballad

Subject: RE: Mediation and its definition in folk music
From: GUEST,jag
Date: 20 Feb 20 - 03:27 AM

I don't think widening the scope to include singer to singer oral transmission or performance for the enjoyment of listeners is useful. Does the cultural studies usage include putting oneself between the song and the listener?

Learning a song of a recording of Harry Cox and singing it at a singaround or as a payed gig is one thing. Choosing what to record from Harry Cox, what to include on an album and what say in the sleeve notes, or singing it as part of a lecture about source singers, is another.

Subject: RE: Mediation and its definition in folk music
From: GUEST,paperback
Date: 20 Feb 20 - 02:36 AM

I'm glad I never went to that college

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Had you, I'd ask for my money back

Subject: RE: Mediation and its definition in folk music
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 20 Feb 20 - 01:52 AM

@ Jag. I think I agree with your suggested extension of Harker's definition. Because if the mediator comes between two things then you need the extension to provide the 2nd thing.

Regarding Steve's point: I think you could perhaps say, as Steve does, that a singer mediates a song, but perhaps this only happens when they perform it, or try it out while learning it in the presence of somebody else, as again, there is nothing to create the sense of 'in betweenness'. Does this makes sense?

Subject: RE: Mediation and its definition in folk music
From: GUEST,Big Al whittle
Date: 20 Feb 20 - 01:32 AM

It appears to be an argument about an argument. the 20 minute argument or the 1954 argument (bystanders ask themselves)....all will be revealed!!

Subject: RE: Mediation and its definition in folk music
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Feb 20 - 07:31 PM

"I think this is right"
Why do you make it a poing to totally ignore what is as if they had never been made Pseud - was that part of your training ?
I'm glad I never went to that college
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Mediation and its definition in folk music
From: GUEST,Pseudonymous
Date: 19 Feb 20 - 06:06 PM

Starship wrote: "When an outsider enters the picture, the picture changes." I think this is right. This is one thing that makes 'qualitative research', including research into folk and related practices, and even a simple thing like an 'interview', potentially difficult if you aim to find out what other people's worlds are like.

But has mediation happened at this point?

NB Hadn't heard the phrase 'Hawthorne Effect' for ages! But I've used the underlying concept.

Subject: RE: Mediation and its definition in folk music
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Feb 20 - 05:52 PM

Should we just sing songs or play tunes?