BS: What is folk music?

Subject: RE: BS: What is folk music?
From: Joan
Date: 12 Mar 00 - 05:00 PM

I second Art's comment. Joan.

Subject: RE: BS: What is folk music?
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 12 Mar 00 - 01:23 PM

Sam gets the wooden spoon, then.

Malcolm

Subject: RE: BS: What is folk music?
From: Billy the Bus
Date: 12 Mar 00 - 02:47 AM

Gidday,

Hmmm.....

Don't think I'll read the 91 posts in older threads on the perennial question "What is Folk?". Maybe in there, I guess I could find the only definition that appealed when we had such serious discussion 40 years back.

I'm trying to recall the original author, Seeger? Leadbelly, Lomax, Lloyd? - can't remember - first I heard it was with an American accent...

The definition?

"I guess it's all folk - ain't heard no horse sing yet!"

Let's just put it down to the original "Folk Poet"..;)

ANON.......;^)

Mind you, as I sit listening to Mµdcat Radio from a couple of weeks back XXIV, maybe I'm old fashioned - in a fairly remote part of the world, I can dial up a wireless programme from a while back - I guess computers can sing now - maybe horses now sing too...;^)

Whoops - now I'm hearing a complaint from a caller to MCR "That ain't Folk"...;^)

Love what I just heard from the caller

"If you write your programme just on what pleases me, you'll only have one listener" - Hmm... that sums it up for me.

"Folk is what appeals to me, from my own definition of Folk".

Cheers - Sam

Subject: RE: BS: What is folk music?
From: Art Thieme
Date: 11 Mar 00 - 11:09 PM

Subject: RE: BS: What is folk music?
From: GUEST,Rich(stupidbodhranplayerthatdoesn'tknowanybe
Date: 11 Mar 00 - 03:19 PM

I agree somewhat with Malcolm (especially the singer-songwriter rarely having to do with folk comment). I like U. Utah Philips remark that "Folk music is not owned by anyone. we own it together like the national forest and the airways. songwriters make grape juice. It can turn into either wine or vinegar. If a people take a song into their lives and use it and change it to suit them and it divests itself of its original name then it becomes afolk song". [] Slan, [] Rich

Subject: RE: BS: What is folk music?
From: Jeri
Date: 11 Mar 00 - 02:03 PM

If folk music simply means music about folks, then all the songs about sheep, horses, dead dogs, trains, the seasons, etc, are not folk music. The category then includes anything not performed by horses. Of course, you could probably train a horse to play a bodhran, so Irish music wouldn't be folk...

If folk music is music by or for people, then all music is folk music, so you don't even need to use the word "folk" - just call it music.

If what Bob Dylan sings is folk music, then what Frank Proffit sang is _____?

Find me something to call songs or tunes passed down the generations in a community by oral tradition. It was called "folk" a few decades ago.

I honestly have been through this discussion many times in many places. One thing I don't really understand is why many people find it necessary to apply the "folk" label to music they just happen to like, and/or find meaningful. Why bother using the word? (Perhaps because "pop," which is what I think a lot of it has, in recent history, come to mean sell-out city?)

Subject: RE: BS: What is folk music?
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 11 Mar 00 - 01:26 PM

Obviously I'd take issue with Chuck's comment; it's overly simplistic and comes perilously close to the reductio ad absurdam of saying that all music is folk music.  In mentioning Mozart, Praise raises an interesting point.  Composers who themselves belong firmly in the Art Music camp sometimes "borrow" traditional melodies; that doesn't make their work "folk music" in any sense, however.  On the other hand, melodies from art music do from time to time find their way into tradition; an example that comes to mind is Weber's "Huntsman's Chorus".

Malcolm

Subject: RE: BS: What is folk music?
From: Chet W.
Date: 11 Mar 00 - 01:22 PM

Good thoughts about a question we never get tired of. I am reminded, though, of a comment made by Thelonius Monk when he said that "...writing about music is like dancing about architecture." Labels and definitions do tend to get in the way of how I personally relate to music or to any other art form. In terms of how it makes me feel, I can't put into words a big difference between "folk" and blues and jazz and country and even classical music. Easy to talk about individual songs or performers, but not categories, if they exist. Not saying it should be that way for everybody.

Veteran of several twelve-step programs regarding music, Chet.

Subject: RE: BS: What is folk music?
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Date: 11 Mar 00 - 01:14 PM

When I get references to "improving" songs, I start to get nervous and fidgity, so it seems like I am unable to totally agree with this notion. We change songs all the time, but I don't feel comfortable with the judgement call that "improvement" entails.

If we take a song and "Update it" to appeal to contemporary ears, It may not be the same song, and if it is still able to do what it once did (a far fetched notion to say the least) it is out of context, and therefore, perhaps, susceptible to fads, trends and fleeting fashions "of the day". This is not such a bad thing, supposedly, unless we insist on the concept of "lasting value" which is beyond the scope of our short lives....

I guess what I'm trying to point out is that what we write now, may, or may not become folk music down the line. And what WAS folk music, still is... though it probably was written without any self consciousness or labeling...

... and "folk music" is about content,... right? ttr

Subject: RE: BS: What is folk music?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 11 Mar 00 - 12:42 PM

IMHO--

Doing what comes naturally, on purpose, to share with people who will do WITH it what comes naturally to them.

By extension, we could say that Mozart wrote folk music too, just from/for a different cultural outlook. For some, what comes natcherly is pretty complex. In the writing, playing, hearing, sharing.

I would guess that the folk music any individual can identify as "folk" tends to be that of our own culture or one to which we are attraced by commonality or by desire for divesity. At least it's like that for me.

Folk = people = my people = The People

As the Native Americans would speak of themselves, not as this tribe or that, but as The People, meaning (I guess) their people.

Look ma, I'm riding Klezmer. See you around the block!

Subject: RE: BS: What is folk music?
From: tar_heel
Date: 11 Mar 00 - 11:24 AM

music about folks....nuff said.

Subject: RE: BS: What is folk music?
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 11 Mar 00 - 11:04 AM

Recently, (last week) I was preparing for a TV interview to publicize the Green Pastures Folk Music Club, here in Central Indiana. In writing a little briefing paper to be given to the TV interviewer in advance I discussed the music we do at the club meetings. I said something like this:
For many thousands of years people have sung and played to, for, and with each other, for various purposes: religious/ritual; work songs; lullabies (or is that just more work songs?); blues; storytelling; dance; and general social time-passing. The good songs were passed around, tweaked a little here, polished a little there, personalized, made relevant to current topics of interest, adjusted to the current singer's instrumental or vocal abilities (or lack thereof). When a singer didn't remember a song he'd heard, he might make a new song on the same story, or tell a new story with "That good old tune that Uncle Jeremiah used to play." The music that resulted, that was passed down, is what we call folk music. At Green Pastures we sing those songs for and with each other, and other songs in the same spirit, just for the joy of making music together.
Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: What is folk music?
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 11 Mar 00 - 11:04 AM

Recently, (last week) I was preparing for a TV interview to publicize the Green Pastures Folk Music Club, here in Central Indiana. In writing a little briefing paper to be given to the TV interviewer in advance I discussed the music we do at the club meetings. I said something like this:
For many thousands of years people have sung and played to, for, and with each other, for various purposes: religious/ritual; work songs; lullabies (or is that just more work songs?); blues; storytelling; dance; and general social time-passing. The good songs were passed around, tweaked a little here, polished a little there, personalized, made relevant to current topics of interest, adjusted to the current singer's instrumental or vocal abilities (or lack thereof). When a singer didn't remember a song he'd heard, he might make a new song on the same story, or tell a new story with "That good old tune that Uncle Jeremiah used to play." The music that resulted, that was passed down, is what we call folk music. At Green Pastures we sing those songs for and with each other, and other songs in the same spirit, just for the joy of making music together.
Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: What is folk music?
From: catspaw49
Date: 11 Mar 00 - 08:40 AM

The most recent discussion of this is a thread called "What Isn't Folk?" ..... Along with Jeri's link, also enter the word folk in the filter box with a 1 year reset and in the myriad threads with folk in the title, you'll find quite a few others attempting to define folk along with a thread called, "Is Rap Folk?"......

Happy reading

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: What is folk music?
From: Jeri
Date: 11 Mar 00 - 08:33 AM

Lookie here for links to previous discussions. I like the definition Malcolm posted. Every time this discussion comes up, people who have studied folk music pretty much agree with that. People who have bought into the record companies' definition argue against the limits. (Why bother having categories if they don't mean anything?) They seem to think that saying songs written by the Beatles, James Taylor or Joni Mitchell are not folk is some sort of insult. Not true.

My opinion:
Folk is (see above definition in Malcolm's post.
Folk singing/oral tradition is singing anything you like. (see above, para. 2 and 3.)

Subject: RE: BS: What is folk music?
From: zander (inactive)
Date: 11 Mar 00 - 08:09 AM

A quick definition, Music of the people, for the people, not composed or written to make money,ie 'pop' music.

Cheers, Dave

Subject: RE: BS: What is folk music?
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 11 Mar 00 - 03:59 AM

As I'm sure you know, this is a perennial question which never reaches a really satisfactory conclusion.  Here is the definition formulated by the International Folk Music Council in 1954:

Folk Music is the product of a musical tradition that has been evolved through the process of oral transmission.  The factors that shape that tradition are: (i) continuity which links the present with the past; (ii) variation which springs from the creative impulse of the individual or the group; and (iii) selection by the community, which determines the form or forms in which the music survives.
The terms can be applied to music that has been evolved from rudimentary beginnings by a community uninfluenced by popular and art music and it can likewise be applied to music which has originated with an individual composer and has subsequently been absorbed into the unwritten living tradition of a community.
The term does not cover composed popular music that has been taken over ready-made by a community and remains unchanged, for it is the re-fashioning and re-creation of the music that gives it its folk character.

Obviously this is not an absolute definition, but provides a good point from which to start.  The waters have become considerably more muddied since the '50s, not least due to the record industry's decision to promote as folk music pretty much anything that didn't fit into any other of its handy marketing categories; in particular the "singer-songwriter" genre, which rarely has anything at all to do with folk music in any real sense.  Well, somebody else's turn, now; and a wooden spoon to the first person to dredge up that tired old cliché involving horses...

Malcolm

Subject: RE: BS: What is folk music?
From: GUEST,THL Fox
Date: 11 Mar 00 - 02:31 AM

One of my favorite definitions comes from the introduction to "English and Scottish Popular Ballads; the Student's Cambridge Edition". George Kittredge writes: "The popular ballads...belong to the folk." He goes on to describe a community celebration, where a group of people is gathered for some common purpose. "The object of the meeting is known to all; the deeds which are to be sung, the dance which is to accompany and illustrate the singing, are likewise familiar to everyone....There is unity of feeling and a common stock, however slender, of ideas and traditions. The dancing and singing, in which all share, are so closely related as to be practically complimentary parts of a single festal act. Here, now, we have the 'folk' of our discussion...a dancing, singing throng subjected as a unit to a mental and emotional stimulus which is not only favorable to the production of poetry, but is almost certain to result in such production."

I find our on-line folk communities, like our real-time ones, to have these things in common: a unity of feeling; a common stock of ideas and traditions; and a desire to create poetry and music when gathered together. That music then becomes available to all who share the creation or who just listen and take it home in their hearts. Want an example? Look at the on-line song/poem creations that happen on these web pages.

We are the "folk" of folk music. And the music that belongs to us, that we share with each other and the rest of the community, that music is folk music.

Subject: What is folk music?
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Date: 11 Mar 00 - 02:08 AM

I'm looking for an easy definition, a destination of sorts away from the vague uneasiness that sets over conversations when I try to explain,.... and fail. It is such a widely used category that it seems like one could use the term to describe ANY music we play in our homes,....then again, maybe folk music could be music that is never actually played, but only referred to as a long past occurrence that we can only approximate.

If folk music is music that was never intended to be commercial, then we might save some money,...

And if we can write "folk" music, is it a rehashing of songs that SOUND old, or are the forms open to "NEW" expressions,...ie "whatever the market will bear"?

Seriously though, I would love some suggestions!