Can newly composed song become folk song

Subject: RE: Can newly composed song become folk song
From: catspaw49
Date: 16 Dec 01 - 02:47 PM

Rick, you won't find the truth on the Niles website. Have you read it? I'd say it's a lovely combination of idolatry and revisionist history.

Amos(:<))

Bill, the Seagull CAN be used, but only if it's a high-gloss finish and solid wood model AND played off-camera on tunes that are definitely trad, such as "Barbara Allen"....or whichever spelling you choose. However, if the Seagull has been modified to accept a pickup, even if one is not used, it cannot be considered trad in any way. Hope this helps.

Spaw

Subject: RE: Can newly composed song become folk song
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 16 Dec 01 - 02:46 PM

Hasn't this question been discussed endlessly in slightly different guises? I've only been a member of Mudcat for about three weeks, and it seems like this is just another angle about who can call themselves a folksinger.

But then, I am one of them danged singer/songwriters...

Jerry

Subject: RE: Can newly composed song become folk song
From: Leeder
Date: 16 Dec 01 - 02:39 PM

Some traditions, including Newfoundland (where Ms. Karpeles collected songs) accept recently-composed songs as part of the traditional corpus. ("If it sounds traditional, it is traditional," might be the criterion.) Other traditions don't (including, it seems, the tradition within which Karpeles thought she was working). It becomes a question for the community within which the new song is born. This is as true of today's folk music scene as it was of early 20th-Century Newfoundland.

Subject: RE: Can newly composed song become folk song
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 16 Dec 01 - 02:32 PM

I know fragments of this story, so if anyone can enlighten me, t'would be fun to know.

Did John Jacob Niles claim he "collected" 'Black is the Color, Venezuela, Go Way From My window, and I Wonder as I Wander.....and then, when the big bucks royalties started rolling in during the 'folk revival', reverse himself and fess up that he 'wrote them'?

Rick

Subject: RE: Can newly composed song become folk song
From: Amos
Date: 16 Dec 01 - 02:24 PM

Spaw:

Here's a time-tested, traditional element of the folk process dating back to before printed records were even INVENTED, so it must be genuine:

UP YOURS, SPAW!!!

And a Very Merry Xmas to you and Karen as well!! :>)

A

Subject: RE: Can newly composed song become folk song
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Dec 01 - 02:08 PM

if a Seagull guitar is used in a movie, does that make it traditional?..or do you have to see the movie more than 3 times first? and if an illegal video is made of the movie, does that count against the time it takes to become trad?..and is the Seagull ok if it is not played on camera?

enquiring minds want.....Oh..they don't? well!

Subject: RE: Can newly composed song become folk song
From: catspaw49
Date: 16 Dec 01 - 01:54 PM

And here is a partial list that needs to be updated of the 3000 previous freakin' threads we've run on the subject:

Threads on the Meaning of Folk

Wanna' talk about "Songcatcher" too?......or maybe Seagull Guitars?

Spaw

Subject: RE: Can newly composed song become folk song
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Dec 01 - 01:47 PM

BTW...both Bruce O. and Malcolm Douglas have 'chimed in' on this issue in an earlier thread...Bruce seems willing to bet that it is NOT authentic 'trad', while Malcolm reserves judgement...whatever the answer is, Ms Tongue did NOT provide enough evidence to be convincing.

Subject: RE: Can newly composed song become folk song
From: Don Firth
Date: 16 Dec 01 - 01:45 PM

I see what Maud Karpeles is getting at. It's an "iffy" situation. She is both right and wrong.

It's true that having a song on the printed page or on a recording makes it possible to refer back to that source and treat it as if it were "the correct version." This is a widespread practice in classical music, and appropriately so. If you're playing with or singing to the accompaniment of a full symphony orchestra, you need to "know the score" and perform it correctly in order to avoid chaos. Popular music is a lot looser. Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Clint Black, and Sting may all sing the same song, but each will adapted it to his or her own unique style—maybe even alter the words and tune. Also, if one particular version of a song is constantly pouring out of radio and jukebox speakers wherever you go, this tends to "lock in" that version. But that's usually a short-lived phenomenon, and once that song is replaced by something else, it's free again.

Folk songs are subject to these same influences. I remember being reprimanded because I didn't sing Tom Dooley or The Sloop John B. the way the Kingston Trio sang them, even though I learned the songs before the Kingston Trio's first record came out (Tom Dooley from a Frank Warner record and The Sloop John B. from Walt Robertson in person). I ignored this and continued singing them as I learned them—more or less.

It's that "more or less" part that makes the difference. When learning a song from a recording, sometimes a word or two doesn't come through clearly no matter how many times you listen to it, so you have to bung in the word that you think it might be. Or maybe a line sings very awkwardly, so while trying to keep the original meaning, you change a word or two to make the line easier to sing or more clear. I am opposed to making changes indiscriminately and trying to justify it by saying that I'm just helping the folk process along. If I make a conscious change in a song, I have to have a damned good reason for doing so. Or sometimes you don't realize that you are making changes, and the song gets altered inadvertently. I'm frequently surprised when I pull out an old record I used for a song source years ago and see how much I've changed a particular song without realizing it. Sometimes I change it back, sometimes I just keep doing the changed version, depending. I don't slavishly return to the source if I like my way better. That is the folk process.

Then someone learns a song from me with the changes I've made and they make changes of their own. Thus it goes. The folk process is alive and healthy. It's a long, slow process, and well it should be.

So Maud Karpeles is both right and wrong. Printed and recorded versions of songs have a certain "authority." They tend to cast a song in stone. But if you ignore the "authenticity police" and don't keep referring back to the same songbook or record to make sure you're "doing it right," the folk process is inevitable.

But as for the gink who stands there at the open mike and says "This is a folk song I wrote last week" and then drones on tunelessly for thirty verses. . . . A folk song? Well . . . maybe. But not bloody likely. Time will tell.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Can newly composed song become folk song
From: Gareth
Date: 16 Dec 01 - 01:43 PM

Spaw - It's a tad difficult to kiss a behind when you are wearing a Nuke, Chem & Bio warefare suit.

Gareth ( With evil grin)

Subject: RE: Can newly composed song become folk song
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Dec 01 - 01:39 PM

and there is always "The Chime Child" by Ruth Tongue, a supposed 'coillection' of songs from Somerset...which is widely suspected of being composed by the author. There are some quite nice songs in it, and I wish there were more definitive answers......if I could write those, I'd sure NOT try to pass them off as 'trad'.

Subject: RE: Can newly composed song become folk song
From: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
Date: 16 Dec 01 - 01:05 PM

1. Compose a nice rhyme. 2. Get a catchy tune, partly stolen, partly original. 3. When you perform it say you found it in the lower back woods of the Minnehaha Hills. 4. Don't leave a paper trail, like John Jacob Niles or Fritz Kreisler.

Subject: RE: Can newly composed song become folk song
From: catspaw49
Date: 16 Dec 01 - 12:57 PM

Amos, have you noticed I have this attractive little sprig of mistletoe hanging from my back belt loop? Please......Go ahead.......Kiss My Ass.

Spaw

Subject: RE: Can newly composed song become folk song
From: GUEST,frankie
Date: 16 Dec 01 - 12:55 PM

Aye, that's the question. This morning on liveireland radio I heard a very traditional-sounding Irish singer do a very traditional-sounding version of Stings' "Fields of Gold". f

Subject: RE: Can newly composed song become folk song
From: Amos
Date: 16 Dec 01 - 12:48 PM

Well, yes...but what IS folk music really?

A

Subject: RE: Can newly composed song become folk song
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 16 Dec 01 - 12:01 PM

Certainly a number of Steven Foster's many, many songs have been adopted into the folk consciousness!

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Can newly composed song become folk song
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Dec 01 - 11:49 AM

sure new songs can eventually pass into traditional repetoire!...But the process must be natural and take 'X' amount of time...it doesn't happen by decree, just because some fan of a particular song...or it's author (like Dylan, for example) decides it is so important and wonderful that it somehow deserves early induction...*grin*...It just sort of 'happened' that many folk came to view Woody Gutherie's stuff as 'folk'...and the process is STILL ongoing. The rules are not clear, and there is no universal agreememnt...but Wooody is sure headed there, as is Dylan, I suppose.

Subject: RE: Can newly composed song become folk song
From: Suffet
Date: 16 Dec 01 - 11:37 AM

She is mistaken. Newly composed songs are the raw material from which all folk songs arise. How many little children who learn "A Place in the Choir" in Sunday school will have any idea that Bill Staines wrote it? Not many. But I am certain they will pass that song down to their children and grandchildren.

--- Steve

Subject: RE: Can newly composed song become folk song
From: The Shambles
Date: 16 Dec 01 - 11:17 AM

This is rubbish. For what were her and Cecil doing if not stultifying a song's development by printing all the versions of the songs they collected?

The idea that a song can only become a folk song if its original author is unknown, is nonsense.

There are many people singing songs, in their own way, thinking they are folk songs without ever knowing when or who composed the songs and so many examples of these songs, where there is an original recording but the current singers are not aware that it was ever made.

Songs are musical statements first and always before they ever become documentary records. They are all open to individual interpretation, in exactly the same way, whether their originator is known or not.

Subject: Can newly composed song become folk song
From: GUEST,Ina
Date: 16 Dec 01 - 10:51 AM

I found this statement in a introduction to English folk song by Maud Karpeles (once Cecil Sharp's co-worker):

'Can a newly composed song become a folk song after a given period of time?...this is hardly possible in present circumstances, for nowadays immediately a song becomes current it is stereotyped by means of print or gramophone record, and no matter how popular it becomes or how often it is picked up by ear, it can always be referred back to the original. Thus its development is stultified.'

What do you think about Karpeles argumentation? I would be very interested in your opinions (I think the book is from the late 50s/ early 60s or thereabouts).