Folk song collecting. Good or bad?

Subject: RE: Folk song collecting. Good or bad?
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 13 Sep 24 - 09:26 AM

Yup: collect, then thresh out the dross. It'll be up to future scholars to debate what's muck and what's brass; but if nothing's collected, the good bits will be guaranteed to be lost.

Subject: RE: Folk song collecting. Good or bad?
From: GUEST,Phil d'Conch
Date: 13 Sep 24 - 05:29 PM

It would seem OP, and many others, believe an oral history is not a history, to include all the human baggage that comes with any history.

The stuff one does not care for, or never even heard of, is all part of one and the same reality. And that will be the majority of it for all of us. No perspective, no history. That's the deal. Take or leave it.

Every 'sea shanty' ever sung in a folk club or on a record, while not exactly ...reduced to polite 'pianoforte' pieces to be played in Victorian drawing rooms* and to be safely taught in schools..., was nevertheless a kind of "forebitter," not so much frozen in time, rather existing on its own as part of history. They never were shanties. Neither stitch-counting historically correct; nor living and evolving; nor any other kind of shanty.

Shanties are long gone and have been for a century. Yet 'they' still manage to entertain to millions today. Anyone sorting the muck from the brass has their work cut out for them and, like most history, it ain't getting any easier as the years roll on by.

*Consumer choice: Historically speaking, early 19th century Anglo sailors were quite fond of their regency dance music turned anchor/capstan/windlass song. Just don't call them shanties and you're good.

Subject: RE: Folk song collecting. Good or bad?
From: Lighter
Date: 13 Sep 24 - 05:49 PM

Muck or brass, it's all down to personal taste.

Solid gold too.

Subject: RE: Folk song collecting. Good or bad?
From: The Sandman
Date: 17 Sep 24 - 02:15 PM

https://www.facebook.com/alan.lamb.357/videos/427432277017894/?vh=e&extid=MSG-UNK-UNK-UNK-IOS_GK0T-GK1C
here are shanties used as work songs collected by peter kennedy

Subject: RE: Folk song collecting. Good or bad?
From: The Sandman
Date: 17 Sep 24 - 02:16 PM

back to the collectors, Sharp did not appear to collect any welsh songs in the welsh language, was this because they were in the welsh language.

Subject: RE: Folk song collecting. Good or bad?
From: GUEST,Phil d'Conch
Date: 17 Sep 24 - 04:34 PM

If shanty collector's did not exist, we would not be discussing their influence, good or bad. Seems obvious no? OP's complaint is that 'purist' consumers of Kennedy, Hugill &c output would turn shanties into 'Victorian' parlor songs, or whatevs.

But I seriously doubt any two working sailors ever debated Hugill-v-reality whilst at task. And, if OP ever sang a shanty in their lifetime, it was a forebitter. The sort of parlor piece reproduction the complaint is about.

Look around you... listen. What do you see and hear? Work gangs of sailors making rhythmic sounds as they go about tasks in unison? Not me! I'm getting folk club singers, TikToks, video games and maritime museum docents... singing from books... or whatevs.

Me? I blame the working maritime industry for becoming museum pieces in the first place…not the collectors, but that's just my personal perspective on the typical muck, gold and brass of musical alchemy.

The pseudo-scientific maritime history song collectors and folk club singers might put up in between the contemporary forebitter is a different discussion. Hugill was no historian. He was a song collector.

Subject: RE: Folk song collecting. Good or bad?
From: Lighter
Date: 17 Sep 24 - 05:26 PM

And probably a song modifier.

Can anyone doubt that as a creative working chanteyman, Hugill himself devised some of the lines in his books? At work, one hopes.

Bear in mind too his revealing comment that "The bulk of the shanties in this book I carried around for years, safely stowed away in the saltwater recesses of my figurehead." That means his head. He wrote them from thirty- or forty-year-old memory.

Subject: RE: Folk song collecting. Good or bad?
From: The Sandman
Date: 18 Sep 24 - 01:35 AM

interesting, shanties evolve or get made up whilst being sung, fits the 1954 definition perfectly. yes he was a collector

Subject: RE: Folk song collecting. Good or bad?
From: The Sandman
Date: 18 Sep 24 - 02:25 AM

Bascam lunsford, a prolific collector ,whose work was valuable he mostly collected white appalachian music, although Lunsford collected music from Black informants and reportedly spoke well of them as individuals and performers, no Black musicians ever took the stage while he led the festival
another collector with an agenda?.

Subject: RE: Folk song collecting. Good or bad?
From: GUEST,Phil d'Conch
Date: 18 Sep 24 - 05:00 AM

Fiction kills. This Conchy has heaved one too many waterlogged corpse over the gunwale to be neutral on the subject of maritime reenactors. RIP De Gallant and two crew for our most recent Lucayan go-round.

Hugill's career was split almost equally between the merchant marine (work song… mayhaps) and the nautical equivalent of summer/holiday camp (parlor song… but spice up the race, risque, entendre &c.)

He was freshly retired from the latter when he published in the 1970s. His target demographic at the time was the Outward Bound student/camper type.

By the numbers… Hugill, as song collector, had zero impact on the post 1970s working maritimes. As a naval historian, he was a lot worse than “bad.” The quality and accuracy of his reenactment, reproduction, demonstration, teaching songs for Outward Bound is debatable. For that schoolboy, dress up and sing like a pirate, Sailortown fun of it all, Stan Hugill was better than “good.”

Subject: RE: Folk song collecting. Good or bad?
From: GUEST,paperback
Date: 19 Sep 24 - 02:12 PM

Well, Hugill may be all pipe and no tar (who can say) but he did have a hole in his ear.

Subject: RE: Folk song collecting. Good or bad?
From: The Sandman
Date: 19 Sep 24 - 04:05 PM

surely, aii collectors have agendas and are victims of what is acceptable at the time they are collecting, and or are victims of their own prejudices, example, lunsford

Subject: RE: Folk song collecting. Good or bad?
From: Lighter
Date: 19 Sep 24 - 05:56 PM

"Agenda" nowadays often means "ulterior motive."

I'm curious. What, aside from making a few bucks, do you suppose were Lunsford's and Hugill's "agendas," and - more to the point - how did they undermine the value of their collecting?

As a chantey collector and historian, Hugill wasn't perfect, but he was surely the most erudite, besides having a degree from the School of Hard Seafaring Knocks.