Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?

Subject: RE: Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?
From: GUEST,Rahere
Date: 24 Nov 14 - 01:00 PM

It's not whether they can sing or not, it's whether they can keep the time. Most of 'em are the fruit of failed rhythmn method on the part of a certain Scottish knob back in the 1660s anyway.

Subject: RE: Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 24 Nov 14 - 01:29 PM

Any of them posh ****s born into an affluent life of privilege and self-centred sense of entitlement..

.. will just as likely sing whatever the f@ck they want to !!!


... and not give 2 pedigree dog turds if any of us common scumbags try to tell 'em not to.... ???

Subject: RE: Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?
From: Musket
Date: 24 Nov 14 - 02:24 PM

Did someone mention dog turds?

She was poor but she was canine,
Squatted on the pavement cold
Hers was fresh and it was reekin'
The others furry, dull and old.

Subject: RE: Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?
From: GUEST,Anonymous
Date: 24 Nov 14 - 04:28 PM

Joseph Scott: Thank you for that very plausible explanation of how Pete Seeger acquired the vocal style that I dislike. The similarity between Lunsford's singing and Seeger's is clear now that you've pointed out the connection, and I dislike the one as much as the other.

I'm relieved to learn that my feeling about this is not based on a prejudice against the upper class. Rather, it's just my usual dislike of any singing that tries to sound like someone else. Do you perchance know whom Bob Dylan is imitating? You can't swing a cat without hitting someone who's obviously trying to sound like Dylan, but I could never figure out where he himself got that odious style.

Lady Diamond: False alarm. Even the few of us who don't revere Pete Seeger's singing won't harbor the prejudice that I spoke of earlier. I'm sure the kitchen boy will love your singing if you use your own voice.

Subject: RE: Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 24 Nov 14 - 05:56 PM

Lady Diamond (What a fake! The ballad, not the OP)
Most of the Child Ballads were written for or by the nobs, the plebs like me only borrowed 'em for a while. If these have too many verses for you a big slice of what we call folk song started life in the theatres and pleasure gardens of London. You could easily repatriate them. They're easy to spot as they have Phoebes and Corydons and Colins in them and half the song is about milkmaids and ploughboys loving their crap lives.

Subject: RE: Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?
From: Betsy
Date: 24 Nov 14 - 05:58 PM

I imagine Cecil Sharp (all his recording equipment) must have been quite posh as was the well-educated Vaughan Williams .
Martin Carthy and countless other folk performers accents probably sound quite posh when compared to mine
The point is - it takes time and effort to learn and sing a song and if a posh person does so, fair play, I won't knock'em if they do a bit of chanting, but if they try to take the piss out of "our" songs and tradition by childish parody or trying to take the piss in their posh manner I tend to get a bit shirty.
Mind you Rambling Sid Rumbold/Rumpole (spelling?)used to make me laugh as did a couple of British comedy actors of that era

Subject: RE: Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 24 Nov 14 - 06:57 PM

Rumpo - as in rumpy pumpy - as in The Rumpo Kid

Subject: RE: Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?
From: GUEST,Rahere
Date: 24 Nov 14 - 07:22 PM

I don't imagine anything about Martin, I know him (W2S), he knows me (BNS). His ancestry were Thames watermen, making the family he married into quite appropriate.
There are lessons to be learned about going overboard in the French and Russian Revolutions in class hatred. Not only did the revolutionaries waste their time on harmless prats while allowing the really dangerous politicians free rein, what it actually did was allow even more pompous middle-class prats to imagine they were better men.
I talked a while back about Tony Benn's five questions to someone with power. The thing to remember is that at the top, the only way is down, and they say rags to rags in three generations: many of the toffs are prats who'll not survive because they're not real. Your proper target should be those who abuse power, and you'll find as many of working class origins in that list as you will middle and upper class. A real person won't fall into that trap.
And it's real people we are for, true to themselves, and class hasn't got anything to do with it. It's abuse of class which has, and the two are as different as chalk and cheese. Yes, there is more responsibility to be demanded of an upper-class abuser, but don't let the pipsqeaks off the hook either!

Subject: RE: Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?
From: Bob Hitchcock
Date: 24 Nov 14 - 08:48 PM

A very interesting question Lady Diamond. I think that the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band posed it quite well in their song "Can Blue Men Sing the Whites". Check it out.

Bob Hitchcock.

Subject: RE: Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?
From: Musket
Date: 25 Nov 14 - 01:14 AM

Married into an appropriate family?

Rather intriguing...

She was poor and he was humble
They knew how to have a laugh
So the neighbours did accept them
But clock the state of the marital bath.

Subject: RE: Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Nov 14 - 04:23 AM

methinks this is terning itno a definitian of Posh. And when did we lay darwn the defineitive of the geanre "Folk"?

Maybe Posh people can spell proper - like.

Subject: RE: Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?
From: Musket
Date: 25 Nov 14 - 04:40 AM

Now there's a thing..

Now I am all posh, I can define folk and Jim Carroll will have to doff his cap and accept the wisdom of his betters. Mind you, Mike is still a problem, what with him being a bit posh in a crusty sort of way himself...

Subject: RE: Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?
From: GUEST,confused
Date: 25 Nov 14 - 04:48 AM

The song not the singer - says it exactly.And I should know cos I am dead posh( to use the vulgate for you plebs!).
In folk clubs in England it's very trendy to slate the US but one wonderful feature of the place is its disregard for class and surely folk music needs a similar attitude.I sometimes feel ashamed of the polarity I witness in folk clubs.As John Lennon (was he posh?he was certainly richer than most folks!) used to say    Give peace a chance!

Subject: RE: Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?
From: Bert
Date: 25 Nov 14 - 04:51 AM

Is there a 1954 definition of Posh?

Subject: RE: Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?
From: Musket
Date: 25 Nov 14 - 05:01 AM

He was poor, he was a folkie,
Lots of songs that he did know,
But no social class ambition,
Hamstrung by playing a old banjo.

Subject: RE: Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 25 Nov 14 - 05:24 AM

Which Mike did you mean above at 0440, Popgun -- me or michaelr? True I am a bit crusty, like fine old port, dontchano! If me, however, how am I any sort of a problem? Why, I am the most unproblematic wysywig entity in the whole of recorded history...

And I can sing folksongs, according to the general consensus when I put my youtube channel up -- with just one trivial exception, who used the occasion to denounce me as "a concertina player who can't sing" coz I had called him a rude yobbo on another thread.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 25 Nov 14 - 05:30 AM

I'm relieved to learn that my feeling about this is not based on a prejudice against the upper class. Rather, it's just my usual dislike of any singing that tries to sound like someone else.

That's why I can't stand Kathleen Ferrier's folksong recordings. She wasn't from the ruling class and, from the biographical stuff I've read, seems to have been a thoroughly nice person, but her vocal training left her permanently disabled with an RP accent and style of vocal delivery that she could never shake off. Something like "Blow the Wind Southerly" is a freak show.

Subject: RE: Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 25 Nov 14 - 05:58 AM

its a bit like blaming Bix Beiderbecke for not playing funk, Blind Lemon Jefferson for not plugging in a strat....

Kathleen Ferrier had her place in history, as we all do, and she acquitted herself with distinction. Well done kid! You did what you could with where you found yourself.

middle class people singing folksongs in an authentic folk voice is a relatively recent thing. and it has its fans, and more than a few detractors.

Subject: RE: Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?
From: Musket
Date: 25 Nov 14 - 08:03 AM

Andreas Scholl singing Vaughan Wlliams folk songs anyone?

Of course I mean't you Mr genetically modified Lion. It's always about you, if you hadn't noticed. Congratulations.

He was poor but as a critic
In the shadow of Irwin's wit
Which is why he ain't world famous
Isn't life a bowl of shit?

😎

Subject: RE: Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 25 Nov 14 - 09:18 AM

Pop Pop Pop goes the Popgun
Drip Drop Drip goes its spit
Sniff sniff sniff at its fragrance -
Unmistakable odour of


                   Chrysanthemums

Subject: RE: Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?
From: Musket
Date: 25 Nov 14 - 09:27 AM

👏👏👏👏👏👏👏

Subject: RE: Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?
From: Musket
Date: 25 Nov 14 - 09:35 AM

If I could have found a flower to rhyme with wit, I would have done.

But we recent posh can't spell krisanthemum.

👻👻👻

Subject: RE: Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?
From: GUEST,Steve Shaw
Date: 25 Nov 14 - 09:35 AM

Yes, Andrea(s) Scholl was on Wireless Three the other day doing his folk song stuff. It was dreary. I came away depressed, though that's happened to me with many a proper folk singer too, even when they were being cheery. I agree more with Al than with Jack about Kathleen Ferrier. What I can't be doing with meself is those Benjamin Britten piano accompaniments. I concede that you can hardly level that one at Blow The Wind Southerly, of course. I suppose she had a go (they were all live BBC recordings if I remember rightly), and that you only need listen if you want to. Which I don't really, not much. And never to Andrea(s).

Subject: RE: Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 25 Nov 14 - 09:38 AM

No good -- my  doesn't read those, whatever they are. All I can see is a row of 7 rectangles that say, in teensyweensy itsybitsy letters, 01F/44F inside.

A grievous disappointment to me, but I dessay I shall get over it in course of time.

So just Popalong, my Ickle Duckli-Boodling...

☺〠☺~M~☺〠☺

Subject: RE: Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 25 Nov 14 - 09:45 AM

I suppose an anagram of that could be

"O ··· Foul - Filthy - Gross"

Subject: RE: Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?
From: GUEST,punkfolkrockers
Date: 25 Nov 14 - 09:53 AM

.... do posh or chav folk singers pull the best class of groupies... ???

Subject: RE: Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Nov 14 - 09:55 AM

a flower to rhyme with 'it' - violit?

Subject: RE: Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?
From: GUEST,Steve Shaw
Date: 25 Nov 14 - 10:13 AM

Frogbit, henbit, sheep's-bit, hawkbit...

Subject: RE: Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?
From: GUEST,Steve Shaw botanist
Date: 25 Nov 14 - 10:15 AM

Privet

Subject: RE: Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?
From: Musket
Date: 25 Nov 14 - 11:20 AM

Mike. Get yourself a real apple then. My iMac, iPhone and iPad see (and produce) them.

PFR. Chicks dig the whiff of a four star hotel rather than sharing a tent with an oik and his banjo. That's two T shirts in the old collection.

Steve. Trust me, it's Andreas, not Andrea. We dirty rotten stinking capitalists know of what we waffle. Some of his more high brow gear is worth sticking on to impress stuck up cows. (Another T shirt in the collection.)

Gone are the days of Barry White and a brandy & babycham. Glad to have hung my Spurs up a few years ago.

Subject: RE: Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?
From: GUEST,Steve Shaw countertenorphobe
Date: 25 Nov 14 - 11:44 AM

Yes I know it's really Andreas and that he's a lusty family chap really. Nothing personal but I have this thing about countertenors. I'm 63 and you're entitled to a blind spot when you're 63.

Subject: RE: Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 25 Nov 14 - 11:45 AM

My computer fulfils all the functions I ask of it, thank you, Poppo. Comprehension of all your manifold facetiousnesses not regarded as indispensable. I simply point out that you are indulging in naught but vanity & vexation of spirit if you desire any of those particular animadversions to have the least effect on me, as I am not equipped to appreciate them.

Live with it.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?
From: Musket
Date: 25 Nov 14 - 12:37 PM

How are you equipped for wit & wisdom Mike?

Just asking like. A pity you can't see 🐴💤🎶🎵💣🎸😇 or even 🃏🔪🚽. I know you would just love them...

Nothing wrong with counter tenors. You just wonder if the rubber band had slipped a few mills.

So... Can posh people sing folk songs? Well now we are all agreed that folk songs are exactly what I have been saying they are, even Mike and Jim concur now, I can answer the question.

Yes.

Subject: RE: Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 25 Nov 14 - 12:52 PM

No we're not, Poppo. No I don't. Don't drag me into that particular bit of your bollox again, thank you.

Could you at least describe some [or even one] of the things I'm supposed to see with these ▭▭▭▭ of yours? I mean, do they show smileys or funny faces or any of the things I can find on Misc Symbols on Special Characters at the bottom of the Edit option -- or what?

≈M≈

Subject: RE: Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 25 Nov 14 - 01:19 PM

"Rather, it's just my usual dislike of any singing that tries to sound like someone else." Well, folk musicians routinely tried to sing like other human beings who were folk musicians. E.g. Stick McGhee was likely trying to sing "Railroad Bill" like his father, and since I don't have any recordings of singer-guitarist George McGhee to listen to, thanks Stick.

Speaking of fathers, Arlo Guthrie and Bob Dylan sound similar to each other because they were both emulating Woody Guthrie. But Dylan also emulated others with results I like better, e.g. Tom Ashley ("The House Carpenter").

Subject: RE: Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?
From: Musket
Date: 25 Nov 14 - 01:19 PM

If your special characters are the same as on my iMac then yes. I have been using smileys with sun glasses (smug bastard Musket) a pile of poo, a donkey (aimed at those who think soldiers are.. Never mind) and various others.

Toilet, joker card, three wise monkeys, the list is endless and relevant.

He was posh but he was silly,
Fumbling on his old iMac
He couldn't find a dodgy smiley
Or a smiling pile of crap

It's the same the whole world over
It's the old that bear the brunt
Of the taunts of good ol' Musket
Creswell's famous silly cunt.

Subject: RE: Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?
From: GUEST,Rahere
Date: 25 Nov 14 - 01:21 PM

Musket
Martin "Waterman" Carthy married Norma Waterson. Get it now?
His training, by the way, started as a boy chorister in the Chepel Royal - and then he moved to work with Leon Rosselson in the mid 60s.
On the subject of counter tenor, much of the folk repertoire goes right there. It was born in exactly the same circles as sponsored the real castrati, the likes of Farinelli. It starts with Samuel Pepys learning the recorder (always thought that was a reference though to fingering his inflatable pipe, but no...). The whole idiom is riddled with attempts to reach out to the common woman (all these blithering milkmaids being typically champetre straight from Versailles). We even have a number of kinstruments - the hurdy, for example - which would have died if they hadn't been adopted by those circles.
So we might twist the question to point out that the need to classify the corpus as "folk" comes from people who were not "folk". If they were, they would just be "our" songs - as is the case in the Suffolk/Essex tradition. So perhaps the answer is that ONLY posh people sing Folk Songs, normal people just sing and don't give a damn.

Subject: RE: Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 25 Nov 14 - 04:55 PM

How do you access these ▭▭▭▭?

Subject: RE: Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Nov 14 - 06:43 PM

On the subject of counter tenor, much of the folk repertoire goes right there. It was born in exactly the same circles as sponsored the real castrati, the likes of Farinelli.

This is one of the more alarming book titles I've seen lately:

The Modern Castrato

Subject: RE: Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 25 Nov 14 - 08:56 PM

Martin "Waterman" Carthy married Norma Waterson. Get it now?

no.

Subject: RE: Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?
From: Don Firth
Date: 25 Nov 14 - 09:35 PM

The story goes that after a concert by the late, famed countertenor Alfred Deller, a woman who had never heard a male alto before came up to him and said, "But sir, you are a—a—a—a eunuch!!"

He peered down at her from his substantial height, his beard and mustache bristling, and in his deep male speaking voice, said, "Madam, I believe the word you are looking for is 'unique!"

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?
From: Don Firth
Date: 25 Nov 14 - 11:02 PM

By the way, Alfred Deller was married and had three children.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?
From: Musket
Date: 26 Nov 14 - 03:03 AM

You know, I was going to make the water / Waterman connection to take the piss. Never realised you were.. never mind.

He was poor his feet were soggy
Playing on his old guitar
Caught the glance of a fellow amphibian
Started a dynasty, known near and far

See? Not as good without poo or knob gags.

Subject: RE: Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?
From: GUEST, topsie
Date: 26 Nov 14 - 03:57 AM

The reason it's not as good is because it doesn't scan.
(e.g. change 'a fellow amphibian' to 'an amphibian' - I'll leave you to work on the last line)

Subject: RE: Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 26 Nov 14 - 05:23 AM

Back on topic........well almost.....I don't think I sound posh but was once accused of it. My accent still has traces of Suffolk where I was brought up, tho some people think I come from Devon, same as my husband! Oh, and lost count of the number of people who've said I sound like Pam Ayres!
But with a Scottish mother and 30 years of living in Scotland I do try to sing in Scots: would never think of trying to "translate" or anglicise a song like "Yellow on the Broom" for example. Ye think ye're daein' nae sae bad, then aebody says "why canna ye sing in yer ain accent?" Whit?

Subject: RE: Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?
From: Musket
Date: 26 Nov 14 - 05:37 AM

Ah, but it does scan, in the tune associated to "She was poor but she was honest."

That said, dynasty has to be sung fairly quickly. (Comedy is about delivery and cramming syllables is usually a prelude to a punch line.)

He was poor as a banjo-ologist,
Finding rhymes where they just don't scan,
He needs knob gags to make them funny
But Pam Ayres is his biggest fan.

Subject: RE: Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?
From: GUEST,Rahere
Date: 26 Nov 14 - 06:05 AM

There was a young man of Japan
Whose poetry never would scan
When asked why it was
He said it's because
I like to get as many words into the last line as ever I possibly can...

Or was it Haiku?

Subject: RE: Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?
From: Hamish
Date: 26 Nov 14 - 07:00 AM

There was a young man from Dublin
Whose poetry never did rhyme
And it ended too soon.

Subject: RE: Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?
From: Musket
Date: 26 Nov 14 - 07:12 AM

As Bernard Wrigley occasionally pops on Mudcat, I shall honour the bugger with his own words;

Robin Hood could have been a poet,
Had he not taken to his life of crime,
But he wouldn't have been much good,
'Cos he always tried to fit as many words into each line as he possibly could which does tend to bugger up the rhyme.

Anyway...

This isn't about limericks. If we read up, we will see that it is about "She was poor but she was honest."

Different rhyme and meter.

I would also like to take this opportunity to clarify my earlier point in the interest of fandom in general. Pam Ayres has never heard of me, and the only thing we have in common is that I once put an "o" on the end of a line to make it work.

Is she posh? We posh people like to have empathy with the lower orders by pretending to like Pam Ayres whilst secretly reading Wordsworth when nobody is looking.

Subject: RE: Can Posh People Sing Folk Songs?
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Nov 14 - 07:25 AM

I have just listened to that programme on McColl linked to in another discussion. I am from Manchester, not nearby Salford. But in those recordings from the late 1960's he sounds posh to me. Like teachers at school who were from somewhere else.

Or did the OP mean a different sort of posh ?