Folk vs Folk

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Jun 08 - 05:22 PM

PS
Is there a prize for getting 200?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 12 Jun 08 - 06:45 PM

Jim,
Of course the aural process has a great deal to do with the variation, but not as much as most people think. As I said, a large slice is down to the printer's hacks altering and mixing and matching. It would take a mammoth study to actually quantify this or come up with percentages, but I have spent a long time studying and comparing stall versions and I'm convinced their intervention is well understated. In Ireland for instance the likes of Brereton, Haly, Baird, Birmingham were similarly involved in this.

Most of those ballads that came down to us from the 17thc hadn't existed purely in oral tradition for 300 years (although a few had). Hacks and printers themselves were going back to the longer ballads and shortening them for more recent tastes. They often did this by splicing 2 stanzas together to make one, and similar processes. William Taylor for instance had about 30 double verses before it was pared down to the version we are familiar with.

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: GUEST,Tom Bliss
Date: 12 Jun 08 - 06:50 PM

I agree that there's a subjective reaction to song which we can't, and indeed shouldn't try to quantify, but we can still do some objective analysis on the lyrics and tune.

And the subjective usually follows the objective, because story song writing is a craft just as much as an art. If you get the construction right the audience will respond - ask any scriptwriter.

There are some basic rules, or shapes, which are universal throughout all story media, and I think it's safe to say that the people who wrote the original versions of the great traditional songs knew what they were doing around these techniques. And we can also look out for things like economic use of language, good similes, creative metaphors, neat rhymes - specially internal rhymes, deliberate assonance and alliterations - because again it's clear that writers from long before Shakespeare knew all about this too, and used these devices to advantage.

Of course it's not easy to decide which section from the many versions we know today are original, but it doesn't take much to work out which versions of a song hold water and which don't.

People do respond emotionally to tunes, and often to an occasion too - so will often bond with the first version of a song they hear. But they can still step back and look at the lyrics objectively and see if the story is well told or not.

This is a bit of an academic pursuit probably only of interest to writers like me, but if you feel about story songs the way I do - where you hate to see even one syllable wasted - then it's inevitable that some versions of old songs will seem somewhat tired and careworn. It's no accident that great interpreters like Martin Carthy and Pete Coe and Chris Foster often take sections from different versions, and also rewrite whole sections - to build a working model: A song that will actually cut ice the way the original writer intended.

I often wonder what the makers actually wrote - and what they'd say now if they could hear their songs today, with half the verses replaced by floaters, key poetic passages upturned and all the torque flopped out of the story.

I know, anal or what - but that's MY passion, you see? My empathy reaches back through time to writers like me. It's only natural really when you think about it

Tom

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: Amos
Date: 12 Jun 08 - 07:52 PM

The Ballad of Various Literary Criticisms

Old Pat was plain and sexual,
He warn't no inty-leckshual,
He liked to shout in terms obscene,
At people on the movie screen.
But down at Mudcat, on a break
Someone made a big mistake,
Asked Pat for a literary critique,
Something you should never do.

All the professorŽs swear
They'd heard of his repute somewhere
They only lost the footnote source
When the winds began to blow.

Now Charley, he a can't pick and choose
Every verse, like he useter do,
When Pat produced his grand critique,
It raised a bit of Charley's pique
It was all bullshit, smoke and phlegm
But that didn't matter much to him,
He started writing one himself,
An' we all know how that goes.

All the professorŽs swear
They'd heard of his repute somewhere
They only lost the footnote source
When the winds began to blow.

The critics all ignored old Pat,
And Charley's counterpoint fell flat
On grounds of insufficient charm
And post-deconstructionist alarm.
And Pat, he needs your prayers, it's true
But save a few for Charley, too,
He's writing guidebooks for the Zoo
For the tourists in the spring.

All the professorŽs swear
They'd heard of his repute somewhere
They only lost the footnote source
When the winds began to blow....
Oh, when the winds began to blow....



Franz was getting hot and sore,
Pacing up and down the floor,
Researching antecedents which
He found from 1934.
But Franz could not, for all his tryin'
Get the other guys to buy-in,
He swore Pancho Villa was the key,
But maybe it ain't so...

All the professorés swear
They'd heard of his repute somewhere
They only lost the footnote source
When the winds began to blow.
Ohhhh, ohh, the winds began to blow....

Big Mick lives out on the road,
Carrying a heavy load,
Righting wrongs and fighting lies,
And helping workers organize,
But when the load, it gets too great,
Ole Mick doesn't hesitate,
He tunes in to the folkie's page,
And rests his weary eyes.

All the greedy bosses claim
They're smarter than a Big Mick's brain,
And they only give him what he wants,
Out of kindness, I suppose.

Ole Hawk, he stayed behind in school,
While they taught him not to drool,
Until they turned him out, alone,
To face the cold inside his bones.
He couldn't stand the cold inspections,
And grammar, text and style corrections,
So he dropped out in Canada,
Where no-one knows his past.

The poets sing about the threads
That he fucked up and left for dead,
And where he lives is bitter cold,
And that is how the tale is told.
But Little Hawk still gets his say
--he writes pedantic posts, by day,
They show the latest dusty trace
Of the thumb that's up his ass.

A few old professorŽs claim
They could have understood his brain,
They only had to run away
When the wind began to blow...

The talking turned to bold Rapaire,
And psychobabble filled the air,
He figgered high and he figgered low,
And what he meant, nobody knows.
He said that life was edible,
And said that Spaw was Oedipal,
Then he went off smoking drainpipes,
As the sun was falling low.

All the academics seem
To think they know what he tried to mean,
But they lost their lists of secret memes
When the wind began to blow,
Oh, when the wind began to blow

After all was said and done,
By the sorry light of a setting sun,
Charley Noble stood alone,
Harvesting the long thread home,
And as the sea was turning red,
Charley shook his noble head,
"They've all gone off to other things..."
But that's the way it goes.

A few old professorŽs claim
They understood the singer's brain
But they couldn't find the footnote source
When the winds began to blow,
Oh, woooah, when the winds began to blow...

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 13 Jun 08 - 01:51 AM

Sorry Tom,
While I find interesting and agree with most of what you say I'm not sure of its place in this discussion.
"It's no accident that great interpreters like Martin Carthy and Pete Coe and Chris Foster...."
Again, a piece of subjectivity that deserves its own discussion.
Steve:
This part of Ireland and others were heavily influenced by the 'ballad sellers'; ballads like 'Sweet William and Lady Margaret' and 'The Suffolk Miracle' owe their existence to

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 13 Jun 08 - 02:15 AM

Whoops - elbow slipped - start again:
Sorry Tom,
While I find interesting and agree with most of what you say I'm not sure of its place in this discussion.
"It's no accident that great interpreters like Martin Carthy and Pete Coe and Chris Foster...."
Again, a piece of subjectivity that deserves its own discussion.
Steve:
This part of Ireland and others were heavily influenced by the 'ballad sellers'. Ballads like 'Sweet William and Lady Margaret' and 'The Suffolk Miracle' owe their existence in this area to the trade. Yet there is little evidence to suggest that the songs that arrived in this manner were sung as they were received, but rather, were heavily adapted/edited by the singers, so much so that in some cases it has been possible to find two distinctive versions of a song from different singers virtually living within walking distance of each other and both having been received from the same source.
Where printed texts were available they were used as a guide rather than gospel. The singers we have found most skillful at adapting songs were Tom Lenihan, Walter Pardon and Martin Reidy all of whom radically adapted received texts (see the magnificent job Walter did on the text of 'Dark Arches' which was supplied by Mike Yates).
The Travellers have probably had the greatest and longest lasting influence on the oral tradition, yet they were almost universally a non-literate community. Ironically, their influence on the singing traditions of the settled communities has been a literary one - through the sale of 'the ballads'.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: GUEST,Tom Bliss
Date: 13 Jun 08 - 03:58 AM

"Where printed texts were available they were used as a guide rather than gospel"

I've worked hard to understand where you're coming from in all this Jim. A song is either a song or it's not. Making adaptations is one thing, but unless you do a major re-write you are still singing an existing song - and you're indebted to the person who made it. If you didn't have it from somewhere you'd not have anything to adapt - so surely the maker is of more importance than any number of adapters? But somehow back there the erosion process has been elevated above the creative one, and this seems bassackwards to me.

Using a text as a guide rather than as gospel is fine and natural - but you're still using the text! How does this 'guide' use negate the existence of the text?

Of course it's hugely rewarding to compare and contrast the many versions of an old song, and of course some versions will work better, or appeal more for one reason or another, than others - and that judgement always will be both subjective and objective.

But a song is a song - and i think the most wonderful thing about the best of these old ones is that they were sufficiently well made for the essence to have survived in many versions, IN SPITE OF the tender mercies of singers through the ages.

Tom

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 13 Jun 08 - 05:51 AM

Tom,
The basic difference between folk and non folk material is that with the former it is highly unlikely that you can trace the author, even when the song appears in print. The ballad sheets were very much a part of the oral process.
The singer we recorded who sold the ballads described in detail how he got them printed by reciting them over the counter at a local printers.
The best seller he could remember was 'The Blind Beggar' - author unknown, probably from the first half of 17th century London (and nearing 100 verses long in its early printed forms). This was probably the most popular song we found among Travellers. This, with most of the songs he sold, came from his parents and other Travellers and were largely from the folk repertoire - again, authors unknown.
It is of course quite likely that songs which entered the folk repertoire started their lives on the broadside presses, but the opposite was equally likely to be the case - I wouldn't like to be the one to have to sort it out.
The point in all this is that the act of folk singing at its best was creative and adaptive rather than interpretive.
For me, it leads back to ballad scholar David Buchan's (unproven but interesting) theory that there were no set texts to the ballads, rather, the singers re-composed them each time they sang them, using existing forms and commonplaces.
Why on earth 'in spite of the tender mercies of the singers'. Doesn't this imply that the best version of the song was the first one? I'm just working my way through a large collection of Irish Emigration songs, most of which the editor took from broadsides and early songsters which fed into the singing tradition here. It is fascinating to compare the often stilted and awkward printed texts to the sung versions we have recorded.
MacColl said everything I would want to say, had I the ability, at the end of 'The Song Carriers'.
"Well, there they are; the songs of our people. Some of them have been centuries in the making; some were undoubtedly born on the broadside presses. Some have the marvelous perfection of stones shaped by the sea's movement; others are as brash as a cup-final crowd.
They were made by professional bards and by unknown poets of the plough-stilts and the hand-loom.
They are tender, harsh, passionate, ironical, simple, profound; as varied indeed as the landscape of this island.
We are all indebted to the Harry Coxs and Phil Tanners, to Colm Keane and Maggie McDonagh, to Belle Stewart and Jessie Murray and all the sweet and raucous unknown singers who have helped to carry our peoples' songs across the centuries."
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: GUEST,Tom Bliss
Date: 13 Jun 08 - 06:35 AM

I agree with everything you say Jim. Of course all that is true - its the variations which are the whole point of traditional songs. The creative and adaptive process is crucial and many of the best elements of many songs are indeed due to this. Carriers (as well as publishers) often improved songs, even to the extent of the occasional re-build, or major reworking to a different melody - and we should always be grateful for this as well as the business of passing-on without major change.

But we should never forget that someone had the original idea. Someone sat down and decided the story, the theme, the moral - and then composed words and melody to carry it. And what's more they did it well enough for others to want to take up that song, and pass it on. And others agreed and did the same down the years. The songs we have today have mainly survived because they had some vital element worth preserving. Weaker songs have tended to die and be lost - unless found in some old archive and revitalised (which is another reason we should never dismiss the importance of the written word - it influences the survival dynamic too).

Of course we can't ever tell whether the original writers were professional bards or unknown poets of the plough-stilts or the hand-loom. (We might make some educated guesses by comparing versions and songs, and looking at other clues like historical events and contemporary language - but that's not the point).

The point is that these songs didn't evolve by osmosis from nothing (well, chanteys and other work songs and lullabies may have done, but not the great ballads). They were made, and that making was the significant act in the song's existence today. And that's something which seems often to be overlooked in the appreciation of the story of the song's journey through history.

Tom

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: GUEST,Tom Bliss
Date: 13 Jun 08 - 07:35 AM

Sorry I forgot to pick up on the point about David Buchan's (unproven but interesting) theory. He may well be right that there were no set texts, but if so, my view would be that the original balladeers were still expert creators - and all the more to be respected if they developed a winning improvisational skill. They could only do that well if they understood the creative process - so were, effectively, makers too. Tom

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Jun 08 - 08:31 AM

"Someone sat down and decided the story, the theme, the moral - and then composed words and melody to carry it"
Wouldn't open that can of worms if I were you Tom.
Group composition is still around as a theory. Gummere propounded the theory that ballads were composed 'by the dancing throng' - certainly happened like that in Finland.
My late neighbour used to bring me scraps of paper from his attic which he and his friends had made during a drinking session - one of the best of these was of a local character nicknamed 'The Drunken Bear' who went on a pub-crawl through all of the 21 (then) bars in this town and was barred out of every one of them. The elderly locals still remember the man and the incident; nobody remembers who composed or even started the song.
Unlettered Travellers were still making songs up to the mid-seventies; notably the 'made match' one, but many more - not an author in sight.
One song sung to us by a Clare man living in Deptford, about the Irish Civil War was made in the singer's presence by four men standing on the corner of the street the day after the incident; again, no author available.
First verses or even lines of some songs were made and abandoned, leaving others to finish them.
The fact of not knowing the authorship of folksongs is part of their uniqueness.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: GUEST,Tom Bliss
Date: 13 Jun 08 - 09:01 AM

Ah - well that's my theory shot down in flames anyway!

I guess one of the reasons I feel as I do about 'ghost authors' is because it seems that in the folk world, along with this general celebration of absence, or lack of importance, of writers, has come an attitude that authorship is never of importance. And this, I feel, has fuelled a general subsumation of known makers too - and a denigration of their contributions in later times. The end result is a state of mind among many that songwriters are expendable and do not require credit or, more importantly, royalties. I think that's a shame - for obvious reasons! Tom

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: TheSnail
Date: 13 Jun 08 - 10:37 AM

Jim, I think you were still away at the time. Would be interested in your response to my post of 10 Jun 08 - 07:37 PM

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 13 Jun 08 - 12:16 PM

Snail,
Was away - not ignoring it; working on it - honest!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: TheSnail
Date: 13 Jun 08 - 12:18 PM

I await with eager anticipation.

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 13 Jun 08 - 02:42 PM

Jim, Tom,
I think we're really singing from the same ballad sheet here. I'd say all 3 of us were in 90% agreement at least.
Jim, I too have collected quite different versions of songs of the older type from 3 people living a couple of doors from each other.

Tom, I too am interested in David Buchan/Albert Lord's theory on ballad improvisation and am becoming convinced by it, although I think both methods were employed simultaneously, 1) journalistic ballads being composed on historical events like most of the Scottish historical ballads 2) Ballad remaking each perfomance based on solid knowledge of the story and a repertoire of stock verses/phrases. I'm not so sure about the balanced construction theory but Buchan presents a strong case.

Jim,
I didn't think there was anyone still alive who subdscribed to the communal composition theory. There are obvious exceptions Tom has mentioned but ballads of the Child variety and broadside ballads certainly don't come into this.

Regarding the second method I have started experimenting with this. I now sing 2 Child ballads, Cruel Mother and Two sisters, without learning a set text, just based on a set tune and refrains and my knowledge of the basic story, so each time I sing them is a different performance.

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 13 Jun 08 - 03:18 PM

Steve
"I didn't think there was anyone still alive who subdscribed to the communal composition theory" neither did I until recently - I certainly don't - but I know a man who does!!!
The point I was making is that while these theories as a whole often don't hold water, there is often a little truth in some of them; the whole area is a minefield.
I am an ardent fan of Bronson , but I found his article on the origins of 'Edward' so speculative and tenuous that I believe he was really flying by the seat of his pants.
I desperately wanted David Buchan to be right, but I think he made a real hames of 'The Ballad and The Folk' by presenting a perfect picture of a 'fairmtoon' then giving as examples of ballad singers, three people who were as far removed from that environment as you could possibly imagine.
Yet, there's Traveller John Reilly, whose ballads appeared to come out in different versions each time - including 2 Lord Gregorys which he didn't recognise as being the same song (he called it Lord Googley) Ah well - back to the drawing-board!
I do find it interesting that the Travellers, unlettered as they are, proved to be the final custodians of the Big Ballads: Maid And The Palmer, Young Hunting, Lamkin, Outlandish Knight, Edward, Lord Randall,.....
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Jun 08 - 04:23 AM

Snail,
Sorry this has been so long coming – a bit difficult to know where to begin really:
"At times, you speak with passion and admiration for the people that you have collected songs from; at others, you seem to be dismissive of them, thinking it "somewhat odd" that they could be expected to speak for themselves."
Of course I believe them capable of speaking for themselves; I'm not sure of how able they were to speak for each other.
Our whole thirty-odd years of collecting has been based on gathering information from singers on their songs and how they relate to their lives. We have recorded somewhere approaching 100 people, some at great length, others briefly.
If we wanted information on East Anglia we'd go to Walter Pardon or Tuddy Rudd, or John Goffin or Bob and Ella Green. Within that single category, if we wanted information on farming life we'd go to Walter, on fishing, to the other four.
The same applied to Irish Travellers, Scots Travellers, West Clare settle people, Irish musicians living in London.... whoever we recorded. They gave us the information, we organised it as best we could to make it useful for our own work in understanding the subject we were involved in. This was our agenda, not theirs.
As far as all this relates to what happened in Sao Paulo in 1954, that, I believe, is what the members of the committee did when they arrived at the definition; they pooled their collective experiences and information. This makes the definition based on the singers speaking for themselves, albeit indirectly. What were the panel members qualifications – they were there and they'd done the groundwork – that is enough for me.
What was the alternative – perhaps a huge meeting of elected representative fishermen, farmers, merchant seamen, mill workers, miners, Travellers..... rather like that held in The Winter Palace following the Russian Revolution in 1917? Lovely idea, but a little impractical, don't you think?   
By all means challenge the definition, but you'll have to be more specific if you want to challenge the qualifications of the people who made it – or come up with a workable alternative.
In my opinion there have been no serious challenges to the definition apart from a couple so 'baby and bathwater' and smugly worded as to make them not only unusable, but also rather unpleasant.
"Who supplied 'us' with The Seeds of Love?" John England gave it to Cecil Sharp, who gave it to 'us'. Sorry, don't understand your point.
"The "practitioners" had managed perfectly well without it for hundreds of years."
Do you know this, or is it an assumption on your part? Every singer was asked came up with a word which separated what I refer to as 'folk' from anything else they might know or sing; 'My daddy's songs' (not necessarily learned from her father), 'come-all-ye's', 'traditional', 'the old traditional', 'the old folk songs' 'the old songs', 'real Travellers songs'.... Mary Delaney went as far as to refuse to sing us her Country and Western songs, which she said "had the old songs destroyed".
Walter Pardon called them 'folk songs' and articulated the differences, musically and poetically, at great length; all part of our collection and written up in an essay entitled 'A Simple Countryman' which we wrote for Tom Munnelly's festschrift, 'Dear Far Voiced Veteran'. The title of the article was taken from a conversation we had with a well-known folkie who, when we repeated what Walter had told us, replied "why should he think that, he's a simple countryman?" This is pretty much the same patronising attitude that is used to generate any confusion surrounding the term 'folk' within the revival; plenty of examples on this forum down the years.
In 1948 Walter began writing down his family's songs in an exercise book. These included music hall, Victorian parlour ballads, popular songs from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and his 'folk songs'. The latter were listed first and separately.   
"and rather vague term "folk"."
'Folk' is far from vague, except to those who wish to make it so for their own convenience. I have no intention of repeating my opinions on the matter – if you wish to make it vague – it's vague – to you!
I retreated from the word 'folk' around the time I retreated from the folk clubs, having been driven out by music I had no particular interest in. As I had no great involvement with clubs, it didn't matter, the word is still fully in use for research purposes, as vague as you might consider it.
As far as can see, it was and remains a perfect word to describe what happened at the type of clubs I was involved in, those presenting folk and folk-based material. As it is not being put to good and certainly not logical use by people looking for a convenient peg to hang their particular 'Brand X' music, I see no reason for not using it correctly.
"I don't have a definition. I have no authority to impose one."
If a thing exists, it needs to be identified and defined if it is to be discussed and put to use. The definition has not been 'imposed' as you so loadedly put it, it is there to be accepted or replaced.
I had a strange argument some time ago with an anonymous contributor to this forum describing him/herself as a 'fairly well known folk performer', who insisted that not only could I not use the term 'folk', but I should now abandon the word 'traditional' as the tradition has moved on and no longer includes..... well, I'm sure you get the drift – pretty similar to many of the arguments which appear on this thread.
It takes all kinds... I suppose!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 15 Jun 08 - 05:12 AM

I now sing 2 Child ballads, Cruel Mother and Two sisters, without learning a set text

Wow - that's impressive.

I've been working up The Outlandish Knight recently, and I've found (to my dismay) that knowing the tune & the story gets me pretty much nowhere - I need to know exactly what the parrot said, not to mention exactly how to make "fetch two horses" stretch over two lines. I shudder to think what'd happen if I tried it your way -

"Then up spoke the lady all to that knight
Or was it the other way round?
No, these are her lines, I was right the first time,
He'll get his turn in the next verse, verse,
He'll get his turn in the next verse..."

Subject: RE: Folk vs Folk
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 15 Jun 08 - 05:48 PM

Phil,
It helps if you've got a cartload of refrains and repeats while your thinking up the next line. I don't think I could do this with a straight quatrains ballad.