'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?

Subject: 'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 10 May 09 - 11:26 AM

Thinking about a post in the EFDSS thread, where someone spoke about how the media is starting to take "us" seriously, and the music being 'ours', as in 'our music'....I was wondering how this happened?

HOW did a music that was sung by any Tom, Dick or Harriet, once upon a time, become so fenced in, so protected, so 'OURS'?

Music belongs to EVERYONE, doesn't it?

Subject: RE: 'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?
From: GUEST,Me Me Me Me Me
Date: 10 May 09 - 11:32 AM

no, its all mine !!!!

all of it,

I own the lot !!!!!!!!!!

Subject: RE: 'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?
From: treewind
Date: 10 May 09 - 11:36 AM

If it hadn't been for the people whose work is kept in the VW memorial library and similar, it wouldn't by ANYBODY's music because most of it would have vanished without trace.

Would that be better?

Anahata

Subject: RE: 'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 10 May 09 - 11:51 AM

"Ours" can mean "belonging to all of us"... but in practice in this case it probably means "belonging to all of us who actually give a shit". The "and therefore denied to you/them/everyone else" part is merely an implication you've decided to read into the really rather inclusive use of the second person plural.

On a hiding to nothing with this one. And what Anahata said.

Subject: RE: 'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 10 May 09 - 11:57 AM

"If it hadn't been for the people whose work is kept in the VW memorial library and similar, it wouldn't by ANYBODY's music because most of it would have vanished without trace."


But, er...the songs were being handed down 'as a natural process' via families, people who lived in the villages, travelled through them etc.

How can you possibly state that those songs would have 'vanished' if they hadn't been 'collected'...?

Surely that's just supposition.

(in or out of the 9th person plural)

Subject: RE: 'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?
From: Musket
Date: 10 May 09 - 11:59 AM

Watch out...

Try saying it is the music of everybody, (folk?) and you get people reckoning that

1. You have to be of the working classes, whatever the heck that means these days.
2. They expand further by saying you have to have affinity of a struggle of the poor against the rich.
3. Some nonsense about a definition from the '50s and don't make my mistake and try to ask why that definition is relevant...

I suppose it is our music in that we are anybody listening to it. I love all sorts of music but don't feel I am intruding if I enjoy something that is normally enjoyed by people who look and act differently to me.

Many mudcatters in The USA must be very bemused by the labelling and vitriolic waffle coming out of UK "purists" on these threads.

Just to spice up the thread, I will repeat my own hung up sermon....

If it is played in a folk club, it is folk music.

No buts, just accept it.

My credentials for listening and playing it are that I like it, not because I may or may not own a flat cap and take a whippet for a walk.

So... to the question in the thread, how did that happen? A while ago going by some of the comments on these threads. Try prodding them with a stick to get a reaction, I find it rather cathartic...

Subject: RE: 'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 10 May 09 - 12:14 PM

"How can you possibly state that those songs would have 'vanished' if they hadn't been 'collected'...?"

They did do though, except for in a few isolated pockets. So its not supposition but a description of a process of extinction that actually took place with the arrival of modernity. Amongst the last people in the UK to keep alive the oral tradition were the travellers and with them the tradition died almost overnight with the introduction of portable tellies, or so I've read (c/f Jim Carroll).

If you want to explore this further can I recommend "Ask the Fellows Who Cut the Hay" by George Ewart Evans? It's a fascinating and beautifully written exploration of a rural community in East Anglia (where Evans lived at the time), written in the mid-fifties. His basic argument was that these communities had remained virtually unchanged from the middle ages to the end of the nineteenth century but that industrialisation, advances in communication, cheap travel etc had changed them beyond recognition in fifty-odd years. The elderly people he talked to (elderly in 1954!) he saw as the last remaining link to a bygone era. My suggestion is that the old singing traditions were part of this bygone era.

Subject: RE: 'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?
From: SteveMansfield
Date: 10 May 09 - 12:17 PM

My credentials for listening and playing it are that I like it, not because I may or may not own a flat cap and take a whippet for a walk.
But I *do* own a flat cap, and I'm just back from taking our lurcher for a run and she is 1/4 whippet ... so I'm terribly sorry, Ian, but if we're playing 'Authenticity Police Top Trumps', I'll see your folkist credentials and raise you :)

Apart from that, what Spleen and Anahata said.

Subject: RE: 'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?
From: SteveMansfield
Date: 10 May 09 - 12:18 PM

Ah, HTML, I'll get the hang of it one day.

Subject: RE: 'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?
From: Marje
Date: 10 May 09 - 01:29 PM

I agree with what Spleen Cringe says above: "our" can mean "belonging to us all" [including the person/people being addressed], and I would assume that's most likely what was meant in this instance, just as if they'd said "our National Anthem" or "our climate".

Sometimes it's a pity that English doesn't have two different words for "our" - one for "me and you" and one for "me and another person/people". But since it doesn't, it's wise to consider the options as to which one was meant.

Marje

Subject: RE: 'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?
From: Emma B
Date: 10 May 09 - 01:54 PM

As I read it, in context, the intention certainly appeared inclusive; but I suppose any ambiguity of language is open to people using any quote to replay and justify their own agenda.

Subject: RE: 'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?
From: GUEST,Me Me Me Me Me
Date: 10 May 09 - 01:54 PM

..apparently, some old bloke called "Dave"

actually does own most of it !!!!???

Subject: RE: 'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 10 May 09 - 03:20 PM

Ok, so if there is no 'our' apart from the collective, nationwide, all encompassing 12th person plurally singular one, then explain what Ian Anderson meant about Show of Hands and Seth Lakeman getting in 'under the radar' as he stated once, a long time back on the BBC board.

Do you think he meant into 'his' world of 'his' music, that being entirely separate and non-welcoming to musicians not deemed to be worthy of being inside the radar?

I don't know...

But...when I see things such as 'the media is starting to take 'us' seriously' then I think 'us' denotes some kind of select club where 'them' aren't allowed, but then I've thought that for a very, very long time.

Subject: RE: 'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 10 May 09 - 03:20 PM

"vitriolic waffle coming out of UK "purists" on these threads."
For 'purist' please read "a piece of juvenile name calling I have for people who disagree with me so I don't have to tax my brain by thinking of a counter-argument.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: 'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 10 May 09 - 03:26 PM

Precisely, Jim.

If you (others) only care what music sounds like, please feel free to use any label for your preference - apart from the one that distinguishes folk music in nature from other types, and aligns the terms "folk music" and "folk song" with "folk dance", "folk lore" "folk arts" "folk tales" etc.

Subject: RE: 'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 10 May 09 - 05:37 PM

Sorry Richard - you'll have to explain - where is the juvenile name calling in your quote? Would appreciate clarification.
The music is 'ours' because nobody else wanted it.
MacColl, Lloyd, Lomax et al took it up, encouraged others to do so, and those who did put it on the map more or less the way they found it - no orchestration, no massed choirs - just a few adaptations to make it acceptable and accesssible - and for a long time it worked.
You don't have to be working class to enjoy it, but its a pretty safe bet that it originated and was perpetuated by the 'lower' classes.
Over the last century our sources for folk songs have mainly been land labourers, small farmers, fishermen, carpenters (like Walter Pardon).
We worked for thirty years with Travellers - the bottom of the social heap, with Irish building workers, rural labourers - they were the people who retained the songs.
It's also a safe bet that it was people like these who made the songs in the first place - who else could paint the realistic pictures of life at sea as in that repertoire, of working on the farms in the North-East of Scotland as portrayed in the bothy songs.... insiders views. Who else could use the vernacular the way it is used in the songs?
Bert Lloyd was probably right when he suggested that one of the reasons that folk songs were anonymous was that the authors were too poor and unimport to be acknowleged.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: 'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?
From: Peace
Date: 10 May 09 - 05:41 PM

Makes one proud to be British . . . .

Subject: RE: 'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?
From: Musket
Date: 10 May 09 - 05:48 PM

See what I mean?

zzzzzzzz

Subject: RE: 'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 10 May 09 - 07:03 PM

No - see what I mean?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: 'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?
From: Folknacious
Date: 10 May 09 - 07:06 PM

See - she's trolled you all again!

Subject: RE: 'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?
From: Gurney
Date: 10 May 09 - 07:07 PM

In the last 60 years, I've heard exactly three trad-type folksongs outside a folkclub or other gathering of 'folkies,' habitues of places that play 'our' music. One of these we did at school, (The Lincolnshire Poacher) another from an old guy in a pub bar outside the folkclub room (He was surprised anyone else knew John Barleycorn!) and the last from another Dad at a cubscout outing, (Working on the Railway.)

I'd say that what Anahata wrote at 11.36AM was right on the money.

This is not an attack on Lizzie, just my interpretation of the term 'our.'

Subject: RE: 'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 10 May 09 - 08:51 PM

The only person I know of who uses a phrase like that is Robbie Shepherd (presenter of "Take the Floor" and "The Reel Blend" on Radio Scotland) who says "our kind of music", a phrase I've picked up and used as well.

Speaking for myself, I mean by it that I'd like it to be your kind of music too, and I would be very surprised if Robbie ever meant anything different.

Places outside "folkie" gatherings where I've heard traditional songs: occasional parties (anybody know the bawdy version of "The Bonny Lass of Fyvie" that rhymes "come down the stair" with "I'll grab your pubic hair"?), gatherings of football fans, a drunk on a bus singing "The Worms Crawl In", quite a few kids doing playground rhymes, and the most haunting one of my life, my ex-girlfriend (now hopelessly psychotic) singing the whole of "The Bonnie Hoose o Airlie" in the middle of the night, sound asleep, with no recollection of doing it the next morning.

Subject: RE: 'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 11 May 09 - 03:52 AM

Perhaps I should clarify. When I said "Precisely, Jim" above, I meant that Jim was precisely right in what he said.

Subject: RE: 'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 11 May 09 - 05:03 AM

Of the two people who started the aggro in this thread, I know where Lizzie is coming from but I have no idea what sort of bug Ian Mather has got up his arse. Somebody else who thinks there must be an anti-English leftie conspiracy preventing Show of Hands from getting the Nobel Prize? What does Ian actually LIKE?

I've been listening to some of the Free Reed reissues lately, like their Old Swan Band CDs. I don't listen to a lot of English music, but the Old Swan Band *is* my kind of thing. That big sound with a brass instrument in the bass and squeezeboxes on top is absolutely distinctive and could only be English.

Subject: RE: 'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?
From: treewind
Date: 11 May 09 - 05:46 AM

"That big sound with a brass instrument in the bass and squeezeboxes on top is absolutely distinctive and could only be English"
Hurrah! a perfect description of Ethel's Cats (sorry - new band, no sound clips available yet)

I digress, but the original hypothesis of the thread wasn't going anywhere much...

Anahata

Subject: RE: 'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?
From: SteveMansfield
Date: 11 May 09 - 06:08 AM

That big sound with a brass instrument in the bass and squeezeboxes on top is absolutely distinctive and could only be English.

By pure coincidence we were playing a friend's birthday party ceilidh on Saturday just gone, and her son sat in on tuba for a few numbers. Absolutely fantastic driving bass sound - I wonder if we could persuade his day job (one of the Guards regimental bands) to lend him to us permanently :)

Subject: RE: 'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?
From: Tim Leaning
Date: 11 May 09 - 08:15 AM

Hi Lizzie :-)

Subject: RE: 'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?
From: Musket
Date: 11 May 09 - 11:44 AM

Ian likes all sorts of music.

Precisely the point...

There is no such thing as "our music" but there may be groups of friends or business concerns that gather around a culture, be it a type of music.

It both worries me and makes me laugh at the same time hearing people being precious about such things. The person who started this thread posed an excellent question.

The answer, whatever it may be, could be why younger artistes are using folk techniques but have decided the normal folk music haunts of many a year have become too cliquy, too old and set in their ways, and too irrelevant.

Good grief, that somebody should dictate to a willing buddy musician what they can or cannot do. Likewise, that somebody on stage should dictate to their audience.

It is a folk song because I heard it played in a folk club.
It is a folk club because it says so on the poster.

Live with it.

Subject: RE: 'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 May 09 - 11:47 AM

"It is a folk song because I heard it played in a folk club. It is a folk club because it says so on the poster."
Rubbish!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: 'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?
From: High Hopes (inactive)
Date: 11 May 09 - 12:00 PM

Actually it's an old geezer up in The Lake District, named Eustace, who owns all the music, and he's threatening a law suit against the EFDSS if they don't drop, in his words, "their stupid London-centric claims"
He's had a bit of education has young Eustace!

Subject: RE: 'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 11 May 09 - 12:33 PM

Ian, I think you're having a seperate discussion! Read the quote Lizzie was complaining about. She was inferring an exclusiveness that was clearly not intended. You're going off on one about definitions of folk. Most people on the thread are saying the music is there for anyone who wants it. Is that really so problematic?

By-the-by, your reasoning appears flawed. The logic of it is that if it's not in a folk club it's not folk. Don't think so...

Subject: RE: 'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?
From: The Sandman
Date: 11 May 09 - 12:41 PM

That big sound with a brass instrument in the bass and squeezeboxes on top is absolutely distinctive and could only be English.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boqwtu3xPzU
BACK IN 1981 yours truly DickMiles,jez lowe,Sue Miles

Subject: RE: 'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?
From: GUEST,glueman
Date: 11 May 09 - 12:44 PM

I agree, brass umph and a wheezebox is a fantastic sound.

Subject: RE: 'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?
From: Marje
Date: 11 May 09 - 12:52 PM

I rather like the use of "our music". Once when I sang a traditional song at a club, someone who's more into modern, recently composed songs asked me "Whose song is that?" - expecting me to name a recording artist or a composer. But I said something like, "It's no one's - or everyone's. It's yours, mine, ours." - which seemed to be a new concept to him.

Modern commercial music is often closely linked with one person (often the performer rather than the composer). I like the way that in traditional music, most of us (and that includes all of you if you like, okay?) feel that we have a right to make a song our own and interpret it as we wish. So rather than saying, "This is a Martin Carthy/Kate Rusby song," we will focus on the song rather than on a particular singer or arrangement. (Although of course if the song is not traditional but was written by Kate Rusby, it's courteous to say so.) We make the music "ours" in a way that doesn't often happen in most other genre of music.

Marje

Subject: RE: 'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?
From: The Sandman
Date: 11 May 09 - 12:53 PM

Ok, so if there is no 'our' apart from the collective, nationwide, all encompassing 12th person plurally singular one, then explain what Ian Anderson meant about Show of Hands and Seth Lakeman getting in 'under the radar' as he stated once, a long time back on the BBC board.
no idea,but then why should Ian Anderson saying something a long while ago ,be given any more importance than anybody else.
Ian Anderson is the Editor of Folk Roots,why should his opinion be any more important than the editor of any other roots /folk magazine,he is not some sort of Guru.

Subject: RE: 'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?
From: GUEST,Herr Wurzel
Date: 11 May 09 - 12:56 PM

"That big sound with a brass instrument in the bass and squeezeboxes on top is absolutely distinctive and could only be English."

.. or German !!!??

Subject: RE: 'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 11 May 09 - 12:57 PM

Could someone please explain to me why the 1959 definition is the only acceptable definition? Who was the authority? Was it a single person or a collective?

I don't want reams just the Cliff note version, please.

Subject: RE: 'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?
From: The Sandman
Date: 11 May 09 - 01:02 PM

excellent post, Marje,
traditional music is ours,it belongs to everybody.
whereas YESTERDAY is a Macartney song,The Game Of AllFours is not a Kate Rusby song,it is traditional,and some of us were singing it before she was born,and some were singing it before I was born.

Subject: RE: 'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?
From: Jayto
Date: 11 May 09 - 01:28 PM

I refer to the folk music I do as ours becuase it is. Most of the songs I do have roots and origins in my state. They are songs that tell a story about events and people tht would have otherwise been forgotten. I really don;t care about definitions or any of that. I don't even care if folk music lovers consider me folk. In my opinion it is folk if it tells of events and people that you would not otherwise hear about. Normal people and places that were captured in time by being put in a song. I wrote a song about my cousin dying in a coal mine explosion along with 10 other men. If you were to try to look up about the explosion (if anyone besides local knew about it) you wouldnt find much. the memory of them will be preserved as long as the song is heard. I know it is not a big stamp but it the memory will at least be preserved for a while longer. I did my part. Alot of old songs are the same the writer was just doing thier part saying hey we were here and this happened. Oral tradition set to music. That is why I will say ours or mine when I speak of it. It came from my people telling about my region my family past and present. My community past and present. It was not written to find a clever hook that might hit the pop charts. It was regular people simply saying hey we were here. I feel that attachment and it is really personal. A deep historic and sometimes blood connection to the events and people mentioned in them. In modern times every song I write is a reference to some local person, legend, or event. I dont always point them out but they are there. I know if I do it alot of the old songs are the same. They may not always point out the source by name but they are based off real life from yrs ago. Events not covered in history books and news coverage. they are the closest thing to sitting down and having a conversation with generations that have passed yrs ago as we are going to be able to have. You hear those generations speak when we hear thier songs.

Subject: RE: 'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 May 09 - 01:28 PM

Virginia
"Could someone please explain to me why the 1959 definition is the only acceptable definition? Who was the authority? Was it a single person or a collective?"
A collective of people already working in the field of song who based it on research work that they were involved in andwhich had been in hand since the beginning of the century. This included research by Sharp and Karpeles, Grainger, Kidson, Hammond and Gardiner and others. It would have also included the collecting project carried out by the BBC in Britain (1950-54).
This was discussed fairly comprehensively on a recent thread (I think you took part).
"It is a folk song because I heard it played in a folk club. It is a folk club because it says so on the poster."
Two reasons why this Humpty Dumpty "Words mean what I want them to mean" 'definition' makes no sense.
1. Sinister supporter knocked it on the head fairly comprehensively with his own club's definition on the above thread:
"On an average night in our Folk Club we might hear Blues, Shanties, Kipling, Cicely Fox Smith, Musical Hall, George Formby, Pop, County, Dylan, Cohen, Cash, Medieval Latin, Beatles, Irish Jigs and Reels, Scottish Strathspeys, Gospel, Rock, Classical Guitar, Native American Chants, Operatic Arias and even the occasional Traditional Song and Ballad. We once had a floor singer who, in his own words, sang his own composition which he introduced with the Zen-like "...this is a folk song about rock 'n' roll..."."
2. Folk is probably the most the most comprehensively and extensively researched and documented musical form; still being researched and documented under the widely accepted banner 'folk', as is its fellow disciplines folklore, folk music, folkdance, folktale and folk custom.
Until all these terms are re-defined the old definition remains firmly in place - live with it.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: 'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?
From: Emma B
Date: 11 May 09 - 01:30 PM

Beautifully expressed Jayto

Subject: RE: 'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 11 May 09 - 01:35 PM

Except that it's 1954.

Subject: RE: 'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?
From: Musket
Date: 11 May 09 - 02:01 PM

Mmmm I just read somewhere above that if I reckon (as I do) that if it is played in a folk club it is folk, then apparently if it isn't played in a folk club, then it isn't folk.

Luckily, I didn't say that. Rather sill put down really.

All I am doing here is sharing the concerns of Lizzie Cornish in the original post.

Jim Carroll says that definitions are there so live with them.

No.

Shan't.

So there.



I have a great respect for the songs, the fun and the friendship I have amassed over the years. I also note the steady demise of a wonderful culture here in The UK. The problem is, I have been going to clubs since a teenager in the late '70s and STILL if I visit a local club, I can easily find myself the youngest one there.

In the meantime, we are told to live with 1959 definitions, be careful what we sing, try and put a song in some compartment or other and wear gloves when handling it..

ZZZZZZZZ

Our music indeed...

Who the hell are "we"??

I must be "them" then. Oh, that's all right then.

Subject: RE: 'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 11 May 09 - 02:08 PM

"the labelling and vitriolic waffle"

For example when people throw out comments like "the labelling and vitriolic waffle"...

Subject: RE: 'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?
From: Emma B
Date: 11 May 09 - 02:10 PM

'In the meantime, we are told to live with 1959 definitions,
be careful what we sing, try and put a song in some compartment or other and wear gloves when handling it..'

Really?

Did I miss those last instructions?

Subject: RE: 'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 11 May 09 - 02:14 PM

RB - Pardon me for getting the date wrong. Sorry about that I am very definitly numerically challenged as you have been witness to more than once.

Mr. Carroll - in spite of your invitation (in another thread) to call you Jim I will continue to addrss you formally because your tone to me is nothing like friendly or helpful. The "live iwth it" comment was unkind.

I was not attempting to be snide or sarcastic. There is so much in these threads that I cannot follow the arguments. Especially when I get into them late and my brain cannot engage at night after work. Maybe it is age, maybe grief, maybe hangover from chemo. I never was clever. All my understanding has been hard won.

And I want to understand exactly what the contention is about. And I want clear definition from a legitimate authority. I am not especially bright. I do need the facts and history spoon fed to me, without having to wade through the bullshit most which appears to divide people with a common interest into camps. I get tired and give up trying to pull meaning from the threads.

I would have preferred a link to the actual definition and historical reference to the principal contributors to that definition. No snide remarks or patronising, pleaxe. Then upon reading and interpretting for myself I will come to my own conclusions. So I will google the apporpriate date (thank you RB) and see what I can find out and decide for myself.

I don't want to cause friction. That is the last thing on what little mind I have left.

Subject: RE: 'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 11 May 09 - 02:28 PM

Always love reading your posts Jayto: Composed from the heart and fired straight from the hip.
That's what makes them folk then.... *smile*

And,

Ditto Virginia Tam's very sensible question regards legitimate provinance and demonstration of 1954 definition as above. Is there any chance of a Dawin/Freud theory masquerading as Scientific Gospel being purveyed here?

Subject: RE: 'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 May 09 - 02:34 PM

"because your tone to me is nothing like friendly or helpful."
Sorry Virginia - it was not my intention to be either unfriendly or unhelpful to you - any more than I am sure it was not yours to me when you called me a 'woolly jumper' and told me not to express my reservations as they were 'devisive' (pretty sure it was you, but if I am wrong about that - apologies in anticipation and I take it all back).
These arguments inevitably become fraught and passionate, which I always take to be an indication of the importance in which they are held by those participating.
Can I second Emma B's admiration of Jayto's excellent posting.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: 'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 11 May 09 - 02:54 PM

Definition and related discussions follow. NB I nowadays disagree with Sharp's conclusion that a folk snog MUST be anonymous. Rather I think that the adoption and modification by transmission is the key.

It also seems to me that the 1954 (or "Karpeles") definition is really obviusly corect if you think about the relation of the expression "folk song" to the other "folk arts" as I listed in more detail above.

"Folk Song in England

In 1954 the International Folk Music Council adopted this definition:—

"Folk music is the product of a musical tradition that has been evolved through the process of oral transmission.

The factors that shape the tradition are:
(i)         Continuity which links the present with the past:
(ii)        Variation which springs from the creative impulse of the individual or group:
(iii)        Selection by the community, which determines the form or forms in which the music survives.

The term can be applied to music that has been evolved from the rudimentary beginnings by a community uninfluenced by popular music and art music, and it can likewise be applied to the 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 refashioning and recreation of the music by the community that gives its folk character.



'Conclusions', by Cecil Sharp~

A folk song is always anonymous.
Modal melodies, set to secular words, are nearly always of folk origin.
Song tunes in the minor mode are either composed tunes, or folk airs that have suffered corruption.
Folk tunes do not modulate.
Folk melodies are non—harmonic: that is to say, they have been fashioned by those in whom the harmonic sense is undeveloped. This is shown:—

a.        in the use of non—harmonic passing notes.
b.        in a certain vagueness of tonality, especially in the opening phrases of modal tunes.
c.        in the use of flattened seventh, after the manner of a leading note, in the final cadence of modal airs.
d.        in the difficulty of harmonizing a folk tune.
e.        Folk melodies often contain bars of irregular length.
f.        Prevalence of five and seven time-measures in folk airs.

In giving evidence in 1835, Francis Place reported that ballads sung about the streets during his youth could not be adequately described in present company. 'I have given you in writing words of some common ballads which you would not think fit to have uttered here. At that time the songs were of the most indecent kind: they were publicly sung and sold in the streets and markets: no one would mention them in any society now!



Another consideration.

"The mind of the folk singer is occupied exclusively with the words, with the clearness of which he will allow nothing to interfere. Consequently, he but rarely sings more than one note to a syllable and will often. interpolate a syllable of his own rather than break this rule.

"O abroad as I was wordelkin'
I was walking all alone
When I heard a couple tordelkin'
As they walked all along"



The Greek/Mediaeval/Folk Song Modes ~

The scales on which many English folk tunes are based are not the same as those with which we arc familiar through classical music.
The Greeks were the earliest musical grammarians in Europe and laid the foundation of the scientific system which was to be, in a modified form, our inheritance for plainsong and folk song.

        There were seven Greek Modes        (The white notes on a piano).
Dorian (Plato considered this the strongest)        D to D
Phrygian.        E to E
Lydian        F to F
Mixolydian        G to G
Aeolian        A to A
Locrian        B to B
lonian (our major modeNodus lascivus)        C to C

"Sumer is a--cumen in", our oldest Mss is in the Ionian Mode.

English folk tunes are most frequently found cast in the Dorian, Phrygian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, and Ionian modes. Occasionally in the minor: Cecil Sharp wrote: "The majority of our English -folk times, say two~thirds, are in the major mode. The remaining third is fairly evenly divided between the Mixolydian, Dorian and Aeolian modes, with, perhaps, a preponderance in favour of the Mixolydian,

The pitch of the mode may of course be varied, the relationship of the notes being constant.



The Pentatonic_Scale

The pentatonic scale (five notes to the octave) is widely distributed in folk music and is found in the traditional music of many oriental countries. We also know that it was practiced in ancient times in China and Greece. It is common in Scotland and Ireland.

In its most common form it possesses no semitones, the intervals between the notes consisting of whole tones and one—and—a—half tones. It can be played on the black notes of a piano, or on the white notes, omitting B and B.

According to the relative position of the tonic, there are five pentatonic modes, though some scholars prefer to regard them as segments of the same scale.

English songs also show a number of Hexatonic (six—notes) tunes, usually with the sixth missing.

Sharp held the theory that the present seven—note diatonic scale is a development from the pentatonic scale,




Ballads

"'Therefore,' while each ballad will he idiosyncratic, it will not be an expression of the personality of individuals, but of a collective sympathy: and the fundamental characteristic of popular ballads is therefore the absence of subjectivity and self—consciousness. Though they do not ~"write themselves" as Grimm has said - though a man and not a people has composed them, still the author counts for nothing, and it is not by mere accident, but with the best reason, that they have come down to us anonymously." Child.

Romantic Ballads        Child Waters, The Gypsy Laddie, The Maid Freed from the Gallows.

Tragic Ballads        The Two sisters, Lord Randal, Barbara Allan.

Historical Ballads        Sir Patric Spens, Mary Hamilton, Queen Jane, The Hunting of the Cheviot.

The Outlaw Ballads        Robin and the Three Squires, Johnnie Cock.

Supernatural Ballads        Lady Isobel and the Elf—Knight, The Unquiet Grave, The Demon Lover, The Wife of Usher's Well.

Humorous Ballads        Our Goodman, The Farmer's Curst Wife,





Conventional Elements

Conventional_diction        cerbain archaisms not found in common parlance — a song about lords and ladies will use "steed", "morrow," etc.

.Conventional Epithet        "milk—white steed," "Lily—white hand," "Fair Margaret."

Conventional Phrase        Tears "blind the eye," blood 'trickling down the knee."

Commonplace        e.g., the rose—briar stanza.

They buried her in the old churchyard (epithet)
They buried him in the choir
Out of her grave grew a red, red rose (epithet)
And out of his a green briar. -

Opening/Ending Formula         "As I walked out one Nay morning,"
        'It fell upon a..        
        "Come all you young fellows and listen to me.





"Voice and ear are left at a loss what to do with the ballad until supplied with the tune it was written to go with…. Unsung, it stays half—lacking.'

Robert Frost (the bloke from whose lecture I nicked this)."

Subject: RE: 'Our' Music - How Did That Happen?
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 11 May 09 - 03:04 PM

You know what... I apologised to you specifically for those flippant comments even though they were not directed specifiically at you.

They were general (what I wrongly thought clever and humorous) comments about applying limits which could potentially kill the very thing we all feel so passionate about.

What more do you want?

I am going to stand by my belief that this devisiveness will frighten people away. It is frighteing to me.

By the way. My name is Tam and I would like to go on record that I have supported you in other threads and been slammed by you for doing so,