Who are folk?

Subject: RE: Who are folk?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 01:09 PM

Glueman,
"However if he holds 1954 higher than a general guide to thinking at the time"
What is the thinking at the time? - please
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Who are folk?
From: glueman
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 01:26 PM

"Glueman doesn't really know much of anything about ethnomusicology and folklore"

You could be right. On the other hand my master's degree majored on folklore and the staff asked me to teach on it once I'd finished. My dissertation was mostly on how folklore and contemporary media - but do fire away.

Subject: RE: Who are folk?
From: glueman
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 01:27 PM

That last sentence should read...oh never mind.

Subject: RE: Who are folk?
From: Don Firth
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 01:33 PM

Point well made, M-Ted.

I think one of the reasons these discussions flail about like an octopus having the fits and wind up ticking people off and ultimately getting nowhere is that two definitions (at least two) are being used for the word "folk."

There was a time when the word "folk" had a fairly specific meaning. The first time the words "folk song" were known to have been used, it was by German philosopher, poet, and literary critic, Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744—1803), who advocated the collecting of volkslied (folk song)—by which he meant "songs of the rural peasant class"—and that if composers wanted their music to have a national character, they should incorporated themes from volkslied into their compositions. One example of a composer who has done this is Ralph Vaughn Williams, another is Bela Bartok. And there are many others. And collectors such as Sharp, the Lomaxes, et al, have used, essentially, the von Herder definition of "folk" (volk), and subsequently "folk song," as a guideline in their song collecting.

In times past, the word "folk" had a fairly specific meaning. But despite the incredible disparity in incomes and lifestyles in modern society, we like to think of ourselves as a "classless society," and the concept of a "rural peasant class" is not something we like to give credence to.

Nevertheless—this is the reality that ethnomusicologists deal with, and as a result, there is quite a difference between what an ethnomusicologist means when he uses the word "folk" and what someone means when they use the word in the very broad and general sense, the way many "folks" here on Mudcat are using it, meaning "people in general," or "just plain folks."

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Who are folk?
From: glueman
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 01:51 PM

"What is the thinking at the time? - please"

To insist folk was/were in the past as the conditions that gave rise to it/them had finished, Jim.
Is it a trick question, I'm happy to play?

Subject: RE: Who are folk?
From: glueman
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 01:56 PM

M-Ted have I got you correct that folk is an academic discipline?

Subject: RE: Who are folk?
From: Aeola
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 02:10 PM

'plain folks'! The term has a slight condescending inference and detracts from the essence of 'what is folk'.

Subject: RE: Who are folk?
From: Don Firth
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 03:42 PM

Aeola, haven't you ever heard people use the expression, generally in reference to themselves, as in "We're just plain folks?" I've always thought of it as a bit disingenuous, but not particularly condescending.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Who are folk?
From: In My Humble Opinion
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 03:46 PM

*'plain folks'! The term has a slight condescending inference*

What infernal rubbish! I get the feeling that the utterance from Aeola has a slightly condescending feel to it......

Subject: RE: Who are folk?
From: Aeola
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 04:18 PM

'we're just plain folks' but they don't really mean it! Do they?

Subject: RE: Who are folk?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 04:22 PM

To be fair, anything can sound condescending if you want to hear it that way. There's a character in one of the Lemony Snicket books who wins any argument by the simple expedient of repeating whatever the other person says in a silly voice - it's a depressingly versatile tactic.

(All together now: "Ooooh! It's a depressingly versatile tactic!")

Subject: RE: Who are folk?
From: In My Humble Opinion
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 04:22 PM

One of the "glass half empty crowd, I see. Most people I've met in my life are just that, ordinary, or "just plain folks.Mind you I always try to look on the positive side.

Subject: RE: Who are folk?
From: Aeola
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 04:26 PM

Oh well, perhaps we're all just folk enjoying whatever we enjoy.....

Subject: RE: Who are folk?
From: Stringsinger
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 04:31 PM

Folk are generally associated with a community. This community is generally culture-based and not cobbled together like a political meeting.

Folk is generally associated with working-class or the so-called "lower classes".

The word has been bowdlerized by the likes of G.W. Bush or John McCain who do
not represent the working class in the US.

Here's a problem. When a traditional singer (such as Doc Watson) sings a popular
composed song (such as Over The Rainbow) is he/she still a "folk"?

If a fine songwriter like Jean Ritchie writes "The L and N Don't Stop Here Anymore"
is what she has written and composed a folk song and if not, does that mean she's still a folksinger?

If Woody Guthrie or Bob Dylan base their songs on traditional folk melodies (changing them around and creating variants) are they still folk singers?

If Uncle Dave Macon draws a sizeable paycheck from Grand Ol' Op'ry is he still a
folk singer?

if Richard Dyer-Bennet or Josh White sing in a smooth style, are they still folk?

Is Dolly Parton folk?

Discuss.

Subject: RE: Who are folk?
From: glueman
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 04:33 PM

I can't think of any sensible way on God's earth how Dolly Parton cannot be folk. If I had to think of an icon of folkiness she'd be the there.

Subject: RE: Who are folk?
From: GUEST,In My Humble Opinion
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 04:39 PM

This thread is making the switch from who are folk to what is folk and it's not being very discrete about it.

Subject: RE: Who are folk?
From: glueman
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 04:40 PM

True.

Subject: RE: Who are folk?
From: Peace
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 04:40 PM

Plain folks is them wot lives on the prairies.

Subject: RE: Who are folk?
From: GUEST,In My Humble Opinion
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 04:44 PM

Sorry Stringsinger, I, for one am not falling for it, this thread concerns who are folk, not what is folk...nice try though. 4/10 for effort

Subject: RE: Who are folk?
From: glueman
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 04:46 PM

One of the criteria that people get sniffy about is a performer's aspiration for 'other'. It manifests itself in negativity to people who play in the tradition who perform different material as well as any sense of aspiration. Is aspiration or divergence un-folk? It strikes me as a particularly authentic facet of a genuinely folk sensibility.

Subject: RE: Who are folk?
From: glueman
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 04:48 PM

To be fair to stringsinger he does name performers and the title says 'who?'

Subject: RE: Who are folk?
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 04:58 PM

Have you people no dictionaries???

Subject: RE: Who are folk?
From: GUEST,In My Humble Opinion
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 05:05 PM

"Have you people no dictionaries??? "

Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses? Sorry but Steve Gardham's statement bought A Christmas Carol and Scrooge to mind for some reson....

Subject: RE: Who are folk?
From: Peace
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 05:06 PM

Uh huh. It says "The Who" are rock, but I didn't want to satart thread drift or trouble.

Subject: RE: Who are folk?
From: Peace
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 05:15 PM

YOUTUBE--these guys ain't folk.

Subject: RE: Who are folk?
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 05:17 PM

IMHO,
Sorry about that! There was a bit of Devil's advocacy in there. I just thought I'd see what response it provoked.

Subject: RE: Who are folk?
From: In My Humble Opinion
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 05:23 PM

You mean Momma's Got A Squeeze Box is not about a melodeon player? Oh dear and here's me thing......

Subject: RE: Who are folk?
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 05:40 PM

Re dictionaries. With a little more reflection on my part, should we not be at least using a dictionary definition as a starting point, to save a lot of the initial arguing. I know this is part of the game, but it can also be tedious. Without turning to the laughingly-named Shorter Oxford (or I'd be posting till tomorrow night) I always find Chambers a reliable source. For those who are Chambersless here are the relevant 'who?' definitions
1) people, collectively or distributively: a nation or people: the people, commons (arch.)
2) Those of one's own family, relations (coll): now generally used as a plural (either folk or folks)

It then defines the adjective 'folk' and gives all of the hyphenated words like 'folk-art'.

I presume the use of 'archaic' is referring to the word 'commons' only as in the House of Commons. Interesting that it doesn't actually state 'the common people'. It means all of us!

Pedant/peasant

Subject: RE: Who are folk?
From: Aeola
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 06:04 PM

I wonder if Chambers et al was a folkie?

Subject: RE: Who are folk?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 06:38 PM

I'll see your Chambers and raise you the OED, which defines the noun as

people indefinitely

but also, in an obsolete usage last recorded in 1886, as

An aggregation of people in relation to a superior, e.g. God, a king or priest; the great mass as opposed to an individual

It also says that the word is found

in numerous modern combinations (formed after German precedent) with the sense

'of, pertaining to, current or existing among, the people; traditional, of the common (local) people, especially as opposed to sophisticated, cosmopolitan'

So folk music is music whose distinguishing feature is that it's "current or existing among the people" - and "the people" are implicitly defined as all those persons who aren't kings or priests.

Now we just need to define 'existing'...

Subject: RE: Who are folk?
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 07:39 PM

: "the people" are implicitly defined as all those persons who
: aren't kings or priests

Can't we admit Father Sydney McEwan, Father John MacMillan of Barra and Father Angus MacDonell of blessed memory?

And of course the Rev Sabine B-G. Being a priest gives you a lot of opportunities for song collecting.


> I wonder if Chambers et al was a folkie?

Chambers was somewhere between historian and folklorist. His book of traditional rhymes of Scotland was an impressive bit of work. He was a younger contemporary of C.K. Sharpe, and Sharpe seems to have genuinely liked him (he didn't like a lot of people).

Subject: RE: Who are folk?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 02:38 AM

Glueman
"Trick question"
You seemed to be implying that the world now has a different definition of the term 'folk' than the dictionary one - if so, what is that definition.
As far as I can see 'folk' as related to song remains as previously defined until the existing definition is altered or replaced to take in new aspects and circumstances. A tiny handful of 'folkies' who decide to hitch their particular brand of song to the term alters nothing.
What has changed is that the communities which once made, circulated and adapted the songs defined as 'folk' no longer do so - folk song as a living entity began to decline with the introduction of mass literacy, radio and finally television. The population became recipients of their culture and entertainment rather than participants in it. Can't speak for the US, but in Britain, the process seemed to have finished sometime in the early twentieth century and somewhat later in Ireland, probably the late fifties - early sixties. The Travelling communities were the last ones to cling on to a song tradition, but that died out in the mid seventies with the introduction of portable television in the caravans. What we have on record in archives of field recordings are singers remembering a living tradition, or remembering accounts of one from family and neighbours in areas where they once happened.
Now the only people who sing and listen to folk songs regularly are cranks like us who are part of the folk song revival - outsiders who believed, and still believe that the old songs still have relevance and entertainment potential, and form a pattern on which new songs can be made and circulated.
Much of this has been shouldered out of the folk scene by an undefinable repertoire which bears no relation whatever to 'folk' as defined by the dictionaries and by the mass of literature on the subject.
If there is a new definition of folk we have overlooked, what is it, or, at the very least, put us out of our misery and tell us where we can go to find it.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Who are folk?
From: glueman
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 03:31 AM

We're quibbling Jim between a definition and the definition, the one that nails it for now and ever. A dictionary, when it gets round to the matter, will include both your terms if they're shared by enough people and hold up without academic dissent and the one used by music companies and shops - which will mean acoustic music and singer songwriting. Both will fall into common use.

I appreciate we're back to the 'what' is instead of 'who' is so I won't labour the issue. People can be aware of and fully understand the 'traditional' or 1954 sense of folk without necessarily agreeing with it or seeing flaws in the definition. It's not a lack of comprehension that stops some people coming on board - which is why a repetition of 1954 ad nauseum fails to round things off - or intelligence, it's context and the framework now points towards a more inclusive sense of what folk is, backed up by recording categories, festivals line-ups, the media and the rest of the social machinery that defines these things to the satisfaction of taxonomists.

Subject: RE: Who are folk?
From: glueman
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 03:47 AM

Incidentally, from what I understand of your work it sounds as though you've done the tradition and music history a real service. In purely academic terms - if they matter a jot to folk in any sense of the word - the work presented as a PhD would require a tentative set of conclusions, or an examination of all possible conclusions to what the music may 'be'.
The arguments on this board generally emerge because posters flit between anecdotal, academic and informal definitions of words with people claiming one context is more in keeping with 'folk' than the next. To make the point the generality of posts on this board, a specialist folk board at that, are completely unconcerned with definitions and include questions about country, acoustic, blues without anyone taking offence.

Subject: RE: Who are folk?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 04:34 AM

the one used by music companies and shops - which will mean acoustic music and singer songwriting

If folk means 'acoustic music' then the Brodsky Quartet are folkies. The whole of Basket of light is folk (including the band compositions) but hardly any of Parcel of rogues (all trad). And, of course, Seth Lakeman definitely isn't folk.

If folk means 'singer songwriting', then Dylan's a folkie; Anne Briggs wasn't a folkie to begin with but became one later on; and Bert Lloyd wasn't a folkie at all (or was he?). On the other hand, Billy Bragg's certainly a folkie, and so's Eric Clapton. Joe Strummer, Kurt Cobain and Jimi Hendrix were all folkies on this definition.

If 'folk' means 'whatever the record companies and the shops are calling folk at the moment', that's not a definition so much as a bag - and it's a bag that could get larger or smaller at any time. In a year or two the wyrd/twisted/hyphen-folk caravan is going to leave town, and the definition is going to contract again by default. Maybe fashion will swing the other way and we'll see the folk racks dedicated to traditional music played on acoustic instruments. If that happened, what would you say that the definition should include?

Subject: RE: Who are folk?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 05:44 AM

Point of order

If you get elected to be a folkie, can you resign the position - or once its been imposed by the 1554 committee, are you stuck with it?

Subject: RE: Who are folk?
From: greg stephens
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 05:53 AM

I am intrigued, as I have commented before, that glueman says unequivocally that blues are not folk. I have also seen similar statements from others: also, for example, that cajun is not folk. It seems extraordinarily ethno-, and class-centric, that the definition is changing so much that that the singer-songwriters of the white chattering classes have become the new folk, wheras people llike the black and cajun population of the rural USA south have their folk music summarily removed from the sacred canon (to be replaced by Seth Lakeman and his American equivalents). It's all completely beyond me.

Subject: RE: Who are folk?
From: glueman
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 06:09 AM

It is fairly clear that a popular defintion hasn't been settled. It's apparent that Dylan is a central figure in the folk revival, which is itself a common shorthand for 'folk'. He wouldn't qualify in my favoured definition though I can why he would unquestionably fit other's; I'd view some of his later electric stuff scoring more folk points than the earlier.

'Can mean' would be more useful than 'will mean' admittedly. An individual popular music radio presenter might introduce a band as folk entirely on their appearance (I once heard Dexy's Midnight Runners introduced as such) while Radio 3 tend to blur the boundaries including Bartok, RVW, Gorecki as classical/folk hybrids, at least by comparison, rather than classical romantic or modernists.
Billy Bragg would only be excluded to prove a point as his subject matter, delivery and any discernable nuance apart from the fact he a) isn't dead, and b) came to folk through the punk community, would suggest he's very much English Folk. Experience suggest English Folk enthusiast tend to see him as such.

Problematisation is inbuilt in deciding who is folk partly because it's a strategy of the left ('everything you thought is wrong') and the left have cornered strategies of analysis since the term folk became popular. The other difficulty is it's proponents have decided a framework that limits the range of folk to fit an agenda; top down, middle class values examining proletarian ones, set taxonomies and categorisation, the early/mid C20th enthusiasm for neo-romanticism and arcadia and a privileging of old world music dissemination at the expense of the new (I exclude dance and lore without prejudice).

For these reasons (and more) I feel who is folk is still up for grabs.

Subject: RE: Who are folk?
From: glueman
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 06:15 AM

"I am intrigued, as I have commented before, that glueman says unequivocally that blues are not folk."

Sorry to give that impression, I was answering in context and the discussion was relativistic. It would take the most confirmed ethnophobe to deny that blues is folk, cajun likewise. Country and Western is differentiated from Country only in the ears of the recipient, not in its claim to folk values.

Subject: RE: Who are folk?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 06:39 AM

its proponents have decided a framework that limits the range of folk to fit an agenda; top down, middle class values examining proletarian ones, set taxonomies and categorisation, the early/mid C20th enthusiasm for neo-romanticism and arcadia and a privileging of old world music dissemination at the expense of the new

I understand what you're saying, glueman, & agree with a lot of it - I've read Stefan Szczelkun, and one of my proudest moments when I was involved in Red Pepper was getting them to print an anti-Revival feature by Steve Higginson. (Did they not like that. We got letters.)

I just think most of it's beside the point. A society where most music that people listen to is sung and played by those people themselves is different from a society where most of it's recorded, and that affects the way the music behaves (spreads, changes, is handed on). I think it's a big enough difference for it to be worth giving the music that's come to us through the mostly-played route a different label from the mostly-recorded kind, and I think 'folk' is a good label.

Subject: RE: Who are folk?
From: greg stephens
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 07:13 AM

Come off it, glueman|: you have stated unequivocally on this thread(twice I think) that blues are not a kind of folk music.Well, in my book they are.

Subject: RE: Who are folk?
From: glueman
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 07:24 AM

"A society where most music that people listen to is sung and played by those people themselves is different from a society where most of it's recorded"

I don't like to quibble (seriously) because we have common ground and your distinction is a reasonable one, but society is different? It's reception of music is different certainly but the inference - and not only your's - is that society in a wider social-political sense was altered by the way music was embedded and history doesn't appear to bear that out. I feel it's a question of degree and that pre-mechanical music and post-commercial recording are only one way of cutting the cake and not an especially revealing one.
There are broadsides and there are reflections on local and national politics but that's some way from making the case that music somehow mobilised a view of the common condition that was transformational. That's not to say it didn't happen but I don't see it being abundant enough to be defining.

The fear has to be that 'folk' is a post-rationalisation of music that neutralises it by guarding its temporal frontiers, in short, it separates popular music's commonality and impulses by an expedient of technological change. It sees the widespread sale of recording as limiting some natural instinct to perform and listen, rather than say, a relief from the necessity of hearing the same thing over without marked expertise or ready adaptation, in much the way that early cinema goers perceived British film as being 'retarded' compared to the cinemas of Russia, Sweden and the US.

The principal definitions of what and who folk are don't appear to receive the same on-going enquiry as other forms because there's still a low-brow and high-brow sense that folk is simplistic and absurd which is componded by the certainty among enthusiasts that concensus has been reached on meaning when - as even this board will tell you - it really hasn't.

Subject: RE: Who are folk?
From: glueman
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 07:26 AM

You'll have to show me where then Greg because contra-distinction of blues and folk would be against everything I believe - musically anyway.

Subject: RE: Who are folk?
From: glueman
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 07:30 AM

Was that a joke? I've just read the whole damned thread top to bottom and I make no mention of blues being folk one way or another, Hilarious Greg, fucking hilarious.

Subject: RE: Who are folk?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 07:50 AM

that's some way from making the case that music somehow mobilised a view of the common condition that was transformational

All I said was that this session was good enough for Jehovah...

Seriously, I think you're reading more into 'society was different' than I meant. I'll take the 1850s for live music, the 1920s for politics and right now for technology (including recorded music).

Subject: RE: Who are folk?
From: glueman
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 07:54 AM

Fair enough but you're talking to a man without an iPod or any likelihood of buying one.

Subject: RE: Who are folk?
From: Peace
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 08:12 AM

What's an iPod?

Subject: RE: Who are folk?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 08:36 AM

I am a man without an iPod or any likelihood of buying one...

Subject: RE: Who are folk?
From: Peace
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 08:49 AM

Is that the thing kids stick in their ears?

Subject: RE: Who are folk?
From: mattkeen
Date: 16 Jul 08 - 09:06 AM

No thats cocaine