What is a folk song? Version 2.0

Subject: RE: What is a folk song?
From: Ebbie
Date: 21 Apr 02 - 07:36 PM

Dang I killed it.

Subject: RE: What is a folk song?
From: toadfrog
Date: 21 Apr 02 - 09:50 PM

A Question, for Ms. Paynter and others of her persuasion. There appears to be a widespread conviction around that what is important is to make as many proselytes as possible for "folk music." Can someone tell me why? Why is it so important to draw crowds? Is folk music a religion? I think what you are saying, and what gets said all the time around here, is that if people don't like "folk music," we should change it into something more like standard pop so it will have more mass appeal. WHY?! If I think someone will like a song, I tell them about it. If they don't, they are surely free to listen to something else. One hears from opera and symphony halls that they have to give their stuff more popular appeal so that they can continue paying overhead and musicians' salaries. But so far as I'm aware, "folk music" does not require auditoriums or orchestras, it is a personal thing or a family thing. We get told, we all have to admire Bob Dylan, because he did great things for folk music by drawing vast crowds. Why? Who wants those crowds, if they don't understand what it's all about? (And mostly, they don't.)

I think it is unfortunate, but we really don't get to define what is a "folk song," because the record labels and marketers do it for us.

I'm still unclear about "Celtic." I had sort of concluded it meant "dreary Irish stuff that might be o.k. for dance music." If it is more inclusive than that, then that's also a new wrinkle in my brain. In any case, it is for sure a commercial term with no particular musical or philosophical meaning. And "folk music" has come to be much the same thing.

Gee, Ms. Paynter, what, exactly, is gained by making people listen to stuff they are not interested in hearing.

Subject: RE: What is a folk song?
From: treewind
Date: 22 Apr 02 - 08:15 AM

Toadfrog, you raise some good points amongst your rant.
It's not necessary to draw crowds and have a big auditorium, but it is desirable to stop the more traditional side of folk music from becoming extinct and gaining a reasonable amount of support from people who might be interested should help.

I agree we shouldn't change it into pop music. It's worth the effort of performing traditional music as well as we can, to persuade people that it is worthwhile on its own merits.

It's not a religion, but it is satisfying to turn on a new listener to folk music when they have never heard it before and discover they like it when it's done well.

We don't want to make people listen to stuff "they are not interested in hearing", but do you remember the old Guiness advert with the caption "I've never tried it because I don't like it" ?

Anahata

Subject: RE: What is a folk song?
From: Don Firth
Date: 22 Apr 02 - 12:57 PM

Hmm. . . . I just posted this on another thread, "Horse", but I think it would actually be more germane here, so I'll go ahead and post it for your consideration:—

I'm currently a short way into Romancing the Folk: Public Memory and American Roots Music by Benjamin Filene, (The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill and London, 2000). Benjamin Filene, a cultural historian with the Minnesota Historical Society, has obviously done his homework and he gives some pretty interesting insights into why "folk song" is so hard to define. The lack of definition that we seem to be stuck with comes pretty much as a result of the different preconceptions that the major collectors and compilers such as Child, Sharp, and the Lomaxes held, further compounded (confounded?) by record company executives and promoters back in the Twenties and Thirties trying to make a buck from their new categories of "race" and "hillbilly" music.

The first person on record to use the expression "folk song" (volkslieder) was German philosopher Johann Gottfried von Herder (late eighteenth century). Von Herder was referring to music of the rural peasant class. But "rural peasant class" is not politically correct in this day and age, nor is it necessarily applicable to the modern world, so his definition just won't do anymore. Percy and Scott were collecting "ancient poetry." They tended to tidy up what they considered "crude" or "illiterate." Child seemed to think that there was no American folk music other than modern corruptions of ancient British songs and that anything much after the fourteenth century was adulterated by modern influences. He was very selective (a monumental and exceedingly valuable achievement, nonetheless). Sharp was looking for his romantic concept of the pastoral England of two centuries ago and thought he'd found it in the Southern Appalachians. His informants sang a lot of stuff to him that he didn't take down, because he didn't regard it as "authentic." So he, too, was very selective (but he did take down the tunes). The Lomaxes were looking for living, breathing examples of folk singers (in Leadbelly, they thought they'd found the Holy Grail)—and then coached them on how to be "authentic." And—blasphemy alert!!—our usually accepted canon of authenticity, Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music is a compilation of commercial records from the Twenties and Thirties.

I'm only a couple chapters into the book, but it's absolutely fascinating and highly enlightening. Obviously, folk music is the proverbial elephant, and everyone else, including the "experts," are blind gropers. Whenever the "horse" schtick comes up, it's a tip-off that someone's trying to toss in a ringer. But just because trying to define "folk song" is like trying to nail Jello to the wall doesn't mean we shouldn't keep trying.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: What is a folk song?
From: DonD
Date: 22 Apr 02 - 01:56 PM

And the guru on top of the mountain said, "Life isn't a fountain?"

The meaning of folk is like the meaning of life, everyone is entitled to his or her own definition. As time passes you find people with similar enough definitions to hang out with and mutually tolerate, and those with suffuciently divergent views you avoid.

I learned what I think of as the folk songs I sing from LP recordings mostly and off the radio and from concert performances and the like, and though I sometimes had liner notes with the words to check against or books of lyrics to refer to, usually I started singing the songs that appealed to me the way I remembered them.

When I got the tune wrong, but sung it wrong often enough, so that became the version I sang, When I forgot or misheard the words, I made up my own to fill in the dead spots, and that became the version I sang -- and I'm still singing them, without worrying about whether they're right or wrong.

I see lyrics in the DT that aren't the way I think they should be, but I can't revise my version now. And I've seen transcriptions on album liners that are clearly not what is being sung on the record itself, nor is the sung always sung the same way by an artist over time, and certainly not by different singers. To me, that's the oral tradition and how it's supposed to be.

I heard "Hard Times" on a link a few weeks ago and can't get it out of my mind. I'd known it years ago but never knew it was Stephen Foster. Didn't he write art songs or pop songs; he certainly tried in vain to make a living at it, so doesn't that make it commercial, or does the fact that he died in poverty disallow the commercial label?

I learned it orally, and I sing it "wrong' because it has a hard melody for me. I say it's a folk song, and to hell wit yuz!

Subject: RE: What is a folk song?
From: Don Firth
Date: 22 Apr 02 - 04:24 PM

Well, DonD, that's pretty much the way I do it too.

Many years back, I made a change in a ballad I had recently learned. I thought the ending was a bit wimpy, so I changed one word which, in turn, changed the whole conclusion of the ballad itself. It punched it up dramatically, and to my mind, improved it. Then, at a party, I sang it in the presence of one of my English professors, who was also a ballad scholar. He asked me where I'd learned that version. I confessed what I had done and threw myself on his mercy.

He said that if a collector or academician made changes (as Percy, Scott, and others did) that he considered poor scholarship. But if a performer made changes, that was entirely different. "Troubadours and other singers used to do it all the time," he said. "That, after all, is the 'folk process.'" He said that he didn't think it was a good idea to make indescriminate changes, but if a particular singer felt there was a good reason for the change, go ahead and do it. Then he used an expression that stuck with me ever since. He called it "minstrel's prerogative." I like that.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: What is a folk song?
From: GUEST,Sue Paynter
Date: 23 Apr 02 - 12:26 PM

Brilliant just what I wanted some passion!

Some answers to Toadfrog's questions. 1) I should ask the Folk Festival organisers why they need to draw crowds, but my educated guess is they need to pay the Folk artists, 'cos whether you like it or not it's SHOWBIZ and lots of money changes hands singing Folk Music (old & new). 2) Folk music needs new blood or it will die, we should encourage people wherever/whenever possible into the clubs, if they like it great, if they don't that is a shame but at least they should be made welcome (whatever they sing!). 3) Noone is advocating changing anything to POP. Not everyone understands/likes Folk, perhaps we can help them to find out but you won't if you frighten them off with your attitude. 4) Agreed, Folk Music is a personal thing as is any hobby we persue in life. 5) Auditoriums/Orchestra's not required true, who said they were? 6) Bob Dylan, again as I said music is a matter of taste, heis to some people a legened in his own lifetime but not to me! 7) If you're letting the record companies and Marketers define what Folk music is for you then you are stupid and obviously take too much notice of what they say. 8) Celtic Music LOVE IT! Shame you don't but hey as I said it's matter of choice 9) Noone makes anyone listen to stuff they don't want to hear. Vote with you feet. I do.

Gee, Toadhead, exactly what is gained by driving prospective new blood away from the clubs. To be honest I think you completely missed the point! Whats it feel like humming to yourself?

Subject: RE: What is a folk song?
From: Wincing Devil
Date: 23 Apr 02 - 02:50 PM

A folk song is a song sung by folks at a folksong sing!

A hundred years from now, the FSGW minifest will have a session entitled "Late 20th Century Folk Music" and will feature folks singing the "Gilligan's Island", "Brady Bunch" and "Addams Family" TV theme songs!

Subject: RE: What is a folk song?
From: Don Firth
Date: 23 Apr 02 - 03:03 PM

I kinda doubt it.

Don Firth