Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 11 Feb 10 - 02:24 PM

Time will tell.

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 11 Feb 10 - 11:43 AM

Dave - yes and no. I know that an awful lot of "contemporary folk" is now showing its age, in a way that (paradoxically?) traditional song hardly ever does. But writing in the folk idiom can be done. I mentioned The Scarecrow earlier on - I'd defy anyone hearing that for the first time to peg it as a 38-year-old song.

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 11 Feb 10 - 11:27 AM

I suspect that there is an eternal problem with moving goalposts. For the past couple of hundred years at least, we've come along, been enamoured by the repertoire of the working classes, tried to write in that style, then the next generation has come along, been horrified at what we've perpetrated on the "songs of the people", and started the process all over again.

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 11 Feb 10 - 11:15 AM

Yes Willie, that's the point. Country is a style. Folk is a derivation.

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: Bernard
Date: 11 Feb 10 - 11:02 AM

"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody!" - Bill Cosby

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: GUEST,Steamin' Willie
Date: 11 Feb 10 - 09:52 AM

Ok, I will veer away from McColl is this debate, as Jim Carroll possibly met the guy a few more times than I did, and I only interviewed him once for the radio, but never did meet his mum....

Instead, I recall an old friend Tom Brown who entertained the clubs years ago with his Norfolk songs. if Tom was around today, I know how he would define a song as folk...

"Here's one I learned at my mother's knee."

On a related point, I remember a concert many years ago in London, Kris Kristofferson. he was introducing "Me & Bobby McGee." he said, "If it sounds like a country song, then I guess it is one..."

Quite.

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 10 Feb 10 - 04:03 PM

Sounds about right - and I've been going most of that time. I think Les has been going since the beginning (November '02; I started going the following February).

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 10 Feb 10 - 03:26 PM

I don't necessarily think that clubs are "being highjacked" as such. In the case of my local folk club I think it has been a mixture of 75% plus singer-songwriter doing their own songs and pop/rock/sing-songwriter cover versions since it started...

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 10 Feb 10 - 03:26 PM

Will,
"Jim, can I just dig a little deeper and….."
Sorry about the long pause, but I found your questions took a little time to think about - truth to tell,
I don't think I ever rationalised the way we worked, or even if there was a set method.
My first instinct was to say – like we used to about folk song, "I can't define what we did fully but I know what it is when we hear it", but that wouldn't be strictly true.
It needs to be remembered that The Singers Club was very much a 'policy' club, based mainly on presenting traditional song, so anything which was performed there had to fit in with this; that's what we came together for and that's what the audiences expected to hear.
MacColl, with others, (Charles Parker, for one) were entirely hooked on the idea that folksong drew its strength from the vernacular; the idioms and accents of the people who created the songs, and he/they believed that these could form the foundations of a new/continuing (depending whether you accept that the old one was dead) oral tradition.   
In my opinion, most of MacColls best songs were based on his and Parker's recorded actuality recorded for the Radio Ballads and other projects. Shoals of Herring drew directly from recordings of East Anglian fishermen, Sam Larner and Ronnie Balls; Freeborn Man, Thirty Foot Trailer, etc., from Minty Smith, Gordon Boswell and Belle Stewart; The Big Hewer and a number of other mining songs from, Jack Elliot etc. I've listened to these fairly extensively and know this to be the case. MacColl was constantly playing or urging us to listen to chunks of these recordings in view to our using them to make new songs and to familiarise ourselves with the different dialects and accents, and above all, the use of language.
The Critics Group was by no means the only ones doing this; I was serving my apprenticeship on the Liverpool Docks and can vividly remember how McGinn's 'Swan Necked Valve' leapt out of the speaker of my Dansette the first time I played 'The Iron Muse' – that was as much about my life as it was the composer's.
MacColl ran several song-writing classes, but there were no hard and fast rules to how the songs were written.
At one time a Singers Club member donated a first edition of Child's first compilation 'English and Scottish Ballads' to be given as a prize for the best new song. The winner was John Pole for his 'Punch and Judy'; hardly recognisable as being in a strictly conventional 'folk' style, but slap in London vernacular.
In order to promote new songs Peggy edited 'The New City Songers' made up from new songs from all over Britain, and later from the US and Australia. It ran into 20-odd editions and made available hundreds of new songs.

This is taking far too long and I don't really want to make it another marathon, so, if nobody objects, I'll take up the rest of your question later.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: TheSnail
Date: 10 Feb 10 - 02:59 PM

Burton Coggles

Snail: I'm just going on what seems to be a strongly held opinion by several people on this thread.

There's the difference. I'm going on what I hear in folk clubs.

Perhaps I'm better asking **if you are of the opinion** that trad. songs and tunes have been edged out,

As I said, not in the folk clubs I go to.

why do you think this is so?

Couldn't say, but if it is in some places, then a comment you made a couple of days ago might be relevant -

Where there are no set rules, as would seem to be the case where clubs and sessions are being hijacked, why don't the traddies fight back with inspiring performances. It might move someone who performs mainly contemporary material to investigate traditional material more seriously - this has been the case with me.

Jack Campin

Are there any trad-only clubs or sessions? I don't think I've ever been to one.

You're probably right, Jack. We think of ourselves as pretty solidly traddy but our publicity material says "Our interest is mainly (but not exclusively) in British traditional music and song and contemporary folk music/song derived from the tradition." and that fairly accurately describes what we get.

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: Will Fly
Date: 10 Feb 10 - 12:47 PM

Ah well, I don't know many ear bleedin' psaltery players - and the ones who might be in my area don't come to my session. :-)

I have nothing against amplified music (played electric guitar as a pro and semi-pro in various bands for over 30 years) and I remember the glory years of Fairport, Steeleye Span, etc. The main problem is that - in my experience - amplified stuff tends to get louder and louder as each player in turn surreptitiously turns up so that he/she can be heard. If you really like electric sessions - and there's no reason why you shouldn't - then why not start one up? I'd bring my 100w Gallien-Krueger and my G&L ASAT...

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 10 Feb 10 - 12:37 PM

"come as you are, do what you want, as long it's acoustic"


well that's where the likes of electric trad folkies like me are buggered all round then !!!


..even though these days the music gear consumer market
is over abundantly supplied with plenty of different brands of light mobile
very low wattage sensibly quiet volume
battery powered amps and speakers
that can be discretely positioned at sessions barely noticable under chairs and tables....


..and what about kiddies practice electric guitars with nicely gnarly distorting built in speakers ???

surely you'd be less audibly tortured if I turned up with one of them
instead of an ear bleedin' psaltery..

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: Will Fly
Date: 10 Feb 10 - 12:07 PM

Pip Radish:
Will: as a musician, I come at traditional and not-so-traditional music from a quite different perspective - which is tunes and not words

I just knew you were going to say that! But you started on the songs, so I thought I'd follow suit.

I should say that my preference for tunes is not as a result of disliking songs - I certainly do sing as a live performer - but I prefer my long helpings of sex, death, betrayal, battles and ballads, etc. to come in printed, rather than vocal form. There's nothing nicer than to curl up with Bob Copper's "A Song For Every Season" and books of songs, and a large glass of Dalwhinnie by a roaring radiator. In that genre, I prefer written prose and verse to sung prose and verse.

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: Will Fly
Date: 10 Feb 10 - 11:49 AM

FWIW Will Fly's session where the emphasis is on improvisation around the tune (trad or otherwise) sounds excellent - if a bit of singing is OK too!

Yes, there's singing as well - it's an eclectic session, and what is played or sung depends on who turns up. We just sit round a table or two and go round the table, allowing each person - if they want to - to play or sing whatever they choose. People join in if they know it, or if it sounds appropriate to join in. If you don't know the tune, you're encouraged to have a go. If I'm singing a song, for example, and others are playing along on their instruments, I invite people to play a chorus - improvise whenever they want to - sing a harmony - essentially make music. There are several traditional tunes sessions in my Sussex area - and very good ones {"English tunes and no bloody singing!"} for those who want exclusively that kind of session.

The monthly session (last Sunday of the month) at the Bull in Ditchling is the same kind of session as mine - though with many more musicians attending - and it's the one on which I modelled my own session: come as you are, do what you want, as long it's acoustic. As it happens, we usually get a nice mix of traditional tunes and songs, plus some American old-time and early country stuff, jug band music, even the odd Richard Thompson ditty - just to cheer us all up...

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 10 Feb 10 - 11:44 AM

I have been introduced to trad songs/tunes through the clubs I've attended, and I probably wouldn't have attended them if they were "policy" traditional only clubs or sessions.

Are there any trad-only clubs or sessions? I don't think I've ever been to one.

There are quite a few no-trad-allowed clubs and sessions, as the Sandbach example shows (and as is the situation in practice with some of the sessions in Midlothian, and at virtually any event anywhere described as an "open mike"). But the other way round? Really?

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 10 Feb 10 - 11:26 AM

Will: as a musician, I come at traditional and not-so-traditional music from a quite different perspective - which is tunes and not words

I just knew you were going to say that! But you started on the songs, so I thought I'd follow suit.

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 10 Feb 10 - 11:24 AM

I'm firmly of the opinion that trad. songs have been edged out. I've seen a rough 50|25|25 split, in several different venues, between singer-songwriter (covers), singer-songwriter (own material) and everything else (parlour songs, novelty songs, recitations... and traditional songs). The "covers" 50% comes in several different varieties - in one club it'll be Gordon Bok and Tom Paxton, in another Keith Marsden and Jez Lowe, while in a more 'contemporary' club it'll be Suzanne Vega and Beck. I guess it could be argued that Jez Lowe (or Gordon Bok) *is* folk in a way that Suzanne Vega isn't, but if what you're looking for is traditional song there really isn't that big a difference.

As for why, I think it's a combination of novelty and accessibility; traditional song has got a reputation for being either incredibly familiar and already done to death ("Early One Morning"), or ferociously obscure and difficult ("In Sir Patrick Spens I clean forgot the forty-second verse..."). A Suzanne Vega song you haven't heard isn't going to sound exactly like the ones you have, but it's not going to sound that different; it'll go down easily.

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: Lighter
Date: 10 Feb 10 - 09:24 AM

Pete, this won't answer your question, but it does seem relevant. A thread last fall invited 'Catters to name their favorite songs, the ones that make them "drop everything."

'Catters are thought to be the most trad-loving of all humans in the English-speaking world.

Check my comment here:

http://mudcat.org/detail.cfm?messages__Message_ID=2767699

detail.cfm?messages__Message_ID=2767699

There were no "thoughts," FWIW.

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: GUEST,Burton Coggles
Date: 10 Feb 10 - 09:01 AM

Snail: I'm just going on what seems to be a strongly held opinion by several people on this thread. I've only limited experience of folk clubs myself (2-3 years) so I have no personal experience of how they were in the past.

As I've stated above, my preference is for variety. Perhaps what I like shouldn't be called a folk club, I've no problem with that. But I have been introduced to trad songs/tunes through the clubs I've attended, and I probably wouldn't have attended them if they were "policy" traditional only clubs or sessions. FWIW Will Fly's session where the emphasis is on improvisation around the tune (trad or otherwise) sounds excellent - if a bit of singing is OK too!

Perhaps I'm better asking **if you are of the opinion** that trad. songs and tunes have been edged out, why do you think this is so?

Pete.

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: TheSnail
Date: 09 Feb 10 - 08:11 PM

Burton Coggles

I'd be interested to hear opinions on why traditional songs & tunes have been edged out of folk clubs?

Have they? Not in the folk clubs I go to.

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 09 Feb 10 - 04:49 PM

In my session, we sing "Kites" by the Simon Dupree and The Big Sound.

Cool. Of course SD&TBS went on to become Gentle Giant, masters of medieval-folk-proggery thus: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oK4cuXJa7QE.

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: Mavis Enderby
Date: 09 Feb 10 - 03:54 PM

I'd be interested to hear opinions on why traditional songs & tunes have been edged out of folk clubs?

Pete.

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 09 Feb 10 - 01:38 PM

Having checked the diary entry, agree that song heard at a party at Lord Bruncker's. It seems that Mrs Knipp sang several songs [Pepys sang along with her, tho whether in all the songs she sang, incl this one, is not made clear], of which "her little Scotch song of Barbary Allen" was the one he enjoyed most. This suggests to me it was one she habitually sang, and this not first time he had heard her sing it [hence, surely, *her* song]; and that she had indicated it as a 'Scotch song'. The fact that she was also an actress does not appear to be that significant here, or necessarily indicate that she had learned the song as part of a play in which she was appearing or had appeared — she seemed to enjoy singing on social occasions quite independently of her profession; & indeed later in same entry Pepys sings in the coach on the way home while he feels up her breasts - so they were clearly on extremely friendly terms of which their singing together formed part. I agree however that the question is open ~ as so often in Pepys, not quite enough info to get the full picture between the lines.

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: Lighter
Date: 09 Feb 10 - 01:20 PM

For pedants like MtheGM and myself only:

The earliest printing of "BA" seems not to have occurred till ca1690, or about twenty-five after Pepys heard it.

No conclusion may be drawn, but that may be a long time to wait for either a truly well-known anonymous song or a popular stage song to get into print. Did Mrs. Knipps write it herself? If word-of-mouth currency began about 1665, and was at first restricted to a relatively limited social circle, it might well have taken the ballad a long time to come to the attention of the printer.

Just thinking aloud.

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: Lighter
Date: 09 Feb 10 - 01:09 PM

What Pepys writes of is "Mrs. Knipp...and *her* [my emphasis] little Scotch song of 'Barbary Allen.'" That may suggest a greater exclusivity to Knipps, and far less familiarity to Pepys, than "the."

Since Mrs. Knipp was a noted actress, it becomes more plausible that the song originated on the stage. OTOH, the diary has she and Pepys singing at "Lord Brouncker's," not in a performance as some writers seem to have assumed. Yet in a subsequent note to Pepys, the lady signed herself "Barbary Allen." This might suggest equally either a stage persona or mere coquettery.

I may have overstated the likelihood of a stage origin (not that it would make the song less "folk," just a little farther from the platonic ideal); but the case is annoyingly ambiguous.

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 09 Feb 10 - 12:02 PM

3. the same song performed in 2008 by its origional writer
but as a reminder of the style it was first presented to a late 70's
music audience

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m34MATtD4Us&feature=related


give it another 30 years ????

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 09 Feb 10 - 11:59 AM

2. The same song performed at an informal social 'folk' gathering in 2007
by it's original writer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtCo2nxh1XA

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 09 Feb 10 - 11:58 AM

just for amusement and possible edification, could this possibly be a living breathing illustration
of folk process and evolution in action within one short generation ???

1. Kirsty MacColl & Billy Bragg 1991

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7aVZ3BHp3k

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 09 Feb 10 - 11:48 AM

Lighter - Don't think that the case re BARBARA ALLEN'S ORIGINS. Earliest known REF TO IT is, I realise, PEPYS HAVING RECORDED hearing actress Mrs Knipp singing it (2 January 1665), but he calls it "the Scotch song of Barbara Allen", which shows that he realised it didn't originate with her or the performance he was attending.

[Apologies for confusion with shift-lock above - didn't intend to SHOUT!]

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: Will Fly
Date: 09 Feb 10 - 11:40 AM

I don't think anyone would take much issue with that - but what you're describing falls well within the "first circle". I'm really exploring the outer circle - the "folk idiom". :-)

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: Lighter
Date: 09 Feb 10 - 11:31 AM

The "ideal" folk song, it seems to me, would be anonymous, widely known among some sizable ethnic group, expressive of admirable sentiments, beautifully phrased in a fully traditional manner, not too long or too short, sung to a beautiful old melody of unknown date or origin, incorporating bits of folklore or superstition, provably old (centuries preferably), and existing in numerous wonderful variants. What's more, few if any of its singers could have learned it from print or recordings.

I said "ideal." How well something qualifies as a "folk song" depends on the judge's impression of how close it comes to that implausible ideal. (Even "Barbara Allen" seems likely to have started as a stage song.)

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: Will Fly
Date: 09 Feb 10 - 11:26 AM

Whoops - Three-Hand REEL...

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: Will Fly
Date: 09 Feb 10 - 11:25 AM

What that actually means & how it could be measured I'm not sure.

Exactly, Pip. I think all of us could say about songs on the margin of the folk idiom, such-and-such sounds OK - and such-and-such doesn't sound OK. Where the line is drawn is probably individual taste.

I should add that, as a musician, I come at traditional and not-so-traditional music from a quite different perspective - which is tunes and not words. I'm primarily interested in playing melodies and I'm a sucker for a good melody. Many of those fall well within the tradition and others do not. I get as much pleasure, for example, from playing Jay Ungar's "Ashokan Farwell" and Tom Anderson's "Da Slockit Light" as I do from playing "Donald Cameron's Polka" and "Beatrice Hill's Three Hand Polka". Words take on less importance for me - which doesn't mean that I don't care for the songs, just that it's the tunes that move me!

So, in many sessions I attend, I find there's less worry over the provenance of a tune and more interest in the musical character and performance of a tune. In the monthly session I run in my local pub, the emphasis - whatever the tune being played - is to encourage and stimulate improvisation around the tune. Which I think is also in a worthy tradition.

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: IanC
Date: 09 Feb 10 - 11:20 AM

Seems simpler to me than all that. The question will be whether those songs are sung by anybody in 50 years time and why.

All sorts of stuff was sung in the 60s and 70s purporting to be "folk songs" but we're now 50 years or so down the line and it's looking as though "Blowing in the Wind" is still being widely sung by people and so are some Beatles and Kinks numbers. In my session, we sing "Kites" by the Simon Dupree and The Big Sound. Certainly didn't seem like a traditional song at the time but it may well become one, at least in parts of Hertfordshire. The test is one of whether people continue to sing things over a longish period.

In the heyday of the traditional "singing pubs" of Suffolk people were singing material from as recently as 10 years ago.

As I've said earlier, I don't go to folk clubs much. Seems to me they often have a biased idea of what is "folk" or "in the tradition" or "in a traditional idiom" whereas what people do themselves in their groupings in more traditional surroundings may well be very different.

:-)
Ian

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: GUEST,Working Radish
Date: 09 Feb 10 - 11:12 AM

Will - interesting one. I wouldn't have any trouble saying that Freeborn Man or the Scarecrow or Boots of Spanish Leather is "in the folk idiom". What that actually means & how it could be measured I'm not sure. I think probably the most important characteristic is a kind of declamatory, public style, as if the singer is telling a story or acting out a scene rather than talking to his loved one. There's a kind of singleness of focus, as if the song is there to get a job done & then stop. And, I think, there should be quite a limited vocabulary and a heavy reliance on conventional phrases - which doesn't at all limit what you can get done in the song.

So my definition would exclude Needle of Death; it would exclude a lot of MacColl's work, come to that (and Dylan's, and Lal Waterson's). I mean, I wouldn't say that Sweet Thames Flow Softly, Red Wine and Promises or Mr Tambourine Man is in the folk idiom - they're great songs and I love them dearly, but they're different.

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: Will Fly
Date: 09 Feb 10 - 11:05 AM

That's an interesting point, MtheGM, because I suspect that - for many whose prime interest is in traditional music - writers like Jansch might be considered the thin end of the singer-songwriter, "contemporary" folk wedge which led on to stuff further and further off-track. I should add that I'm not requesting anyone to draw a line, necessarily. I was interested in exploring Jim's very clear description of what he believes the folk idiom to be - and how far he (and others) consider that particular elastic band can be stretched.

I'll give you an example of the band being stretched. If you hear a new song in a folk club of the same quality as, say "Cornish Lads", how do you know that the writer was steeped in traditional song? He or she might just be a very sophisticated and clever writer. Unlikely, perhaps but...

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 09 Feb 10 - 11:03 AM

IMHO it is generally impossible to define a "style" with precision, but it is possible to be clear on the derivation and modification of a song and its adoption in a community. Those are the facets of the 1954 definition and IMHO they are right.

I don't do much American stuff, but if I do do "Worried Man Blues" I often put in a verse of Amazing Grace (in the style of the Shepherds' Bush Comets) - if you see my point.

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 09 Feb 10 - 10:50 AM

In my entry on FOLKLORE in The Continuum Encyclopedia of British Literature [NY 2003], I wrote "Many singers steeped in tradtional song , such as Ewan MacColl, Cyril Tawney, Peter Bellamy, Bob Pegg, Peter Coe, succeeded in creating new songs in the traditional idiom that the revival had brought to a wider audience" [italics added]. The essential point is that these original songs were made by those within the folksong movement, who went on simultaneously performing within it as well as introducing some songs of their own. The same applied to others mentioned above {McGinn, Jansch, Bryant, Pickford, Seeger...}. Their songs were not pop-infiltrators, but made by those who understood what a folksong typically was and what it typically did, and, I reiterate, went on singing them alongside their original contributions. That surely is where the line requested above by Will Fly et al will be drawn.

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 09 Feb 10 - 10:46 AM

Didn't Hamish Henderson say something along the lines that he knew he'd written a folk song when he collected it in the field and his informant swore blind that they'd got it from their grannie? (I'm paraphrasing heavily)

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: Will Fly
Date: 09 Feb 10 - 10:08 AM

Some clubs were 'purist' and frowned on non-folk songs and musical instruments, others like the Lloyd/MacColl camp, used accompaniment and saw the tradition as an inspiration for creating new songs. I was a part of this latter crowd; I even regarded Dylan as worth a listen before he 'popped out' of the scene and went for the big bucks. I admired songwriters like MacColl, Seeger, McGinn, Tawney, Pickford and the many others who were creating in the folk idiom – it was really what we were about. With the Radio Ballads I really thought we'd made it – the perfect marriage of the tradition and newly written songs.

Jim, can I just dig a little deeper and draw you out further on this point of "creating in the folk idiom"? I'm interested in this because, whereas there appears to be a fairly clear chalk line drawn around the songs passed down through what we've called the oral tradition and the "folk process", the grey area which fuels part of these Mudcat debates is precisely this folk idiom.

I wouldn't claim to be a great definer of the folk idiom, but my sense of it is that the composers of the newly written songs were writing in their own voice, about the world around them, about their community, using the ballad and verse and song techniques of their predecessors. Can we perhaps take two or three examples of such songs and do a spot of comparison? Purely in the spirit of debate.

My first example is a song written by West Country singer Roger Bryant - "Cornish Lads" - which, in succinct language, describes the pain of the decline in the Cornish fishing industry and the tin mining industry. Great tune, great words, great point - sung by a local man about the world he inhabits. (This, as it happens, was sung unaccompanied beautifully in Lewes last Saturday by local singer Mike Nicholson). Using your definition of the folk idiom as a marriage of tradition and new composition, I would class this as a worthy example.

My second example is a song by Scottish singer Bert Jansch - "Needle of Death" - which, also in succinct and imaginative language, describes the death of a friend of his through heroin. Great tune, great words, great point - also sung by someone about the world he inhabits. Different theme, of course, but personal and direct. Now, whether you consider this to be in the same folk idiom or not, I don't know. It's a much older song than Roger Bryant's, of course, and from a different milieu. It's certainly very different in feeling and style.

The point I'm somewhat laboriously trying to get to is where, in the spectrum from McColl, Tawney et al to Jansch to Bryant - and beyond - is the next chalk line drawn? What, then becomes acceptable and in the folk idiom, and what is unacceptable and beyond the idiom - or the pale? We can pronounce - and agree - for example, on the boredom of hearing a not very good couple singing an Abba song from words and chords on a music stand in a folk club (I would certainly be bored). But at what point on the long line which connects, however tenuously, the songs that "fit" the folk idiom and those that don't would you say "stop"?

It's a bit like the old joke about the millionaire who says to a woman, "If I gave you a million pounds, would you sleep with me?" She thinks a bit and then replies, "Yes." He says, "If I gave you a hundred thousand pounds, would you sleep with me?" She thinks a bit longer and then says, "OK". He says, "Would you sleep with me if I gave you a fiver?" Outraged, she says, "Certainly not - what do you think I am?" He replies, "We've established what you are - we're just haggling about the price."

I should just add that I remember the scene around the time of Cyril Tawney and Seeger and McColl - too young to be part of it - but certainly conscious of things like the Radio Ballads.

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: Will Fly
Date: 09 Feb 10 - 09:33 AM

rich twats with guitars that cost nearly the same amount as a good 2nd hand family car relentlessly crucifing the easier to play chord 'favourites' from the Beatles songbook

I have a great deal of sympathy for your aversion to people crucifying the favourites from the Beatles songbook and similar, but let's not get hijacked by inverted class snobbery. There may well be rich twats with expensive guitars who are extremely good performers and choose their material with care. I, for example have several expensive guitars. Rich I am not. Twat - well, that's up to those that know me.

It's obviously just as possible for the cream of the Beatles songbook to be performed by poor twats with crap guitars.

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Feb 10 - 09:30 AM

Can I just make clear my position on the clubs and folk music.
I came on to the scene in the early sixties when virtually everything being presented as folk was just that – folk. We had some access to the BBC material collected ten years earlier through the Caedmon/Topic 'Folk Songs of Britain' series, and, thanks to some prodding by Alan Lomax we were examining our own British and Irish repertoires. It wasn't all great by any means, but the enthusiasm 'buzzed' and I can't recall people who got up to sing who were incapable of holding two notes together or reading from scripts – we all thought that the stuff we were doing was worth making an effort for.
Some clubs were 'purist' and frowned on non-folk songs and musical instruments, others like the Lloyd/MacColl camp, used accompaniment and saw the tradition as an inspiration for creating new songs. I was a part of this latter crowd; I even regarded Dylan as worth a listen before he 'popped out' of the scene and went for the big bucks. I admired songwriters like MacColl, Seeger, McGinn, Tawney, Pickford and the many others who were creating in the folk idiom – it was really what we were about. With the Radio Ballads I really thought we'd made it – the perfect marriage of the tradition and newly written songs.
In the mid seventies things started to change and by the eighties it became virtually impossible to be guaranteed a night of folk or folk related songs, the clubs had become a platform for navel-gazing introspective mumbling their way through stuff that was neither fish nor fowl; so thousands of walked away and what I described further up the thread happened – clubs, audiences, magazines, radio and TV programmes – all gone quicker than you could say Led Zepplin! And along with them, any chance of being taken seriously by the establishment in order to set up the necessary archives and libraries desperately needed to preserve what we had collected from the tradition. The big bang in the club scene was marked by a series of articles and letters in the then leading folk magazine, Folk Review entitled 'Crap Begets Crap'.
The scene hadn't yet become the refuge for failed, fifteenth-rate pop performers and would be Sinatra wannabes, that it has since become, but that didn't take too long to happen.   
With this latter we lost something else; the chance to attract new blood to our music; no self respecting youngster is going to bother their arse listening to crappily performed pop songs by crumblies like us when they have easy access to the real thing – would any of you?
I've got no objection to people playing and singing what rings their particular bell – the more the merrier – but please don't call it folk, or even folk-inspired unless you are ready to define your terms.
Steamin' Willie;
"Well, I still haven't read two replies that agree on "folk" songs."
As I said, buy a book if you have real problems.
Folk is probably the most well-researched and documented of all musics; the fact that today's tiny handful of folkies can't (or don't want to) define the term indicates a nasty case of dyslexia rather than a problem of definition.
Speak for yourself - or point out one song which is "...so old nobody can remember their original meaning." I would guess I'll have to wait as long as I have waited for an answer to my original question, which was, in the hope of getting an answer, if a Gounod piece from Faust is performed at a folk club, is it folk?
Where are these 'totally everbody' people who claim that love songs are defined as 'folk' - that's a totally new one on me?
Phony accent - MacColl came from a Scots backgound - I knew his mother when she was in her 70s and sometimes had problems understanding her Perthshire accent. He grew up surrounded by Scots people and chose the accent in order to sing songs of his heritage - whether he did the accent well enough is a matter of opinion, but it's certainly preferable to the strange Mid-Atlantic hybrid I heard at many clubs.
Tiresome chestnut about MacColl's name change - can I assume you feel the same about Robert Zimmerman?
Thank you for those kind words Matt Seattle - the cheque's in the post.
There - that must put me in the running for the wordiest Catter!!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 09 Feb 10 - 09:02 AM

I'd consider it an honour to be insulted by a man of Jim Carroll's calibre and reputation.
Though, as in this instance, he may sometimes display traits
of paranoid bilious pomposity and be too quick to react over-defensively
to perceived slights in what he imagines other posters might mean by their writing.

Jim, we are actually on the same side and mostly in agreement
on this issue.

My personal taste in trad folk music stems from my life long enjoyment
of early music / medieval forms of rhythm, drone, and rasping abrasive
instrumental timbres that informed classic recordings by late 60's early 70's folk rock artists..

I however, as a punkfolkrocker would substitute a fuzz box or minimoog
for the likes of the hurdy gurdy or psaltery
in any personal attempt to pay honest respect to my cherished influences.

My hastily scribbled generalization
[based on a quarter of a century of my own experience
of the petty favouritisms and spites of vainglorious local community
music scene 'entrepreneurs']
was actually aimed at the kind of local pub club that wastes my time and money advertising 'Folk Night'
and then presenting a dismal evening of nothing but insipid rich twats with guitars
that cost nearly the same amount as a good 2nd hand family car
relentlessly crucifing the easier to play chord 'favourites;
from the Beatles songbook.

We all can always strive to better express ourselves with clarity
and precision, but buggered if I can be arsed to try to pre-empt
every possible way my chosen 'mudcat nom de persona' can be misconstrued
by any over-sensitive folk constantly on the look out to pick a row with anyone about anything as often as they feel like it....

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: GUEST,Steamin' Willie
Date: 09 Feb 10 - 08:53 AM

Well, I still haven't read two replies that agree on "folk" songs. I suppose that makes me a troll or whatever they call somebody who doesn't agree with somebody else...

I don't hide, by the way. Steamin' Willie caught on before the interweb and I have been using it in a spoof fashion for years whilst er... singing... "Folk" songs. I do have another name, but not sure it is relevant or indeed known by anybody, hence Steamin' Willie to those who fill my glass.

McColl certainly did say that "First Time.." is not a folk song, which is rather strange as it is a love song and there are many love songs that are classed by just about everybody as "folk." But there again, dare I say, he used to say that you can only sing songs that are indigenous to you, then hide his Salford accent with a phoney Scottish one. (Not to mention hide his name under it.)

I was interested by Jim Carroll's definition of songs that are so old nobody can remember their original meaning. About two years after the Boomtown Rats released "I don't like Mondays" most people had forgotten about the American school shooting Bob Geldof had written about. Does that make it a folk song? (Around that time, Dave Burland started singing it and telling everybody it is a folk song, so that settles that then!)

Sinatra? I will try and dig it out. It is on a "crooning" compilation album I used to play the odd track from when I was a part time radio presenter many years ago. BBC Radio Sheffield may still have a copy or at least a reference to it.

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: MikeL2
Date: 09 Feb 10 - 06:40 AM

Hi Jim

Many thanks for your interesting description of the state of folk music in Ireland.

It is good to hear that something positive is being done to preserve the wealth of music for others to enjoy and to follow in years to come.

As I have said here before I am interested in all kinds of folk music and I am just as happy to watch and listen to traditional music as to contemporary.

Like you I can relate to folk clubs as an organiser, resident, guest performer and audience participator.

In those roles I tried to introduce a good balance into what we did.

Though I don't think that my particular style really lends itself to traditional music I have on many occasions performed them ( having learned them first ).   

I have visited Ireland on a few occasions and have always been pleasantly surprised by the quantity and quality of ( mainly ) traditional music and it's honesty and spontanaity. Long may it be so.

Cheers

MikeL2

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: Matt Seattle
Date: 09 Feb 10 - 06:13 AM

Jim Carroll is OK, one of the most thoughtful, knowledgeable and considerate frequent posters here.

I share that short fuse syndrome. Sometimes I write the fuming message, leave it for a bit, then delete it. Sometimes I mail it. Oops.

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: glueman
Date: 09 Feb 10 - 06:07 AM

Most punters go to see attractive people or gnarly characters sing old songs in a compelling way. If it's 100% kosher 1954 attested herd direct line to Arthur's bosom song by a dull sod sung in a boring way it's crap-folk.
There's a genre to chew on.

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Feb 10 - 06:04 AM

Bruce M (what a short surname)
I get a little tired of, on the one hand, being accused of being a 'folk policeman' and on the other, constantly reading postings like yours from people who apparently think that we shouldn't be discussing things that don't interest them.
I do have a short fuse and am constantly apologising for same (apologies), and if that makes me nasty - so be it, but your 'bullshit' posting doesn't win too many prizes in the 'Dale-Carnegie-How-To-Win-Friends-and-Influence-People' race.
If you are not interested in a topic - feel free not to join in.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: Mr Happy
Date: 09 Feb 10 - 05:32 AM

The weakly get together me & chums do includes 'trad folk songs/ tunes' [whatever they are?] but in the main everyone presents the stuff they like.

Ultimately, if anyone's in an FC, sesh or WHY, then its up to themselves to initiate their faves, then they're guaranteed satisfaction!

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: mousethief
Date: 09 Feb 10 - 12:30 AM

If your joke fails, blame the audience.

O..O
=o=