Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: evansakes
Date: 08 Feb 10 - 04:08 PM

"However, if each of us true believers can convert just one person each on forums like this, then all the crap we have to wade through on topics like this would be worth it"

I've come across a fair few 'folkier than thou' manifestos over the years but that one takes the biscuit.

Congratulations, Silas!

ps This sprung to mind for some reason :-)

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: Silas
Date: 08 Feb 10 - 04:14 PM

"I've come across a fair few 'folkier than thou' manifestos over the years but that one takes the biscuit."

Well, you need to get out a bit more matey.

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 08 Feb 10 - 04:32 PM

The link MikeL2 couldn't make:

http://www.sandbachfolk.com/chronarticle.html

Urgh. What a bunch of know-nothing dipshits. Are they still that bad 13 years later?

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 08 Feb 10 - 04:37 PM

Well, Jim, I know we disagree on some things but here you have neatly pointed out the difference between those who have bothered to find out what "folk" means and the wilfully ignorant cultural colonialists.

It isn't, however, worth bothering to try to inform them. They don't want to know. They actively seek to promote ignorance.

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: Silas
Date: 08 Feb 10 - 04:39 PM

OMG!

I suppose hell is different for different people, but I think I have just seen a tiny glimpse - shocking, truly shocking...

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: glueman
Date: 08 Feb 10 - 04:40 PM

My pecking order goes:
Traditional folk song
Other traditions; music hall, military songs, etc.
Non-folk material performed with integrity; blues, skiffle, rock
Self-penned acoustic songs
Songwriter soundalikes; Denver, Dylan, etc

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: Silas
Date: 08 Feb 10 - 04:40 PM

Err.my post was in response to Jack's

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 08 Feb 10 - 04:41 PM

Incidentally, "traditional" is not a synonym for "folk". All anonymous traditional music is folk, but not all folk music is either traditional or (in my contentious opinion) anonymous in that music (including song for this purpose) may enter the currency of a community, and be transmitted through and modified by that community without (in these days of modern media) passing through the oral tradition or the identity of the original writer being lost.


Oh shit, before the horses get here I spot the psychobabble brigade coming out from behind their open university degrees.

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 08 Feb 10 - 04:53 PM

I'd agree with Richard, more or less.

This thread should not be discussing whether any particular genre is better than any other, but rather, why do we have folk clubs, and what should they doing.

As someone who usually describes himself as a blues singer, and who has been described (a long time ago) as "Edinburgh's only traditional Dylan singer", I went out of my way to learn Scottish traditional material, and to try to learn traditional styles of performance, with initially at least, some interesting results. However, when I'm in a folk club, I'll always include traditional material in my set.

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 08 Feb 10 - 05:12 PM

glueman wrote:
"My pecking order goes:
Traditional folk song
Other traditions; music hall, military songs, etc.
Non-folk material performed with integrity; blues, skiffle, rock
Self-penned acoustic songs
Songwriter soundalikes; Denver, Dylan, etc"

Here is my top five! ( and this really applies to an English Folk Music Club)
1. Traditional English 2. Traditional Irish/Scottish/Welsh sung in English. 3. Traditional Appalachian of British Isles origin. 4. Contemporary songs dealing with English themes and written with traditional song forms in mind ( Jez Lowe, for example, fits this category). 5. As 4, but Irish/Welsh/Scottish themes.

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: Nick
Date: 08 Feb 10 - 05:30 PM

I posted this on another thread recently.

"Came back from our weekly music gathering (we are not a folk club and I definitely don't think of us as being primarily traditional but see below!)

High Barbary
A Hundred Years Ago
Unknown Country song
Fol-de-rol-de-riddle-i (not sure of real name)
Thousands or More
Tell Me Ma
Adieu sweet nancy
Country song
Close to the Wind
Set of three fiddle tunes
Love in America
Blues in D (for Kate Mcgarrigle)
Accordion Tune
Second Accordion Tune
Mountains of Mourne
Set of three fiddle tunes
Hole in My Bucket
Shepherd Song
My Love Has Gone
Put Out the Lights
Set of Three Fiddle Tunes
Cousin Jack
Country Song
Galway to Graceland
Sailors Life
Set of three fiddle tunes
Unknown drugs song
Northern Tide
At Seventeen
I Can Hew
Fathom the Bowl
Stormy Winds Do Blow(?)
Vincent
Bring Us a Barrel
Both Sides of the Tweed
Three Score and Ten
One Starry night
Too Long (?)
Sisters of Mercy
Lord franklyn
Big River

Hmmm.... more traditional than I thought."

Why don't people just get out and play what they want to rather than constantly bleating and moaning about how people are breaking things and spoiling things?

Perhaps I'm lucky that I have rather broader tastes than many and can have a pleasant evening playing and listening to the above but equally can enjoy the following that I am doing over the next four weeks - playing a mix of jazzy, blues and even pop tunes with my wife in a pub nr Selby, playing rock and soul to a couple of hundred vets at a black tie dinner and dance at a hotel, playing with my son, wife and a friend doing a mix of original songs and things we enjoy and an acoustic gig playing modern stuff from Duffy to Lady Gaga to anything else we fancy. And not for a moment be concerned about anything apart from enjoying ourselves and hoping the various audiences enjoy it as much as we do.

Music of all sorts will be there long after I'm gone.

Perhaps there will be another blues revival? Or jazz may make a comeback... (my son who was 18 yesterday was given a copy of Bitches Brew for his birthday by a 17 year old friend. Very hard for good music to die and it without doubt pops up where you least expect it to)

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 08 Feb 10 - 05:31 PM

Not sure about drawing that firm a line around 'English', Tunesmith - particularly since it would demote some works collected by F. J. Child to second place! Me, I'd go for...

1. Trad. English or Scottish
2. Trad. Irish
3. Trad. American
4. "Contemporary folk" that sounds like it's at least on nodding terms with traditional forms
5. Music hall songs, parlour ballads, general daft stuff

In terms of proportions, 60% of the first and 10% each of the rest would do me fine. Well, I can dream.

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 08 Feb 10 - 06:27 PM

"I genuinely do not know what a folk song is. I also would suggest my lack of knowledge is rather widely shared...."

How true! How very, very true!

I suppose that reading any of the relevant books is out of the question? It's always seemed to me that wifull ignorance is considerably more common than genuine ignorance ...

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 08 Feb 10 - 06:30 PM

Pip: "Contemporary folk" that sounds like it's at least on nodding terms with traditional forms"

Ah... there's the rub! If that was what everyone meant when they said "contemporary folk" - i.e. new music that was firmly rooted in tradition (to nick a phrase from fRoots) we wouldn't even be having this discussion. I just dunno where cover versions of songs by Cliff Richard, John Denver, The Beatles, Bob Marley, Robbie Williams and Kris Kristopherson (to name a few I've heard in folk clubs - though admittedly "Sunday Morning Coming Down" is a beautiful countrypolitan pop song) fit in.

Meanwhile, if I want to hear singer songwriter stuff, I'd rather go to a gig by a decent singer songwriter performing their own stuff than watch a bunch of blokes with acoustic guitars bashing out acoustic karaoke in a pub backroom. Nothing wrong with that in itself, of course, simply a different horse.

In fact I think I'm on to something. Anyone up for an acoustic karaoke night?

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 08 Feb 10 - 06:34 PM

PS: Mousethief! Does this answer the question? Wonderful...

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 08 Feb 10 - 06:36 PM

To quote a friend of mine "People who sing songs that bad usually write them themselves".

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: glueman
Date: 08 Feb 10 - 06:48 PM

I was going to break traditional down regionally but I assume English trad will be the priority of an English club, Scottish north of the border, Irish, Welsh, etc., so left No 1 as Traditional.

There's also the problem of exclusively Trad. Eng. being easier to prove lyrically than musically and as I don't believe there's such as thing as English music, only regional English sounds, it seemed too much faff.
If the pecking order took on Linnaean categorisation I'd top it with revenge ballads played on concertina and bass brass.

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: mousethief
Date: 08 Feb 10 - 06:54 PM

Is William McBride (Green Fields of France) folk? If not what is it?

O..O
=o=

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 08 Feb 10 - 06:57 PM

It's a modern song composed in a tradition that stretches back to the "Unfortunate Rake" and includes such diverse songs as "The Dying Stockman" and "Fiddler's Green".

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 08 Feb 10 - 06:57 PM

I'd call it contemporary folk - new music rooted in tradition.

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 08 Feb 10 - 07:06 PM

It has not yet been sufficiently altered by transmission within the community.

Contrast "Slipjigs and Reels" or "Ride On" - the diversity of local variants of which is amazing.

"McBride" is therefore contemporary acoustic (or "folk-style") whereas the latter two are contemporary folk.

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: GUEST,999
Date: 08 Feb 10 - 07:51 PM

Another bullshit thread for another bullshit question.

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 08 Feb 10 - 07:58 PM

"Another bullshit thread for another bullshit question."
And another braindead troll emerges to throw stones (from the safety of anonymity course) and scurry back under his bridge.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: GUEST,Betsy
Date: 08 Feb 10 - 08:01 PM

I can't bear those twats who read Les Barker poems or other monologues and don't know or realise where to highlight / emphasise the funny bits -I have now made a point of going to the toilet (or bar) to avoid such numbskulls .

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: GUEST,999
Date: 08 Feb 10 - 08:38 PM

Jim,

My name is Bruce M. Go screw yourself.

Thank you.

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: GUEST,999
Date: 08 Feb 10 - 08:40 PM

BTW, you spend so much time putting people down you have little time left for niceness. Have a good look at yourself, Jim. You have become a very unpleasant individual.

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: GUEST,999
Date: 08 Feb 10 - 08:43 PM

As another btw, Jim, I am no more anonymous than any other GUEST that posts to Mudcat.

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: mousethief
Date: 08 Feb 10 - 11:24 PM

BTW, you spend so much time putting people down you have little time left for niceness.

This from a guy who called this a bullshit thread based on a bullshit question. Does the cognitive dissonance eat holes in your brain?

O..O
=o=

Subject: RE: Should folk songs be sung in folk clubs?
From: GUEST,999
Date: 08 Feb 10 - 11:55 PM

You suggesting it was done for a serious purpose? Check your own processes, MT.

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=

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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: Will Fly
Date: 09 Feb 10 - 11:26 AM

Whoops - Three-Hand REEL...

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 - 11:40 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". :-)