Nominations for 'new' traditional songs

Subject: Nominations for 'new' traditional songs
From: Larry The Radio Guy
Date: 22 May 10 - 01:52 AM

Traditional songs are, according to the experts, songs that have lived on, are spread through an "oral tradition" where many different versions may prevail, and nobody really knows for sure who wrote it. Right?   So, at one time, these songs were introduced by somebody. I'm curious about the qualities that lead to some songs becoming traditional and others going into the scrap heap (or even worse, being designated "pop" songs).

I'd like to hear mudcat contributers vote for a relatively recent song that, say, 50 years from now, could be considered "traditional". If you don't like predicting, give a song that you would LIKE to see enter into an oral tradition.

Subject: RE: Nominations for 'new' traditional songs
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 22 May 10 - 02:37 AM

It's already happened, certain songs by Ewan MacColl, Cyril Tawney and others have been absorbed into the tradition, MacColl had been known to ' collect ' his own songs from traditional singers, Shoals of Herring has become a traditional Irish song called ' Shores of Erin '

Dave H

Subject: RE: Nominations for 'new' traditional songs
From: Anne Neilson
Date: 22 May 10 - 03:58 AM

"Yellow on the Broom" by Adam McNaughtan is probably halfway there in the acceptance process.
He wrote it after bring asked to review the book of the same name, written by Betsy Whyte (a Scottish Traveller, singer and storyteller). Betsy described her childhood, but the focus of the book was her mother's story - coming from a family which travelled the year round, she married into a family of Travellers which wintered in the town and she yearned for the first appearance of flower on the broom shrub in Spring, as that was the signal to go back out on the road.

Subject: RE: Nominations for 'new' traditional songs
From: Joe Offer
Date: 22 May 10 - 04:03 AM

On this side of the pond, I'd say "We Shall Overcome" qualifies.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: Nominations for 'new' traditional songs
From: GRex
Date: 22 May 10 - 05:01 AM

I think that Dave Webber's "Bonnet and Shawl" already sounds traditional.

       GRex

Subject: RE: Nominations for 'new' traditional songs
From: treewind
Date: 22 May 10 - 06:08 AM

"If I were you, young man, I'd leave local songs for local people to sing"
(or words to that effect)

Pastow resident to Dave Webber, after the latter had just sung the May song that he wrote and which had been enthusiastically adopted by the locals in the ensuing years.

Subject: RE: Nominations for 'new' traditional songs
From: Leadfingers
Date: 22 May 10 - 06:10 AM

Keith Marsden's 'Bring Us A Barrel' - ALREADY called traditional by a lot of people - His own fault , as after he wrote it , he felt he shouldnt call it a contemporary song so used to introduce it to his Audience as 'Trad'

Subject: RE: Nominations for 'new' traditional songs
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 22 May 10 - 08:43 AM

Yellow Submarine
Singing in the Rain
My Way
Love Me Tender
One Love

and no doubt lots more...

Subject: RE: Nominations for 'new' traditional songs
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 22 May 10 - 08:50 AM

May I Have this Dance for the Rest of my Life
Didn't I Dance in my Day
Stairway to Heaven

Subject: RE: Nominations for 'new' traditional songs
From: GUEST,Bob Coltman
Date: 22 May 10 - 08:55 AM

"Geronimo's Cadillac" - compulsively singable. Bob

Subject: RE: Nominations for 'new' traditional songs
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 22 May 10 - 09:32 AM

During a concert Cyril Tawney introduced ' Sally Free And Easy ' as one of his own songs, he overheard a matelot on the front row saying to his mate ' the lying bugger, I heard that song in Hong Kong years ago '

Dave H

Subject: RE: Nominations for 'new' traditional songs
From: JedMarum
Date: 22 May 10 - 09:42 AM

I second it; "Yellow on the Broom" by Adam McNaughtan!

Subject: RE: Nominations for 'new' traditional songs
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 22 May 10 - 11:42 AM

I'd like to see Bob Kenward's "Man of Kent" become "traditional".

Subject: RE: Nominations for 'new' traditional songs
From: old git
Date: 22 May 10 - 12:02 PM

Peter Bond's "Joe Peel"
A whole lot of Keith Marsden's songs

Subject: RE: Nominations for 'new' traditional songs
From: old git
Date: 22 May 10 - 12:04 PM

Stan Roger's "Mary Ellen Carter" and lots more of his

Subject: RE: Nominations for 'new' traditional songs
From: Larry The Radio Guy
Date: 22 May 10 - 12:16 PM

How about Long Black Veil by Danny Dill and Marijohn Wilkins. So many different versions--all of them so different (and often better) from the original Danny Dill recording--which barely anybody's heard.

Subject: RE: Nominations for 'new' traditional songs
From: Emma B
Date: 22 May 10 - 12:29 PM

Fiddler's Green

I heard someone introduce this as a 'traditional Irish folk song' once when John was in the audience

Subject: RE: Nominations for 'new' traditional songs
From: The Sandman
Date: 22 May 10 - 12:35 PM

I had a wheelbarrow but the wheel fell off.

Subject: RE: Nominations for 'new' traditional songs
From: GUEST,CupOfTea at work, cookieless
Date: 22 May 10 - 01:32 PM

An automatic nomination should go to any song that's been cited as "traditional" within the writer's lifetime. One that comes to mind immediately is Si Kahn's Aragon Mill. His Wild Rose of the Mountain has an oh-so-trad feel, too. I've seen a doofus on You Tube list "One, I Love" as being a "traditional Irish song popularized by American Jean Richie" rather than crediting it to her as writer/composer.

Woody Guthrie wrote a fair few that have become traditional, particularly within the "went-to-camp-learned-it-there" group like me. Plane Wreck At Los Gatos/Deportee, Pastures of Plenty, Do Re Me, Pretty Boy Floyd, Roll on Columbia, and of course, This Land is Your Land

Pete Seeger's own songs presented in the same style as traditional material were absorbed as such by plenty of folks. Get Up & Go, Where Have all the Flowers Gone (with last verse by Joe Hickerson), If I Had a Hammer (with Lee Hayes), Turn! Turn! Turn!- just the tip of the iceberg.

Stan Rogers wrote for the ages, for a certainty: Mary Ellen Carter, Barrett's Privateers, Northwest Passage.

Even moreso, Gordon Bok's songs are timeless: Turning toward the Morning, Hearth and Fire... and on and on So many writers who are strong in their traditional roots - as most of those I mention- can write things that can stand for years: Tommy Makem's Four Green Fields - I get into the Irish and Scottish writers and I could be coming up with a list long as my arm!

Some songs I think SHOULD become traditional, for the sheer number of covers also make me wonder if they might miss becoming that because of OVERexposure (Not that bloody song again!): Eric Bogle's Green Fields of France, The Band Played Waltzing Matilda. Kate Wolf's Give Yourself to Love, Bob Franke's Alleluia, the Great Storm is Over, Sidney Carter's Lord of the Dance, Sally Rogers' Lovely Agnes.

It'd be interesting to know what's being sung around campfires these days and by younger folks in general. I wonder what impact in the US the songs in "Rise up Singing" will have on what endures into the tradition & if it hastens the transition of something from "pop/popular"music to "folk/traditional" - which is likely a whole OTHER thread...

I'm glad it wasn't specified how many nominations we each get! This had me thinking all morning.

Joanne in Cleveland

Subject: RE: Nominations for 'new' traditional songs
From: mg
Date: 22 May 10 - 01:56 PM

I think most of what Pete St. John has written. mg

Subject: RE: Nominations for 'new' traditional songs
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 22 May 10 - 02:09 PM

Pete St John definately has the gift of writing traditional songs, and ALL Woody's songs will become traditional in time.

Dave H

Subject: RE: Nominations for 'new' traditional songs
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 22 May 10 - 02:19 PM

'You'll never walk alone', Gerry Marsden, sung by tens of thousands on a weekly basis. 'Old Faithful' sung by thousands on a weekly basis.
'Fields of Athenry' sung by tens of thousands on a weekly basis, during the season! And many others of that ilk.

Any pop song that lingers on a generation AFTER it was written, without having to undergo a 'REVIVAL'.

An American pop song written in 1908 that entered oral tradition in Britain, but I don't think it survived in America. 'My Brudda Sylvest'

Jimmy Kennedy's 'Hokey Cokey' from WWII, albeit based on earlier European songs.

Many parodies on pop songs, some of them bawdy.

Subject: RE: Nominations for 'new' traditional songs
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 10 Feb 11 - 09:48 PM

The names of Peter Coe ('Joseph Baker'), Bob Pegg ('Rise Up Jock'), Peter Bellamy ('The Transports'), Eric Bogle ('The Band Played Waltzing Matilda'), Cyril Tawney ('Sally Free & Easy'), Ewan MacColl ('Ballad Of Derek Bentley'), come much to mind in context of this thread.

I once asked A L Lloyd [see my interview with him, "The Donkey & the Zebra" in Folk Review Sept 1974], whether Liverpool FC crowds had not turned the song You'll Never Walk Alone from Rodgers & Hammerstein's musical Carousel,[adduced above by Steve Gardham, who however surprisingly attributes it to singer Gerry Marsden rather than to its composer & lyricist!] into a folk song. "Folk in function but not in form'" Bert said. I asked whether, in folksong, the function did not define the form to some extent. "To some extent," he repeated firmly; and the subject dropped.

~Michael~

Subject: RE: Nominations for 'new' traditional songs
From: Clontarf83
Date: 10 Feb 11 - 11:38 PM

Aragon Mill
Peat bog soldiers
Millworker (James Taylor)
Jolly beggarman (Makem--lots of his stuff)
Will think of more

Subject: RE: Nominations for 'new' traditional songs
From: mousethief
Date: 10 Feb 11 - 11:42 PM

All God's Creatures Got a Place in the Choir (Bill Staines)

Subject: RE: Nominations for 'new' traditional songs
From: mousethief
Date: 10 Feb 11 - 11:43 PM

The Final Trawl

Subject: RE: Nominations for 'new' traditional songs
From: michaelr
Date: 11 Feb 11 - 01:40 AM

Steve Tilston's "Slip Jigs and Reels".

Subject: RE: Nominations for 'new' traditional songs
From: Dave Sutherland
Date: 11 Feb 11 - 03:05 AM

"Sullivan's John"

Subject: RE: Nominations for 'new' traditional songs
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 11 Feb 11 - 04:07 AM

Whence "Sullivan's John", then, Dave? The Dubliners IIRC sing it as 'traditional'.

~M~

Subject: RE: Nominations for 'new' traditional songs
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Feb 11 - 05:05 AM

Seems to me there's a great deal of wishful thinking going on here.
Tradition is not just repetition - it's a bit more complex than that; nor does it have anything to do with what the songs 'sounds' like.
Sullivan's John has a claim to 'tradition' because it was born into a community that could identify with it, make it their own and claim it represents their way of life in some way.
Rogers and Hammerstein's You'll Never Walk Alone, made for an Broadway musical, has about as much to do with the lives of the people of my home town as does Mongolian throat singing.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Nominations for 'new' traditional songs
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 11 Feb 11 - 05:18 AM

Maybe, Jim ~~ but it has a lot to do with the people whose home town happens to be Liverpool & who support the city team rather than Everton or Tranmere Rovers.

~M~

Subject: RE: Nominations for 'new' traditional songs
From: GUEST,S.T.M.
Date: 11 Feb 11 - 05:19 AM

The Band Played Waltzing Matilda
The Grey Funnel Line
Dimming of the Day

Subject: RE: Nominations for 'new' traditional songs
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 11 Feb 11 - 05:26 AM

The Dreamend and The Drowned - by Reg Meuross

From Reg Meuross:

"This song is about Betty Corrigan, an unmarried girl from the island of Hoy, who fell pregnant by a sailor in the late 19th century. When the sailor failed to return Betty was banished from her village to the desolate moor. The isolation drove her mad and she committed suicide before the child was born. She was buried on the moor in un-consecrated ground. Her body was later exhumed by mistake and found to be incredibly well-preserved owing to the peat soil. (It's said that the sailors dressed her up and took her to the mess room to scare the other sailors although I doubt this.) On realising her sad fate, the sailor who found her paid for a headstone and had her buried on the moor.

The song is the title of a new compilation of my unreleased songs, compiled by Stephen Jordan at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, and soon to be released."

Subject: RE: Nominations for 'new' traditional songs
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 11 Feb 11 - 05:30 AM

Moreover, Jim, re Never Walk Alone: it has become part of a regular ritual, sung by people, many of whom are probably unaware of its origin, on specific occasions ~~ or, rather, a repeated specific occasion, a match in which Liverpool FC are playing. It could almost, it seems to me, be included in a reissue of the old Caedmon/Topic Folk Songs Of Britain set, volume 9, Songs Of Ceremony.

~M~

Subject: RE: Nominations for 'new' traditional songs
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Feb 11 - 06:19 AM

"but it has a lot to do with the people whose home town happens to be Liverpool"
No it doesn't Mike: it is something repeated at a football match, same as 'Land of Hope and Glory' is repeated at the last night of the proms.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Nominations for 'new' traditional songs
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Feb 11 - 06:20 AM

Or maybe that is something that should have been included in the Caedmon series?
Jim Carroll

Subject: Lyr Add: NEWELL HIGHWAY (John Warner)
From: freda underhill
Date: 11 Feb 11 - 06:49 AM

NEWELL HIGHWAY
John Warner (1985)

This song celebrates the Warrumbungle Ranges in inland NSW. John first heard the tune, C.H.H. Parry's melody for the hymn 'Dear Lord and Father of Mankind,' in his earliest childhood as a theme to a BBC radio programme, and it is adapted here from that memory.

Awake before the dawn within the spires of range
Where magpies ornate melodies
Engrave the chilly morning breeze
Beneath the towering stone,
Beneath the towering stone.

On nights of silver moon too rich to waste on sleep
In silence make your way to seek
The choirs of frog in swamp and creek
That sing beneath the stars,
That sing beneath the stars.

Out on the western plain beside the roaring road
Where trucks snarl by without a care
Are billabongs with ibis there
And wedge-tailed eagles soar,
And wedge-tailed eagles soar.

All you who love the earth
And make her ways your choice
Cry out against the noise of trade
Demand that silence should be made
So that all might hear her voice,
Her ancient, matchless voice.

Subject: Lyr Add: ANDERSON'S COAST (John Warner)
From: freda underhill
Date: 11 Feb 11 - 06:55 AM

"Anderson's Coast" by John Warner, here sung by James Fagan and Nancy Kerr

Australian singer John Warner writes evocative and beautifully poetic songs, many drawing on Australian colonial history. Anderson's Coast concerns of a group of convicts who escaped Van Diemen's Land in a stolen ship, only to be wrecked by the notorious Bass Strait waves on the Gippsland coast (in Victoria). The explorer Strzlecki and his small band stumbled out of dense rainforest and encountered the marooned men. Strzlecki would probably have perished had it not been for his Koori guide Charlie Tarra and this group of convicts who led him to Anderson, a pioneer settler who ran cattle on the South Gippsland coast. Apparently the convicts were pardoned for their contribution to the explorer's survival.

Old Bass Strait roars like some great mill race
And where are you, my Annie?
But the same moon shines on this lonely place
As shone one day on my Annie's face.
But Annie dear, don't wait for me,
I fear I shall not return to thee
There's naught to do but endure my fate
And watch the moon, the lonely moon
Light the breakers on wild Bass Strait.
We stole a vessel and all her gear
And from Van Diemen's we north did steer
'Till Bass Strait's wild waves wrecked us here.
And somewhere west Port Melbourne lies
Through swamps infested with snakes and flies
The fool who walks there surely dies.
We hail no ship though the time it drags
Our chain gang walk and our government rags
All mark us out as Van Diemen's lags,
We fled the lash and the chafing chain
We fled hard labour and brutal pain
And here we are and here remain.

Subject: Lyr Add: THE PEOPLE HAVE SONGS (Miguel Heatwole)
From: freda underhill
Date: 11 Feb 11 - 07:00 AM

The People Have Songs
written & sung by Miguel Heatwole, Sydney.

Here voices are tuned to each other in gladness
To all here in common affection belongs
Here joy and laughter meet keening and sadness
Here tyranny's cursed for the people have songs

Let us set the room ringing with the sound of our singing
When we come to the end let us hold the chord long
Hear the harmonies rise and all close our eyes
'Til the last cadence dies the people have songs

Here is war parting sweethearts
Here are strong sweating sailors
And poets for beauty who ardently long
Here are people at work singing loud at their labours
Here are marriage and drinking for the people have songs

Respect for each other gives each one a hearing
And whether the voice be uncertain or strong
We listen with love if the heart is endearing
Supported in harmony the people have songs

Disdaining oppression like others before us
Our gentleness angered by history's wrongs
Our tradition endures, and our voices in chorus
Are lifted in hope for the people have songs!

Subject: RE: Nominations for 'new' traditional songs
From: GUEST,Desi C
Date: 11 Feb 11 - 08:15 AM

The Times They are A-Changing, The Contender, Fields Of Athenry, Dirty Old Town, Greenfields Of France, The Bank PLayed Waltzing Matilda and my own song Singing In Kilkenny

Subject: RE: Nominations for 'new' traditional songs
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Feb 11 - 08:45 AM

It seems the term 'traditional' is rapidly becoming a dustbin for songs lacking any identification of their own, just like 'folk'.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Nominations for 'new' traditional songs
From: Will Fly
Date: 11 Feb 11 - 09:43 AM

I ask (yet again) about the place of tunes in all this.

Some of the tune titles which are reasonably modern compositions (within the last 30 years) and which get played regularly at sessions - whether you like them or not - are Pete James's "Horizonto", Jay Ungar's "Ashokan Farewell", Tom Anderson's "Da Slockit Light", Joan MacDonald Boes's "The Sweetness of Mary" and quite a few others. Not in the slightest way unknown in origin - but quietly slipping into a 'music traditionally played' category.

Going even further back in time - to look at precedents for such incorporation of modern composition - we have Carolan...

Subject: RE: Nominations for 'new' traditional songs
From: treewind
Date: 11 Feb 11 - 09:50 AM

Add Colin Cater's "Penny for the Ploughboys" to the list.
It's already been adopted an a sort of anthem by Old Glory Molly Dancers.

Subject: RE: Nominations for 'new' traditional songs
From: GUEST
Date: 11 Feb 11 - 11:36 AM

Nobody's mentioned 'Changeling's Lullaby' by Gav Davenport of 'Crucible', or 'The Guist Ploughman', by Mike Barber (recorded by Gav's parents Paul and Liz). I've started hearing both around the singarounds over the last couple of years.

Subject: RE: Nominations for 'new' traditional songs
From: Paul Davenport
Date: 11 Feb 11 - 11:39 AM

Thanks for the plug Guest, Yes, Mike's song is doing very well out there and quite a few people think its trad. I must add, that 'Under the Leaves' (words by Gavin, tune by myself) has started appearing all over the place and, according to Dave Webber, raised a few eyebrows at the Ballads seminar at MIT a couple of years ago.

Subject: RE: Nominations for 'new' traditional songs
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 11 Feb 11 - 12:18 PM

@ Jim Carroll, partly:

Given that these days the singing of traditional songs is largely the preserve of people involved in the folk scene than the public at large or regional or workplace communities and so on, there's a sound argument that any song taken up by and mutated within the folk scene is 'traditional' - because it has entered the folk community's own tradition and, in some cases, been sung by people who don't even know that it has a (relatively) recent origin. This could include those Cyril Tawney songs, Keith Marsden songs and Eric Bogle songs mentioned above as well as stuff like "the Testimony of Patience Kershaw", "The Dalesman's Litany" and "Farewell to the Gold". It could also include A.L. Lloyd's often excellent reimaginings of traditional songs. Of course, I know that none of these are traditional in the academic sense (with the exception of Lloyd's work, of course, which is assumed to be traditional because its based on traditional songs), but they might as well be for the thousands of people up and down the country who take immense pleasure in gathering together to sing then. It enriches and entertains us, and that living, breathing understanding and appreciation and unleashing of folk music is for many of us overwhelmingly more important in our lives than the narrow academic study of folk music, important though that also is. I suspect when we gather to sing, academic definitions are not - and should not be - at the forefront of our minds.

One song I'd love to see enter the folk scene tradition (as I'll call it to avoid further offence...) is Alasdair Roberts' Farewell Sorrow.

Subject: RE: Nominations for 'new' traditional songs
From: Dave Sutherland
Date: 11 Feb 11 - 12:29 PM

MGM - "Sullivan's John" seems to be generally attributed to the traveller Pecker Dunne (see Jim's response) although there appear to be one or two other names thrown in along the way.
I thought it was a traditional song for a few years after I first heard it in the sixties.

Subject: RE: Nominations for 'new' traditional songs
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Feb 11 - 01:06 PM

"Given that these days the singing of traditional songs is largely the preserve of people involved in the folk scene...
So if I set up a 'Elizabethan Madrigal Appreciation Society" and we start composing our own stuff, whatever we come up with will automatically become an Elizabethan madrigal? Hmm, have to think about that one - thought about it - rubbish!
A song (or any artistic) form is defined by much more than where it is performed and by whom. 'Traditional' is about where the song has been and what has happened to it on its journey.
If You'll Never Walk Alone is 'traditional' then so is The Birdie Song and Viva Espania.
Bert Lloyd said it all forty odd years ago when he wrote at the end of Folk Song in England, "If Little Boxes and The Red Flag are folk songs, we need a new term to describe The Outlandish Knight, Searching For Young Lambs and The Coalowner and the Pitman's Wife"; all different forms, different origins, different functions, different historical, social and cultural significance.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Nominations for 'new' traditional songs
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 11 Feb 11 - 01:20 PM

A song; Unison in Harmony (Jim Boyes); Soaring skywards...

A tune; Margarte's Waltz (Patrick Shuldham Shaw)

Subject: RE: Nominations for 'new' traditional songs
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 11 Feb 11 - 03:13 PM

Another thing that is now part of the folk scene tradition is Peter Bellamy's settings of Kipling, particularly "Oak, Ash and Thorn" (which Les cracks open once a year at the Beech singaround) and "Sir Richard's Song".

Any community has its own traditions. These days, many communities are communities of interest rather than communities of location or communities of employment. The post-war folk revival is considerably older than me, and as far as I can see, it is a well established community, and one that has its own loosely defined norms, mores and traditions. Taking up and singing newer songs, often created by members of that community, is one of those traditions and a living tradition at that. Its one of the things that keeps things from getting pickled in aspic. Not all of the new songs written by members of that community become part of its tradition, but some most certainly do. I'm sure this would have been similar process to what might have happened to new songs introduced in older, rural communities- none of these songs came fully formed out of the ether. Our modern folk community, is of course aided by new-fangled stuff like this board, Youtube, sound recordings, mass transport and other things people living in previous eras didn't have.