Can a pop song become traditional?

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 04 Sep 12 - 11:01 AM

Well he used a naughty word which he shouldn't have. He could of course have said something a little less hostile. Like "are you going to sing this song then?" or something.

But I've been tempted to heckle when I've experienced people hogging other people's time in situations like that. it's inconsiderate.

Like when you're at an Open Mic and you get three songs each: there's always one (usually a pony-tailed middle-aged guy with an expensive guitar) whose first song is about the length of other people's three. And then his second's even longer. And then his third... you get the idea.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 04 Sep 12 - 10:59 AM

Thank you, Blandiver.

A google search for MoFo suggested something entirely different...

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: theleveller
Date: 04 Sep 12 - 10:40 AM

"I think the key words here are "3 minutes" and "floorsinger"!"


No, the keywords are: 'Sing the fucking song man, stop talking about it'. A quiet word afterwards might have been appropriate but to speak that that to someone in front of the whole room is disgusting. Only an ignorant boor would behave like that - I don't care what his credentials are in the folk revival. No-one, but no-one would ever get away with speaking to me like that.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 04 Sep 12 - 10:20 AM

I really don't understand what Psychedelic Arcadia that is MoFo means.

MoFo = Mosely Folk Festival - or so it said on our handsome purple plastic wrist bands.

Psychedelic - Well, the whole vibe was like Glastonbury 1984 in miniature & it brought me back to the whole free festival scene that I used to revel in as a younger man, only it wasn't free, but the vibes were beautiful and the music was beautiful too. We heard amazing sets from Emily Portman, Sunjay Brayne, Telling the Bees and Ian A Anderson's False Beards and it felt utterly idyllic. Even several hallowed members of Steeleye Span said how much they enjoyed our set.

Arcadia - This is mythic realm of Nymphs, Shepherds, sunshine & idleness. Backstage we were handfeeding the wildfowl on the wooded lake before going on to do our set of Field-Hollerin' Mom 'n' Pop Feral Weirdlore and I looked out and - things was cool, you know? I saw beautiful nymphs laughing with handsome young shepherds and all in perfect contented idleness. Wandering around the festival site afterwards we bought beautiful clothes for autumnal wear; there were storytellers, jig-dolls, pole lathes, tarot readings, Chinese zither players and lots of happy painted faces and not a curmudgeonly folky in sight.

Thus : the Psychedelic Arcadia that is MoFo. And all a very long way from the Gasworks Club in Fleetwood.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 04 Sep 12 - 08:56 AM

Blandiver,

It's quite possible that I'm very dim, but I really don't understand what Psychedelic Arcadia that is MoFo means.

Could you elucidate please?

Thanks,

Ed

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 04 Sep 12 - 08:28 AM

at the risk of sinking up to my neck into the "what is folk?" quagmire...

it has often struck me that the closest thing we have to a folkloric "shared song culture" today is that provided by Glee and X Factor.

After an episode of Glee, there will suddenly and instantaneously be hundreds of thousands of people who know the song "First Time Ever I Saw your Face" or "Hallelujah", or whichever song from the last 50 years of recorded popular music the programme's producers have decided to recuperate.

The next day, children in school playgrounds know the song, and share it on their phones.

One might say something analagous about the function that superhero movies plays in terms of narrative and myth: today's equivalents of folktales and mythical archetypes are Batman, Spiderman et al. The speed at which the film companies decide to "reboot" the franchise with different actors is in its own way testament to the mythic potency of Iron Man, Hulk and co.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 04 Sep 12 - 08:18 AM

otoh many traditional song benefit from a programme note. Obviously, discretion as to length and detail is essential, but it would be a pity if all traditional material were to be sung entirely 'from cold', perhaps to the mystification of much of the audience.

~M~

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST
Date: 04 Sep 12 - 08:15 AM

I think the key words here are "3 minutes" and "floorsinger"!

Effectively that's making your intro the same length as someone else's entire floorspot! That's saying "my song is more important than your song". I'm willing to bet that that floorsinger probably went on to sing a song that was a lot longer than everyone else's too. There's always one...

(I went to a screening of "Cracked Actor", the 1974 David Bowie documentary, at the ICA on Sunday. Afterwards there was a Q&A with the director. One particularly obsessive audience member just didn't seem to understand the concept: his question turned out to be a three questions, prefaced by a lengthy rambling preamle, and the microphone had to be positively wrestled away from him)

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 04 Sep 12 - 06:35 AM

Of course there are certain cunning individuals who can turn their scolarly intros into golden entertainment without veering into the Badlands of Folk Comedy even in the setting of one of the Fylde Festivals less desirable venues. We witnessed this on Saturday night even as the MC fumbled about the place trying to figure out how to work the lights and the ghostly ectoplasmic fug of the Wheeltappers and Shunters club hung in the stale air undisturbed by anything brighter than a lighter since 1970 at least (somehow, you just know the Shirley Bassey Sink anecdote is set here). But, undaunted, and with the sort of gifted artistry that sorts out Men from Boys, we were lifted (nay transported) into the more wholesome realms of Traditional Song & Ballad (& more besides) in such a way as to quite ignore the oppressive horror of the place. Mr Brian Peters, to you, sir, I doff my cap.

We didn't stay long enough to see The Emily Portman Trio, but we loved her set the following day at Moseley. Her music is an exquisitely woven filigree tenderness ideally suited for the rainbow colours, smiling painted faces & verdant parkland setting that typifies the Psychedelic Arcadia that is MoFo. I couldn't help but wonder how her particular flower would have faired in the sinister gloom of the Gasworks Club. Shame we didn't hang round long enough to find out really, but, like Brian, I bet she sent the shadows fleeing away...

Then, doubt not, ye fearful
The Eternal is King
Up, heart, and be cheerful,
And lustily sing:
What chariots, what horses
Against us shall bide
While the Stars in their courses
Do fight on our side?

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 03 Sep 12 - 02:44 PM

Bob certainly had an agenda and didn't suffer fools gladly, but under the brash exterior is a heart of gold. He lives in London nowadays and still turns up at the occasional do. He was an influential singer in his early days being backed by bands like the Rakes. Impact on the Yorkshire scene? I saw him perform in my neck of Yorkshire many times.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: theleveller
Date: 03 Sep 12 - 07:43 AM

Yes, vaguely recall the name from way back in the mists of time. He didn't have much impact of the Yorkshire folk scene I was involved in and I don't think I've ever seen or heard him. He obviously has an over-inflated sense of his own importance.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 03 Sep 12 - 03:53 AM

leveller ~"Whoever he is" ··· Are you serious! He might have his yobbish and aggressive side; but Bob is one of the most distinguished singers of the British Folk Revival. Try googling if you don't believe me.

~M~

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: theleveller
Date: 03 Sep 12 - 03:14 AM

"Punch Bob Davenport? Are you hard enough?"

Fortunately I've never come across this "gentleman" whoever he is, but let's just say that I doubt if he can hold a candle to the hunt followers, dog-fight organisers and badger-baiters I've come up against in my time.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Brian Peters
Date: 02 Sep 12 - 06:45 PM

Even as I wrote it, I was thinking about kicking Bishop Brennan up the arse...

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,raymond greenoaken
Date: 02 Sep 12 - 06:11 PM

Punch Bob Davenport? Are you hard enough?

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Brian Peters
Date: 02 Sep 12 - 03:24 PM

'Sing the fucking song man, stop talking about it'

I'm always amused (or possibly bemused) when people make the effort to post to a music discussion group to complain that discussing music is boring and a waste of time.

Also agree with theleveller: I hope the singer went and punched the offending heckler on the nose for such bad manners.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,raymond greenoaken
Date: 02 Sep 12 - 02:42 PM

I understand it all! Honest. I have a dictionary too.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 02 Sep 12 - 05:47 AM

Second try!

Jack, apologies, it slipped out, but you do have a strong tendency to use vocabulary no one else on here understands.

Dick, agreed, and I really like Ole's follow-up.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Ole Juul
Date: 02 Sep 12 - 04:37 AM

Since this discussion is pointless, and has been for the past century or so, why not start over by soliciting definitions of "folk" and "traditional"? Otherwise we wind up with arguments about whether an elephant is a quadruped, a vertebrate, a mammal, or a beast of burden.

That's easy. "Folk" is a mammal and "traditional" is a beast of burden. :)

Seriously, there is indeed an elephant in the room. That, is the tendency to slide effortlessly back and forth between academically aware practitioners, such as we mostly see here, and society in general.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 01 Sep 12 - 11:56 PM

Just a thought-
Since this discussion is pointless, and has been for the past century or so, why not start over by soliciting definitions of "folk" and "traditional"? Otherwise we wind up with arguments about whether an elephant is a quadruped, a vertebrate, a mammal, or a beast of burden.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Henry Krinkle
Date: 01 Sep 12 - 10:06 PM

See my lyric request for Run, Joey Run?
A pop song very likely to become traditional one day.
Just you wait and see.
(:-( ))=

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Musket
Date: 01 Sep 12 - 06:29 AM

I like to give a bit of background to a song, not too much but a bit. I suppose that if we are to call something "folk" it includes the provenance as the idea is to preserve old traditional songs as well as introduce new songs to the genre.

Which of course is why a pop song can become traditional.



If a song is about an event, a person, a capture of time in any event, it is preserving an experience, which is precisely what we want to preserve traditional songs for.

Cool for Cats describes my life at the time. I Don't Like Mondays was sung by Dave Burland whilst in the charts and he described it as a new folk song. Smoke on the Water is about a fire in Switzerland. Etc etc etc

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: theleveller
Date: 01 Sep 12 - 05:02 AM

"First time I heard Bob Davenport in 1964(he's well known for plain speaking) a floor singer got up and spent fully 3 minutes explaining the song he was about to sing. Bob stood up and shouted from thn back- 'Sing the fucking song man, stop talking about it'"

Ignorant bastard! There's plain speaking and there's downright fucking rude. If anyome said that to me they'd get a pretty curt response at the time and a warning afterwards that it they ever did it again they wouldn't be able to sing until they'd had a lot of cosmetic dentistry.

Personally, I like to hear the provenance of songs (OK, maybe not so much in a singaround). When he ran the Osmotherly Folk Gathering, Richard Grainger has a Sunday lunchtime session where singer/songwriters were invited to talk about the background to their songs before singing them. I really enjoyed that.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 01 Sep 12 - 03:43 AM

I'm not talking of a lecture, Steve - just a wee introduction to place the song in its context, for the benefit of those who don't know, or might not be familiar with it. It's nice to do that without having some pumped up boor bawling out to Sing the fucking song man - much less resort to personal sidewipes about dictionaries.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 31 Aug 12 - 04:09 PM

Jack,
It's a case of time and place. I can easily talk for an hour on the provenance/history/geography of some of the songs I sing, but wouldn't dream of doing this in a singaround where you're often lucky to get 2 songs in. If I'm perfoming to a historical group I might do this but to people who've come to hear singing the briefest of intros suffices. I'm afraid I veer more towards Bob's colourful and brief statement.

And we'll all be glad when you've got to the end of the dictionary and got it out of your system.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 31 Aug 12 - 03:38 PM

Discussion's cool. Surely much of the appeal of a song is its provenance; I'd go so far as to say that its provenance accounts for its numinosity (or is it numinouness?). At a Fylde Festival singaround earlier today (about 2 hours ago) I happily sourced my rendering of Out With my Gun in the Morning to the singing of Jimmy Knights with reference to both the Broadside in the Axon Collection and Jim Causeley's track on the Woodbine & Ivy Band album. If someone had said Sing the fucking song man, stop talking about it I would have told them that whilst never being numinous ourselves, we Traddies are nevertheless drawn to the mystery that, in the pure sweet communion of simply singing a song, radiates its divine charge in our hearts / souls and in this way are our lives made complete. This is but one of the Bounties of Traditional Song and we do well to explore the source and account for it by way of as wide a credit as we can. Chapter and, indeed, verse. Amen, amen, amen, amen.

Who said Folk was a religion?

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: The Sandman
Date: 31 Aug 12 - 01:49 PM

exactly Jim, its called the Dunbeacon reply, HAVE YOU DUN SPEAKING THEN DUN BEACON

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Jim Bainbridge
Date: 31 Aug 12 - 12:57 PM

First time I heard Bob Davenport in 1964(he's well known for plain speaking) a floor singer got up and spent fully 3 minutes explaining the song he was about to sing. Bob stood up and shouted from thn back- 'Sing the fucking song man, stop talking about it'
The current discussion brought this to mind, can't think why

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Mr Happy
Date: 31 Aug 12 - 04:19 AM

"I want to lick your balls until you come"??

I think 'traditional' songs are usually a little more subtle than that example, often with innuendo & humour

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 31 Aug 12 - 01:21 AM

Much impressed by Brian's last post. Reminded by it of something from my pre-WW2 childhood, about 1937 when I would have been 5. We had the painters in for a few days; and one of them while at work incessantly sang The Skye Boat Song, which I thought beautiful. Have always wondered why, and whether such a thing would happen today. (Just an anecdote, but felt faintly relevant.)

~M~

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 30 Aug 12 - 06:59 PM

Will: In both genres time has, like water running through a rock formation, eroded the soft stuff and left the peaks standing.

As someone involved in geophysics that image strikes a very appropriate chord!

It's been fascinating out here to see what songs are known and sung. It's also fascinating to see that the more "commercial" side of things (what's playing in clubs and such) is largely Rap, Trance and Dub-Step music that sounds about 3-4 years "out of date" compared to the UK. The local "commercial" music seems to be mainly Rap or Metal, and the lyrics often switch into English, sometimes inappropriately. I was walking through a mall with quite loud piped music the other day and the Russian lyrics suddenly switched to : "I want to lick your balls until you come", repeated 3 times until they switched back to Russian. I was an obvious foreigner as I stopped dead and did a distinct "double take"!

Brian: What Rob is describing (and I'm genuinely fascinated by it) is a process by which songs are accessible to the generation below the one that first enjoyed them, but as the result of a more complex series of processes that no doubt involves peer-to-peer transmission but also Youtube, Spotify, CDs, LPs, etc. There's always a fixed reference point to return to. Of course that also means that those songs will be available for ever, for anyone who wishes to access them.

Yes, you've hit the nail on the head there in terms of transmission processes. And, as someone else pointed out, there are also loads of "Best Rock Guitar Tunes" books and similar. I know that some of the songs in my "inter-generational list" feature in several of these books.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST
Date: 30 Aug 12 - 06:33 PM

"Goodnight Irene". "So Long, It's Been to Know Ya". "You Are My Sunshine".
All have entered into the folk process. They have been adopted by people who have no idea that they were written in the last century and that their composers are known. When people sing them they sing them as songs they learned from somebody else; a parent, a sibling, a friend, from a recording. They may remember the lyrics or the tune " "incorrectly" or add their own variations.
Frankie Armstrong told me she met a couple of German girls travelling in Wales who were singing Ewan MacColl's "Moving On Song". Unlikely they learned it from the original Radio Ballad. It had become part of their personal tradition.
Many of Ewan's songs have entered the tradition. "Shoals of Herring" is popular in Ireland and there are people there who will swear they learned it from their grandfather.
It doesn't matter the provenance of a song. If people adopt it as their own it becomes "folk".
Big Bill Broonzy once said, "If folks sing it it's folk music."

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST
Date: 30 Aug 12 - 05:45 PM

Will Fly has described the process clearly enough:
"time has, like water running through a rock formation, eroded the soft stuff and left the peaks standing. " and, by means of this analogy, suggested that rather than being a phenomenon peculiar to music, or to a particular culture or society, or even to humanity, it is at root, a universal principle.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Iains
Date: 30 Aug 12 - 05:11 PM

I have read all this thread with fascination. There seem to be several streams of thought(at least)There is a highly academic line of reasoning that suggests everything has too be highly dissected and conform to a rigerous test as to origin/antiquity-even to the extent of having no attributable author. Another argues that a song must have evolved. The definition of folk has no universally accepted criteria.
Also the world has moved on. Data can move around the world in an instant- the days of an itinerant minstrel ceased many years passed.
In many ways the purists need to update their act to the modern world, they seem to require that a song evolves and travels over a period of time. The internet provides a new paradigm.
Is Raglan Road a folk song or in the folk idiom or is this purely an argument based around semantics? Does the same apply to O'carolyn's Farewell to Music, or Carrickfergus?
In sessions I attended in Lincolnshire for some years the music played
would encompass anything in the folk 'idiom' I am sure we all collectively regarded it as folk, irregardless of wether it was written by John Connolly, Ralph Mctell or A N Other back in the 1600's
If Joe average regards Fairytale of New York as a traditional folk song then surely it is? By it's chart sales it is also a pop song.
Is music of a certain genre to be enjoyed by listening to it-playing it-or dissecting it? The latter song is a traditional christmas favourite. So to answer the original thread I would say YES.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Mr Happy
Date: 30 Aug 12 - 08:28 AM

Yes

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Brian Peters
Date: 30 Aug 12 - 07:19 AM

"I still await the evidence that recent songs are getting passed on down the generations..."

"What evidence do you need?"

As several people have now pointed out, in order to discuss the original question we have to decide what 'traditional' actually means. Clearly it meant one thing then and another now. I've tried to remember to qualify at least some of my comments with the phrase "in the old sense". However, as far as the dictionary goes the main meaning is given as:

"The passing down of elements of a culture from generation to generation, especially by oral communication."

A secondary meaning, "A time-honored practice or set of such practices." is relevant here, too. (I don't think anyone here has yet claimed Slade's 'Merry Christmas' as traditional, but it's certainly part of what is now the traditional Christmas soundtrack, like it or not)

When I talk about "getting passed down" I'm talking about songs being passed from parents to children, and then on to the next generation and the one after that. Sheila Kay Adams' family singing tradition, for instance. What Rob is describing (and I'm genuinely fascinated by it) is a process by which songs are accessible to the generation below the one that first enjoyed them, but as the result of a more complex series of processes that no doubt involves peer-to-peer transmission but also Youtube, Spotify, CDs, LPs, etc. There's always a fixed reference point to return to. Of course that also means that those songs will be available for ever, for anyone who wishes to access them.

When I said "it's too early to tell", I was imagining a list that might have been drawn up in 1960, of songs that would stand the test of time. What would it have included? 'Oh, What a Beautiful Morning'? 'Getting to Know You'? 'Singing in the Rain'? 'Ol' Man River'? As it happens I remember my Mum singing the first two of those around the house, and could manage at least a verse and chorus of the first. But I don't sing them around the house (nor much else, for that matter, unless I'm practising) and I guess Rob's young musicians in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk don't sing them either. Of course they'll always be there for people who like to watch classic old musicals, but I suspeect they'll fall out of more general circulation in another generation.

Now I'd concede that those songs from the shows represent a style of music that the next generation largely rejected, whereas the generation below mine hasn't (entirely) rejected the guitar-based popular music idiom that arose in the 1960s. Also, there's been a democratisation of music-making since working-class youths of the 60s achieved fame by playing electric guitars, then punks and rappers showed that music-making was accessible to anyone, instruments and technology became more accessible, and venues like my local music pub started running open-mikes. There's plenty of opportunity to get involved in music today. Nonetheless, those twenty-year-olds who are playing 'Hotel California' (do the three table-slaps make it the new 'Wild Rover', I wonder?) are still part of a select community that chooses to entertain itself by sharing music, a bubble no less than the folkie bubble CS identified.

fRoots magazine reckons from surveys that 53% of its readers play an instrument, two thirds of those in public - but that's fRoots, which champions essentially home-made music. What percentage would you find amongst the readers of Auto Trader, Country Life, The Spectator, Cosmopolitan or Nuts? There is a subculture of music-makers, but I suggest (while respecting various bits of testimony above) it's still a minority. In the heyday of what (with all the usual disclaimers) I'll call the folk tradition, the majority of people sang, albeit without necessarily having a large repertoire. According to Roud, "people sang in all kinds of places and contexts, and there was probably no situation in which people did not sing at one time or another". He goes on to list instances both private and public: the home, the pub, the workplace, etc. According to an account of turn-of-the-century Nova Scotia:

"In the town where I lived until I was twelve years old, almost everyone sang these old songs and ballads. Neighbors were few and far between, books and magazines were scarce and we had to make the best of what we had... If a stranger came to house or to one of our neighborhood gatherings, it was considered a breach of good manners not to ask him to sing."

We simply don't have that kind of culture now, however much wonderful music is made in our present culture. Celebrate the difference, but recognize it. And recognize too that, in the great scheme of things, it doesn't actually matter very much, other than as an interesting discussion topic.

"I was thinking more of Riverdance actually"

Then why not say so? Instant consensus, and no subsequent ill-humour!

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST
Date: 30 Aug 12 - 06:22 AM

surely we could have answered this thread's question with just two words (rather than 190something posts):

"Yellow Submarine"

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: johncharles
Date: 30 Aug 12 - 06:05 AM

Will, you could be that man on the clapham omnibus. I may have to have a rest now, philosophy is so tiring.
john.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,d
Date: 30 Aug 12 - 06:03 AM

Will - and by extension Rob - you two sum up the situation pretty well. One could also include our parents, aunts, uncles here - what, if anything, did they sing to us when we were kids? 'Folksongs'??? Or songs from rambling/climbing club outings, popular films of the time etc.? Some of these songs may have stuck in our memories, some we may even sing irrespective of whether we know who composed them or not, or some we've even possibly used as vehicles for completely new songs. Only time will tell whether anything like 'folkmusic' will be played and sung in 2112, and the same goes for songs crossing over from one genre to another. (It's 'folk' Jim, but not as we know it!) Since none of those pontificating here in this thread are going to be around in 2112, surely the question is really only one of academic interest.

"Fixin' to Die Rag" may be superficially about Viet-Nam, but surely it's the general sentiment of the song - war and the behaviour of politicians and military - that matters?

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Will Fly
Date: 30 Aug 12 - 04:30 AM

Rob - some very interesting comments from your own experience on how, in our modern times, popular songs - and even fragments of these songs - are remembered cross-culturally. Perhaps we're seeing the beginning of a different kind of "folk process" (I hate the phrase but can't think of a better) in which, from out of the multitude of popular songs composed and created in our time, certain ones get sifted out and come to prominence while the rest of them settle down to relative obscurity. I'm generalising, of course, but I'm sure you'll get my drift. The main difference between our time and that of the collectors at the turn of the 20th century is that recording and archiving techniques allow the provenance of all of this modern material to be known and documented. In this world, both the "classics" and the "dross" survive on an equal footing and can be brought out for inspection as and when required.

What would we have heard two or three or four hundred years ago? What has not survived? Perhaps, like today, a mixture of great songs and comparatively poor material. I've been listening avidly to music for the greater part of my 68 years, and been actively performing a wide range of music for over 45 of them. I often reflect that, when I first started listening to music hall songs, for example, this material was around 50-60 years old then. Now it's over 100 years old. Similarly, the 20s and 30s jazz I'm so fond of was in its 40s when I started playing it - but is now fast becoming a venerable centenarian. In both genres time has, like water running through a rock formation, eroded the soft stuff and left the peaks standing. It's a process analogous to that of traditional music, with the exception that, unlike traditional music, we have all the relevant birth information. What will be remembered and heard and played of our modern music in 100 time...?

As far as traditional music is concerned, I'm firmly of the belief that the songs we hear today started off as personal compositions by an individual. Some names survive, others don't. And I'm sorry to say that - not really being immersed in the folk song tradition, it matters not a jot to me whether Variant A is related to Variant B by way of a housewife in Banff. What does matter to me is how good the song/tune is to my ears.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: theleveller
Date: 30 Aug 12 - 04:30 AM

"'Adlestrop' must be one of the finest accounts of that sort of mystic experience we all have now and then, the feeling that there is a sort of profound thought somewhere just beyond where our mind can reach, if only we could just think what it was."

Very true - whenever it happens I always think that Wordsworth sums it up.

                               "And I have felt
      A presence that disturbs me with the joy
      Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
      Of something far more deeply interfused,
      Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns"

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 30 Aug 12 - 04:27 AM

Agree with Rob, the kinds of songs he lists have definitely become generation transiting acoustic anthems - just take a look at YouTube and you'll see examples of hundreds of young musicians playing such songs. The key difference today being that such songs have become a part of contemporary DIY music making traditions via the means of recorded sound, the internet and also importantly via 'Greatest Rock Songs for Guitar' chord books, rather than the exclusively oral tradition of yore - though that plays it's part also.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 10:39 PM

I have been a folksong leader and performer for about 55 years and, although I am partial to traditional songs, and I champion then in my reviews, I believe that a "folk song" is a song that people sing, rather than just listen to. Of course, tradition takes time. Is there anything sillier than an event that is advertised as The First Annual whatever?
But, even though Dr. Kenneth Goldstien was a friend, and my daughter's godfather, his assertion that a folksong's author must be anon and altered by, what he called "folk process", was, and is nosensical. Even he would have admitted that Silent Night, Happy Birthday and the Star Spangled Banner are traditional and ritual folksongs. The same can be said for Guthrey's "This Land is Your Land", Leadbelly's "Goodnight Irene" and Irving Berlin's "God Bless America" A folksong outlives its creator and its popularity. I suspect that "Puff, The Magic Dragon" will achieve folk status. Children's songs and Christmas carols tend to have a longer shelf life.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: The Sandman
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 10:29 PM

I am flabbergasted, as Shakespeare might have said "much ado about nothing

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 08:09 PM

I still await the evidence that recent songs are getting passed on down the generations

What evidence do you need?

I've said above, a couple of times, that I regularly hear people in their 20s singing and playing songs that are 40-60 years old, or joining in with them word-perfect when they hear them played.

The songs include "modern folk" songs...I've posted before about the young mandolin player who "only plays traditional Irish songs" launching into "Fiddler's Green" and reacting with horror when told that not only was it written in Grimsby, but that the composer was still alive and performing.

As for pop and rock songs, as I said above, "Hotel California" is definitely a generation-crossing "anthem"...if young people from Axminster to Sakhalin and various points between are able to identify it from the first bar and join in word-perfect, including the 3 percussive table-slaps immediately before the vocals start, then in my book it's "there". In the last few months I've heard it done by, and joined in by, people at least a generation removed from its composition in: Axminster; Yeovil; Bethesda; Tunbridge Wells; Den Helder; Stavanger; St Petersburg and Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. I would probably have heard it in Turkmenbashi and Ashgabat if I'd been there long enough to come across any singing!

Other pop/rock songs I hear sung by people in their 20s and younger all the time, and in widely separated locations, include:

- Space Oddity
- Wish You Were Here
- Blowin' In The Wind
- Streets of London
- Teach Your Children
- Bad Moon Rising
- Catch The Wind
- Big Yellow Taxi
- The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down
- Ruby Tuesday

to name just 10 of many.

And strangely, there seems to have been a recent uptake of "Feel Like I'm Fixin' To Die Rag" which is *really* out of its time and place, but which I've heard done recently by under-30s in both Axminster and Tunbridge Wells, and joined in with enthusiastically by others.

I suspect that one's just a flash in the pan, but I'd be willing to bet that at least half the other 10 I listed above continue to make their way down the generations.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 07:02 PM

numinosity....almost rhymes with verbosity.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 06:46 PM

Is it 'numinousness', 'numinescence' or 'numinosity'?
It's like 'luminous'.
You say 'numinosity'?
I do.
And when a things is numinous, it exudes an air of mystery, of sanctity, of energy.
It appears 'charged'.

(Peter Blegvad)

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 04:25 PM

I was thinking more of Riverdance actually - but the thing I love about pre-Revival Irish musicians & singers (same for America & UK) is the numinouness that, to my ears at least (this is a matter of personal taste after all), is conspicuously absent thereafter.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Brian Peters
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 03:29 PM

"grim nationalistic MOR pastiche"

I found myself at a concertina workshop with this wonderful musician last year. Kindly explain how her music fits into the ludicrous characterisation above.

Mary McNamara

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 29 Aug 12 - 02:57 PM

and maybe I'm being 'wishy washy' but I see the truth in both.

Me too. Is life ever so simple as to be clear cut?

they knew the difference between Johnny B Goode and The Bucks of Oranmore

And the two can coexist quite happily in the same musical universe. Most Irish Bands of my acquaintance wouldn't get the gigs if they couldn't cover The Dubliners, Irish Women, Riverdance, Dervish as well as The Commitments.

*

Yet you feel free to insult anybody you choose whenever it takes your fancy.

I never insult anyone, Jim. I question certain assumptions, but I never get personal.

*

I still await the evidence that recent songs are getting passed on down the generations

Things get passed on, only differently; and maybe the time scale is a little different too. The Idioms certainly get passed on - the means by which new music is created; we inherit that the same as language. I've still got my mother's old Beatles 45's, including her cherished copy of All You Need Is Love which I flipped over & flipped out to as a kid in '67 when I heard Lennon's modal clavioline on Baby You're a Rich Man. That's Pop heritage! It provided the link between the Smallpipes and the Prog that followed; especially when I hear the Third Ear Band a few years later. Pow! I'm still reeling, man. Seriously. That got me into Medieval Music via The Macbeth soundtrack & I still dream of a universe where Magma and Gong used to tour together - or where Mark E. Smith used to travel on the same bus as Ian Curtis, or Sun Ra and Rahsaan Roland Kirk would meet on the subway in the early hours after the gigging was done, or the thoughts of what Willie Scott, Jimmy McBeath and Davie Stewart had to say to each other in those high and far off times...

We live in a wonderful wonderful wonderful wonderful traditional popular musical universe. Forgive the worst pun you'll ever hear but it's Johnny B. Goode to be here. As Zappa said - Music is the Best.