Can a pop song become traditional?

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 26 Aug 12 - 01:00 PM

"but even the 1954 definition has been discredited in academic circles. No-one in ethnomusicology or study of folklore now accepts that knowing an author has any relevance to the subject at all."
Not following you.
"The International Council also stressed the fact that the term folk music, which includes folk songs, can be "applied to music which has originated with an individual composer and subsequently has been absorbed into the unwritten living tradition of a community"
"Discredited???"
Don't think that knowing the composer of a song has ever been an issue.
It's about a process, not origin.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: The Sandman
Date: 26 Aug 12 - 12:48 PM

Iam not impressed by your comment Steve, as far as I am concerned trad means of unknown author, plus having been through a process of oral transmission in which words have become changed possibly added to etc, an example being the outlandish knight, it does not mean johnny b goode. I am unimpressed if people on this thread want to be silly and start calling anything, everything, why not start calling baked beans roast beef?

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 26 Aug 12 - 10:16 AM

All of these words being bandied about 'folk', 'traditional' etc. have different meanings in different contexts and are perhaps best dealt with loosely without rigid definitions. Certain characteristics can certainly be applied but even the 1954 definition has been discredited in academic circles. No-one in ethnomusicology or study of folklore now accepts that knowing an author has any relevance to the subject at all. We know the names of many authors of songs nowadays due to lengthy research. That surely doesn't mean that these artifacts they originated now cease to be part of a particular genre other than the genre of songs without known authors.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 26 Aug 12 - 10:02 AM

It is one of the more iksome myths of the Folk Movement that in writing Modern Folk Songs people are supplying The Traditional Songs of the Future. Consequently in most clubs you're more likely to hear Artificial Folk Songs than Real Folk Songs, however so artifically interpreted. I have a love of certain Artificial Folk Songs - be they by Bob Pegg, Rudyard Kipling, Peter Bellamy or Ron Baxter - but whilst they might tick all the right Idiomatic Boxes, they are a very different beast to the real thing. In more mawkish MOR circles the songs are even further removed from the core root of the thing (by their very sentimentality), and the Weirdlore Scene is a law unto itself (by its very pagan-centredness). That's the Horses for Courses Definition of Folk.

The Tradition is dead; long live the tradition.

Empirically yours,
Jack Blandiver.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Don Wise
Date: 26 Aug 12 - 09:57 AM

Whether or not present day 'pop' songs pass over into a tradition of some sort or other is a question of time. We are too close to the songs to be able to foresee what may or may not happen in 10,20,50 or more years, irrespective of matters like copyright.
I can well imagine a similar argument taking place in a village pub somewhere, say 150 years ago. One of the younger men has just sung a song from a broadsheet he picked up recently at the market and one of the older men passes comment along the lines of "Na, it won't last, this modern stuff. You mark my words lad, no bugger'll be singing songs like that'n next year!"........And then take a good look at the song collectors lists.
As for the accompaniment/interpretation question, it's all down to your abilities and to how prepared you are to take risks. After all, the audience knows these songs (Chuck Berry or whoever) from radio, concerts and records and so tends to expect you to go along with the 'accepted' version. But if you're prepared to convincingly go out on a limb the results can be fascinating. I know it's not exactly a 'pop' song but with "Hallelujah" for example, singers tend to slavishly follow Leonard Cohen's original interpretation. A while back I heard a version from an Algerian singer which was, apart from the melody, light years away from the usual interpretation- and it was bloody marvellous! Ditto Davenport's a capella "Memphis Tennessee". On the other hand, playing rock'n'roll songs in a proper rock'n'roll manner can be real fun!


I'll go along with Arlo on this.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,SteveT
Date: 26 Aug 12 - 09:17 AM

""Traditional" has more than one meaning here. Traditional as it is defined in folk music circles, or traditional in that it is always done because it is part of the popular culture."

Absolutely. If you mean the latter; why not? If you mean the former, you need to define folk (the usual minefield; lets not start again) and also need to define "pop".

My "folk" environment consists of singers who sing purely for the pleasure of it in singarounds in pubs etc and my comments are probably only valid within that context.   I don't spend much time at concerts etc listening to recording artists, professionals or semi-professionals and I don't equate "folk" with stages, electrics, microphones and "performances" so the nature of pop, when I last heard any, would tend to deny it entry to the folk world

"Traditional to me means so long ago that most people or indeed no-one at all knows who wrote it. .. The origin of a song can no longer disappear into the mists of time. Today's media and access to information means that in centuries to come our descendants will still know who wrote Shoals of Herring so it will never be traditional."

This seems to lead to the conclusion that the "folk song process" by which songs become traditional can no longer take place and that there will be no more traditional songs from any source. Whilst I accept the rationale of this viewpoint I'm happy to accept, personally, that songs like Fisherman's Green and Shoals o' Herring are modern songs that are in the process of becoming traditional folk songs because they match several criteria. First, they sound like folk songs to me (I won't go into details)! This is incredibly subjective but, in the end, I think we're all subjective about what constitutes folk so I'm just being honest about it. Second, many of the people that know and sing these songs think they are traditional or at least don't know the author (see the "most people (do not know) who wrote it" above.) [Many of the non-professional, "back room" singers that I know do research the background to their material very thoroughly but many others just sing for the fun of singing without knowing everything about the provenance of the songs they sing] Third, the songs have gone through enough changes to have evolved in the same way that the true traditional songs evolved. The big problem, perhaps, is that the two song examples above were never "pop" songs in the first place and were, in fact, created for and within the current (and "artificial") folk revival movement.   

If there is a true folk process occurring somewhere in the way that it occurred to produce the songs we could all agree are current traditional folk songs, I doubt if that process is occurring in the folk world. (Perhaps it's in the creation of football chants?) It's all a bit like evolution itself, you can only look back afterwards to see that it's happened. You can demonstrate the process in controlled, artificial habitats (farm animals; folk clubs) but the true process is probably going on where you're not looking, will probably produce something you couldn't have predicted, won't recognise and probably wouldn't want to admit as a traditional folk song anyway.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 26 Aug 12 - 08:37 AM

Oops!   Missed Brian's post back there...

Again, I ask who or what is 'Folk' in this context?

I'm using Folk to mean The Revival. I think it's not unreasonable to see it as unbroken continuum from the early years of the 20th century to the present day. Socially, culturally, demographically it occupies the same niche which is no closer to the actually 'folk' whom it regards as its principle source, much less those of a similar social caste today. Folk is thus a construct arising from the condition of social class that operates at several removes from the tradition it postulates, much as Kipling did in The Land. IMHO.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 26 Aug 12 - 07:59 AM

I say that at this point songs like Johnny B. Goode are folksongs

Well, Jimmy Wrinkle, they're certainly a non-horse song born of idiomatic tradition and subsequently adopted and processed accordingly; but the fact it exists in even more variations than Barbara Allan isn't enough to make JBG a folk song. And why would one want it to be? For sure, it can be a folk song - but only when sung by folkies: as I might have said earlier or elsewhere even when Jim Eldon performs a pop song it becomes Folk by dint of context & intention alone, but to call it a Folk Song on account of its adoption, process, nascence and adaption is, I think, specious in the extreme.

Call it instead a Traditional Song (a term which is, I would argue, tautologous) of the genus Rock 'n' Roll that has been adopted by Folkies and Classical players (I've heard extremely involved & intricate serial variations for string quartet) is by the by. Composers have used folk songs similarly - doesn't mean Vaughan Williams was writing folk music, but dear God, he was certainly processing it as part his tradition.

All musical Idioms exist in the flux of process. The nascence of a song is testimony to this & its variations thereafter but par for the course, especially in a more improvisatory context, such as the natural oral habitat of The English Folk Song Proper where things emerged differently every time and the collected evidences froze those instances in aspic - silenced as larks tongues!

The Folk Song idiom is hightly prized for its music purity but whether this the consequence of the erosion of the ages or just the mastery of the individual song makers is open (I hope) to debate. Remember, in their working lives these singers would have been masters of a dozen crafts, and just as I hear kids of ten masterfully peeling off everything from heavy metal licks to Irish jigs to Vivaldi sonatas, it ought not surprise us that these songs were made by masters too. Heavens, we even have the names of a few of them - George Bruce Thompson, Tommy Armstrong and James Armstrong to name but three - who composed perfect verse in the Idiom of Traditional Folk Song. They were not alone.

My position here is that Folk Song is a matter of idiom; the Tradition was the genre, rather than the songs per se. It's a case of seeing the wood AND the trees. We access an idiom through its works, and by a familiarity with those works we gain an understanding of that idiom, and however so long dead they still have the power to invigorate us on a level which, I suspect, is as intuitive as it is academic. I know a lot of very passionate folk song scholars - indeed, what would the revival be without them?

The Folk Charm is beguiling, but without an understanding of the natural habitat of Fok Song Proper we're limited to the taxidermy, which is far from flawless as act of pure ethnomusicology - which it wasn't in the first place. It is typified well meaning outsiders like Cecil Sharp made a parlour arrangement of a song he'd filched of his mate's gardener only a few hours earlier. Is that too part of The Folk Process I wonder?

This continues this to this day - all we Folkies are doing is making parlour arrangements of material which is better heard by the original singers, but being so beguiled, we're compelled to do so. Many lose sight of the Old Singers in this tertiary folk process. I keep ranting on about sourcing and listening and revering, but even the most seasoned folkie will look askance if told that his/her song has a better source than Steeleye Span. Tread carefully there, bonny lad, (though I might add that I seldom go on like this in the real world unless faced by a very particular fundamentalism (the dreaded Purist) but they, thankfully, are few & far between these days).

If some gifted young kid got up in a Folk Club and sang the whole of The Revealing Science of God accompanying him/herself on a mandolin (or better still if Jim Eldon did it on his fiddle, we can but dream) then I'd argue that in that manifestation it was, by dint of context alone, a folk song. The original, of course, is not a folk song - the original is merely part of the unbroken 50,000 year Tradition of Popular Music-making.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: The Sandman
Date: 26 Aug 12 - 07:40 AM

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: JHW - PM
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 03:33 PM

Traditional to me means so long ago that most people or indeed no-one at all knows who wrote it. Even time served songs by McColl or Cyril Tawney, written in the style of a folk song, passing through variation and selection etc. to become what many would reasonably call a Folk Song are not Traditional.
The origin of a song can no longer disappear into the mists of time. Today's media and access to information means that in centuries to come our descendants will still know who wrote Shoals of Herring so it will never be traditional.
Equally so a pop song.
I agree with JHW,
Larry Saidman, Henry Krinkle, that is my answer, that is my opinion you are entitled to yours, if you want to call it folk music or the music of the people that is debatable too but a different matter entirely

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Henry Krinkle
Date: 26 Aug 12 - 06:23 AM

I say that at this point songs like Johnny B. Goode are folksongs.
{:-(0)=

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Larry The Radio Guy
Date: 26 Aug 12 - 03:00 AM

Question for Good Soldier Schweik,

Why isn't You Are My Sunshine, or Take Me Out to the Ballgame traditional?

Is there anything that would have to happen to make them traditional?

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 26 Aug 12 - 02:02 AM

I am not sure where you ot the impression that the folk process did not apply to material that was copyrighted. Copyright simply is the right of authors to profit from their work by licensing it's commercial use. It may offer a limited ability to control changes and variations in a song presented commercially, but in practice, it is difficult to control that. There is no legal way for an author to prevent any sort of non-commercial variation of a song at all.


Here is description of the "Folk Process", from Wikpedia. It is not the final word, it is just an attempt to describe something that has been observed to occur.

"In the study of folklore, the folk process is the way folk material, especially stories, music, and other art, is transformed and re-adapted in the process of its transmission from person to person and from generation to generation.

....it is the act of refinement and creative change by community members within the folk tradition that defines the folk process."

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 11:35 PM

Copyright says who has the right to the song, payment or not - and as Morwen notes, if there is a copyright then there is going to be a fee - and the folk process is something I always understood to take place on songs in existence before the legal issue of ownership and copyright comes into it. Isn't that what we're talking about? The organic shift in songs and lyrics from a time when ownership was forgotten and they belong to the folk to sing and change as the interpretations and conditions shift?

SRS

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 09:30 PM

This discussion is complicated enough already without bringing up a discussion about copyright and folk/traditional music.;-) Copyright doesn't effect much beyond who gets the money. And somebody always gets the money.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 07:30 PM

IMO it only starts to count when you don't have to pay a fee anymore.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 07:19 PM

I was talking about copyright. It seems that copyright status on a modern composition would stymie the folk process because you will always know the original song. If you do a different version of a song but have to pay a fee to the original writers, does it still count as the folk process?

SRS

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 07:17 PM

Thank you, Betty. Like most everybody, I was moved.

As far as I am concerned, if there is one person who would know, it would be Pete. As for you GSS, the choice is yours-you can either sing along, or not. At the end of the day, that's really all there is to this.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 07:03 PM

IMO, Peter Tosh's version of "Johnny B. Goode" is not truly a variation of the original. It's the lyrics to "Johnny B. Goode" sung to a rhythm and melody of Mr. Tosh's devising. There's nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't reflect the way variations of songs naturally evolve via the "folk process".

Compare it with Jim & Jesse McReynolds version: CLICK (audio only).

But, overall, I agree with Don Wise's post above, that "Memphis Tennessee" has a lot more going for it when it comes to lending itself to interpretation.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 06:21 PM

Nice link, Betty. I'm with you, Arlo, and Pete. A song that lives on is a Folk Song, whether it's about the Moon in June, a Gold Doubloon, or The Bold Dragoon. Long may it be so!

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: The Sandman
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 06:03 PM

so what,bettynh, just cause PETE agreed, that does not make it a folk song or even a traditional song.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Bettynh
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 05:49 PM

Arlo Guthrie discussed this awhile ago. And Pete agreed.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 05:49 PM

That doesn't even make sense, SRS--if the source isn't attributable, then there is no source, and without sources, ethnomusicologists wouldn't have anything to work with.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 05:40 PM

"If the source is attributable and the secondary product is always linked back to it, that isn't folk, that's theme and variation." And you know this, because...?

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: The Sandman
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 05:36 PM

"You Are My Sunshine" is a clear example, as are "take Me Out to the Ball Game" and a horde of others
you are entitled to your opinion, and I am entitled to mine, and your examples are not in my opinion traditional songs

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 05:15 PM

"You Are My Sunshine" is a clear example, as are "take Me Out to the Ball Game" and a horde of others.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 05:14 PM

I think some of you are confusing variations on the original song with the folk process. If the source is attributable and the secondary product is always linked back to it, that isn't folk, that's theme and variation.

SRS

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 05:09 PM

Compare this: Peter Tosh's Johnny B. Goode
with this: Chuck Berry's Johnny B. Goode

I think that you'll have to acknowledge that there is plenty of variation--people learn rock/pop stuff from memorization, variations can result from incomplete recollection, misunderstanding, or deliberate alteration, all of which are part of the folk process.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 04:22 PM

10 years ago, in the wake of one of the ongoing "what is Folk?" discussions, I offered up a method by which songs might be classified as to their stage in the Folk Process...

Steps in the Folk Process

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 03:56 PM

"Traditional" has more than one meaning here. Traditional as it is defined in folk music circles, or traditional in that it is always done because it is part of the popular culture.

Habituation is an aspect - so many songs might simply be forgotten, written or not, so if they are rediscovered in print (author or not) are they now "traditional?" If it has an author and is in print but is so popular and sung with gusto on special occasions, does it become traditional because it fits a specific tradition or occasion? It isn't folk process traditional, but it is culturally traditional. Like Jingle Bells at christmas or Happy Birthday at your party.

SRS

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: JHW
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 03:33 PM

Traditional to me means so long ago that most people or indeed no-one at all knows who wrote it. Even time served songs by McColl or Cyril Tawney, written in the style of a folk song, passing through variation and selection etc. to become what many would reasonably call a Folk Song are not Traditional.
The origin of a song can no longer disappear into the mists of time. Today's media and access to information means that in centuries to come our descendants will still know who wrote Shoals of Herring so it will never be traditional.
Equally so a pop song.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Brian Peters
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 03:16 PM

I'm an admirer of Chuck Berry's lyrics, but I don't see any resemblance at all to a narrative ballad. There's plenty of scene-setting (which the old narrative ballads typically avoid) but no one particular incident that's described in any detail.

As far as different versions go, I've heard plenty, but none that departs substantially from the Berry original. Maybe in the presence or absence of the 5 chord at the end of the verse, but nothing more. Guitarists generally try to copy Berry's opening riff note-for-note. And, as I tried to say earlier, few people (including, I suspect, band members other than the singer) have the slightest idea of the lyrics to the verses. It might have very wide recognition, but if lots of people not in bands aren't singing it then it's hardly a folk song.

SRS: interesting stuff (if not easy). A printed example is generally the earliest record we have of most English folk songs and, although no-one can ever be really certain, Steve Roud in New Penguin reckons that the majority had their origins in print. Nevertheless, most of the singers who were recorded during the 20th century, at least, told collectors they'd learned songs from family members, not print.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 02:39 PM

There may be many versions of Johnny B. Goode but they are tethered to the original by way of permission from the author or publisher. That seems less conducive to folk process, don't you think? Same (in theory) with any modern song.

SRS

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: John P
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 02:34 PM

As for the Scandinavian thing, I've been playing mostly Swedish dance music for the last few years. The "feel" of the tradition is somewhat different than the American, British and French music I'd played before. It's almost like the traditional music is more conscious; musicians regularly know the names of the composers of tunes that are a hundred years old or more, as well as the name of the person who came up with the version that gets commonly played. This seems to be a part of the tradition in the minds of most of those who play the music. Also, newly composed tunes -- if they do what dance tunes are supposed to do -- get accepted into the traditional repertoire quite easily.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 02:27 PM

I think "Johnny B. Goode" is a perfect song to consider. It is, after all, one of the most widely known and recorded songs of our time. And, contrary to SRS assertion, it has been published in many different versions, because each new recording constitutes a publication, and secondly because both the music and the text have been printed and reprinted, both formally and informally, hundreds, if not thousands of times.

Probably more important, for the purposes of this thread, it is a narrative ballad. It tells the story of "Johnny B. Goode" very much in the way "traditional" ballads tell stories. It describes him in the terms that ballads describe their heroes, it gives examples of his virtue, his humble origins, his character, and his achievements.

Even though the boilerplate for rock and roll describes it as a mixture of black and white musical traditions, it never seems to register with people that it is directly linked to the broadside ballad tradition. What was "Stagger Lee"? It was a murder ballad.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: John P
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 02:23 PM

To get back to the original question, I'm wondering about "Summertime". I've heard it done as jazz, folk, blues, rock, classical, and combinations of all of those. I've heard the melody get seriously messed with. The words seem to mostly stay the same, though, and I can't honestly say that the melodic alterations actually equate to different versions, so there is ambiguity in my mind. On the other hand, pretty much every musician I've ever played with knows it and has a slightly different take on it, and everyone in every audience I've ever played it for knows it.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 02:17 PM

I probably overshot the discussion - I'll leave those remarks with apologies to those who don't appreciate them and just say don't let it trip you up.

SRS

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 02:13 PM

Brian Peters wrote The excellent discussion in the New Penguin Book of English Folk Songs of folk song in a social context makes the point that singing for diversion and entertainment was once very widespread in the population.

In 1984 I was an heir in my great aunt's estate in a the house the family moved into in 1911. The attic was like peeling back history, with the cabinet radio in front of the box of lacquer records and then the big old Victrola, all of this in front of the music stand for the piano sheet music at the back wall of the upstairs room. A brief history of how this family entertained themselves with the earliest step being singing together at the piano with sheet music.

The Ur folksongs will never be discovered since they can't leave a fossil record, but (I imagine) an important part of the research includes an anthropological examination of the collections and early written records, wherever they are found, trying to find reference to known songs or better yet, the jotted down ancient lyrics. Am I correct? I'm an English major, who spent a portion of my academic pursuits focused on American Indian literature and the early records of literate Indians, of first settlers, and the largest portion coming from anthropologists who are very important in teasing out the earliest known tellings of stories and the understanding of remnants and fragments of earlier times. We look at anthropological transcriptions and translations of conversations looking for things that we understand now that they missed in their day.

If we didn't have a written record today this discussion of popular song versus traditional would all be moot. This whole discussion is putting modern composition and the written evidence against spoken and sung history and versions that were handed down through memory. If all of the old versions haven't been collected before now time is almost up because the written word trumps so much.

Allow me a moment to put on my academic hat and introduce some French theory. Jean-Francois Lyotard wrote The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge in 1984 (as La Condition pestmoderne: rapport sur le savoir). Chapter 6 (pgs 18 - 23) is "The Pragmatics of Narrative Knowledge" and has to do with passing down stories through the oral tradition. He discusses the transmission of narratives (obviously songs are a form of narrative) and that

their narration usually obeys rules that define the pragmatics of their transmission. I do not mean to say that a given society institutionally assigns the role of narrator to certain categories on the basis of age, sex, or family or professional group. What I am getting at is the pragmatics of popular narratives that is, so to speak, intrinsic to them. [20]

He gives the example of how a tribal Cashinahua storyteller always begins a story with their equivalent of "once upon a time." He would begin "Here is the story of ------, as I've always heard it told." Because he heard the story, because he tells the story, because he follows the social conventions to ground the story in its place in the culture, the community privileges the storyteller to do this work of transmitting cultural knowledge.

"The narrator's only claim to competence for telling the story is the face that he has heard it himself. The current narratee gains potential access to the same authority simply by listening." This is identical to the authority we grant to folksingers known for collecting and performing traditional songs.

Lyotard follows by noting that this "gives insight into what is a generally recognized property of traditional knowledge." Privileging the narrator is what cultures are inclined to do, but in modern times those narrators are up against the written and recorded word and allows quibbles with authorship, exact wording, sources, and versions. (I won't stray into Barthes and Foucault and argue about the Death of the Author, but a huge aspect of "folk" is that the author is unknown, which is mostly impossible with modern recorded and printed songs.) Before the prominence of the written word, cultures granted the storyteller the authority to do his or her work. When Child and Sharp and others started collecting them, things changed.

As I read this thread, am I correct in thinking that some participants in this discussion seem to want the continuum to move along as if modern composition is subject to the same eventual obscurity as songs composed hundreds of years ago, and that they will eventually be transmitted as a piece but missing the author bit of information? Do any of us really think that Johnny B. Goode will someday be an anonymous folk song? The traditional narrator storyteller/singer gives what they know about what they are about to perform and they tell the story or sing the song. In older times, as what was understood about the world changed, aspects of the song or story would change. The folk process. When modern songs are written on paper with names attached and copyright issued this process is no longer going to happen. Don't you think?

That's all I'll pull from the Lyotard essay, I need to re-read it to discuss any more in depth, but that isn't necessary for this topic. I just wanted to bring in something else for you to chew on.

SRS

Lyotard, Jean-Francois. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, 1984. Translation from the French by Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. U of Minnesota Pr, Minneapolis.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: The Sandman
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 01:34 PM

the reason for singing a song should be [IMO] that it appeals to you, and that you feel you can perform it well.
since the majority of songs performed in the folk genre, are often performed without amplification, that has to be a consideration.
   most pop songs IMO, DO NOT WORK without accompaniment, or electronic wizardry, they are often written with that consideration in mind.
they may be good songs of their genre, but they do not stand up to a different test, that being sung unaccompanied or accompanied in an acoustic style
quite frankly if Iwant to listen to johnny b goode, I would listen to the man who does it best chuck berry[not bob davenport]
likeise if i wanted to listen to a north eastern mining song, i think bob davenport would be a preferential choice to chuck berry. horse for courses

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 01:25 PM

"From Clare to Here" introduced as a traditional folk song."
MacOll's 'Shoals of Herring turns up in American academic Horace Back's 'Folklore and the Sea' as 'Shores of Erin' a traditional song from Kerry
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 11:06 AM

Well, of course, lots of modern songs are mistaken for old(ish) folk songs. But most of them are written in a folkie style.
For example, I've heard Ralph McTell's "From Clare to Here" introduced as a traditional folk song.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Brian Peters
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 09:47 AM

"Vernacular musical usage was always a good deal more widespread than the prescriptions of Folk would allow."

I don't know which 'prescriptions of folk' you're referring to. My point was that singing was indeed very widespread, at least up to the early 20th century. Vernacular music making is an interesting area, encompassing the early 19th century village bands in which present-day folk musicians, at least, take a great interest.

"It seems to be the aim of Folk to filter out what it sees as the 'pure stuff' from the background noise of working-class culture as a whole."

Again, I ask who or what is 'Folk' in this context? As I've pointed out before in these discussions, things have moved on a long way in the hundred years since Sharp. But even he, during his Appalachian trips, noted fiddle tunes, African-American work songs, string band songs and hymns that did not fall into his search criteria of old 'English' folk songs. In other words, he made a record of precisely the 'background noise' you're referring to.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Don Wise
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 08:32 AM

I don't know about "Johnny B. Goode" but "Memphis Tennessee" certainly turns up, either complete or in parts, in a'folk' music context. Ever heard Bob Davenport's version? Or Pete Coe's reworking of "Marrowbones"?

Personally, I consider that a lot of what we classify as 'Traditional/Folk Music' , irrespective of whether "Come all ye's" or "Big Ballads" was, at one time or another, the Top 40 of the day. And what about "The First Time Ever"? Or is a cross-over from 'folk' to 'pop' OK but not the other way round?

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 07:43 AM

"I count in an honour that you bother discussing these things with me at all. It always passes a cheery hour...."
Does this mean the wedding's back on then?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Ole Juul
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 07:42 AM

It seems to be the aim of Folk to filter out what it sees as the 'pure stuff' from the background noise of working-class culture as a whole. Maybe I'm alone in finding that a tad specious.

No you're not. :)

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 06:49 AM

and passed down in thousands of households from one generation to the next (which is what 'traditional' means in this context).

Vernacular musical usage was always a good deal more widespread than the prescriptions of Folk would allow. Back in the 80's I lived in mining communities and knew key singers & musicians in their 90's (and older) who would talk openly about taking their one-string fiddle quartets around the farms at Christmas time and the colliery band traditions which many of them had learned from their fathers, but on the subject of Folk Song Proper I invariably drew a blank. Even growing up as a kid we had a wealth of Traditional Northumbriana in our family but it was always just a part of a much wider picture. According to family tradition, my father played all sorts of music on the piano, as did his mother before him, and even sang certain 'Folk Songs' and shanties but my mother never remembered him being involved with Folk as such.

It seems to be the aim of Folk to filter out what it sees as the 'pure stuff' from the background noise of working-class culture as a whole. Maybe I'm alone in finding that a tad specious.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Brian Peters
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 06:16 AM

'Johnny B. Goode' might entertain claims to have become a traditional song if its lyrics (and not just the chorus) were widely-known amongst the public at large (and not just a tiny number of lead vocalists in covers bands), and passed down in thousands of households from one generation to the next (which is what 'traditional' means in this context). The thing that makes 'folk music' - in its original usage - 'different' is that it was not the preserve of a self-appointed caste of musicians. The excellent discussion in the New Penguin Book of English Folk Songs of folk song in a social context makes the point that singing for diversion and entertainment was once very widespread in the population. It also declares, incidnetally, that for all Cecil Sharp's supposed selectivity in his collecting methods, his findings regarding repertoire were more or less confirmed by the collectors who came later, and operated with more inclusive criteria.

Excellent points from Stilly River Sage, by the way.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Ole Juul
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 05:59 AM

This bears repeating.

Blandiver: It is my contention that the Pop music of today is part of an unbroken continuous tradition of Vernacular Music Making stretching back 50,000 years at least. Each idiomatic genre of Pop Music derives from that which proceeded it - nothing came out of nowhere. This to me is what Traditional means. It's acknowleding the glorious Rootedness of all human music making and respecting it accordingly. Pop, Folk, & Classical musics are all born of Traditions and Processes and are thus evolving as a consequence.

It seems like there are some who like to set themselves apart. In my experience it is the more conservative element too. Funny that.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 05:46 AM

I aways know you're bullshitting when you call me 'old man'

Jim - I only call you Old Man as a mark of respect. Seriously. It comes from the film 'For a Few Dollars More' - it's what Clint Eastwood's Monco calls Lee Van Cleef's Col. Mortimer. It acknowledges the simple fact that we both are, each of us in our own very different ways, Bounty Hunters in the wilds of Folk Song. It also acknowledges that I defer entirely to both your seniority and your contribution to a greater work before which I stand in awe. I'm not bullshitting here - I'm just an average Folkie with a proclivity for mouthing off in the face of entrenched religiosity & fundamentalism which (I feel) ill befits the glory of the subject. Personally, I count in an honour that you bother discussing these things with me at all. It always passes a cheery hour....

So...

Your argument was "Pop music is Traditional Music" - look IFMC said so, so it must be true.

Would the IFMC said such a thing? The ICTM certainly did - and not without good reason. It is my contention that the Pop music of today is part of an unbroken continuous tradition of Vernacular Music Making stretching back 50,000 years at least. Each idiomatic genre of Pop Music derives from that which proceeded it - nothing came out of nowhere. This to me is what Traditional means. It's acknowleding the glorious Rootedness of all human music making and respecting it accordingly. Pop, Folk, & Classical musics are all born of Traditions and Processes and are thus evolving as a consequence. For sure, you can go back and isolate a particular idiom (as Prof Child did with his Popular Ballads) but that filters out so much else and creates the false picture upon which the Folk Song Revival is predicated. It's a nice picture though - as nice as those on the Axon Broadsides certainly, but just part of something that always a good deal broader.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 05:10 AM

"I wonder - do the ICTM still stand by their findings as the IFCM?"
As I've said, it's the message and not the medium that is important - Your argument was "Pop music is Traditional Music" - look IFMC said so, so it must be true.
I aways know you're bullshitting when you call me 'old man' - and I always expect a waterfall of meaningless verbiage - thanks for not disappointing me
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 25 Aug 12 - 04:40 AM

Ole Juul--I like to play music on acoustic instruments, and I particularly enjoy playing for dancing, so at one time, I played a lot for "international folk dancers", who do a lot of Scandinavian dances, so I am familiar with the whole "Spelman" thing. I am also a bit of a a wonk, and have a never ending curiosity about sources, origins, construction, and such things.

One thing I learned from playing music is that for audiences, it exists only in the present. They don't really care how old a song is, or how it came to be. Often, the are scarcely aware of what it is about. They really just want it to make them feel like they are part of the moment.

Music is about the best way to make people feel part of the moment, but what music? A room full of International Folk Dancers might feel an overwhelming connection to the earth and the people when they hear a Swedish Hambopolksa from the 19th century, but a room full of Swedes might rather hear ABBA (I can tell you this from my own experience!).