Can a pop song become traditional?

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: theleveller
Date: 06 Sep 12 - 03:04 AM

There's a huge affinity between Danish and the old, now seldom-spoken, East Yorkshire accent which, I'm told, only extends as far west as Snaith. My grandfather could speak it and told me the mow-familiar story of when some Danish soldiers were sent to East Yorkshire during the First World War, they could converse with the locals in Danish.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: theleveller
Date: 06 Sep 12 - 03:27 AM

Not 'accent', 'dialect'. Dohhhhhh!

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: theleveller
Date: 06 Sep 12 - 03:51 AM

Swa begnornodon         Geata leode
hlafordes hryre,         heorðgeneatas,
cwædon þæt he wære         wyruldcyninga
manna mildust         ond monðwærust,
leodum liðost         ond lofgeornost.

THE END.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Don Wise
Date: 06 Sep 12 - 04:41 AM

Ole has actually hit the nub of the problem here. There are myriads of traditions, so which one(s) are we talking about here? Those of the British Isles? US Appalachian? US country blues? Cajun? Sami? Bhutan? Denmark?

Chuck Berry probably won't transfer to British Isles 'folk' repertoires, and, given time one or other of the 'traditions', because his songs are intrinsically american. On the other hand, his songs have already crossed over into the cajun repertoire and in the course of time will no doubt be regarded as 'traditional' cajun songs.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Stringsinger
Date: 06 Sep 12 - 11:54 AM

A folk song has to be sung by those who are outside the music business genre.
A popular song can cross over. My nominations are:
1.   This Land Is Your Land (known by every school child internationally)
2.   Maybe Blue Eyes Cryin' in the Rain (since there's Czech version.
3.   Country Roads has gotten world wide recognition

4.   Old Dan Tucker was a walk-around cakewalk from Daniel Emmett on the New York Stage, popular in its time.
5.   Dixie also by Dan Emmett from New York stage stolen by a New Orleans publishing house emerging as a phony theme for the Confederate cause.
6.   Johnny I Hardly Knew Ya' from Irish with vaudeville roots.
7.   Songs by Joe Hill such as The Preacher and the Slave.
8.   Scarborough Fair (with a bridge written by Paul Simon
9.   We Shall Overcome (from the tobacco workers union in Tennesee with roots from Rev. Tinsley called I Will Overcome.
10. Angelina Baker by Stephen Foster changed to Angeline The Baker in Appalachia.

There are many more examples and brings forth the argument as to whether folk songs are part of the aural tradition and variations or is the original song composed?
There are arguments for both sides.

Johnny B. Goode is not one because of copyright restrictions, there are no definable or recognized variants.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 06 Sep 12 - 12:26 PM

Good list, SS, with which I should nor differ basically. But I don't think a 'bridge' built by a particular folksinger into a N England variant of Child #2 quite makes it a pop song; and I don't think a song extolling the area between "California the the New York Islands" will be quite as internationally known by children as you may fancy.

~M~

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: johncharles
Date: 06 Sep 12 - 12:56 PM

having just looked at the Bellowhead video thread it would seem a traditional song can become a pop song.
john

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 06 Sep 12 - 01:09 PM

Strinsinger-
I agree with "A folk song has to be sung by those who are outside the music business genre.A popular song can cross over. " as at least a portion of a definition of "folk" or "trad". Necessary, but not sufficient. In your list, though, only 2,3,4,5 and 10 were really "pop" songs.
Parenthetically, 7 (Johnny I hardly knew ye) was not of Irish origin.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 06 Sep 12 - 01:12 PM

Of course it was, Dick ~~ even if it used a tune and format from another tradition.

"Along the road to sweet Athy ..."

Athy is in Co Kildare.

~M~

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: PoppaGator
Date: 06 Sep 12 - 01:31 PM

"Guest" of 04 Sep 12 - 05:48 PM, above, was me. THought I was logged in...

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 06 Sep 12 - 08:22 PM

MikeGM-
It was about an Irish soldier, but it certainly wasn't Irish in origin. Read Jon Lighter's The Greatest Anti-War Song Ever Written. Fascinating, well researched read.
CAMSCO stocks it (and published it). Check camscomusic.com

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 06 Sep 12 - 09:13 PM

I don't know about a Czech version of "Blue Eyes Cryin in the Rain", Stringsinger, but I know that the song has a life of it's own amongst American Serbs, many of whom believe it is a Serbian song, and sometimes translate it back to English as"In the rain, your blue eyes are filled with tears"--it is copyrighted, as well.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Don Wise
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 04:33 AM

Copyright is not eternal and if some people get their way could be very short lived.

"Johnny B.Good": I'd say that the Peter Tosh version certainly qualifies as a variant.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Will Fly
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 04:46 AM

Frank - just to nitpick slightly here:

"Scarborough Fair" is not a pop song which has become traditional - it's an old traditional song which has become popular. Paul Simon's version is essentially that of a version sung by Martin Carthy and then copyrighted by Simon.

As far as the song itself goes, I much prefer the alternative tune and words by the Dransfield Brothers, which they recorded on their "Rout Of The Blues" album in 1971. The tune (IMO) is more rugged, and the words dispense with the obligatory herbs - their version being far more down to earth than the pretty-pretty decoration of Simon's.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 05:15 AM

'Scarborough Fair' is in fact a version of Child #2, The Elfin Knight; specifically the 'Cambric Shirt' versions. The herbs are integral, as magic potions for the transformations &c demanded by the contestant-lovers in the ballad. 'Scarborough Fair' [the familiar tune & words] is the version collected [by Ewan MacColl ~ who simply states the version is "from the singing of..."] from Mr Mark Anderson, a retired lead miner of Middleton-in-Teasdale, Yorkshire, in 1947; sung by Ewan on The Long Harvest {Argo DA67, 1967}, having been previously included by him & Peggy Seeger in The Singing Island, London, Mills Music,1960.

~M~

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 05:30 AM

I don't know about Sringsinger's list, is he sure that the songs he lists are maintained outside of a particular generation of folkies? Perhaps they are in the US I wouldn't know, but I haven't heard half of them either in or outside folkie circles here in the UK. And I'd certainly never heard of "this land is your land" before joining Mudcat. I'm not even sure if I've ever heard anyone play it since then in fact.

As per below I was raised hearing Pink Floyd, the Rolling Stones and the Beatles played on acoustic guitars from "Fifty Greatest Rock Songs" compendiums.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 05:32 AM

Meant to put a '?' after "by Ewan MacColl": not quite clear if he claimed to have collected it or not.

Robin Dransfield's version is OK, but an amalgam from various versions ~~ like the words sung by Sim & Garf for that matter, but not that sung by Ewan which appears to be Mr Anderson's version correctly reproduced. No indication where Robin got his tune from: another variant, or his own composition? I do not find his rendering preferable, myself: partly for the lack of a source for the tune, which doesn't strike me as a very interesting one, partly because I miss the symbolic herbs, as stated above; tho Will appears not to care for their inclusion. Why is that, I wonder, Will?

~M~

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 06:03 AM

Symbolic herbs, eh? Next you'll be telling us The Seeds of Love is a cunning occult concoction for an effective remedy for erectile dysfunction in the elderly folky. All sounds a tad Frazerian to me, Michael, but charming by way of Steamfolk, as these things invariably are.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 06:19 AM

Macbeth's witches somewhat predated Frazer, Sean. Do you deny any tradition of magic potency of certain fauna & flora in witchcraft and spells?

~M~

(And I shall blaspheme all I like, but just you leave my liver alone!)

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Will Fly
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 06:22 AM

No particular preference for the herbs inclusion, actually, Michael - I just always feel irritated by Paul Simon's version of the tune, which seems all tinkly-winkly to me, grumpy old toad that I am.

For me - and I'm never very interested in the origins of tunes, not being anything of a folklorist - the Dransfield's tune seems more rough-hewn and appealing than the better-know version. I believe that they heard it from a singer in a Bradford pub, but I wouldn't swear to that tale without going back to the record sleeve notes.

The song, as sung by the Dransfields, has a simplicity and bitterness about it. "Her? A true lover of mine again? Not a chance in hell!" But that's just my personal interpretation, you understand. And the violin accompaniment is wonderful.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 07:41 AM

I'd to think both Seeds of Love and Child #2 predate Frazer too, but whereas Shakespeare was quite deliberate in his Jacobean incantations, it's still a fancy rather than witch-lore per se. There's nothing to indicate that the makers of folk songs were being quite so self-consciously occult in the meaning of their imagery, much less that such a tradition exists as such beyond the usual medicinal associations of certain flora, a lot of which was still extant when I was kid & probably is today (dock for nettle stings, dandelions for a diurectic, comfrey for broken bones, hawthorn leaves as an appetite suppressant, etc etc). Is the riddling of Child #2 an indication of the occult I wonder? Or just two lovers being smart with each other - more Much Ado than Macbeth? As for Seeds of Love, the flora serves to euphemise a load of knob-gags.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Stringsinger
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 11:00 AM

Regarding This Land Is Your Land, it has achieved international status whether you know the song or not. Its roots are in the old Carter Family rendition of the spiritual, "When the World's on Fire".

Regarding Johnny I Hardly Knew Ya' it might have originated as an English Music Hall song as did Finnegan's Wake but both certainly are known throughout Ireland and that qualifies
it as a folk song, a song sung traditionally by Irish singers.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 11:09 AM

"Regarding This Land Is Your Land, it has achieved international status whether you know the song or not."

I'm sure it's a well known song among folk enthusiasts. But not by "every schoolchild internationally" I'd be surprised if any schoolchild outside of a folk loving family in the US had so much as heard of it, or indeed most of the other songs you propose as modern folk songs. Really, Stringsinger, my intention isn't to be offensive in any way, honest, just realistic.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Stringsinger
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 11:10 AM

To complicate the matter, Barbara Allen became known from its source, a printed version in an old songbook. That suggests at one time it was popular, a pop song.

I think the argument is over whether songs sung by popular artists such as the Beatles
can be construed as folk songs.

In time, with variants, I think they can. But they have to be taken up by enough people to produce cultural variants, by which I mean they find themselves in a monolithic culture changed from the original version. Rock and roll is not a monolithic folk culture but a
genre of music engendered by the music industry and used as a label in recording stores
to sell that brand of music.

A folk song is one in which many have taken it up and found variants of it.
A good example would by the song "La Paloma" written by a Spanish composer
and disseminated in different forms all over the world. No one can dispute its
popularity in its original form.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 11:21 AM

A folk song is one in which many have taken it up and found variants of it.

I can think of dozens of Folk Songs where this isn't the case.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 11:52 AM

Yes yes, Blandy. But your persistence in this counter-everyone-and-everything vein which you affect is becoming tiresome and overdone. There is probably much truth in your urgings about the disingenuous factitiousness of much of 'the tradition'; & of the influence of lateC19/earlyC20 anthropologists determined to find what confirmed their theories; & of the selectiveness of the early collectors with their scorn for so much of their informants' repertoires and offerings which didn't meet their own predetermined criteria ~~~

Yes yes, we all know all that ~~~

But beware of going too much to the other extreme and denouncing absolutely any and every concept of 'the tradition' as non-existent, a con, an imposition on the national æsthetic ~~~

Remember the wise words of James Thurber in the moral to one of his Fables For Our Time -- "You might as well fall flat on your face as bend over too far backwards!" ~~

And just think of that poor baby in the bathwater.....

Best regards

~M~

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: johncharles
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 12:35 PM

More wise words

Oh, your baby has gone down the plug hole Oh, your baby has gone down the plug
The poor little thing was so skinny and thin He should have been washed in a jug

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 01:01 PM

The only thing I'm wary of is The Rule, Michael - which isn't about to be proved by all these bally exceptions. And in urging a more descriptive approach to Folk Song, as oppose to a prescriptive one, then we might clarify the sort of thing that deserves to be classified as a Folk Song (Seeds of Love etc.) and those that obviously don't (Johnny B. Goode etc.), no matter how Traditional they might be otherwise (ICTM) as all musical idioms undoubtedly are.

Talking about babies and bathwater, I remember collecting this as a kid around the playground to a tune close to Glory, Glory, Hallelullia:

Whiter than the whitewash than the whitewash on the wall,
Whiter than the whitewash than the whitewash on the wall,
If you wash me in the water that you wash your dirty daughter,
I'll be whiter than the whitewash than the whitewash on the wall.

Ten years later I was singing it as part of Oh What a Lovely War (it's in the Metheun Script at least) and the producer was most fascinated to think how it got from the trenches of WW1 to the playgrounds of 1960s Northumberland.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 08 Sep 12 - 01:10 PM

I'm beginning to prefer the descriptive over the prescriptive as well, Jack.

Never heard your little ditty but it goes very well to 'College Hornpipe' tune (Sailor's HP)

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Brian Peters
Date: 08 Sep 12 - 02:48 PM

This Land Is Your Land (known by every school child internationally)

I rather doubt that this is the case in many places outside the USA - where I believe the song is taught to every school child. Whether that constitutes 'living tradition' or not may depend on how you view, for instance, the formal teaching of old playground games, as opposed to just letting them carry on unmolested in the schoolkids' 'underground' (which is the whole point of those games if you ask me).

Old Dan Tucker, Dixie and Angelina Baker are good examples precisely because they're relatively old, and we can witness their adoption. Country Roads might be a good candidate (it has a very catchy chorus), but with the generation who first popularised it still very much alive, it's surely too early to say.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Sep 12 - 01:42 AM

There is a large brown insect on my window screen, and it is much more interesting than this thread has gotten to be. Please everyone, endeavor to be more interesting, or it would be best to let it die(the thread, not the insect).

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Stringsinger
Date: 09 Sep 12 - 10:40 AM

"A folk song is one in which many have taken it up and found variants of it.

I can think of dozens of Folk Songs where this isn't the case."

Please offer examples of this .

In aural tradition in rural areas, songs are taught to people in informal ways.
That's how they get disseminated.

Formal ways may or may not constitute the aural process by which traditions are learned but I see no distinction between the methods of teaching.

Folk traditions can be formalized in their teaching methods by carriers of tradition.

People study music in traditional circles as would a student at a music academy.

Regarding "This Land", not all people from urbanized communities fed on piped in pop music will know this song but it continues to be circulated in other environments and in this instance, I mean this respectfully, it has been around with variants for some time as Woody would have wanted it to be and of course reality is in the eye of the beholder.
The values might be different in terms of what is acceptable or not, but the best teaching is when the student is in the same room with the teacher.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,jim bainbridge
Date: 09 Sep 12 - 04:54 PM

re my non-return to Bob Davenport's considered criticism of a very boring singer, called Smyth my memory tells me?- have been busy playing the music after my own fashion, folk, pop or whatever. When people have paid £5plus or more like 2 shillings in those days! a little background is fine, but not a whole pre-summary of what was already a long song is not what is required- and it still happens- a joke is one thing but not what this man did. I have admired Bob ever since and I am appalled that anyone who pronounces about 'folk music' and admits to never having heard of him is very sad. I wouldn't have the nerve or the honesty to react as Bob did that night.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,jim bainbridge
Date: 09 Sep 12 - 04:56 PM

it occurs to me that this is nothing much to do with the subject & maybe you'd all better get back to the subject- apologies for any failure to return.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 09 Sep 12 - 05:41 PM

Regarding "This Land", not all people from urbanized communities fed on piped in pop music will know this song but it continues to be circulated in other environments and in this instance, I mean this respectfully, it has been around with variants for some time as Woody would have wanted it to be and of course reality is in the eye of the beholder.

I think - and I mean this respectfully - that there's 3000 miles of ocean between a lot of us here and the country Woody Guthrie was writing in and about. I'd never heard "This land" until I encountered the Internet.

Several of your other examples fall into the dreaded 1954 Definition without any trouble at all - few if any collectors believed that all folk songs were composed collectively or anonymously and preserved only within the oral tradition.

Defining "folk song" is a fool's errand - some "folk songs" are only found in one variant; some are found on multiple broadsides but without any variation; some are found on broadsides and don't appear in the oral tradition at all... Personally I'm happy to say that "folk songs" = "all the songs collected by folk song collectors, with a few completely subjective exceptions and additions" and leave it at that. It's not as if we're going to risk running out of folk songs if we define them too narrowly, after all.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 09 Sep 12 - 10:46 PM

If you use phrases like "In the tradition" or "In the oral tradition" please define it in some way, be it geographically, ethnically, or culturally . Or something. There is no single "tradition"., there are lots of them, in lots of places, unless they've disappeared.

For instance, here is a new website that offers recordings from a tradition that I am very excited about: Paul Gifford's Collection of Old Time Music from Michigan and the Great Lakes .

I am excited about it because I am from Michigan (though I seldom admit it unless I have been drinking) and he managed to record music from a tradition that I remember from my childhood, before it disappeared(the music, though my childhood seems now to be gone, too).

The thing is, it disappeared so completely, that I'd forgotten that it was ever there. And when it was there, I didn't recognize it for what it was, and, at least by reputation, I am a "folkie".

Paul is not an ethnomusicologist or an academic, he's just a guy who was really interested in what was out there, so he wasn't looking for "ballads", or such things--the result is he has a collection of folk music that shows us how diverse the sources for "folk music" really are--

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 10 Sep 12 - 02:52 AM

Thanks for the link Stim. I knew this thread would make good in the end.

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

"I am appalled that anyone who pronounces about 'folk music' and admits to never having heard of him is very sad"

Well I wasn't aware that I had "pronounced" about anything - merely expressed an opinion about what I think is ignorant and boorish behaviour. Sorry if that doesn't suit you, Jim, but I expect you'll get over it.

The fact that I haven't come across Mr Davenport during my 48 years around the folk scene probably says more about him than me.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Sep 12 - 06:08 AM

>I think - and I mean this respectfully - that there's 3000 miles of ocean between a lot of us here and the country Woody Guthrie was writing in and about. I'd never heard "This land" until I encountered the Internet.<

I knew it when I was in primary school (West Northumberland), as did just about all of my pals. We're talking late '50s/early '60s here. Folk songs were ubiquitous during my childhood – on the radio, in school, at the Cubs and the Scouts, local concert parties, in the back of the bus. Did I live in a folk oasis?

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 10 Sep 12 - 06:52 AM

GUEST ~~ You say you knew "Your land, my land" when you were in primary school. Did you actually learn it at primary school?: in which case you will probably have had a Guthrie-loving teacher. Or was it one of those ubiquitous radio, cubs&scouts, back of bus songs you mention from the time? It makes a difference...

~M~

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 10 Sep 12 - 03:51 PM

You're welcome, Spleen Cringe. If you're still around, check out "Ethnic Music" on the pulldown menu under "Dulcimers" for a real treat! Though the discussion is not the most satisfying, I've been googling some of the references, Bob Davenport, for instance, and have found good things to listen to.

For those unimaginative sorts who have problems understanding why people would enjoy singing about things that are 3000 miles away, I will point out that California is nearly 3000 miles from the New York Island. I doubt it helps you, though.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,raymond greenoaken
Date: 11 Sep 12 - 04:34 AM

sorry Michael and everybody – I was that Guest.

>GUEST ~~ You say you knew "Your land, my land" when you were in primary school. Did you actually learn it at primary school?: in which case you will probably have had a Guthrie-loving teacher. Or was it one of those ubiquitous radio, cubs&scouts, back of bus songs you mention from the time? It makes a difference...<

Can't actually remember, Michael. I associate it with school, somehow, but I rather doubt that our Miss foster was a Guthrie enthusiast. Probably it was in the air.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 11 Sep 12 - 05:02 AM

Thanks, Raymond.

Nevertheless, Stim, I think you miss the point about "This Land". The distances involved are an irrelevance. It is just that someone above claimed that it was a song known worldwide by all children; whereas, whatever Raymond's recollections, most children here, unlike yours, are not taught it at school, and are entirely unaware of its very existence ~~ no matter how wide the ocean, how high the sky!.

~M~

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST
Date: 11 Sep 12 - 03:01 PM

I don't miss the point, MthGM. I happen to think that there is good reason to believe that "This Land is Your Land" is known and sung all around the world, and by a fair number of children, at that.

Here is something I pulled from the Wikipedia page:

Arlo Guthrie tells a story in concerts on occasion, of his mother returning from a dance tour of China, and reporting around the Guthrie family dinner table that at one point in the tour she was serenaded by Chinese children singing the song. Arlo says Woody was incredulous: "The Chinese? Singing "This land is your land, this land in my land? From California to the New York island?"

The page also includes verses of the song that have been rewritten to includes places in New Zeeland, India, and Namibia, to name a few.

If that does not suffice, the recently published "This Land Is Your Land
Woody Guthrie And The Journey Of An American Folk Song" by Robert Santelli and Nora Guthrie discusses this at greater length.

To resolve this properly, perhaps we should as Bob Davenport if he knows the song.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 11 Sep 12 - 03:02 PM

That last was me.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Sep 12 - 02:01 AM

Bob will know it, Stim, & for the same reason I do ~~ he is a folkie.

I am sure many people know the song worldwide: particularly those into folk; & including many children.

But I still think the original assertion, *that it is known to every child internationally,* was an absurd overstatement ~~ a bit of typical US-centricity, the assumption that what goes over there must be commonplace worldwide. I have no precise statistics to hand, obviously. But if you can organise a survey among British children which will demonstrate that more than one child in a thousand has ever even heard of it [or of Woody Guthrie either, for that matter], I promise to give you a nice red apple. As distinct from the situation in US, where, as many above have confirmed, it appears to be taught as part of the regular educational curriculum.

~M~

*"1. This Land Is Your Land (known by every school child internationally)" was what Stringsinger posted on 6 Sep, 1154 am. To which I rejoin, yet again, NO IT'S NOT.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 12 Sep 12 - 02:35 AM

those unimaginative sorts who have problems understanding why people would enjoy singing about things that are 3000 miles away

Not my point at all. I was just pointing out that the song is specifically part of a US schoolchild's heritage, not the heritage of schoolchildren everywhere.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,Don Wise
Date: 12 Sep 12 - 04:43 AM

@ Phil Edwards: ...but presumably only with the 4 standard verses?

As an aside, back in the 1950s a british skiffle group recorded a 'UK' version of the lyrics.......bloody awful!!

A further aside- schoolkids in Jamaica, Zimbabwe etc. sing Bob Marley songs..........


Now and again in the course of this thread reference has ben made to the 1954 definition of folk music. With hindsight it must be clear to many people that,even back in 1954, that definition was teetering precariously on the brink of obsolescence. Since then things have taken giant steps forward..........

Oral transmission: I suspect this is inversely proportional to literacy rates. Where literacy rates are generally high there is less demand for oral transmission. Also, whilst Mudcatters will probably have high scores here, how many parents these days sing to their kids? How many take the time to go through not only nursery rhymes but also kids songs - of whatever provenance? How many take the easy way out and plonk the brats in front of the goggle-box/PC, give them cds of modern childrens songs and leave them to their own devices or consider this a responsibilty of the kindergarten?

Variations to lyrics and melody: It's difficult to see how variations can occur these days, given the availability of song and tune books, cds, YouTube and websites like MUDCAT.....This applies not just to 'folksong' but also to pop and rocksongs. We no longer need to grapple with lousy pronunciations mumbled into a wall of sound on crackly vinyl discs, instead we just google around till we find what we want on the net or we post a query on, for example, Mudcat and receive the correct lyrics almost before you can blink. From this viewpoint the 'lack of variations' of pop/rocksongs sung at parties, campfires etc. is understandable. Even if we can't find the lyrics as text there's likely to be a YouTube video available where we can take them down in the 'traditional way'.

Copyright: This is finite and, if some people get their way, will become obsolete. Furthermore, it only really comes into play in connection with recordings,big concerts etc. If Mudcatters want to sing 'Da-Da-Da' to their kids and they, in turn, pass it on to their kids (andsoonandsoon......) the fact that the song was 'composed' and subject to copyright will slip into the background, even assuming that the name of the composer(s) was known. Whilst songwriters like Chuck Berry, Lennon&McCartney,Jagger&Richards et al are these days more or less household names, who knows who wrote, for example, "The Rose" (I know, I noted it when I copied the lyrics) or, referred to above, "Da-Da-Da"? (I think I know, but I don't know who translated it).
Those who, with apologies to Kant, invoke a 'categoric negative' in terms of pop/rocksongs eventually acquiring some sort of 'traditional' status are, to my mind, grasping at virtual straws.

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 12 Sep 12 - 05:12 AM

"a bit of typical US-centricity, the assumption that what goes over there must be commonplace worldwide."

I recall another discussion akin to this one where a number of US posters argued that the CND sign meant simply 'Peace' in ALL COUNTRIES, and absolutely and resolutely refused to believe that this was not the case for those of us in the UK, where it is known historically as the 'anti-nuclear' sign. So odd!

Subject: RE: Can a pop song become traditional?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 12 Sep 12 - 06:39 AM

Wrong question! Or else a pack of wrong answers!

1. A pop song CAN become traditional over 100 - 200 years, if it survives that long.

2. It can only become traditional pop, never folk, because it simply isn't folk.

"Traditional" is not a word that applies just to one kind of music in one culture. It is the application of the descriptor "Folk" which provides that link, and even with that the boundaries are fuzzier than some people would like.

Whether, or not, the pop song will ever become traditional is a matter for those in the future who choose to apply it as a descriptor because they wish to preserve it. Given the origins, it is extremely unlikely that they would want to call it anything other than "Traditional Pop".

Don T