What makes a new song a folk song?

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: The Sandman
Date: 14 Sep 14 - 03:10 AM

jim,
it takes two to tango, your responses help to turn many discussionswith different members into slanging matches.
I will continue to discuss with people who can discuss in a civil manner, which you by all appearances appear unwilling to do so, I have stated in several posts what i think makes a new song a folk song.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 14 Sep 14 - 02:54 AM

"but doesn't make it above scrutiny."
Sorry - don't understand that in the slightest - I've given you my idea of what folk song is - so far, all I've got from you is "It is what I choose to call it".
I really don't want to enter into a pissing contest with you on who lived in a cardboard box on the M1 ("Cardboard box on the M 1 - you were lucky" - but I'm quite happy, to if you want to go there.
As for credit - I've never had to put a C.V. of my work up to defend my understanding of folk song before - this is extremist "folk policing" thuggery at its most extreme Muskie.
"i think my testimony and the folksong i have created is as valuable as anyone else, "
This is not about whose got the biggest willie Al - it is, or should be about what we mean by folk song.
The pair of you, to a lesser degree, have turned it int a slanging match.
If I behaved like you pair are doing, you'd be screaming "folk fascist" to the high heavens - with some justification.
If this is how the folk scene has developed, its little wonder it's blowing for tugs.
"or say nothing."
If you have no intention of being part of this discussion, please mind your own business and stop stalking.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 13 Sep 14 - 08:21 PM

yes i came into folk music around 1960 - when i heard where have all the flowers gone on the radio, and we were liv[ng in Lincolnshire where you could walk past thor rockets armed with nuclear warheads and vulcan bombers carrying h bombs on the way to school.

we came at folk music from different angles Jim - to you it has to be about industrial diseases and working mens experiences - usually in long finished industries, well i sympathise with that. my mum and her sister grew up breathing in the polluted air of St Helens - where the rain contained sulphurous and sulphuric acid in their time. and as a result they suffered.

i think my testimony and the folksong i have created is as valuable as anyone else, and a damn sight more entertaining than most.

I've also helped more than a few artists with their work over the years. but without the English folksong and dance society patting me on the back - and frankly it would have been appreciated.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: The Sandman
Date: 13 Sep 14 - 07:17 PM

"I hope you understand my getting somewhat pissed off being told that I'm wasting my time nad I haven't a clue what I am doing so I should be doing something else by somebody who appears to spend a great time damaging young people's ears and another whose music sounds nothing like that I have devoted over half my life to."
no, i do not understand, and have no idea what you are talking about, if you are going to indulge in this stuff be more specific and identify those who you are attacking, or say nothing.
What substances are you on?

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 13 Sep 14 - 05:57 PM

Yeah your typical vicar gets just as involved in his life work, but doesn't make it above scrutiny.

Jim, you have made comments that do not bear scrutiny and confuse opinion with fact. We all do from time to time, but you plug away regardless. If you are damaging young peoples' ears, lower your voice.

Michael. The beer reference was, as you possibly actually know, a reference to the folk club culture and experience. That is as nostalgic to many of those who haunted folk clubs as any warbling voice singing about an England that is as removed from those listening as country and western is to the many who love it. I mention that because in folk clubs I listened politely to social,workers and teachers singing about mining, yet if I went down the Miners' Welfare for a pint, the turn was usually C&W. Most of my workmates saw the value of mothers, prisons, farms, trucks and trains rather than hewing, (not a word used in mining since my Grandfather's time.)

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 13 Sep 14 - 05:08 PM

"to a bloke who has been in the folk scene since before Shakespeare was born that is galling Jim. "
Which tells be everything about the folk scene that I need to know.
I came into folk music in 1960ish
I sand, I helped run clubs,I read about it, I attended lectures to learn about it, I've given a dozen or so lectures on it - including at two universities, I've written about it, I've been involved in issuing around twenty CDs of it, I spent thity to forty years recoding traditional singers singing and talking about it I've archived our recordings in Dublin (2 archives) and in The British Library.
We have now embarjked on two hour long radio programmes to the centenary of the birth of a dear friend whose contribution to folk music in Britain outstrips any other individuals I have ever met
In order to do this, we have had to refuse an offer of another radio programme on our Irish work - also for Irish radio
Next month we will have finalised the making available over four hundred songs collected in one small area of this county - leaving our Norfolk and our Irish Traveller collection to sort out before we snuff it (not to mention the 10 years of recordings of Critics group meetings and other connected material, which we will have to leave to posterity to sort out).
I hope you understand my getting somewhat pissed off being told that I'm wasting my time nad I haven't a clue what I am doing so I should be doing something else by somebody who appears to spend a great time damaging young people's ears and another whose music sounds nothing like that I have devoted over half my life to.
What substances are you people on?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 13 Sep 14 - 04:32 PM

Not quite clear as to the relevance of your "beer of yore" comparison; perhaps because I don't drink beer, and do not find it a topic of any great interest.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 13 Sep 14 - 04:31 PM

Depends on the instant purpose for which you are approaching it. If you are an impresario intending to please a not necessarily knowledgeable in the field general audience, you will make different demands on the performers of the music, of whatever genre, from those made by a cultural historian, or by a musicological taxonomist, either of whose approaches will be phenomenological rather than critical or aesthetic or popularist, as the case may be. Are you perhaps being too anxious to find a one-size-fit-all approach?

≈M≈

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 13 Sep 14 - 03:42 PM

It's this "you haven't a clue what folk music is" to a bloke who has been in the folk scene since before Shakespeare was born that is galling Jim. Al is an example of what I called folk when I first started and we haunted the same places. The Brown Cow in Mansfield was a folk club. Not a whatever you may refer to it as, but a folk club.

Michael. To be serious for a moment, I hear what you say, but to be judged as entertainment, to be judged critically as music, you can only make so many allowances for provenance. The interpreters who bridge that gap deliver beautiful music. That it is based on historical collecting of words and music of yesteryear is fantastic, but so was the beer in folk clubs of yore.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 13 Sep 14 - 03:19 PM

"lets face it -its not that you like folk music "
Let's face it Al - you haven't got a clue what I like, basically because you haven't got a clue what folk song is - only your own undefined, and probably undefinable version of it.
Yu seem to be suggesting that, because folk music hasn't reached number one in the charts, we should all become interested in something else - preferably something you like.
Don't know if you ever heard the story of the two Liverpool lads who ran a fish and chip shop in Lime Street during the war.
Because of the German shipping in the North Sea, fresh fish was hard to come by, and the danger of transporting goods on the Lancashire Roads made it virtually impossible to get good potatoes.
Business began to drop off rapidly, until after one particularly bad night, one of the fellers said to his mate, "We can't go on like this: lets close the chippy down and open a brothel instead".
His mate replied, "Don't be daft la - if we can't sell chips, we'll never be able to sell soup".
Sorry Al - if I can't sell chips I really can't be arsed selling anything else.
As I said, us workers can move the earth if you give us a crowbar long enough.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 13 Sep 14 - 02:48 PM

well i took these same people to see johnny silvo, derek brimstone, noel murphy, tony capstick, bernard wrigley, sean canon.....and they loved them ...performing folk music. many times the same songs that trad artists had bored the living shit out of them with.

lets face it -its not that you like folk music and we don't. its just that minstrelsy and its attendant skills are anathema to you.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Lighter
Date: 13 Sep 14 - 02:10 PM

When the literary critic Paul Fussell was asked if he weren't an elitist, he replied, "Yes, but I want *everyone* to be an elitist."

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 13 Sep 14 - 02:01 PM

"but musically, it needs the treatment of more modern interpretations to turn it into music. That way, it can reach a far wider audience."
.,,.

That may be viewed as a desirable objective. OTOH, is there not arguably much to be said for appeal to a narrower but more knowledgeable and discriminating audience? Over-popularisation can surely be qualitatively counter-productive. Both approaches have their merits, it seems to me. Are they in fact mutually incompatible, or are there not different occasions where it would be appropriate for either one to take precedence over the other?

I have always considered the fact that the word "élitist" should have acquired lip-curlingly pejorative overtones to be one of the more negative symptoms of the decline of of our society.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 13 Sep 14 - 01:24 PM

"well all i know is that the people i took along to folk clubs really hated the trad singers and their songs. both sets of parents -"
Fine Al - sounds like a great reason not to go to a folk club (at least one where they specialise in folk songs)
"working classes people i took thought Ewan and Peggy preachy on subjects of which they knew nowt"
This working class person certainly didn't - neither did a lot of other working peole who I knew who listened and sang.
One of the finest singers I ever heard, Kevin Mitchell, painted high rise factory chimneystacks for a living util he retired.
"but your experience wasn't universally shared"
Neither is Beethoven or Shakespeare - what are you suggesting - replace them with Iron Maiden and Andrew Lloyd Webber?
This music was made by working people and served them as entertainment for centuries.
I have never had the slightest doubt all working people are capable of appreciating any form of art, given the opportunity nd incentive.
I was introduced to Dickens and Thomas Hardy by Walter Pardon, a carpenter from East Anglian farming stock
My father, a navvy, left me with a life-long love of Shakespeare whchich he got from his father, a merchant seamen i the last days of sail.
The latter, as a pastime, used to tell the plots of Shakespeare plays in broad Scouse to amuse anybody who would listen - he was invited to Stoke-on-Trant Grammar School to tell them to the students there a year or so before he died.
He was a founder-member of the Seaman's Branches of The Workers Education Association.
Us workers can do anything we choose if we put our minds to it!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 13 Sep 14 - 01:22 PM

My experience too Al. I put MacColl on a pedestal for his talent and I have a certain nostalgia feeling when I hear his voice, even if the variable accent could be cringeworthy at times.    But the rudeness and "worship us" attitude he and Seeger were happy to project is in sharp contrast to Jim's music of the people nonsense.

When Mrs Musket and I tied the knot a few years ago, I wanted "First Time Ever" as the music we walked back down the "aisle" to. After a lot of thinking, we chose The Stereophonics with Jools Holland and his rhythm and blues orchestra version. Mrs Musket asked to hear the original when we were choosing and after hearing Peggy, said "no effort, no mood, sterile. All the things you say about some classical singers except they don't sing flat."

To be fair, I like Peggy more than that and have her new album winging its way via Amazon. But Al's point is valid. You have to be enthusiastic about the provenance in order to appreciate the old traditional songs and some of those revered for it, but musically, it needs the treatment of more modern interpretations to turn it into music. That way, it can reach a far wider audience.

Listen to Anais Mitchell and Jefferson Hamer interpreting a few Child ballads as an excellent recent example.



An aside..   After losing money booking Gary and Vera Aspey, we folded a once rather large established folk club in North Notts, thirty Years ago.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: The Sandman
Date: 13 Sep 14 - 01:09 PM

"If the clubs had been full of people singing Searching for Lambs or Two Pretty Boys, this might not have mattered; as it was, they were full of people singing Fire And Rain and Palaces of Gold,"
   sorry phil i went to a lot more clubs than you in the seventies[fact] I was doing gigs, what you say is just not true, it may be your experience, but my experience on visiting clubs as a paid musician was different., and was based on seeing many different clubs.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 13 Sep 14 - 12:37 PM

well all i know is that the people i took along to folk clubs really hated the trad singers and their songs. both sets of parents - mine and my wife's thought their attitude condescending and ridiculous.

working classes people i took thought Ewan and Peggy preachy on subjects of which they knew nowt.

Peter Bellamy - my guests insisted on leaving before the end of the first half!
Carthy's tuning antics dicked off more than a few.
My mother was infuriated by Gary Aspey's jokes about northern male chauvinism.
anothe chap whom i took to the jolly porter in exeter - asked why they were singing in such exaggerated butch accent - were they all homosexuals, by any chance?
Bob Davernport - had he got toothache - why was he holding his head .......and so on.

maybe your mates were disappointed at not getting more of this stuff Jim - but your experience wasn't universally shared.
for one thing Jim - just think. do you REALLY think in the very difficult world of professional musicians - if the public wanted english traditional folk music, pro musicians wouldn't be busting their balls to give them what they wanted.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 13 Sep 14 - 11:55 AM

As for what happened and when, I think we should consider generational effects. I grew up listening to prog rock, followed by punk. Both of those styles were all about personal expression, but in very stylised, artificial ways - the very narrow sonic & lyrical palette of punk & the ridiculously broad palette of prog both militated against songs that were both straightforward and articulate.

So I've never liked 'confessional' singers like Roy Harper and Richard Thompson, or 'protest' singers like Leon Rosselson or Dougie Maclean. If you want to tell me about your innermost feelings, you can write me a letter; if you want to tell me about the Diggers or the class system, you can write a letter to the paper. I always wanted something more from music, or at least something different. (I liked Pentangle and early Steeleye Span - they didn't preach and they sounded good.)

My dislike of singers with well-intentioned and/or introspective stories to tell kept me out of the folk clubs for years. All this time I'd been wanting to sing in public, till finally - at the age of 42 - I bit the bullet and went down to the local folk club. I wasn't expecting much - in fact I was expecting to hear a lot of earnest, well-meaning and rather boring songs, accompanied on acoustic guitar. And I did - but I also heard some great musicians, some fine songwriters and some interesting traditional songs. After a few years of this I discovered that there was a huge traditional repertoire, and that there were a lot of people who knew more of it than I did. These traditional songs made a total contrast with what I thought of as the standard folk club repertoire - they were, by and large, neither introspective nor well-meaning, and they sounded good.

The interesting thing about all this is that I'm still hearing Richard Thompson and Leon Rosselson songs, usually from people quite a bit older than me - but I'm also starting to hear earnestly introspective songs, and earnestly right-on songs, from people half my age. So maybe my generation is the odd one out. For me, Beeswing and Blackwaterside, or The World Turned Upside Down and The Battle of Otterburn, are so different that they might as well be separate art forms - they fit on the same bill about as well as clog-dancing and tai chi. But perhaps that's because of the reaction against earnestness which was very much in the air when I was growing up; perhaps people who grew up in the 00s, like many who grew up in the 50s, don't have that reaction.

In short, I wonder if Jim's right, or at least half-right, about the reason for the decline of the clubs. Here's how it might have gone. By the mid-70s earnestness just wasn't in fashion any more. If the clubs had been full of people singing Searching for Lambs or Two Pretty Boys, this might not have mattered; as it was, they were full of people singing Fire And Rain and Palaces of Gold, and the sophisticated youth of the day took a look and turned away. But it's not because they positively wanted what wasn't being played (traditional songs) - it's because they didn't want what was. Now, in less ironic times, the clubs are filling up again, but again it's not because of demand for traditional songs; it's largely because it's fashionable to wear your hearts on your sleeve again.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 13 Sep 14 - 11:43 AM

" "First time Ever.."
Ewan once described one pop rendition (can't remember which), as sounding like a feller standing outside a ten story block of flats and calling up to his girl on the tenth floor to come for a pint.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 13 Sep 14 - 11:32 AM

For that matter, Elvis did record "First time Ever.."

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: The Sandman
Date: 13 Sep 14 - 06:32 AM

in my opinion that makes it as much of a folk song as first time ever, another love song with a folky type tune, although imo first time ever i saw your face is a much better song.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: The Sandman
Date: 13 Sep 14 - 06:31 AM

"Do you believe that is is acceptable to turn up at a folk club and never hear anything resembling a folk song?"
jim i have more up to date experience than you, in all the folk clubs i attend i hear folk songs.
somebody, was it jim? made a remark about elvis presley.
for the record the elvis presley song wooden heart uses a folk tune.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 13 Sep 14 - 06:15 AM

Howard
I think with both Thomson and MacColl there would be no problem anyway - Dylan seems to have made it clear that he had moved on, though some of his followers seem to have had trouble in following in the steps of the master.
Maybe a "right" it too strong a word - nowadays
Many clubs were "not to my taste" in the old days, but we managed to co-exist comfortably.
Noww we seem to have undergone a sort of acculturation, where folk has been driven out by something else.
I totally disagree with you that the hard core had anything whatever to do with the demise of the clubs.
In my experience, the hard core were very much a minority and constantly the target of 'finger-in-the-ear' and 'purist' and being misfit cranks.
The period that I believe Mike was referring to, when standards plummeted and choice disappeared what, as far as I can remember, the time of the Great Crash - by that time, the hard core clubs were all but an extinct species.
I really don't believe that those who would not abandon their commitment to putting on the music they thought worth the effort, in favour of keeping bums on seats no matter what they put on, can be in any way as being "hard core" - far from it.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Howard Jones
Date: 13 Sep 14 - 05:50 AM

"Do you think that a punter turning up at a folk club has a right to hear a fair number of folk songs during the evening,"

A right? No. A reasonable expectation, yes. However if what they got was an evening of Bob Dylan, Richard Thompson or even Ewan McColl I don't think they could argue the Trades Descriptions Act. You just have to accept that club is not to your own taste (just as a club offering more traditional fare might not be to someone else's) and look elsewhere. that's how it's always been, at least in my own 45 years' experience.

What you don't seem to realise, Jim, is that the points you make, valid as they are, are the preserve of academics, collectors and enthusiasts. For most people, folk clubs are simply purveyors of a particular form of entertainment, one which is difficult to define but broadly recognisable. If they lead people into a deeper interest and understanding of traditional music then so much the better, but that is not what brings people in to folk clubs in the first place - they go because they like what they hear, and they like the special intimate atmosphere which most clubs generate.

It gives me no pleasure to say it, but I think one of the reasons for the decline of the clubs was because they became too hard-core, catering much more for the committed enthusiast than the casual enquirer. As that generation found themselves with less time to spare due to increased work and family commitments, the clubs failed to attract a new generation who turned instead to other forms of music.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 13 Sep 14 - 05:03 AM

"So why did you cite it as an example of what is wrong with English folk clubs?"
It was a comment on what has happened to the scene in general - as far as I'm concerned, the Electric' scene was a giant stride in that direction - making the same indigestible 'electric soup' of a song form that is basically narrative.
My misgivings are of what has happened to the clubs in Britain - not just in England - my brief thumb-through included the scene as a whole.
I seem to remember that it was a Sussex folk club that was offering pop hits from the fifties on their 'folk', though I might have mis-remembered that one.
England does have a 'Folk Metal scene FOLK METAL UK but it's beside the point.
It really doesn't matter Bryan - as far as I can see, with notable exceptions, the scene has gone down the pan, and some of the arguments being put forward here have done little to show I'm wrong.
Instead of nitpicking, perhaps you might answer the question I asked earlier - what is your opinion of what some of the 'anything goes' clubs are putting on, and what is being argued for here?
Do you believe that is is acceptable to turn up at a folk club and never hear anything resembling a folk song?
I really could do without the waffle about "It depends what you want" and the crap about my going to clubs waving a copy of '54 - that has never been my position, and we've been disagreeing for long enough for you to know that.
Do you think that a punter turning up at a folk club has a right to hear a fair number of folk songs during the evening, or has the term lost any meaning for you too?
"the best in-depth and no-nonsense discussions"
I take your point entirely about New Penguin Book Sue - we have to bite the bullet before we shell out for 'Street Ballads - I saw a copy in I.T.M.A. in Dublin, - looks fascinating, but lending libraries that would stock such an item are a bit thin on the ground here in the Wild West.
That's what gets me about these arguments - there is so much published evidence, past and present, of what constitutes folk song and virtually none on what people claim it has become, other than, "folk song is whatever I choose to call it", or the old cliché that inspired all those lovely old Hollywood musicals, - "I just wanna sing!!!"
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: The Sandman
Date: 13 Sep 14 - 04:50 AM

lewes folk club is weekly, i speak from experience, i have played it a few times.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Sue Allan
Date: 12 Sep 14 - 08:30 PM

My god, what a lot of got air generated by you guys! I tend to agree with what Howard and Steve G are saying, but for me by far the best in-depth and no-nonsense discussions of what constitute 'folk song'' are in Steve Roud's introductions to both 'The New Penguin Book of English Folk Song' and 'Street Ballads in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Ireland, and North America'. Read those and then resume your argument. And before anyone says they're prohibitively expensive - there are free public libraries, and if necessary inter-library loans at very little cost.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Leadbelly
Date: 12 Sep 14 - 05:15 PM

In Germany, they differantiate between folksongs, coming from foreign countries and Volksliedern ( which is of same meaning) coming from gone centuries in German history.
In so far, normally there exists no real Volkslied composed in modern times. All which is sung was written long, long time ago.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: TheSnail
Date: 12 Sep 14 - 03:19 PM

Jim Carroll
Never come across it if it does Bryan - I was told that it happened in Glasgow and I notice some of the groups are Irish.

So why did you cite it as an example of what is wrong with English folk clubs?

just thumbed though lists of English Clubs - nearly all monthly where they used to be weekly (isn't yours monthly?) and everything from heavy metal to music hall

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Sep 14 - 02:53 PM

I'd say those more dubious, in that they are the products of professional musicians. Early Blues not entirely or altogether so.

Of course, as so often, there is that wide border between folk/not·folk -- the Debatable Land of folk music. But I should personally say that Mance Lipscomb, eg, was far more tending to the folk side than Scott Joplin or Satchmo [even if he did invent that bloody horse!].

Again, let me stress -- a taxonomic, not a qualitative, distinction.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Sep 14 - 02:48 PM

"What about early blues? Are they folk songs? I think so."
They certainly are - you should try Alan Lomax's 'The Land where the Blues Began.
"Whether or not this is represented in English folk clubs remains to be demonstrated."
Never come across it if it does Bryan - I was told that it happened in Glasgow and I notice some of the groups are Irish.
Nearest I ever heard 'Alone' becoming a dolk song was w foreman at work telling me how he heard a bunch of Evertonians coming out of a match where Liverpool had been thrashed by Cologne, singing loudly, "You never wore Cologne DOWN" (shouted)
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Lighter
Date: 12 Sep 14 - 02:43 PM

How about ragtime? Jazz? Swing? Rock? Bop? Rap? Slug? (I just made that last one up).

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Sep 14 - 02:37 PM

Yay indeed. The Blues one of the most universally recognised and highly regarded of folk forms.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Leadbelly
Date: 12 Sep 14 - 02:30 PM

What about early blues? Are they folk songs? I think so.

(If mentioned in this thread I'm sorry. Couldn't read all of this)

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: The Sandman
Date: 12 Sep 14 - 02:11 PM

michael, depends which street you went to if you went to killybegs or castletownbere, fishing towns, they would know shoals of erin[sic]fiddlers green boys of killybegs, if you went to a street in peckham you might get mugged.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Sep 14 - 01:21 PM

Interestingly, Steve, this very question arose when I interviewed Bert Lloyd for Folk Review back in 1974. I actually put it to him that Liverpool supporters had made YNWA a folk song. "Folk in function but not in form," he said. "But," I replied, "in folk doesn't the function define the form, at least to some extent?" "To some extent," he agreed, perhaps a bit grudgingly -- and we turned to other matters.

So, apart from that, actually -- no thanks, I wouldn't "like to explain why". Just that I don't feel it here...

Dick, despite my previous challenge to you re Fiddlers Green & the MacColl song you cited, I agree that The Wild Rover has made that breakthru. But I can't think of any others which the first ten people you might stop & ask in a busy street would actually make any sort of familiar response to the names of.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: TheSnail
Date: 12 Sep 14 - 01:18 PM

Bounty Hound
By the way, Jim, meant to say that I'm not quite sure of the relevance of the link to listings of so called 'folk metal' bands

I think Jim is referring to my expression of incredulity when he listed heavy metal as one of the things he had found when he "just thumbed though lists of English Clubs". Folk Metal does, indeed, exist. I also came across "Scottish heavy metal bagpipes". What would you call a fusion of heavy metal and folk? (I mean as a defining term.) Whether or not this is represented in English folk clubs remains to be demonstrated.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: The Sandman
Date: 12 Sep 14 - 01:05 PM

so there are some new songs that are folk songs that would not be sung in folk clubs but might be sung at football matches , fields of athenry, the wheel barrow song,the red red robin keeps bobbing along
then we have our old friend the wild rover, a very good folk song, that is not sung in folk clubs because folk club goers think it is hackneyed, strange because it is the one song that people outside the folk scene recognise as a folk song yet folk afficinados turn their nose at.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 12 Sep 14 - 12:48 PM

Okay, M, Guest was me sans Cookie again.

Perhaps you'd like to explain why it isn't 'folk'.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Sep 14 - 12:42 PM

... words by Jack Brooks

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Sep 14 - 12:42 PM

BTW, Harry Warren also wrote "That's Amore", source of "That's Zamora" mentioned in Musket's x-post with mine.

I love coincidences -- have OPd threads on them...

≈M≈

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Sep 14 - 12:34 PM

Indeed, Guest. But I don't think even that would make it folk. I bet not many reading this could tell you offhand who wrote, say, a 30s standard like "We're In The Money", which I bet you can all hum on hearing the title... Hammerstein? Porter? Berlin? Johnny Mercer? Kern? Nope; none of them. In fact, I happen to remember it was one of the hundreds of songs with music by Harry Warren; not a name to conjure with, but google him & you'd be surprised who he worked with & what familiar tunes he was responsible for. Words were by Al Dubin in this case -- & likewise with him.

But it still isn't 'folk', is it? For all that...

≈M≈

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 12 Sep 14 - 12:18 PM

There you go! Living folk songs! Live from the kop end!

Football chants are indeed folk in any sense, if we must be bloody pedantic..

At Hillsborough, we recall boxing day 1979 with

Hark now hear!
The Wednesday sing!
United ran away...
And we will fight forever more,
Because of boxing day!

Whilst down at Upton Park, they still recall when Bobby Zamora played for them;

When you're sat in row Z
And the ball hits your head
That's Zamora...

Eeh.. I could talk about this folk music lark all day....

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Sep 14 - 12:09 PM

Wow!
What's going on? The 12th of September and all postings amicable and in agreement. I must have slipped sideways into a parallel world!
What was all the fuss about?

Off the top of my head, I seem to remember the suggested criteria in the 54 description are not cast iron requirements in every given song. The more of the requirements the song has the more it is a folk song.

As you all seem to be in agreement you probably already know that the 'known authorship' clause was in the original 54 description, but it was dropped very soon after it was published, possibly due to Lloyd or even Bartok.

This brings us to M's statement re 'You'll Never walk Alone'. This is of course the Liverpool anthem for obvious reasons, but it is also sung by just about every other bunch of fans in the country. As M states it is sung pretty much as it first appeared in the musical, but I would contend, although there is little variation, it is sung by many many 'folk' most of whom have never heard of 'Carousel' or indeed of 'Gerry Marsden'.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Bounty Hound
Date: 12 Sep 14 - 11:38 AM

'As far as the 'Heavy Metal' posting goes, I was responding to what I believed to be on offer as 'folk' - certainly fits the 'non-definition' definition some clubs choose to put on.
If that is 'folk' the term has become meaningless.
Won't get any argument from me on that one Jim, adding a traditional instrument to a heavy metal band no more makes it folk than a mandolin on the intro to a Rod Stewart song.

'A question - if some people dislike the stuff that brought us into this music so much - why do they with topo associate their music with it- or are they setting out to destroy the old music and replace it with theirs?'
Not sure whether this was an open question, Jim, or just aimed at me, but I certainly don't dislike what brought us into this music, as well as 'rocking it up' a bit with The Hounds, I sing unaccompanied, or with acoustic instruments, and listen to a wide variety of traditional song. Personally, I don't feel that we are in any way setting out to 'destroy' the old songs, as a large number of our repertiore is traditional, but rather help to preserve them and perhaps give them a wider audience. I'm aware that a drum kit and electric instruments are not your cup of tea, but we'll have to agree to differ on that one ;)

Have fun with the flax!

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Sep 14 - 09:34 AM

Football crowds are not the sole arbiters, tho, Dick. Nor yet are they infallible ones.

What is the best-known of all songs sung by football crowds? Why, we all know that: a song, unchanged by folk process but sung with its original words & music, from a somewhat sugary & religiose Rodgers & Hammerstein musical first produced in 1945 & still current in the musical theatre repertoire: I must have seen at least 5 productions in my time. So prominent an example of the genre you rubricate as definitive in identification as folk, so identifiably & primarily cognate with the genre indeed, that its title/theme·line are inscribed over the gates of one of our leading football clubs.

And does all that make it unarguably folk?

Well, er -- I am sure you are glad I asked you that.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: The Sandman
Date: 12 Sep 14 - 09:03 AM

"No we can't - the authorship of many songs that have become 'folk' are known yet they have been taken up and re-identified with by communities and have become part of the culture of those communities.
Quite often, as in the case of the MacColl songs I mentioned, the original maker is not known by the people who have chosen to identify with it."
I agree, Shoals of herring, fiddlers green,caledonia,dirty oldtown, are all examples

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Sep 14 - 08:36 AM

"Jim, so we're happy to deviate from 1954 which does specify 'oral' to allow modern forms of transmission, yes"
This has never been an issue
If you read the '54 definition, it says:
"Folk music is the product of a musical tradition that has been evolved through the process of oral transmission."
The ambiguity of that statement is its Achilles heel - it is not clear whether the process is the result of oral transmission or the music itself - you can transmit song orally, you can't transmit music.
As far as we know, literacy has long played a part in the transmission of folk songs, so there is no great problem when music is transmitted in other ways.
It is not really a major part of its definition.
The important features of folk son as I see them are the fact that they belong to no-one, can be claimed and used by everyone as their own - certainly not the case with newly composed songs.
Probably the most important feature of folk songs is the fact that they are virtually all universal in their structure - anybody can identify with the situations they throw up in some way or other - it's why I believe the two modern songs I cited would be good 'folk' candidates.
I've never worked in a dye-works like Pete Smith did, but when I worked in London I dismantled literally hundreds of cancerous causing asbestos-filled storage heaters - I worked in factories where the entire heating systems were made up of asbestos-wrapped hot water pipes - can't tell you how many bricks I shat when the health report on the risks of industrial and domestic asbestos was published.
That's why I had no problem with identifying with a song which was outside of my immediate experience.
Our folk song repertoire is made up of such identifiable situations, that's what makes them universal and to a degree immortal.
Very few new songs have that double quality of specific universality - dealing with a particular situation yet at the same time, open to general identification.
"that a new song can become 'folk' if we don't know who wrote it and other people sing it?"
No we can't - the authorship of many songs that have become 'folk' are known yet they have been taken up and re-identified with by communities and have become part of the culture of those communities.
Quite often, as in the case of the MacColl songs I mentioned, the original maker is not known by the people who have chosen to identify with it.
As far as the 'Heavy Metal' posting goes, I was responding to what I believed to be on offer as 'folk' - certainly fits the 'non-definition' definition some clubs choose to put on.
If that is 'folk' the term has become meaningless.
A question - if some people dislike the stuff that brought us into this music so much - why do they with topo associate their music with it- or are they setting out to destroy the old music and replace it with theirs?
Just asking
Sorry - started this a couple of hours ago and am stuck uprooting New Zealand flax before is pisses with rain
Will post this and come back later.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 12 Sep 14 - 08:13 AM

As for "knowing who wrote it," I have to agree with Lloyd's citation of a European collector (Bartok?) that, essentially, "a peasant pot is still a peasant pot even if we know the name of the potter."

Of course, if there are considerable and interesting variations, the name of the original potter/creator becomes moot, even if known.

On the other hand, the amount of verbal variation in most songs by known writers (say, "This Land is Your Land") is almost negligible.

That is especially true in societies like ours right now where people want to "do it just like the album" and love correcting you. Remember the other-thread controversy about whether Anais Mitchell sings "Carter Hall" or "Carterhaugh"? Really, why should anyone care?

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: The Sandman
Date: 12 Sep 14 - 08:04 AM

here are two more composed songs, rose of mooncoin, and slievenamon, both sung at football or hurling matches.