What makes a new song a folk song?

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Sep 14 - 05:51 AM

"Should be very interested to read that Living Tradition letter, Jim"
Thanks for your interest Mike - (letter below)
It was a somewhat cranky response to an article by Karl Dallas - a man whose early contributions to folk I very much admired.
The responses were a mixture of depressing, conformation of what I believed and a couple of extremely heartening ones, one from Peggy and another from an American whose name escapes me but who, I belive, is a contributor to this forum.
Pegggy's was particularly interesting as she goes into the origins of The Singer's Club's "sing songs from your own background" policy   
Will did them out if tyou can't find them on the Living Tradition website archive.
Terribus
Your input is much appreciated - nce not to be at each orther's throats for a change.
"The reality is that the honouring is to some extent a tactic to encourage tourists to stop,"
The reality is that Castleisland has a fine annual traditional music festival dedicated to Padraig O'Keefe where it is possible to hear some of the best of Irish music and singing.
Credit where credit is due
Jim Carroll

WHERE HAVE ALL THE FOLK SONGS GONE?
A combination of the article on Peter Bellamy by the "re¬invented" Fred/Karl Dallas and the "Is Folk Dying" debate in your letter pages, has brought on an uncontrollable attack of deja vu in us. Having long given up attending folk clubs regularly, we couldn't say if what now passes for 'folk" is dying, all we can tell you is why we stopped going to clubs.
In this present bout of soul-searching, as in earlier ones, we feel the real issues are being missed. In the past, (remember the "Crap Begets Crap" debate in the pages of Folk Review?) the problems that clubs were having were put down to bad organisers and noisy audiences; now, it seems, passive smoking is the culprit (LivingTradition, Opinion, Sept/Oct).
Thirty odd years ago, inspired by Ewan MacColl, such radio programmes as the still unsurpassed "Song Carriers", and the Caedmon "Folk Songs of Britain" records, we, like many other enthusiasts at that time, developed our interest in song by listening to Joe Heaney, John Strachan, Elizabeth Cronin, Harry Cox and all the other fine traditional singers captured by the BBC's mopping-up campaign of the Fifties. It was to these singers that the best of the revivalists were going, both for the songs and their styles. It was possible then to go out at least once a week and hear good traditional songs well sung.
Things were by no means perfect. You had (and still have) the "near enough for folk" brigade, the singing pullovers and, of course, a proliferation of mid-Atlantic accents, but there was enough good singing around to make it an exciting time. The rot really started to set in with the mini-choirs: The Young Tradition, The Watersons and their clones who specialised in reducing the songs to doleful dirges, ironing out the subtleties of the melodies to fit tedious harmonies, while relegating the words to a poor second.
There were also the aspiring Segovias with their tricksy accompaniments and peculiar phrasing, turning the songs into elaborate pieces of music, again pushing the words into the background. A low point was reached with the coming of the electric squad with their barrages of sound equipment turning the songs into an unmusical soup. Then it became almost impossiblE to follow the words.
It is true that those dedicated to traditional song continued to plough the furrow but, following the inescapable scientific law that crap tends to float, the genetically modified product began to take over. This downward spiral can be charted through the pages of the folk magazines, a number of them edited by Karl Dallas. Entertaining and informative ones like Dallas's Folk Music (first issue November 1963), carried good, interesting, wide-ranging articles by MacColl, Lloyd, Charles Parker, Stephen Sedley, etc. (oh, and the mysterious Jack Speedwell). Alongside this were: Sing, Spin, Garland, Ballads & Songs, the sadly short-lived Tradition, and a host of others, all adding to a healthy, lively debate.
These publications continued in various guises, each one not quite so good as its forerunner, until the appearance of what was probably the longest running of them all, Folk Review, a somewhat show-biz production with the occasional interesting piece. The least said one of Dallas's later efforts, Folk News, the better; (Punk v. Folk -come off it, Karl).
A few clubs resisted what they saw to be the downward slide. Some did this with strict, somewhat antiquarian attitudes: no contemporary songs and no instruments. Others, recognising the need for new songs and the advantages of accompaniment so long as it did not interfere with the narrative nature of the tradition, attempted to set standards with selective guest and resident policies and tightly controlled floor singer spots; (this latter aimed avoiding the mistakes of some of the dreadful, anything goes, singaround clubs that were to be found all over the place).
Foremost of the policy clubs, was Ewan MacCoil's Singers Club in London.
It has become extremely difficult to discuss rationally the work of MacCoil and his attempts to promote traditional song through the Singers Club; the opening up of the industrial, London and ballad repertoires; the feature evenings; his study sessions with The Critics Group; the numerous seminars; the hundreds of traditional songs and ballads he made available through his records and books, not to mention his vast output as a songwriter. His failure to commit any of his ideas to print has left the field open for the knockers and snideswipers (Dallas, Harker, et all) to distort and misrepresent his theories, sometimes through genuine ignorance, a commodity to be found in abundance in the revival.
More often than not, however, these attacks have been carried out in a spirit of sheer vindictiveness, made in retaliation to MacCoil's political and artistic stance. These distortions are amply represented in Dave Harker's One For The Money", where The Critics Group is portrayed as some sort of secret society from which it was necessary to smuggle out 'surreptitious" recordings, even though virtually all Group meetings were recorded and were available to anybody genuinely interested in the work. (Incidentally, if Dallas did attend any Critics Group meetings, he kept remarkably quiet, as there is no trace of him on the recordings. And he must have fallen asleep during the discussion on the effect of Lloyd's smile on his singing. In fact, the position of the mouth, as in a smile, alters the tone produced. Try it.) Writers like Harker have managed to reduce any potential debate on MacCoIl's work to the 'Jimmy Miller" level; (shades of Monty Python's Arthur "Two Sheds" Jackson sketch where an artist is prevented from discussing his art by an interviewer who is more interested in his nickname than his painting).
Included in the anti-MacCoil camp was a fundamentalist fringe specialising in rumours that he didn't write his songs but stole them from traditional singers, despite lack of any evidence to support such a theory. It was, of course a compliment to MacCoil's songwriting skills. In the magazine, Folk Scene, December 1965 issue, Ian Campbell wrote:
"If the folk song revival were to consist merely of the reverent re-¬exhibition of songs hallowed by time, it would be a futile and sterile exercise. To make sense, the revival must produce new songs and, presumably, to be valid, they must show the influence, in form at least, of the tradition. MacCoIl demonstrated years ago that it is possible to create vital, contemporary songs within the traditional frameworks."
Unfortunately, most of the contemporary songwriters who find favour among the folk club audiences, show little interest in, or concern for, traditional song forms. The idiom in which they most commonly compose is that of the pop songs, no matter how un-pop their lyrics. This is a pity because, with contemporary "folk songs" continually growing in popularity, the eventual result will be that the folk song revival, and the clubs, will lose all contact with folk songs."
(Very far sighted, 34 years ago!)

Briefly, MacCoIl's argument was a simple one: folk song is an art form and, like any other artistic endeavour, it is necessary to master certain skills in order to do the songs justice. To this end, he devised a series of voice and relaxation exercises, based largely on his theatre work, so that a singer was equipped to handle the whole spectrum of the traditional repertoire from big ballads to street songs. (MacCoil was co-founder, not, as Dallas puts it, "graduate of Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop" also a playwright long before he was known as a singer, earning tributes from George Bernard Shaw and Sean OCasey - well documented facts, Karl.) He also devised methods of helping singers to analyse, understand and interpret the songs.
These ideas went down like lead balloons with most folkies to whom taking singing seriously and enjoying it, was a contradiction in terms. They appeared to believe that singers like Sheila McGregor, Jeannie Robertson and Joe Heaney took in their singing abilities with their mother's milk and never found it
necessary to work on them.
The term "finger-in-the-ear" became one of abuse, even though cupping the hand over the ear in order to stay in tune without the guidance of an instrument, is an age-old device used by singers from Bucharest to Belfast and found in woodcut illustrations of street ballad-sellers throughout the ages.
The ascendancy of the "anything goes", non-policy club not only affected performance of traditional song but led to a situation where it was, and is, possible to spend an evening at a folk club without hearing a folk song. The traditional repertoire: the ballads, sea songs, cornkisters, bawdry, songs of working life and love, were replaced by Victorian tear¬jerkers, music hall ditties, pop songs of the past and those dreary, all-round-the-year carols.
We should say that our experiences have been largely confined to English clubs (mainly around London) and festivals. However, if the pages of Living Tradition are anything to go by, we have no reason to think that the situation is very different elsewhere. We know from the excellent Folk Songs of North-East Scotland CD that there are still good singers around but, oh dear, when we received our freebie CD Celtic Connections with our subscription, we nearly demanded our money back.
Since we moved out of England last year, we have noticed that Ireland does not have a strong club scene. There are a large number of extremely skillful singers who are to be found at sessions and at the numerous singing festivals but, even here, the cracks are beginning to show.
Collectors like Tom Munnelly have unearthed a treasure-trove of songs and ballads in both English and Irish from a relatively large number of traditional singers who were still to be found until fairly recently. Unfortunately, many of the younger singers have chosen to ignore the narrative repertoire in preference to the long, slow, highly ornamented, lyrical pieces, very beautiful but, taken in bulk, the listener is often left with a feeling of having waded through a field of syrup. Many singers seem unwilling to ring the changes with a mixture of light and heavy, slow or fast, serious or comic songs, as did, say, CoIm Keane or Elizabeth Cronin. Even with these reservations, there is a higher standard of performance of music and song in Ireland and, interestingly, debate than we found in England. (Can you imagine a TV programme in the UK based on the question: "Has the Tradition Sold Out?" as was recently presented by RTE?)
So, how do things stand at present? In England, at least, we appear to have the remnants of a folk song revival where folk songs are relegated to second place, traditional material having been jettisoned in favour of a mish¬mash of mediocrity. Singers who previously confined their repertoires to the tradition, have moved away, some to the more lucrative pastures of "Over the Rainbow" and "Blue Suede Shoes".
It appears to us that perhaps it is time to take a hard look back to where we started out to see how far away from the tradition we have moved and if the direction taken is a worthwhile one. Does what is performed now in folk clubs have anything in common with the singing of, for instance, Harry Cox, Walter Pardon, Jessie Murray or Phil Tanner? We would suggest it has not. Experimentation has replaced commitment

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: The Sandman
Date: 11 Sep 14 - 04:53 AM

"Singing has some way to go here, but one of the exciting things that has happened is that when a singer or musician dies, some towns have honoured them with a singing week-end or even a school."
in the case of castleisland they have erected a statue, to padraig o keefe, if he came back he would laugh as when he was alive he was only allowed in ONE pub in the town,
The reality is that the honouring is to some extent a tactic to encourage tourists to stop, ALBEIT providing trad music is a very pleasant way of doing it.
coope boyes and simpson are a very well respected uk singing group, not a firm of solicitors.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 11 Sep 14 - 04:17 AM

Phil. How did I know I was playing folk?

Mainly because the advertising said folk club, or folk festival. People turn up to listen on the basis that they will hear folk and I have yet had anybody complain that it doesn't sound like gangsta rap or opera, as that is what they expected.

Granted, my rendition of Blackwaterside attracts the occasional boo, but we can't all be Bert.

zzzzz

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 11 Sep 14 - 03:54 AM

Should be very interested to read that Living Tradition letter, Jim. Any chance of your copying it here?

≈M≈

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Sep 14 - 03:43 AM

"If "most people" didn't have this wider understanding of the word, your complaint that it devalues the real meaning of 'folk' wouldn't matter"
Yes it would Howard - the devaluation of the term has done much to prevent folk music being taken seriously in Britain.
If the performers are not going to understand what the music they are performing is enough to be able to define it, how the hell are outsiders going to come to it.
The Irish crowd took the stance that if you want to put traditional music on a firm footing you have to be clear about what you are promoting.
"You're wasting your time repeating this over and over. It will never sink in!"
Never thought I'd read this from a researcher Steve - as you rightly say, sad indeed.
Singing has some way to go here, but one of the exciting things that has happened is that when a singer or musician dies, some towns have honoured them with a singing week-end or even a school.
This town hosted the fortieth annual week-long traditional music school dedicated to piper Willie Clancy, who passed away at the beginning of 1973.
Joe Heaney in remembered with a singing weekend in his native Carna.
In a couple of weeks time, the Frank Harte weekend is taking place in Dublin.
Clare has the Cooley/Collins weekend in Gort in December and there are rumours that the Mrs Crotty weekend is to be revived - that part of Clare also has the Mrs Galvin weekend.
Seamus Ennis, Mary Anne Carolan and Geordie Hanna are singers remembered with singing weekends.
Some of these events not only honoured the singers and musicians but they have proved a fair source of income for some of the rural towns struggling with the results of the Irish banker's shenanigans which brought about the death of the Celtic tiger.
Some time ago I wrote a letter to the Living Tradition magazine lamenting the poor health of folk music in Britain ("Where Have All the Folk Songs Gone")
I received a fair amount of stick in return, including a particularly sarcastic one from the firm-of-solicitors sounding folk group, Coope Boyes and Simpson, which suggested that I must have had a lot of my time on my hands in the long, cold winter nights in Miltown Malbay, puttig together such a letter.
We have weekly wall to wall traditional music throughout those cold winter nights - I wonder if C. B and S. are in the position to make the same claim!
If we survive the present downturn in the economy, traditional music will have played a large part of us doing so.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Teribus
Date: 11 Sep 14 - 03:12 AM

Jim Carroll - Date: 10 Sep 14 - 09:07 AM

Another extremely good post that clearly "sets out his stall", belief and opinion.

Bounty Hound and Howard it would appear that you are clearly, and possibly deliberately, missing the points that Jim Carroll is making.

I have always loved history and I have always loved songs that told a story. History is not always and only written by the victors, in terms of any struggle be it social, political or national you will find that it is normally the "losing side" that writes the songs and poems. While various regimes and interests made attempts to censor and destroy written works that did not accord to the winners side - nobody could censor the songs which were passed from community to community and from one generation to the next by performance and repetition. While the songs may be heavily slanted, they do provide a perspective and perception dealing as they do with particular events and aspects of any given time. As such they are important, because they detail where we have come from, they described life as it was then.

Various contributors to this thread who have been shouting down the definition of "Folk Music", as detailed by Jim, go wittering on about "old geezers with waistbands up to their armpits", "finger in ear", etc, etc. To them I would say that their songs have lasted and have carried forward through centuries of time. One night in what you call your "Folk Club" just try one evening where no-one who is going to sing is allowed any accompaniment - then see how well "your song" stands. Because most of the "Folk Songs" described by Jim as being an essential and vital part of our heritage were working songs, and if you are working you are using both your hands, there were no "working tunes" the tunes so well carried forward and taught now in various University courses (The ones churning out all those "youngster bands" you see performing at various festivals up and down the country) were composed in what little leisure time the "folk" had in those days. While there are University Courses that cater for musicians who want to study Folk Music, I don't know if there are any that specifically cover songs and cater for singers. For them or anyone interested all they have are "Folk Clubs" that offer "Hits from the 50s Nights". Hearing a poor rendition of a "traditional song" might be bad Big Al, but having to listen to one poor rendition of Buddy Holly after another is unbearable. The "anybody can sing and anybody can have a go attitude" in most Folk Clubs is excruciating but apparently vital as it makes the "performer" who is "less crap" feel good as he/she picks up their guitar to give the assembled company a "less crap" version of Dylan or the Beatles.

As for Shanties/Chanty's or what ever you want to call them now. As far as the British ones went, the piano and the Victorian parlour killed them off, to the extent that today all these so-called Shanty groups if they sang one no sailor would ever recognise it as such, they certainly could not work to them.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: The Sandman
Date: 10 Sep 14 - 11:51 PM

Sean is a great performer with a versatile repertoire, Fred jordan was a great performer too but very different from Walter Pardon, Walter was a good enough singer, but he was not an extrovert performer, and outside the cloistered area of folk clubs or folk festivals was not in my opinion able to hold an audience, he tended to mumble,and his poresentation was imo not good
as a traditional style singer or tradtional singer[ or however he should be described] he was not[imo] in the same class as phil tanner. fred jordan clearly loved performing, for walter it appeared to me it was an ordeal, he reminded me of a rabbit caught in the headlights of a car.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 10 Sep 14 - 07:30 PM

probably the outright hostility comes from listening to all the rubbish versions of blackwaterside that you never get to hear....

i'm not really sure what you expect from ordinary people. i think many of the brilliant trad musicians i have heard would do a brilliant spot most places. i'm not sure a proper roots singer like Walter Pardon, or Fred Jordan could do one - which i suspect is what jim is going on about. and that is a weakness - buthere again -they don't welcome us into their strongholds.

i think that very ornate style of singing that Sean Canon used to do might have a thin time of it. but Sean was a great performer -he could play guitar and fiddle. i can't imagine him getting wrongfooted.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 10 Sep 14 - 03:57 PM

Either I've been very lucky or you've been very unlucky, Al. I've never heard a rubbish version of Blackwaterside; I've heard three or four truly brilliant ones, though.

Musket:

I had been playing folk for over 30 years

How did you know? What is 'playing folk' as far as you're concerned? It doesn't seem to have anything to do with singing folksongs.

(I'd been playing folk for five years when I discovered traditional songs. I really resent having had to wait five years.)

That said, I disagree slightly with Jim, inasmuch as I think the 'acoustic night'/'open mic' type of folk club is an institution in its own right - lots of people go to that kind of FC and know, by and large, what to expect. And they're fun, if you like that kind of thing. It's just that it's an institution with little or no connection to traditional music, and generally with an attitude to your actual folksongs somewhere between indifference and outright hostility - and I think that's a damn shame.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 10 Sep 14 - 03:48 PM

Howard, Bounty,
You're wasting your time repeating this over and over. It will never sink in!

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Howard Jones
Date: 10 Sep 14 - 02:26 PM

Sorry to disagree Howard, but as far as the general population is concerned, there is no "wider meaning".

Sorry Jim but I stick with it. I agree most people don't give folk music a thought from one week to the next, but most have a vague notion what it means, and it is only the wider meaning. Their idea will probably include some old farm labourer in a pub, and a group playing diddly-diddly, but it will also include Dylan, Simon and Garfunkle, and probably Rambling Sid Rumpo. It's a fuzzy idea, rather than a definition, but I think it's fairly widely understood.

What they don't have is an understanding of the difference between what you regard as 'folk' and the other stuff, far less the importance of that.

If "most people" didn't have this wider understanding of the word, your complaint that it devalues the real meaning of 'folk' wouldn't matter. It's precisely because it is so widespread that the damage you fear might occur. However you cannot alter the way language is used, especially when that use has been well-established for more than half a century.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 10 Sep 14 - 12:09 PM

pain in the arse

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 10 Sep 14 - 11:57 AM

p.i.t.a.....?

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 10 Sep 14 - 10:11 AM

Ah, Jansch. I have established on threads before that I am not the only organism in the entire History of the Universe to regard him as a kingsize affected p.i.t.a. But one of probably only 3·772 such! Liked his guitar work, of course. But oh my god that laidback caterwaul of his. As the Shropshire Lad put it: "It gives a chap the bellyache".

≈M≈

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Bounty Hound
Date: 10 Sep 14 - 09:49 AM

Sorry to disagree Howard, but as far as the general population is concerned, there is no "wider meaning".

I've just come back from a weekend at Swanage FOLK festival, where I've observed a large number of the general population enjoying 'folk' music of a wide variety of styles, from bluegrass and Americana, traditional song, new songs written in a traditional style, folk/rock etc etc.

Ask those representatives of the 'general population' what they were listening to Jim, and then tell us again there is no 'wider meaning'!

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 10 Sep 14 - 09:44 AM

i reckon in my years, i've heard two good versions of blackwaterside - and several thousand rubbish ones.

one was obviously jansch - a talented guitarist. the other was an unaccompanjed one by Roscommon Brummie, Tommy Dempsey.

all those rubbish ones - you really have to wonder -wouldn't the people have been better off singing something a bit easier. its a case of diminishing returns.

what can they be feeling singing such a song in such a way? national pride in our folksong heritage? satisfaction that they aren't singing karaoke?

the hunted look in their eyes betrays the fact that they know damn well no ones enjoying it.

Waylon Jennings wrote a song about the way country music was going called ARE YOU SURE HANK DONE IT THIS WAY?

ARE YOU SURE EWAN WANTED IT THIS WAY?

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 10 Sep 14 - 09:07 AM

"you will know that working class people don't really get anything you would call folk music
Not any more they don't - I agree with you, though there are others on this forum who wouldn't.
Not the point.
The songs that I call 'folk' were a staple part of the culture of working people right up to comparatively recently.
They createdf the songs (I believe), passed them on, remade them in different forms and created more songs.
We got the tail-end of them, often from people who had never been part of a living tradition, but had remembered what their grandparents grandparents had remembered - third or fourth hand.
The songs we have acquired of part of the culture of working people.
Personally I still find a great deal of entertainment I many of them - I remember hearing the 300 year old 'The Duke of Atholl's Nurse' for the first time, chuckling my way through the singing of it and then thinking how it compared to a classic piece of slapstick comedy.   
I still feel the hairs on the back of my neck bristling when I hear a well-sung version of Sheath and Knife.
We were talking to the young woman who is producing our MacColl programmes and she described how she visited Edinburgh last year and spent a week-end listening to knife-edged sung ballads that moved a roomful of people to tears.
These songs and ballads are as timeless and as important as Shakespeare - I believe that some of them are as skillful.
Whether working people like it or not, they are our heritage.
I believe that they still have a part to play in entertaining us, in fact I know they have - I've spent enough time in folk clubs to have learned that.
If you don't like then, fine, all I can say is, "I'm sorry for your loss" - you really don't know what you are missing.
That aside, if today's generation has abandoned them, it doesn't mean that others will do the same.
Working people as an identifiable group no longer have a creative culture of their own, it has been usurped by a musical form manufactured, pre-wrapped and marketed to make some money for a few privileged people and much more for investors who culd equally have put their money into selling frozen peas - not my idea of a working-class culture, sorry and all that.
"but it forms a sub-set of the wider meaning"
Sorry to disagree Howard, but as far as the general population is concerned, there is no "wider meaning".
Most people in Britain live and die without ever the word 'folk song' passing their lips - our failure.
Id there is an alternative meaning, where do I find it, or more importantly, where do I point to to help others to find it.
Thanks to deliberate or thoughtless misuse, Folk Music has become as accessible as Freemasonry - in Britain anyway.
I haven't looked at the media guide today, but I'm almost certain that I will be able to turn on the T.V or radio tonight and listen to or watch a half-decent programme on folk music - unfortunately, I won't be able to listen because I'll be at one of the four weekly music and song sessions taking place in this one street town in the West of Ireland.
In a couple of weeks time, on our annual Irish Culture Night I'll be attending a public interview with 80 year old piper, flute playe and singer, Michael Falsey, at our local Traditional music centre (look up O.A.C. (Oidhreacht an Chlair") or Clare Music Makers)
All of this was achieved by a few people who knew what their music was and where they wanted it to go.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 10 Sep 14 - 08:47 AM

Jim. There is no established agreement. 99% of everybody who enjoys folk has ever heard of any 1954 document and as it has no bearing on what they like, it is irrelevant.

I had been playing folk for over 30 years before I had heard of it. I took one look and put it in the same category as women not allowed to walk across the green in front of the bar at Lindrick Golf Club. An anachronism.

To have a consensus, it helps if anybody knows or cares about library categories. Music is categorised in many ways by many sources.

1954 was a Mudcat thread with a summing up post. It is the view if those who wrote it. A bit like religion. If you believe it it is true to you but sod all to do with those who don't believe.

You seem to be confusing most people who love folk with someone who gives a shit.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Howard Jones
Date: 10 Sep 14 - 08:00 AM

"If 'Little Boxes' and 'The Red Flag' are folk songs, we need a new term to describe 'The Outlandish Knight', 'Searching for Lambs' and 'The Coalowner and the Pitman's Wife'."
Folk song proper is far too old in the tooth (another of your "old geezers") to re-identify itself - "

Yes, but...

The term 'folk' is understood by most people to encompass both. 99.9% of them have no interest in the difference between them. Unfortunately perhaps, the meaning of words is determined by usage and cannot be dictated. "Gay" is the obvious modern example of a word whose common meaning has changed utterly - "disinterested" is rapidly coming to mean "uninterested", and "momentarily" is starting to take on the American sense of "in a moment" rather than "for a moment". This is annoying for those who would prefer to use language precisely or who now lack a word to replace the original sense, but you can't turn back the tide. Popular usage creates language just as it does folk song.

I agree that for the relative few who do regard the distinction between "Little Boxes" and "The Outlandish Knight" as important, a different word is needed. Since 'folk' cannot now be redefined, better to find another term such as 'traditional song' to describe the latter. This is still 'folk', so you won't need to re-bind your books, but it forms a sub-set of the wider meaning.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 10 Sep 14 - 07:55 AM

Jim, GSS is a very good musician. i would imagine, he's a pretty good ambassador for folk -mainly doing your kinda stuff. if his beliefs propel him forward on his merry way - well really they're his business.

if you are as you say from the working classes - you will know that working class people don't really get anything you would call folk music - not the ballads, not the unaccompanied singing, the finger in the ear routine, the morris dancing. no doubt in certain rustic communities there are settlements where they dig it. Elijah Wald said as much. When he went to put amemorial in Robert Johnsons birthplace - he said people in the little village were getting layers of meaning from the songs that he didn't get. seeing jokes he had never recognised as such in the lyrics.

so what are you going to do do. just give up on the generality of humanity apart from these isolated communities....?

last night i was in a little open mic in Weymouth. a young guy called Ed Bleach(named because his hair is bleached) sang in manner that would have most people running. he was twice as loud as the presence of a microphone necessitated. and yet the wordcraft was superb, and he had so much to say about his town that was clever, compassionate and funny.

And so often I see the approved folkies flinging themselves like lemmings at songs like Sheath and Knife and bread and Cheese. and they're doomed to failure because, I don't think those song were worth preserving.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: johncharles
Date: 10 Sep 14 - 07:23 AM

Miranda Sykes and Rex Preston playing at Cecil sharp house. I wonder how many of the songs they sing will meet the !954 definition criteria. Not many I would guess. Even the home of Folk it would seem are prepared to broaden the criteria to put bums on seats.
john

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 10 Sep 14 - 07:00 AM

Sorry don't get your point Muskie
There is an established agreement as to what constitutes 'Folk'
Confirmation that that agreement exists an be found in places such as Topics 'Voice of the People' and on the Roud index - both conforming more or less to that definition, or in publications such as The Greg Duncan Folk Song Collection and the new edition of 'The Penguin Book of Folk Songs'.
That the clubs don't have a consensus must strike you as a threat to the future of clubs, surely?
I people can no longer select what they listen to when they o to a folk club, only those who are already familiar with what goes on in them with go to them and when they die off, so will those particular clubs - no new blood, no future.
As I've said, the fact that so many clubs have nothing whatever to do with folk song has done immeasurable damage to the possibility of bringing new people into the music.
Bert Lloyd put it succinctly in 1967 in 'Folk Song in England':
"If 'Little Boxes' and 'The Red Flag' are folk songs, we need a new term to describe 'The Outlandish Knight', 'Searching for Lambs' and 'The Coalowner and the Pitman's Wife'."
Folk song proper is far too old in the tooth (another of your "old geezers") to re-identify itself - really do have no intention of rebinding all our books titled or referring to 'folk song' - for what - a group of peole who haven't had the nouse to find their own identity and have hijacked somebody else's long-established term to describe what they do - and then can't be consistent enough among themselves to agree what that is; the 'Hits From the Fifties' that are advertised on some club publicity as being part of their 'folk evenings' have sweet sod-all to do with snigger snogwriter compositions that some people are wanting to call folk, let alone the real stuff!
Your particular taste in music not having an identification of its own can't be good from your point of view - Calling it 'folk certainly isn't for ours.
That's the problem that needs discussing - not attempting to insert your square peg into somebody else's round hole (excuses the connotations of that analogy)
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: The Sandman
Date: 10 Sep 14 - 06:50 AM

jim carroll, every time you make accusations about me that are not true, I will continue to post the the facts, there is no personal vendetta, but i am not prepared to put up with your incorrect statemments about me on this forum.
I am not going to ignore any comments by anyone [yourself included] That I consider illogical, untrue, half truths or over simplifications.
I have never met you, I have respect for your hard work as regards collecting, I disagree with some of your views on traditional music, and I will continue to argue against points that you or anyone else make on this forum,thati happen to disagree with, that is not a vendetta but it is called free speech

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: The Sandman
Date: 10 Sep 14 - 06:38 AM

"You have contributed noting to the topic under this discussion, but have made this and the other one a part of your obsessive vendetta"   
       incorrect yet again. here are four posts, that contribute to the topic under discussion
Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Good Soldier Schweik - PM
Date: 31 Aug 14 - 03:52 PM

"So, the serious question is, what makes a new song a folk song? Should it have a particular kind of tune? Must it carry an important message? Does it need to be about ordinary people's lives?"
as far as the uk folk revival goes, most of the songs that are considered to be in tradtional style, belong to a limited group of modes, so yes they do appear to have particular kinds of tunes, limited to certain modes, they do not all appear to carry an important message, and some are not about ordinary peoples lives.
for example ICARUS was not an ordinary person.
2.
Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Good Soldier Schweik - PM
Date: 31 Aug 14 - 05:14 PM

al, i said some are not about ordinary peoples lives, some of course are, but they do not necessarily have to be about ordinary people.
3.
Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Good Soldier Schweik - PM
Date: 01 Sep 14 - 08:17 AM

"Genuine folk at least has a provenance and some sort of pedigree.
I've always believed that the best way to plan your future is to understand your past - that goes for music as much as anything else."
often but not always, for example some football songs[ which fall under the 1954 defintion of folk song], are genuine folk, but they often are not very good, for example the wheel barrow song[ sung by notts county fans , it has a provenance , [on top of old smokey], but it[ the wheelbarrow song] is a genuine folk song but a crap one., football crowd songs are folk songs, but do not have folk a pedigree or folkprovenace [youll never walk alone]         
talking a bout arrogance, MacColl was someone who came into that category, excellent song writer and performer that he was, an example of his arrogance was the occasion that he stopped Lisa Turner in mid song to remind her publicly of the singers club, song policy, the correct thing was to have had a quiet word privately.
4.
Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Good Soldier Schweik - PM
Date: 01 Sep 14 - 12:21 PM

sometimes the new song has to take its time, but it gets picked up and sung, examples of this in ireland are.. fiddlers green and song for ireland and caledonia, all songs written by english or scottish people, but songs that mean something to people outside the uk folk revival and are assumed to be tradtional.

---

Now, boys, stop your fighting. The rest of us are bored to tears by your squabbles and pettiness.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 10 Sep 14 - 05:58 AM

We don't have a consensus.

You do.

Not the same thing.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 10 Sep 14 - 05:55 AM

"I guess we will never know since we can't even get a consensus on what a folk song is."
We have a consensus in the form of existing dictionary definitions which tend to agree, and masses of documented and published researched information which essentially forms a core shape to what is meant by 'folk'.
The problems arise with the clubs who have decided to go AWOL and the fact that they have scattered themselves all over the musical landscape and have no definable form of their own makes it very difficult to recapture them, bring them back to base and slap them in the brig!
It makes utter nonsense of any artistic form to refuse to define it so it can never be discussed other than by acrimonious shouting matches.   
Folk song is far too enjoyable and informative to be lost to us this way.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 10 Sep 14 - 05:28 AM

...just like they'd be acoustic songs if you sang them at an acoustic club, talented songs if you sang them at a talent night and party songs if you sang them at a party. Easy!

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST,Derrick
Date: 10 Sep 14 - 05:21 AM

What makes a new song a folk song?

I guess we will never know since we can't even get a concensus on what a folk song is.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 10 Sep 14 - 05:16 AM

Watch it Joe. You'll have Jim calling you ageist.....

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 10 Sep 14 - 05:13 AM

Yeah, Musket, but that's because you're so old....
;-)

-Joe-

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 10 Sep 14 - 04:38 AM

Naw. Mine are folk songs the minute I sing them in a folk club.

Easy

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 10 Sep 14 - 04:34 AM

What makes a new song a folk song? About sixty years. It's no accident that the "1954 definition" is the prevalent definition of what's a folk song. It happened 60 years ago, didn't it?
;-)

-Joe-

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 10 Sep 14 - 04:29 AM

Nothing new about all this, of course. Look at the dozens of threads labouring all these points to death that have been here on the Cat since it started. But that was nothing new even then. These exact points, v much on Jim's side of the matter, were an obsession of mine in my monthly Folk Review column which ran thru a lot of the 1970s, to the extent that Fred Woods, the editor, insisted after a while that I should address other issues. In fact I had done so for all the time up to then anyhow. I had written of the traditional aspects of all sorts of matters from card games to 'Watership Down'. But it was this good old "So what is Folk?" issue, that I dealt with just now & again, that people noticed & responded to, that brought the letters in from Ian A Anderson et al; & which got me both supported and denounced in innumerable discussions and workshops at folk festivals. It was in one of these, Norwich, that Peter Bellamy said, in reply to an assertion by organiser Alex Atterson as to what he thought should go on in a folk club, "That's not a folk club, it's an anything club", that I have quoted recently (is it above on this thread or on the "Definition" one? Can't remember!). I recall a nice moment on the way to that session, walking in a heterogeneous group to the appointed hall at Norwich Uni, when the man next to me said to his neighbour, "This should give us all a chance to have a go at Michael Grosvenor Myer!"   "I think you might find him a match for you," I put in. & we walked on.]

And still, way-hay and on we go.

A tradition, innit!

≈M≈

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 10 Sep 14 - 04:03 AM

Dick
I have had enough of this
Every posting you have made to this thread has been aimed directly at me and most of them have been a personal attack, personally insulting - exactly what you accuse me of doing.
You have contributed noting to the topic under this discussion, but have made this and the other one a part of your obsessive vendetta.
It will stop now - if it doesn't I will ask one of the adjudicators to order you to stop.
I'm far too old to cope with a cyber-stalker.
You have been far nastier on one thread than mot people could possibly have been in a whole lifetime.
Take you unpleasantness and peronal attacks elsewhere - if you have anything to say on the subject, please do so, but do not address them to me
I'll post this up on both threads
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 10 Sep 14 - 03:52 AM

"i have not contributed to the death of trad music"
Al - I bloody hate this
You seem a nice feller and I'm sure we could both drink ourselves under the table arguing this in a pub and then stagger home with our arms over each other's shoulders, but you appear to have no idea of what folk music is about or the importance attached to it.
"bloody fossils singing songs that have died out cos they weren't all that good anyway."
I find that downright insulting to a genre that has endured for many centuries and served as a form of expression for ordinary working people throughout that time - the only creative form of expression that can be claimed as "ours" (I'm not a bloody "middle class publisher" - I'm a retired electrician trying to understand the culture and history of my forbears and pass on my findings to others.
My introduction to folk song was through the clubs over half a century ago (making me one of your "fossils" I suppose).
That is why I attach so much importance to the clubs being places were people can be introduced to folk song.
This is no longer guaranteed because what I believe to have been clearly defined as folk song has been replaced by a whole bunch of indefinable types of song, there has not been a single workable definition for what goes on in folk clubs today offered up here - not one.
Some people have taken time out to not only denigrate the music that was the mainstay of folk clubs for the best part of my life - but have turned on the people who preserved and passed on that music 'old geezers with their waistbands up under their armpits singing songs that were not good enough to survive' has been the level it has sunk to - me vituperative?
What has replaced the music and song that has been good and important enough to have survived for many centuries and claimed by the people who sang them (the folk) as their own, is largely pop music of one form or another - second/third/forth/fifth rate tribute versions of songs that have been created for a Music Industry that deliberately markets the to have a shelf life of what - one, two, three four months, if you are lucky.
Folk songs not good enough to survive - give us a break Al.
The pop industry today is so unimaginative that it has been forced to dredge up songs that I rejected as crap when I was in my twenties and actually listened to the stuff.
I'm not denigrating what you do - you are entitled to listen to, sing, play what you please - we all are.
My objection is, and always will be, that by describing it as folk it has wrought enormous damage on the access to folk music proper.
You say you sing real folk songs - but not at your folk club - only at home.
Don't you find that more than a little bizarre - I do?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: The Sandman
Date: 09 Sep 14 - 07:41 PM

Jim Carroll, I meant you,and here is the evidence, to the Snail, "you arrogant little prat". and another
Subject: RE: BS: BDS of Israel 'Gathering Weight.'
From: Jim Carroll - PM
Date: 03 Mar 14 - 04:57 AM

"I ignore nothing as you know, Jim, & deplore Israel's actions as much as you."
Yes - we know you don't like olive trees being cut down - which is about as serious an accusation as you have ever made of Israel.
You have allowed Keith the moron to make your case for you and leapt to his defence whenever he got into trouble
On occasion you have resorted suggesting that those of us who feel strongly about Israel's behaviour as anti-Semites and "Jew-baiters"
You are as sad a case as he is a disgusting one
Jim Carroll Subject: RE: BS: BDS of Israel 'Gathering Weight.'
From: Jim Carroll - PM
Date: 04 Mar 14 - 07:47 AM

The Jerusalem Post - my apologies?
The film must have been a load of shit in that case.
All the points in the German paper were fully covered by the film itself
The film was not about Palestine - it was about the effects of an apartheid ethnic cleansing policy has on ordinary human beings.
One of the most telling moments was the mistrust shown towards Palestinian politicians who muscled in on the press interviews.
You can dredge up any dissenting reviews you wish - the film said it all
It is a superbly honest film and has been recognised as such with world-wide acclaim

"5 Broken Cameras" has been screened at a number of film festivals and won the award for best Israeli documentary at the 2012 Jerusalem Film Festival. It also took the prize for best documentary directing in the World Cinema category at the Sundance Film Festival.
It was nominated for an Academy Award in the documentary feature category this year, but lost to "Searching for Sugarman.""
Take your ethnic cleansing apologisms elsewhere you deplorable toe-rag.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 09 Sep 14 - 07:23 PM

i have not contributed to the death of trad music. on the contrary i have bought the records, booked trad arist in my clubs, paid to go and see them.
i respect their industry and dedication.
but i don't agree with them on the meaning or future or practice of folk music.
if you could summon up an ounce of the respect and regard i have shown for your music, for a different point of view: you would not be so vituperative and mean minded.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Sep 14 - 05:29 PM

"When your songs were written - they weren't published. now they are museum pieces"
No they weren't - they remained alive in the mouths of singers right up to the second half of the twentieth century
They will only become museum pieces if people like you, who have neither the interest or the knowledge to help keep them alive are allowed to make the running
Not really surprised you are lost for words on my understanding of the miners strike - I would be if our positions were reversed
I reported what I saw with regard to the song you mentioned and to MacColl having been honoured by miners for his support - nothing more to be said on that one
"who regularly insults other members if they disagreee with him"
THere is indeed - you.
Go and look at some of your own postings - to me and others who have equally found your behaviour offensive and arrogant and have said so.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 09 Sep 14 - 02:32 PM

Jim your lack of comprehension is staggering with regard to the miners strike. frankly I can't even begin to address your points on that subject.

When your songs were written - they weren't published. now they are museum pieces. they threaten no one. people try to write songs like them - about the first world war. it called 'in the tradition' - permitted subjects only. fishing, gypsies, farming, real ale.....

no doubt when folk songs don't unsettle or so obscure that no one understands them. they will all be of interest to middle class publishers. and they all will be published.

we don't agree - but i do respect you.

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

"How does a seemingly simple question turn into an emotional minefield? Mind boggling."
there is one member of mudcat who regularly insults other members if they disagreee with him

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST,sciencegeek
Date: 09 Sep 14 - 11:48 AM

I find the acrimony on this thread beyond comprehension... as well as sad and pitiful.

How does a seemingly simple question turn into an emotional minefield? Mind boggling...

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 09 Sep 14 - 11:47 AM

The concert in 1984.... I recall getting a round of applause at the time at a folk club near where I lived when I pointed out that by the time of the concert, over 80% of us had told Scargill to fuck off.

MacColl may have been this and that but his hate for the common people, if they didn't fit to his stereotype, made him a prize cunt. His songs such as Daddy etc just show hatred for normal working people whilst he was being lauded by the bastards who authorised thugs to remind men, me included, that their wives and children weren't well protected when they were at work. In my case, a note through the door stating the time my wife took the baby to nursery. That baby by the way became a miner himself till he finished his apprenticeship.

It wasn't a great moment Jim. It was an obscene party in London whilst we were dealing with split communities, bailiffs and the dying embers of an industry the idealist twats used and abused to attack a government.

Those miner's lamps? Not from the batch the 'met police nicked from Manton lamp cabin were they?

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 09 Sep 14 - 11:21 AM

I said I'd read the occasional one, just to keep up. Anyhow, I was never any good at sulking, as either of my wives would confirm.

So let's all pronounce in praise of Musko·poo: perfectly impeccable professional pottimouthed expletive imprecator in extraordinary...!

≈M≈

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 09 Sep 14 - 11:05 AM

And isn't Michael a mind reader, considering he stated my wit and wisdom is too good for him so he wasn't going to read it any more?

Just think, if I say fucking in this post, that's three on the f%#king trot?



Even though it WAS Ewan etc..   Grr..   (Interview for Folk Ward, circa 1980.)

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Sep 14 - 11:00 AM

"preferring their librarian approach"
Singer - club organizer and audience member for thirty to forty years, as well as stepping through the folkie air-lock to find and interview some of those "old codgers with their waistbands up to their armpits" and ask them what they thought of the songs they sang and how they rated next to those from Nashville and Tin-Pan-Alley
Spent a fair amount of that time trying to pass on the songs and information to others so they would get the same amount of enjoyment and encouragement from it as I have.
What did you do in the war Muskie?
MacColl's committment to folk songs and those he believed made them went far beyong his part in the entertainment Trade" which he could have become quite wealthy on had ho been prepared to sell out.
"No, Jim, not you."
Sorry lighter - I was joining you in search of a reply to your question, not in any way opposing it.
Al
"blackleg miner."
Not sure what your point is on this one.
I don't know enough about the song to say whether it came from the British mines or whether is was adapted from the Cape Breton 'Yahi Miner, but I do know it has far more claim to belonging to the mining industry than anything by Leiber and Stoller or Otis Blackwell, or any other song now being passed off as "folk" in many of the clubs.
On MacColl's 70th he was presented with two miners lamps from different national officials of the N.M.U.
He treasured them both and carefully placed them next to the one he was awarded for 'The Big Hewer' in the early 1960s.
Around the same time as his 70th celebrations, he wa part of a fund raising concert for the Miners Strike at the London Festival Hall- he was as proud to sit on the platform next to a crowd of strikers representatives as they appeared to be to sit next to him and Peggy.
They all joined in the chorus of 'Blackleg Miners' lustily, along with MacColl's own, 'What Did You Do in the Strike' - the foot-stamping nearly brought the roof in
Great moment or what?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 09 Sep 14 - 10:08 AM

Yes Jim. It is ageism.

Not from me though, but from old farts who don't understand or appreciate the music, preferring their librarian approach to something they hold as sacred yet is just fucking good fun for the other 99% who love folk music.

Dick, thanks. Every time I point out MacColl was an artiste plying his entertainment trade, I get shouted down. Even though it Ewan who told me what he was!

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 09 Sep 14 - 10:04 AM

"But don't dismiss the fucking music..... "
.,,..,

Or even that used for any other purpose?

☺(Ain't old Muskie-buttox an ickle sweetie, just?)☺

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: The Sandman
Date: 09 Sep 14 - 09:55 AM

""MacColl and Lloyd" both sang the songs the heard the older people from the same rat-infested sites, the same pit villages, the same fishing communities I got my songs from"
and lloyd made up some of the songs he "collected".
macColl also borrowed from other traditions to find tunes,not a crticism but a fact, MacColl also used theatrical techniques in his presentation and performance, Lloyd adopted the technique of singing with a smile on his face, which owed nothing to the tradition, so dont get too carried away with the idea that ewan and bert derived their styles from the proletariat or from trad singers, they may have sung some repertoire that derived from tradtional singers , but both of them[ particularly lloyd] did not sing in the style of traditional singers, maccoll was a imo a good singer but he used dramatic effect[ this is not a criticism] in his singing[ which is uncommon in my experience of a lot of trad singers

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Lighter
Date: 09 Sep 14 - 09:39 AM

No, Jim, not you. What you like are indubitably folksongs by
to certain clear and well-known criteria.

I meant people who apply the word very broadly according to criteria largely of their own to any song that has any fancied resemblance at all to the traditionally defined "folksong."

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Sep 14 - 09:05 AM

"Why do so many people want to call their favorite music "folk music""
Me too?
"I repeat doesn't get it -never will."
Get what Al - you have responded to nothing I've said so I presume you haven't read or understood it - that is the real key to "not getting anything".
"MacColl and Lloyd" both sang the songs the heard the older people from the same rat-infested sites, the same pit villages, the same fishing communities I got my songs from.
MacColl spent a great deal of time recording the people that sang them and what they had say about them so we could check he wasn't making it all up - as you appear to be with the songs you call "folk"
How about substantiating your claim - we've registered ours for public access
Jim Carroll