What makes a new song a folk song?

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 03 Sep 14 - 10:37 AM

I used to collect songs myself you know..

Mainly from Martin Carthy albums.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Lighter
Date: 03 Sep 14 - 09:46 AM

The 1954 definition well describes the kind of song most valued and sought after by collectors.

The encyclopedia definitions describe how the word is used by more recent scholars.

For better or worse, it subsumes the 1954 kind of song.

And the current popular definition subsumes the others in a kind of notional slurry - much the same substance one often encounters in the criticism of art, music, and literature.

It seems inevitable.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Lighter
Date: 03 Sep 14 - 09:18 AM

The definition is serviceable, Jim, but even Oxford waffles and wobbles.

Mention of Dylan, Fairport, and Steeleye muddies the waters, since if the writer didn't think they were, or could be regarded in some way as "folk musicians," he wouldn't have mentioned them. In fact, it blurs the issue almost to the point of this thread.

We all know what a "traditional song collected by Cecil Sharp" will probably be like, but we can no longer know what a "folksong sung by X" will be like.

Howard's comparison to the use of "classical" music is right on the money.

In some contexts narrow application may be useful, but not in others.

BTW, the assertion that "Woodie" [sic] Guthrie above all others was responsible for revived American interest during the Depression makes me wonder what superficial whippersnapper wrote this article.What about Carl Sandburg? What about the Lomaxes (who discovered and promoted both Guthrie and Lead Belly)? Indeed, before the '50s revival gradually made their names famous, both Guthrie and Lead Belly were rather obscure musicians.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Sep 14 - 08:50 AM

"Stop getting touchy"
Just because you go through life believing everybody is getting at you, it doesn't mean that they're not.
"Can't see the word 'borrowed' in there Jim,"
Covered elsewhere but here goes again, "explored and expanded the form" which is a reference to how it was performed, not what it is - style, not definition.
Not even Steeleye's best friends could claim that they performed'folk songs' in a traditional style, yet their origins remained 'folk'.
"man in the street"
The "man in the street" seldom, if ever refers to folk music as anything at all - one of our great failings.
When he does, it is usually on the basis of misinformation generated by a disinterested media which has also failed to gain public interest for folk music in any shape or form - one of my favourite T.V. programmes is Q.I., which spends an hour at a time bursting such bubbles of inaccuracy.
The nearest the general public en-mass came to folk song is probably via Sharp's Folk Songs For Schools, and later, snippets doled out by such performers as Hall and MacGregor on popular early evening news discussion programmes (names escape me) - both of these were far closer to the real thing than anything else that captured the public interest in any depth.
Those of us involved tend not to go to the man in the street for our information and the meaningless black-hole that the term seems to have plunged into means it will probably be a long time before we get an opportunity (in the U.K. at least.
I wholeheartedly agree with your last sentence.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 03 Sep 14 - 07:27 AM

Actually Jim, I wasn't referring to you. I was referring to the myriad American folk song compilations and the forwards telling us what folk is and isn't.

Stop getting touchy.

A punk band I was in played an upbeat version of Jug of Punch. Thin Lizzy's excellent Whiskey in the Jar, Led Zeppelin's Gallows Pole... It would be churlish to refer them to be anything but rock. No bugger I know would call them folk.

You see, music is an abstraction. No more. No less. So I am right, Jim is right, Al is Al and I recall hearing Kris Kristofferson introducing Me and Bobby McGee. He said "If it sounds like country, I guess it must be a country song."

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Bounty Hound
Date: 03 Sep 14 - 06:42 AM

Can't see the word 'borrowed' in there Jim, what it does do is talk about a 'form' and that dreadful word 'style' two words that could, in the context of the paragraph be interchangeable.

What it actually says is that there are new songs in that 'form' or 'style', and here they are as part of the definition of 'Folk Music'

Precisely what I've been saying, and you've been denying all along!

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Howard Jones
Date: 03 Sep 14 - 06:42 AM

The root cause of the difficulty is that 'folk' can refer both to style and to describe where and how that music came about. These meanings are incompatible, but they are both correct uses of the word. That is how language works, like it or not.

In common usage I'm afraid the second interpretation has all but vanished. To the 'man in the street', but also to non-specialist music journalists, broadcasters and retailers 'folk' describes a particular style of music which helps people to mentally pigeon-hole it more easily, and to look in the appropriate section of the record store. Other terms are used the same way and with equal lack of precision - most orchestral music is not strictly speaking 'classical', but that is a convenient catch-all term which is generally understood.

You would expect that a specialist folk music forum would be more comfortable with the more specialist usage, but apparently not.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Sep 14 - 06:26 AM

"If you actually read what I've posted you'll see an clear acknowledgement that style varies from place to place"
And if you read what I wrote it has nothing to do with style - how can it if it "varies from place to place?"
If style is a defining factor it would remain the same - a song from Chipping Sodbury would sound like one from Ulan Bator.
English songs tend to be narrative in style, Scots the same,
Native Irish songs are mainly descriptive, though Anglo-Irish songs remain with the narrative influence.
Irish language songs are invariably non-narrative - the classic ones are sections of Irish language stories
The denfintion refers to who the songs belonging to 'the folk' (a specific group outlined by early researchers like Laurence Gomme - see, The Village Community with special reference to the origin and form of its survivals in Britain - 1890) - it has always been believed that the songs actually originated with 'the folk' (Steve Gardham has challenges this and claims the majority originated on the Broadside presses - I disagree - it remains unproven one way or the other and almost certainly always shall be)
The fact remains that we received our folk repertoire from 'the folk' - mainly the rural working classes, merchant seamen and Travellers, with a few from industrial workers like the textile industries and miners - that is the origin of the term folk in relation to our songs, music, dance and stories.
"You're looking for definition, and legally binding concepts"
Stop using loaded terms Al - I'm looking for no such thing, but while we're on legality - 'folk song and music' lies in the public domain - how do you think Tom Paxton or Bob Dylan or John Lennon or whoever's songs are performed a folk clubs and "become folk songs" by your non-defintion, would react if you told than w didn't have to ask permission or pay royalties to record their compositions?
Jim Carroll

This is as good a simplified definition of folk song as you are likely to come across - it refers to the revival performers as borrowing from folk, not being part of it.

FROM THE OXFORD ENGLISH REFERENCE DICTIONARY.
FOLK MUSIC n. instrumental or vocal music of traditional origin transmitted orally from generation to generation, whose authorship is often unknown. Folk music tends to have a relatively simple structure and melody, and to use portable instruments such as guitar, violin, harmonica, accordion, and bagpipes. Folk music is often monophonic, consisting of simple unaccompanied tunes although vocal polyphony is common in southern and eastern Europe. While some regions of Europe (e.g. Bulgaria, Romania, the Basque Country, Macedonia, etc.) there has been an uninterrupted there has been a living tradition of folk music, concern began to be felt in the late 19th in Britain and elsewhere that the folk tradition would be lost. Pioneering collectors and revivers of folk music include Cecil Sharp and Percy Grainger in Britain, Dvorák in Bohemia and Moravia and Kodály in Transylvania. During the Depression years in in the U.S. Woodie Guthrie revived interest in the form with his political protest songs: he had a strong influence on later figures such as Bob Dylan, who later performed traditional folk material and also wrote new songs in a folk style. In Britain in the 1960s and 1970s groups like Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span explored and expanded the form; electronic and other less traditional instruments began to be used, giving rise to a style known as folk rock.
Recently much attention has been given to folk music from other cultures (see World Music)

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 03 Sep 14 - 05:56 AM

Back in the 1970s it was either 'Trad Folk' or 'Contemporary Folk'..

Add electric instruments and amps into the mix and it became 'Folk Rock'....

Middle of the road laid back acoustic music with hints of folk,
augmented with bass guitar & drums was 'Soft Rock'

What was difficult about that, we knew more or less exactly what to expect within those categories...

If a 14 year old school kid watching 'The Old Grey Whistle Test' on telly,
reading 'NME', 'Sounds', and 'Melody Maker'
and rummaging through 'Topic' LPs in the town library
could understand those rule of thumb classifications
of 40 years ago..

how come it's such a big problem now !!!???


By those criteria, that's even how we eventually regarded a fair proportion
of newly written punk rock songs
to be considered on the fringes of 'Contemporary Folk'.........

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Bounty Hound
Date: 03 Sep 14 - 05:53 AM

'You're looking for definition, and legally binding concepts, and blueprints where none exist. folk is more evanescent than that. nowadays its being written by call centre workers, teachers, salesmen, computer programmers, students, nurses - whatever people work at nowadays. their voice is no less valid than fishermen, farmers, gypsies - their lives no less full of struggle and heartbreak.'

Nicely put Al, exactly what I was alluding to in my last paragraph above :)

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Bounty Hound
Date: 03 Sep 14 - 05:48 AM

'"What would be really helpful, if you are going to reply to a post is to read it"
You wrote
"'Folk' is the word used to describe the STYLE of the music of the indigenous population,"
It is not - it is a word to describe where and how that music came about - it has nothing whatever to do with the style -
Styles of folk singing vary from place to place, as do the structure of the songs in various parts of the British Isles and America.
The word "folk" has nothing whatever to do with style.'

There you are you see Jim, further evidence that you're not bothering to read, or do not want to understand. If you actually read what I've posted you'll see an clear acknowledgement that style varies from place to place, I actually used the example of different countries, so maybe that made it too difficult for you!

Interestingly, you missed my point when I mentioned acoustic guitars, and then you said: 'What the hell makes the self-penned, navel-gazing introspection , or the regurgitated or imitated pop songs that pass for 'folk-song' any more "real" than that?' Seems like you might be agreeing with me on that one, although perhaps I made the point in a nicer way, pointing out that those songs may not be 'folk' in my eyes, but still very much have a place and a value!

So I'm still a little confused as to whether you simply don't understand, or don't WANT to understand, although I suspect it's the latter!

So, just to recap, 'Folk' IS the word used to describe the STYLE of the music of the indigenous population," (and just to spell it out simply, that could be the indigenous population of a small geographical area or a country) thus it is quite possible to have new or modern folk music if it follows and respects that style (or tradition, if you prefer)

I do find it strange that having worked tirelessly to protect and preserve that tradition, you now appear so insular that you seem to want that tradition to stagnate and die. The ONLY significant difference for this purpose between people writing songs in that style now, and the unknown authors who wrote songs 2 centurys back is precisely that we live in a different age, and therefore know who's written those songs today! Fortunately for us there are enough people writing songs and music in whatever their traditional style is for traditions to be both preserved and developed, and developing a tradition is surely only what you call the 'folk process'!

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 03 Sep 14 - 05:48 AM

classical music - maybe theres some sort of folk process going. Ralph McTell had a go at a guitar version of The Trout, and ascribed it to Mendelson - give a while, it will be traditional.

' I first hard Pete Seeger at The Philharmonic Hall in Liverpool - classical music, no doubt
Last Year I watched some of Ireland's finest traditional singers and musicians in the Abbey Theatre in Dublin - all performing plays, no doubt.'

You're looking for definition, and legally binding concepts, and blueprints where none exist. folk is more evanescent than that. nowadays its being written by call centre workers, teachers, salesmen, computer programmers, students, nurses - whatever people work at nowadays. their voice is no less valid than fishermen, farmers, gypsies - their lives no less full of struggle and heartbreak.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Sep 14 - 05:20 AM

Bit beneath you to resort to the old 'folk police' bit
The real fascists of these argument are those who resort to such garbage in order to suppress or avoid real argument.
You want to to prove me wrong - do so with arguments and not shit like 'I'll call my songs what I want'.
As for 'it doesn't matter because he does't live in England' - I thought Keith was on holiday?
Tsk, tsk - a sad disappointment
" they sing it or hear it in a folk club."
Infantile at it gets - I first hard Pete Seeger at The Philharmonic Hall in Liverpool - classical music, no doubt
Last Year I watched some of Ireland's finest traditional singers and musicians in the Abbey Theatre in Dublin - all performing plays, no doubt.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 03 Sep 14 - 04:13 AM

Don't worry Don. The folk police doesn't live in The UK anyway...

To the many who go out at night for a pint and to enjoy themselves, it's a folk song because they sing it or hear it in a folk club.

Quite right.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Sep 14 - 03:37 AM

"What would be really helpful, if you are going to reply to a post is to read it"
You wrote
"'Folk' is the word used to describe the STYLE of the music of the indigenous population,"
It is not - it is a word to describe where and how that music came about - it has nothing whatever to do with the style -
Styles of folk singing vary from place to place, as do the structure of the songs in various parts of the British Isles and America.
The word "folk" has nothing whatever to do with style.
It would be helpful if you knew what you were talking about and stopped trying to give the impression that you do.
Likewise Al
"Ewan and his pals inadvertently stumbled over a magic formula? the top room of Victorian pub, English beer"
Where on earth did this come from?
MacColl came from a poor working class family of Scots singers and grew up in a household in Northern England where singing was a regular activity.
He was first encountered singing "rare Scots ballads and songs and songs in Scots Gaelic to a cinema queue in in Glasgow in the Hungry Thirties"   
Lloyd spent some time in the Australian Outback and on whaling ships, where he claimed he first encountered folk songs.
The main influence on both of them came from Alan Lomax who, with his father, cut his teeth in the penitentiaries of Texas, recording songs from poor blacks on the chain gangs.
The basis of MacColl's and Lloyd's early repertoires were the songs recorded by the B.B.C. teams that travelled the length and breadth of Britain taking songs from farm labourers, mill workers, miners, deep-sea fishermen, quarrymen....
To them it was 'a workers' music' - that was their inspiration and that was the reason they put so much effort into populaising it.
"Folk clubs with real folks"
What the hell does that mean
When I came onto the scene in Liverpool in the early sixties the clubs were full of dockers, labourers, manual workers, tradesmen with some university students.... a mix of "real" people all listening to and singing the songs that had been given to us, largely by the B.B.C. collectors - got from "real people"
What the hell makes the self-penned, navel-gazing introspection , or the regurgitated or imitated pop songs that pass for 'folk-song' any more "real" than that?
You mentioned Bob Dylan - at least he has now had the balls to admit that he was conning us and that what he was writing was gibberish that even he didn't understand the meaning of - sure, he borrowed from folksong, and managed to make it anodyne and meaningless (sure, he wrote a couple of good songs in the process, but there were many, many more a hundred times better than he ever was).
If someone turns up at a club nowadays and sings Schubert songs, it would become acceptable TO THE CLUBS to describe it as 'folk'.
Folk music from the "real" people has lost an extremely important platform and this has, as far as I am concerned, drawn a large question mark over its future where this has happened.
I wish we could get away from this idea that anybody wishes to stop people singing any type of song they wish - it really is a misrepresentation of all of these arguments.
The term 'folk', as far as I am concerned, is a means to discuss a specific type of music - little more.
It used to be the means in which new people were drawn in to join us in our interest, as listeners, as performers and maybe much more than that - as far as the clubs are concerned, that is no longer the case - the term 'folk' WITHIN THE CLUBS has become meaningless and now just describe music.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Teribus
Date: 03 Sep 14 - 02:36 AM

1: "It only seems to be folk where the looters have taken over the shop."

Could not agree more, evidenced by - "To say it isn't folk according to some, the likes of Mumford & Son are doing quite nicely thank you out of what millions of people recognise as folk... We lemmings can't all be wrong eh? - It's the looters that think and tell others that they are folk - having listened to them "Folk" was a convenient "label" for their 100% commercial output.

2: "Music is relief from the world around you, not a process of achieving your aims."

Tell that to Simon Cowell.

3: Jim Carroll - Date: 29 Aug 14 - 03:59 AM

Excellent post agree with every word of it (Hope that hasn't been too much of a shock to your system)

4: "the midAtlantic adenoidal with a guitar has nearly disappeared!"

Not in Scotland he hasn't.

5: "We have two of the finest traditional music archives in Europe, if not the world (look up the Traditional Irish Music Archive).
Many thousands of youngsters are taking up the music and playing it in traditional styles or experimenting with it - room for all.
This has fed into the tourist industry, bringing thousands to Ireland to listen to, play and learn about (unadulterated) Traditional music each year.
This really hasn't been achieved by faffing around with definitions to please some of the people all of the time, but by someone saying "this is what we are and this is what we are about".
Song has some way to go yet to make up lost ground, but it seems to be getting there slowly.
Our collection has been taken up by our County Library and is due to go on line in the nest couple of months to cater for all tastes, singers, listeners, researchers, cultural and oral historians.... whoever.
We passed on a copy of our work to an authoritative singer friend in the North recently - his comment - "every County should have one".
With a bit of luck......"

And I bet very few if any of those songs or tunes would ever have been created with a view to them being "commercial".

6: ""The folk song revival has and will survive most things, but it won't last five minutes if if falls into the hands of people who don't actually like folk song, and that's the way it's heading"." - Ewan MacColl

Thanks again - 100% correct and in that bit about it being in "the hands of people who don't actually like folk song" - is where and why most "Folk Clubs" are failing - most are now havens for 50s, 60s and 70s failed wannabe "pop stars" who see a "Folk Club" as their last gasp chance to perform.

7: "My biggest difficulty is that the term 'folk' has become so debased as to be meaningless. It has ceased to become a useful label to help discover a particular type of music. When buying music meant ten minutes thumbing through the folk section of a record store that wasn't a problem, but now buying music means browsing through tens of thousands of albums on-line, and the term is used so broadly (especially by iTunes) that very little of what is there is the type of music I am seeking." - Howard Jones

Precisely!! The above illustrates perfectly how the "looters" have taken over the shop.

8: "I attended a regular club and I helped to run another - no problem with either - it gave me exactly what it said on the label.
I made a point of visiting as many other clubs as I could to keep me in touch with what was happening.
Gradually, I stopped going to the latter when they began to be used as dumping grounds for singers who had nothing to do with folk song and just took advantage of the democracy of the folk scene to strut their stuff.
Night after night I left half way through the evening, not having heard a folk song.
I have no idea what kind of music you like or play Al, and quite honestly, I don't care too much - as your arrogant attitude towards the music I know to be folk from half a century of listening and working in the genre, suggests a total disinterest for and ignorance of that music and the people who follow it - it is exactly that attitude that emptied the clubs."

Perfectly put.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Don Firth
Date: 02 Sep 14 - 08:28 PM

Thanks, Phil, that's good to hear. Parts of this thread were beginning to sound as if one flew to the U. K., customs stopped you at Heathrow and excised unacceptable songs from your song list.

The only times I've ever had anyone object to what I sing and the way I perform was a guy who was passing through Seattle from Berkeley, one of the Berkeley Ethnic Purists (this was before Bob Dylan, but he was doing the same thing: roughening the sound of his voice and trying to sound like he'd just rode into town on the turnip truck).

The first thing he objected to was my guitar—a nylon-string classic. "REAL folk singers use steel-string guitars!" he informed me (where does it say that in the Bible?) And he was contemptuous of the fact that I didn't screw around with my voice, I just sang the best I could. Most really good singers of folk songs do just that.

In fact, a very good voice teacher I took some lesson from (really BIG no! no!!) told me to keep my throat relaxed, support my voice with the diaphragm, and sing openly. That way, it should last me all my life—and so far, so good!

By the way, voice lessons don't make you sound like an opera singer. Many aspiring Pavorottis and Renée Flemings wish it were that easy!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Lighter
Date: 02 Sep 14 - 08:27 PM

> there isn't a definition in the world which will include Adieu Sweet Lovely Nancy and also include an open-mic cover version of Fire and Rain.

Well, there *is* that pesky definition from the enormous "American Folklore: An Encyclopedia" suggesting that "folksongs" share common ground with "folklore," which is then defined as "verbal arts" or "vernacular culture" or "expressive culture."

Both "Lovely Nancy" and an amateur try at "Fire and Rain" would seem to fit easily into "expressive culture," at the very least. "Vernacular" too.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Lighter
Date: 02 Sep 14 - 08:23 PM

> there isn't a definition in the world which will include Adieu Sweet Lovely Nancy and also include an open-mic cover version of Fire and Rain.

Well, there *is* that pesky definition from the enormous "American Folklore: An Encyclopedia" suggesting that "folksongs" share common ground with "folklore," which is then defined as "verbal arts" or "vernacular culture" or "expressive culture."

Both "Lovely Nancy" and an amateur try at "Fire and Rain" would seem to fit easily into "expressive culture," at the very least. "Vernacular" too.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 02 Sep 14 - 08:04 PM

The last time I took a chance on an informal night out advertised as 'FOLK'
was getting on 6 - 10 years ago.

A great atmospheric old fashioned pub in Clevedon selling Thatchers Trad on tap.
The mrs and me were on a day out for our wedding anniversary,
had already spent the late afternoon in that pub,
when we noticed the poster for "Folk Night Tonight"

So we agreed, ok, we'll not bother with the last bus,
it's our anniversary, we'll treat ourselves to a very expensive taxi home after pub closing time.

Big mistake... there was one solitary hippy looking fiddler
who played a couple of pretty decent trad tunes to a completely indifferent smarmy looking clique,
before they elbowed him out the way to sing Beatles songs for the rest of the night,
strumming away a few basic beginners chords on their immaculate shiny high price tag acoustic guitars..

Sod that... the taxi home cost a fortune !!!

I'll stick to my 1970s Folk Rock CDs and whatever new stuff mudcatters suggest on youtube.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 02 Sep 14 - 07:45 PM

Don - no one ever tells anyone what they can and cannot sing. It's a complete red herring. I was at a folk club the other night whose MC told me in fairly stern terms, at the start of the night, that they were very much on the traditional side of things. Two hours later I'd heard Rose of Allendale, Farewell to the Gold, a couple of Kiplings and several original songs.

I started a thread a few years back asking for first-hand experiences of the "Folk Police" - i.e. organisers telling a performer that they shouldn't sing song X, because it wasn't Genuine Folk. I think one person came up with a story that fitted; mostly the only prohibition anyone could remember was of incompetence - and that was pretty rare.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 02 Sep 14 - 07:36 PM

It seems to me that nobody's got a definition they're happy with, apart from the 1954 definition (folk = traditional = oral transmission). This is understandable: nobody wants to define 'folk' to exclude traditional songs, but there isn't a definition in the world which will include Adieu Sweet Lovely Nancy and also include an open-mic cover version of Fire and Rain.

I'll ask the question another way: what would actually change if we all woke up tomorrow morning with the 1954 definition permanently engraved in our brains? Would it stop anyone from playing the songs they want to play or listening to the kind of music they want to listen to?

My main singaround calls itself "mostly but not exclusively traditional"; no F-word there, no change required. I sometimes go to a Folk Club whose website announces that "a mix of young singer-songwriters and life-hardened old timers play all kinds of music" (which, in my experience, is about right). They'd probably have to call themselves an Acoustic Club instead. But nothing would actually change - the same people would go and play the same music, some of it (but not much of it) traditional.

All you singer-songwriters and sub-Thompson plankbashers: if, all of a sudden, you couldn't refer to your songs as 'folk', what would it actually cost you?

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Don Firth
Date: 02 Sep 14 - 07:35 PM

Sorry, but—

I have sung in concert halls, coffeehouses, on television, occasionally at hospitals and retirement homes, at folk festivals, at song circles, at dozens of house concerts, and at open mikes. And maybe thousands of "hootenannies" (a few, public multi-performer concerts, but mostly unstructured "free-for-alls" in somebody's living room).   At one event, I sang to an audience of 6,000. (With that many people in an outdoor venue, applause is a bit eerie—it sounds like surf.)

The vast majority of the songs I sing are folk songs, certified and ordained by people such as the Lomaxes, Child, Sharp, Sandberg, and other collectors. I do sing a few songs, such as two poems that friends of mine have set to music, and the occasional song like "Copper Kettle," written by Ed Beddow for a "folk opera."

I have never performed in a "folk club." And from what I read here, I don't think I ever want to.

NO ONE is going to tell me what I can and cannot sing.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 02 Sep 14 - 06:50 PM

..and how did you know the colour of my eyes...?? nah, that's gotta be a lucky guess.

Anyway, I'm not even sure if there is a trad folk club, anywhere near our town and colleges anymore ??
The main college does have an excellent reputation for music and performance arts.
Until recently there were local council funded festivals at parks and venues
for the students to take their first big steps in public.
The usual mix of punk/metal bands, and acoustic singer/songwriters

Now maybe just a couple of cafes and wine bars provide encouragement
for the more determined acoustic singer/songwriters?

Maybe for that reason I think the one remaining small guitar shop
probably sells more beginners acoustics than electrics.
I admit I'm a bit out of touch the last 2 or 3 years,
but I don't remember ever hearing a young acoustic kid perform
a 'trad folk song' at any of the local promotional gigs and events for teen student gigs
I attended since I moved back to this area 15 years ago.
[and I was involved in an active network of community music projects - dating back to the 1980s
- while the local councils could afford them]

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Amos
Date: 02 Sep 14 - 06:49 PM

I thought this would be an interestig thread to follow, being as how I do dabble in folk songs. But unfortunately I find it laced with the same acid tones and venom as so many of our other threads, where the simple courtesies of dialogue are abandoned for uncivil invective, insult, and arrogant assertion.

What would it take to move the nasty off the 'Cat in favor of a more fundamental human affinity and respect for civil exchange?

A

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 02 Sep 14 - 06:44 PM

punkfolkrocker: hmmm.. young commercially astute 'folk' performers...???

I suspect Musket doesn't mean albums by "commercially astute" coat-tail-hangers such as the Mumfords, but by young people like Gilmore/Roberts or the Carrivick Sisters who whilst being excellent musicians are very unlikely to break into mainstream commerciality. I may be wrong here, and putting words into his mouth, but certainly those and other talented artistes who are unlikely ever to become household names form the majority of "folky" albums *I've* bought in the last year.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 02 Sep 14 - 06:16 PM

I first played in a rock band at 15
at my cousin's engagement party,
she was 13 or 14..
he was in his mid 20s.............
but that was the semi-rural west country for you...

Now there's subject matter enough for a brand new folk song.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 02 Sep 14 - 06:07 PM

I first played in a folk club at 16.

Fuck you, blue eyes.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 02 Sep 14 - 05:54 PM

"If folk is dying, why are most of the albums I bought this year by performers young enough to be my kids?*"

hmmm.. young commercially astute 'folk' performers...???

Begs question, to what extent are 6th form performing arts courses pushing 'folk' as a viable 'genre'
for talented teen singers to break into the lower echelons of the music business...
...first rung on the ladder and all that...

What with Techno Dance Pop and R&B markets being well over saturated.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 02 Sep 14 - 05:06 PM

If folk is dying, why are most of the albums I bought this year by performers young enough to be my kids?*

Conversely, how would they react to an old codger telling them their art isn't folk?

I think "folk off" gains in impact what it loses in wit.


*That said, Musket's album of the year to date? Acoustic Classics by Richard Thompson

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Amos
Date: 02 Sep 14 - 04:45 PM

As usually occurs in a group discussion a great deal of smoke and friction is generated because of the conflation of multiple definitions around a single phoneme or word. "Folk" has multiple definitions, of which a few are:

1. A musical category of songs and tunes that have been handed down through time orally or through personal modeling. Folk music is the product of a musical tradition that has been evolved through the process of oral transmission according to Saint Fifty-Four. (His close friends just call him Nineteen).

2. A set of agreements and cultural attributed associated with folk music.

3. A class of non-urban people romantically considered as the backbone of a nation, often used as a pretense for war or other political dodges.

4. A category of musical products such as records or CDs usually involving artists playing acoustic instruments and pretending to be from the class in Definition 3.

5. Musical compositions that try to sound as if they come from the people in Definition 3, by invoking simplistic or romantic sentiments, minimal vocabulary , a bent for melodrama, and weak discrimination as a key plot component in farce or romantic comedy.

It should be immediately clear that if you have one definition in mind, your assertions will sound quite off to a person who has another definition in mind.

A modern singer-songwriter who writes a really great and genuine-sounding "folk" song (e.g., Darcy Farrell, circa 1970) is only doing so under definition 5, and not under definition 1.

A

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 02 Sep 14 - 04:43 PM

i don't think they will die out. you see they contain valuable stuff. look how Bob Dylan wrote them all anew! musicians and poets will always steal the good bits. the useable bits.

its a bit like these women , who say - you're using me ! you're using me!

its when you start thinking there is some virtue in being useless - that's when it will be in trouble.

even the current crop of approved folkies with their ghastly festival slots and programmes on BBC4, and arts council commissions - at least they use it for their own ends.

folksong has so much intrinsic worth and quality that it won't die out.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Lighter
Date: 02 Sep 14 - 04:22 PM

> folk, however you care to define it will die,

Well, with the passage of time (a long time, one hopes) all but one or two of the songs we're arguing about will have been utterly forgotten except by a few antiquarians who will categorize them any way they want. (Perhaps merely as "old songs.")

Otherwise, if a definition becomes thoroughly outmoded and falls into disuse, all that really "dies" is the categorization. The songs outlive it - if people want them to.

To be perfectly serious, cultural style is certainly a factor in the sorts of songs most all of us would agree are truly "folk": traditional titles like "The Bitter Withy" and "The Bonnie Bunch of Roses." Any definition that would exclude pieces like those would probably be laughed out of court. (But consider George Herzog's very narrow definition - mentioned yesterday - which was vetted and approved by folklore scholars.)

What is not so clear is whether a certain style (or any other single factor) should be *insisted on* when thoughtfully applying the "folk" label.

The good thing is that we largely agree on what is indubitably a folksong. We disagree wildly, though, about how to classify questionable cases (according to our preferred definition), and these cases always seem to exist in great numbers.

Categorizing should be a tool, not an obsession. If it suggests further avenues of consideration, it's done its job.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 02 Sep 14 - 03:50 PM

folk is a word like gay, the meaning has shifted since 1954, in common parlance at least.

isn't that the problem? Ewan and his pals inadvertently stumbled over a magic formula? the top room of Victorian pub, English beer, a bohemian atmosphere, entertainment of an intelligent adult nature, the ancient skills of singing folksongs and telling stories rediscovered.
The folk club.....the genie was out of the bottle.

The folk took over the folk clubs. Folk clubs with real folks. We hijacked his great idea, and used it for our own ends. I'm not sorry. It was great!

I loved guitars before folk clubs.. I was a Roy Rogers/Gene Autry fan. The only thing that's really worked out in my life. Some days I can get my guitar in tune.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Bounty Hound
Date: 02 Sep 14 - 03:02 PM

Jim, the origins of the term 'folk' to describe a STYLE of music has it's roots in the word folklaw and IS just a word used to describe music that originates from the tradition of whatever country it is applied to.

What would be really helpful, if you are going to reply to a post is to read it (and perhaps give it some thought) before you reply! You will see that I said that just because something is accompanied by and acoustic guitar it does not necessarily make it 'Folk' as many seem to think, that's where the guitar fits in the context of my post, but either your response was a knee jerk reaction, you did not bother to read and think about it, or you simply feel you have to disagree! Only you know which!

As has been said before, if we all believed the same as you then folk, however you care to define it will die, and we might as well all give up now! However, I'm pleased to say that pe

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Sep 14 - 01:25 PM

"I't, it really is you that don't understand,'Folk' is just a word coined to describe a particular type and style of music in the same way as jazz, pop, rock etc etc! "
And what you don't understand is it isn't any such thing
It is a word coined to describe the origins of a song, story, custom tune, dance belief.... and a whole number of other related disciplines that have undergone a certain process - style, type or form have nothing whatever to do with the term - totally with Lighter on this one.
By the way -I'm not sure where you think the acoustic guitar fits into all of this, by and large, the British and Irish traditions were unaccompanied - the guitar was a very handy revival tool introduced into the revival by modern folkies to perform folk songs - tried hard myself but could never get the hang of it so I got my mate to do it for me when AND IF I needed it.
Spain maybe, not Norfolk.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 02 Sep 14 - 01:23 PM

The fact that literacy has played a major part in the transmission of folk songs is now becoming more recognised, but exactly what part that has been has yet to be fully understood.

and then

"You admit literacy has changed things."
I don't admit it - it has been a recognised fact from day one of Britain's interest in folk song and was fully recognised by all who wrote about it - I did say it wasn't straightforward, but you choose to ignore that.

you don't make it easy Jim.

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

Jim Carroll
The list of songwriters I gave you are not down to subjectivity, by the way, they are those who have, consciously or unconsciously, drawn on traditional forms to make new songs - their compositions all show evidence of this fact.
(Nothing Jim said before this line in his post was remotely relevant to the question I am trying to get him to answer.)

An excellent list, Jim. One I know personally, several I greatly admire and some I've never heard of but I'll trust your judgement. None of the songs they have written fit the 1954 definition. Their presence on the list is entirely subjective. It's your list. You chose who to put on it. As I said, I realise a definition is impossible but this list gets me no nearer an objective criterion . How can I tell whether the works of Brian Bedford, Roger Bryant, Jon Heslop, Mike O'Connor, Graham Moore, Mick Ryan, Lennon and McCartney, Sandra Kerr, Buddy Holly, Frankie Armstrong, Bob Dylan, Gordon Sumner... fit in with "what it says on the tin" for a folk club?

You haven't the slightest idea what I read and draw from the internet you arrogant little pratt, how dare you make such an assumption.

Ya gorra larf. I was going by what you post on Mudcat.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 02 Sep 14 - 01:01 PM

Ok. Time to re-genre my iTunes.

Smoke on the water -Deep Purple, that's a folk song.

Scarborough Fair - Martin Carthy, not any longer it isn't.

Hurry up Harry -Sham 69, possible? Of the people and all that.

Too drunk to fuck - Dead Kennedys, the song isn't, the band are though by definition.

198,567 to go...

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Lighter
Date: 02 Sep 14 - 12:27 PM

> the STYLE of the music of the indigenous population

Heh heh. How many styles does that give us in the USA - or even in   Britain and Ireland?

Teenagers are pretty indigenous.

And how much of the indigenous population? Dixieland has been around for a hundred years, beloved by a fair number, though perhaps a minority. Is it "folk music"? Were the blues "folk music" when hardly anyone knew of them? Maybe now they are. Or some of them. Or not.

Does it make complete sense (or any or none?) to lump these things together, plus Lord Randall, Edward, and "Old Chisholm Trail"? I begin to weary ....

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Bounty Hound
Date: 02 Sep 14 - 11:48 AM

Jim, if you read what I actually said, you will see very clearly that I was not suggesting that ALL new songs have to follow a prescribed pattern.

With all due respect, it really is you that don't understand, 'Folk' is just a word coined to describe a particular type and style of music in the same way as jazz, pop, rock etc etc!

'Folk' is the word used to describe the STYLE of the music of the indigenous population, as in African folk music, Russian folk music etc, the word itself has nothing to do with the 'process' you are so hung up on.

Once you grasp this very simple concept, accepting that there can be and already are new 'folk' songs will become much easier for you!

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Sep 14 - 11:15 AM

"there is none."
Yes there is and you have it.
There is a general recognition that the '54 is in need of a revisit, but in general, it is the one that has served since it was devised 60 years go.
The points you raised may be "very" inconsistent in your mind but it only takes a few hours discussion with singers who were a part of a living tradition to realise that they are not particularly problematical.
What happens in today's folk clubs is somewhat irrelevant nowadays - there is certainly no consensus of what constitutes folk music, there is probably no interest in the subject any more.
Many club organisers use the term as a catch-all to put on what they wish to - if challenged they might put up some sort of argument such as the tiresome 'talking horse 'adage' to justify their disinterest, but that is as far as it goes.
Usually it's the somewhat irresponsible argument that the prospective punter has no right to expect anything whatever from a club, no matter what it calls itself.      
Clubs have become little more than convenient hat-pegs to hang whatever puts bums on seats.
"There you have it, the 2014 definition."
Not until you have general agreement you don't - tapping it out on your keyboard in the privacy of your own home doesn't make definitions - agreement and usage does.
Try telling some of the people here that they what they write and sing has to be influenced by and respect "the tradition of their country or area of origin" - we've already has Al's "tail wagging the dog" hissy fit.
Most of your other points are covered by '54 anyway, but you continue to miss the point.
Although folk songs tended to follow certain patterns in their creation, how they were made and how they sounded had nothing to do with them being 'folk'.
Up to comparatively recently, children were making songs from the current hit parade, or from television ads - nothing to do with "their country or their area of origin".
Travellers were re-making Country and Western songs to sing about horse fairs, or deals, or life on the road - nothing much to do with "country or area of origin" there either.   
'Folk' isn't a form or style, it''s a method of creation, general acceptance, recognition of ownership, passing on, recreation, ownership again..... and so ad infinitum.
It is when a song is absorbed into this process to one degree or another by communities as a whole, that they become folksongs - and this is very much a case of "Don't call us, we'll call you" - the decision of whether a song is 'folk' is not our decision to make.
Personally, I don't believe the mechanism that once made folk songs
still exists outside the travelling communities, though I would very much like to be proved wrong on this one.
What you propose regarding modern folk songs and tunes might well describe songs created in the folk idiom but they still remain separate entities from the real thing - and you really are going to get up the noses of Al and hiss buddies by suggesting that new songs have to follow old patterns.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 02 Sep 14 - 10:47 AM

"Juke Box Jury" - remember that ???

The format is ideal and needs to be resurrected..

"FOLK BOX JURY"

A panel of top folk pickers* [one must be a sexy dolly bird - it's tradition]
listen to a song and vote "FOLK" or "NOT FOLK" !!!

..easy as that...



[*top folk pickers* - and here lies the only innate flaw in this plan -
who selects this team of argumentative over-opinionated old buggers!!!???]

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Bounty Hound
Date: 02 Sep 14 - 10:17 AM

Lighter and Musket,
no-one said it would be easy, but if we go with this at least we've got a basis for disagreement over the next 60 years ;)

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 02 Sep 14 - 09:32 AM

That'll be fun to try..

Too many freaks, not enough circuses.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Lighter
Date: 02 Sep 14 - 07:59 AM

Not bad, John. Now try to create a consensus.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Lighter
Date: 02 Sep 14 - 07:57 AM

> And your consensually agreed alternative definition is......?

That's the point: though most (though obviously not all)stress oral tradition and variation, there is none.

What I posted are just two *very* inconsistent definitions from expert sources - professional folklorists and/or musicologists/ anthropologists in each case. If the 1954 def. is still somehow "better" (and why would it be?), it isn't because the definers were any more accomplished - so far as I can tell.

Folk clubs are a special case. They've developed historically in a way that leads older people like Jim to reasonably expect a certain kind of song. Others simply don't care about the exceptions. I agree that a "folk club" should concentrate on "folk music," but if some day most of the people involved come to think of rock and rap as "folk music," and that's how their tastes run, you get a new kind of club and need a broader - or, much better, an additional - definition of "folksong." Demanding that they listen to reason won't bring back the past, especially if they won't understand the reasons.

People don't want theory: they want music.

"Folksong" is not a clearly applied, indispensible scientific term like "proton." Our understanding of protons may constantly be improving, but physicists agree on the basic meaning of "proton." All else is details.

There's a big difference here. No professional insists that electrons are really protons, or that some protons aren't protons at all. Reality *forces* a consensus, because without it, experiments and textbooks would become meaningless and discussions dissolve in chaos. That could spell disaster.

But when discussions about a largely subjective label like "folksong" become meaningless and dissolve in chaos, as they tend to, the sole real-world consequences are eye-rolling and a spike in blood pressure.

If it's songs we're interested in, not lists, we'll focus on the songs and not how and why someone else wants to label them.

Meanwhile, nobody seems ready to prescribe once and for all why any of the songs I listed (and there are so many, many more in line) are or are not folksongs, just according to definitions already on this thread. To do so might inadvertently give us some new insights into the songs, but we'd be no closer to agreement on what "makes" a folksong.

A single rigorous, imposed definition of a hazy and disputed concept is neither necessary nor possible. In other words, not worth doing.

Except for people who get a kick out of it, people even more pedantic than I am.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Bounty Hound
Date: 02 Sep 14 - 07:33 AM

So we want a new definition then?

The issue as I see it is that folk clubs and festivals have become a platform for singer/songwriters, many of whom write great songs and are excellent performers, but my personal opinion is that many modern songs should not be regarded as 'folk' merely because they are accompanied by an acoustic guitar. That's not to belittle those songs in any way, as many of them have a real value and have their place. Our OP alluded to this by pointing out that he would regard some of the songs he's written as 'acoustic pop'

We also cannot allow our traditions to stagnate and die, so there must be scope to maintain and develop that tradition.

So how about this as a new definition:

Folk music is the music of the people and of communities.

Traditional folk songs and tunes are those songs or tunes from antiquity that have been passed down by an oral tradition or circulated at the time of writing via broadsheets and similar methods.

Modern folk songs and tunes are those songs or tunes that are influenced by and respect the tradition of their country or area of origin.

Collectively, both can be known as 'folk music'

There you have it, the 2014 definition.

John

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Sep 14 - 05:43 AM

"It sprang from the folk clubs of the fifties and sixties"
No it didn't Al - it capitalised on what was happening in the folk clubs by using them as a platform for a music that had little to do with what was going on, and eventually kicked folk music off that platform in many clubs.
"You admit literacy has changed things."
I don't admit it - it has been a recognised fact from day one of Britain's interest in folk song and was fully recognised by all who wrote about it - I did say it wasn't straightforward, but you choose to ignore that.
What are those changes and what is the new definition they have brought about?
As Phil has so succinctly put it - "how about one you do agree with? Or are you opposed to defining 'folk music' in any way at all?"
"why do you have to insult people who disagree with you"
I don't - I respond to dishonest and distortion badly - nothing more.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: The Sandman
Date: 02 Sep 14 - 05:09 AM

"You haven't the slightest idea what I read and draw from the internet you arrogant little pratt, how dare you make such an assumption."Jim Carroll.
The level of debate reaches a new low,
Jim, why do you have to insult people who disagree with you.