What makes a new song a folk song?

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Howard Jones
Date: 12 Oct 14 - 08:56 AM

"yo have no idea what you will be given when you turn up at a folk club - the suggestions here range from Barnara Allen to Boomtown Rats.
That should not be the case - as with a classical concert, or a jazz session, or a country and western night.... the description of the place should tell you what you will find when you turn up,"

If you go to a 'classical' concert with no further information you will have no idea whether you're going to hear Mozart, Beethoven, or 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence. You won't even know whether there will be a full orchestra or string quartet. A 'jazz' club could be dixieland or bebop or a dozen other very different things, 'country and western' also covers a variety of styles all with different sounds. None of these terms is very helpful on its own, and they'd don't tell you what you will find when you turn up other than in the very broadest terms. All they can do is give you a rough idea what to expect and give you a starting point to narrow it down to your own interests. In this respect the term 'folk' is no different.

My own experience is that clubs calling themselves 'folk clubs' are still largely centred around the conventional idea of folk in its broad sense, including but certainly not restricted to traditional music. Those clubs which want to encourage all sorts usually call themselves 'open mics', not least to attract those performers and audiences who wouldn't be seen dead in a folk club. The problem is that without advance knowledge of who will perform it can be difficult to research in advance whether a particular folk club will suit your own tastes, and unless you can rely on a recommendation finding the right club becomes a matter of trial and error. However where there is an advertised guest list it shouldn't be difficult to find out.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Oct 14 - 08:29 AM

"fecking clear when you turn up at a folk club what kind of folk music you are going to get you look at the guest list."
In the spirit of discussion I'll respond to this up to the point you become abusing or threatening, then you ca find a blank wall to abuse or threaten.
As thiings stand at present, yo have no idea what you will be given when you turn up at a folk club - the suggestions here range from Barnara Allen to Boomtown Rats.
That should not be the case - as with a classical concert, or a jazz session, or a country and western night.... the description of the place should tell you what you will find when you turn up, then you can make your judgement on the quality of what you hear and not whether it was what it said it was going to be.
As for looking the guests up - why should I do that?
I'm a bit like Britten when he suggested "you should try anything once except incest and Morris dancing" - though I would draw a line at the former maybe!
I like to hear new singers I haven't heard before and don't know anything about - reading the ads for many clubs, they don't specify enough to make a reasonable decision.
One of the things there can be no doubt of is that folk music in Britain desperately needs new blood - if that's going to happen, clubs wishing to attract people for the music need t be specific on what type of music they are presenting - that's the way most people I know came in to it.
Anything goes doesn't hack it - you can't please all of the people all of the time.
Ireland has never had much of a club scene, and, in my opinion, song would benefit very much from developing one.
The fact that the scene is largely non-accompanied here is fine, as far as it goes - the repertoire here is largely a non-narrative, lyrical one which really doesn't need and, in my opinion, wouldn't benefit from accompaniment - very few instrumentalists I have heard are competent in accompanying lyrical songs in my opinion, they don't need accompaniment anyway - the Irish song tradition has never been an accompanied one.
Should the scene open up to include the entire repertoire - lyrical, narrative, Irish and Anglo Irish, then perhaps instruments can be added (though I don't believe they are ever needed).
An interesting thing happened a couple of years ago at the Frank Harte Festival, when they advertised a "mysterious guest", who turned out to be Christy Moore.
The organisers contacted Christy and told him that, while they ran an unaccompanied set-up, they would be happy if he brought his guitar along.
He refused, saying he respected their policy and was happy to go along with it.
Would that all performers where as respectful.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 12 Oct 14 - 06:55 AM

..person PLAYING it..

Tsk.

Soddin' iphone.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: The Sandman
Date: 12 Oct 14 - 06:03 AM

"It's music Jim"
Fine - if you aren't going to give us the right to choose what we listen to when we turn up a folk club, call it a music club.
look, its really fecking clear when you turn up at a folk club what kind of folk music you are going to get you look at the guest list. for singers night do a bit of researach on the club organiser and the club residents.
my advice is to avoid singaround clubs the standard in the uk might well be lower,with a few exceptions than guest booking clubs.
singers clubs in ireland its pretty obvious look at the guest list and the residents, 99 per cent of them will be unaccompanied that tells you a lot.
if none of this works just go when it is a guest booked, before you go check on the guest. in my experience, with a few exceptions the standard is much higher on guest nights, booked guests do not read from crib sheets and are generally professional, that is what they are paid for.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 12 Oct 14 - 06:02 AM

Come to a folk club I am playing at.

You can listen to folk music or piss off. You don't get to decide what folk music you hear unless you are the person paying it. At that point, it is a spectator sport, or musical entertainment as it is known. Don't worry, an old bloke rattling on about Walter Pardon, (Pardon? said the audience, granted, said the compere,) is much needed. Ok, the queue at the bar gets a bit longer at that point, but you could aways nip for a piss instead. It's down to what you like, hence the breadth of music you can hear in most folk clubs.

Your choice. It's all folk music, including the new songs the OP innocently asked about.

Aye, exposing absurdity can be boring, but whilst ever you two think you have copyright on a word, I'll keep taking the piss out of your rather silly stance.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Oct 14 - 05:45 AM

"It's music Jim"
Fine - if you aren't going to give us the right to choose what we listen to when we turn up a folk club, call it a music club.
The fact that it's entertainment doesn't stop us thinking about what we listen to
"oh what a bore that musket is"
A 12 bore musket - now there's a thought!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Oct 14 - 05:07 AM

oh what a bore that musket is

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 12 Oct 14 - 04:38 AM

The music doesn't need help from God, it is thriving in a way that is exciting and heartening at the same time. You might like folk music if you bothered to listen to it.



I think I'm getting the gist of the tit trouser credibility. Here goes;

Said Red Molly to James
That's a fine motorbike
With a fol de rol rol


Jim waffling on about difference in policy, says it all. What policy you old fool? It's music. You like it or you don't. For 99% of people who say they like folk, they like the music. Whether Al wrote it yesterday, Tit Trousers learnt it at his mother's knee or Martin Carthy is singing a rock song in a style known to be popular amongst folk loving audiences, th th that's all folk!

I recall one of the Norfolk "originals" who I shan't name because best not shatter the dream, introducing a song he claimed had been sung in a nearby village to him with these words as he was singing them. Including the additional line put in by Nic Jones to make it scan better. 😹 not to mention his colleagues and my dear late family friends Tom and Bertha Brown, who sang one of my songs on the radio, telling Jim Lloyd it was in Tom's family for years.

It's music Jim. The provenance doesn't legitimise it, it gives it a romanticism that new songs can't have. But to distinguish on so called policy grounds??

😆😆😆

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 12 Oct 14 - 03:35 AM

"there is no justification for your gratuitous insults."
There is no justification for your dishonest attacks on fellow performers - in all the time I've been involved in folk song I have never known anybody stoop to the level you have in attacking fellow folk music enthusiasts in the way you have.
Neither have I come across anybody who has attacked source singers in the distastefully insulting manner Muskie has here.
If that is the level of dishonesty, unpleasantness and unfriendliness to be found in today's revival it is little wonder that it is in the state it appears to be.
Those of us who preferred the traditional side of folk song and those who went for the Dylan side of things may have had our differences in policy, but at least we could go our separate ways without having to resort to this level of shit.   
If the pair of you are indicative of what is to be found on today's scene, god help the music.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 11:14 PM

Thanks, Jack. I had forgotten that track. Both, of course, re accompd by Pete's eccentric but excellent bottleneck in open-G.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 05:32 PM

there is no justification for your gratuitous insults. as Jesus said, what profit a man to lie about an evening of insultingly bad music - sub entry level instrumental skills, half remembered lyrics , a lecture on how to lose weight by not eating anthing and fisherman's smocks. these evenings tend to stick in ones memory.

anyway i was drawing it pretty mild. you should have heard what the other traddy clubs said about grey cockers, when i told about my experiences.

the place was notorious.

it might have had all the tags of respectability. Enoch Powell had all the tags of academic respectability - it didn't make him one of the goodies.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 05:21 PM

Only exception I can think of on record is the snatch of Robert Johnson's "Stones in my Passway"

See also 'Motherless Child' on his 1985 EFDSS LP 'Second Wind' on which our hero excels with some blistering bottleneck. Amazingly it's on YouTube so pin back yer lug holes! Saw him do this round then too & was suitably delighted.

Peter Bellamy : Motherless Child

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 05:01 PM

Not sure what the garbled typos were preceding the word desperate, but where I come from, fisherman frocks are kept in a box hidden under the bed with the dichotomies. Saturday night..l might get to open the box when we get home!
😎

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 03:32 PM

"Fishermen's smocks were the unofficial uniform of the Grey Cock Gang. "
Sorry John - now you are openly lying - it simply is not true, you are inventing something that was directly the opposite of what the club was
I was a vistor there on numerous occasions, I was at the 'Park Hose Convention' meetings when the speakers were Roy Palmer and Historian, Edward Thomson - neither of whom would have lent their names to such a club.
Charlie Parker was one of the members of the Critics Group up to its ceasing to exist.
Don't you think you are taking your resentment for not being asked to sing a little too far.
This is the sort of thing the Grey Cock went in for

"Much of the technique was already in his head in 1962 when he prepared The Maker and the Tool , a multi-media documentary drama for presentation at six festivals in major cities run by Arnold Wesker in association with the Trades Councils. It came to full fruition, however, after Parker left the BBC. In the autumn of 1973 a new theatre group, the future Banner Theatre Company in embryo, was gathered from the regular performers at the Grey Cock Folk Club. The initial project was to produce a version of Parker's radio ballad, The Big Hewer, known as Collier Laddie. The show combined Parker's established mix of actuality, folk song and slide projection with dance and movement. Collier Laddie was produced at the Birmingham & Midland Institute, and was so successful that the group decided to take it on tour. From this success, the Banner Theatre Company was born, and over the years 1974 – 1980, Parker was involved in a series of shows with the company which gave it a considerable reputation in both the Labour movement and the community arts world."

AND THIS

As far from 'fishermen's smocks as you could possibly get
Shame on you Al, you deserve all the insulting you get for your dishonesty
Dave Bishop, a long-time Grey Cock supporter and resident, used to be a member of this forum
"Fook me, your looks are important now"
You are not really going to suggest anybody has tey are, are you - now you really are getting desperate Muskie
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 03:02 PM

I am not dishonest . Fishermen's smocks were the unofficial uniform of the Grey Cock Gang. in fact i bought one, cos i felt like the odd man out. i have a photograph somewhere of me in it.

just cos you remember sod all about what the well dressed folksinger in the 1970's was wearing doesn't give you the right to insult me.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 02:35 PM

One positive thing about this thread..
no matter how much some mudcatters might moan about it's length and unpleasantness,
I'm finding it a great memory jogger......

F'rinstance, that Donovan...

If it wasn't for the cod-medievalism of a bunch of his flower power era LP tracks,
I might never have explored 'real' early music recordings in my late teens..

...and come to the realisation that John Renbourn was even better than Donovan
at that sort of thing....

...whilst at the same time I was playing in a locally notorious west country punk band...

Like I said.. diversity and perspective...

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 01:12 PM

Sure, Dick. That's fine. But you addressed the info re Pete, not to readers of the thread in general, but specifically to me for some reason; to which the only possible response on my part was, "Thank you; but I knew that; so what's your point?" Now you have specified what your point was, I have more of an inkling as to whence you are coming! Fair points re Peter's way of writing &c. But can't quite see what you are saying in relation to the topic of the thread, and the specific question asked therein. {He rarely did much blues or jazz singing in public, tho they were a great love of his. Only exception I can think of on record is the snatch of Robert Johnson's "Stones in my Passway" as a brief interpolation on the YT's "Galleries" all those years ago -- 45, to be precise - gawdelpus!}

Regards

≈M≈

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 12:59 PM

Fook me, your looks are important now as well! My fault for referring to tit trousers.   The Wurzels used to dress up, still do I suppose, although Adge Cutler looked more authentic. Bugger, he wrote songs..... 😼

I might wear a westkit, gaitors and tit trousers with braces doing strange things to my nipples on Tuesday night. Live the dream and all that..

Hey Al! I'm the one rubbing shoulders with the megastar here! I used to play at The Brown Cow in Mansfield on the basis you once had. (Although The Ship at Upwey, I played that before you got down there. Family in Weymouth and I spent a summer living there before succumbing to a life down the pit.)

But ah don't want tu gu darn 'pit!

Thas gooin' melad.

Ah fuckin' hate yer! Ah were 'appy darn south like!

Welcome tu reality serri!

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: The Sandman
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 12:48 PM

my point is that Bellamy had many influences on his singing,apart from English traditional singing, he also sang blues as away of expressing himself., but decided not to do it generally speaking on gigs. Why?
I am not sure of the relevance of your remark about him spending time in your house, I am not sure what you are getting upset about has anyone suggested that he was not a friend of yours whats the problem, when Bellamy wrote sang he had many influences, however when he wrote he deliberately wrote in a certain style.
I believe   Peter knew the market he was writing for so restricted his melodies to those that were in the three most common modes found in uk and irish traditional songs, for example fiddlers hill is the same melody as when a mans in love. Peter borrowed a tune from the irish tradition to use for a song about east anglia , he did not write it in a 12 bar blues format, because he knew that was not acceptable for his market. but that does not mean that his singing was not a result of broader influences.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 11:30 AM

"if I hadn't packed in drinking on the weekends..."
Sorry for yout trouble - as they say over here.
"music press promo articles from that period over 40 years ago did try to establish him with some kind of retro 'folkie' persona credibility."
One of the reasons why the press descriptions of 'folk' should be take with a large dose of salt.
I'd forgotten about G, O'S. ad clicking onto him then brought back memories of Darin at his best - I always quite fond of his singing.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 11:22 AM

yeh Carthy recorded one of his songs. now thats what i call divergent thinking....

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 11:14 AM

It's Saturday afternoon Jim....
just think of the crap I could find to post if I hadn't packed in drinking on the weekends...


Though, I wouldn't be surprised if music press promo articles
from that period over 40 years ago
did try to establish him with some kind of retro 'folkie' persona credibility..

I have very distant vague memories of reading such like.



FACT: that 'artist' and Donovan were my first 2 fan obsessions
when I was about 12 and becoming interested in music.
A year or so later Lindisfarne pointed me in the direction
of looking through the Topic LPs in the local library.

Of course I was also getting heavily into Alice Cooper and David Bowie...
and 'old fashioned' bands like The Move, The Who and the Beatles
[in that order]

It's all about diversity and perspective...

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 10:53 AM

"Well he's Irish, he looked like a trad source singer, his voice sounded fairly folky,"
Yes he is, no he didn't, no it didn't, no it doesn't
He looks like a refugee chimney sweep from Mary Poppins and he sounds like an American swing singer from the late forties/early fifties, which fits the tenor of the song perfectly - nothing in any way 'folkie' about it.
I never heard or saw a source singer sounding or looking anything like that - perhaps you might put one up for comparison - otherwise, take your pick from anything Bobby Darin ever did.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 10:29 AM

pfr - don't do that again, please...!

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 10:06 AM

Early 1970s...

Well he's Irish, he looked like a trad source singer, his voice sounded fairly folky,
the song subject matter has a reasonable sense of 'folk' universality.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbFh_VWQdjc

but... errrr... somebody should have had a word with the record arranger & producer...

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 09:02 AM

Don't tell me what Bellamy did, please, Dick. He was one of my closest friends, & I know perfectly well what he did, thank you. I spent many hours in his house listening to his eclectic record collection. But I don't get the point you urge here anyhow.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 08:46 AM

Even at my most knowingly daft & facetious, there is always a core serious subtext,,,,
that's how my personality works... can't help it...

So, I'd find it an interesting 'academic' exercise to hear just how
one of the better Elvis impersonators would tackle
an unaccompanied solo set of some of the dustier old UK trad songs.....

But he'd have to take it seriously, no mucking about and mugging to the audience
for cheap comic affect..............

He could even try doing it as Elvis putting on a British accent
to add variables to the experiment......????


Well... it might edify or amuse some of us for 10 minutes...

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 08:31 AM

"How many years do you have to be singing tit trouser stuff before you can write a folk song?"
You obviously have no intention of responding to me question - says what need to be said really
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 07:40 AM

who would have thought i'd attain your level musket - a humble troubadour rubbing shoulders with a bloke who once met Tony Blair. corblimey guv' -never thought the likes of me.....

depends on your starting point mike. i imagine Geldof was influenced by Dylan, who was influenced by source singers like Clarence Ashley. like i say - every herbert who turns up in at your folk club can be slotted in the folk tradition somewhere. its just a case of not being so exclusive and negative.

Geldof was part of the Dublin, so doubtless there are many who remember him throwing shapes round the local folk scene. in the indifference song - he used all trad musicians -even had a step dancer on top of the pops.

none of which really matters -its not what what some millionaire rock star does that signifies, its what herbert, the floor singer does when the song falls to his tender mercies that turn it back into folk.

well as far as i'm concerned.

Jim - i haven't shown a tenth of the disrespect you have shown to people who keep this folk train on the rails. it was ian campbell who made me reconsider.

i was speaking disparagingly of someone - and he said - al, that guy is the sort of bloke who holds this folkscene together. okay he's not a great singer - but if you want someone to sit on the door, turn up with a PA system, fill in for ten minutes when the guest has got stuck on the motorway - he's there an hour early, and glad to be of service...

i know i'm wasting my time. you see nor understand any of the points, activists like myself and ian engage with. you just come up with this bollocks about we haven't got a definition - neversaid we had.

and then we have the other point - i don't think that walter pardon and sam larner are the mutts nuts.

well... no i don't.   and the reason is this. i have worked most of my life as a professional entertainer. if there were any way i could perform these guys songs in a manner that would entertain - i'd do it. it would solve a lot of problems. i would have the approval of all the folk community. i would be eligible for all sorts of arts council type goodies. eejits would stop asking me why i slip into an american accent.

but fuck it! its not what i see as folk music. its not what brought me into the clubs and the stink of arrogance and moral superiority that comes off many of its supporters is a cultural and enviromental health hazzard.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 07:38 AM

Or for that matter, when did you see Woody Guthrie at a UK folk club ?

😎



How many years do you have to be singing tit trouser stuff before you can write a folk song? It'll be a while before the top grossing folk albums of 2014 can call themselves folk eh?
😹😹😹

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: The Sandman
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 07:21 AM

MGM,
Bellamy spent a lot of time listening to blues and gospel music=and unaccompanied harmony singing from the american tradtion    as well as traditional english songs.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 07:00 AM

What's all this stuff about folk style? I thought the point wasn't about the style but how it was transmitted? You coulldn't say Hal an Tow and Andrew Lammie were in the same style - they're chalk 'n' cheese...

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 06:57 AM

You are now claiming that I have "altered my definition" on another thread, as you have claimed I have "back pedalled" here - both are blatantly untrue
I ask again - where have I done this - or are you going to continue to 'score points' by knowingly making dishonest statements?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 06:42 AM

I've been singing traditional songs for bloody years too. That doesn't make my punk songs folk.

Your silly narrow definitions may be within the genre "folk" but there are many definitions of folk that aren't in your little list. First of all you were both rattling on about the oral tradition and lack of copyright. A few people, not just me, shot that down in flames. Then it was "of the working people." That lasted about five seconds. Now it's folk if the person writing it has been known to sing the odd traditional song.

Pray keep going. In about five years you may have covered about half of folk.

I look on the bright side. Thanks to Michael's latest stab at it, I can introduce 1952 Vincent Black Lightning as a folk song when I perform it and refer tit trousers to Michael if he or she argues otherwise.

😹

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 06:19 AM

I ask purely for information, BTW, Ian.

When did Bob Geldof last sing a song solo with guitar accompaniment in the upstairs room of a pub with wine glass candles on the table?

For that matter, did he ever do so?

Just curious.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 06:06 AM

"You are back-pedalling and I don't blame you."
A total waste of time my asking you, but where exactly am I back pedalling?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 05:32 AM

You don't bloody listen, do you, Ian? Peter Bellamy & Eric Bogle had long years of singing traditional songs and learning about the tradition to draw on when they created their 'folk-style' songs, for which they never claimed any other status. Geldof didn't. & he wasn't folk -- and didn't claim to be; so what point you imagine yourself to be making by bringing his name into the equation I cannot imagine.

But some who are no more 'folkies' than he is do make such claims, supported by those who make a virtue of their selfindulgent antidiscriminatory unselective haphazard singing-horse-lovers tastelessness, as you do. I will occasionally enjoy & sing some of the products of the first group — always in the back of my mind the consciousness that it is good imitation but not true coin; which is OK as long as one isn't trying to purchase with the counterfeit.

If you are really too thick to get this distinction, then bugger off & ride an aardvark with Bob Geldof. And enjoy your selfrighteous sense of all-inclusive anticritical death-to-taxonomies virtuous lack of discrimination. And I hope it keeps fine for you.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 05:18 AM

If you are having a pop at someone Jim, it confuses them if you pay them compliments. "Puts you squarely on Muskie and Al's level."

That would be the level of the vast majority of people who enjoy folk in all its manifestations.

You are back-pedalling and I don't blame you. If it is to enhance your own credibility then fill your boots. If however it is to try to make others look foolish, hoping those reading this either forget or didn't read your earlier odd proclamations, then dream on.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 04:00 AM

"Of course no one here would agree at that point it had become a 'folk song'....."
And there is no reason that it ever should be, as its catchiness is based on pre-war American pop song form which, as enjoyable as it is, bears no relation whatever to folk song in either style or content.
"So long as every few weeks you turn up at your local folk club with your trousers up to your tits and appear authentic"
And once again you feel it necessary to distort our attitude out of all recognition with your offensive descriptions of what folk song is - a pretty clear example that you have no honest argument of your own.
As far as I'm concerned, traditional song is valid enough as an entertainment not to need the phoniness of mock-countrified uniforms (despite Al's dishonest claims that the Birmingham crowd all wore "fishermen's smocks") - that was the stuff of the folk boom - not the Singers Club or The Musical Traditions Club ot The Grey Cock, or the Wayfarers in Manchester or any of Harry Boardman's clubs or the Victoria or the Trawler in Liverpool, or any club I have been associated with.
That has nothing to do with folk song as I knew it - it is a figment of your own invention and is dishonest of you to claim otherwise.
You want to show that either Mike or I have put forward such an idea, please do so, otherwise PLEASE STOP MAKING THINGS UP - YOUR DOING SO ONLY SHOWS THE WEAKNESS OF YOUR OWN ARGUMENTS AND ITS EXACTLY THIS THAT HAS LED TO ANY BITTERNESS AND ACRIMONY HERE
Folk-song is also powerful enough to be used to create new songs which might have become folk songs had the situation still existed to make that possible.   
All the singers Mike mentioned largely based what they did on the folk tradition and any new material they made or sang on traditional song was identifiable as stemming from folk song - which is not what is being argued for here.
MacColl certainly never claimed his songs as 'folk' - he went out of his way to say they weren't - he always described them as 'contemporary songs' in public performances.
NEW BRITON GAZETTE
At the same time he argued that, without new songs being written and performed, the clubs would become little more than museums - I go along with that entirely - but it is not until thoese songs take a life of their own out of the rarefied atmosphere of the folk scene that they will become folk scene - the 'folk' decide what is theirs by making it part of their culture, just as the record-buying public decide what will be 'a hit' - this is not a decision for song writers or club organisers to make.
By the way - missed a bit earlier Bryan:
" Jim would have us believe, there are no other traditional clubs in the country."
It seems you have joined Muskie in inventing attitudes on my behalf - from the beginning I have actually argued that the tradition side of the scene has seriously declined, not that it has disappeared altogether
To suggest otherwise, as you have here, puts you squarely on Muskie and Al's level.
If you disagree with what I have to say, have the decency and honesty to to address what I have to say and not make things up.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 03:34 AM

Looks like Humpty Dumpty had a point...

If Bogle writes a song about an event it is folk. When Geldof writes a song it isn't. Even though both are sung by a bloke with a guitar in the upstairs room of a pub with wine glass candles on the tables next to the beer, an audience of people with beards, even the men, and one old lad in the corner wearing tit trousers muttering to himself about that nice man with a tape recorder who used to take him seriously.

I get it now. If you say it's a folk song eh? But if I say it is???

🙈🙉🙊

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 03:16 AM

Not contradicting any earlier stance. The "Cambridge Guide" entry I ref'd above dates from 1988. My You·tube channel, posted 4 years ago, includes, inter alia, The Band Played Waltzing Matilda & Farewell To The Land. So what's with this 'earler stance', for crying out loud!

God, Ian, I'm soon going to stop reading your posts again: not in anger this time, but because your would-be witty but almost entirely opaque contributions are all so preternaturally bloody BORING! So go & kiss an aardvark!

≈M≈

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 02:31 AM

Mission accomplished. Jim and Michael are happily contradicting their earlier stance.

The poor bugger who started this thread with a genuine question can at last see an answer with consensus.

So long as every few weeks you turn up at your local folk club with your trousers up to your tits and appear authentic as per Jim and Michael's descriptions, you can sing songs you wrote and claim them as folk.

And Jim apparently won't ask you where your Jack boots are.

And Michael won't call the bar stool an aardvark.




Some fucking hope......

😆

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 01:36 AM

Ok.. heres a new song....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PCkvCPvDXk

Probably the catchiest singalong and most fun pop song of the moment.

Right now, I can't imagine any of us would claim it as 'folk'.

However... I could very easily imagine it being folkified up by a makeshift band of folky celebs
lead by one of our leading female 'folk' singers

- particularly that well respected one with the violin -

and going down a treat with the audience on a BBC4 'Folk' TV Awards or Xmas show..

Of course no one here would agree at that point it had become a 'folk song'.....

but........

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 11 Oct 14 - 12:16 AM

Michael and nondescript others who say contemporary folk does not exist or if it does, it isnt folk.
Rather insulting to the Vin Garbutts of this world, not to mention the Seegers etc the other side of the pond...
.,,.
Unfair to me. I have frequently made the point that the creations of many who are themselves versed in, and performers of, traditional songs can well fit into the definition; for example, in my entry on 'The Folk Revival' in The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English (1988) , where I adduced as examples Ewan MacColl, Cyril Tawney, Peter Bellamy, Bob Pegg, Peter Coe. Those mentioned above could be added to this list [altho the Seegers, being US, would not of course have fitted into that particular ref book]. It is to the many others to whom the folk label is often unsuitably affixed who are at issue here.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 10 Oct 14 - 09:43 PM

didn't need a definition when i started
don't need one now

perhaps if the music you say you enjoy had more conspicuous virtues, was more listenable and more memorable.
then maybe you wouldn't need a definition to justify it.

can you think of any other reason the folk have lost all relish for your school of folk music?
god knows if that's all folk music DID consist of - there would have been no folk revival. no network of folk clubs for Ewan and Peggy to tour.

you claim all the time that we dis respect your music. booking the artists, supporting them, offering them our homes to stop in when they were on the road. that's not disrespecting them. is it compulsory to lie and say they are the alpha and omega of folk music.

you claim that we abuse you. i have offered you no insults. but you have called me a clown, dishonest, a liar......no wonder people lose patience with you.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 10 Oct 14 - 08:00 PM

"To be fair, you have to scroll through the myriad posts of Jim and his mates to see why I said what I did."
Before you start apportioning blame, I would point out that my main bone of contention has been the dismissive, insulting and in some cases, extremely personal way this argument has been conducted - particularly towards people who have no part in it and are not part of our folkie world - source singers and Travellers have been subject to somewhat dismissive and occasionally, deeply insulting racist and ageist attacks as thieves and geriatric no-marks    - not on in a discussion on folk song, as far as I'm concerned.
If your problem is my disagreeing with what you have to say it is just that - your problem.
Whether you actually believe what you wrote, or wrote it to wind me up doesn't matter particularly - "that's what you wrote" as the song says - you succeeded in winding me up.
It would be disingenuous of me to point the finger - any fault here lies equally with both of us - you for behaving the way you have, me for rising to the bait - my unreserved apologies to all for the latter.
Richard is, of course right - songs by known authors can and have become folk songs - I have not suggested that they can't,
One of my first statements was that Travellers were making songs right up tp the nineteen nineties and probably still are.
I have argued that modern pop songs cannot become 'folk songs' because they belong to someone else other than the folk and will remain so until we have the mechanism back to make them our own.
You want to argue that we are all 'the folk' - up to you, were back to the talking horse - which gets us back to where we all came in over a century ago.
The fact remains that an identifiable body of songs exists which have undergone a particular process which led them to be called 'folk' - not my doing - long before I was ever a twinkle.....
It is diversive to talk about "rule books" or "libraries" or "copyright".... it is the process and the people involved which makes a song folk - everything else if incidental.
Personally - I don't need '54 or any definition to recognise a folk songs - I have spoken to enough field singers to have learned that they regard a particular body of songs as unique - whatever they choose to call them - we call them 'folk songs' - I go along with that.
It is insulting to nobody to state that fact - I can't for the life of me see why Muskie and Al, both who have written them off a irrelevant and "part of the dim and distant past" and "far less popular than Elvis, et al, should get their knickers in a twist about a genre of songs they have made clear they don't particularly like (whatever lip-service they choose to offer)
My concern is the damage that has been done by the forcing out of traditional songs by material that belongs elsewhere - acculturation is the technical term for what has happened.
Songs by The Boomtown Rats, or Lady Gaga, or Elvis..... will never become folk songs until we all get our mojo back and become participants in our culture rather than recipients of it - it really is as simple as that.
Back to page one again - you don't set out to write a folk song any more than you write a hit song - they become what they become via specific processes.
That is an assessment based on over a century's worth of well-documented and argued research
If you want to change that definition, produce an alternative other than the Humpty Dumpty one - "it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less."
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Musket
Date: 10 Oct 14 - 05:52 PM

I think I understand your post Richard, but struggling a bit with your point?

To be fair, you have to scroll through the myriad posts of Jim and his mates to see why I said what I did.

There are some who see folk as an exclusive 1954 waffle, whereas millions (I use Amazon sales statistics worldwide as my source, publicly available) to denote that folk as a term goes further than diddycoys and so called music of the people who we think existed many years ago.

Before everybody blames both sides in this debate, or pisses off before they got here like Will Fly, it is Jim, Michael and nondescript others who say contemporary folk does not exist or if it does, it isnt folk.

Rather insulting to the Vin Garbutts of this world, not to mention the Seegers etc the other side of the pond...

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 10 Oct 14 - 05:27 PM

Some of the contributors to this thread have reduced themselves to trolls, arguing for the sake of arguing and being gratuitously abusive (and sometimes making asinine assertions into the bargain). Some, sadly, have responded in kind to such provocation. Some have been mostly standing back and occasionally trying to make constructive contributions. Some have made more frequent but still constructive contributions. I name no names, but it's not hard to see who is in which group, and therefore who deserves respect and who deserves scorn.

I don't think anyone has responded specifically to this part of one of Musket's posts:

' Most "traditional" songs "in the oral tradition" have been copyrighted broadsheet ballads before ever tit trousers tried claiming them as from his or her mother's knee.

'I mentioned Famous Flower of Serving Men as an example I happen to know the details of. it was written by Laurence Price and published under copyright in June 1656. If I could be arsed, I could find plenty more.

'No problem, it remains a folk song. It's just that Jim's silly definition that you are supporting for some illogical reason falls at such hurdles. '

a) The "1954" definition is not Jim's personal one but a widely used one, albeit now recognised as imperfect.
b) It does not exclude songs with known composers.

Laurence Price also started on their way some other songs that would now generally be regarded as folk songs even by those who choose to apply the term narrowly.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 10 Oct 14 - 04:28 PM

the thing is that Humpty and Alice don't really attend folk clubs - so generally speaking most people at folk clubs tend to make a valid contribution to the evening. Even if you don't much like what you hear, most of the time you can perceive some relation with the folk process.

Subject: RE: What makes a new song a folk song?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 10 Oct 14 - 04:04 PM

"To be honest, that covers all bases, from reality to Carrollville."
In my opinion, Musketry's " folk is what I choose to call it" is about as unreal as it gets - especially wen it includes Lady Gaga and 'Monday's'
"'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'"
Humpty Dumpty - Alice Through the Looking Glass
Jim Carroll