Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 07 Jul 15 - 06:04 AM

Hope you like it!

One of the Carnima Burana poems that features in the Orff setting is CB159 - Tempus Est Iocundum, with its famous O, o, o! Totus floreo! chorus. It wasn't covered by the Clemencic Consort, but the ordinal melody is exquisite. Here's Ensemble Oni Wytars giving it a rare old dressing down with plenty of references to the various European folk idioms that inform so much of medieval music practice today :

Tempus Est Iocundum

Subject: RE: Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?
From: Don Firth
Date: 06 Jul 15 - 03:55 PM

Thanks, Jack.

Got 'em bookmarked to come back to. Unfortunately the sound is out in my computer and I have to call Heath of the GeekSquad to come out and give my computer a good dope-slap!

I'll be back. Thanx again.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 06 Jul 15 - 04:27 AM

During one class, we listened to a recording of Carl Orff's setting of Carmina Burana, a collection of poetry and song, thought to have been written by some of these wandering scholars and compiled sometime in the 13th century.   

Other than Carl Orff's settings, I don't suppose anyone had tackled the Benediktbeuren ms. (AKA Codex Branus / Carmina Burana) originals back in the 1950s, though the first of the two volume of Thomas Binkley & Studio der Fruhen Musik's Carmina Burana was recorded in the early 1960s. However so charming, the Binkley recordings sound very dated to our ears today as back in 1963 the modern performance of medieval music (vocal techniques, instrument reconstruction and technical practice) was still very much in its infancy. Happily Binkley himself would do much to remedy this in the coming years, but scroll on a mere decade to the mid 1970s and you have a landmark recording in the five volumes made by The Clemencic Consort for Harmonia Mundi in France.

Subsequently issued on CD, lost, overlooked, edited, anthologised, deleted, (and latterly re-recorded!) there's a dark authenticity & theatricality about the Clemencic Consort's Carmina Burana : Version Originale & Integrale that captivates and bewilders by turns with its heady mix of scholarship, virtuosity and ribald audacity. I've long pitied the casual listener who might chance upon these volumes under the assumption the music has something to do with Carl Orff...

These days you can listen to it all on YouTube, but here's a wee taste in the form of one of the lyrics Orff used in his setting, heard here as it might have sounded 800 years ago, but 40 seems long enough to me. Contrast & compare!

Clemencic Consort : In Taberna Quando Summus (CB196)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?
From: Don Firth
Date: 06 Jul 15 - 02:04 AM

Yes, there should be a mountain for the early collectors and compilers of folk songs and ballads.

This is an excerpt from a book I am writing.

Here, I talk about Dr. David Fowler's English 401 (The Popular Ballad), a course I took when I was attending the University of Washington in the 1950s:

Most of what I learned about the early minstrels and troubadours came from Dr. Fowler and from some of the books he recommended, such as The Wandering Scholars, by Helen Waddell. During one class, we listened to a recording of Carl Orff's setting of Carmina Burana, a collection of poetry and song, thought to have been written by some of these wandering scholars and compiled sometime in the 13th century.   

Dr. Fowler also recounted stories of some of the early ballad collectors: for example, the bizarre happenstance of how an 18th century clergyman, Bishop Thomas Percy, the Dean of Carlisle, rescued a priceless collection of ballads from piecemeal oblivion. While visiting friends in Shropshire, he noticed the chambermaid was lighting his fire with pages from an old manuscript that she kept under a dresser. Curious, he pulled it out, examined it—and immediately appropriated it. A scholar and antiquarian as well as a theologian, Bishop Percy recognized it as a hundred-year-old hand-written collection of poems and songs, many of which were ballads. Bishop Percy edited what was left of the collection, combined it with other material he had accumulated, and in 1765 published it as Reliques of Ancient English Poetry.

Sometime around 1784, a thirteen-year-old Scottish lad came by a copy of Percy's Reliques. Already fascinated by the history, poetry, and legends of the Scottish Border country, he was enthralled by the ballads in the Reliques. This had a powerful influence on his life. As a young man he turned to collecting ballads, and soon abandoned his Edinburgh law practice in favor of a literary career. One of his first published works, in 1802, was his own collection of ballads, Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. This was followed by The Lay of the Last Minstrel, The Lady of the Lake, Rob Roy, The Heart of Midlothian, and The Bride of Lammermoor (upon which Gaetano Donizetti based his opera "Lucia di Lammermoor"). Then there was perhaps his most famous work, Ivanhoe, the classic adventure story of knights, ladies, chivalry, pageantry, and 13th century villainy and skullduggery, complete with castles under siege, a mysterious Black Knight, and lots of jousting and swordplay. Ivanhoe has come out in at least three movie versions. This was, of course, Sir Walter Scott.

The collections of Percy, Scott, and others were important forerunners and contributors to the monumental achievement of Harvard English Professor Francis James Child. While carrying a full teaching schedule at Harvard and working in his spare time, Professor Child amassed every collection he could lay hands on, including many rare books and manuscripts. With little access to primary sources, he corresponded with other scholars and interested parties who assisted him in his quest. Over time, he managed to accumulate a staggering amount of material. He carefully combed through everything, analyzing, editing, annotating, and rejecting spurious material. He discovered that many of the ballads were actually variations of the same ballad. He collated thousands of ballad texts into groups, finally arriving at 305 distinct ballads. The product of nearly twenty-five years' work, this Herculean feat of scholarship, came out in a five-volume set, between 1882 and 1898. The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. Subsequently, this collection became the definitive and essential reference for ballad scholarship.

Considering the difficulties under which Child worked (many of his colleagues didn't have a clue as to what he was doing and why he even bothered with it), it is astounding that since that time, ballad collectors have found only about a half-dozen additional ballads (and those very rare) beyond the 305 which fit Child's carefully reasoned criteria for what constitutes an authentic folk ballad.

In songbooks and on the backs of record jackets, one sometimes sees notations in parentheses following a song title, e.g., "Lord Randal, (Child #12)" or "Geordie (Child #209)." This identifies the song as one of the 305 ballad types in the Child collection. If one wishes to learn more about a particular ballad or find other versions of it, this is the starting point.

A tribute to Child's scholarship.

Cecil J. Sharp's monumental work in both the U.K. and the United States is equally important. And equally impressive.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 06 Jul 15 - 12:06 AM

"Frances Child"
.,,.

Who? If Guest above meant Francis J Child, then he wasn't a collector, he was an anthologist.

If not, then, again, who?

≈M≈

Subject: RE: Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?
From: Don Firth
Date: 05 Jul 15 - 03:48 PM

Now, there, I agree!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Jul 15 - 02:49 PM

Interesting...most people on this thread think of "folk" as being the Folk Revival group of performers...Northern, or Northern-discovered, and white. Folk music in the South, and other parts of the country, never stopped. I don't see any of the early recording pioneers here, like Doc Boggs, or Lightning Al Hopkins. Nor do I see any collectors here, not famous ones like Cecil Sharp or Frances Child, popular ones like Carl Sandburg, or lesser-knowns. Nor their sources, like Jane Hicks Gentry, from whom Sharp collected over 60 ballads. Nor the Celtic musicians who came and brought their music. And not too many African-Americans made people's lists, thought the influence of African-American music on what we think of as folk music was huge. Folk music is bigger than the stuff that got recorded in the 50's-60's, or even the 20's. It's ancient. I'd include on a folk Mt. Rushmore the Unknown Singer - a face of no one in particular. That's who kept it going for 250 years.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Jul 15 - 02:14 PM

Loudbelly, Woosy McGuthrie, Poop Seeger, Bob Dlyum.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?
From: Don Firth
Date: 04 Jul 15 - 02:40 PM

Guest, you are deliberately twisting and misinterpreting what I have written, and at the same time, displaying that you know absolutely NOTHING about folk music and its origins and traditions.

I think Charles Seeger, Bess Lomax Hawes, John Lomax Jr., Archie Green, and Roger Abrahams know quite a bit about folk music, and ALL of them sang, although they were not known primarily as singers. I heard John Lomax Jr. sing at the Berkeley Folk Festival in 1960, songs that he and his father and brother collected. And Roger Abrahams is a particularly good singer, in fact, as is Bess Hawes (who was one of the Almanac Singers early on).

Guest, it is patently obviously that you know nothing about folk music.

And you will note that, in the photo you linked to, Pete's shirt does not have a button-down collar. So you're a sartorial ignoramus as well!

Just be a good little troll. Go away and stop pestering the adults!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?
From: GUEST
Date: 04 Jul 15 - 02:04 PM

Don saiys: " we "old fogeys" had folk music pretty well defined until the Fifties, when the "Great Folk Scare" occurred, and hordes of frat boys in look-alike button down collar shirts singing folk songs—to begin with—were suddenly found commercially viable by purveyors of pop music records and music promoters. "Folk music" became the $$Big$$Buzz$$Word and everybody and his pet turkey started writing "folk songs"

Did those frat boys look anything like this pic?
Frat boy straight outta Harvard

I guess we should be taking Seeger off of Rushmore for waering the wrong clothes. Same as the punx. Also, for earning money at the profession.


Don says: "I've been at this for something like Sixty years, and in that time I have talked with many of the authorities in the field. Seeger and Richard Dyer-Bennet, as aforementioned, but also such people as Charles Seeger, Bess Lomax Hawes, John Lomax Jr., Archie Green, Roger Abrahams, and a whole litany of authorities in the field of folk music that you have probably never heard of."

Not one of the people on your list is or ever was a folksinger. Pete was a singer of folk songs. When Pete sang for the Civil Rights movement, he lifted a little snippet of a song from the fol and turned it into "We Shall Overcome." Fair enough, folk process and all. But when Pete made a comeback at a Washington D.C. rally against the war in Vietnam, he sang John Lennon's "Give Peace a Chance." Pete was a singer of folk songs and John Lennon was the folksinger.

Therefore - John, Paul, George and Ringo.

Furthermore, Don makes full confession that he and his old folkie cohorts conspired 60 years ago to ban any new genre from popular music being introduced. It has been 60 years or more since any genre from pop music has been admitted to the family or order of the Folk Canon. Give me no reason why (and you will give me no reason why) Bluegrass should be a genre in the order of Folk and Rockabilly cannot be a genre? The implication in Folk Songs of North America is that it would include future modern genres as Folk. One of the last genres to be included was Boogie Woogie and as I was closing the book, my mind pointed directly to Rock and Roll as the next step. And I think Dylan got it right. Dylan also got it right when he gave you phony folk people the finger at Newport 1965. And Dylan never stopped protesting. He just stopped protesting your enemies and started protesting you. I throw my hat in with Dylan on that. He was still protesting you up to John Wesley Harding in the song "As I Went Out One Morning."

You fogies took a wrong turn 60 years ago and killed off Folk music for good, with Seeger as your leader. Dylan walked out of your Fogiefest. You turned the vibrant living art of Folksong into nothing but Fogiesong. You spoiled our fun! BWWWWAHHHHHH

Subject: RE: Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?
From: Mr Red
Date: 04 Jul 15 - 08:18 AM

Perhaps we should nomintate a faceless GUEST as one of the faces carved into a mini Mt Rusmore. Then we could throw rotten tomatoes at it. Then at least he/she will have some form.
And if not I nominate a TROLL as one of the faces. Trolls have been with us since woad &/or chalk was invented. Which make him traditional. Oh shit!

---

If you insist on feeding the trolls then the thread can't be repaired without removing so much content that the thread makes no more sense. But perhaps that is what the troll was hoping to achieve? Don't Feed The Trolls. If you must respond, post a simple statement like "troll alert" with no other remarks. That makes for more tidy pest control. ---mudelf

Subject: RE: Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 04 Jul 15 - 06:06 AM

The best threads on this sort o' thing:

Does Folk Exist?

and...

1954 and All That

Note : the title of this was altered by moderator to 1954 and All That - defining folk music because, and I quote : "1954 and all that" doesn't fit our requirement for clarity in thread titles. I'm going to add something for clarity. A priceless piece of Mudcat fluster for which, I note, someone even thanked them.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?
From: Mr Red
Date: 04 Jul 15 - 03:37 AM

GUEST - there is a Folk tradition, well here in the UK it is very pronounced, it is called "irony".
Folk is what Folk do. Anything else is commercial and no matter how much people think it is Folk, it is revivalist or money-making or both. We accept the label until it offends us then IT AIN'TA GONNA BE FOLK.

Chas & Dave is nearer to Folk than Steeleyespan, because their tradition is pub singalong, and they do it rather well. So They should be carved into Scafell Pike at least. What a lot of definers of Folk fail to see is the "tradition" that we live in. It is everywhere, it is throwaway, it is familiar. Just like the "Seeds of Love" was to John England when C Sharp overheard it. Sharp saw something else. Sharp by name, sharp by nature.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?
From: GUEST,Tony Gillespie
Date: 04 Jul 15 - 12:36 AM

Guest: Please, give it a rest. You've taken a simple, fun exercise and twisted and OVER-ANALYSED all the joy out of it. What is your end game? Do you feel good about how smart you are? We get it. Don't take the fun out of it, please. You overthought it. You win. And now, as the originator of the post, I am asking you politely to back off.

PS...I'm 38. I'm also on Don Firth's side. I guess I'm an old fogey in a younger man's clothes.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?
From: Elmore
Date: 03 Jul 15 - 11:08 PM

Phil Ochs, Odetta, Pete Seeger, Leadbelly.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?
From: Don Firth
Date: 03 Jul 15 - 07:53 PM

Guest, we "old fogeys" had folk music pretty well defined until the Fifties, when the "Great Folk Scare" occurred, and hordes of frat boys in look-alike button down collar shirts singing folk songs—to begin with—were suddenly found commercially viable by purveyors of pop music records and music promoters. "Folk music" became the $$Big$$Buzz$$Word and everybody and his pet turkey started writing "folk songs"

Note: One does not write a folk song. A written song can become a folk song, but that is not something that is determined by simply calling it a folk song.

Nor does one become a folk singer by singing Rock and Roll and calling it "Folk Rock!"

A folk song is like a piece of antique furniture. It becomes a folk song—or an antique—over time and through use. You cannot simply sit down and write a folk song any more than you can go down to your workshop and make an "antique."

I know of damned few songs designated as "folk rock," for example, that are sung by people other than the person or group who wrote them.

Time and usage.

And for personal enjoyment, not commercial exploitation.

It's only the wet-behind the ears types who insist that the song they wrote just yesterday is a folk song--trying to claim a prestige for it--and themselves--that they have not yet earned.

Don Firth

P. S. Now, for Chrissake, let's get back to the subject of this thread!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?
From: GUEST
Date: 03 Jul 15 - 06:22 PM

Sorry Don - But you old fogies are going to die off and we young uns are going to march off into victory. It was your generation who could never define "Folk music" using objective terms. If it didn't make you fall into a swoon, it wasn't folk. That is subjective criteria. This new generation will admit all of those genres that you rejected because of the criteria I am laying out.

What folk giant can you name from before the advent of recorded sound?

What genres since the death of Woody would you admit into the folk repertoire? (I listed every main genre that sprung since then in my previous postings.)

What is your objective criteria for defining folk music?

What is the folk process? (This will determine your definition of "folk music.")

Subject: RE: Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?
From: Don Firth
Date: 03 Jul 15 - 05:55 PM

I don't think so, guest.

I've been at this for something like Sixty years, and in that time I have talked with many of the authorities in the field. Seeger and Richard Dyer-Bennet, as aforementioned, but also such people as Charles Seeger, Bess Lomax Hawes, John Lomax Jr., Archie Green, Roger Abrahams, and a whole litany of authorities in the field of folk music that you have probably never heard of.

You are mere enunciating another variation on the "horse" theme, which has been beaten to death in many threads on this forum.

It won't wash!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?
From: GUEST
Date: 03 Jul 15 - 03:32 PM

Dave - You are not able to define Folk because of the lack of definition of the folk process which is always changing. You are skirting the main issue that has bewildered folkies for more than 75 years.

Yup! Next week, Verdi, Wagner, Puccini.... - Don Firth

Don - Both Folk and Classical are not genres but orders of music which encompass genres. Folk is an order divided into periods represented by genres (such as Cowboy and Rockabilly), just as Classical is an order encompassing periods represented by genres such as French Impressionism.

The Lomaxes envisioned Folk as a map dotted with regions and cultural peaks. Even as the book was published in the early 40's they were including modern sounds like boogie woogie. I refuse to accept Folk as frozen in a 30 year time period from 1929 to 1959. The misunderstanding of the process that the folk process is always in is what has caused this problem in defining Folk. Folk is a collection of popular genres according to Folk Songs of North America. The artists presented in FSoNA introduced new genres. What new genres have been admitted into the folk canon since the publication of FSoNA? None - because the folk process was misinterpreted to be fixed and not itself subject to continued process. I wish I had the Lomaxes and Studs Terkel here on this forum because they would come to my aid.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?
From: GUEST,Dave
Date: 03 Jul 15 - 02:40 PM

Guest, I think that the main point that I would have to agree with is that its a problem that nobody has yet named anyone other than an english speaker. And its a problem with mudcat too. Where are the threads on African folk, Asian folk, even native Australian folk. Nowhere, thats where. There are huge numbers of threads on African-American music, but very, very few on actual African music. Ok, if an African musician takes on western influences, like Ali Farka Toure, then he gets an Obit here, for a traditional musician like Sidiki Diabete, very little. Almost nothing on Asian music. Very little on Eastern European music. When people on here throw in names such as the Everly Brothers and Donovan as folk then I despair. Not that they are not any good, but they are in no way an expression of folk as opposed to commercial culture.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?
From: GUEST
Date: 03 Jul 15 - 01:25 PM

"But is it Folk?" - Mr Red

Why is the answer to this question so elusive? Any thread with the word "folk" is going to come to that old question stated when folk music was threatened into extinction at the turn of the twentieth century. 99.999999999% of the folk music that was ever made has been lost to us. No one named any person that lived previous to the advent of recorded music, except Gerry.

"Wouldn't at least one of the four spots have to be reserved for Anonymous" - Gerry

Gerry - I think all four spots should be reserved for Anonymous.

Stephen Foster is not named. And why not? Our conception of what folk music is has largely been formed by electronic media. And the names that were first mentioned in this thread come from a very tiny window of all folk music. And they are all English speakers.Why is John Dowland not on the list? To keep him or Thomas Morley off the list is to assume that you know what folk music was in the distant past. I say that likewise you may be displacing the folk music of the future.

The Lomaxes perceived folk music as a patchwork of genres from regions and cultural peaks. Folk Songs of North America is just that. It is a documentation of genres current at that time. Folk is not a style or genre. If you can accept Blues and Bluegrass and Country music such as Texas Swing as Folk , it is a small step to the admission of Rockabilly. I can easily replace Pete Seeger with the Everly Brothers or Chuck Berry.

The reason why people would begrudge Disco as Folk is simply intolerance. It is the music of women and gays. And an important cultural peak in the musical landscape of the world. These "folk purists" (really we should mark them as destroyers of the progressive Folk tradition) have no place for Punk because they did not like the music, the audience, the style of dress and behavior. That criteria that they want to apply in defining Folk is subjective. Since the Lomaxes accepted new styles and genres, what newer genres would the folk purists admit as folk music?

Anyone who is a faithful followers of Folk has heard singers of folk songs and folksingers break into Tin Pan Alley classics from the Cole Porter songbook at some time or other. I have no problem with someone singing an Irish tune (oh yeah, these Folk bigots have no problem if you want to admit Irish music - the same ones that had problems admitting the Blues was Folk) and then busting into Smoke on the Water by Deep Purple. Because they are both equally valid as Folk songs - if you would bother to learn what that song is actually about.

Folk Purism = Folk Bigotry

Something else at issue in defining Folk is the folk process. I think that is what is confusing things. We think of the folk process as being an oral tradition practiced in a community, focused upon work. Stephen Foster is hard to accept for some people because we know that in the 1850's there were rural communities in which folk song flourished. There were plantations where real people sang their hearts out. There were mountaineers who panned for gold and silver or cut timber for housing and miners who shipped out materials for industries.v And they sang about it. We recognize those communities of anonymous players as folk.

And that is where we get stuck in defining folk music. Because the process itself is in process and it changes. Folk music is no longer in the same process as back then. From Woody Guthrie to the Almanac Singers to the Weavers and culminating finally with Dylan, folk song became less of an oral tradition produced by communities and more of a written tradition composed by individuals. Dylan showed that you did not need the oral tradition any longer. The oral tradition was for illiterate people who seldom knew how to read and write. Because of their lack of literacy, they took several generations of songsters to refine the songs. Dylan showed that you could produce as fine or better work through a written process. You could read and write your way to better and faster songwriting. And you could do it alone. And that change of process was reject by the folk bigot. They did not realize that the process itself is in process.

In other words, the process is always changing. (If anyone wants to disagree with me on this point I am going to have to ask you to prove it. You have a community here and one that can communicate at near speed of light time. How much folk music has your community produced here together?) Most of the greatest songs today are made by loners. That is just one other way that the process has changed.

Another thing - since 99.9999999% of all folk music ever sung happened before modern recording techniques we do not have an actual record of the process. And now we do. So we can see who is in the process. But that point of view seems to throw us because we want to submerge the best artists of our day into anonymity. We want them to be as submerged as the Anonymous of the past is to us today. But I have to agree with the founding member of the Byrds, Roger McGuinn, who says that the circulation of recorded music is now in the place of the old oral tradition. So the process has simply changed and we need to alter our perception of what is acceptable. If you know how to listen to popular music you can hear an oral conversation going on between the artists. Remember when Neil Young recorded "Alabama" and "Southern Man" and the band Lynyrd Skynyrd replied with "Sweet Home Alabama?" The great conversation is still going on in recorded music today. What throws people is that these may be the minor contributors to the folk process. We you look at the folk tradition prior to recorded sound, these are the people in the process who are now lost to you. Now the whole process is laid out before you in detail and you want to say "That ain't Folk!!" Because you wrongly think of Folk as a genre rather than a collection of genres that represent cultural peaks. And genres change.

I don't think that the Folk tradition should be stuck and frozen in some tiny window of time carved out by the folk bigots and forced upon us. For them, they would be hard put to include anyone in the tradition who sang prior to the advent of the gramophone (simply because they would not be able to recognize what was folk and what was not) and they are unable to select the best artists who represent the folk of the future because the process is flowing right before their own eyes and they don't see it.

We also have to understand how community has changed. Punk was a community and a movement, just as Disco was for the Women and Gay movements. Those genres are documents of those communities. And I warn you to beware of bigots who have trouble with those communities. If they can't accept the choices of community expression, I hold them as false to the folk tradition, because the tradition is progressive.

Howlin' Wolf, Chuck Berry, The Everly Brothers and the Grateful Dead.

If that is not Folk, then nothing else can be Folk. I would rewrite the work of the Lomaxes to include Rockabilly, Soul Psychedelic, Heavy Metal, Disco, Reggae, Punk and Rap. And I am entitled to my opinion.

I have much more to say on this head, but there are moderators around here, and you may never hear from me again.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?
From: GUEST,Gerry
Date: 03 Jul 15 - 08:42 AM

Guest Lin, I live in Australia, and have never seen Eileen McGann perform. After I heard the Herdman, Hills, Mangsen recording of Requiem, I started buying McGann's albums. Fine voice, great taste in what she records, and excellent songs of her own. I'm sure you can find out what she has been up to by doing a little websearch.

Everyone else, sorry for the thread drift.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?
From: GUEST,Riah Sahiltaahk
Date: 03 Jul 15 - 07:06 AM

Seeing Mt Rushmore's in America:

Michael Hurley. Harry Smith. Max Hunter. John Jacob Niles.

If it were in the UK:

Peter Bellamy. Jim Eldon. Harry Cox. Davie Stewart.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?
From: GUEST,Dave
Date: 03 Jul 15 - 03:45 AM

To the Guest posting at 02:44, Led Zeppelin were to some extent steeped in both folk and blues traditions, but that steeping did not always extend so far as to give credit for the authors and arrangers of some of the material they used.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?
From: GUEST,Lin
Date: 03 Jul 15 - 03:02 AM

To Guest Gerry (who posted on July 2, 2015) Canadian artists to be on your folk Mt. Rushmore.

One of the artists you mentioned was Eileen McGann.   
Wow, I was surprised to see her name as not many people have ever heard of her. I don't live in Canada, but I did see her once in concert at an acoustic music venue in California back in about 1996 or 1997.
However, I haven't heard anything about her in many years.
Glad to see that someone else knows who she is - a very fine performer indeed! Is she still performing or released new albums in recent years?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?
From: Janie
Date: 02 Jul 15 - 09:15 PM

The faces would change from week to week, and mood to mood.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 02 Jul 15 - 07:56 PM

"Therefore, we always haver to" Non sequitur.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?
From: GUEST,Tony Gillespie
Date: 02 Jul 15 - 05:24 PM

Guest...(and I think we all know which guest in referring to), your assessment and justification is bastardizing this post. No matter how you want to spin it, if Bob Marley is on a Rushmore, ppl will think raegge. Ramones, punk. Etc...put them all on there, and ppl will think MUSIC in general. That is NOT the point of this post. I was trying to see who ppl hold in the most regard under the umbrella of the FOLK genre. Not the "steeped in folk" genre. Every musician has their influences, many of which have nothing to do with the box their music is usually lumped into. Blame the music industry for labeling things.

With that being said, I don't care if Louis Armstrong was cited as the greatest folk singer... He's not folk. The same as Hank Williams, Sr is not folk despite being called such on his early records.

I appreciate you posting, but please don't come back unless you want to take the question as it was intended. In other words, if you want to come back and try to justify why you think the sky is green, please don't waste your time.

Thx.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?
From: Don Firth
Date: 02 Jul 15 - 03:31 PM

Yup! Next week, Verdi, Wagner, Puccini....

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?
From: GUEST
Date: 02 Jul 15 - 02:44 PM

First off, when John Lomax first began collecting and publishing, he was heavily critized for including cowboy song s and blues in the canon. He stuck to his guns and 50 years later both were included in the canon. Secondly, when Alan Lomax published Folk Songs of North America, he cited Louis Armstrong as being America's most authentic folksinger. Armstrong was pure jazz and pop. He also included Jelly Roll Morton - pure jazz.

Therefore, we always haver to update the folk canon with newer genres. I include these newer genres in teh folk canon - Beatles (especially the psychodelic electronic stuff like Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite, A Day inteh Life and Strawberry Fiends :) Forever) I would include Reggae, Rap, Heavy Metal, Disco and Punk.

Third, Woody Guthrie said that Pete Seeger was a singer of folk songs and that Bob Dylan was a folksinger. Dylan can write! Applied to Rock and Roll, that would make the Byrds singers of folk song and the Beatles folksingers. How strong a writer is your candidate for Rushmore?

Perhaps- Bessie Smith, Daniel Johnston, Bob Marley and the Ramones?

Ruunners up: Sex Pistols, Led Zepplin (both heavily steeped in folk traditions)

Daniel Johnston deserves a write up. This is a real folksinger on keyboards. Peculiar indeed. Johnston spent his teen years making bedroom tapes of him singing away his angst on piano and a wide variety of homemade instuments. Again, steeped in the traditional, he blows the theory of the folk process right out of the water. Folk music no longer needs be the product of a community process. Folk music can be made (and probably ought to be made) by the "lone wolf." With a laptop this is even more possible and I pick Daniel as a model for the future folksingers of this world. His complete repetoire recorded in his teen years are a must for anyone who hopes to understand folk.

Folk music, real folk music, is incredibly progressive. It's not about baking cherry pies and snuggling with your cat on the couch. It's about drug smuggling, gory plane crashes and mass murders. It's about taking on the NSA and standing up for Eddie Snowden. It's New New Left.

And if you are from the UK, you've got no business putting faces on Rushmore! That's vandalism!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 02 Jul 15 - 07:20 AM

If it were strictly Canadian....Kate and Anna McGarrIgle, Bruce Coburn, Helen Creighton.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?
From: GUEST,Gerry
Date: 02 Jul 15 - 07:12 AM

Canadian Mount Folkmore: Joni Mitchell, Gordon Lightfoot, Stan Rogers, and ... Ian & Sylvia? James Keelaghan? Eileen McGann?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?
From: GUEST,Fred McCormick
Date: 02 Jul 15 - 07:11 AM

Joe Heaney, Joe Heaney, Joe Heaney and Joe Heaney. Well it was often said of him that he had a face like granite.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 01 Jul 15 - 07:52 PM

The Ramones played straight-ahead rock and roll, and it's difficult to argue that straight-ahead rock and roll was any more folk music than disco was. The musicians who invented the rock and roll sound, such as Wild Bill Moore (who had previously played in Jazz At The Philharmonic) and Roy Brown (who said he didn't listen to folk blues), were professional entertainers who were working smack in the middle of what was contrived to be _most_ commercial to blacks in the U.S.

Donovan made authentic folk-rock (and was closer to Ray Davies in genius than he usually gets credit for).

"But why is folk music so entwined with the guitar?" It isn't.

"I spose that is as valid as" Validly what?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?
From: GUEST,Tony Gillespie
Date: 01 Jul 15 - 04:17 PM

I agree with Don... no way are The Ramones, Jimi, Janis, etc folk. Period.

I would like to say to Guest Dave that Dylan, while he only belonged to us for a few years, did a lot for the folk resurgence. A lot. To discount him because he later went away from those roots would be unfortunate. Joan went country, then kinda pop. Joni went jazz.

Dylan matters.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?
From: Mr Red
Date: 01 Jul 15 - 03:16 AM

...Hmm. 'Scuse me, I seem to have wandered into the wrong thread....

It is called Continental Drift Don. Some people can move mountains.

But is it Folk?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?
From: GUEST,Dave
Date: 01 Jul 15 - 03:14 AM

Donovan? Dylan? Dylan was authentic for about the first two years of his career, Donovan almost never. Pete Seeger and Ewan MacColl stand out. If asked for two more, those who encouraged and nurtured folk, A.L. Lloyd and Alan Lomax.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?
From: GUEST,Lin
Date: 01 Jul 15 - 01:44 AM

1. Donovan
2. Joan Baez
3. Bob Dylan
4. Peter, Paul & Mary

Subject: RE: Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?
From: Don Firth
Date: 01 Jul 15 - 12:04 AM

...Hmm. 'Scuse me, I seem to have wandered into the wrong thread....

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?
From: GUEST
Date: 30 Jun 15 - 09:36 PM

The Ramones were great folksiingers with electric guitars. But why is folk music so entwined with the guitar? Not many piano players on the list. Probably because the acoutic guitar (and other acoustic instruments) was very portable and excellent for transporting songs throughout a region? But then why admit the electric guitar? The Ramones are definitley folk. Electric folk? We all know the old Dylan story. But there's more to it than that. Jimi, Janis and James all sang about sex, drugs and rock & roll. And I spose that is as valid as singing about cowpoking, train hopping, lumberjacking, steamshipping and cornhusking. That is why I have little taste for 60's "folkies" - because they did not sing about the times as well as the rockers did. A few did but even Dylan was very inconsistent on that point. The rockers and punkers were more consistent with their literary messages.

So my four heads on Rushmore will be the Ramones - original lineup - Joey, Johnny, Dee Dee and Tommy.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 30 Jun 15 - 08:50 PM

"Dylan went electric...." As did Fred McDowell, Mance Lipscomb, Hobart Smith, Bill Broonzy, Sam McGee, Thomas Shaw, Lightnin' Hopkins...

Subject: RE: Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 30 Jun 15 - 08:32 PM

"Folk? If any punk artist is allowed near a Folk Mt Rushmore - it should be Shane McGowan." I thought of him too, and then there's Jonathan Richman. And Prince Albert Hunt.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?
From: GUEST,Desi C
Date: 30 Jun 15 - 08:21 AM

For me it'd have to be Towns Van Zandt, Luke Kelly, Hank Williams Snr, and Johnny Cash

Subject: RE: Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?
From: GUEST
Date: 30 Jun 15 - 06:21 AM

Huddie Ledbetter, Charles Ives, Woody Guthrie, Doc Watson, Bob Dylan. If enough space left: Ornette Coleman...

Subject: RE: Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?
From: GUEST,Roger Knowles
Date: 30 Jun 15 - 04:46 AM

Guthrie, Rambling Jack, Mike Seeger,Peggy Seeger

Subject: RE: Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?
From: Mr Red
Date: 30 Jun 15 - 03:10 AM

Folk? If any punk artist is allowed near a Folk Mt Rushmore - it should be Shane McGowan.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 29 Jun 15 - 07:35 PM

"The Ramones" For folk punk, there were the Fugs (wonderfully terrible, e.g. "Coca-Cola Douche"; their Ed Sanders called himself "punk rock" four years before the Ramones formed), the Holy Modal Rounders (terribly wonderful), and the Godz (terribly terrible).

Subject: RE: Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?
From: frogprince
Date: 29 Jun 15 - 07:11 PM

No votes for Tom Waits ?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?
From: GUEST
Date: 29 Jun 15 - 06:13 PM

The year is 2015 - thus -
The Ramones, Ledbelly, Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Who's on your Folk Mt Rushmore?
From: Murpholly
Date: 29 Jun 15 - 06:40 AM

For us it would have to be the original five Dubliners who kept so much Irish and English Folk alive and re-introduced it to us all. But then O'Donohues in Dublin is better than a mountain because it does not destroy nature and we can enjoy a pint of the black stuff at the same time.