Ireland's Favourite Folk Song

Subject: Ireland's Favourite Folk Song
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Apr 19 - 08:42 PM

RTÉ have a new TV series called Ireland's Favourite Folk Song which begins this weekend, on Sunday 28th April.

After an initial open call for song suggestions, a panel narrowed it down to ten songs which will be featured on the series and then viewers can vote for their favourite of the ten songs.

Any guesses on which songs will be featured and which song might win?

Subject: RE: Ireland's Favourite Folk Song
From: GUEST,Guest
Date: 24 Apr 19 - 09:55 PM

Fields of Athenry
Wild Mountain Thyme (Scots/Irish crossover)
Danny Boy.(Irish/English crossover). Hackneyed, but truly Irish favourites.
Do Pogues songs count.. ? what is folk what is pop? As soon as you use the word 'panel' then cultural bias and trendiness comes into it... the emperor's new clothes syndrome. It is no longer Ireland's favourite song but whichever writer or recording has kudos with the panel members and their own backgrounds.

Subject: RE: Ireland's Favourite Folk Song
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Apr 19 - 10:43 PM

The Foggy Dew; that's a no brainer.

Subject: RE: Ireland's Favourite Folk Song
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 25 Apr 19 - 05:16 AM

I think, from the way 'folk' seems to be understood by the mass media (everywhere), that mumbling incoherently into guitars or shouting over a loud band will run off with the prizes here
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Ireland's Favourite Folk Song
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 25 Apr 19 - 05:49 AM

Galway Bay

Are we allowed Raglan Road?

Mountains of Mourne (my grandad's party piece after a pint or six: my gran's name was Mary-Ann and he'd pat her on the head as he sang the first line, "Oh Mary this London's a wonderful sight..." upon which she'd snap, "Sit down you silly old bugger..."

Subject: RE: Ireland's Favourite Folk Song
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 25 Apr 19 - 06:19 AM

"Galway Bay"
YOU CAN HAVE THIS ONE - FAR BETTER IMO
Not so sure about the other, even though my mam loved it
Jim

Subject: RE: Ireland's Favourite Folk Song
From: Marje
Date: 25 Apr 19 - 06:28 AM

It'd be interesting to know how this list, when it appears, compares with the favourite Irish (or pseudo-Irish) songs ouside Ireland (e.g. in England or the US).

I hope someone who sees it can post the final list on here. We'll probably pull it apart, saying, "That one's Scottish", "This one's by Ewan MacColl" etc ....

...but if you tried this exercise in England on national TV, outside the folk circuit, most viewers would struggle to name even a handful of English folk songs.

Marje

Subject: RE: Ireland's Favourite Folk Song
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 25 Apr 19 - 07:19 AM

These competitions are usually fairly useless and quite often damaging
Thhey are run by people who don't know the first about the music in question and are usually decided by similar people who have the ear of the media
Far more reliable to ask The Irish Traditional Music Archive or 'The Goilin' or 'The Cobblestone' clubs for advice, but these are usually the last people whose opinions are taken into consideration
Jim

Subject: RE: Ireland's Favourite Folk Song
From: GUEST,Allan Conn
Date: 25 Apr 19 - 07:33 AM

To be fair Marje the title of the programme is seemingly "Ireland's Favourite Folk Songs" and not "Ireland's Favourite Irish Folk Songs" :-) Though I do kind of agree with others that it will end up as choose a favourite out of this list pre-set by some supposed 'experts'. It is like the recent Greatest People Of The 20thC which was recently on BBC. David Bowie was voted the greatest entertainer of the 20thC - but he was only up against another three people. Billie Holiday, Charlie Chaplin and Marilyn Monroe. Hardly representative of who the public at large might regard as their favourites. And I've always been a huge Bowie fan....

Subject: RE: Ireland's Favourite Folk Song
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 25 Apr 19 - 08:01 AM

Good chance 'Galway girl' is going to do well ;-)

Because that's the point isn't it, it's not a competition to find Ireland's most appreciated traditional song.

Subject: RE: Ireland's Favourite Folk Song
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Apr 19 - 08:29 AM

Yep Allen that Bowie one was ludicrous, as much as we all love Bowie at his best - he was not the greatest entertainer of his century, though he has his place among all the other figures. And in terms of recordings he made an amount of stinking material as well as total classics. Death and media sainthood makes people forget the trash.    In the case of the Irish songs, Maybe they feel the public need guiding in case 90% of them go for 'Danny Boy' or similar. Also conceivably, without pre-selection someone could orchestrate a hijacking social media campaign to vote for an IRA or Loyalist sectarian politically themed song. I look forward to seeing this one unfold.

Subject: RE: Ireland's Favourite Folk Song
From: Thompson
Date: 25 Apr 19 - 08:50 AM

Apparently the shortlist is The Green Fields of France, The Foggy Dew, Danny Boy, A Rainy Night in Soho and On Raglan Road.
.

Subject: RE: Ireland's Favourite Folk Song
From: Marje
Date: 25 Apr 19 - 09:02 AM

Fair point, Allan, it doesn't say the song has to be Irish, so they're free to choose No Man's Land (the title that Eric Bogle actually gave to TGFOF) if they want to.

Marje

Subject: RE: Ireland's Favourite Folk Song
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 25 Apr 19 - 09:02 AM

Rainy Night is my favourite Pogues song. Sublime. I'll definitely go with Raglan Road as long as it's Luke singing it. And the Rising Of The Moon, Luke again.

Subject: RE: Ireland's Favourite Folk Song
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 25 Apr 19 - 09:09 AM

There's a shortlist of ten songs.

RTE blurb for Ireland's favourite folksong

Bear in mind this is not about musicians or singers' preferences, it's about 'what song will you sing along to at parties' as they put it when calling for submissions (although in fairness, there were a few other reasons given to nominate a song).

Subject: RE: Ireland's Favourite Folk Song
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 25 Apr 19 - 10:07 AM

I think Shane McGowan's 'Rainy Night in Soho' makes my point perfectly - it may be many things but a 'folk song' it ain't
Jim

Subject: RE: Ireland's Favourite Folk Song
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 25 Apr 19 - 10:11 AM

Hey, Jim, I always thought that a folk song was just a pop song with a fiddle in it...


I'll get me coat then...

Subject: RE: Ireland's Favourite Folk Song
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 25 Apr 19 - 10:18 AM

She Moves Through The Fair would be my choice.

Subject: RE: Ireland's Favourite Folk Song
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Apr 19 - 01:09 PM

Any chance an Irish language song will be considered?

Subject: RE: Ireland's Favourite Folk Song
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 25 Apr 19 - 01:13 PM

"Any chance an Irish language song will be considered?"
I doubt if any of those concerned can speak Irish - some of them have trouble with English since it went Estuary
Jim

Subject: RE: Ireland's Favourite Folk Song
From: Thompson
Date: 25 Apr 19 - 03:03 PM

Nope, that's the shortlist. I don't know where RTE got it from. Mary Black is doing a series of programmes with two of these songs in each.

Subject: RE: Ireland's Favourite Folk Song
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 25 Apr 19 - 03:10 PM

Shawls of Erin?

I'll get me coat!

Subject: RE: Ireland's Favourite Folk Song
From: peteglasgow
Date: 25 Apr 19 - 03:41 PM

my lovely horse?

Subject: RE: Ireland's Favourite Folk Song
From: Jos
Date: 25 Apr 19 - 04:16 PM

According to Peter Laban's link that's half the shortlist - five more to come tomorrow (Friday):

"The public nominated over 1,300 songs, giving the Ireland's Favourite Folk Song jury a mammoth task to whittle that down to just 10. The first five to make the Ireland's Favourite Folk Song shortlist are The Green Fields of France, The Foggy Dew, Danny Boy, A Rainy Night in SoHo and On Raglan Road.

Voting opens tomorrow, Friday April 26th, directly following the announcement of the final five songs on the shortlist."

Subject: RE: Ireland's Favourite Folk Song
From: John P
Date: 25 Apr 19 - 05:36 PM

Why are we so obsessed with popularity contests? Does it really matter to anyone what someone else's favorite is? Music as competition has never seemed like a good thing to me.

Subject: RE: Ireland's Favourite Folk Song
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Apr 19 - 10:07 PM

a load of baloney

Subject: RE: Ireland's Favourite Folk Song
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 25 Apr 19 - 11:07 PM

"We're Off To Dublin in the Green" 

"Whack Fol De Diddle Dee/The Orange and the Green"

"Come Out ye Black and Tans"


"Wind that shakes the Barley "


"Stick your Decommision Up Your A$$"

"My little Armalite"

"Amhrán na bhFiann "(The Soldiers' Song)

"A Nation Once Again"

"Arthur McBride"

"Some Say the Devil is Dead"

"The Fields of Athenry"

"There's No One As Irish As Donald Trump"

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

Well GUEST..it is certainly a load of.....putrid

Subject: RE: Ireland's Favourite Folk Song
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Apr 19 - 02:55 AM

Steve - more true than you think. Most "folk" songs we know seem to have been 18th or 19th century popular songs (or even 20th).

Subject: RE: Ireland's Favourite Folk Song
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Apr 19 - 03:36 AM

Ding Dong Denny O’Reilly and the Hairy Bowsies have two contenders.

1. The craic we had the day we died for Ireland.

2. The Potatoes aren’t looking the best

Subject: RE: Ireland's Favourite Folk Song
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 26 Apr 19 - 03:40 AM

"Music as competition has never seemed like a good thing to me."
Amen to that - competitions are for winners - only the first three ever win anything

"Most "folk" songs we know seem to have been 18th or 19th century popular songs (or even 20th).
Nobody knows where most (or even a few) folk songs originated - all we know for certain is that they have been around for quite a while
Most 18th, 19th and a few early 20th century songs either sank without trace or survived only in print - most popular songs tend to have been quickly forgotten by the people (popular only for a short time)
Jim

Subject: RE: Ireland's Favourite Folk Song
From: GUEST,Allan Conn
Date: 26 Apr 19 - 04:42 AM

If the public nominated 1300 songs then one wonders why they need anyone to whittle them down to 10? You'd think it'd just be the 10 most nominated songs and take it from there. Unless they want to engineer what the 10 most popular are - which kind of defeats any purpose.

Subject: RE: Ireland's Favourite Folk Song
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 26 Apr 19 - 04:52 AM

I think it will be a question of perception rather than anything. As has been discussed before, what the general public perceive as a folk song may not be a folk song according to aficionados. As we are discussing a 'popularity contest' I think there is little hope that the aficionados outnumber the general public. These things are light entertainment, not meaningful insights into a minority genre.

Subject: RE: Ireland's Favourite Folk Song
From: GUEST,jim bainbridge
Date: 26 Apr 19 - 05:28 AM

When I played music & organised sessions in west Cork 1989-2000, the most commonly performed song by local people was 'Summertime' (and the livin' is easy)

Subject: RE: Ireland's Favourite Folk Song
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 26 Apr 19 - 05:33 AM

There is a great danger that this will end up as a market ploy to discover the most marketable folk songs
The last thing the Irish folk scene needs now is another folk boom
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Ireland's Favourite Folk Song
From: Jack Campin
Date: 26 Apr 19 - 07:11 AM

"Summertime" has to be one of the greatest successes ever by someone Jim Carroll would classify as a broadside hack. It must have been far more widely transmitted orally than anything ever found by a field collector. (And the words are still in copyright: Ira Gershwin lived to 1983).

Never mind Ireland, it must be close to being the Anglophone world's favourite folk song.

Subject: RE: Ireland's Favourite Folk Song
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 26 Apr 19 - 08:14 AM

Unless George Gershwin changed his job in midstream, the beautiful 'Summertime' is as far from the output of 'broadside hacks' as you can get
Popularity has nothing to do with songs being passed through a process to become traditional
The fact that it remains the property of the Gershwin estate means it can never be claimed by the folk - it is not a folk song if the term 'folk' is to mean anything - sorry   
I was making a point - not trying to start a 'what is folk' argument
Of all places, Ireland tends to not have the problem of identifying traditional songs and music that Britain now appears to have
The media is a different kettle of fish
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Ireland's Favourite Folk Song
From: GUEST,jim bainbridge
Date: 26 Apr 19 - 12:08 PM

I'm not interested in another 'what is folk' thread either.

But the 'folk' seem to have accepted 'Summertime' as the kind of song 'sung at parties' - isn't that one criterion deciding the winner of this daft competition?

To eliminate 'Summertime' you surely have to define 'folk'?- count me out of that....

Subject: RE: Ireland's Favourite Folk Song
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 26 Apr 19 - 12:42 PM

"But the 'folk' seem to have accepted 'Summertime' as the kind of song 'sung at parties' -
As they have Abba's Waterloo and The Birdie Song
This attitude robs folk song of its uniqueness and importance as a people's art
You have given your own answer - by counting yourself out you can have no input in this subject
Jim

Subject: RE: Ireland's Favourite Folk Song
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 26 Apr 19 - 12:50 PM

I've heard "Summertime" done extremely well by a number of people at folk clubs. As well as Ted Edwards' parody "Suppertime" (and the liver is greasy) :-) I've never heard Waterloo or The Birdie Song at a folk club though.

Subject: RE: Ireland's Favourite Folk Song
From: Thompson
Date: 26 Apr 19 - 01:18 PM

Final list:

On Raglan Road (poem by Patrick Kavanagh set to traditional air Fáinne Gheal an Lae)
The Green Fields of France (ie No Man's Land by Eric Bogle)
A Rainy Night in Soho (The Pogues)
The Foggy Dew (by Canon Charles O’Neill)
The Town I Loved So Well (by Phil Coulter)
Óró Sé Do Bheatha Abhaile (by PH Pearse)
Danny Boy (by Frederick Weatherly)
The Parting Glass (Scottish traditional)
Rocky Road to Dublin (DK Gavan)
Only A Woman's Heart (Eleanor McEvoy)

I'd lay good money on The Town I Loved So Well being voted in, given the rage and indignation over the shooting dead of young Derry journalist Lyra McKee last week in Derry (the town she herself called Legendary).

Subject: RE: Ireland's Favourite Folk Song
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Apr 19 - 01:51 PM

https://youtu.be/tZoqYZ2Hd9c

Subject: RE: Ireland's Favourite Folk Song
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 26 Apr 19 - 01:59 PM

That's a folk song

"I've heard "Summertime" done extremely well by a number of people at folk clubs."
Yeah - I've come to realise the English clubs don't know their folk arse from their pop elbow nowadays
That's why people stopped going to the clubs - they didn't know what they were going to find when they got there
What does being "done wellhave to do with anything ?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Ireland's Favourite Folk Song
From: GUEST,Cj
Date: 26 Apr 19 - 02:05 PM

I was fully expecting to see a MacColl song in there, either Shoals / Shores or DoT. Still, no Ed Sheeran, which has to be a blessing. I wonder how close The Whole of the Moon came to be included?

Subject: RE: Ireland's Favourite Folk Song
From: Thompson
Date: 26 Apr 19 - 02:38 PM

I'd love to see the other entries, and to know how high the votes were for different songs. I don't really want RTE to decide what are my country's favourite songs - the people of the country should decide that…

Subject: RE: Ireland's Favourite Folk Song
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 26 Apr 19 - 02:51 PM

" no Ed Sheeran, which has to be a blessing"
Amen to taht, but give 'em time
" I don't really want RTE to decide what are my country's favourite songs -"
Amen to that too
It's not too long ago that RTE were contemptuously referring to Irish traditional music as "diddley-di" music
It's probably not a coincidence that exercises like these have only come to the fore at a time when traditional music proper has made it on its own terms largely without the help of the media - cynical opportunism
I know one of the ex directors of RTE - a man dedicated to traditional music - he often spoke about his struggles with 'them upstairs'
The Irish language channel, TG4 has always given traditional music its share of airspace
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Ireland's Favourite Folk Song
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 26 Apr 19 - 02:58 PM

In your own words, Jim, pop songs are quickly forgotten and don't last long. Porgy and Bess was first performed in 1935 and is still selling out nearly 85 years later so I guess it is not really a pop song by your definition is it? I wish you would make your mind up! Or at least just give us enjoying folk music in England a break for just one thread.

Anyway, Morris practise calls. I shall just go off and play those tunes of no consequence that no one ever hears any more in England and leave you to cry into your beer over Englands past glories...

Subject: RE: Ireland's Favourite Folk Song
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Apr 19 - 03:00 PM

DtG
'Supper time' by the wonderful Ted.
Remember it well.
Whatever happened to Ted?
Roger.

Subject: RE: Ireland's Favourite Folk Song
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 26 Apr 19 - 05:17 PM

He is still about, Roger. Severely disabled after a stroke but still managing to get out to clubs regularly. I last saw him at Swinton early this year and he managed a floor spot and plugged his new book!

The only bit of that song I remember is

Suppertime and the liver is greasy
Fish are jumping and the sausage is high... :-D

Subject: RE: Ireland's Favourite Folk Song
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Apr 19 - 06:31 PM

I may be an old fart, but surely more of the Irish people are likely to know songs like 'Wild Mountain Thyme' than lesser known Pogues songs, like a 'Rainy Night..' Then Bogle's 'Green Fields of France' is not quite on the public conscious scale of 'Wild Rover' 'Whiskey in the Jar, 'I'll Tell Me Ma' etc. In terms of the Pogues 'Fairytale of New York' is in a way now a modern seasonal folk song and known to everyone. Clearly the selection 'panel' have skewed the choices of the people. I'd love to see the actual proportional voting figures and not what the panel selected. Obviously sectarian/rebel songs on both sides would have polled as well. List programmes though are lazy programming. Not as bad though as Channel 5's Nation's favourite biscuit, sweets and other vacuous space fillers.

Subject: RE: Ireland's Favourite Folk Song
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 26 Apr 19 - 08:27 PM

" I guess it is not really a pop song by your definition is it?"
I have no definition of pop song other than popular
Most disappear shortly after they have run their commercial value - others become 'standards' - still pop but old pop
It's a great song - one of namy I play regularly, lik mid career Sinatra, or Billie Holliday, or Ella....
Dooesn't make them anyything other tha what they are - certainly not folk
Enjoy Morris - or Bernard, or George...
Jim