Folk Process - is it dead?

Subject: RE: Folk Process - is it dead?
From: Scoville
Date: 30 Jan 07 - 09:33 AM

Grab--folk musicians will. The general public never has and never will care, but my experience has been that people who really like the music will seek out alternative and often less-commercialized versions. Furthermore, finding them is, if anything, getting easier since we now have the Internet, which not only makes it easier to search but makes it easier for people who have these resources to make them available to a wider consumer base.

Example: I (living in Texas) recently purchased a record by a commercially obscure Canadian fiddler on eBay, after having heard his music in a YouTube video. Fifteen years ago I *might* have heard about him (through friends who live further north, where they are more attuned to that fiddle culture) but it would have been nearly impossible for me to find recordings of him, and I don't like to buy recordings without hearing the musician first. Instead, it took me about three minutes to locate and purchase a limited-production CD. Bingo--market expansion.

Subject: RE: Folk Process - is it dead?
From: GUEST,Jim Martin
Date: 30 Jan 07 - 11:37 AM

Patrick Costello - are you the Pat Costello of Clare fm fame?

Welcome to 'Mudcat' anyway.

Subject: RE: Folk Process - is it dead?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 30 Jan 07 - 12:30 PM

The paradoxical thing is that, if we who get too purist about tradition, we are setting ourselves against the folk process which is a fundamental aspect of that same tradition.

"would someone like to offer a definition of "folk process" For me it just means the way that songs get altered over time as they get sung around the place. Not necessarily for the better; but often enough a better song does emerge along the way.

Subject: RE: Folk Process - is it dead?
From: Tim theTwangler
Date: 31 Jan 07 - 02:00 AM

Hello George.
What is afolk process matey?
And btw lovely songs see you later this year.

Subject: RE: Folk Process - is it dead?
From: Gurney
Date: 31 Jan 07 - 02:28 AM

Well, I'm still doing it, folk processing I mean, more and more with advancing age.

Pat Cooksey has found more than 20 TITLES to his 'Paddy and the Bricks.'

Cyril Tawney always did it to his own songs, polishing them to economy.

Vin Garbutt has written (I'm told,) a new verse to an old song.

I would say that, if a singer is going to the trouble of learning a song, s/he would want a version that suits him/her. However, what has changed? Cecil Sharp House and suchlike institutions still have the originals for the scholar, so the singers will do what they like.

Subject: RE: Folk Process - is it dead?
From: Scrump
Date: 31 Jan 07 - 06:11 AM

I think many singers will change their own songs, adding a verse or changing the words, which is fair enough. I'm not so sure it's right for other singers to change the songs of other living writers, though, without the writer's consent. George gave some examples where others have changed his words, and he was happy with the changes and adopted them himself - that's fine.

But if someone changes the words to (say) a Ralph McTell song, because he thinks he has thought of some better words than Ralph's, or writes a new verse to it, without asking Ralph for approval first, it could be that the 'improved' version is not as good in the eyes of anyone apart from the 'changer', and that if Ralph were aware of it he would object. Does that count as the folk process, and would you approve of it? Or would you say the person changing the original song is doing something wrong in a case like this? Or doesn't it matter at all? I guess it would depend on the views of the original writer - or would it? Let's have your opinions please.

(I just used Ralph as an example, there's no significance in that - I'm not aware of this happening to any of his songs).

Just trying to get to the bottom of what the folk process is, and what is acceptable within it.

Subject: RE: Folk Process - is it dead?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 31 Jan 07 - 06:41 AM

All this whingeing about presevation and protocol is all very well, but there is an inherent cruelty in turning away from the needs of the community to express itself, just preserve a load of old songs.

It is hard to know what many of these songs are about. The modes of expression demanded are strangely reminiscent of Michael Palin's public school tradition's in Ripping Yarns ('How I longed to be a fourth year and have one leg untied on Tuesdays')

i think the writing was on the wall thirty years ago when Ian Campbell's kids became reggae singers. Presumably they went to folk club, heard what Dad was up to and were put off by this tidal wave of hogwash. the English obsession with pre first world war values found resonances amongst the geriatrics who voted for Thatcher.

It was said the C of E is the middle class at prayer. I suppose we are the middle classes on camping holiday or something.

Subject: RE: Folk Process - is it dead?
From: Wolfgang
Date: 31 Jan 07 - 07:24 AM

I come from a different tradition where the no known author definition would be useless. I don't know why the difference, but the authors of our even more than 500 years old folksongs are often known. Noone over here would for instance not call Die Lorelei a folksong just because the author is known.

It is a folksong because I knew it and could sing it before I even cared or knew whether the song had a known author or not. I learned it orally without any recollection when and from whom. If that is true for a song for a significant percentage of the population it is a folksong in my mind.

The no known author definition has one more disadvantage in my mind: If a researcher would find in an obscure library an old document giving the name of the author to a song that previously had no known author would that mean that that song has to be removed from the folk song corpus henceforth?

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: Folk Process - is it dead?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 31 Jan 07 - 07:31 AM

I suppose its good to know there are places where they are even crazier than we are.

Someone wrote those songs - they didn't appear by magic.

Subject: RE: Folk Process - is it dead?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 31 Jan 07 - 08:47 AM

'Bubblyrat',

I have to say that I was particularly pissed off when, about 25 - 30 years ago, the old songs were hi-jacked by rock musicians - who also thought that they could 'improve' them.

And, yet again, to WLD. Us 'purists' are a teeeny-tiiiny, microscopically small, miniscule minority. If the 'Folk Process' decides to get underway again (if it ever stopped - I'm not sure) there's nothing we could do to stop it, even if we wanted to. Please feel free to start a new movement more relevant to today. I certainly won't stand in your way - good luck, God speed and bon voyage! Why if I find it exciting, and it appeals to my imagination, I might even join you!

Subject: RE: Folk Process - is it dead?
From: Mooh
Date: 31 Jan 07 - 09:16 AM

Short answer...No.

Even if armageddon nearly destroys everything but some part of folk is rediscovered by some distant future archeologist and revived, the folk process continues. It can be stopped and restarted because of our obsession with preservation by recording everything in every possible way.

It is not dead now because folks everywhere are still passing culture around. I do it, my friends do it, and there are fantastic networks of folks doing it online, offline, in jams, lessons, gigs, sessions, and in media. It's old-fashioned and new-fangled all at once.

Last summer I participated in teaching children a song while playing on a beach in a way which could have been done since the dawn of music. I knew the song from having been taught by my parents decades ago in the same rural area. Last week I participated in learning a song with the band with the aid of the internet. It's fast and ignores geography, but it's the folk process.

The folk process isn't just old, it's new, now, current, and future. It doesn't die.

Folk is dead they say, long live folk.

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: Folk Process - is it dead?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 31 Jan 07 - 09:24 AM

Most of the time it isn't about people consciously changing the songs, isn't about them singing them as they remember them, and the way they remember them isn't quite the way they heard them, because memory is like that. Or perhaps it's the way they did hear them, but the person singing the song had done the misremembering.

Or it's a matter of someone reconstructing a line or a verse because they can't remember how it went, or the person they heard it from couldn't remember.

That's why the word is "process" - it's what happens whether you want it to or not. Like the process of growing older.

Subject: RE: Folk Process - is it dead?
From: GUEST,Terry McDonald
Date: 31 Jan 07 - 11:02 AM

The C of E is traditionally the Conservative Party, rather than the middle class,
at Prayer........

Subject: RE: Folk Process - is it dead?
From: Scrump
Date: 31 Jan 07 - 11:16 AM

That's why the word is "process" - it's what happens whether you want it to or not. Like the process of growing older.

I don't think I agree that a process is always something that happens whether you want it to or not. A process can equally well be something under your control, to happen when you want it to, or not if you don't.

But obviously growing older is something we don't have control over, I can't argue with that (I wish I could!)

Subject: RE: Folk Process - is it dead?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 31 Jan 07 - 12:02 PM

I just wish there were some songs about how I lived, and my parents - instead of this stuff about 4 loom weavers, recruiting sergeants, pretty ploughboys, and of course the first world war - rivetting as though subjects are.

I just feel my generation never made the slightest attempt to make a contribution to folk song. we are as ones whose name were writ on water, as JK said - something like that anyway.

What will mark our passing? The fact that we didn't let hurdy gurdy tunes go the wall, a memory of Ewan singing The Dowie Dens of Yarrow,
Tony Capstick singing Bonny Bunch of Roses, Bill Caddick singing The Writing of Tiperary, Gerry Lockran singing No Cane on the Brazos....I'm glad I saw it all.

But it doesn't explain, express or even record the times I lived through.

Subject: RE: Folk Process - is it dead?
From: Scoville
Date: 31 Jan 07 - 12:09 PM

So, what are you doing about it?

Subject: RE: Folk Process - is it dead?
From: Grab
Date: 31 Jan 07 - 12:31 PM

Grab--folk musicians will. The general public never has and never will care, but my experience has been that people who really like the music will seek out alternative and often less-commercialized versions.

Now we get onto defining the word "folk musician". :-/ I doubt most of the people we now call "source singers" or who C#, Alan Lomax and others recorded would have called themselves "folk musicians" before the folk community got hold of them. They were simply people who sung songs that they'd heard from other people. I think that as long as people still learn songs from each other (and particularly from parents) rather than from CDs, that's going to keep going, whether they think they're folk musicians or not.

Graham.

Subject: RE: Folk Process - is it dead?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 31 Jan 07 - 01:24 PM

Scoville, If I could find something that would work and confront the general malaise, I suspect I would have done by now.

Subject: RE: Folk Process - is it dead?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 31 Jan 07 - 01:39 PM

"I just wish there were some songs about how I lived, and my parents"

There are, even if they seem to have passed you by. Start a thread looking for them maybe?

Subject: RE: Folk Process - is it dead?
From: Scoville
Date: 31 Jan 07 - 02:52 PM

Or write your own.

Subject: RE: Folk Process - is it dead?
From: Scrump
Date: 31 Jan 07 - 02:53 PM

I can sympathise with WLD's complaint about the lack of songs about 21st century life for ordinary folk, but as McGrath says, there are some around. Maybe not as many as you would like, but they do exist.

I keep meaning to write some - goodness knows there's enough material to use.

Subject: RE: Folk Process - is it dead?
From: BB
Date: 31 Jan 07 - 03:11 PM

I think it's quite reasonable to make small changes in songs whose writer is known, especially if they are written to be sung as 'folk songs'. As far as I am concerned, that means that anyone can change a song so that they feel comfortable with it, which is what 'folk' singers have always done. Perhaps if songwriters don't feel happy with that, they should write pop or classical songs instead!

George has already stated that it doesn't worry him - even that it pleases him. How do other songwriters feel about it?

Barbara

Subject: RE: Folk Process - is it dead?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 31 Jan 07 - 03:12 PM

I'd take it "how I lived, and my parents" would be primarily about 20th Century life rather than 21st century life.

More modern songs sometimes can be misplaced in time by peoplem hearingnwhat they expect to hear. I remember one time when I sang a song of mine about growing up in the war and its aftermath, and a man conme up afterwards sayingt he'd liked it - and the going in to say "there's some great songs about teh Furst World War". And that's true, and I was flattered that he thought to rank mine as one of them - but the war I'd been singing about was the Second Wolrd War.

There are great songs about the Second World War, and the wars we've had since and are having now, and about life "between the wars", to quote Billy Bragg (and people always think that song of his just means the 20s and 30s, which is another example of how songs can get misplaced in time).

Subject: RE: Folk Process - is it dead?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 31 Jan 07 - 03:22 PM

I dunno they all seem to be about stuff dying off - like Bernie Parry's Man of the Soil, or Connolly's The Punch and Judy Man. I'm not saying that stuff wasn't going on. But wasn't it mainly about what was dying off - rather than all the things and events that swept us along.

Such efforts have been made to make the sound and the forms archaic, I'm not sure the language exists. I know I searched for it, but I never found it.

I think maybe I was a bit like the Ulster poet Louis MacNeice. Alan Bennet said of him, he never went off at the deep end so he didn't make much of a splash. Perhaps if I'd been a pissed off intellectual like Rosselson, or a punk like Billy Bragg. But I never had that attitude.

Like alot of other common men, the folk revival bypassed me and my life. And that's why we have this thread, and many of us feel uneasy about the basic worthwhileness of the artform that we gave a lot of our efforts in life to.

Subject: RE: Folk Process - is it dead?
From: Tim theTwangler
Date: 31 Jan 07 - 05:39 PM

Arent your own songs reflective of the period yo have lived though(so far )WLD?

Subject: RE: Folk Process - is it dead?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 31 Jan 07 - 06:42 PM

One or two perhaps - most of the best ones are just silly. Just lately I've got into poncy guitar based things.

They don't really come close to expressing the round of shit jobs, shit circumstances, crap relationships (and I'm not just talking about man/woman things), tough decisions, and betrayals of honour that modern life imposes on most of us.

You write what you can. What is that TS Eliot says, I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be......

I don't think it was given to me to be the great writer. I do get the feeling though that not too many people have tried, not enough. And those byways with that take us before the guns at Waterloo, before the mast with Nelson, rollicking away in a jaunting car, or sharing a cuppa with the Tommies before going over the top on the Somme........they are just so much more enchanting than the present, and the truths offered by those times so much more substantial.

What if the four loom weavers etc had never written songs about their lives. Wouldn't they think us sad cases if we told them we had nothing to sing of in our lives?

Subject: RE: Folk Process - is it dead?
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 31 Jan 07 - 06:58 PM

Some songs reflective of the Vietnam War era which have (I believe) long-term folk potential...
Sam Stone by John Prine
Get Together by Jessie Colin Young
My Uncle by Gram Parsons

Of these, the most specific to the time is My Uncle, which references "a letter came today from the Draft Board" and the recipient's plan to head for the nearest foreign border, saying "Vancouver may be just my kind of town". Even today in the era of a Volunteer Army, the memory of receiving "greetings" in the mail strikes a chord only for those of us who are 50 or older, and running away to Canada seems like a strange concept, so the topical references may rule out transition to tradition, even though it has a snappy bluegrass beat.

Several songs off of Steve Earle's "The Revolution Starts Now" also have potential as regards the Iraq War. I believe there are plenty of songs being produced that have survival potential, even popular songs by popular artists.

Subject: RE: Folk Process - is it dead?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 31 Jan 07 - 07:17 PM

Maybe there's a built in tendency for songs in our part of the musical forest to tend be looking back at the parts of our world that have just gone or are going, and to celebrate them or lament them.

But that's as true where the songs are set in our own times - think of Cyril Tawney's songs, which were right up to date. It's a matter of mood, not chronology.

Generally the best songs very often often tend to be about hard times. But in spite of Stephen Foster's song, hard times do come again, and the songs that come out of them help us get through them.

Subject: RE: Folk Process - is it dead?
From: GUEST,Frank Hamilton
Date: 31 Jan 07 - 07:48 PM

I would be extremely complemented if someone decided to change a song that I wrote but I would be angry if someone tried to claim authorship for it and start collecting royalties. Pete Seeger changed "If I Had a Hammer" and did it the way Peter Paul and Mary had changed it. He did their version and gave up his own.

The most important aspect of a folk song in my opinion is its accessibility. Some folk songs may deserve to be forgotten because they no longer serve the needs of the community where they were written. They have become archaic and require so many footnotes, historically that the intro to the song takes more time than the song itself to perform. Some folk songs will become "Art Songs" if they are musically and poetically interesting and find their way to the stage. Some will become popular songs (not likely today). But the need to sing them defines their life expectancy. One reason I got into folk is that it has an obvious "social" aspect to it. It can be shared informally and not rarified as with a concert art song. It breaks down the barrier between the stage performer and the audience.

To try to do a song as it was done through imitation risks the performer coming off phony or not true to him/herself. (I cringe when I hear young white kids trying to sound "soulful" or see college students in overhauls with handlebar mustaches and patchy jeans trying to be "old time". )

I think that folk music already has adapted because people are making the music for themselves. The tunes are not far-off or esoteric and when they are inclusive through singing choruses and recognition. There are musical traditions that are being carried out today by those who respect those traditions and understand them. Up in New England, they get together to sing sea chanteys and add some new songs to the repitiore. They still have Sacred Harp sings throughout the country. Spirituals are still being sung, some recently composed and others older in that tradition. There's the blues...still goes on.

There are "folk-style" songs being written by people who are sensitive to that tradition.
(Merle Travis "Dark As A Dungeon", Jean Ritchie "The L and N Don't Stop Here Anymore"
and Woody, Prine, Dylan and others capture the spirit of "folk".

The biggest obstacle to what happens to the "folk process" is the penchant for academic types to attempt to define what is the real deal and they miss the forest for the trees.
I think of Leadbelly (who most of you know) who loved the way Richard Dyer-Bennett performed his art song versions of folk. Maybe John Henry was off stylistically when Dyer-Bennett performed it, but most of his work was lovely and introduced new audiences to the content of folk, musically and lyrically. In that sense, he carried the folk tradition forward.

You would have to say that for the Kingston Trio although many would consider that in a disdainful manner as breaching the "purity". Well, there is no purity. There is no pure human being as well as the songs they sing. Something we hear in a song comes from something else.

What is dead however is the conception of what folk has been due to its commerciality and popularization through the music industry. Folk music is not an "image". That's just the show business part. The music carries its own weight because it has a value that moves people and makes it identifiable and lives on as a result. People want to recreate it.

Frank Hamilton

Subject: RE: Folk Process - is it dead?
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 31 Jan 07 - 08:01 PM

Excellent post Frank.

Subject: RE: Folk Process - is it dead?
From: Ref
Date: 31 Jan 07 - 10:20 PM

Ah! I love academic folkies! A few years ago at Old Songs, Ian Robb and Finestkind did their lovely a capella version of The farmer's Boy on Friday night and at least twice in big workshops on Saturday. Ian talked about it being his father's favorite song, one he'd heard in music halls as a boy, and how, havong acyually been a Yorkshire "farmer's boy", would chortle at the thought of any Yorkshire farmer treating such a lad with anything approaching human warmth. On Sunday afternoon at the mainstage, some local, self-styled "authority' crept out on stage with her guitar and talked about this song she was going to sing that had "been COLLECTED in the Adirondacks in the late nineteen forties" and how no one could explain where it came from. She started into a rather mournful version of The Farmer's Boy and the deer-in-the-headlights look she had when half the audience swung lustily into the chorus was priceless. Don't look now, but while you guys and gals are deconstructing the folk process, it's going on all around you!

Subject: RE: Folk Process - is it dead?
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 31 Jan 07 - 11:26 PM

I was wondering what that low rumble was.

Subject: RE: Folk Process - is it dead?
From: Scrump
Date: 01 Feb 07 - 04:48 AM

To reply to Barbara's post above: I would have thought it depends on the nature of the changes.

George has said he was happy for small changes to be made to his songs, but would he have been so happy if someone made substantial changes, maybe rewriting a couple of verses and perhaps changing the meaning?

Any of us could add verses to a song, or rewrite a verse, etc., but what we change may not be as good as the original version. I'm not sure where you would draw the line between 'acceptable' and 'unacceptable' changes, but I would have thought it was at least implicit that the author of the original song would have to give his/her approval to such changes (as George has done in his examples).

I've made minor changes to other people's songs but in each case I've sought the author's approval (and happily, got it). I feel happier singing the song if I do this - I'd feel I was taking liberties otherwise. But I don't know if everyone else would bother, or care about this?

I guess some songwriters would care more about changes to their songs than others. After all, if a songwriter has put a lot of effort into honing a song, he/she might feel a bit miffed to discover somebody had changed it without their knowledge. Some songwriters might not care at all, some might not want any changes made at all, while others may be somewhere in between.

Of course all this only applies to living writers. If a song's author is known, but is dead, then maybe it doesn't matter as much (or does it? should you consult their family or something?). And for traditional songs by unknown authors (or Seth Lakeman of course) it would be fair game to change anything you like.

Subject: RE: Folk Process - is it dead?
From: Sugwash
Date: 01 Feb 07 - 06:09 AM

I guess that people have always made changes to songs, either intentionally or unintentionally. It doesn't damage the original song; we're not breaking into the Lourve and defacing the Mona Lisa, we're Photoshopping a copy of it.

I've changed the odd trad song in my time. I didn't like the ending of 'The Gallant Brigantine', a promising story that fizzled out in my opinion, so I made up my own ending. I don't try to pass it off as the original, or rather the version that is best known, who knows what the original version was like.

Shakespeare plays are constantly adapted or interpreted, classical music the same; the original versions survive. I think it was Martin Carthy who said "It's a difficult tradition to damage" or words to that effect.

I recently sang a song I written to a friend. He didn't record it at the time, but some months later he did and the 'folk process' had subtley altered the tune — for the better I'd say.

Troublesome word folk, perhaps we should just call it the process. Anyhow, to answer George's question: no, it's not dead, it's a fiesty old bugger that'll see most of us off.

Subject: RE: Folk Process - is it dead?
From: GUEST,Elaine
Date: 01 Feb 07 - 07:01 AM

Could it not be that "Folk Process" and "Tradition" are not exactly the same thing, that perhaps they could be viewed as a simple Vin diagram with a huge overlapping area, but not a complete eclipse of one over the other?

Tradition could be frozen in the past in such a view, but a part of the folk process would not be. And it is obvious that there are areas where the folk process is still strongly at work, and not particularly collectable in the instant, such as military training chants and schoolyard games and songs that pop up with a degree of spontaneity and may or may not catch on and spread with multiple variants.

Admittedly, I haven't read this entire fascinating thread yet, though I will eventually, so this may have already been put forth. Please forgive me if I'm repeating an idea expressed already.

Subject: RE: Folk Process - is it dead?
From: GUEST,Mr Red who collects songs (more than one!)
Date: 01 Feb 07 - 07:26 AM

No

Subject: RE: Folk Process - is it dead?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 01 Feb 07 - 10:06 AM

Elaine - you are exactly right. the tradition informs and inspires and occasionally stultifies the folk process.

To devote your life to honouring and trying to play the tradition is laudable - and probably as demanding as trying to be an opera singer

But its not the whole folk process, which is to do with people writing about their lives using all sorts of techniques and whatever they feel they need to express themselves..

Don't be just a guest, we need some more people with your point of view.

Subject: RE: Folk Process - is it dead?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 01 Feb 07 - 11:47 AM

"Tradition" and "the Folk Process" - it's not so much that they overlap, but rather that they are interdependent. Yin and Yang, two sides of the same coin. Position and velocity.

Subject: RE: Folk Process - is it dead?
From: Elaine Green
Date: 01 Feb 07 - 07:11 PM

Thank, weelittledrummer! After casting around a bit I did finally figure out how to sign up. I'm Elaine Green. I tried to sign up as simply elaine, as that's what my few meager posts as a guest were done as, but y'all already have one of those. Glad to be here! I've been enjoying reading posts here for quite a while.

Subject: RE: Folk Process - is it dead?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 01 Feb 07 - 07:27 PM

Welcome, Elaine. New members always welcome, and for me that goes double form people who choose to use a real name.

Subject: RE: Folk Process - is it dead?
From: GUEST,Frank Hamilton
Date: 01 Feb 07 - 07:49 PM

To interject a little heresy into this conversation, I submit that some rap music could be folk music in process. The idea of a narrative in rhythm depicting the lives of contemporary society has its roots in African-American and African traditions. The Griot of Africa might be a ancestor of the modern sidewalk rapper. You can hear the sounds of Fela Anikulapo Kouti as a bridge between the modern rapper and earlier forms of Afro-speech in song.

Bling and commerciality aside, there is a case to be made that record scratching by DJ's is a folk art and so too the rappers that don't make the charts but are in the community. Now, rap is an international expression.

Hey, you don't have to like all folk music if you don't like rap. But folkies can use an open mind sometime.

Frank

Subject: RE: Folk Process - is it dead?
From: Mooh
Date: 01 Feb 07 - 08:54 PM

Frank..."folkies can use an open mind sometimes"? Okay, agreed and I like to be reminded, but compared to rappers? Geez, the rap folks I've encountered have been too willing to promote violence and hate to be considered open minded.

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: Folk Process - is it dead?
From: Elaine Green
Date: 01 Feb 07 - 09:41 PM

I think Frank is right, though, in spite of my agreement with Mooh also about many rappers and the tradition of violence.

I do think that tradition (rapping) has fairly genteel beginnings, though, in spite of what it has let itself become. Its roots are as folk as calypso and mento and Carribean toasting, as well as the examples Frank mentioned. Like most all genres it's probably about 95% horrific and 5% good to great. I think folkies (and I'm one, though I do try to keep an open mind) don't much like it because so much of it has essentially dispensed with melody and is considerably more vulgar than we're used to. I like melody, and while I like some minor vulgarity, I prefer it in small doses and not sexist.

That 5%, though, has (wait for it, wait for it) gotten a bad rap, by association. But look, there are probably 100 Avril Langnappe or whatever her name is for every Sheryl Crow, and that doesn't make all rock music bad; and the Serendipity Singer types were a lot more popular than the Leadbellies and the Guthries, and that doesn't make all so-called folk music bad.

Okay, I'm babbling, so I'll stop now.

Subject: RE: Folk Process - is it dead?
From: mousethief
Date: 02 Feb 07 - 12:01 AM

I'm with those who say the folk process will only be dead when the "OH MY GOD DON'T CHANGE ANYTHING" types have killed it. But presumably there will always be people like me (and others here) who will keep chipping away at the edges.

A friend of mine, who should know better, who does what she calls "Old Timey Music", once criticized me for taking liberties with "The Fox". Well, I learned it from a book, and my sight-reading sucks, so the melody was a little different from what she was used to. I like it. People I've sung it for that "don't know any better" like it. Why isn't that part of the "folk process" too?

Also, to people who don't like PPM or the Kingston Trio because they're too polished: good grief. Find a hobby or something.

O..O
=o=

Subject: RE: Folk Process - is it dead?
From: GUEST
Date: 02 Feb 07 - 01:40 AM

Ah well...

My family is about as deep into performing traditional music as it is possible to be, and not a one of us has the least belief that the folk process is dead.

Consider the example of human evolution. When lifespans were shorter, people married in early teens, had children and died early. Evolution was faster, then. Imagine that the human lifespan, and our reproductive cycle, doubled in some future reality, as it has doubled in the last 200 years. Evolution would be slower yet.

My daughter sings "Muleskinner's Blues" the way she heard Odetta sing it. Most local performers sing it the way Bill Monroe sang it, except that most of them don't have copies of Bill Monroe's version. They change the arrangement and confuse the lyrics. Few have actually heard Jimmie Rodgers' original version, though it is available on CD.

It is as if the song were an organism that has found hosts in the singers of Appalachia. It is evolving and surviving. In the days before recorded music the lifespan of a particular performance was much shorter, and evolution was faster, but the process seems the same.

I have heard, in the past 3 months, five different performances of the Child Ballad "Geordie." Heaven knows why this classic has come out of dormancy now, but it has. With no definitive performance on CD, I don't doubt that the folk process is vigorously at work. Like some tough microorganism the song is living, multiplying, reproducing.

Folk music, in general and the ballads in particular, are very tough organisms indeed. I doubt that the entire World Health Organization could wipe out "Barbary Allen" in our lifetime.

Considering other songs, there is a "Dixie" eradication program at work in many settings. I doubt that we can find every carrier, so there will probably be an outbreak of "Dixie" sometime in the future.

The truth is that the folk process is a part of the core complement of lawful processes of human existence that seem to fit biological patterns. We fool ourselves when we suppose that basic, well-understood processes are no longer active.

Subject: RE: Folk Process - is it dead?
From: Gurney
Date: 02 Feb 07 - 02:50 AM

Mousethief, I'd say that the erudite folkies are more likely to carefully listen to a changed version of an old song, and then buttonhole you later and sing you 3 or 4 variants of that song. Whether you want them to or not.
I doesn't seem to happen on Wolfgang's scene, but the British tradition is largely recorded by collectors, from oral sources, and then bowdlerised to remove the naughty bits, and consequently there are few 'original' traditional songs, just several folk-processed variants.

On second thoughts, I suppose it depends on your local pedants, really.
Bowdler was an English vicar and song collector. So was Spooner a vicar. What these clerics will do to be remembered.....

Subject: RE: Folk Process - is it dead?
From: GUEST
Date: 02 Feb 07 - 10:23 AM

Mooh, compare the topics covered in rap with the stuff that goes on in traditional ballads. People have always had a horny, thieving, bloody-minded dark side - and folk music, from Child Ballads to Ice T, has always found a way to celebrate our basic earthiness in one way or another.

-Patrick

Subject: RE: Folk Process - is it dead?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 02 Feb 07 - 10:43 AM

Pretty clearly rap comes out of a folk tradition, or rather, a combination of folk traditions. Whether people like particular examples of it, or even the whole genre, is irrelevant. "Folk" isn't another word for "good", still less for "pleasant".

There are folk traditions in which the central element is passing on songs and music that has been formed already, and traditions where the central element is improvising within certain recognised patterns, verbal or musical. The two elements - continuity and innovation - are always present, but the balance can be very different.

Subject: RE: Folk Process - is it dead?
From: Mooh
Date: 02 Feb 07 - 11:46 AM

Guest Patrick...I knew someone would mention that. Folk songs of violence don't preach it and are more often (note I said more often, not always) third person narratives rather than first person pronouncements.

All music is derivative so it stands to reason there's a relationship between folk and rap but that doesn't excuse rap of its violent tendencies, not does it make rap folk.

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: Folk Process - is it dead?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 02 Feb 07 - 12:42 PM

Having violent tendencies doesn't make something a folk song, and it doesn't stop it being a folk song.

That kind of argument is much the same as if someone were to say that a picture in front of them couldn't possibly be a photograph, because it showed something nasty happening, or even that it appeared the person taking the photo approved of the nasty stuff that was happening.

There's no use in trying to argue in a circle: "That song preaches violence. Folk songs don't preach violence. So that song can't possibly be a folk song."