Guest LSC,

My point is, Shirley Collins isn't very popular. Very few people have ever heard of her, or bought any of her records. The vast audiences you seem to think confirm her star quality would embarrass any major label act.

In fact, there are plenty of traditions, such as joikking, eephing, musical saw, etc., where no artist has ever become popular. This does not mean they aren't good artists. You slipped a new concept into your last post, btw: popularity "in ratio to exposure." But this doesn't help us that much either. After all, most people in the world have heard of folk music, but few actually listen to it. So it has had a great deal of exposure, but little acceptance. Does this mean it is generally bad? I don't think so.

The fact is, the world is made up of communities, and these communities have aesthetic standards. Shirley could be popular among the group of folk enthusiasts because she fits their aesthetic. This, in a sense, is the answer to your rhetorical question above: "You could say "technically" but by whose standards???? Well, by the standards of a given community. Thus, a good Joikker is one whom the Saami people think does a good job at joikking. A good singer in folk music is one whom folk audiences enjoy. THIS is what you seem to be getting at. But if her popularity is because of quality, it's only a symptom of the fact that she IS satisfying people's aesthetic needs. She's not good because she's popular, she's popular because she's good, and the "goodness" resides a set of aesthetic principles of a given community. These can be discovered and discussed intelligently, and we don't have to pretend that the sales figures are the only measure of artistic merit.

What your analysis lacks, by the way, is that there are other reasons besides aesthetic ones for which something may be popular. There are powerful forces of both "marketing" and "authority" that help items gain popularity within their communities, even if they don't satisfy the aesthetic that well.

Your own example works fine. McDonald's is relentlessly marketed. It's popular NOT because it's so good, but because it's a familiar name and it's associated with familiar, consistent food that you can get cheaply and quickly. Familiarity, comfort, consistency, price and speed turn out to be more important to people than pure aesthetic enjoyment. McDonald's knows this, and therefore emphasizes consistency, speed, price, and making themselves familiar through advertising. In fact, if it were really so popular just because it naturally tasted so good, they wouldn't need to put so many ads on. It's the ads that make it popular, not the taste.

Authority tends to work a little differently. Let's take the bestseller lists. Books often get on there that I do not believe all that many people actually read. They buy the book because there is a "buzz" created partly by marketing, but partly by authority: so and so in the Times said this book was good. In the US, daytime TV host Oprah Winfrey literally made authors into overnight millionaires when she started a "book club," recommending certain works. The books all ended up on the bestseller lists. They may have been good, but that wasn't why they made the list!

Folk music is less popular than pop not because it is objectively worse, but largely because it isn't compatible with the kind of marketing pop gets, and because most authoritative organs of the larger culture (The Times, etc) marginalize it. Within the general English community, folk has neither big marketing nor the cachet of authority.

However, within the much smaller folk music community, Shirley had both. To the extent that things were "marketed" in the 50s-60s folk world, Shirley was. She was talked up in music magazines, was of course tremendously sexy (as several on this thread have attested to) and generally "buzzed" about. At the same time, she was a protegee not only of Bert Lloyd but of Alan Lomax as well, making her the favorite folk artist of those seen as authoritative in folk circles. So and so in the Times said she was good, and she was on the cover of every folk magazine, etc., etc. This could easily explain her success within a small community like the folk world, even if people DIDN'T love her singing all that much; or perhaps they DO love it, but they wouldn't have if not for the marketing and authority.

Note that Shirley is ONLY popular in this small context, with its isolated marketing outlets and it isolated authorities. Put her up against even the crappiest spice girls wannabe group, and Shirley sells less product. Is this because she's bad? Or is it because she wasn't marketed or authorized in the pop world? I'd say the latter.

Within the small folk context, was she popular because she was good? Or because she WAS marketed and authorized? Hard to say...certainly sales figures on her CDs can't tell you!