It really matters or it doesn't. That is, a pop song may or may not ever become a folk song. To become a folk song, people have to sing it OUTSIDE its origins. When a pop song gets "covered" by another performer (or 101 Strings), it's still a pop song. When that same song gets sung around a campfire (not being led by the Scout Leader, but just sung because it's enjoyable to sing it), it's on its way to becoming a folk song.

When it gets mis-remembered, parodied, or even deliberately rewritten, it may be getting closer to folkish.

When one of those mis-remembered, parodied, or rewritten versions gets sung by someone not connected to the one(s) who changed it, it's pretty damned close to folk.

When their grandkids learn it, it's a folk song.

Let's consider Stephen Foster songs, for some well-known examples.

Most Foster songs are not folk songs. They're found in books (so the original version can be re-imprinted on the singer's mind -- no "folk process" is involved) and may be sung in parlors just as in his day.

That said, there are a few of his which have escaped. Fiddlers and banjo players play "Angeline the Baker" without knowing anything of the original, nor that it had words, nor that the words went to a tune which was separated from the chorus, which is half of the fiddle tune. The other half of that fiddle tune is totally un-Foster in origin.

There are a few others which are still sung or played without recourse to the original sheet music or a recording relying on that sheet music, but most of the rest of his works are non-folk songs.

So a singer-songwriter of today may write "in the tradition" (take folksong forms and formats as his/her pattern) but their songs won't become folksongs till sufficient time has passed and the aural/oral tradition has a chance. Sometimes that happens quickly, particularly with songs that get parodied. The parodies get passed around by ear, and sometimes get separated from the original.

Example: Chuck Perdue, one of the founders of FSGW, made a parody of "Don't Think Twice," and sang it around, for fun. Several months or years later, someone at a singaround sang the parody back to him, and said it had been written "by someone at Purdue" (University). So Chuck's parody became a folk song, and his name remained attached to it, sort of.

Anyway, that's how I see it. I write songs, and hope they sound "folky" enough to be considered as such -- "folky", not "folk." In other words, I want my songs to sound like they could have been folksongs, but I'm not out to "write a new old folksong." I just write "in the tradition," and, since that tradition includes Woody Guthrie and Tom Paxton and Rick von Schmidt and Paul James McNeeley, I'm happy to be in that company.


Bob Clayton