I'm trying to make some sense of this discussion. It seems to me that academic males have made the distinction between what is revival and what is traditional and that this doesn't seem to be coming from very many who would be labeled as a traditional folk musician or singer. Also, as Bee has pointed out, not much imput from women here.

Most of the traditional singers have modified what they heard making it their own rather than imitative. In that sense, each time they perform, they are part of a revival.

New verses were being written by those who are dubbed traditional throughout the ages.

There is a Anglo singing approach to folk and an Afro one. The first stresses solo performance and the latter ensemble.

The difference between Dylan taking trad songs and rewriting them and those who do this in a traditional enclave or sub-culture is that Dylan gets the royalties.

Nottamun Town as sung by Jean Ritchie would seem the basis for Dylan's Masters of War.

I do think there are musical patterns which indicate a traditional approach to a song but as has been stated many times, the more global, technological, and academic folk music becomes, the lines between trad and revival become blurred.

There is a sub-cultural tradition in music whether it's jazz, blues, ballad narrative singing,
fiddling, etc. and this is what gave rise to the interest initially by those of us who got what that was.

I think it became Rousseauian, however. It was romantic and exotic by those who were not part of any particular definable sub-culture. People started dressing oddly and affected mannerisms that are what could be viewed by many as comic.

From the standpoint of a musician, which is how I initially started out, the music speaks louder than words. But then when you look at the lyrics of songs, something else comes into focus.

There are good lyrics and poor ones. Some of the so-called songwriters of the "revival" are better than some of the lyrics messed with by "traditionalists". And vice versa.

I originally liked the folk music that I heard because it attracted me as good music, potent words and historical revelations. When I encountered "academia" then it seemed that the point of what folk music was suddenly became kind of crazy.

But if there had not been a historical precedence, a body of developed tradition, a method of expression that was concise and subjectively what I would call honest, I wouldn't have bothered.

So it leaves us in limbo. When you start using words to describe music you might as well use them to make buildings.

I think that when you scratch the academic skin you find radical differences in what they call folk, trad, revival, commercial and the interjection of opinion keeps the conversation flowing. Some information is useful. Some not. But thanks to UK Mudcatters I'm learning more about how folk music is perceived in the British Isles.


Frank Hamilton