The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #119547 Message #2594361
Posted By: Gibb Sahib
22-Mar-09 - 01:56 AM
Thread Name: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
Subject: RE: 1954 and All That - defining folk music
Why go by the "1954 definition" when we can go by 19th century definitions? Isn't older better?
No, older is not necessarily better. Such heavily loaded terms vary in their definitions at different times. If "folk" didn't even exist in such usage before the 19th century, how can we feel so positive about its "correct" definition? What did they call the same phenomena before the advent of the term "folk"? And does anyone else feel uncomfortable with the fact that the term emerged hand in hand with certain notions of nationalism, the flipside of which is often ethnocentrism? These were the connotations of folk /volk from the late 19th century, the idea that there were discreet, "pure" ethnic ("national") communities which produced distinctive material culture through which their character could be known and through which, materially, "us" could be defined in distinction to "others."
Moving forward, how could we seriously trust a Cecil Sharp-era concept of "folk"? Didn't nationalism drive his work, as he pursued a notion of what was "English" through ascribing a repertoire of songs.
Let's say Karpeles was the next wave, but she inherited Sharp's legacy. These were people that had recently witnessed surges of industrialization which they feared were a threat to the "purity" of xyz nationalities. "Folk" in many ways meant to covey that which was.
The continued process of industrialization, mass media, and...most effectively....globalization forced people to rethink such quaint concepts. Anthropologists, ethnomusicologists, other theorists etc etc have surely redefined "folk" may times since the 1950s. And one cannot say that, oh well, they are academics whose ideas have not application to how we perceive "folk" on the ground...because the original idea of "folk" is an academic concept. (There seems to be a bit of double-standard in these discussions where academics are simultaneously disregarded as irrelevant while also cited as authorities.)
Gibb