Somme aspects of the oral tradition and folk process will NEVER die!


As long as there is a traditional context, any song used in it becomes a folk song. I give the example of the lulabye. When my daughter was in infancy, I would sing her to sleep using all the traditional lullabyes I remembered while sitttting in a dark room next to her crib rocking in a in a rocking chair. If she didn't want to go to sleep that particular night and I ran out of traditional lullabyes, I sang any slow song I could think of until the job was done and that became a folk song the second I sang it, EVEN if it reverted back to its origins the moment I stopped. I've heard several mothers use the Elvis hit "I Can't Help Falling In Love With You" as a lullabye, so Elvis didn't just borrow "O Sole Mio" and "Plaisir D'Amour", he managed to give back as well.

I've marched in cadence to Manfred Mann's "Doo Way Diddy" just like I have to the traditional derivatives of "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon", "The Crawdad Song", Civil War era tunes while re-enacting or any other "Jody Calls" from US Army basic training.

The "Jody Call" is another context where new verses are made and passed on in a "traditional Manner", as are Barracks songs and kids' playground songs, both as often as not parodies of familiar tunes P.D. and popular. Some of the parents' military songs from the world wars even made it to the playgrounds amidst"Mine Eyes Have Seen The Glory Of The Burning Of The School" and the like, as I remember singing:

First Marine bought the bean, parlez-vous
Second marine cooked the bean, parlez vous
Third Marine ate the bean
And PFFFT all over the submarine
Hinky-dinky parlez-vous

Third Marine jumped the fence
And milked a cow with a monkey wrench

...and on into infinity. Or taunts like :

Roses are red
Violets are blue
You've got a nose
Like a B-52


....So professional singer-songwriters be damned, there are "Traditional Folk Songs" being created in barracks and on playgrounds as we speak, and as long as there are soldiers and children the folk process will never die and the cycle will continue.

(Maybe Joe Hickerson, if he's reading this, can write a NEW final verse to "Where Have All The Flowers Gone" adressing this part of the cycle).

The work gangs are pretty much gone here, but anything you sing to yourself in rhythm as you hoe your garden becomes as much a folk song as "Ain't No More Cane On The Brazos" until the task is done, after which it can go on back to its original context once its temporary purpose is served.

My mother is 94 and is in a seniors home. Once when she was in the rehab building and I was waiting for her, I heard the muzak in trhe building playing Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry and Jackie Wilson. There are people in the home in their 70's now to whom that music was the sundtrack of their lives and the same age my late pre-war 1941 born oldest sister would've been if she were still alive, people considered "old folks" listening to music my parents couldn't stand when my sister played it.

Choose your own examples. Draw your own conclusions.