The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #127587 Message #2848975
Posted By: Goose Gander
24-Feb-10 - 02:19 PM
Thread Name: Is traditional song finished?
Subject: RE: Is traditional song finished?
Bert, it was you who made a distinction between 'traditional' as collected by folklorists "on the rampage"; and the DT, which is "the real thing." It might be interesting to see what percentage of lyrics and tunes in the DT are drawn from collections of folklore, and which come from other sources. Unless you are going to make an 'all music is traditional' argument, then you should be able to understand that folklorists with limited time and resources had to first define what they understood to be traditional, and then focus their efforts upon collecting what they could of this material.
That being said, there is a range of possible approaches: Sharp collected older ballads that had been in circulation for some time and were unquestionably traditional; the Lomaxes leaned toward such material but also recorded newer songs; Randolph collected just about anything, including stage songs, commercial hillbilly songs, etc. So I'm still failing to grasp your "valid point" unless you are simply peeved that these folks and others weren't as all-encompassing as you feel they should have been.